Pivot - Epstein's Out, Rapinoe's In, Plus a Social Media-Less Summit

Episode Date: July 12, 2019

This week Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are together in D.C.; we repeat: they are together in D.C.! They chat Jeffrey Epstein and double jeopardy, President Trump's social media summit (where no major social media networks were invited?), and whether or not start up culture is dead. The pair also celebrate Megan Rapinoe and the U.S. Navy, and they contemplate what Kara should ask Pete Buttigieg about. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In the District of Columbia, in our nation's capital. Yeah, and thank you very much. You and Tammy Haddad and Hillary Rosendale threw a book party for me last night, and I not only felt very American, I felt very loved. So thank you. Yes, it was a nice book party for the algebra of happiness. But you had a rant. You ranted in front of the power elite of Washington. That was nice.

I loved it. But everyone seems so shocked. There's no ranters down here. No, no. Everyone literally seemed like they were going to swallow their tongue. I know. I'm not sure if they were horrified or turned on. Yeah.

It was a mix of – it was like sex with me when I was a younger man. I'm horrified yet slightly compelled. What is going on here? Because you were like, first of all, you trashed all the tech companies and then blamed everyone here for not doing their job, right? You're like, they're doing their job, but you're not doing yours. If it walks like a duck. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then you talked about happiness, how they can be happy, which-

Which makes sense. That was an easy segue. That's right. Angry Depressed Professor on Happiness. That makes all the sense. Yeah, it was quite something. There was silence in the room. You had Steve Case there. You had a bunch of people. You had a lot of – it was very interesting. Executive producer for Meet the Press. Yeah. Are you going to go on now? Do you think – No one's invited me on Meet the Press. That's what's called good judgment. Yeah, bring the crazy – no, we should – no, no let's go back to who's that woman with perfect skin who's like crazy smart who's on there all the time she was there last night yeah i don't know yeshita oh yeah yeah yeah she was on our yamiche i'll send her she was a code she's amazing super impressive yeah yeah she had been to the acosta press conference she was telling me all

about it yeah and he was there too although he looks 14 what's with all these young people seriously who was there who jim acosta no no What's with all these young people? Seriously. Who was there? Who? Jim Acosta? No, no, no. Jim Acosta. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They look 14. Yeah. And the former Wonder Woman was there. It was really fast. Oh my God, Linda Carter, how awesome was that? I'd throw you a Washington party. Literally. You're welcome. And it's one of the things I thought about after meeting Wonder Woman is that it's so easy to have stereotypes. I would have thought that she'd be kind of reserved and like I'm Wonder Woman and like kind of coy. And she runs up to you and hugs you and she's delightful and nice and friendly. Yeah, it looks great.

Stereotypes are dangerous. Anyway, we had a good time and now you're tricked out with swag from Tammy at Democracy. You have Washington Post. I have a V-pillow, T-shirts, all this crap from my kids. He's wearing a Democracy Dies in Darkness T-shirt from the Washington Post, which is very funny. So good. I'm glad you had a good Washington time. And here we are in Washington.

There's lots to talk about in Washington. Right now as we speak, I think President Trump is having a social media summit. Yeah, that will work. I know. We'll get to that. Well, actually, let's start with that. So I wrote this week about the decision, the really big decision actually that he cannot block people on Twitter. He's got everyone – he can't block people he doesn't like essentially and neither can other public officials.

And I wrote a column about how he's more tethered to Twitter than ever. Like this is sort of the marriage made in reality heaven and that he – how he uses it and what would he do without it. And one of the things he's having of course even though he's indebted to Twitter and indebted to the internet and others, in the tech space, he's having the social media summit, which he didn't invite Twitter and didn't invite Facebook to, nor do they want to come. And it's packed full with people who are going to whine about shadow banning and this and that.

So anything? Well, we talked about this. Like it is a marriage made in hell, right? But it's a marriage. They're incredibly good for each other. Twitter is probably, you know, there's a few billion dollars in market capitalization they own to the president because they're constantly in the news. And he has direct access to, what, 63 million people? Yeah, 63.

He's at 63 million. Unfortunately, the media will ask questions back, and they have a little bit of discretion in the editorial and filters. And people argue that's what's, you what's maybe the problem with the old media. But a lot of the stuff he puts out there just wouldn't be newsworthy. Right. And the notion that social media has been anything but outstanding for the far left and the far right, it's kind of whack job central. Right. I would agree.

So I wrote it in the column. It's more important. It's not just that it's good for him. He's using it to govern. is not just that it's good for him, he's using it to govern. And so one of the things that happened this week, and it's happened several times, is that he put out a tweet essentially saying the reports about the citizenship question

not being on the census were fake, and they were actually statements put out by the Justice Department, which he is in charge of, and the Commerce Department. And so the people at the Commerce Department and the Justice Department didn't know what to do, and one of the lawyers in the case, because the judge was like, what's going on? And he was like, I don't know what the tweet means. So he's governing by tweet.

So it's really fascinating if this is appropriate or it is what it is essentially. Well, it's just a shocker to see the president be wrong on something. It's, you know, at this point, it's literally. But is that wrong? They then did what he said via tweet, whatever he commanded via tweet they're doing. Yeah. I don't – I just don't understand. I mean, the interesting move would be if Twitter said, look, he's violated our terms of service and then kicked them off the platform. I think that would be incredibly interesting for Twitter. Which is what I wrote about.

Yeah. But the problem is someone would then create a shadow account and just start posting everything he says. We've seen so – But that's harder. That would still be harder. It would really minimize his impact on it. Or at least delay it. Certainly. It would not have the same visceral, quick, hot pop.

But look what's happened. All the intermediaries that thought of themselves as having discretion and power are being disrupted. Whether it's, you know, we talk about direct-to-consumer is this hot space where it's like away or quip or Peloton where they've said we can bypass this industrial complex of distribution and go straight to the consumer. And the same thing's happened with media. Everyone said, okay, let's go buy, let's do an end-runner on the gatekeepers. And the president reflects that. And in some ways it's healthy.

But he's doing an end-runner on his own agencies. Well, he doesn't. In my sense, he doesn't listen to anyone. don't i don't it's just interesting i think using it they'll be interesting if it's continuing sean hannity yeah that's true that's hannity's this dude i think he probably is there today complaining about so who's there facebook and twitter aren't there who's there at social media nobody nobody from social interest there no i don't think it is nobody's going to no listen i talked to silicon valley i mean there aren't that many of them i know three of them yeah but I talked to Silicon Valley people. I mean, there aren't that many of them.

There's like two or three of them. Yeah, but I talked to social media people who are like, we're not going. We weren't invited. Well, that's the worst photo op in the world, right? Yeah, yeah. That's like, okay, I'm standing next to someone. I could yell that, but right wing. I don't need to be scolded. Yeah.

Anyway, they're not going. They weren't invited. And if they showed up, actually, they'd be jailed because you can't like break into the White House. And it's just it's interesting that they're doing this without it. But whatever. It's just it's just for press. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens. So the other big story, obviously, is Jeffrey Epstein.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Now you're looking at me. Yeah. So give me your view. You go first. This is so dangerous.

I know it is. It is. They you know, this this was implications for the country, obviously. And obviously, this guy is linked all over the place. He's not just linked in Wall Street. He's linked in Silicon Valley. He's got a lot of Silicon Valley investments. But when you say linked, OK, this is where I am.

Well, he's socialized. Yeah. Go ahead. Please try not to. There's no good way to discuss the abuse of young women. Look, let me start off by saying if he's guilty of half of the things he's accused of, he should die in prison. Right. These things are terrible.

But when they're against children, I like the fact that Michael Jackson died 90 pounds and bald because I think his truth had emerged in terms of what he had done. And he needed literally to be anesthetized every night to sleep. I think he got his comeuppance. And I think Jeffrey Epstein didn't. But I think there's a couple of things going on here that are interesting and I think ultimately will come out. And the first is, I think we're in the midst of a revolution. Whenever you have this level of income inequality, it- So it's a bigger, you're going to bigger picture this for us.

I'm going big. Okay. I'm big picturing it with the big dogs going wide angle. All right. So this represents what? Pull back with my – This represents what? The pull back. My brain is a Leica on heroin.

All right. This represents what? Well, okay. So whenever you get to a level of income inequality as we have now, it self-corrects in one of three ways, war, famine, revolution. And we're in the midst of a revolution where we've decided to go after rich people. Now, he's a rich pedophile, but this is the thing. Florida fucked up and didn't figure out a way to put him in prison for the rest of his life. And I believe this is, quite frankly, is double jeopardy. And they're claiming because the feds decided not to

prosecute him, they can prosecute him again. But what would happen if all of a sudden we decided in 20 years that crack or 10 years was the scourge of the universe and we started going back and re-prosecuting people who are already out of prison for crack. So did Florida, the Florida state prosecutors totally screw up here? It's Florida federal prosecutors, Alex Acosta, who is the labor secretary. Oh, yeah. And he's in a ton of hot water now. But I don't think, like, this is an awful person. He should be in prison right now. But part of our justice system is you don't retry things. They screwed up. They shouldn't have screwed up. Well, what's going to happen? They're going to come up with new people now. But part of our justice system is you don't retry things. They screwed up.

They shouldn't have screwed up. Well, what's going to happen? They're going to come up with new people now. This is just- You think they'll find new ones? Oh, lots, tons. I think they probably already have them at this point. And so it's, you know, and also there were other activities that they weren't prosecuting in New York. And so- Well, that's what they're claiming. They're claiming one of the victims- Yeah. Came into New York airspace.

Yeah, there were tons of stuff. And I think yesterday, like six seven more came up. And so I think that's where it's going. And what's the media doing? The media is immediately going, okay, who is on his plane? Right. I mean, if someone offered me a chance to get off Spirit Airlines and they were a pedophile, I'd say, okay, fine. Look, the implications that people knew, I think that's one of the things. That actually some of these guys knew what was going on. No, but the rumor was out there. The rumor was out there about him among a lot of people. Even Trump's comments that he's a great guy, he's a terrific guy, but he likes the young people. Like, they were all insinuations almost persistently.

That they knew what was going on. Or some section, some version of it. And so I think that's what's interesting. Old media actually started this thing off, which was Julie Brown, Julie K. Brown, who just kept at it because she was writing about the settlement. Yeah. Which I think got perhaps the tutors here in the Southern District of New York going. And so it's interesting. Old media does have a little kick in it. So what's clear, though, is sort of more going on.

If you commit a crime, you don't want to be poor because prosecutors come in and say, we're going to put you away for 30 or 40 years unless you cop to a plea and go to prison for three years. So I believe there's a lot of innocent people in prison who were worried about spending the rest of their life in prison, so cop to a plea. And you also don't want to be a billionaire because I think billionaires have become new targets in what is a soft revolution against rich people. So what you want to be –

I feel so badly. Yeah. This one was so – Couldn't happen to an ISA group. Violative of everything. But I don't know. I do think – anyways, I don't think being rich is a crime. Okay.

So bottom line is if you commit a crime, you want to be rich-ish. You don't want to be – the worst place is to be poor because you have to cop a plea and you're probably intimidated and have to end up in prison maybe when you shouldn't be in prison. And second, you don't want to be a billionaire because we're in the midst of a revolution. All right. But now the economy, as we're going to get to the last thing here, has never been better. You know, we've got this great economy. The Fed is thinking of cutting rates and the economy went crazy. But one of your rants yesterday was against rich people getting away with stuff at the

party and also that there weren't enough startups, that startup culture is dead essentially, is that there haven't been enough of that. And so how do you juxtapose these two things, billionaires ruining everything and being unfair billionaires? Because I think you're wrong about that. Well, I think it's a nuanced argument. Look, the Fed cutting rates, I'm not an economist, but it feels to me like socialism on steroids when we artificially suppress interest rates, such that we can create asset inflation. Who owns assets? Rich people. Right. So who needs a little bit of inflation to get greater wages? Middle class

people. So again, this is nothing of a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The notion we're going to cut interest rates to me just makes absolutely no sense. And also you hear all these billionaires, Jamie Dimon and rich people saying, tax me. It's not noble. It's self-preservation. They recognize that people with pitchforks and lanterns are coming for them. People are just so fed up. So there's a lot of work here. But I think we're in the midst of a soft revolution. We're also in the midst, I think, when the Epstein case, I think the Southern District

is, and I'm going to my prediction here, I think the Southern District is hoping someone to get someone to kind of drop a dime on the president. And I think this is an end run to get at the president. And I think we have a group of very intelligent government officials who have said this is no longer about partisanship. They look at the president and say, okay, he's a bigot. He's a Republican. Maybe we like him, maybe we don't. But I think the thing that has created real concern amongst government officials, including people in the Southern District, is he's stupid. And it's dangerous to have someone stupid in the White House. I think when you have Iranian government seizing or trying to seize a British tanker, as they did this morning,

it's because the president and his diplomatic staff have failed to acknowledge one of the basics of game theory and geopolitics is that agency or strength and greatness is in the agency of others. And we've slowly but surely done the equivalent of cut our military in half by alienating our European allies who have large armies, fantastic intelligence services. So Iran is like a shark bumping a big, fat, stupid seal right now. A big, fat, stupid seal would be Trump, correct? Yeah. Okay, thank you.

Just clarifying. Blowing a drone out of the air. Sea mammal. There you go, sea mammal. Blowing a drone out of the air because they know we're not going to go into the Middle East for a third time. And they know the guy's military has been cut in half because he's not getting along with our allies. They're just literally – they couldn't – they haven't read basic game theory strategy. And Iran –

I would imagine they would, Scott. And Iran – I would imagine they would, Scott. Well, and this all goes back to the worst geopolitical decision of the last 50 years since we went into Southeast Vietnam was when we decided to take out the buffer against Iran and destroy Iraq. But anyways, that was, you know, the Iraq-Iran war. Now Iran's this power and quite frankly, they are flexing their muscles and they're now the power in the region. And I think we're somewhat neutered to do anything about it unfortunately unfortunately. All right. Let me get you back to the economy, the startup culture, the innovation. Sure. So there's this myth that we're in this, you know, everyone would call this an era of innovation, largely this myth fomented by big

technology. And we're actually in an era of non-innovation. Which is what you said last time. 30 years ago, 15% of companies were less than a year old. Now it's down to 7%. Twice as many companies being started in the Carter administration as they're being started now because the fastest growing parts of our economy, search, social, digital dominate it and aggregate unbelievable spoils from the entire market with a few people. So you have companies worth $550 billion. Facebook spread across 22,000 employees. And you have companies like Ford with 150,000 employees worth $50 billion. And it's great to be a shareholder of Google, right? It's great to have real estate or the Ferrari dealership in Palo Alto or San Francisco.

But it's terrible for the economy. And the government's job is to prevent a tragedy of the commons. And we have a tragedy everywhere. Did you feel like you got through them last night? I don't know. Because you've been down here a lot. Yeah, I've been down here a lot for me. But look, I have this really kind of, I think, strange impression of D.C. And my impression of D.C. is it's a bunch of thoughtful, nice people who want to do the right thing who get along. And that's my impression so far. Everybody laughed when you said that. Yeah, Representative Walden, Senator Warren, Senator Bennett, I meet with these guys, and they all seem really genuinely concerned and want advice on what to do. So, look, the world

isn't what it is. We can absolutely fix this. The thing that's unfortunate, I think, is a lot of people feel resignation around big tech and that we're outgunned and it's too late. And it's just so ridiculous. The people down here turned back Hitler. They've cured polio. I had this discussion with my son last night. He goes, maybe they're too big to fight. And I go, nobody is too big to fight, Alex Swisher.

Are you kidding? We took on the Imperial Army of Japan, the Imperial Navy of Japan, which had never lost a battle. I don't think it would be quite like the Imperial Navy, Scott. You got to go to the war. You got to go to the History Channel. I'm old. This is one of the ways I can tell I'm old. I just watch films about Hitler.

And the idea of a cruise doesn't sound awful. We are not invading Silicon Valley. It's not happening. Yeah, well, we could absolutely fix this problem. Well, I like this professor. We're going to take a break now. We're going to get back to other things next. I like this Professor Galloway comes to Washington.

Yeah, it's fun, right? Yeah. And I'm getting all the swag. And I was at the Line Hotel with all the cool millennials getting pretty drunk. I met a transgender hooker. She was pretty nice. Okay. And then a nice young man came up to me and said, I love your work.

Yeah. Where's Karen? No, they didn't see. Oh, wait. We've got to tell this story. All right. We'll do it next. Let me take a break and we'll tell the story and get back.

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I'm on blade, which is literally like douchebag air. Anyway, so the guy, I don't even want to call it, with the lights and the yellow vest, is waving the helicopter in. Yeah. Right? He's like guiding him in left, right, whatever, which is the ultimate invisible until you fuck up job.

You're totally anonymous, and then you might become infamous for a brief moment. Anyways, we're going out trying to make sure that the tall guy, the big bird guy, doesn't get decapitated by this blade spinning at 1,100 RPMs. And he's got a pretty important job. And he looks at me, and then he looks back, and then he whips his head to me and stops doing his very important job and goes and screams out, where's Kara? So literally, people, again, we're conjoined twins. People think that we just roll together.

We don't hang out. We don't hang out. You invite me out all the time. I do. You always say you're going to take me out to dinner. And then what do I get? Nothing. I gave you a party.

You know who loves me and is pretending she doesn't know me? She's my new crush. Who? Maureen Dowd. Oh, yeah. She was there last year. Oh, my. She comes.

She's like, hi, I'm Maureen Dowd. And I'm like, you're a saucer. You know who I am. You know who I am. She's seen the dog at the park playing with his ball. She knows who I am. You know what? Maure the park playing with his ball. She knows who I am. You know what? Maureen Dowd. Oh my gosh. She got Nancy Pelosi to give up

some good stuff. That was huge. That was big this week. There's a fight with the squad. So it was at a... Okay, that's going to be my win. Maureen Dowd won this week by getting Nancy Pelosi and the squad into a fight. And then Nancy Pelosi saying, don't tweet to them, to the squad. You can't do that. That's your win?

No, it's not my win, but it was fascinating. My win, obviously, is Megan Rapinoe. Yeah, that's inspiring and incredible. And you know what's a great forward-looking indicator? My son's 8 and 11. They're in town, and we were going to hang out. And they're like, no, we're watching the women's final. And we were just – that was an amazing game. What's her name?

The woman from Madison, Wisconsin. Probably one of the greatest goals in soccer history. She was great. Rose Lavelle. Rose Lavelle. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

But I think Megan Rapinoe is really interesting, and she's sort of using this media moment everywhere on Twitter, on stuff. She's an inspiration. You know, saying, I want everything. I deserve everything, essentially, which is, you know, confident women is not something you can see a lot. You do see confident women, but she's really aggressively confident, which is great. And then she's using it to say, you know, we have to be better. We've got to love more, hate less. She talks about making the world a better place. And then she talks directly to Trump. Your message is excluding people. You're excluding me.

It's just a really interesting use of all the mediums, but her now and this team. And it's weird, too, because the reaction when a female athlete kind of commands the space she occupies it's seen as obnoxious. Look at what dudes do. Look at the celebrations and how obnoxious they are. But when a woman does it, it's oh no. Oh, I think people like it. I think a lot of people. I think she'll get

used to it. They better get used to it because that's the way lesbians roll. And that's what we're going to do. I do that all the time. It's interesting because when I did a podcast once and someone was like, why do you think you do well? I said, because I'm fantastic. And they were like,

well, isn't that? I was like, what? The reaction was fascinating. And the fail to me this week is the Zoom for Mac with the major security vulnerability. I think they've had a good run in the stock market,

but they have a camera business on your computer or your phone or something like that. I love Zoom. Do you use Zoom? I do all the time. Yeah, it's great. I love it. I love it. It's a great product. Yeah, we predicted that was going to be one of the better IPOs. Yeah, but they can't have a security vulnerability in their cameras. They just can't. Yeah. No, if the camera on my computer is recording shit, it is going to be highly embarrassing for me. And that's their business. That's their business. So what is your win and fail? So actually, I'm going to go, my fail is the dispute between AOC and Pelosi. I think Putin and his bitch, the president, would love to see the Democrats go after each other. We're falling

into their hands. And AOC is the Muhammad Ali of our generation. She's brave. She's amazing. And Nancy Pelosi is the Nancy Pelosi of our generation. And the two of them should literally lock hands and say, all right, we're the peanut butter and chocolate of this shit and we're just going to do our job. So the notion – in any way to see them not hand in hand, it's like, all right, get in a room and hug it out because they're too important and their team is too powerful. Well, they don't agree on everything. And Pelosi's got to protect the middle. I don't agree with Nancy, but I'm with her. I know. But she's got to protect the middle. She's got to protect the ones that got but I'm with her. I know, but she's got to protect the middle.

She's got to protect the ones that got her there, which is the middle. Behind closed doors. Behind closed doors. So they just do that and every now and then a bad tweet. I just don't think they start snipping at each other. I think that's a terrible strategy. And then Kellyanne Conway jumped in and used a phrase from – Yeah, well, she used the word catfight, which made her look stupid.

It's like we're not back in dynasty days. Catfight. She used the word catfight. There you go. What is your win this week? My win is kind of strange. It's the United States Navy. So I have a close friend, Connie Hallquist, whose husband, Commander Brian Cowan, passed away a few weeks ago and was laid to rest with full military honors.

And this is a super impressive guy who decided to spend 20 years in the Navy, an impressive guy, and obviously speaks well to the Navy to be able to attract him into the service. They have two wonderful kids, Luke and Anna. And then last night I met this young man, Lieutenant Ross Urich. Is that his last name? Something like that. He was really impressive. Yeah, and I immediately liked him because he was an oarsman like me at Yale. I was at UCLA.

And what does he decide to do? Does he go to Wall Street? Does he go to work for Google? No. He goes to medical school at Penn and then goes to Walter Reed to do his residency. And now he's on a ship conducting surgery on young men and women at sea. And I think it just makes me feel a little bit safer knowing people this impressive are standing watch for us. And I think, how does the U.S. Navy, how have they created a culture that has and continues to

attract such impressive young men and women. And I don't know what it's done, but, you know, hats off to the Navy for standing watch and whatever it is they do to continue to attract some of our best and brightest young men and women. So my winner is the U.S. Navy. I'm feeling very patriotic this morning. Because you're in D.C. My dad was in the Navy until he died. He was. Yeah.

He was a doctor in the Navy, right? He was a doctor. He was a lieutenant commander. Yeah. He was, indeed. And where was he stationed? Was he on a ship? A lot of doctor. He was a lieutenant commander. Yeah. He was, indeed. And where was he stationed? Was he on a ship? A lot of places.

He actually did a lot of stuff in Assaw. He was on those boats. He was in San Domingo. He was, you know, we put him through school. He didn't have money. He was poor. Or not poor, but he couldn't afford college. And it put him through medical school and college.

And then he served until he got out and he died. Just right after he got out of uniform. Literally half a year. And he was very young. He was 33? 34. Yeah, so his whole life was in the military. Yeah, I have wonderful pictures of him. It's an interesting place. You know, I wanted to go in the military. Yeah, you told me that. Didn't you want to be a spy? No, I wanted

to be in the military. I wanted to be military intelligence. I wanted to go around and do... And what stopped that? How did you end up here at Vox? Gay. Gay stopped that? Gay stopped that. I'm old, Scott.

Isn't there a large contingent of gay people in – There are, but they don't tell. They didn't tell back then. I'm going to talk to Mayor Pete soon about that. I already told, so you can't go in if you tell. And Mayor Pete came out fairly late, right? After he was in the military. After he was in the military.

Yeah. I couldn't don't ask, don't tell. I couldn't do it. You just couldn't don s don't tell i couldn't do you just couldn't do it no i could i was like ask me ask me i'm gonna tell you i want to tell i already told yeah it was told it was told it was impossible you came out you came out when it wasn't cool it was not cool it was very hard yeah before will and grace yes before ellen pre-ellen when it was a bug not a feature yes exactly it was problematic but anyway i would really wish i had been in the military that would have been nice i would be a general right now general of something i don't yeah that's just frightening i don't i don't even like to think that i would totally be a judge and then i'd have a fight with

trump and you know things like that it would be great right now my dad took me my dad took me to annapolis to try and get me excited about it mostly because he didn't want to pay for my college. And I found out, you know, the first year, it's changed now. They weren't allowed off campus. And then I went to UCLA during sorority rush. I'm like,. That's right. Prediction. We're going to revisit a prediction from the episode. You were talking about North Korea and the Chinese trade war and you said within the next 90 days people are going to start geopolitically testing the system and Trump's weaknesses and we're more than halfway marked to that 90 mark and you were correct. Well, look, again, agency and strength. Our strength is in the agency of others. Agency and strength. Our strength is in the agency of others. And when our adversaries see our allies fracturing because of just incredibly poor strategy and weak thought leadership on the part of the administration, they start testing us. And so North Korea is testing us. Now Iran is seriously testing us. So this was going to happen. It's only going to get

worse. And it's a huge disappointment that we're literally fracturing probably the greatest alliance in the history of mankind, and that's the North American Treaty, the North Atlantic allies. It's difficult to – it could be anything. It could be Russia deciding to like, quote, unquote, do a soft invasion of one of their neighbors. It could be another missile being launched by North Korea, another test. It could be the Iranians spinning up their uranium again. I mean all sorts of stuff. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be Canada. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be Canada. Justin Trudeau is not doing so well up there.

He might need something. Yeah, that guy's – that guy. I don't know. That guy's great. Yeah. Anyway, he might need to do something. Yeah. Might need to make some flex. Take over Minnesota.

That's it. Minneapolis is ours. Tomorrow belongs to me. I mean, basically, Minnesota is Canada, isn't it? How did you manage to mix Nazis, Justin Trudeau, and Minnesota? I'm not clear how that works. I think I'm still a little bit drunk. I had four Makers and Gingers last night at the bar.

All right. So that was nice. Oh, and who gave me a ride home? Your ex-wife. It's literally like you're, again, you're the Sultan of Brunei with if you were a man, you would be horrified by you. It's like there's wives, ex-wives, kids everywhere. Yeah. Anyways. Well, what can I, kids everywhere. Yeah. Anyways.

But yeah, I don't know. Well, what can I say? Oh, back to Barbara. Back to Barbara. You know, and I start thinking, is there a ready-teller near here? I mean, I don't know what's going to happen here. Let's get you out of Washington before you end up in the title basin with a stripper. That is really what's going to happen.

You say that like it's a bad thing. I can't believe you didn't go to Trump Hotel. I've got to have my hobbies, Kara. All right, whatever. I've got to get you out of Washington before there's a scandal du jour. Anyway, there's lots of big political guests coming on Rico Dico'd Soon. I interviewed your friend Michael Bennett, Senator Michael Bennett, yesterday. And Pete Buttigieg, I loved him. He was very wonky.

Senator Bennett? Yes, Pete Buttigieg is coming in today. You're going to see him in a second. Are you excited? I can't even. that's literally overwhelming. Well, he's going to be here in like four minutes. Anyway, Adam Schiff I'm going to visit up on Capitol Hill. He's a gangster too.

Yeah, I'm interviewing Lauren Underwood and Andrew Yang. And there's so many political people. I'm going to hopefully be talking to Elizabeth Warren soon. Wow. Yeah, what do you think? I think you're super impressive. No, not bad. I mean, this is going to be interesting. I'm going to need your help with questions. Yeah. Give do you think? I think you're super impressive. No, not bad. I mean, this is going to be interesting.

I'm going to need your help with questions. Yeah. Give me one for Pete Buttigieg since he's here. Why'd you come out so late? Well, everyone asks him that. Give me another one. And what has he said? Because I did.

And what about, I would be very interested in how serving in the military has changed his view of the world. I think that people who serve alongside brave men and women and put their lives at risk for the country, I just think that's got to change you forever. All right. I'm going to ask him that. I'm going to ask him that. And also, quite frankly, is he taking oxygen away from other candidates? Can a gay man who oversees, governs 150,000 people, a third of the size of a congressional district, what makes him believe he is qualified to be president, other than we have someone totally non-qualified right now?

Well, that would be an argument. Is America ready for a gay president? I'd like to think so. Do you think America's ready for a gay president? We've had a gay president. You've had a gay president? I'm sure we have. Oh.

Oh, that took me by the... There are rumors everywhere. Really? Yeah, but it's back in the 1800s, so let's forget about it. Oh, really? Let's just move along. I didn't know that. Yeah.

But I'd like to think we're ready. I'm just an enormous fan of his. I think he's got the— But you think he's taking up too much oxygen. Interesting. Well, he's very captive, but good for him. We met the strategy head, the woman who's sort of the mastermind behind the curtain. She's an incredibly impressive person.

Met her last night. But, yeah, look, he's done a great – who would have thought? You know what's impressive about these people is they even have the confidence to say, okay, I'm mayor of a city of 150,000 people. I'm going to run for president. That takes a lot of confidence. Confidence is the one word for it. Yeah. So what is it?

Is it confidence or delusion, right? But right now it looks like confidence. He has a vision. And also I need you to help him explain. He keeps talking about you can't have, you know, what's more important, democracy or capitalism? I still don't quite understand what he means about that. I will ask him. He says a lot of things that are like that.

So I'm going to pin. Yeah, they're like, wow, he's so smart, but I don't really understand what he's saying. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which kind of describes Michael Bennett. He's very wonky. Yeah, he does explain. Yeah, he does explain. Anyway. He's still my man, though. I know. He was great. He's saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which kind of describes Michael Bennett. He's very wonky. Yeah. He does explain. Yeah. He does explain.

Anyway. He's still my man though. I know. He was great. He's a lovely guy. But Mayor Pete's in the wings. I'm in the wings. All right.

I will ask these questions of these people. Anyway, thank you, Scott. Thank you, Karen. Thanks for hosting such a – Thank you again for hosting such a wonderful party. No problem. I felt very American and I felt loved and affirmed, which I need. Well, buy your book.

I need all of those things. The Algebra of Happiness. Thank you for signing up. Where you made everybody miserable. The algebra of happiness. Thank you for saying that. Where you made everybody miserable. There you go. Anyway, you were correct, though. Anyway, Camila Salazar produced our show today. Nishad Kerwa is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson and Erica Anderson. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. If you like this week's episode, leave us a review. You can email us if you have any thoughts on the show or suggestions or topics you'd like to hear us discuss. Pivot at voxmedia.com. Pivot, pivot, the only pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back next week with another breakdown of all things tech and business. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere?

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