Pivot - Elon's OpenAI Bid, Trump's Judicial Strategy, and DOGE's Shock and Awe

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

​​Kara and Scott share their reactions to Elon Musk calling them "cruel, mean, & deceitful human beings." Then, they dig into Elon (and a group of investors) making a $97 billion bid for control of OpenAI, and what exactly will come of it. Plus, Trump's latest tariff threats, and his master plan to discredit judges and weaken the judiciary branch. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, business leaders, are you here to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next MVP. NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite is your full business management system in one convenient suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your finance, your HR, your e-commerce, and more, all from your online dashboard. Upgrade your playbook and make the switch to NetSuite, the number one cloud ERP. Get the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning

at netsuite.com slash Vox. Netsuite.com slash Vox. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. This isn't your grandpa's finance podcast. It's Vivian Two, Your Rich BFF and host of the Net Worth and Chill podcast.

This is money talk that's actually fun, actually relatable, and will actually make you money. I'm breaking down investments, side hustles, and wealth strategies. No boring spreadsheets, just real talk that'll have you leveling up your financial game. With amazing guests like Glenda Baker. There's never been any house that I've sold in the last 32 years. That's not worth more today than it was the day that I sold it.

This is a money podcast that you'll actually want to listen to. Follow Net Worth and Chill wherever you listen to podcasts. Your bank account will thank you later. Oh my God, I can't go to a sex movie with you. I just, that just flashed through my brain. That wasn't on my bingo card either. So yeah, that's, that's not going to happen.

Hi everyone. This is Pivot from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I am the very cruel Kara Swisher. And I'm the deceitful Scott Galloway. Yeah. And we're both mean, right? We're both mean. Yeah, I know we're awful.

That one's accurate. Don't you think? The revolution begins with two podcasts. I know. So I don't know about you, you know, but that was kind of something for Elon to attack us on the Twitter, where neither of us are over there, so we had to be told by people. We're like, what? Huh?

What? Well, it's not nice. Yeah. Although I'm glad I didn't have to read, I guess there's 11 or 12,000 comments. so we had to be told by people. We're like, what? Huh? What? Wasn't that nice? Although I'm glad I didn't have to read, I guess there's 11 or 12,000 comments. The same thing happens whenever this happens. My guess is it wasn't talking about your grayed hair and my broad shoulders, but whenever you're on tweets, the same thing happens. My phone starts blowing up. I'm like, are you all right?

I'm like, oh shit, did something bad happen? And then someone sent, my phone starts blowing up. I'm like, are you all right? And I'm like, oh shit, did something bad happen? And like, someone sent me a screenshot. And I'm like, I don't, the thing about being off of Twitter is you realize how small it is. It's like, no, my life is absolutely no different. And the thing that immediately came to mind is one of my favorite quotes of FDR

is that I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. I know, it's so weird. Let me just add though, these were my comments. They were. And he goes after you. Of course. It's like, okay. I'm always taking a bullet for you, Galway.

I said these things, Ilan, not Kara. And he's acting like these individuals. First off, can the guy not afford auto-correct? It's like his team or grammar, pick a struggle. And the notion that there's somehow these, he portrayed this team as being in Guantanamo Bay when the reality is they're on a Discord server figuring out if their logo or their meme

should have sunglasses. I mean, just to portray these kids as victims is just kind of hilarious. But I did feel bad that he went after you and not just me. So- Of course. Well, I am pretty obnoxious about him all over the place. So it probably like glommed up into one thing. You didn't say anything. I said all this shit. I know, but in general on CNN, where I call him a toddler,

an adult toddler on any day of the week and twice on Sunday, or anything, just us threatening them. But here's the deal. First of all, all you said, and I tend to agree with, is the exceptional reporting by Wired, for example, a couple of them sound like a prick, right? And we said it. These people sound like pricks. They're doing something that's probably fun for them. They get to work for Elon Musk. They get to like raid the government, everything else. We just were like, this is not the way we should make sausage in our country. It's really gross

how they're doing it this way and they need to do it in a legal way. That's all we said. And he tries to insinuate that we're threatening them because as I say, everything, every accusation is a confession by these fellows. And let me just read the thing for people to understand. He really posted a video of us talking about Doge employees in our last episode. Swisher and Galloway are threatening talented young software engineers who gave up high compensation for death threats in order to help American people shame on Swisher and Galloway's cruel, mean, and deceitful human beings that they are.

First of all, they're going to make high compensation later, folks, by doing this. This ups the compensation level for them because they become legend among tech people, whatever, because they work for Elon tech people, whatever, because they work for Elon, depending how it turns out. Also, they didn't trade it for death threats. They traded it because this is what they want to do, and they were enthusiastically doing it. And we don't have to like them.

And just by not liking them, we're not threatening them. So that's fucking nonsense. And neither you didn't threaten them in any way, and it's a larger part of a strategy of intimidating journalists. He's trying to shut us up and somehow link us, if anything ever happened to them, to them, just because we don't like them. Well, okay. Just to steal Man it, he does have a point in the sense that, let's be clear, in my opinion,

trespassing an illegal takeover of our government to hack the system such that veterans and kids and people benefiting from Head Start, this is on the president and Elon Musk. It's really not about these kids. It's really not about them. But what I would ask him is that he come after me when I say things like, wow, Elon Musk appears to have made a hard Reich in his politics or that the new model, Tesla model SS is coming out. I say those things.

You don't. I know. And if he's going to Strong man. Excuse me of overreach, then come after me, bitch. To go after the woman, it shows one of two things. Either you're weak or you have an incredible bias, I am a misogynist. If the man says something about you and you keep going after the woman who's near him,

that just implies incredible weakness on your part. Yeah, I get it. I understand. I do attack him pretty well. And I realize you don't need protecting. I don't need protecting. Thank you. I just found it like he puts your name first like you did that. It was me, like, he puts your name first, like you did that, it was me.

Well, he likes to do that. You know, but let me just say about the death threats. You know when I got death threats? When he said my heart was seething with hate. Remember with the O.L. Roth, where he said you all was evil and my heart was filled with seething hate. That I got, should he have not done that? I didn't like bitch and moan about that.

And I got a lot of really frightening stuff aimed at me and when he does it every time. So, you know what? And instead he bitches and moans about it. Well, I'm bitching and moaning now. Guess what? I got death threats. Guess what?

I can handle it. It just is, again, a larger strategy of intimidating journalists and other people who speak out and disagree with him. President Trump called for the Washington Post of Fire, columnist Eugene Robinson. Elon Musk called, speaking of which, investigative reporter Catherine Long, who was writing about this stuff, disgusting and cruel. This is what these people do all the time.

They do all kinds of intimidating and rude remarks. And that's to say nothing of his endless anti-trans stuff, anti-immigrant stuff, his tasteless stuff about gay people, his tasteless stuff about women, about anyone who opposes him. So this guy, you know, pot, kettle, nice to meet you. Anyway, there you have it. Well, I, you know, look, we get it wrong sometimes, but just keep in mind, both Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, we live with our children. And so we got that going for us.

Mm-hmm, that's true. And we're not given Nazi salutes. That was your best one. You're such a great dad. You're an amazing father. To the best of my knowledge, I have not hired video game players to pretend they're me such that I can go on podcasts and say

I'm a world-class video game player. I'm not creating fake accounts to call myself an amazing dad. I do a lot of virtue signaling around my fatherhood, but I haven't gone that far, you know. And so far, I am not addicted to ketamine. I have shown some discipline around that. I'm willing to try. I'm willing to try.

No, I didn't get there. I just went out and drank instead. I had something called, I had two mezcal margaritas and half an edible and that worked for me. That all worked. Oh good. Jeff Swisher said he'd help you if you'd need help because he gives ketamine every day as a doctor.

Not that he's gonna prescribe it for you. Oh my God, I tell you, I had, I'm sorry, I keep bringing this back to me. I had lunch with Chris Anderson from TED. Oh yeah, him too. And he sat down and it was so lovely. You know what he said to me. I had lunch with Chris Anderson from Ted. Oh yeah, him too. And he sat down and it was so lovely. You know what he said to me?

He looked at me and he's like, me and Jacqueline, his wife, who's lovely, he's like, are you all right? I'm like, yeah, well, I mean, I'm no less fucked, I'm more fucked up than I usually am. People are, people after hearing that podcast are worried about me. They are.

And taking me out to lunch and sitting me down. He goes, no, no, really, no, really, Scott, are you? Are you all right? And also would you be willing to come back and do another talk? And I said- Did he step down from Ted? He's like, he's basically, it's kind of a gangster move.

I don't know if you've heard about this. He said, I'm giving Ted away. And of course he's gonna give it away to some billionaire who put a bunch of money behind it. But he has basically decided to give Ted. He needs every Democrat over the age of 100, like 40%, 50% of them, needs to take a note out of the Chris Anderson page book. He's a great fiduciary for organization.

He think Ted plays an important role. And he's like, it is time to bring someone more youthful and vigorous and some new ideas to this thing. And he's going to give it away and he's doing this big competition to give Ted away. I think it's the right thing to do. You know why? Because he's tired as fuck. I know where he sits after leaving.

Oh, 100 percent. I was tired as fuck. I wanted out. He's on the last helicopter out of the Saigon embassy. I wanted so out and I was like, oh, it's the legacy. La, la, la. You know what? I was tired of doing it. I wanted to go out and I was like, oh, it's the legacy, la la la. You know what? I was tired of doing it.

I was just fucking exhausted and I did a great job, but I feel his pain. So are you okay, Scott? Are you okay? Especially because Elon attacked you. I answered him the same way I always answer that question. I hate my life less and less every day. Things are going pretty well.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but this notion that like, I'm not, this shit used to bother me. Yeah, it did. The guy- It doesn't bother you anymore. It doesn't. I feel like I'm turning into one of those villains that gets energy from attacks.

Yeah. I love that this guy hates me. Like he punches you and then you get his energy, like that kind of person. Seriously, we're doing some right, Kara. We're doing some right, Kara. We're doing some right. It's true, he does call most people disgusting,

disgusting, cruel, pedo. When he calls you a pedo, that's when you know he loves you. You know, that's when- We're headed that way? I don't know, but you pointed it out. You, not me. Look, let's just get to the source here. It's just so clear the guy wants to fuck me.

I mean- That's what I said. The sexual tension is palpable. I get it. Palpable. I get it. And he's rich, so there is a shot here. There is a shot here. He is very rich.

I could maybe go there. Like three mezcal margaritas. No way. And 10 milligrams. Then I have to ask you. At this point, Kara, I have an open mind. I had this, I played this game with someone, I'm not gonna tell you.

I didn't, I couldn't answer it, but you know, fuck Mary-Kell. Fuck Mary-Kell, yeah, I knew you were gonna ask. Okay, I'm an open mind. I had this, I played this game with someone, I'm not gonna tell you, I didn't, I couldn't answer it, but you know, fuck Mary-Kell. Fuck Mary-Kell, yeah, I knew you were gonna. Okay, I'm gonna do this, you're gonna answer it right now. Okay. Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, go. Yes. Which one, go ahead.

We might've played this before, but I'd like to play it again. Oh, I would definitely marry Bezos because I'd like to roam around on a thong on one of his yachts. I think that would be a good look for me. I'd be willing to embarrass myself. They go to the best parties. I love the fashion. Oh my God, the fashion I get to wear.

I'm so down for a lot of cosmetic surgery. Oh my God. I just decided. I'm coming back as Lauren Sanchez in my next life. All right. Mrs. Bezos. Excellent. Okay. That's it. Okay. Not kill. We won't use the word kill because it's not nice. Okay. Because we're not cruel and disgusting or whatever. So that's Mary. So fuck?

Yeah. Fuck. Oh, God. I want Suck to put on one of those jujitsu outfits and start manhandling me a little bit. Ooh. And then a few things go the wrong place, oh yeah. Let's get, let's get ready to rumble. Oh my God, and I'm not gonna say kill

because I don't even think it's funny to joke about violence, but yeah. Oh no, I am Lauren Sanchez and I'm making sweet, sweet love to the Zuck. As always, everything goes back to Elon, who has continued to plague us, but he's now plaguing Sam Altman. A feud with the CEO of OpenAI took a new turn today when a consortium of investors led by Elon is offering $97 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls open AI. The bid was submitted on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal. And in a quote, Elon Musk said, it's time for open AI to return to open source safety focus force for good it once was.

Obviously, for people who don't know, Elon and Sam and others created Open AI together as a nonprofit to battle, and I did an interview with them at the time about this, both of them, to battle the bigger companies and the privatization of AI. And so, it was going to be a nonprofit that was going to focus on safety. At the time, Elon thought AI was going to kill all of us. He's changed his tune on that, obviously, over the years. And this is a really shocking news. What do you think, Scott? What's he up to?

Because he's not busy with other things, for goodness sake. Scott Cunningham I think this is a rich man's version of I'm invading Greenland. I think this is a distraction. So first off, if I, I got to be clear, I got to do more research here. But essentially, what they've done accidentally or unintentionally is by starting out as a nonprofit and then pretending that they would maintain some fidelity to the nonprofit once they smelled hundreds of billions in potential shareholder value, they accidentally

created a two-class shareholder company. And that is they have essentially some shareholders, the nonprofit, that have a lot of governance rights. And the for-profit group is raising money at a $300 or $350 billion valuation. And Musk has found a way to try and create a cudgel, or according to him, essentially get control of, if you will, the voting shares by taking over the nonprofit side of OpenAI. Now,

what this really does is probably force them to pay more in their negotiations, I think, since the last round on what they're going to pay or what share of the equity the nonprofit gets in the for-profit. But be clear, this is based on the false premise, the statement that you just read that he's concerned. Yeah, he's not concerned with anything. Well, look at his investors. WME and Baron Capital aren't going to put billions of dollars up to try and, you know, to try and protect the world from AI. That's not why they make investments. They would be, as soon as possible, their investors here of this 97 and a half billion dollar bid would be looking for a return on their capital.

That's not, they're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. I think what this is at the end of the day is I think this is an attempt to slow him down. I think he sees this as a free call option. I'm gonna fuck with a guy, slow him down. I want Grok or XAI to be, I don't like this guy. I've convinced a bunch of people to come in with me.

And if for some reason we manage to get control of the voting class shares of the nonprofit, then good for me. What are your thoughts? Well, I think that, you know, they've been trying to stop this move. And I believe the lawyer is the same lawyer that's dueling with this, made this offer. But they've been trying to mess with the move to open, and he's been suing OpenAI for a

wide range of things, right? And it boils down to, he wanted to take control of it. They said no. He huffed out, and they were like, goodbye, and didn't, you know, didn't chase him in any way. And so he had made a sort of bid to take over at the time and they thought that they would be, he would be irresistible as a lover, I guess, of this company and it didn't work. And so now he's been just furious ever since as it's become more profitable and he has this sort of enmity towards

Sam Altman that's really severe. I heard it myself, but at the time when they started it, that was the idea of it. Of course, it was all for profits for all these people in the end. And so, this will mess with their move to it. It will cost them more. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft has to say about this. Obviously, they're still negotiating over their equity stake in this thing.

It was $157 billion is the valuation they're looking at now, which is enormously high. When they started as a charity, maybe for a moment there, but the minute it got profitable, all of them were running for the for-profit subsidiary. And OpenA has emails from Musk talking about wanting to turn it into a for-profit. What if his entities aren't for-profit? That's correct.

They have emails saying it. Like, he's a liar. He's a liar about wanting this particular sentence or a fabulous or whatever. He's just doing it for the performative nature of this. But I think the question is what it will be valued at. And so he's just setting it higher and who would end up with this controlling stake in the new OpenAI.

Now he could have waited until it did this and then tried to make a play for it publicly. But you're right, it's Joe Lonsdale from Palantir, Ariel Emanuel, like literally the least charitable people I know, right? Let's just say they're the most capitalist. Capitalists. They're probably charitable people,

but no one's gonna put a hundred. I mean, they don't wanna do this for the good of humanity. That's all I'm saying. 100%. Yeah. 100%. And so, I think he's filed all these legal complaints saying that they had betrayed their nonprofit mission at the same time, colluding with Microsoft. And this Tobarov was the one that tried to get the attorney general's California to do

this and do a fair market value. It's a fuck you Sam kind of thing. And I think he was just to come to the present, there was this announcement at the White House that Musk tried to shit all over this $500 billion on AI infrastructure in this joint venture called Stargate. And he tried to, you know, he tried to, he wasn't in on that. And this is something Trump announced at the White House with Sam Altman. And so he just doesn't want, he wants to block Sam Altman at all.

And to say that they're doing it for the charity or fully compensated is just the ploy in order to get close to it, right? And he said they didn't have the money. He's called Sam Altman a swindler. I mean, he called us deceitful and mean and cruel, but Sam Altman's a swindler. So this is very typical of him. And it's largely because Grok just hasn't caught up as much as he's made these efforts to do so.

You know, I think this group was on track to value this company, which we think was too high too, at $157 billion. Well, first off, let's be fair. Sam Altman is not a swindler. The rest of that might be true, but look, this is the same emotion as a really angry ex-spouse.

You go through a contentious divorce, you give your half of the house to your spouse, and then the moment you leave, the house ends up going from a million in value to a billion. So you not only feel, you feel, you're so fucking angry that you left. You agreed to leave. He gave up all of it. I mean, it just reeks of, you know, burn this village to save it. Angry, angry ex-spouse. I'm just so upset at the bad deal I agreed to. He left.

They have those emails. He wanted out. He wanted to run it. He wanted it to become a for profit. And he's now a distant, distant player in the race. And he's got a bunch of people together who all want to be around the Elon magic. And he does create a ton of shareholder value. Through chaos. At a minimum, I'll slow them down, I'll create, I'll get in the news cycle again. And I'll pretend that down, I'll create, I'll get in the new cycle again, and I'll pretend that

it's something righteous. I mean, yeah, I'd love to see Ari Emanuel, the guy from Baron Capital, to stand up and tell us why you think AI needs to be a nonprofit, and you're not expecting a return on investment here. You're willing to do this for the good of humanity? Very fair. Actually, let me say I made a mistake. This transition was part of a $6.6 billion funding round in October that valued at 157.

It's 300 now. 300 now. It's $40 billion in a new funding round. SoftBank would lead the round in discussions to invest between 15 and 25 billion. This is going to just, and this Stargate thing separately is raising money, and Sam's working on a chip, also a very manic entrepreneur, by the way, as is Elon, and they're trying to raise billions for Stargate. This puts uncertainty into it, which is exactly what he's trying to do.

He's trying to put uncertainty into a deal because they didn't want him, the client has kind offered to own the place, right? I think what's going to happen here though is I think the two people that are going to rally around Altman are going to be arguably one of the more powerful people in tech here and one of the grownups, Sachin Adela and the deep pocket at Masi Oshisan. I think this is going to thrust Sam further into their embrace. And I think they're gonna rally around Sam, because here's the thing around Musk,

if you're already rich, you don't wanna put up with this guy. You don't want him anywhere. Do you think Sacha Nadella wants to go to board meetings with Elon Musk? These guys, it will create a distraction, but you're gonna see, I think, Sach guys, it will create a distraction, but you're gonna see, I think, Satya, Microsoft,

and Masayoshi San will see this as an opportunity to kind of bear hug Altman. But Altman, in my view, at the end of the day, the most successful people over the long term put themselves in a room full of opportunities because they make a lot of allies, and I have been wrong so far, but one of these people has largely been making allies, and another one of them has been making people a lot of money, but has been making a lot of enemies.

That's a fair point. I think that is going to come home to roost here. Well, we'll see. What's interesting, it just reminds me, you know my favorite movie is the original Patrick Swayze Roadhouse. Do you know that? You're kidding me. Roadhouse. I love that. The Sam Shepard? No, it's Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott.

Oh, Sam Elliott. The lifeguard. That guy's dreamy. I love that guy. I love him so much. That guy's dreamy. Anyway, Swayze was in it and he plays Dalton and he's trying to save a town, essentially. Jake Gyllenhaal made a terrible version and made me want to cry afterwards, but there's a guy, Ben Guzzara plays a guy named Brad Wesley, and he wants to own the whole town, including this shitty bar, right? Like, by the way, Open A is not a shitty bar, and there's questions around after Deep Seek,

like, is it too overvalued? All of these companies, right? But anyway, Ben Gazara has to own everything, including this shitty bar, and that's what – Elon reminds me of Brad Wesley, didn't end well for Brad Leslie in that movie. All I remember is Kelly Lynch. Kelly Lynch, that's right, Dr. Elizabeth Clay. I know this whole movie so well.

So getting out of the Roadhouse thing, it's like, can you, aren't you busy ruining the government over here? You want to come and fuck with this guy? This is the level of this guy's energy, I will say, energy and manic nature that nobody gets like, he just can't stop. It's like, it's demented at this point. This is a demented effort. I don't know.

But he's the ultimate vendor's dream because he says to these enormous law firms of incredibly talented smart people and bankers, he has unlimited funds. And this again goes to the notion that power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts and people just shouldn't have this much money. He can say to all of his bankers and all of his lawyers and the smartest people in the services industry, okay, I got 10 minutes. Here's your directive. Fuck with Sam Altman. Come back with a dozen ideas." And somebody came back and said, well, actually, the nonprofit has governance rights,

so we can make a bid for the non-profit. And he says to the banker, get on it. I don't... I think the directive here was pretty simple. Fuck with these guys. Okay, because the best part of this is the relationship between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, I just want to read the tweet between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, I just want to read the tweet that Sam Altman had in response.

No, thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want. All right, we have to move on and talk about the Super Bowl, which was won by the Philadelphia Eagles. President Trump became the first president to attend the Super Bowl and had a totally normal reaction afterwards posting on True Social. The only one who had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift, who got booed out of the stadium. Mag is very unforgiving. Actually, Donald, this was kind of a big like, fuck you, by many people at the event.

The ads were star-studded with appearances by Ben Affleck, David Beckham, Len Powell, and Billy Crystal. Brad Pitt did a big long ad for the NFL, which was a little woke there. Open AI made its Super Bowl debut with a 60-second, $14 million spot. Obviously, Kendrick Lamar ruled the fricking school. Someone said he should get the Nobel Hate Prize because he did such a beautiful, artful job of saying, fuck you to the Trump administration. But I just thought it was beautiful. I thought this was amazing.

I thought this was amazing. And I thought it was artful and beautiful. Did you, what did you think? I got none of that. So I wasn't going to watch the Super Bowl. It really, there couldn't be anything more American than a bunch of Boner Pill ads and opioid-induced medication ads

while we watch young, beautiful men get CTE. I mean, it really is America. You don't want to. But instead of like Roman Coliseum and Lions, we have Taylor Swift. And I promised myself I wasn't gonna watch. And then my 14-year-old goes, Dad, do you want to watch Super Bowl?

And I'm like, yeah, of course I do. I mean, so a chance to hang out. You heated up the nachos and got to it, okay, of course I do. So a chance to hang out. You heated up the nachos and got to it. Yeah, but it started at 11.30 PM. What did you eat? Set the scene for me. What did you eat? We had milk and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

All right. It's kind of dull. I know that it's kind of dull, isn't it? Of course, my 14-year-old didn't want to hang out with his dad and watch football. He wanted to stay up till two in the morning. I thought Kendrick Lamar was incredibly boring. Really? I didn't think it was my 14 year old didn't want to hang out with his dad and watch football. He wanted to stay up till two in the morning. I thought Kendrick Lamar was incredibly boring. Really? I didn't think it was a good performance at all, but I realized I've kind of aged out of

that shit. I don't know. But my favorite though, hands down though, there was, I mean, the ads that occasionally really move you, there was this wonderful ad, and I don't know if you saw this, but it was of a man sitting at the Super Bowl and he had an empty seat next to him and someone leans over and asks him, why is it there's an empty seat? And he says that he bought two seats for him and his wife,

but his wife, unfortunately, had recently passed. And then the guy goes, well, I'm so sorry. Why, why did you not bring someone else from your family? And he responds, they're all at the funeral. I love that. I love that. Oh, you saw that on TikTok. All right.

And moving on. Amazon shares are down 2.5% in the last five days after mixed earnings report. The company reported better than expected earnings and revenue, but told investors to expect slowing growth ahead based on Amazon's estimates. First quarter revenue growth could be the slowest growth on record for the company. On the upside, revenue rose 10% and income almost doubled thanks to a cost cutting campaign.

There's only so much you can cut, I guess. It's set to pass Walmart and revenue at the first time. What's up with this, Scott? This is an area, is it the effect of Sheen and TAMU or what's going on here? I don't think so. I think investors now consider Amazon as essentially a cloud company with a retail unit.

And their cloud division actually missed estimates by about $100 million. And even though the growth was 19% to $29 billion, keep in mind that while AWS represents just 15% of Amazon's revenue, it's responsible for the majority of its operating profit. Which CEO Andy Jassy used to run.

Let's just keep, used to run before. And is the reason he's the CEO. Because essentially, as AWS goes, so does Amazon now. And so the analysts and shareholders are essentially, yeah, yeah, yeah, retail, fine, fine, fine, Amazon Prime Video, yeah, whatever, what's happening with AWS? I initially thought that, I've said this in my prediction two or three years ago, that Amazon would eventually spend AWS and AWS would be the most valuable company in the world in five

or seven years. They didn't. And they didn't. Another one wrong. Another one wrong. Well, you know, I asked Andy about that during an interview and he said they absolutely are not going to. And I believed him at the time, but you know, I thought they should have. They never, they're absolutely not until they do.

But anyways, but they essentially, Amazon's firing on all cylinders, but the fact that they say they were capacity constrained, the miss was enough to scare investors though, because it's so important in terms of their margin. The AWS's operating profit margin was 37%. The rest of Amazon, get this, is just 7%. So it is really, that's the tail wagging the dog here. Amazon is a cloud company with a retail division. Yeah. So what happens? What does an investor do? Should they spin

it off? It would really be a problem. You know, you always talk about shitcoes versus this is not a shitcoe, but it's a version of that, right? If they take the higher growth one and spin it off, is it still too late to do so? Look, I've advocated for a long time that if you took Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet and Facebook or Meta and you turn them into 15 companies, you'd end up with an aggregate that within 24 months these 15 companies would be worth much more than the original four. That breakup was a bad idea said no one ever. Breakups are one of the few things in history where the government

intervention always works. Shareholders win, innovation wins. The reason, do you think if Google had been a stand-alone unit, or if Google Cloud had been a stand-alone unit, or Google AI had been a stand-alone unit, do you think they would have stopped? Do you think they would have most likely had an AI application sooner?

But they don't. They want to make sure they don't fuck with the toll booth known as search. Shareholders win, consumers win because it creates competition. You know who wins really big? It's the employees because they have more people bidding on their time and renting.

And they are more innovative. You know who doesn't want to do that? People who love to just keep their little groups together and then also then want to merge to get bigger. The only people the only people that really benefit are the person who wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms, not just Westeros. And unfortunately, because of dual class shareholder companies, they usually they usually get to make the decision. But if you looked at it from a pure shareholder standpoint, I would argue that you'd want to break them up. But in terms of, I think Amazon is the kind of company, my biggest holdings for the last 10 years have been Amazon and Apple. And even when Apple gets to 34 times earnings, which isn't quite frankly, kind of crazy town, the fact that it's growing 2% a year and it's growing, it has a P multiple of 34 versus its historical average of like 18 or 19 You should probably sell but at the end of the day, these are the kind of companies

That you just sort of hold forever because they just continue to innovate so Do you imagine them? Breaking it off or not in this environment No, no, no not with the not with Kantor and Kangan. You're gonna see, these guys are all telling their bankers to sharpen their pencils and actually go acquire and gobble up more stuff now.

It was interesting, I interviewed a conservative economist, Orrin Kass today among others, and he was like, I was like, you'd be for mergers. He's like, no, I don't think mergers for whatever, no thank you. Like, you know what I mean? Like, because they aren't necessarily the best thing for economic growth.

They don't necessarily promote it. It just promotes bigger companies. And then they fall into the crosshairs of regulators also and they spend a lot of time doing that. Anyway, I agree. They should break themselves up. You should always break yourself up. Just to talk about concentration of power,

my friend Andy Cohen at JP Morgan pointed something out. This blew my mind. And I've said for a while. Not the guy from the Housewives series? That's not your friend? Oh, no, not Anderson's friend. No, Andy is like the most likable guy in the world. He literally is exactly in the seat he should be.

And that is he is managing tens of billions of dollars for high net worth families. And he's just the most likable guy in the world. And also very smart, nice man. Anyways, he said something that just blew my mind. I, of course, was like doing my party trick and throwing out stats. And I said that the US equity market now was 50% of the total value of all equities globally. And he said, no, it's actually, if you add in debt, corporate debt, America represents 70% of all value globally. So if you think about it, would you rather own the world, would you rather own America for $70,

or if you could own everything but America for 30, which would you pick? And what that says to me is that America is overvalued. And not only is America overvalued, it's really the whole world is vulnerable because there are 10 stocks that represent 28 to 33% of the value, meaning that somewhere between one and six and one and five dollars globally

is dependent upon a small number of companies. And if Amazon and other folks show any slowdown in AI or cloud, oh my God. Yeah, if there's an AI meltdown. These economists noted that. That's gonna be an echo felt around the world really severely. Watch, we're gonna have to bail out the tech bros at some point. Anyway, all right, we'll see.

Let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, Trump's latest terror, speaking of bailing out people and Dozier's latest targets. Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. If you're selling cybersecurity software, it won't do you much good being targeted to a company's HR department. Or if you're selling the best bulk office snacks,

you won't get much ROI when the only people who see it work remotely. So if you're looking to grow your business, you need to make sure that the right people are seeing what you have to offer. For that, there's LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over a billion professionals, and that's where it stands apart from the other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue. All the professionals you need to reach in one place. That means you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals who are eager to hear about you only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you a hundred dollar credit on your

next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to linkedin.com slash pivot pod. That's linkedin.com slash pivot pod. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. This is Carry the Fire. I'm your host, Lisa LaFlamme. Carry the Fire, a podcast by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation featuring inspiring personal stories about what happens when world-leading doctors, nurses, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs. Carry the Fire launches Monday, January 27th, wherever you get your podcasts. The Republicans have been saying lots of things.

Just yesterday, their leader said he wants to own Gaza? The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We'll own it. On Monday the Secretary of State said an entire federal agency was insubordinate. USAID in particular, they refuse to tell us anything. We won't tell you what the money's going to, where the money's for, who has it. Over the weekend, Vice President Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, tweeted about the

same agency that, you know, gives money to the richest man on earth, tweeted about the same agency that, you know, gives money to the poorest people on earth. We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead. But what have the Democrats been saying? People are aroused. I haven't seen people so aroused in a very, very long time.

Huh. That's a weird way to put it, Senator. We're going to ask what exactly is the Democrats' strategy to push back on Republicans on Today Explained. Scott, we're back. President Trump is touting his latest terror plan after hitting pause on those Canada and Mexico terrorists, which are such a joke, such a ridiculous fucking joke. Trump now says he plans to impose 25% tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum will apply to everybody, including Canada, Mexico. Reciprocal tariffs on US trading partners are also reportedly in the mix this week. I'll note, we're recording

on Monday morning, whether he's going to follow through on it is not true. Having just interviewed three economists, none of them think these are a very good idea. One of them thought terrorists sometimes are a good negotiating tactic. And sometimes when they're explicit in certain areas, very surgically done, they're a good idea. This was the conservative one. The others thought this was just attacks on people and none of them ever happened. Right? And what a stupid way to, you're trying to, one of them, Mariana Moscato was saying that you have to focus in on production subsidies over tariffs, like to help companies,

to help industries and be very specific about it versus tariffs, which is just a blunt instrument that is about the past. Anyway, talk about these, this seems like, this is just some more air blowing from this fella that upsets markets. World leaders are learning how to deal with them, and that is you mollify them by making some token gestures. Basically, Claudia Scheinbaum and Trudeau said, all right, I'll tell you what, we'll do this. And they were already doing it.

And then he walks it back. And also there wasn't that much fentanyl coming over the border from Canada. So ridiculous. And linking it to things that have nothing to do with economics are ridiculous, right? But they basically kind of managing him. But our presence across the world is a function of leverage and relationships. And if you said to your husband,

you're really vulnerable right now, whatever, you're out of work and I'm gonna leave you unless you do the following husband, you're really vulnerable right now, whatever, you're out of work and I'm going to leave you unless you do the following things and you're really like, he or your partner might be so scared and so upset and so vulnerable, they say, okay, you're bigger than me and more important than me. I agree. But what does that do to the long-term relationship? And I don't think people realize that these people, at some point, they will find explicit and implicit ways. Canada

they're we're brothers in arms. They're our allies. They're our friends. They followed us into Afghanistan. This is just so short so short-sighted and it's also the the hint or the insight here I think is the following. The adult in the administration here is the 10- The adult in the administration here is the 10-year bond in the stock market and the 1% who Trump listens to, corporations and very, very wealthy people. And what happened here was the following.

They called him and said, this is all cute, but you realize, you know, XYZ company, we're going to lose 20% of our sales overnight, and you're probably going to see gas spike, and you're going to see the 10-year bond. And he pretends that he has a victory, and you're probably going to see gas spike, and you're going to see the 10-year bond, and he pretends that he has a victory and he walks it back. And I think the lesson here for Democrats is the following. I think that we are now at a point where because they control all three branches of government

and we really can't do anything through our institutions in sending congresspeople to wave their cane at the building of the Department of Education. That's just not an effective strategy optically. Is that an age remark? Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, fuck. Put a third of them on a fucking ice floe.

I've had it. I've had it. Just the Democrats are all over. It literally looks like- Be bipartisan if you're going to do ice floe. It looks like a senior's home where they've canceled water aerobics at this point. That's how effective an outrage they- Charles Schumer will win. Oh, okay. Thanks. where they've canceled water aerobics at this point. That's how effective an outrage.

Charles Schumer will win. Oh, okay. Thanks. That feels better, Chuck. Anyways, these people are so fucking pathetic. Oh no, it's, they've switched Jell-O night to Tuesdays. Rise up America. My God.

Anyways, this is the strategy. This wasn't so grim. I shouldn't laugh, but it's funny. This is the strategy. Oh my God, this wasn't so grim. I shouldn't laugh, but it's funny. Go ahead. This is the strategy. Fine, you want mutual assured destruction. We're not gonna approve an increase in the debt limit and we're gonna have a failed treasury auction.

And the 90, the 1% who own 90% of the stocks, you're gonna start getting calls from them. You wanna go gangster, let's go gangster. Because the bottom line is when it comes to economics, the tariffs, you know what Trump did? He blanked. He did. It doesn't just blank.

It's all such nonsense. It's not even blinking. It's like such a- But there's a lesson here. This is where we have leverage. Our leverage is around the bond market and a failed treasury auction. And I recognize this could set off something really ugly,

but before it sets it off, the people he cares about, corporations, which have the lowest taxes rates since 1939, and the 1% who have garnered an extraordinary amount of spoils are gonna call him and say, you realize the Democrats are gonna shut down, you're gonna be the first president that has a failed treasury auction.

That is our leverage. Enough of this screaming into TikTok and this is where we have leverage and this is where we should go. Yeah. It's interesting. So speaking of which, Elon's power rock continues with Doge worming itself into at least 15 government agencies. Of course, he's going to do this.

Trump says he's happy about things are going. He sang Elon's praises and talked about Doge's next targets in the Super Bowl interview with Fox News' Brett Baer. Let's listen. I've had a great help with Elon Musk, who's been terrific. Timeline, you say you trust him. Trust Elon? Oh, he's not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it.

He's so into it. But I told him to do that. Then I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He's going to find the same thing. Then I'm going to go to the military. Let's check the military. We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. Yeah, they've found a billion maybe, but this is already stuff people knew with other commissions, including Steve Ballmer, has shown a lot of costs.

This is not new stuff this man is finding at all. And it's very small in comparison to most of them. They're always trying to find like the gold toilet seat. That's what they're always, you know, like, oh, it's a $600 toilet seat. That's what they're looking for. But the federal judge temporarily blocked Doge's access to the Treasury Department payment system over the weekend, citing risk of irreparable harm. Though it's unclear when or if Doge employees will comply with that order.

We'll talk about compliance. We're going to get into that strategy with the courts after the break. But thoughts on the latest Doge move is the Consumer Finance Protection Board, which has returned money to the Treasury by a lot, temporary closed its offices and suspended services. And they're pushing to rapidly develop a custom AI chatbot to analyze government data, according to Wired. And Doge employees have also fed sensitive data from the Education Department into AI software to probe the agency's programs and spending, according to Washington Post. This has all been done before. It's just very performative. I think it's

just to gain access to the data and who knows what. I mean, you don't necessarily have to assume they're nefarious, but why not? Why not just go start with nefarious and work your way down from there? Your thoughts? I think it's war. And I think that unfortunately we're on the wrong side of it.

And we thought we built these impenetrable institutions as these Maginot lines. And they just dropped the Nazis, just dropped paratroopers behind this impenetrable border called the Maginot lines, and they just dropped, the Nazis just dropped paratroopers behind this impenetrable border called the Maginot Line. And I think we're on the Democrats, the Panzer tanks have rolled in, and we're trying to fight them on horseback. We shouldn't be talking about what's outrageous about this or what's wrong about it. We should be saying the following.

If a group of talented engineers can come in and cut off payments to veterans, cut off payments to children in low-income areas, then once we're in power, I wonder if we could find some really intelligent young people to cut off payments to Starlink overnight. Overnight. We think, by the way, we're wondering if space is sovereign territory and that you're trespassing

and we should take control of your 51 satellites. And we have some really talented people from Google and from different tech companies that we think could go in and shut down Starlink and start asking questions the next day and find it. And let's find out if maybe it's not legal. Let's find out. So instead of like screaming into fucking Tik TOK or on MSNBC, you, if you can do this, well, we're going to come up with some creative ideas

about maybe we could do the same thing. Right. Unfortunately, that's where it leads, right? Presidents have been trying to expand their power for a long, long time, right? This is not a new trend and it's bipartisan, by the way. But this is sort of, what's interesting to me is how performative it is, and then when you call them out on it, they're like, how dare you call us out?

But I'm like, they're literally going jazz hands all over the place, and then making these ridiculous statements about cost savings when they're saving very little. It's not strategic, it's not legal, they're not doing it with Congress, and I understand the need to a little shock and awe in that regard. I'm not against that. I do think the way they're doing it is just so deleterious to what they're trying to accomplish, which is, you know, they put a tiny little bit we want to say make the government more efficient. No shit, Sherlock, so do the rest of us, right? We want to make the government more efficient, but to do it in this way is purposely creating havoc and purposely against what you're supposed to do to actually save money.

And they're going to find very little savings by doing this. The fact that he mentioned military was my, I was like, oh dear, you're going to go over that over on that rail? Because the only thing, you know, I was just interviewing these economists today and Paul Krugman correctly said the United States is an insurance company with a military. Because most of the spending is Medicare, Medicaid, and things like that, or the military. So if you're going for the Medicare, where the real money is, good fucking luck on that one. If you notice, they're not. So the fact that he mentioned military was really interesting to me.

And again, probably full of fraud and full of problems, but not in the way that they're talking about in any way, I don't think. Okay, so something I've struggled with my entire career is the difference between being right and being effective. And I think the majority of the Democratic Party and the majority of media talking about some of the points you've just referenced are right.

I want to move to the effective part of the conversation. Absolutely. And this is how I think we become effective. If you want to hurt Trump or stop him, you got to stop Musk. And if you want to stop Musk, you need to go after the surface area of attack. And it's one thing, it's money. It's already happening in Europe. BV sales in Europe are down 6%, but they're down like 20 to 40% across France

and different nations in Europe. It was like 69% in Germany. They're off dramatically. Should you be signing up for T-Mobile right now? Should veterans be signing up? Should veterans be communicating to their colleagues or institutions or people in areas affected by this? Should they be saying, T-Mobile, I'm not down with you partnering with Elon Musk at Starlink?

Should you be flying United Airlines, which just announced a big deal with Starlink? Should you, and I'm just speaking for a friend here, but what if every time you get an Uber, every time I get an Uber, if it pulls up, if it says Tesla Model S, I cancel and I put in the notes, I will not write in a Tesla.

I'm done being right, let's be effective. And this is about going after, one third of Musk's wealth was not only created by these democratic institutions and rule of law, which he has no fidelity to, so fine, let's take some of it back. But trying to talk about how outrageous this is and whether it's illegal or not legal,

let's go after all these guys care about. They care about power and they care about money. Let's move from the right part of the program to the effective part of the program. Well, here's the only problem. Look, its shares were down very low for a while in the low 200s. Now they're, you know, they peaked right around

Trump's election time at 400 and some, and now they're slowly ticking down. They're at 358. They're still enormously high, right? It's 175 P E ratio. And the stock is falling, but it's not so, you know, I think, I definitely think you should focus on Musk and how much money he's making out of this and how

he's, you know, if, if he had, he had spent some money against USAID, I don't know who paid for that. If it was American taxpayer, it was a lot of money ill spent attacking USAID. If he spent his own money, he could knock himself the fuck out. T-Mobile subscribers, do you want to work with a guy who's giving Nazi salutes?

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. But what else? I don't think it's wrong to try to push back legally. I think that's quite smart. That's happening. That's happening. That's happening. The only way you get either of these guys to notice, in my view, is you go after their money.

What about the access to data? I mean, everyone of course thinks, we're in the middle of a Bond movie where they're winning the whole nine yards of it. How do you feel about the data part? I ask this sincerely, What is the concern? I understand that we don't want to hand over our data to this individual.

I've seen some, I don't want to call it conspiracy theory, but theories that the end game here is to get data to train his AI models. But I don't fully understand why people perceive, other than just a pure violation of people's privacy and getting access to your data and what they could do with that data. I mean, if these people who have access to all of our information truly think we are

cruel and deceitful people, that's probably not, you know, that's not that comforting. But what is the fear or the concern beyond just the circumvention of the democratic and constitutional norm? Well, I think it's opening it up, creating a real danger in terms of opening it up. Let me just read you someone who knows. I was talking about CISA. He was making cuts to CISA, which has always

been in his crosshairs, Trump's crosshairs. Elon eliminated the ability to track disinformation on Twitter. Zuck eliminated it for Metta. Stanford cut the Samos-René project, Pam Bondi just eliminated the FBI task force that tracked foreign influence campaigns and now this at CISA. All this when disinformation is now being spouted to AI speeds. It's a gift to Putin and Xi.

On CISA in particular, they've been in Trump's crosshair since 2020. It's barely getting, you know, it's not much there's a cut, but still on the anyone's left. But what they're saying is, the who can pay to track disinformation and do legal takeouts for and everyone else, the electorate were just fucked. And so, you know, this was someone who's been covering this is that we are very exposed, and also allowing the Chinese and Russians incredible act possible access to sensitive data. Every single one of these researchers I talk to is like, are you kidding?

This is terrifying. We just opened the gates. This just feels, I think, I don't know what the definition, if you talk about Gladney, I think America, unfortunately, is paying the price for so much security. I don't think they realize how many people do not wish us well around the world.

Yeah, they don't. And that they're fairly sophisticated and they understand how to use data and how to weaponize it and how many people work so hard and take huge risks to try and protect us. And that a lot of that effort, decades of skill, effort, sacrifices being just kind of thrown out the window. And until, I mean, it just goes to these very basics. The biggest takers and the people most upset and the people who want to tear down the government

are the people benefiting the most from these programs. I mean, the reality is, Kara, is you're in my life, it's not gonna change that much. I mean, I think there's some- I'm concerned about the Russians and the Chinese. I think that equally affects all of us, no matter what economic bracket you're in, of them having this information.

You know what, though? I get that, but if America's, I mean, we're now in an economic weight class where we can move to Milan or so. This, it just doesn't make, it's just so incredible that the people who seem to be most, it's like they're burning their own house down. Look at the regions that were so deep red, they're the ones that benefit the most from

these programs. Yeah, it's true. So my attitude is, okay, you want your Medicaid, you don't want your insulin, you don't want your kid, you don't want a school in that rural town mandated by the federal government, you don't want your uncle in veteran affairs. Fine, okay, here's the country you wanted. I agree with you, but at the same time,

I do think this stuff out in the wild, it's like someone just opened all the nuclear things and just, like we need to clean up this nuclear stuff and just open them. I just think it puts us, it literally puts us in a Bond villain movie situation. I think, anyway, I think there's gonna be huge repercussions going forward. And it was, it's a gift to China and Russia.

Every single person who I find intelligent thinks this. All right, let's go on a quick break. More on Elon and Trump's strategy to target courts, not just Elon, also JD Vance. Hey, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of Channels, a podcast about technology and media. And maybe you've noticed that a lot of people are investing a lot of money trying to encourage you to bet on sports. Right now.

Right from your phone. That is a huge change and it's happened so fast that most of us haven't spent much time thinking about what it means and if it's a good thing. But Michael Lewis, that's the guy who wrote Moneyball and the Big Shore and Liar's Poker, has been thinking a lot about it. And he tells me that he's pretty worried. I mean, there was never a delivery mechanism for cigarettes as efficient as the phone is for delivering

the gambling apps. It's like the world has created less and less friction for the behavior when what it needs is more and more. You can hear my chat with Michael Lewis right now on channels, wherever you get your podcasts. where you get your podcasts. Scott, we're back as Donald Trump and others continue to push their agenda. The only thing standing in their way

appears to be the courts for now. Federal judges have halted parts of Trump's executive order blitz, including the federal spending freeze, worker buyouts, and Doge's access to the payment system, as we mentioned earlier. But everyone's, they're attacking the judiciary. spending freeze, worker buyouts, and Doge's access to the payment system, as we mentioned earlier. But everyone's, they're attacking the judiciary.

First, Musk called for the impeachment of a judge who ruled against Doge. He's also proposing that the worst 1% of appointed judges be fired every year. Sorry Eileen Cannon, you're going. This undermined the strategy was especially by JD Vance. He put one out that got enormous attention, and I think it's a coordinated effort. He posted over the weekend that judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, which of course everyone was like, did you go to Yale Law School? Trump administration lawyers also filed a motion saying Dozierling impinges on the president's

absolute powers of the executive branch, which of course they're going to do, but they're moved to the undermine the judiciary portion of the show, I think. And the cases will likely get appealed. Some will go to the Supreme Court. We'll see where that goes. But remember after the immunity decision last year, Justice Sotomayor wrote the president is now king above the law. So, and even if the courts do rule against Trump, I'm going to give you the whole package, enforcement will be up to the DOJ, which he controls. The DOJ through the US Marshals Service controls that. So a lot of my legal people say there's no enforcement mechanism for any of this stuff.

And if he resists, he can just resist. He can resist illegally too. And it takes a while for things to shake out in that regard because judiciary does not have enforcement powers. I think it's Ruth Ben-Giott. Is that her name? She summarized it. I think it was her.

If it was another historian, I'm sure I'll hear about it. But she said most democracies are driven institutionally, that at the end of the day, the courts rule. And then kind of the slow burn to fascism or a dictatorship is you move to a paternalistic model. And that's the right term. It's this father where you decide this guy knows better than everybody else.

And we kind of, you get the government you deserve, and that is this guy was freely and fairly elected by a country that decided it's okay to be a convicted felon. And so he now believes, and he has the incentive structure and the results to show it, that he can be elected president despite being a convicted felon. So why on earth would he not believe and others who support him

not believe that he's above the law? That's, America basically said, okay, he's above the law and he gets to make these decisions now. Well, the Supreme Court said that, but go ahead. Haven't we given him all these green lights and say, yeah, just break the law. Just, it's okay. Just move. Don't go around institutions. The law no longer applies to you.

We're moving to this paternalistic government structure that is kind of more tightly associated with dictatorships and democracies. Yeah, I think it's problematic. I think the issue that they don't have enforcement. If a group of people is willing to break laws and then break rulings against their activities, there is nowhere to go, right? And then if, I mean, the place to go is people protest,

right? That's the next step. And of course, you could declare martial law, which is, you know what I mean? If we protest even slightly, maybe he'll say it's martial law. So it really does, it really does, you know, put it into stark relief how fragile our systems are in ways that I think we don't think about. Let me just read something, someone who I really respect wrote me, who's pretty well done. This is an impending constitutional crisis. Courts and Congress become subordinate to the executive branch and then our system crumbles at its foundation, we're nearing that moment if not there already. Our system is far more fragile than most people appreciate. It depends on people in power respecting the constitutional framework.

At bottom, it's an honor system. Most people in power get this at a gut level and will not touch the third rail. But here we are in uncharted territory. Never have we seen this happen at such a scale and depth." And I said, oh, well, that's happy. And he said, it's going to get worse before it gets better. And I said, what does better look like? And he responded, they're going to break too many things.

Markets will eventually crash, and people will lose basic services. The problem is it will take time for the public to really feel it. He brought it back to the market itself, too, is when the market goes, that's when they stop, right? And there's a lot know, that's, there's a lot of damage in the interim. This guy's not a, trust me, he's not a like hyperbolic person in any way.

And he's usually like, eh, whatever, for a lot of Donald Trump's things, but in this case, concerned. Especially when it has to lead to market meltdown, essentially, or violence. Makes sense. I mean, I'm so sort of overwhelmed and having... Sorry, did I just depress you?

I'm having a difficult time processing every sort of destruction or institutions and what feels like everything, the pillars of what we thought we could rely on and sort of default to, that judges matter, that laws matter, that institutions matter, that there's a level of mutual respect, that you don't hack the government and stop payments to people in need. And it definitely feels like the operator, we've pressed the reset button and we're not entirely sure what's gonna happen

when it reboots back up. Right, right. That's a really good way to put it. It is sort of, you know, for people who don't understand, it is this Silicon Valley ethos of, do we really need judges? Do we really? They question everything, and in some cases, that is a great thing. In other cases, it's deeply dangerous, right? The idea of things that probably we, not we shouldn't be questioning, but maybe we can do it better. They don't ever want to do it better. They

just want to wreck it and then clean it up afterwards. And that's a very Musk-like characteristic. It's not just him. It's a lot of Silicon Valley. And it's that thinking that like what could go wrong? Is it so bad if we break it? And I think you have to really understand their personality. And when it will matter was when, for at least Trump, from what you just noted, will be when

the economy tanks, when the market tanks, when rich people get made discomforted by this, right? Versus just the moral argument that you should make that this system has worked for centuries and pretty well, even if it has all kinds of hair on it, right? This is actually, we've never had a stronger economy, we've never been more productive, we've never been more everything, and yet here we are starting to take apart the pieces

that actually quietly hold it together. Yeah, but there's, I agree with you, and that was my narrative kind of coming in, you know, when I was told to understand the assignment and support Biden and Harris, which I agreed to and signed up for for a lot of reasons. But what a lot of America has said

is the narrative that you throw a bunch of numbers at me about the market and our prosperity, and all I know is this all reverse engineers, in my opinion, to income inequality and people being reminded every day that they seem to be the only people that aren't succeeding and that no one, you know, that they're left behind, that their kids, they can't afford them. Forty percent of Americans now have some form of medical or dental debt. I think there needs to be a new crop of leadership that comes out with really dramatic, bold.

So I'd like to, you know, let's lower Medicaid two years every year for the next 25 years until we have nationalized medicines. There just needs to be some really big bold ideas from the left as opposed to burn everything down. And these discussions, I don't even wanna entertain these discussions with the right right now, because as far as I'm concerned, no, I'm not going to engage in a conversation with you.

You're trying to foment an illegitimate forum around this discussion. You have it in my opinion, you're trying to foment an illegitimate forum around this discussion. You have, in my opinion, you're trespassing and you're illegally hacking our government systems without government oversight. And I just don't think we should even, you know, sure, talk about how outrageous this is. I'm just pointing out it's not an excuse, it's an explanation of what their mentality is.

And I think these people do not care about disruption or the effect. And I think downstream, away from all of this huffing and puffing by everybody, and it's very serious stuff, Scott, it really is, is this is going to affect, this is nothing to do with the price of fucking eggs, right? Any of this. And attacking the court system, which is people who run businesses like laws. Laws are good. Laws is good.

If everyone, you know, runs stop signs and runs red lights and decides to murder people, this is not good for the economy. This is not good for stability. And so what's interesting is this like thoughtless idea of breaking without thinking of the implications of it. And I'm of the implications of it. And I'm not exercised about it. I'm sort of like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Like, are you crazy?

This works pretty fucking well. And so to me, it all does boil down to people who like disruption and don't mind breaking, and because they're in a position to be fine with it, and maybe they'll benefit in a new order. And regular people who are going to see enormous economic stress from all of this, if they keep going at the rate they're going. I mean, basically, if the rule of law feels at risk, if judges feel nervous, if when they call the US

Marshal Service, then they decide not to come because Pam Bondi is a suck up. That's a problem. That's a real, people don't believe in the law really, pretty much. I think that's an economic problem. Well, when I moved to London within kind of six months, I just came to new appreciation for America in terms of the viscosity, the risk aggressiveness.

In general, people start from a position of yes, they're optimistic. There's just a shit ton of opportunity. Our universities are just incredible. Our entrepreneurs are incredible. I generally think that in the wild in America, people are generous, really decent people. I'm so impressed with our,

I mean, it sounds weird. I miss my students. I miss the service. We used to have this wonderful program that like a GI Bill, all these incredibly talented young people who went to work in government. America works, America works less bad than any other nation in the world.

And I think a lot of citizens in the United States are about to find out that government isn't as bad as they think. And they're really gonna miss it when it gets shut down, when they stop, you know, really going to miss it when it gets shut down, when they stop. You know, the FAA does an amazing job. The Veterans Affairs Department, sure, there's a lot of waste, but the reason why, one of the reasons we are, you know, respected around the world and get the best treaties and have

700 military bases is because we have all these people who are willing to sign up and put themselves in harm's way, and then when they come back, we attempt to reasonably honor them and take care of them. People are about to find out just how well, actually, American government does work. And if you have to move to London or if you have to have your benefits taken away and find out what happens when these institutions collapse,

OK, so be it. I hope the collateral damage isn't as enormous as it likely will be, but I just feel like we're dealing with a series that Americans have become—everybody has a tendency to say Americans are—I think they're fucking spoiled children at this point. I don't think they realize how fortunate they are at the largesse and inefficiency of government. All right, Scott, just remember you're mean, cruel and deceitful. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first? Or would you like me to go first? You go first. I'm going to do two wins today. One is I got to say, Wired's coverage of all things Elon and Doge has become essential reading, scoop after scoop for all the crazies.

Who would have thought, Wired? Well, they've got a new editor, Katie Drummond, who's, they call the digital thorn in Elon Musk's side is Wired, but I gotta say, the final, this is, you know, Wired has gone in and out of relevance over the many years, but I gotta say, this is just great reporting and their subscriptions are up. Amanda came home, she says, I just got a subscription to Wired. It's doing a great job on basic news and it's been very fair.

It hasn't been snarky. It's just been here's who they are, this is what they're doing, here's what's happening. I have to say it's essential reading and I have to, I give them great credit for that. And I like to call out institutions that have really, just really improved our lives and they're doing a great job. They're doing a great job and doing it with real like steadiness, which is really hard to do.

My other win, I hate to say this, but the penny thing that Trump wants to end the production of pennies, I hate pennies. So I'm happy with that. I wanted to say one positive thing about the Trump administration. I don't like cash. I don't like cash at all. That's how I feel. So I feel this is a win. There you go. I have two wins. I don't know what platform it's on, but I'm fascinated with this woman. She's a historian and staff writer at The Atlantic named Ann Applebaum. Yeah, I love her. She was just on the podcast. Yeah.

I'm learning a lot from her and I think she has a very measured and thoughtful way of looking at history and relating it to what's going on now. So I would recommend everyone tune in or do a search for Ann Oppelbaum on Instagram. Then I'm going to have another one because I'm too freaked out to have too many fails. I've been watching the Penguin and it's actually just okay. It's not what you expect. It's good. It's not great.

We won all those awards. But Colin Farrell, is that his name? Colin Farrell. He's, I mean, my God. He's- Transformed. Jesus. I think he'll win a lot because you know what they like. Colin Farrell. He's, I mean, my God. He's transformed. Jesus. I think it went a lot because you know what they like, they want you to play someone who's mentally disabled or overweight,

or they want you to transform into someone else. A lot of cost to me happening with him. Yeah. So, it took four hours every time, but he is, I mean, it's just fascinating to kind of watch him and how good he is. It's hard not to take your eyes off his performance. So I think it's just, I think his performance

is just incredible. I think occasionally, you know, Walter Wyden, Breaking Bad, I forget the actor's name, you know, occasionally there's a performance, the guy who was in. Brian Cranston, Brian Cranston. But this is that kind of role. And it's just, just as an unwind,

just to appreciate this guy's craft. And he's so handsome and he's so, I've never thought of him. I do think, you were talking about Brad Pitt, I think really exceptionally good looking people don't get the credit they deserve as actors. Yeah, he's a good looking man. And you know what he did?

He had to do four hours of makeup to make him really, really ugly for you to realize what a good actor he is. But anyways, my wins are Anna Applebaum and The Penguin with Colin Farrell. He's done a ton of great movies. He was in a remake of the one set on Mars that Arnold Schwarzenegger was in, Total Recall, do you remember that? Oh, really? Yeah.

I'm sorry, I like the Schwarzenegger version much better. But yeah, he's been in a ton of stuff. He's a very talented person in general and a handsome man. He's a handsome man. He had a handsome man. There you go. Have you seen the one with Nicole Kidman where she's banging the answer? I can't do it. I don't want to watch her have an orgasm.

I'm sorry. Really? Yeah. I think you're being ageist. I don't think so. If she was the young hot Nicole Kidman, you'd enjoy it. I literally have no fucking interest in it. I think you're being ageist. I don't think so. She was the young, hot Nicole Kidman you were with. I literally have no fucking interest in it. I have no interest in it.

I don't wanna see it. Don't wanna see her having an orgasm several times. What did you think of the commercial with Harry, when Harry met Sally, when they redid, did you see that? They redid the scene. I didn't see the commercial, I have to watch it. I don't like when they redo things like that.

It's, don't watch it, it's suppressing because you realize how old you are because they look like Democratic Congress people storming the Department of Education. It's like. Oh, God. The only thing I liked was the new Mission Impossible is coming, and I can't wait.

Reckoning, whatever, dead reckoning. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot. Just made a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT. But speaking of movies elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, I talked to Cynthia Erivo on On, who is the great, she's in Wicked, but she's also been in The Color Purple, on

Broadway, she's all over the place, she was in Harriet. This woman's like, if she wins an Oscar, she gets an EGOT. And I think she's great. So I interviewed her. Let's listen. I think part of doing this tour is to make sure that everybody understands that it's not just a chick film. It's not just for little girls. It's not just for kids.

That it's actually for everyone. It is something for everyone in it. And that just because there are two women protagonists, that doesn't automatically mean that no men can understand what's going on. We don't say that of films that are mainly male. And most films are mainly male. I mean, we have the Irishman, which was quite frankly, all men, but nobody is saying, this is a do film.

No, we go and we watch it because it's a good film. We go and we watch good cinema. That's aimed at you, Scott. I want to see Wicked. It's supposed to be fantastic. I want to see it. And she's supposed to be an immense talent. I like Ariana Grande.

Good cinema. She also talked a lot about being queer, a whole bunch of stuff. It was really actually a really good interview. And I needed a palate cleanser, Scott. I needed a palate cleanser. Good for you. You deserve it. I went from Ann Applebaum,

and now I'm back into it with a legal and economic one. So I needed a palate cleanser. I'm going to bring you back. I'm going to make you watch Nicole Kidman have orgasms. No, we're not. I would never watch that with you. That would be so awkward. Oh my God, I can't go to a sex movie with you. That just flashed through my brain. Well, that wasn't. That would be so awkward. Oh my God, I can't go to a sex movie with you. I just, that just flashed through my brain.

That wasn't on my bingo card either. So yeah, that's not gonna happen. Because I had a discussion with Louie the other day when we went to see Sausage Party. I'm not sure I wanna hear this. No, I took him as a teenager to Sausage Party. We were laughing our asses off because it was like awkward parent.

I took him to Sausage Party, which was a cartoon. I thought it would just be funny. And it turned out to be food having a lot of sex that was gross. And he looked at me while we were watching it and he goes, this is awkward. And I go, I'm the worst parent ever. Shall we leave? He goes, no. And I had to stay there and watch this horrible food orgy with my son at the time.

It was terrible. I can't watch Nicole Kidman. Okay, we're not watching Nicole. We're not doing that. We're gonna go to Mission Impossible. We're gonna go see Wicked. Oh no, I'll see Mission Impossible. Oh my God, you should go see Wicked with me.

Let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. Okay, let's do that. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday with more Pivot Scott Read Us Out. Today's show is produced by Larrane Amandzoi-Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertide interviewed this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miss Severio and Dan Chulan. Nishak Kurwa is Vox Media's Executive Producer of Audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back on Friday for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Please judge Kara and me by the enemies we've made.