Pivot - Elon’s Politics Detox, the “Big, Beautiful” Bill's Next Phase, and Open AI's Big Bet

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss Elon Musk’s plans to significantly reduce political spending, and his defensiveness around DOGE. They also talk about reactions to Joe Biden's cancer announcement, and have choice words about the “big, beautiful” tax bill's advance. Plus, iPhone designer Jony Ive joins OpenAI, Google announces the roll out of AI Mode, and Democrats still want their Joe Rogan. 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

Hey there, this is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the show about what happens when tech and media collide. And this week we're talking to Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram and who also runs Threads. And he told me what Threads was originally going to be called. I called it Textagram as a joke, which unfortunately stuck as a name for months before I managed to kill it. Textagram, great name. You're making me regret telling you this.

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today. That's z-o-c-d-o-c dot com slash pivot. Zocdoc.com slash pivot. Oh god, that's literally the worst spring break I've ever seen. And Mardi Gras, you should throw a necklace at me if you're going to do that. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, and I'm Tom Cruise. Oh, no, Kara Swisher. You're excited about that, huh? I am. I got the 10 o'clock show. I'm going to the late show. It's three hours fucking long. Do you know that?

Two hours and 49 minutes. Wow. I know. It could be a lot of Tom Cruise. That is a lot of Tom Cruise. You're a big fan though. I'm not a fan of him as a person, the Scientology part, but I love all his movies.

The whole woke conditioning thing. He doesn't pass my purity test, so I need to condition everything. No, I don't think it's a very good group of people from all that I've read. It's not a purity test. Well, neither is the Catholic Church. He sounds like a pretty nice guy though, no? He really sells these movies, I have to say.

He's out there, he's in theaters, he does the work. He is a very hardworking, massive celebrity. He really is the kind of dumb movie star that defines our generation at least. Absolutely. I don't love Tom Cruise movies, but I'm a huge Tom Cruise fan. I just think he works so hard. I love that he has a certain fidelity to movies

and the big screen and he's trying to promote theaters. And everything I've heard about him, anecdotally about people who have interactions with him, is that he's a very lovely guy. Yeah, hard worker. Hard worker. That's what I appreciate. That's what I see. And I like the movies. I'm sorry. I love all the movies he's in.

There's not a movie. I was just thinking of rewatching Taps. Do you remember Taps? That was really, even though he got famous in risky business, Taps, he played a crazy over the top military school cadet. And Tim Hutton, remember they took over the school in the name of the. I do remember it. As a matter of fact, this is how things change. The star of the movie who got paid more was Timothy Hutton.

Hutton, right, that's what I said. He was the heartthrob at the time. And also the other guy who was number two ahead of Tom Cruise in terms of the billing was Sean Penn. Sean Penn, you're right, that's right. And it was all like, what do they do and this and that. But Tom Cruise was the crazy one who like was all in. Like he was fantastic and born on the 4th of July.

He was great in Tropic Thunder. He should have won an Oscar for that. I think Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise were denied Oscars and Oscar nominations because they're so good looking. Good looking, yeah. I think that Tom Cruise and born on the 4th of July was absolutely, he was out.

That was such a moving performance. There's a scene in that. I remember there's a scene in that where he comes home, you know, it's based on a guy named Ron Kovac who's paralyzed in the Vietnam War. And there's such a moving scene between him and his father. You know, the mom is sort of overbearing and the dad's a softy.

And this kid, you know, he's a kid back from Vietnam. And he has this wonderful, um, as I think about it, actually, I love Tom Cruise as an actor, there's this scene where he's like, you know, putting him to bed and hooking up his catheter, and he's like sobbing, and he's like, dad, who's ever gonna love me? So powerful. And then another great, uh,

really powerful scene is from a great movie called Magnolia, which he didn't get the credit he deserved. a really powerful scene is from a great movie called Magnolia, which he didn't get the credit he deserved. Another great movie. Where he's next to his dying father who abandoned him. He's obviously, I have some of my own father issues, but he really is, as I think about it, really an outstanding actor.

Yeah. Anyway, I'm very excited and I'm going to be up very late, but I'm super excited to go. Anyway, one quick note before we move on, some news breaking after our taping about the Trump administration's war with Harvard. You know, the university in Boston. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, also known as Ice Barbie, and that's a compliment, ordered her department to terminate Harvard's student and exchange visitor program certification, effectively barring the university's ability to admit foreign students. Harvard says it has nearly 10,000 people in its international academic population in an unusually petty move for the Trump administration, which specializes in petty moves.

They have attacked Harvard in this way that really could hurt a lot of foreign students, because about a third of its students are from international countries all over the world. I think probably this will not happen. I think Trump administration will back down, as it always does. It's just another salvo that it likes to do publicly. Probably if they keep at it, it will go to the Supreme Court, which is interesting because four of the nine justices went to Harvard Law School and two of them also went to Harvard College. The rest went to Yale and other important universities around the country. I do think that eventually the Trump administration is going to pay for this kind of behavior

and will lose, lose, lose, lose, lose again in court. We'll see how this turns out and we'll have plenty to say about it over the coming weeks. Oh, and one more thing, Scott, I have a quick update for you on the fake Scott scam that's been floating around on, of course, MetaProperty. Oh, and only, Kara Swisher is so powerful. You connect me with literally like-

Top people. Anyways, go ahead, tell them the story. So you had complained about this. This is fake Scott's. And I think it's absolutely something to complain about. I have the same issue on Amazon with fake Harris-Wisher books. They don't take the care to get them down.

And I think you made the very salient point that you don't see this in the New York Times or MSNBC or CNBC, but... Or Snap or even YouTube. Anything. Tell them what happens. You have fake Scott's selling investment advice, right? A bunch of my friends texted me and said, have you seen this?

And some even said, should I do this? And I click on it and it's an AI generated Scott saying, please sign up for my WhatsApp group and there's a fee involved where I will share with you two to three stock tips every week. Good idea for us to do that, but go ahead. Well, it was everywhere and it was a scam. And that is just terrible for my brand.

And we purposely, we don't take crypto investments. We turn down a lot of money and we're even quite cautious about doing financials because I take very seriously that I want young men to have economic security. And I think there's a bunch of grifters out there that have moved from finance to health, who basically claim they can outperform the market

if you just send them your 49 bucks, and they'll give you insider stock tips, or that you can't trust the industrial food complex to buy their fucking ridiculous supplement, even though they failed biology in high school. And I'm very sensitive to the fact that young men can be very seduced by this. I think we both take economic viability

very seriously in young people. So the fact that I'm out there- Only yoga pants for our customers, but go ahead. There's literally probably tens of millions of people who have seen me trying to shill a fucking investment forum on WhatsApp. That is just not, and most of them don't realize it's a scam, they just ignore it. That is not good for my brand.

That inhibits my ability to make a living. That hurts my brand equity, my reputation. That is the definition of libel and defamation. And they can, with AI, figure out if someone in your house is about to go to a Beyonce concert, but they can't find, they can't take that one ad and send out a crawler across their network and go, anything saying this is fake

and we're gonna pull it down right away. They could do that in about a five, if they took two minutes of an engineer's time or two hours of an engineer's time to do it across everyone, they could get rid of all this shit. But instead they throw up their arms and say, it's just too complex. Or we've got most of it, that's what sets you off.

That was my favorite. While some still remains, I'm like, oh, okay. So you've taken the knife 90% of the way out, but some still remains. Anyways, these people, you texted them, immediately they got back to you. They texted me and then I texted you. I have been screaming into,

I have been barking at the moon trying to actually go through the, you know, the channels here, trying to get anyone's attention. And in about a hot minute, you got two people who I'm sure are lovely, nice people with good kids who are mendacious fucks hurting the world. Sorry, Andy, I told you. Anyway.

No, I'm sure they're lovely people. Everyone I meet from Facebook is super lovely. What happened? Oh, I haven't texted them back. I'm scared. You're supposed to talk to them on the phone. You're like, I want to talk to you now. And you didn't talk to them? Yeah, yeah. I got distracted last night.

I stayed up late. I watched the last two episodes of Friends and Neighbors. I'll call them today. I'll call them today. All right. You do that. You know, at the very same time something happened with your thing, Walt couldn't get back into Facebook when he got a new iPhone, and they had put him on a security list by accident, some weird security list.

So I think that didn't get fixed either, but he was a whole lot nicer about the situation. Well, even Alphabet has figured out a way not to have this shit on their network, right? One of the things that I was telling Amanda about it, and she said, not everyone knows Kara Swisher, or if you fix it for one, why can't you fix it for everybody? That shouldn't be the way customer service works. They should take everything down. There should be no mistakes.

It can't be that hard. It's not in the New York Times, it's not in magazines, it's not, I know it's a harder, difficult, more difficult thing, but that's the business you've chosen, and therefore, you need to keep your place clean. I see. I don't think it'd be that hard. I think they could so easily upload that video to AI

and say, look for the attributes, the sentence structure, the photo resolution, everything, and go identify this everywhere and pull it down. They give these makers a lot of outs. Like, I think it was whatever strikes that they get. Anyway, you better fix it, boys, because Scott Galloway is not happy. They asked me if I had signed up for face scan or something.

I'm like, no, I don't even know what you're talking about. No, you don't do anything like that. Like, you know how Amazon now has a hand scan at Whole Foods? And someone was like, would you like to try it? I said, as fucking if. I would give my hand print to Amazon. Yeah, you pay just by putting your hand down. Really?

OK, we've got a lot to get to today, including Target's struggles and OpenEye making a deal with former Apple designer Johnny Ive with a photo that looked like he was marrying Sam Altman. It was a lovely photo. But first, Elon Musk says he plans to significantly reduce his political spending moving forward, saying in an interview with Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum,

I think I've done enough. I think we all think that. This after he poured over $290 million in the 2024 election to support Trump and Republicans. He also spent roughly $25 million on that Wisconsin Supreme Court race that he like shit the bed. The cheesehead hat, the whole thing. He shit the bed, essentially. Things got a little testy in that same interview when he was asked about Doge saving less than originally promised. The whole thing was friggin' testy. What a little baby. What a little wussy baby he is. Okay, let's listen. What happened to the two trillion? Well, do you expect it to happen immediately? Well, is it going to happen? Because Doge is supposed to run until next July.

I mean, your question is absurd in its fundamental premise. Are you assuming that within a few months, there's an instant 2 trillion saved? No, I'm not at all. I'm just asking you, is that still your aim then? Is it still your aim to get to 2 trillion? Have we not made good progress given the amount of time? Have we not made good progress given the amount of time? That's exactly what I'm asking. So is it still your aim to go from 170 billion to 2 trillion? The ability of Doge to operate is a function of whether the government, and this includes the Congress, is willing to take our advice. We're not the dictators of the government, and this includes Congress, is willing to take our advice. We're not the dictators of the government, we are the advisors.

This is such horse shit. He closed down a ton of stuff. He didn't do well. That's all. It's just like the Cybertruck, this was a flop so far. And of course Congress has to pass it, but he ran through all the government cutting things, closing things, firing things. He had plenty of power. He had the president of the United States behind him. So he was running rampant. What happened is he ran rampant. He did stupid things like the chainsaw thing.

He pushed around and the other story after story coming in about what a fucking nuisance he was to these people, ran over Congress, ran over cabinet members, did stupid things, made idiotic mistakes. He's not getting to two trillion. And the entire interview was just ridiculous, saying Tesla's doing great. He's just such a, it's such horse shit. This guy is full of horse shit. This was a failure.

It was too bad, as we all say, good thing to cut things. And he didn't reach his goals. And even the $170 billion is questionable. I'm sure he's cost the US taxpayer money, but he got his. He got his regulatory relief. He's going to probably be part of that Golden Dome thing. He will probably benefit in lots of ways with Starlink and everything else. So let's just say he got his.

So one headline described this interview as a billionaire man-child. Elon Musk gives his most petulant interview to date. I think that was correct, Scott. Any quick thoughts? And then we'll talk about the Tesla part. Well, just some data. This has backfired. It was initially the best investment anyone had made for a quarter of a billion dollars

and sort of the promotion of Tesla and the belief of the markets that this would pay off because we had gone to a kleptocracy. It's now the rivers have reversed and the tide has turned entirely against them. And this has arguably been one of the greatest brand destructions and Tesla was a great brand. According to Axios Harris Poll, Tesla has fallen from the eighth most reputable brand in 2021.

I mean, that's in the company of- Yeah, Coca-Cola, right? You know, Amazon and Coke and Apple. It's fallen from eighth to 95th. I'm surprised it hasn't even gone lower. I mean, that's in the company. Yeah, Coca-Cola, right? You know, Amazon and Coke and Apple, it's fallen from eighth to 95th. I'm surprised it hasn't even gone lower. We talked a lot about this. Their revenue was down 20%.

Do you realize Tesla, despite the fact it trades at 150 times earnings and most automobile companies trade at 10, Tesla's sales are declining faster than any automobile company in the world. They decline 20%, profits are down 71%. Sales, you want to talk about sales declines, down 59% year on year in France, 81% in Sweden,

74% in the Netherlands. Their sales are gonna cut in half in Switzerland, 33% in Portugal, and their sales are down by two thirds in Denmark. And what I don't get is he's such a, he is a brilliant guy, but he's alienated his core demographic. And he's alienated the Republicans. They should read these stories. He's alienated the wrong people. The three quarters of Republicans would never consider buying an EV. So he's cozyed

up to the people who aren't interested in EVs. And then California, which is the biggest EV market in the US, Tesla sales in the state have dropped 12% and its market shares dropped almost 8%. So, and then let's just be clear about Doge. It's not saving the US money, it's costing money because one of the recommendations they made was a plan to cut the IRS by 50%, which would essentially lead to a $400 billion increase in uncollected taxes.

So if you're talking about effect on the treasury and our receipts, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say it is 150 billion. Well, but if you lose 400 billion in uncollected taxes, that's a quarter of a trillion dollar net loss to the US government. So you're down about one and a half or $2 trillion over the next 10 years because Doge has emasculated our ability to collect taxes from the people who know him. And I'm writing a newsletter this week called Toligarchs. I think there's this transnational oligarchy class that's emerging where people get so rich they can afford their own security, their own rights,

their own family planning, their own schools. And as a result, they have less of a vested interest in the well-being and democracy of their native country. Anyways, and the problem is, how this has arisen is the following, and that is what you see in America, and this is happening consistently,

is that as income inequality has increased, a smaller and smaller group of people who are unified in their love of low taxes and getting richer continue to weaponize the government. And the result is as wealth concentrates, political spending capacity increases, which secures policy outcomes that further concentrate wealth and you enter into a doom loop.

The share of wealth at the top 0.1% since 1980 has tripled. Their share of wealth, political spending, has increased 17 times in real terms on inflation justice basis. So that means, and what do you know, combined corporate and top individual tax rates fell from an average of 58 to 29%. So as the 0.1% gets wealthier.

They get what they want. Over the last 40%, their effective tax rate has been cut in half. So you just see a correlation here. And that is, unless you step in and redistribute income from corporations and the 0.1% to the middle class, they increasingly, and I live this firsthand, it's just when you're paid not to understand something,

it's really easy to not understand it. And people can talk about, oh, income inequality, but at the end of the day, they vote for candidates and give money to candidates who are gonna find a way to continue to cut their taxes. We have to have class traitors. We have to have rich people. We do.

FDR was a class traitor. Truman was a class traitor who turn around to these very rich people in these special interest groups and these lobbyists and say, No fucking way. No, you're gonna hate me interest groups in these lobbyists and say, no, you're going to hate me. I appreciate all the money you gave to me, but you're going to hate me. I'm coming for your ass. So when he asked, was asked about returning to Tesla and his commitment to the company, baby Huey attempted his usual brand of awkward comedy. Check it out. Do you see yourself and are you committed to still being the chief executive of Tesla

in five years time? Yes. No doubt about that at all? Well, no, I might die. You know, I think one of the things that I don't believe is he will stop his financial involvement in politics back in March of 2024. He said he wouldn't be donating to either candidate in the presidential election. I called that horse shit then, very clearly, that he was obviously going to back President Trump because it was an existential crisis for him to be for a Harris presidency. And that's exactly what he did.

And he lied about it. He just lied about it. His posts on X have become less political in recent months. So Washington Post analysis found under 20% of his posts are now about Doge or politics, while more than half are about tech and his businesses. This interview was such a disaster, the reporter was trying her best to try to get an answer out of him. And then in a separate interview on CNBC, he should just shut up.

He also said, robo-taxes would be driving around Austin in June in LA and San Francisco after that. I would not get in a RoboTaxe because they haven't had any, and even one of the people who was doing this said they were years behind Waymo. And I was reticent. I now go in Waymos quite confidently, but I would never get in one of these. And before we move on, I just want to note that in that CNBC interview, Elon was asked about his plans to combine Tesla and XAI, a merger.

I predicted a few weeks ago he didn't rule it out completely. Let's listen to what he said. It's not out of the question, but that would have to be something that the Tesla shareholders would want to vote for. Understood. So, but it's not something you're thinking about doing? It's not currently. It's not currently, there are no plans to do so. Right. It's not out of the question, but obviously would require Tesla's shareholder support. Well, that means yes, obviously.

Yeah, I 100% agree. The only pushback I would give Karen, I think some of, and I share this bias, but I think your bias is coming out here, and that is against Elon, which I share some of a, and I share this bias, but I think your bias is coming out here. And that is against Elon, which I share. But one, I do think he should continue to do interviews. I think he gets so much free attention. He still has a big fan base. I guess, you're right. And free media around Tesla all the time

and SpaceX and attention. I do think that is worth billions of dollars and he should probably continue to do it. Should he be coached a little bit better about things to say? He was coached there when he said, well, shareholders would have to approve it. That's not true, he can muscle around his board,

but that was the smart thing to say. The other thing is, I disagree, I think a lot of people, you may not, that you didn't say a lot of people, you said you wouldn't, a lot of people will try self-driving from Tesla. I don't think they're gonna hesitate to get into a Tesla. I didn't think they wouldn't.

I'm just telling you as someone who's written in the earliest ones till now, they simply aren't safe enough. They are not safe enough. I believe that you wouldn't. I think there's a lot of people that will try an autonomous Tesla taxi. Yeah, I just don't think. Listen, he was saying robotaxis are coming by this date, and that was eight years ago, and it was a date. Waymo has written circles around coming by this date, and that was eight years ago and it was a date.

Waymo has written circles around him in this issue, and so have others, by the way. There's some Amazon efforts, there's Aurora. Everybody has moved forward here and for him to pretend that they're not extraordinary. It's the same thing with AI. Look, he was extraordinarily late with Croc. Good catch-up, I guess,

although the numbers are pretty low compared to other things. But he just declares things. It drives me fucking nuts. And it made me biased. I just wouldn't, I don't think he should, I think he should go away for a while and keep quiet. That's, I get what you're saying, but every, I think he became a nuisance at the White House. And now there's- Well, he's out. He's, but we predicted this. No, I get that. I'm saying I think he exhausted people with his never shutting up and his ridiculous jokes and his bullying. The exact moment was when I saw that whatever it is, the head of the province

in Ontario said he was canceling a SpaceX contract. I'm like, he's out. He'll leave government. Once he sees that happening, he's out. He's going to pull the VAC. The VAC was fired, but basically he's going to fade to black. And he did. Literally from that moment on,

he started fading back into the bushes. And your analysis was the correct one. And that is they don't want him around, but they're scared of him because of his money and his platform. But he's out, he's gone. This is what he should do. Let me leave on a positive note here.

He should work on his fucking cars and not make shitty cars. And the reason why Tesla is not doing well is because there's an old car that it's a very good car, but it's something that's not make shitty cars. And the reason why Tesla's not doing well is because there's an old car that it's a very good car, but it's not a fresh car. And the Cybertruck is a, sorry, that was his midlife crisis, I guess, not a good car. He should make good products and roll them out.

That's what he should do. That's what he was good at. And now he's bad at government, he's bad at a lot of things, he's bad at media. He should go back and do the things he does best, which is be very bold about cutting edge products and then improve Starlink, improve the Tesla product. There's no way he couldn't come back, Tesla couldn't come back from this if they made good cars.

But they aren't, and so he could blame all the protests, he can blame anyone else. But the responsibility lies with him. Speaking about responsibility, we're learning more about former President Joe Biden's prostate cancer diagnosis. Biden did not receive his diagnosis until last week in his last known PSA screening. That's what they used to do. These was in 2014 according to his spokesman. That is an astonishing thing. I cannot believe that. You had noted this and I was shocked again when I saw that. That information comes amid ongoing speculation about a possible cover-up, including from President Trump,

who claims somebody is not telling the facts. He would know about that. Medical experts point to guidelines that advise against PSA screenings for men over the age of 70, I guess. He's the president, though. Though some people are raising questions about whether Biden as president should have still been screened, such as you did. Scott, you asked this question earlier this week. Where do you think we stand now?

And by the way, you also spoke with CNN's Jake Tapper on Prof.G this week. Jake is the co-author of the new book, Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again. Let's listen to the clip when he talks about what it means for Democrats. All of Democrats right now are being blamed for the Biden fiasco. And by that, I mean his decision to run for reelection and his decision to hide his deterioration. As our reporting suggests, this was the fault of President Biden, his wife, and his son, and like a number, a few top aides. But this isn't necessarily something that could be laid on the feet of every single

elected Democrat in the country. My personal view is that until the Democratic Party reckons with that, people are gonna have a very difficult time trusting them on anything. So what do you think about the screening? And then tell me a little bit about your thoughts here. Look, so I've tried to be, I think like a lot of people during COVID,

I decided I was a junior epidemiologist. And what I realized is I had no fucking idea what I was talking about. So when it comes to medical advice, I try to be more measured. And what I'll say is a citizen who gets regular prostate exams and even has a regular MRI that looks and images my prostate. And the PSA test is a blood test. That's it. it costs a hundred bucks.

It just seems weird to me that this guy wasn't getting the most robust scans in history and PSA tests all the time. As president. As president. Your brother immediately reached out to me and said, it's not unusual for a man of this age to find out in a screening that it is this advanced.

And I believe Dr. Jeffrey Swisher, who spent a decade of his life studying these issues over my instincts. Having said that, I still think this is just incredibly odd. And we don't, there's so much understandable and deserved affection and goodwill towards Joe Biden right now. But this is the reality.

He has ruined his legacy. This is what he'll be remembered for. He'll be remembered for the guy who fucked up and got an insurrectionist elected. This is the fine point on his career that will be the thing that he was known for. Our years of public service. Plus he stopped him and then he got him elected, right?

And he would have gone on a hero. This was such incredibly poor judgment and it brings up two issues around how we move forward. The first is when we talked about this last week, if we're going to have age limits on the lower end, we need them on the upper end. And two, the Democratic Party needs to recognize that one of the greatest tools we have in history in terms of our democracy is the primary process.

The primary process. The primary process is such full body contact violence in incredible competition that it matures not only the right person, but the right person for the moment. No one had heard of Barack Obama. No one had heard of Bill Clinton. No party, no, the Democratic Party wasn't gonna pick

either of those people, but you know what? They just rose every week and did the work and America fell in love with them. So when the Democratic Party tries to clear Bernie Sanders out of the way for Secretary Clinton or Barack, you have to let our primary process run. And the fact, in my opinion, another mistake they made in addition to this consensual hallucination we all entered in with each other, is that I think they should have had a super shark tank-like mini primary

rather than just anointing Vice President Harris. I think they could have made it weak. And I wanna be clear, I don't think we're guilty of Monday morning quarterbacking. I was Saturday afternoon quarterbacking. I said, have a mini shark tank-like primary with the best eight candidates go from two debates with eight, then to four, then to two,

it would have dominated the media cycle. And by the way, Trump was dominating it because they were afraid to let Joe out of the basement. We would have, Democrats would have dominated it and who knows, maybe it would have been Vice President Harris that would have matured. I don't think she would have, the woman who- Yeah, she needed more time.

Well, the bottom line is, we don't want to acknowledge this. She's not a great candidate. I think she did a good job given the hand she was dealt with, but this is a candidate who didn't make it to Iowa four years earlier, which says to me, America didn't think of her as a great candidate. I thought she did a lot better. The first 60 days, I thought, were terrific, I thought,

for her. Look, I think given the hand she was dealt, Vice President Harris, first off, I think one of the great performances in political history was her debate. I think the amount of pressure that she must have felt, and for her to show up and be that composed, that articulate, that deft, practicing with two screens.

I thought that was one of the great performances in political history. The reality is she was not a strong candidate, and President Biden and his family's narcissism have severely fucked this country, severely. And that is his legacy. And we want to have, and we'll get shit for this because people are correctly feeling empathy for him. But his legacy, in my view view has been ruined by this. Can I bring that up because I gotta tell you, it continues.

We were pretty outspoken, you first, and then you convinced me of his need to step down at the time. And we got so much endless shit, you remember how much endless shit we got. I have blocked so many people and all the social networks because they just can't, they do have a derangement syndrome. I was like, you can't say to yourself what a fuck up this was, because it's not the point. I think we should move on, by the way.

I think we've got to move on quickly, and there's lots of ways to do that. We made a mistake. We needed to do this. We're going to do things differently. We're so sorry. Please trust us again. Here's how you can trust us by doing, as you said, a robust primary, correct?

Here's some answers from us. Here's what we're going to do. And also saying out loud, Joe Biden betrayed us, right? Just say it. Sorry he's sick, but. Betrayal is a strong word. He screwed up. And we went along with it.

He screwed up. OK, he screwed up and we went out. OK, betrayed is not the right word, right. OK. But that said, stop it, you people. Like, you yelled at us when we said, which would have been a much better outcome, especially you, Scott. You were really out on that limb.

And I'm not giving you credit, it's just you were right. And it's the same problem we had. We can't say anything because Trump, yes, we can say things. Look at the shit Tapper's getting right now. People are so angry at him. Yeah, he is getting angry. People are so angry. By the way, just we should point out or try and use this for some good

about the importance of a prostate exam. And you know how you can tell or how I can tell it's going to be a really great prostate exam. How? I feel two hands on my shoulders. Oh my god. By the way, if Patrick comes over and gives me an in-home prostate exam, I think I should be reimbursed by my insurance. Okay, okay. Getting back to Tapper, the other thing is I've just gotten several of these new these books on the presidential race and stuff like that. And I do have to say, there's a lot of news in a lot of these. They're all under embargo and stuff.

But sometimes you feel like maybe you should have said it at the time. Like, you know, when reporters have to do, and here's where I do think the media is culpable. I think a lot more reporters knew about this and several did some great pieces talking about this, but they got relentlessly pummeled when they did. You were called an ist. The moment you said it, you were called, no one wants to be called an ist.

No one wants to be called a sexist or agist, but immediately you were called an agist right away. Oh, you're an agist. You don't think you can do it. But reporters got the pressure, and in that way they really have to just push back and keep going. And they're not a creature of Trump if they... The guy was the president and they should have done a good job covering him despite the fears of Trump. And that's just the

way it's got to be. I'm sorry. There's no... By all means necessary is not the way the Democrats could consult themselves. Anyway, okay Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the bond market gets a little yippy again. Support for PIVOT comes from Vanta. If you could automate 90% of one part of your life, you might choose cleaning your house or writing thank you notes or working out. But if you're a startup founder or a security professional, you'd probably choose compliance. Makes sense. Achieving and maintaining compliance takes a ton of time and money. Vanta is a trust management platform that helps businesses automate up to 90% of the work

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That's vanta.com slash pivot. Support for the show comes from Trynet. Trynet's full range of HR solutions were built for purpose driven companies such as Zap Surgical. Founded by pioneering neurosurgeon and inventor Dr. John Adler, ZAP Surgical has spent the last decade developing precision brain care solutions that make world-class radiological surgery universally accessible, treating more patients with greater accuracy and charting a new frontier in medicine, from physical health to mental well-being.

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Trinet, your path, their purpose. trying to your path, their purpose. Support for Pivot comes from Ferragamo. When it comes to Mother's Day, your mom might say your happiness is enough, but come on, there are plenty of ways to show her how much she means to you. One such way is gifting her a piece of happiness she can carry with her or even wear.

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bill. I mean, this is just what you're talking about, selling out the poor to feed the rich. The 10-year and 30-year bond yields also jumped sharply, a very disturbing indicator. The 30-year rising above 5% to its highest levels since October 2023. The sell-off isn't just a U.S. story. Bond yields are rising globally too, with Japan and the UK seeking similar moves. The bond market got yippy back in April, as Trump put it, which led him to pause the tariffs. I'd like you to explain what's going on without a penis joke and as pithy as you can be for the people who don't understand it.

Well, look, this is and several nonpartisan economic think tanks have said that this tax bill is the greatest transfer of capital and money from poor to rich in history. And adding 5 trillion to the debt, which will increase interest rates for everybody and young people is basically a deferred tax on young people such that, it's very simple to understand this tax cut. The top 5% are getting a tax cut, the bottom 95% are getting a tax increase.

And I was hopeful that this thing was gonna be rejected. I thought the arguments were just so insane and cruel that they weren't going deep enough in the cuts. But effectively, I was with Anthony Scaramucci last night who I just continue to be so impressed with. I think he's so thoughtful. And he brought up something so interesting, and that is- Is he in London?

Yeah, he's in London. And he brought up something so interesting. He said, look, you had, effectively, you had Republicans were fiscal budget hawks. They were very concerned about the deficit. And Clinton, who was a moderate, figured out a way to have a surplus. And Al Gore said with my economic plan over the next eight to 10 years, we're going to have $4 to $5 trillion in surpluses.

Bush won. And that was really the pivot point. Cause what Bush did was the following. He convinced, he decided, and the American public has gotten used to this, he decided we can have our cake and eat it too. And what he did was he decided to go to war and lower taxes at the same time. And nothing really happened in the short term to the markets because we have built up so much borrowing capacity because of the responsible fiscal approach of our predecessors. And the result is when we decided during W's administration

that we could cut taxes and spend more, we began essentially a downward spiral of fiscal irresponsibility that Democrats and Republicans have both taken a play from. That the haunting or the negative impact of deficits don't come to fruition during my administration. So whatever, I'm just going to keep everybody happy. I'm going to the far left and the far right meet around. I know let's cut taxes and I know let's increase social spending.

By the way, government expenditures are up $200 billion since Trump took office but compared to last year and also Biden, despite railing against the billionaire class, not paying enough taxes during the Biden administration, taxes went down. So this is a continuation of the same irresponsible fiscal behavior, but this is a focus and this kind of embodies what America has become about. And that is the bottom 95% are here to optimize the lifestyle and economics of the top 5%. And one of the reasons we do this is because Republicans are very good at representing the top 5% and convincing the top 50 that they'll be there, that Americans are so optimistic

they believe at some point they might be in the top 5%. And because Democrats, quite frankly, just don't want to be serious about, about, neither side want to be serious about either raising taxes or cutting spending. And neither is willing to have a serious conversation. The best the Democrats will do will say, at some point when I interviewed leader, leader Jeffries with Jess, he said, well, at some point we should probably have that conversation, but no Democrat will stand up and say, we probably need to means test Social Security. The only person I've found who's being kind of responsible is Senator Chris Murphy. He's actually naming programs we need to take a hard look at,

but this is a transfer of wealth. Danielle Pletka Explain what the bond market's saying very quickly. Chris Murphy Oh, the bond market is saying that this irresponsible fiscal behavior means that lending money to US companies and to the US government is now riskier, meaning that you need to get paid more to take that risk. And effectively what you have is the bond, the 30-year treasury is at 5.09% and that's the greatest or the highest it's been since October 23.

And this impacts, this means you're paying more for your student loans, your credit cards, your mortgages and companies are less inclined to borrow money to grow because it's more expensive. In other words, everything everywhere gets a little bit more expensive. Now that's okay if you're the 5% getting a huge tax credit because I don't have student loans. My mortgage, if it goes up 25 bips, that still will be overcompensated

by the tax cut that I will get. But the bottom 95% see their taxes go up and see an increase in costs across their debt instruments and their kids are really gonna have a tough time because the fastest growing expense line in the government budget right now is the interest on our debt. It's not investing in infrastructure. It's not social services to keep seniors out of poverty.

And this is how nations fail. Nations don't fail because they get invaded. They fail because they go broke. That's what we're doing. And we're not creating the economic opportunity because we're paying interest rates. That's usury against ourselves, which is really astonishing. Anyway, we'll see what goes on. They're going to pass it, but that was a tight vote. You know, again, I have to insult all the congressional Republicans

who pretend they're hawks. Fuck you for voting for this. Like, if you really cared, you would do something not like this, but you did it anyway. I don't know what deal you got or whatever promise, but it's all nonsense if you don't stick to your guns on this stuff. iPhone designer, Johnny Ive and his design firm are taking over creative design at OpenAI. This is an interesting story speaking of expansion, to develop consumer devices and other products. Ive's design firm and OpenAI CEO, Sam Alton have reportedly been working on a device that moves beyond screens, including headphones and other

devices with cameras. IVE will also work on future versions of Chatt GPT, audio features, and it's OpenAI's app. IVE also leads I.O., a company founded to design and develop a new family of AI products. OpenAI will acquire I.O. in an all-equity deal valued at $6.5 billion. So here we are. We have Johnny Ive coming back, the obviously famous iPhone guy, aluminum. I just want to note, I spoke to Ive at Code in 2022. He was on a panel about Steve Jobs with Lorraine Powell Jobs and Tim Cook.

It was the last Code session ever because Jobs was the first one. I asked him about intentionality and responsibility when designing tech products. Let's take a listen. I think if you're innovating, there will always be unintended consequences, some of them wonderful and some of them not wonderful. And I think the issue is just how

you know your decision in terms of what responsibility you need to shoulder. I think the more powerful, I mean this wonderful historic precedent for powerful tools and having that you know that ability to be used in both ways. But I think it's you know the consequences in to be used in both ways. But I think it's, you know, the consequences. In the end of the day, I think it comes down to how you view your responsibility. Yeah, he's a very articulate person about design. He also insulted the current, there was a humane pen, a couple of pens. He thought they sucked.

But is it too early in the process here at OpenA? They're clearly, as you noted, going consumer if they're bringing in Johnny Ive. And I will note Ive and Altman are very close friends. And again, the picture they took together was really kind of odd and interesting. It looked like it was like an engagement photo in the New York Times. What do you think about this? Well, it is a big moment in business history because this is now the most expensive aqua hire of all time.

Yeah. At six and a half billion dollars and at just 55 employees, that's 120 million per employee. Actually, no, the biggest number three was Instagram. I think it was 20 people, billions of 50 million. This is now, I was wrong. This is now number two and 120 million per employee. Number one was met's acquisition of WhatsApp, which was purchased for over 300 million dollars for employee.

But this was an acquihire. They're getting stock. I don't think they're getting cash. But even if it gets cut in half or by 75%, I think OpenAI is dramatically overvalued right now, but this is an acquihire. And I can see why the justification is they got, they got a lot of press, a lot of awareness today.

Quite frankly, this isn't as big a story as Google's announcement of some of their AI products yesterday. Yeah, we're gonna do that next, but go ahead. I know, but my point is OpenAI stepped on. Yes. Basically, it took the oxygen out of the room. I don't know if they planned it,

but it was quite brilliant. As soon as Google came out with this, they came out with this love picture of them. And Johnny Ive is a very compelling, charismatic guy. And they stepped all over Alphabeck's big announcement, which by the way, is a lot more meaningful in terms of tech news. That was a job smooth.

Yeah, they stepped on it. They basically said, no, back of the bus, in terms of tech news. That was a job smooth. Yeah, they stepped on it. They basically said, no, back of the bus, in terms of your story. Look, good for Johnny Ivey. He's a visionary. This is him saying that if we can come up with a better user interface or some sort of hardware product, it signals to the market that they're more leadership.

Is it worth $6 and 1 half billion? That's a 2% dilution at a $340 billion. I mean, that's real freaking dilution, but if it gets them awareness, then they can end up having a cleaner user interface on their search or whatever products, you know, good for them. So look, I think it was a risk we're taking. Talk about the consumer, the consumer,

because they're obviously leaning, Johnny Ive is probably the greatest designer in consumer technology history, right? One of them, possibly the one. So this is the idea of how do you make AI useful, right? So a lot of it is very kludgy, how you use AI and those pins were just ridiculous, we made fun of them. But there has to be some way because I have to say, I've been noticing, you use AI, and those pins were just ridiculous. We made fun of them. But there has to be some way, because I have to say,

I've been noticing, I mean, you use AI all the time. I'm really using it. I don't use Google search anymore. I use ChatGPT, like for all, and they're better answers. They really are. And I'd like a little more information about the provenance of the information I'm getting sometimes, but I feel pretty good about it.

It's getting better and better, that's for sure. But interestingly, my Apple things are getting useful. When in my messages suddenly it said, your Amazon package is at your doorstep and it never did that before. It's insert AI is definitely inserting itself trying to coordinate all my apps at this point in a way that's much more actually useful. But do you think that they're going full consumer here and they're hitting at phone makers, they're hitting at search, they're hitting at travel agencies,

they're hitting at libraries. I mean, how do you look at this? I mean, you could see an AI phone and Johnny Ive is one of probably the three or five greatest consumer designers. I mean, I'll list off some others, Charles and Ray Eames, the furniture guys, Dieter Rams, who was kind of the original consumer design company, I think was Braun. They said that, you know, this stuff can be more interesting and not dysfunctional and ugly and look like Soviets designed it.

James Dyson, I think would have to be up there. A guy named Achille Castigliani, who was known for furniture and lighting. If you, you know, I love furniture and I think some of the more interesting design and consumers actually been in furniture of all places. But anyways, he's right up there. I can see an AI phone. But anyways, he's right up there. I can see an AI phone. There's something about when you get a physical product that creates, I was having lunch with Jordan Harbinger.

He's a great podcaster and I just like him. I think he's a really decent young man. And I said, my advice to him was, you need to write a book because something you can hold in your hands, it takes the podcaster and makes it, gives you a level of heft and gravitas. I kind of feel the same about a physical product for these digital only companies. That if Google can put out an interesting laptop or a good phone and the Pixel phone while it hasn't really got any traction, is a great phone. It gives you a certain level of, I don't know, heft gravitas that it takes you.

I mean, for God's sakes, Meta's been trying to figure it out. They might have it with their AR Ray-Ban glasses. But there's just a certain affinity or affection or gravitas you get when you have something people can hold in their hands or marvel at its beauty. Because you are limited in terms of what you can do in a digital interface. You know what I was thinking? My iPhone suddenly feels older, too old. Something else has to come.

For the first time when I read this, even though I've been through many cycles and he's at the end of a very long and illustrious career, I think he's got one more in him. Someone could supplant Apple. Someone could. That's what I thought of when I heard this. Will. You know it'll happen at some point, just when. Yes, I know. But I thought of course will.

But now I'm like, oh, I can see it. I can see them making something I would buy. Anyway, we'll see. So I'm an investor and was on the board for a couple years in a company called Ledger, which is a kind of the premier hardware wallet for crypto. Yeah, they're in a little trouble because of some security issues. A lot of their stuff got... Actually, I think, well, it's still known as a secure story that it's, the company is

doing really well. I see, I see the numbers, but anyways, I left the board mostly because I hate crypto and I shitpost it everywhere, so I wasn't a good fit for that board. But you know who took my spot is Tony Fidel. Oh, yeah, another great designer. Because the company realized he's been very involved in the design.

And one of the things that ledger nanos do have on the competition is they just kind of feel better in your hand. They look cooler. Yeah, they're beautiful. And so they realized that the guy who was involved in the iPod, and I think he was involved in Nest, that it makes sense. These people, top end designers, are rock stars.

And they can have a material impact on the perception. And when you have a tech company with people who brighten up a room by leaving it, having some of that sex appeal in the beautiful things, as I just talked, process this, it probably is worth the 2% dilution when this company is trading at three. Open AI needs to maintain a lot of momentum and constantly be in the news to justify a third of a trillion dollar valuation right now.

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful, I have one, it's gorgeous. And Tony is really great. The other one would be Eve Behar. There's a couple. Oh, that's a good one. And then Susan Kerr, who designed all the original stuff for Apple, all the iconic stuff for Apple.

She did all the, anyway, there's a couple of really well-known tech designers and I was at the very top of that pile in any case. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Google introduces AI mode. Support for Pivot comes from SimpliSafe. Every day we make countless decisions. What time we get up, what do we want to eat, Should I watch one more episode before I go to sleep? No matter what the decision is, you make it with the best intentions in mind. And that is part of the reason why so many people trust SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe can help put your mind at ease with their advanced security system monitoring your home. Their AI-powered cameras, backed by live professional monitoring agents, monitor your property and detect suspicious activity. If someone's lurking around or acting suspiciously, those agents see and talk to them in real time,

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guy is offering free skincare samples. I say, sure, I'll take one. Then he literally grabs me by the hand and pulls me into his store. And suddenly he's putting like this goop under my eyes. And I'm not a big skincare girly, but I dabble and I'm telling you that this stuff was magic. Like I have the beginnings of crow's feet, but I'm looking in the mirror and they're gone. And he tells me, this stuff costs $1,300, but it is so worth it because you won't need Botox for another three years.

How old are you, Amanda? I'm 28 years old. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Coming up on Today Explained. The pressure to fix your face. Tell them when we drop. Weekdays wherever you get your podcasts. Scott, we're back. Google has announced it will roll out its AI mode. It sounds so scary.

A new search feature which will function like a chat bot to all users in the US. The feature will include personalized and automated email replies, can automatically purchase items when they're on sale, and with a new addition, can click around the web for you like to book travel. This is the idea behind all this stuff. For now, AI mode will just appear as an option inside of Google Search. However, the group of the biggest news published in

the US expressed disapproval in a statement on Wednesday saying the new feature deprives publishers of traffic and revenue, no shit. An internal document disclosing Google's antitrust trial this week revealed that the company decided against making publishers, asking publishers for permission to have their work featured in AI search features. Talk a little bit AI mode. I mean, again, they've got to fight back because they sort of have the pole position being the leader in search. They should be dominating this and they're certainly not, although they've certainly got a lot of power. So talk about, would you use AI mode to replace your other apps? I find myself using Google a lot less than a lot more, in my experience.

And I'm shifting over to ChatGPT and whatever's on Apple. And I guess I'm just about to shift from Google Maps to Apple Maps, because they've gotten as good, for example. So thoughts? Well, the metaphor I use is that Google is big box, everything at the lowest price. But there's some decision calorie expenditure. You have to decide which of the 45 brands of peanut butter you want. Whereas AI is specialty retail and says, we're not going to give you every answer, we're

just going to give you the three best toasters or the one best. And that's specialty retail. I think there's room for both, but specialty retail took market capitalization away from big box, and I think that's going to happen here. Having said that, I actually like the chat-like interface with Google search. I use it. I find it's now at the top. They're integrating into the search, and they're saying, look, if you want to go down the aisle and pick out which of the hundred toasters is fine,

but we're doing like similar to what AI does, we're trying to at least start with what we think is the best toaster or the best answer. I also, one of my predictions in October for 2025 was I called it the empire strikes back. I think Alphabet is about to strike back. And I think still the largest concentration of IQ and even IQ related to AI is in fact at Alphabet.

And also the scale they have is, the scale they have, so just one piece of data here, there are 373 times more queries on Google than on OpenAI right now. Now granted, their search has declined, but I'd still think that Alphabet with their IP, their IQ, their capital, and the interface they have is still, I think it would be very dangerous to count Alphabet out. And I believe that Alphabet's market cap will go up and I think OpenAI is gonna go down.

And when I saw that product release yesterday of the different things, their AI mode, the chat-like interface, I was blown away by those product releases yesterday. I think it's really incredible what they're doing. Yeah, so do they not get stepped on? How do you look at that? Oh, from a PR standpoint, they lost.

I mean, one guy, Johnny Ive, in a six and a half billion dollar acquisition, is the bigger news today. They released so much stuff that I think a lot of the stuff kind of stepped on each other. I would have paced it out and had a series of product releases, but some of the things like

basically putting a movie studio on your phone, some of the stuff that feels like mid-journey but better, it just, some of the stuff they announced yesterday, I felt like I needed a few hours to really digest and understand, but I just got the sense, they have all of a sudden, that they got the memo that they're behind and they need to catch up,

and I think the distance between that they're the memo that they're behind and they need to catch up. And I think the distance between that they're lagging OpenAI substantially narrowed yesterday. Is how I, did you see it and what did you think about it? I think OpenAI's principal competitor is Google. That's it, that's it. I don't meta from the outside with the open stuff and they'll certainly a player, but if I had the top three of those three, absolutely.

I did see it and I do use, I think what I like about Google search, and I still use it, I'm just using it less, just slightly less. I feel my patterns, right? Because Google was the go-to period, and now it's not the go-to period. But I do like when you search for something, the questions they add, like, it anticipates your next question of why this is this and why this is this. And so I like that. I think search is a lot more searchable and useful.

And I never go down below the first six inches, right, of the whole thing. They usually get my answer to me pretty quickly. And so that's great, except for everyone else below the line, right? They are deploying it well. They still have a problem with design. You know, I always thought this was Apple's to lose in terms of delivering. Apple, I don't think, is doing anything that's really fantastic in terms of AI deployed to help me through my day. I think Chappie GPT is much more helpful.

And I think they're kludgy, too. I think they're all kludgy. So we'll see. I think obviously Google's, I think you're absolutely right. It's the empire strikes back and they have to. So they have to get more dynamic, I suspect. Anyway, let's move on to the last thing. Democrats still want a Joe Rogan, Scott.

Since their loss in November, donor retreats and pitch documents have been full of ass for rich backers to contribute to the party's efforts to develop an army of influencers. Efforts include American Bridge, one of the largest Democratic donor networks, which has launched a plan for a nonprofit called Achieve Narrative Dominance and aims to have a budget of over $70 million. Project Echo, a new four-year $52 million influencer program from the progressive nonprofit American Way, and several other smaller projects looking to amplify left-leaning influencers.

I'm just looking at the top charts, I'm just using podcasts because there's lots of ways to influence on all the different platforms. But actually, Joe Rogan's dropped rather considerably. He's now down at six. I think left-wing ones or left or softer ones are near the top. Good hang with Amy Poehler's really burning the charts these days. The Daily is still up there. Obviously, Megyn Kelly's still up there.

But I got to say a lot, it's not so much a right-dominated thing. Tucker Carlson's up near the top, but so is Michelle Obama right next to him. Midas Touch is right there, along with things like Diary of a CEO, or the crime ones that are up to the top. I feel like it's a mixed bag these days on a lot of these shows. I don't know. What do you think?

Should they try to do this? It seems silly. It's like making Fetch happen. I do think think? Should they try to do this? It seems kind of silly. It's sort of like making fetch happen. I do think they dominate. There's been some... Pivot is 76, just so you know, in the world. What is? Pivot? We're 76 in the world? Yeah. Yeah, we're in the top 100. Watch out, 75. We're higher than Charlie Kirk.

Here's the thing. When you're a Democratic, we're seen as center left, crazy left. I won't say who crazy left. You. I won't say who's who. You've become much more liberal. We have. I like that you said I'm a San Francisco lesbian. Anyways.

Prof G is 87. I'm just sorry. Go ahead. And Prof G is 87. I love that you threw that in. Just saying. Oh my god. That's such a Kara Swisher thing.

Oh, by the way. We're higher than all in. Too bad, boys. You BFFs or whatever you call yourselves. But we get, I mean, in terms of, I'm focused on money versus rankings. The Democratic podcasts get a much higher CPM. They do.

Because the bottom line is, Democrats listening to podcasts have more money than some of the Republicans listening to these podcasts. The, I do still think they dominate. Occasionally stuff is breaking through, like the Midas Touch came out of nowhere into the top five. But a lot of the top podcasts, like Stephen Bartlett is pretty much middle of the road.

He tries to be apolitical. I think he's gonna replace Joe Rogan. And Joe Rogan, I kind of feel like we should all send Joe a royalty, because he kind of busted open the medium. I still think he's number one on most accounts, if you really are honest, on the medium and long-term.

Mel Robbins, who's broken through, but she's not political. But there's, Megan does a great job in podcasts in terms of her viewership, Tucker's right at the top. It still pretty is, it still really is very right. Now, what the Republican Party does really well is the synchronicity between the think tanks, their media, their podcasters, and their candidates. The Democrats war within each other. I mean, if you think about even,

there were four parties just a few years ago. There was the kind of George Bush, Mitt Romney Republicans, and MAGA. And then there's the kind of George Bush, Mitt Romney Republicans and MAGA. And then there's the Bernie AOC side of the Democratic party and kind of the more moderate side. The right has consolidated around MAGA. The Romney, McCain, Bush Republicans are gone. They've been cast into the wilderness. And to a certain extent, that's an advantage

because they're all on the same page from a messaging standpoint. And I'll speak to the same talking points. I don't think it's good for America, whereas the Democrats, we're still roaring with each other. We're still saying, oh, you're my ally, but I don't like the way you're holding the gun. And we're spending a lot of time getting angry

at Jake Tapper as opposed to saying, okay, let's focus on the fact that the biggest grift in history is taking place. So what I've thought about doing, and I've talked to some podcasters about is, is as we go into 26, I want to be more coordinated around organizing with other kind of what I'll call like-minded podcasts. Cause I do think podcasts are increasing their influence.

And I've said that I think our revenues are in podcasting going to grow dramatically because I think political candidates are going to start transferring money from local news stations to podcasts based on Trump's genius move to go right into podcasting. But I think the left needs to be much more organized. Yes, this is what I talked to you about, this idea of creating a consolidated, about six months ago, this idea of bringing us all together

where we trade podcasts. The right does this beautifully. Promote each other, highlight great candidates, maybe even circulate certain data that's super interesting that people aren't focused on. But everyone, I'd like to see everyone from kind of the smartless guys to crooked media. You know, these guys are so smart.

Let's just be a little bit more. I don't think we, the problem is, I don't think the left moves in lockstep in the same way exactly They aren't the house organs, right? And so when I was I was talking to some rich people into doing this about six months ago this idea But it's really hard what they have to do is more Push each other, you know, we've had I've had Julie we strive for son our thing We're gonna do we're gonna do some things with crooked. I hope

Where we trade and push each other. The problem is we don't coordinate with the Trump administration or whoever the Democrat, in our case, whoever the Democratic administration, we're not gonna go, all right, Pete, what do you want us to do today? The way the Trump people do with Fox News. No, an autocracy is very efficient.

Right. And I think that there's a certain, I think there's a certain elegance to once you get, I think our messaging has to be more on point and more coordinated and we have to do a better job of building each other up and highlighting Richie Torres or Wes Moore or Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer, whoever it is, and start and also highlighting the fact that, okay, while you were sleeping, there was a million and a half dollar per day. I mean, just some of the grift that we're constantly seeing.

You did very, one of our most popular social things was Scott listing all the grift, like in list. It was really, just to bring it together. Well, but there's all sorts of great talking points. He did a trip to the Middle East, but the two biggest economies in the Middle East, or the three biggest are Turkey, Israel, or Turkey, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel.

He avoided Turkey and Israel because they're democracies, and they couldn't give him grift. Even Turkey couldn't give him a 747. There's no fucking way Israel would bribe him or his sons. So he skipped those countries. He went to the countries where the supreme ruler was willing to give them a billion dollar golf course, a multi hundred million dollar Trump Tower or a 747.

He seems to have accepted it. That's what he picked up in those three countries. You know what he would have picked up in Israel? He would have picked up a trip to the border of the Gaza border, but he's not interested and he's actually not interested in actual defense. Right, or saving anybody there, or settling anything there. One of the things that was pretty heinous yesterday, it was a joke as you're noting this,

the head of South Africa made a joke, I don't have a plane to give you, and then Trump goes, well, I'd take it if you did. And by the way, that was, he was spewing right-wing conspiracy stuff. If there's a genocide against white people? For the wrong country. It was for Congo, and even his conspiracy theories were inaccurate. Like, it was just full of nonsense. That was a white s— And by the way, guess who I blame for that? Some— A famous South African who was one of his advisors. Oh, there you go. But anyway, you're right.

You're absolutely right. I don't think we have to create a Joe Rogan. There's— That's not what we want. I mean, you could say John Stewart sometimes or John Oliver. They're all over the place. We have to create, to me, a 360 on every single social platform where we're not necessarily coordinating. I think you can't make Fetch happen with the left.

You can't. But we're really giving messages and drilling in, as Scott said, on grift, on give messages of hope and give messages of these guys are crooks over and over and over again. But coordination is not really a left thing to do. The way I presented it to the people I'm speaking to is that bad CMOs get a directive from the CEO and take budget from the brands and then impose a series of guidelines around,

I want this type of advertising for this brand, and ultimately they get fired because all the powers with the people making the money at the individual brands, they start to resent the CMO and he or she gets fired. Good CMOs become a center of excellence in basically shared services where they say, I've done a bunch of work on media effectiveness and if any of the brands wanna come to me,

I will provide you with this data. That's right. I think we need to be, we need a group of people that says, we have some amazing candidates that are available for interviews, up to you, here they are. And we can make it seamless and easy for you. Every day, we're gonna send out a series of talking points and data that you may choose or may not choose

to highlight in your stories. By the way, Smartless, Pivot would like to promote you and promote certain episodes. Would you be interested in a reciprocal deal to promote them? And we're also gonna promote the Midas Touch. Would you like to be part, all opt-in, would you like to be part of a consortium that helps build each other's audience? Almost like just a shared services where it becomes a pull as opposed to a push,

but us lecturing at them saying, oh, you need to highlight this or talk this way. These people are going to stick up the middle finger. These people have their own businesses to run. Yep, exactly. That's the problem. That's the problem. All right. One more quick break and we'll be back for predictions. OK, Scott, let's hear a prediction. OK, so my prediction is that it goes back to a prediction I made in October of last year.

And my prediction is the empire strikes back. And I just want to be clear, my financial advice to anyone, especially a young person, is hope you go double platinum or sell your company. But just in case you don't, save three to five percent of your salary in a tax advantage vehicle in low cost diversified index funds, not only in the US, but across the world. And by the time you're my age, even if you haven't gone double platinum or sold your business, you're going to be fine. And try to resist the temptation of believing you're smarter than everyone else and do stock picking and limit that to 20 or 30%.

And I do think it's worthwhile to take some of your money and do stuff because it forces you to learn about the market. And also quite frankly, it's fun. Anyways, that's my big asterisk there. Having said that, my prediction is that Alphabet is going to outperform the market. And if you look at Alphabet right now, they have so many incredible businesses. So the Google Cloud is a basically a $43 billion business going to 50. And if you put the same multiple on that business that Oracle gets, you get about a $400 billion, a company worth about $400 billion.

YouTube, which is essentially the biggest streamer in the world, it does $54 billion in business. If you apply that Netflix multiple, you get a 650 billion, so at $1.1 trillion. Waymo, in my opinion, let's not even count that, but I still think that's worth a lot of money. I think the autonomous war is about to break out and the leader is going to be Waymo. And if they spin that out, I think that'll get a huge valuation. So essentially what you have is at the most conservative level, Google is being valued at about 800 billion to a

trillion or four to five times revenues. And Chipotle and Coca-Cola trade at six times sales. So, you know, Cava trades at 10 times sales. So- Cava's delicious. A $200 billion tech business that grew at 13% last year does not deserve a lower multiple than Coca-Cola, a mature food and beverage firm with less than 50 billion in revenue that grew 3%.

So if you do a sum of the parts analysis, it's undervalued. So the question is, well, why is it undervalued? And the two reasons I think are one, the existential threat posed by open AI, which is a threat, but I think it's been overestimated. And two, the likelihood of antitrust and a breakup, which I believe would actually be accretive to shareholders if they were forced to spend some of these companies because they would be unlocked from this conglomerate tax that the company is paying right now. And my final point here is that right now, Google trades at a PE of 19,

the S&P 500 with its drawdowns trades at 24. So take an average company in the S&P, a P&G or a Dow. Like I don't know what company sort of embodies the SMP, but those are both great companies. But any average, quote unquote average company in the SMP is not nearly as impressive, isn't growing nearly as fast, doesn't have nearly the margins of an alphabet. All right, Sundar Pichai thanks you, but go ahead.

Well, I really think this company of all of the big tech right now is the most undervalued and it's being overly punished because of this existential threat of open AI and the notion of antitrust. One, I think is overstated. I think they are absolutely striking back in terms of AI. And two, I think antitrust.

Will be a good thing. If the law was passed and they had to spend something would actually be accretive to shareholders. There is no reason. Alphabet at the end of the day is a much more impressive company than your average S&P company, and yet it's trading at 18 or 19 versus 25. And it's traded at an average of 26 over the last five years. And even this year, even with its bump up yesterday, it's down 12% year to date.

This is an impressive company that in some, I think, is undervalued. So interestingly, because Suna Pichai is sort of never mentioned, you know, you give Satchi lots of props. He's kind of a plotter. I know him very well. I've known him since he was a young product manager

on a bunch of stuff at Google. He's kind of a plotter. He's always thought of as doesn't make decisions fast enough. He certainly isn't a hand waver about himself. You know, he's quite, he's just a nice guy. He's just a really nice guy. So he doesn't get the kind of props and you're right. It's a difficult company to tell the story of

because there's so many parts of it. So that's an interesting prediction. I think that's interesting. But I will note, I use Google a lot less than I did. I don't know why, but you're right. They really, it's theirs to lose in many ways, but it's good they have competitors. Let me bring in a totally unrelated topic.

Okay. So Sundar Pichai and Sacha Nadella, two guys who've created unbelievable market cap, hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs, incredible ecosystem, incredible shareable value. Sundar is from Madurai, India, and Sacha is from Hyderabad, India. Sundar is from Madurai, India, and Sacha is from Hyderabad, India. The fact that we are not saying to every Indian, golden visa for anyone, I can tell you, and I'm being a racist here, I think the Indian population that immigrates to America is some of the most accretive,

positive human capital flow in history. Walk around the halls of Stern. These Indian Americans, these people who decided to get, who are literally the 0.01% and got to IIT and then decided of all their options to come to America, they are a gift to America. At one point, the head of Microsoft, Sundar was a name that was floated as the head of Microsoft also because he hadn't gotten the CEO of Google job. But yes, they're both really remarkable citizens of the United States and also immigrants.

I've had lots of really interesting discussions with Sundar about the anti-immigration Trump stuff, but he's a quiet leader. I think he'll probably, you're right, it's there so it's a really interesting prediction. My prediction is that at 10 o'clock tonight, Kara Swisher will be so happy because she's watching. Oh, you're going to, I'm curious. You got to text me and tell me what you think. I'll text you at two in the morning

because it's time for our movie anyway, because it'll be like a half an hour of previews, I'm sure. Anyway, I'm so excited. I've got the, I bought the popcorn advance and the drink and I'm very excited to watch Mission Impossible, final reckoning. Anyway, I feel like an ad for them, but I don't care. I love that movie. Anyway, I love the series.

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 to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. That's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is growing handily. Scott, we're actually dark next Tuesday for Memorial Day, but we'll have a great episode of Stay Tuned with Preet in our feed.

We'll be back next Friday. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Kevin Oliver, and Corinne Ruff. Ernie and Ertaud engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms. Saverio, Dan Chalon, and Kate Gallagher. Ms. Shak Kuroa is Vox Media's executive producer podcast.

Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks 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 next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, enjoy the movies. Music .