Pivot - Jack Ma bypasses NYSE, a Friend of Pivot on how the Lincoln Project is trolling Trump, and Netflix's earnings fail

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about billionaire Jack Ma taking his company Ant Group public in Hong Kong and Shanghai and what that means for the US stock market. They discuss the fall out from Twitter's biggest user hack in the company's history. In Friend of Pivot we hear from Rick Wilson, the co-founder of the Lincoln Project about his PAC's social media advertising strategy to take down Donald Trump. In wins they celebrate Congressman John Lewis. In fails, they discuss Netflix disappointing earnings and Kanye West's campaign rally. Get tickets for our upcoming livestream event series: PivotSchooled.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Senator Marco Rubio. That was good, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Senator Marco Rubio. That was good, Scott. That got a lot of attention. Yeah, wasn't it? Oh, my gosh.

That was so ridiculous. For those who don't know what we're talking about, Marco Rubio misidentified John Lewis, the congressman and civil rights leader, legendary, who passed away and put a picture of Elijah Cummings, who also passed away, which wasn't a good look for him. I think he probably blamed it on a staffer as he usually does. He's done this before. And so Scott did a very funny tweet about me being Marco Rubio, which, you know, we don't look unalike. We don't look unalike, right? We're both good looking brunettes. Brunettes, right. It's true. It was interesting. It's just sort of you live by Twitter, you die by Twitter and people were immediately on him. And so Scott took advantage of the situation.

Pretty funny. They were like, I love my junior senator or senior senator from Florida. And they have a picture of Desi Arnaz. Everybody kind of dunked on him. They dunked on him. My favorite was him with a dog saying, here's Senator Rubio with his cat. And people had a lot of fun. They did at his expense. And it was a stupid stupid mistake especially because john lewis was such a legend and um and deserved a little bit more i mean what was hard to see was all these people who have been blocking the protections that john lewis had sought to have in terms of voting rights and other things and you know uh sort of larding on the we're so sorry we're so with him he's so important when in life

they blocked him at every turn. So that was kind of, that to me was worse. I don't want to hear from Mark or Ruby on this guy. I just like, in weird ways, people were waiting for President Trump to say something and he is the president, so we should. I was sort of like, well, at least he's being honest. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. I don't think, I don't think, do you think Representative Lewis would want the president to say anything about him? No, I don't know. I think there's a presidential, you see, it's all gone now. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Like, yes, in some ways and no in others, but there's some, the office and then, but that's gone. That's gone. It doesn't really matter. I mean, like, think of, speaking of gone, what did you think of that Chris Wallace thing that was

also all over social media in pieces? Chris Wallace sure is a good interviewer. Boy, oh boy. I think Chris Wallace is fantastic. I do too. I think he's got a lot of integrity. I think he's a great interviewer. I think he, you know, everyone compares him to his father, but I think he fills his father's shoes. And more. Yeah, I think he's fantastic. I think he's kind of turned into, and I can't wait for the reaction from you, but I think he is, if there is, the conscience of Fox News. I think he shows up. He's a real journalist. Anyway, I just have a ton of respect for him,

and I think he manages. It's a tough line or it's a tough needle to thread to come across as respectful to the president. You do have to respect the office. Sure. But to just say politely, no, that's not accurate. We don't have the best mortality rate in the world. That's just not true.

And then all these people running back and forth with pieces of paper. The whole thing. I heard that we did. I heard that we did. It was really an embarrassment of an interview. And by the way, Chris Wallace did a great job because it was very respectful. I think the only thing that he did that he he took a, he did do a dunk, which I thought was fantastic.

It's when the president was bragging about passing, what is a very, I have taken that cognitive test many times. Why have you taken that? I just do it. I'm just obsessed. When I after had a stroke, I took it a bunch of times.

Isn't the test like, does this monkey have a tail? I mean, it's pretty. No, it's not. It's not hard. Chris Wallace's not. It's not hard. Chris Wallace is right. It's not hard. It's not a hard test.

But if you had cognitive difficulties, it would be hard. You know, it absolutely would be hard. You'd have to memorize five things and then remember them five minutes later and, you know, stuff like that. And there's one where you do count backwards by whatever, a number 12, and it was seven in this case. And so the president's like, they're really hard questions. Like at the later, he goes, you mean, he goes, you have to talk back from 100. And so by seven, and the president kept going on, and Chris Wallace started going 93, 80, whatever. I heard the president paid someone to take it for him.

Did you hear this? He paid someone to take the SAT for him. I wish I'd known that was a service. I would have done that. Anyway, let's move on from Marco Rubio. Mark Zuckerberg pictures in Hawaii in zinc oxide. Was that actually real? No, he was doing it.

And listen, I put out a tweet saying, as usual, because I did this with Bill Maher, stop attacking for his looks. Stop. He was actually wearing the right sunscreen. We need sunblock. I mean, look at us. We need sunblock. He was actually wearing the right sunscreen. We need sunblock. I mean, look at us. We need sunblock.

He was very light skinned. I thought that was like, really like, look, it was an odd looking picture. There's no question, but it doesn't have anything to do with him. And I really,

people don't deal with that. And then I got the, he spews hate all over the place. We can spew hate at him. I said, if you don't like the hate he spews, spewing hate on him and that about his looks, you know, I just, I have a line with the looks thing.

Although I have done it and I feel bad when I do it. I just don't like it. I like objectifying people for their looks. I think it's an incredible pastime. I think we're a visual species. And I figured out I can no longer objectify women's looks. So I just objectify men. That's my superpower.

I'm calling him the Joker. I definitely think that's funny. No, really? That's not nice. I think it feels like schoolyard. It feels like a kid, you know. Well, I agree. And you don't want to discourage the use of sunblock.

You don't. That's what I say. He's doing it. He was on an electric surfboard. I don't even know what that is. And apparently it was like dunking on that. That's fine. Dunk on him for the electric surfboard all you want.

The limits of my fathering is every time the kids say goodbye to me, I'm like, do you have sunblock on? That's my fathering. That's where it begins and ends. Do you know what I say every time? What? Especially my oldest son, because he's such a big wet noodle. He's so lovely. We say I love you every time we leave each other.

That's nice. We do. I don't know why. We've gotten into this habit. We have to say it. Well, maybe because we love each other and you realize at some point you'll be dead. But it's gotten to be like we won't leave without saying it. He'll run back in and say, I forgot to say I love you.

It's really sweet. I think that's, I do something very similar. I kiss my boys, and it's the nicest thing in my life. Yeah. Anyway, let's not dunk on Mark Zuckerberg for his country. Let's dunk on him for – Let's start kissing Mark Zuckerberg every time we see him and he says goodbye and tell him we love him. He's suing Native Hawaiians for their land.

That's a good story. That's a good story. That's a dunkable. The Facebook thing where they think they did something around climate deniers. They were back in class. Joel Kaplan was somewhere wandering around. Like, let's dunk on Joel Kaplan, but not his sunscreen. Yeah, but is this really true?

Is the media in Rome with this? Or is there any veracity to this story that Mark Zuckerberg has decided to sue? What is it? Hawaiian? I mean, it's something. It's like Monty Burns. He's been fighting on land. There's a whole land ownership thing going on there.

He's trying to buy quite a lot of land. Interestingly, you know, Mark Benioff had a kerfuffle over land. I don't recall. It was many years ago. And he has a big estate there. Steve Case owns half of Hawaii. He's from Hawaii. Yeah.

And so there's a, you know, this is a so, this is a really tense situation. And Mark coming in there and doing stuff. He was trying to keep people off the beach. I don't remember all of it, but it had to do with a beach and not going. And I drove over and kind of looked at it when I was there. I love Hawaii. I think it's a wonderful place. It's gorgeous. Wonderful. And I went over and looked, but there was no, I wanted to sneak onto his land. You have to go around things. I'm sorry. You were trying to sneak on. No, I wanted to sneak onto his land. You have to go around things. I'm sorry. You were trying to sneak on. No, I wasn't sneaking onto his land.

I was trying to figure out a way to get on the beach, but I would have like died and then I would have been found. And it just, it just, the whole thing would have been bad. Yeah, that is bad. Anyway, he's got some other, yeah, he shouldn't, he has a big kerfuffle going on with the people in Hawaii, some of the people in Hawaii. And it's worth reporting on. That's worth reporting on. That's worth reporting on. This sunscreen thing is not. So lastly, the House is beginning to debate the National Defense Authorization Act, and

a lot of them should be wearing sunscreen, by the way, in that there's a GOP-backed amendment that would ban federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on any government device. That continues this week after I wrote a column this week about my burner phone and TikTok. I just think this is an interesting case because it will lead into our next story, our big story. But this growing sort of, it's become their little political thing to try. I don't think it's going to work with the American people necessarily, but it's interesting. They need to see what they're trying to go for to win here. And I don't know if this is a winning. I don't think beating up protesters is a winning thing And I don't know if this is a winning. I don't think beating up protesters is a winning thing.

I don't think ignoring COVID is a winning thing. I don't think this is one either. What do you think? Well, we're just, it seems like we're just as quickly as possible ceding global leadership to China. And China could, or ByteDance slash TikTok, if and when, not even if, but when they go public, I think what they could do is we could try to ban them. I think Americans are selfish enough that

they'll figure out workarounds and they'll continue to use it. They don't care what the government tells them to do or not to do. This platform has so much momentum right now. And one of the more staggering statistics is I read people are spending more time on TikTok than they are on Instagram, which absolutely blew my mind. In terms of doing this Instagram screens, you know, they're doing a copy, but go ahead. But so they get, so we officially ban them, whatever that means. And then they go public on the Hong Kong or the Shanghai exchange, and it becomes the sixth or fifth most valuable company in the world. And it'll just be another data point in the line that is China usurping our position as an economic and geopolitical power. Or they go public in the U.S.

That's what I posited in my column, that this is like an all set up. Well, I've said this before. I think they hired Kevin Mayer. A lot of their staff is in the U.S. Tic Tac was a U.S. company that was made out of Musical.ly. I think they go public. They have a really unusual corporate structure from what I understand. It's not based in China, even though it's founded in China.

I think it's based in one of the islands. And so a lot of people say in their privacy thing is that some of the data can go back to the parent company, but it can't exactly apparently something. Anyway, they can fix this all by spinning it off, going public as a U.S. company and being separated from the main company by dance. To me, that and then it creates a real counterweight to Facebook. I do think if they got bought, they could buy Snapchat. If they went public, they could do a lot of things because they really are onto a secret sauce of real entertainment i don't think this administration would let them acquire snap but well in any case they they go public in the u.s it sort of removes the the attacks really quickly i think god i can't imagine how many

bankers are trying to cozy up to is his name kevin the new senior yeah yeah it's a great idea i think that's what I will see. I think they're going to do it. This is one of my predictions. I think they're going to, I made a prediction last week on that. And I do think also that it creates a counterweight to Facebook in a really interesting way. And the Facebook can try, you know, Snap is doing really well this week. The stock is up. A lot of people are recommending it. Twitter's up actually too. I think it just, there needs to be a counterweight to Facebook. And to me,

this is the one, if it's done properly, if it's in the U S it has an ability, but you're right. They could go public on, I don't think you're going to public in China. I think that just, cause they were having troubles in London now.

And they're talking about creating a separate entity in London. I think they just need to end Chinese ownership and everybody gets the money. That's my feeling. Yeah. Well, if you, I mean, it's an interesting thought because if you go public and there's a lot of people, the idolatry of money is a pretty powerful fighting force. And if a lot of people own the stock and they get a pop, it creates a lot of misplaced or not goodwill towards the company. I like that. I think you're right. I think an IPO feels very strategic for them right now. Yeah. And then they really have some currency. Anyway, we have to get on to big stories. Jack Ma's Ant Group, which is related to this, is going public in Shanghai and Hong Kong markets,

but is bypassing New York. As tensions rise between the U.S. and China, billionaire Jack Ma is listing one of the world's most valuable startups closer to home. The move would bring more global investors to Hong Kong and make mainland Chinese companies and even larger part of the city's $5 trillion stock market. Back in 2014, the e-commerce giant Alibaba, which was spun off of the Ant Group, went public in New York and raised $25 billion.

It is the second largest IPO in history. Meanwhile, this year, the Senate passed legislation that would force U.S.-listed Chinese companies to delist from the American Stock Exchange if their audit work papers weren't respected by U.S. regulators for three consecutive years. Really, you're right. Talk about this idea of developing a different power base in China, whether it be on the Shanghai exchange or the Hong Kong exchange. Well, we just have a tendency to see ourselves as the only game in town and it's not true at all.

And Ant Group is this thing, this is juggernaut. Um, they own the popular mobile payments network, Alipay. And they've said, look, if you don't want to embrace us, you know, when you walk into, if you've ever gone into a hotel and you see that thing on the back of the wall, we were talking about this and it says, this is the full rack rate. I think a lot of foreign investors, foreign companies, people who come over here on student visas and pay full freight in colleges, you know, it's one thing to pay full freight. It's another thing to pay the full rack rate when the owner of the hotel is blatantly bigoted and harasses you. And I think that these guys, I think China looks at the U.S. and says, OK, it's the biggest market.

But the rest of the world is also a very big market. Sure. And we can go public, bring more credibility to local markets. All of these companies are pretty tightly aligned with the ruling party there. And I'm sure they're advocating for them to go public on the Shanghai market. And you're going to see a ton of news. It'll just be another nail or another signal of our decline when these companies start choosing other exchanges. Our financial markets have always been the most robust. We benefit tremendously. And the most attractive.

What's that? And the most attractive for people to come to. Yeah. And we have the best, we typically have the best governance. We have the rule of law. We have, you know, the SEC was kind of the gangster regulatory body around reducing the likelihood that the thing was a total Ponzi scheme. And that's switching. We've lost our credibility during this administration. Did you see the cover of Der Spiegel with Trump with a match and everything burning, you know, call him the fire devil? I love Der Spiegel. Mostly I love saying it,

but I love Der Spiegel. Well, in any case, I just tweeted the cover and I got like crazy amounts of, what was really interesting is that even though, let me just say there was an interview with I think the Chinese ambassador on British stations here that like handed his head to him. He was saying there's no concentration camps in China, etc, etc. But we have no credibility given

Portland, you know what I mean? And things Trump says is we've lost. We have no moral authority. Like we are lost authority. We have no moral authority. Like we are losing moral. We don't, we have moral authority. We have, we're losing it rather quickly. And I think that you're right. There's this, it's an economic opportunity. And the minute they get an economic step up, we're really, it's really problematic for, I'd be interested. We should probably have someone from one of the exchanges on, um, to talk about this issue because I think it's really's really, you know, he may have been pressured to

do it on the Chinese stock exchange, but it doesn't seem like there's any plus to doing it here right now, given the tensions. The exchanges are dying. There's half as many stocks on the exchanges as there were 20 or 30 years ago. It's an expensive process to go public. There's all sorts of regulation and lockups. A lot of companies are going direct. But more than anything, the majority of the gains have been captured by the private markets because you can get liquidity. There's a very robust finance market. It used to be if you wanted to raise $200 million, $300 million, or even more than $50 million,

you had to go to the public markets. And if you wanted a liquid currency to acquire companies, now you can get all of that and more in the private markets. So companies are staying private much longer in a small group of, you know, kind of institutional, wealthier, you know, kind of old white guy clubs are capturing the majority of the gain. So the public, the retail investor is missing out on the majority of the upside. It's kind of, it's an unhealthy attribute. So the exchanges are going to have to rethink themselves. It'll be very interesting to see if the New York Stock Exchange ever

even opens up again, because as we talked about before, it's become a movie set. But the exchanges are, as businesses, the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, as exchanges, they're just not doing well. Yeah, I agree. It's interesting. It is a movie set. I can't go in there again, I think. It felt like

virus-y before. You've been there, right? Yeah, a lot. That's why I can't go in there again, I think. It was so, it felt like virus-y before. You've been there, right? Yeah, a lot. That's where I used to go on CNBC every morning before I was banned. It's been clean since the 20s. I'm a little bit of a neat freak in an OCD, but I was always like, oh, not so nice. Although I like that Carl Keaton-y a lot. But you're right.

This is a real opportunity for China in lots of ways. I do still think something like TikTok willAC will go public here for in order to create lots of money and for lots of investors. And that really does. There's going to be pressure from this country, even if it's a Biden administration on China going forward. They are our rival, 100 percent. We have to get we take at least the moral ground first and then the economic ground. at least the moral ground first and then the economic ground. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break and come back to talk about the fallout from the Twitter hacks and a friend of Pivot from the Lincoln Project about their ads trolling Donald Trump. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

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other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. worth knowing and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Okay, Scott, we're back. We talked last week, some of Twitter's most high-profile people and high-powered user accounts were hacked. You were upset that you were not hacked. Nope. Let's talk about the fallout. It's unclear how Twitter's most prolific hack in the company's history happened late last week,

but everyone, from Elon Musk to possible future President Joe Biden, were compromised. In a statement over the weekend, Twitter said the hackers manipulated employees and used their credentials to access Twitter's internal systems. There was someone named Kirk,

someone named Plug Dog Joe or something. They say attackers took additional steps of downloading the account's information through their Your Twitter data tool. Twitter says they'll be restoring access to account owners still locked out, beefing up security protocols and rolling out more training of employees. I just, you know, their stock is doing really well this week, too, at the same time. I mean, this is, should they face additional regulations and punishment? What do you make of it besides it needs a full-time CEO? But where do you think this comes down? People seem to have walked right on by past this really quickly.

Well, it's all relative when you say the stock's doing well. Keep in mind, I think the stock is mostly flat for the last several years. So it's not— It's highest since 2018, but go ahead. It's the highest, but. So it's not- It's highest since 2018, but go ahead, yeah. It's the highest, but where was it in 2015? The company is dramatically underperformed on almost every metric relative to the other big tech guys. The weird thing is these guys were neither that creative

nor that greedy. Because if you think about what they could have done here, they hacked Uber's account. If they could have gone, they could have used an offshore account to buy a bunch of options on Uber. And then under Uber's account saying, we're pleased to announce that we have been purchased by, we're entering into a transaction and we're going to be acquired by Microsoft for $60 a share. And the stock would have spiked for a few minutes. Or if they, I mean, the geopolitical concerns are really frightening in terms of getting the president's account. If they'd gotten Jay Powell's account and said, in an emergency meeting of the Fed, we've decided to hike interest rates 150 basis points because we're seeing all sorts of signals around inflation.

The markets could have crashed. It could have done all kinds of stuff. Yeah, we've let this. It's got to be, you know, it's become a utility in a lot of ways for a lot of people for information flow, for sure. And I think that the question is how unhackable can they make it on some level? But that's the point. It's not, I don't even think it's Twitter's fault. When you talk about utility. Well, this feels a little bit. A utility is the right. Read the New York Times piece. It's pretty disturbing, but go ahead. A utility is the right analogy.

And that is if you have a nuclear power plant, there's tremendous regulation to ensure that that power source and the dangers surrounding that power source aren't co-opted by bad actors. Or in this case, what feels like kind of like pranksters. It almost feels sort of fraternity-like. Yeah, it was like $180,000 they made. Yeah, big deal. They're not that creative or that greedy. But because this thing isn't regulated, because it's not that secure at the bottom line, people shouldn't be using it as a primary means of communication on important matters. They just shouldn't.

They should have other means of secure communications because this means this channel is not secure. Well, as I've said, I don't think the president should be doing things on it as much as he does. Because, again, you don't know what he's saying because some of his stuff is nutty. Like, right? And so you don't know which is which. You could easily – I think they must have so much security around his account. Yeah, supposedly they do. Supposedly they do have additional levels of security around his account.

Yeah, and they're watching it not just for protecting him if he starts to do something real nutty to turn it off. I think they have that in place, too, from what I understand. But what's important here is to understand that these kind of things, the way we've allowed it to happen, to get this, your Twitter data thing is more important. What did they get in terms of DMs? What did they get in terms of private communications? It's not just the public ones and publicly saying something like Joe Biden. Yes, I am. I'll addled or whatever. It's the it's what's in the data that they downloaded and the DMs. I used to DM quite a bit on Twitter.

I don't do it. Except, you know, every now and then I'll send one to Mark Cuban saying nice job dunking on Tedz or something like that over this kneeling thing but i try not to do too much on it um because of that because i'm one because i don't want to fuck it up like a lot of people remember remember the coo kept sending out dms as public do you remember that you just don't want to be anthony wiener part two i know i'm not going to take a picture of my thing thank you yeah the tweet one tweet kind of changed his life, didn't it? One tweet. Come on. That was a pattern of behavior. I know, but it was the one that got out.

That guy. That guy's got a problem. Oh, you think? You think, Dr. Swisher? You think Anthony Weiner has a problem? I think it wasn't one tweet. It was like he continued to misbehave. He just moved from tool to tool how he was doing it. I don't want to talk about Anthony Weiner. I don't. True story. My friend, my first friend in New York tried to set me up with Huma Abedin. Is that her name? Oh, yeah. And I met her. She's a lovely woman. She's lovely. Wait, you went on a date with Huma? No, they, she, you know, she met me and was like, no way. She has good judgment. But my friend said, oh, you got to meet my friend Huma. You guys would

like each other. And we met at a party, had a lovely conversation. And she wanted nothing to do with me. She's really interesting. She gets a lot of flack, but I like her. She's very funny. She's more of the perverted elected types. I'm just one of those. I have not been elected.

You don't fit that. You don't fit that. I'm half of that. You're half of that. I'm half of that. All right. So give me like, so Twitter, what should they do? What are the repercussions? Should they be like investigated it?

No, I think there's a fairly simple solution here. And that is when I'm on the NYU Stern grading site and I submit final grades, I have to go through two and sometimes three factor authentication. And that is I get, you know, a phone call, I press a button and it says, okay, it's the guy, whoever's, if someone's hacked his account, they also have his phone. And then we used to have verbal authentication. They don't do that anymore. Verification. They need to take, they need to identify and flag accounts that have, could have outsized

impact on the economy, on social unrest, on, you know, war, things like that. Yeah. And there's probably, I don't know, a couple thousand of them and they need to put in place a department. And it wouldn't be that hard. I can't imagine it would be that many engineers a couple thousand of them, and they need to put in place a department. And it wouldn't be that hard. I can't imagine it would be that many engineers and say, all right, anytime they put out a communication, there's going to be a lag, but we're going to do some form of two-factor authentication. But who do they decide to do that for? Well, they could figure that out.

I think there's a series of criteria. One of them, Nicki Minaj is pregnant. Let's wait and see. For example, I don't think it's size that they're following. I don't think Kim, if Kim Kardashian says, our birds are in the air, we're bombing South Korea, we're bombing Seoul or whatever. I don't think anyone cares.

I don't think that, well, Kim doesn't have her hand on the button. And, you know, but if it's any member of the Fed, any president, the president of the Dallas Fed, Robert Kaplan, who's a thoughtful guy and can move markets, you double, move markets, you double and triple authenticate anything he puts out. And it wouldn't be that hard to put in place. So I think these guys lack imagination and they lack the will. What about regulation? Maybe they're just waiting for some sign of regulation.

Well, you've always said this. Regulation is a blunt force. I think they'd be smarter to put out something themselves first and try and head it off for the pass. They're a small staff. They're not that big. Facebook's the only big game in town. I mean, I think they have to decide where to put their resources. Obviously, there's so many wildfires at this company. You know what I mean?

And they're actually trying to do things. I think it's quite different. But what's interesting is the markets really don't seem to care to your point. The markets don't really look at all the tech stocks are up in any case. In any case, they definitely should get their hands around it because, you know, you may not have someone like Trump, but Trump is going to be here going forward. Biden may not be that kind of thing, but everybody. These are really important things to understand that going forward, all public figures will be using Twitter, at least until something else comes along to communicate.

And in that vein, we are going to have a friend of PivotOn who has been using social media to take down Donald Trump. Rick Wilson is the co-founder of the political action group, The Lincoln Project, and a longtime Republican political strategist. You may have seen one of The Lincoln Project's brilliant ads skewering the president. Now Trump's bureaucrats are promising to send their thugs everywhere. Your town. Your neighborhood.

This is how it starts and how freedom dies. Unless we stand up, unless we speak out, unless we demand justice. Register and vote November 3rd, because if we don't, we know how it ends. Welcome, Rick Wilson. Thank you, Cara. I appreciate you having me. So I want to talk a little bit about, we're going to get into a lot of things. Let's start actually by the genesis of this.

You guys have really, your use of social media is astonishing. I don't know who's doing your actual social media. It must be someone, a younger person, I'm guessing. But maybe not. It's a 78-year-old woman from Poughkeepsie. She's rather clever. So talk a little bit about sort of strategic. We talk about tech a lot and media both, but talk about strategically.

You've used social media quite adeptly in terms of not just tweeting, but putting these ads out, getting millions of views and stuff like that. So you created a real being talked about, at least, on social media. So talk a little bit about that. Well, one of the things, Carrie, that we are all born from in modern politics is television advertising. And for decades, that was still the singular point of persuasion in the American electorate. But all of us also realized we were also fairly early adopters to digital, paid digital advertising, almost all of us. I'm platform agnostic where you see my message, whether you see it on a Twitter video feed or a Facebook page or a YouTube link or a television ad or a cable ad or a pre-roll video, I now have the tools to measure where I'm hitting. I know who I'm talking to. early on that using our fairly meaningfully large social media voices, we could amplify

what the Lincoln Project was doing. And especially in this phase of the campaign, which is not a heavy tonnage air war on paid media. Right now, we're working- It would be television, you mean. Well, television and digital. But right now, we're working to shape the campaign narrative, which we believe we're very successful at doing. We're working to play into Donald Trump's whole portfolio, this constellation of psychological weaknesses that Trump displays every day. it takes his campaign off track, costs him time, money, space in the electorate. And there's one fixed item you will never get more of in a campaign. You can always buy more

media. You can raise more money. You can do more events. You can't get a day back that you lose. And we're very good at taking him off course and having him lose a day here, a day there. Questions you've been trying, why didn't you do it before? Like, where was the luck? Because he was adept at digital. He was more adept. And secondly, how do you come up with the ads? How do you decide? You're just trying to, to me,

it seems like you're trying to occupy parts of his brain. Like, you do them very quickly. We do them very quickly. Like, within hours. We do them very quickly. We have a production, a super lean production system. You know, the group comes up with what we know is moving the day and what we want to move during the day. And also, he presents targets of opportunity constantly.

This guy shows you his throat all the time in this battle. We move very quickly. We amplify very quickly. We amplify very quickly. And we understand that there are people who don't look at us as the traditional super PAC because we don't do all the things that a traditional super PAC does. We don't spend weeks message testing every single ad. We don't spend weeks wondering about policy questions. There is no policy with us. We are here. We're submarines roving the ocean. We're not here to be the Heritage Foundation or Brookings or anybody else.

We're here to help defeat Donald Trump. And so we stay focused on that. And that makes our mission a lot easier in many ways. When you come up with an ad, so like, for example, the Chris Wallace interview, it's full of things to go for, right? So it's like, I mean, it's either you or Sarah Cooper are going to take, you know, this is like a real thing, but what's the strategy behind one? What's the metric of success for each ad? Well, so we do ads in three big columns. The first column is the audience of one, psychological warfare with Donald Trump. And those are the ads that most people see and talk about and share. Those are the ads that most people say, oh my God, Donald Trump just spent 10 minutes on a stage basically

trying to refute the fact that the Lincoln Project said he couldn't walk down a ramp. Lincoln Project said he couldn't walk down a ramp. Those ads in that first column are very much meant to disrupt his campaign at a meaningful level. Look, we did it this last week, the proof of concept. We've turned Parscale into a verb by running ads against Brad Parscale that Donald Trump saw. And we didn't care if America saw them. I cared Donald Trump watched them because he can't turn Fox off. He's addicted to it. I know where to feed him. And so when we built the Parscale ad, we went after, we spent, I don't know, maybe 12 grand producing it and maybe, I don't know,

another six or eight on TV just because we knew Trump would watch it. And so the way we score our operations on that first column is observable behavior by the president. And those are things we can absolutely see and read back because we know he fired Brad Parscale. We know what happened. We hear from inside the White House and from inside the campaign all the time now. And there's a great rule of thumb in politics. And it probably scales to business too. Good organizations leak on purpose. Bad organizations leak because they're bad

organizations. And the Trump campaign and the Trump White House are bad organizations. And so we are able to know very quickly what happened, how badly it affected Trump, how much he lost his mind about whatever we did that day or that week. So, those things are very measurable for us. We know by his behavior, we know from internal information. And a campaign doesn't have long windows where they can just sit and go, okay, well, we'll just reorganize this week. We'll just do the wiring diagram differently this week. Those campaigns, they live and die every moment. And so for the next week to 10 days, Bill Stepien will be trying to replace Brad Parscale and set a large dysfunctional organization. And we know we did that. Or helped do it. That Tulsa thing wasn't a very good thing.

And his hundreds of interviews. But you scratched an itch. You scratched an itch. Brad, again, when somebody on an opposing campaign shows you their throat, you're obliged to go. So the second tier of advertising is to litigate the case against Trump, which we're doing very broadly. And we're doing that in a lot of different states, a lot of different markets, a lot of different audiences. This is, again, not the phase of the campaign where we're going to go out and drop million dollars a day in Florida or Wisconsin or Iowa or Arizona yet. Because any organization will go broke really fast, spending that much money in places where the vote will be decided, historically speaking, in the last three to five weeks. During the early

voting window, things will start changing very rapidly. So that persuasion stuff that we're doing comes down to three big categories that we know are moving voters. We know the reason that an awful lot of voters have abandoned Donald Trump, especially in the suburbs, is his mishandling of the COVID crisis is, I mean, across every public and private survey research instrument you choose to look at, his handling of COVID has lost him voters, particularly with educated voters, independent suburban men and women, educated women particularly, and women with children, particularly, um, the second big tier that we know is also shattering Donald Trump is, is the, the, the, the defense of the Confederate flag,

the alt-right, the racism, the, the, the thinly veiled, you know, racial animus that's hidden behind all of the immigration talk that has also damaged him rather painfully. Rick, over the last decade, I was fascinated when you were talking about media mix. If you had $100 to spend on just media, how has that media mix changed in terms of where you spend that money? And then the second part of the question is, if you could only go with one platform or channel to spend money, what would that be? So the mix used to be about, well,

20 years ago, obviously the mix was 99 to one or 99.5 for TV, all TV, all TV, all even direct mail, assuming broadcasting cable, you know, direct mail as a persuasion tool has been dead for decades. Direct mail is good for raising money. And so you may do some persuasion in that, some voter turnout in that, but it's mostly about direct mail is mostly about fundraising. And even that is dying off because email. So it was all TV. What is it now?

Break it up for us now. You got a hundred bucks where you spend it. If I have a hundred bucks right now now i spend 30 bucks on cable i spend 35 bucks on digital i spend 15 on on broadcast and then i do a mix of other stuff out there depending on the market and the audience you look there are still markets in this country it sounds, that are great for radio. It's insane. I would imagine. Just a couple follow-up questions.

If you're just so accustomed to the world of digital, what platform has the best tools? And I think I know what the answer's going to be. And also, are there any mediums

that I've always thought so many people are abandoning digital, so many people are abandoning print and terrestrial media. At some point point do the prices get low enough where they become more effective again there will be a there will be a tip over at some point where that's you know the the weird stuff that you would always like sort of laugh at like i'm not

going to run four page newspaper that's what are you insane i'm not going to run billboards that's insane um look the uh the hellscape that is facebook is the most meaningful tool of political manipulation ever devised in the history of all mankind it really is incredible and and so there will be a battle fought on facebook this year and probably next and probably the next and probably the next as much as i truly believe it is it should be destroyed plowed into the earth and the ground salted where it once stood um that's where the toolbox is you know it needs sunblock rick it needs sunblock but it's wearing sunblock so it'll be just fine what why is that explain for people why that is i mean why is it great from a political point of

view and then why should it be well it's great as a tool, right? It's great as a tool. What does it give you? Look, a chainsaw is a great tool when I go back in my swamp and cut down dead trees. It's a bad tool if I run into a Walmart with it. Rick, you should be in consulting. You are very good at this. Your turn of phrase here, you are, something tells me you make a shit ton of money. You show up in an average shirt and you fly a G650 extended range. You got that right kind of phrase. Now Scott's going to want to be a political advertisement. You make old white guys want to open their checkbook.

Back on track. Sorry, go ahead. What is good about it? Well, what's good about it is they have a suite of tools that allows you to segment and target your audience in ways that are enormously granular. Lookalikes. You can voter file match people. You can now go out and match the cable and the rent track data to a lot of the Facebook data that's available.

And it lets you send a person to, it lets you silo a person, not, not a demographic group. Look with cable, I can get you down into your neighborhood and your household somewhat with Facebook. I can make sure that the ads following you on your phone and on your computer and on your tablet are all telling you that unless you vote for Donald Trump, Antifa is coming to kill your dog. Right.

And what we've also learned about Facebook is it doesn't matter how verifiably false or ludicrous the message is. It doesn't matter. I could go on Facebook right now and buy a suite of ads that say, Joe Biden is a secret lizard-humanoid hybrid who is going to- That was Hillary last cycle, but go ahead. Exactly. And that case seems lurid, but it was exactly what you were seeing on Facebook with Pizzagate. She murdered Seth Rich. She's a part of a global pedophile sex ring, all these things. And it's so ludicrous, but Facebook believes that their tool is morally agnostic. And especially to this link between advertising and content.

Because if they remove the ads, it doesn't matter. The content is the ad. Right. And that's what the Russians do. They weren't buying Facebook ads as much as they were buying the ability to go out there and build enough audience. So as a political strategist, don't you want Facebook to stay then? I mean, what do you use Twitter for? You use it for excitement and generating bucks, correct?

The tool of Twitter is because the nation's political media ecosystem lives there. Every reporter in America that's in the political space is active on Twitter in some greater or larger degree. Facebook is more amorphous in terms of getting a single political message out to people that you're, when you're trying to push the dialogue forward on a message, that's the place you do it. Anywhere else? Not for me personally. I mean, some people, some people are still arguing that the transition to Instagram is where political comms is going. I'm agnostic about that.

I don't think it's there yet. You know, I think it's still too many cute pictures of dogs and kittens, which is basically what I post on Instagram. I keep my political somewhat separate from my Insta. Not entirely, but, you know, the TikTok situation, it's exploding. No, the TikTok situation, it's exploding. There is a, like a lot of these sudden rise social media networks. I don't, I'm one generation behind being able to fully say that I can understand TikTok.

I see it out there in enormous numbers. And I see it out there affecting a lot of younger demographics. But the secret of younger voters is that they aren't voters. Yeah, they don't vote. I mean, the average person that's going to vote in this country is going to be about 56 years old. I have two more things. And then Scott may have another question. One is Jane Costin of Vox wrote a pretty tough article. And many people have about and you got killed by was it Colbert?

Colbert, which was you took it rather well, I have to say. But one of the things is you guys are spending too much money on yourselves. One is the thing and that you're that you're you and that you need to spend more money on the actual states and things like that. And the second one is that and I have raised this with you and I've raised this with George Conway and stuff like that, is that I joke about it. I'm like, I can't wait till we don't get along again, like after Trump goes. And a lot of the stuff you've done previously has been pretty ugly. Sure.

And so I look at these ads and I go, great job, you're getting Trump. And then I thought, oh, no, they're going to turn these abilities. Let me settle the Jane issue first. Right. What's that Jane? A lot of people. A number of people. Many of our critics on the left and the right. And I'll tell you why some of our critics on the left are pushing this. Because Democratic media consultants are getting the shit kicked out of them by their bosses. And they're saying, why aren't you making ads as fast as the Lincoln Project? Why aren't you hitting as hard? Because the average Democratic campaign consultant, any media consultant gets 20,000 views on a YouTube

video or a Twitter video, and they like do a victory dance and pop champagne. They think they've gone viral. You know, if we don't hit a million, we're like, what the fuck went wrong? Right. But a lot of the folks that are talking about the way we're structured and the way we're doing this campaign, first off, they're looking at the first quarter numbers. When we started this whole thing off, we thought we'd raise a couple of million dollars, try to do an earned media play, and beat up Trump. Well, that's not how life turned out. We have taken off in a way that no one could have anticipated. life turned out. We have taken off in a way that no one could have anticipated. And the fact that we do our operations through an LLC that pays all the producers and the vendors and the data people and everything else makes it look in a way that Jane and others have attacked. But the fact of

the matter is, we've built an enormous organization in a couple of months. And they're not looking at the second quarter number where we raised $16.8 million. And I think as of today, we have 14.7 in the bank this morning. I mean, we are saving the resources for the fall fight. Look, the simplest thing in the world for me to have done way back in 2016 would have been to shut up. I would have still made a whole lot more money than I did on two bestselling books if I had just shut my mouth. Instead, I grew a soul and so we're in this fight. Now, the second part of this equation that's very simple is we've burned our boats. The second part of this equation that's very simple is we've burned our boats. There is no Republican Party for us to go home to.

There's no Burkean conservative movement left in this country. The party has been so thoroughly, utterly compromised and destroyed by Donald Trump that, look, if tomorrow Donald Trump and Mike Pence got eaten by wolves and you said, hey, Rick, reconstitute the Republican Party, I'd say no. Because the Republican Party in 2024 is going to be, the nominee is going to be Donald Trump Jr. or Tucker Carlson or Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton. One of these guys that thinks that the nationalist populism and statism on the edges of Trump. Okay. Trump would be a much more terrifying figure. He's a terrifying figure. He would be an apocalyptically terrifying figure if he didn't have ADD and he was actually organized and could think about a project for longer than 15 minutes.

Tom Cotton or Tucker Carlson as president should scare the shit out of people. And so we've committed, we're going to stay in this fight because we laid out a mission at the very beginning. And our mission was to eliminate Donald Trump, to drive him from office. Easy. All right. I'm still scared of your evil skills and I don't like some of your views, but that's okay. It's okay. I don't mind having a good debate. I'm going to ask you one more question. What is going to change in November and then Scott can finish up? What are you going to do? You're going to do more persuasive, more wide ranging in lots of states and TV apps? nerds are following the campaign rigidly, attentively on Twitter and on cable TV. Most American voters have a sort of amorphous thing in their head right now. They say, yeah, it's like that Trump guy and that Biden guy, I don't know yet. And that's political behavior that iterates out over generations.

We've seen that for many, many years. generations. We've seen that for many, many years. They will start making a final decision, especially because the campaign can be altered by exogenous events. Look at 2016. Hillary Clinton's emails and the Russia leaks were the exogenous event October surprise of all time. So that's why you back end your spending. That's why you back end your final messaging, your final litigation of the points. But our map has expanded radically since we got into this game. When we started in December talking about this, we looked at Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Those were the states that were going to swing. Ohio was even a long shot because it was fairly red. But now the battlefield that gives Biden and his allies like us, the calculus has radically expanded. So our ability

to go into Arizona and Iowa and North Carolina and Georgia and a whole bunch of other places has increased very rapidly. And Trump's pathways to victory have narrowed very rapidly. So we will see this fight being waged and won, I think, at the end of the day in Florida, Arizona, and Ohio. But we're going to be active in a bunch of other places because it's a game of very small numbers. People overlook the fact that the Electoral College is not, you know, you're not trying, I don't have to go out and win, you know, beat Trump with 20 million voters. I have to go out and beat him with one Electoral College vote. I'd prefer a lot more, but it's a narrow path.

20 million will help too. It wouldn't hurt. But I need to go out and make sure that the same thing that happened in 2016, where Trump won by 77,000 votes in three states and by less than 150,000 votes in the state of Florida, I got to ensure that that doesn't happen again. And so if we can start blocking out places on the electoral college map that he can't win, you know, that adds to the security of what is shaping up to be a good year for Joe Biden and the Democrats. Okay, quick, last question, Scott. Rick, just advice, advice to an old person or a young person. Say you're an old person that is a Florida resident, has a little bit of time and a little bit of money. What should that person do if they buy, if they agree with you that this march towards autocracy is frightening? What counsel, counsel a 55-year-old white guy who's committed to helping flip Florida on how he could best allocate his small amount of time and money this fall?

Well, I would say in that regard that the most important thing people can do beyond the donations to whoever you want to support, COVID has reconfigured political grassroots campaigning fundamentally. Most campaigns have a metric where they want to touch a persuadable voter with email, mail, digital ad, TV ad, five to seven times in the closing five weeks, six weeks. COVID has changed all the door knocking stuff. We're not going to do that this year. We're not going to go out and organize canvassers in neighborhoods and drive people to the polls. None of that's going to happen. So, you know, digital organizing and sharing, because the devil machine that is Facebook allows people to talk about, you know, messages that can be supportive of Joe Biden.

And if Biden continues to do the campaign the way he's been doing it, it makes it easier for that 55-year-old white guy because he doesn't scare the shit out of people. Donald Trump's dream this year was to select Bernie Sanders as his nominee. Trump would have won 44 states with Bernie Sanders because Bernie is an ancient communist who scares the shit out of people. And that's a shorthand. Do nothing Democrats work. Do nothing Democrats is a fantastic idea. And you should let you do the mean ads. Just like let them just sit there quietly. Biden's campaign and a lot of other groups have sort of tuned up their their edge. And if we're leading the way on that at all, I'm proud to say, you know, we we don't bring anything with a dull. We don't bring any dull knives to this fight. Well, there's a bunch of you. There's Republicans versus. Sure. And there are a lot of allied groups. In fact, we all went up this week. I think we're spending a couple million total in Ohio over a long running

program. We're calling operation grant because we feel like Ohio is starting to soften for Trump. All right, Rick. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Keep going. Keep going with those ads. We appreciate them. All right, thanks. Appreciate you.

All right, Scott. That was good. We'll be back for wins and fails. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere and you're making content that no one sees and it takes forever

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Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. It's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Okay, Scott wins and fails. I'm still scared of that guy. I don't know if he's going to come

after me. If we allied with the Russians, we can ally with Rick. I know, but you know what? They have a history, those people, of lots of stuff. But you know what? I'm going to say, I'm going to look. I don't know. I think moral clarity is a luxury we can't afford right now. That's true.

That's right. We're not doing anything to get rid of anybody but Trump. Any brothers in arms are my brothers right now. I know. And sisters, excuse me. I know. It's ABT, but I'm worried a little bit about the anybody, but I do think they're doing amazing work and I think

they're very effective. They're very good. Very good. The thing I took away from that is the, you know, the world belongs to the fast, not to the big. And I was just struck about how fast they are. Yep. Yep. Do you have any wins? Wins? I have a fail. Kanye West's first political rally. That was not good. He's mean to Harriet Tubman, so I can't vote for him. This is ridiculous. Why do that? I get that you shouldn't have to.

Nobody is. There are sacred cows and stuff like that. She's really a hero. I'm sorry. What a tough life. My son, actually, I learned a lot of it when my son did a report on her in like sixth grade and a reading very widely to help him. I just feel like that. Why? Yeah. Yeah. Do you got to win? Let's get, let's bust you out of the Kanye hole. Do you got to win? Let me think. You start with yours and I'll think about one.

Well, at this point it's, I mean, it's often repeated, but worth repeating, obviously, just a nod to the life of Representative Lewis. Yes. And also, I think it's a win. I think it's a moment of reflection to also acknowledge that the arc of his life does in many ways represent a positive arc in the American story. When he, you know, one of 12 kids born to a sharecropper was going to be, I think he was going to be a priest or a minister and decided to go into social activism and, you know, had his head fractured, but never gave up on the importance of peaceful protest, was abused at the hands of governments and was very forgiving and brought a lot of empathy and grace that I think

we could all take a page from. And when he started his quest, there were segregated lunch counters and, you know, bathrooms. And we've made tremendous progress because of guys like that, who are people like that, I should say, who are just tremendously brave and weren't thinking about their careers and weren't thinking about money and weren't thinking about their reputation. They weren't even thinking about their personal self in terms of their willingness to be injured. So, look, easy to honor him. But I also think it's a nice time to reflect that we still have a lot, you know, the struggle continues. But because of people like him, I think America has made a lot of progress. You know, interesting.

A lot of people retweeted a tweet he did in 2015 of an arrest in 1961 in Mississippi. And he tweeted, even though I was arrested, I smiled because I was on the right side of history. Find a way to get in the way. Good trouble. I thought that was really lovely. Sometimes social media makes me cry. It's like, that's really lovely. I hadn't seen that and I was very moved by it.

When, you know, someone who is not at all like John Lewis and has his ups and downs. I did like Mark Cuban's tweet against someone in Texas, some radio jackass, was giving me a hard time about. If somebody, I am so ready to be on this year's Mavics home stretch, so much promise, so much personality. But the minute one player kneels during an anthem, I am out. Surely Mark Cuban can lead the way for Mavs to do whatever gesture they wish without insulting the nation. This is this guy, Mark Davis. And Mark Cuban wrote, the national anthem police is in this

country is out of control. If you want to complain, complain to your boss and ask why they don't play the National Anthem every day of the week before you start to work. And then he tweeted, bye, which I kind of liked. Yeah, he's good. I like when he does that. That's a win to me. But Netflix there, Mr. Sir, Mr. Fail, had weaker than expected earnings. What do you think? Yeah, that was going to be my fail.

So I predicted the stock would be up 10% after they announced earnings. And it did make a dramatic move, but not the way I predicted. It was off 6%. And I made a kind of a rookie error in terms of accounting. I thought that because the production had been shut down, that the earnings would be massively inflated. And someone reminded me, one of my colleagues at NYU said that those expenses are capitalized. So the impact is amortized over a long period.

And also, it's really kind of unusual. They beat on the top line. Their earnings, while they missed, were largely a function of the fact that they had a one-time charge in California related to research and development tax credits. But the thing that took their stock down was they gave very weak guidance. And I think they're now in a position where they can under-promise and over-deliver. And I also think the market absorbed what I'll call a little bit of fear. And that is they made a big announcement that I think hurt the stock. And that is they announced a co-CEO, which is kind of the, that's

kind of Reed Hastings lifting his arm and starting to wave goodbye. And when you bring in a co-CEO, it's an elegant transfer of leaving. It's an elegant way to say, okay, well, it's getting late. And this guy, and Reed Hastings, there's just no doubt about it. He's just a genius. He's going to be one of my first interviews for the new podcast on the New York Times. I've already arranged it. He's going to be one of my first interviews for the new podcast on the New York Times. I've already arranged it. He's going to be great. I agree. Ted Sarandos, who I've known for a very long time, and he started off very early with and has been a critical part of the success of Netflix, a really interesting and affable guy, but also just a really interesting mind. And he was

the one around behind. He was in Hollywood. he was based in Hollywood and was really the one pushing all these different deals and doing all this creative and bringing a lot of different voices into the management staff. So I think he's the natural leader there. And I agree with you. I think, you know, Can I do an algebra of happiness? Something you said earlier in the show inspired me. Sure, go ahead. Can I get soft and gooey? Please. My algebra of happiness moment where you brought up about you and

your son saying i love to each other i i have my closest friend i was in colorado my closest friend i don't see as much lee came and joined us and something he's had such a huge impact on my life he's one of the few people that makes me laugh out loud but the the the thing that inspired me or what you said about you telling you and your son telling each other you love each other. I remember when Lee's dad came over to my fraternity in college and this his father was this really rugged, handsome kind of Burt Reynolds figure. And he walked in, he owned a furniture store. He was an entrepreneur. He had a Cadillac.

And he just instinctively he leaned over and he kissed Lee on the lips. And I'd never seen two men, they're Italian, kiss each other like that. And it was so natural. And it was really shocking. And I decided as I had my own kids 30 years later, that as long as they would let me, I would kiss them. And we were in Colorado. My nine-year-old gets up to go to the bathroom and he leans down and he just instinctively kisses me and Lee goes, wow, your son, your son's kissing you. And it was such a nice moment for me. And I'm like, that's, that's from your father. And I was thinking that was such a source of pride for me. And I was thinking that life is when you want to boast to your best friends, you don't, you don't as much boast that you have people in your life that love you, but you've built a life

where you love others. And it was just such a nice moment for me. And as long, I think men got to take affection back. And as long as my, my boys will kiss me, I'll kiss them. There you go. Anyways,

algebra of happiness. Your life isn't about, not only about how many people love you, but your ability to build a life where you love others. And my son Lee and his father kissing him. We, men need to take affection back, Kara.

Yeah. I'm not going to be kissing you at all. That's not where this was going. I'm just saying. That's not where this was going. I'll give you a high five. Let's move to a high five. That's not where this was going.

I know. Although I am more drawn to you knowing that you have a coal mine. That is sexy. That is sexy. I could leave any time. There's a mountain of coal I could sit on if need be. It's nice.

Anyway, we have to go. Don't forget, if you can't get enough Pivot, we're going to do livestream events for the month of August. We've sold over 1,000 tickets. It's called Pivot School from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. We want 5,000. So make it happen, fans. You can get tickets at pivotschooled.com.

There's also a link in the show notes. Don't forget if there is a story in the news and you're curious about it and want to hear our opinion on it, email us at Pivot at VoxMedia.com to be featured on the show. All right, I'll read us out, but you have to read all the ads. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanas. Fernando Finete engineered this episode.

Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. And if you're an Android user, check us out at Spotify or, frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kiss your boys.

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