Pivot - MAGA War Chest, Nuclear Subs, and Texas Dems Flee

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Kara kicks off Scott-free August with guest co-host Anthony Scaramucci — lawyer, podcaster, founder of SkyBridge Capital, and yes, former White House Communications Director for Trump (briefly). Kara and The Mooch break down Trump’s decision to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the latest tariff moves, and some nuclear saber-rattling with Russia. Plus, MAGA builds up its war chest, and Trump tussles with Charlamagne tha God over Epstein. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠.Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠.Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠.Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at ⁠⁠nymag.com/pivot⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Robin Hood Crypto is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Crypto Health, the Robin Hood Crypto is not FDIC in short or CIPIC protected. Investing involves risk, including loss of principle. Securities trading is offered through an account with Robin Hood Financial LLC, member CIPIC, a registered broker dealer. People didn't used to have jobs. Jobs only came about because... All right, hold on. You're losing, me. What does this have to do with being weird? I'm making jobs strange. So most people wake up thinking, you have to have,

a job. Jobs have always been here. What I'm saying is, what is a job? Who invented jobs? Who do they favor? Why do we have this system? And is there another one? Can you think of another one? That's this week on the gray area. New episodes every Monday, available everywhere. Who's smart? Who in that administration? I know you probably are not a Lutnik fan would be my guess. Well, I mean, Howard Butnick? But lick. Not lick? You're allowed to say nut lick on the Pivot? You're allowed. Whatever. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kera Swisher. And guess what kicks off today? Scott Free August.

That's right. It's the first week of Scott Free August when the dogs away and the jungle cat gets to experiment with. a bunch of different co-hosts. And today I'm with the one and only Anthony Scaramucci, the mooch, a lawyer, podcaster, founder, and managing partner at Skybridge Capital. And you remember that he did a quick 11-day stint in the White House during President Trump's first term. But that's in the past, actually. I don't think about that as much. Anthony, welcome. All right. Well, I'm very flattered. I appreciate that. You're never invited into my apartment or my kitchen, Kara. You'll have to stay in the living room when you come over. I just want to make sure you know that. No, I'm going to look through all your things.

By the way, that was incredible. That was A plus trolling, Kara Swisher. A plus troll. He's referring to a video of me in Scott's apartment looking through his things, which I do constantly. And if I came to your apartment, I'd be right up in your medicine chest, just so you know. And you would learn that I have a lot of skin products. Okay, lots of mortgiorizer. Do you have like shrimp semen? What do you have? No, I haven't gone into that yet. I probably should talk to some of the actresses about that, but no, I just said, just general stuff, retina, retina, things like that, Renova. All right. Well, what would be the craziest thing I would find in your closet?

Oh, man, there's too many crazy. I mean, the craziest thing that you would find in my closet is the original hood from Batman in the 1966 television series. With Adam West? With Adam West, yeah. Why? No, I'm a super hero kid. I grew up with comics and superhero.

and it's four or five years old when he was on TV, and I thought he was hip and cool. I used to own the Batmobile. What? I owned the Batman Returns, Batmobile, the one where Danny DeVito played the penguin, and Michael Keaton was in the movie with Michelle Pfeiffer. She was the California.

I know this. What do you mean you owned it? Where did you put it? Yeah, you have a story. Well, that was the big issue. So I had it for many years. It cost a lot of money to store it, lots of insurance. to buy. What did it cost to buy? So that car's probably worth about $3 million now. I bought the car for $150,000. And I sold it. Yeah, $150,000. This is 20 years ago. I sold it for $300. But if I kept it, it was a little, it would have been a great investment. But you know what? I didn't keep it. And life goes on. But I did. Yeah. It's on an F-150 frame. It does not drive well, frankly. There's a little propane tank in the best.

back. It's not registered. You can't insure it. It's a show car. But there is a button that you can click and it shoots the propane flame out of the back. That sounds dangerous. That sounds very dangerous. You know, if you're an overgrown 12-year-old, it's one of the funest things you can own. Can I ask you a personal question? Do you put on that outfit? Did you get it dry cleaned? Yeah. I'm going to bring my wife on the podcast. You know, I chase her around in the bedroom with the hood and the cape. I actually don't do that. But I wish I did that. But I don't do it. Yeah. You know what? I love Adam. I look when he used to dance. Remember they had the swivel?

The swivel, yeah. When he danced. You didn't buy the Robin outfit? You didn't do that? Didn't buy the Robin outfit? No, I'm not. I, Bert Ward was obviously a very colorful, fun guy, but I, I identified more with the aloof Batman. All right. When I come over, you're putting that thing on it. We're having some fun. We're having some fun. I don't know what we're going to do. Definitely hiding that from you. No way. That is so now that I know. Anyway, I'm so thrilled you're here. There's so much to talk to you about there. You are a very canny observer of everything that's happening. But we've got tons to get to, including Maga's War Chess, which is huge, nuclear submarines, and the latest on the Epstein saga.

I'm excited to hear what you have to say. But first, Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives have fled the state in an attempt to stop Republicans from adopting a redrawn congressional map. Republican state legislature has been pushing for a map that flips five Democratic congressional districts in favor of Republicans. Governor Greg Abbott called the departure of the Democrats an abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office saying he would take steps to remove the missing Democrats if they don't return. And then, of course, a lot of Democratic governors, including Gavin Newsom, are threatening to do the same in their states. Thoughts on this strategy? Terrible. Terrible strategy. They should get together and declare a detent, statewide detents. People like you and me is very important.

for us to explain to the American people what they're doing. Okay, gerrymandering everybody is when the politician picks the voter in a liberal democracy. The voter is supposed to pick the politician. And so these guys have totally corrupted the system. The Republicans did this better than the Democrats early on. There was something called Operation Red Map, Kara. You probably remember that. They went into the state local legislators. The Koch family was big, big donors to this. And they influence the local elections to get the local elections to redistrict the congressional districts. Trump is looking at the map and he's thinking to himself, I'm going to lose the house. I'm not a popular president. He's below 40%. I'm going to lose the house. He calls up Governor Abbott.

It says, I need five Republican congressional seats. And this will cause an escalation of complete nonsense. You and I both know that the American leaders were once public servants. We're now in the age of public self-servants. They're serving themselves. Nice way to put it. And they're doing terrible things to the American people. And this is an example of that. So what happens here? What is the game? If they do this and they get these Democratic legislators back, they can't take them out of office. Or maybe they can in Texas. They probably can. No, but they'll re-jury. They'll get them back to force the vote and cause the redistricting, which is legal and is allowable, to cause the redistricting of the of the districts, which will allow more Republicans on a percentage basis into those districts,

and then the Democrats will probably lose those House seats. And so Newsom is saying, okay, I can do that. There's some Republican districts here in California. Let me get the chainsaw out and let me redistrict. And so, I mean, this is something people should know. Very, very bad. We would need a constitutional amendment, frankly, to end gerrymandering. Maybe AI could pick the districts, make the districts flat, make the districts even, it would cut the extremists in the society, but would also end the redundancy of incumbency. Okay, and so that's what's going on. Right. So if Abbott does this, should Newsom do the same thing? Well, he will do it. No, no. So if Abbott does it, he will definitely do it, and then you'll have an escalation and you'll

have a, you'll have an escalating war. You know, you're asking me if he should. In a normative world, they should de-escalate. They should cut the nine. They're not serving the American people, but, you know, there's something that someday we're all going to have to write about. Maybe you and I won't be here. I don't know, but 50 years from now, someone will write, what the hell? How did this orange spray-tanned maniac get a hold of one of these parties like this where everybody is crippled with moral weakness, moral depravity, and just literally allowing him to do whatever the hell he wants? months, and he laughs at these. By the way, by the, I know the guy.

So when they're kissing his ass, Kara, he's laughing at them. You know, he's picking up the phone. He's calling his friend Kara Swisher and say, can you believe Governor Abbott is actually willing to do this for me? You know he's doing that, right? Yeah, he loves that. So speaking of which, he said he planned to appoint a new commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics over the next three or four days.

He fired the head of the agency last week following a jobs report that showed week hiring in July. a major downward revisions to jobs created in May and June. These revisions happen all the time, by the way. Trump called the jobs numbers phony and rigged, his favorite two words, and offered no evidence except my opinion. His economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, who's quite a minion, defended the move in an interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.

Let's listen. Is the president prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with? No, absolutely not. The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, They're more transparent and more reliable. And if there are big changes and big revisions, we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example, that we want to know why. We want people to explain it to us. They need to be explained to.

We've seen this firing routine from Trump many times, as you well know. But is he taking it to a whole new level here? Your thoughts on this? Because you and your Wall Street pals must be freaked out by this one. Well, I mean, you listen, I mean, I don't think anybody on Wall Street's freaked out anymore. I mean, that was a freak out moment in 2018. In this moment now, you're going to expect anything from Donald Trump. You may remember this.

It's sort of obscure now, but Jack Welch, the very high profile CEO of GE, questioned the job reports numbers under the Obama administration once. And so this is a political tactic. I find those statistics, like the CBO, to be very nonpartisan. The numbers are the numbers. I will say that they can be antiquated, though, Carr, you know, like, you know the cliche statistics are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics. We can make statistics look any way that we want. And so I don't think it's the right thing to do to do that. He would be better advised to say, okay, how are we getting this data now? And can this data be sourced better and sourced in real time, given all the great technology we have in the country, to make. the data a little bit less laggy and a little bit more accurate in real time. And so he's not going to do that. But here's the irony. And I push this back to you for a second, this data supports

a rate cut. And so he's railing on Jerome Powell. What I don't understand is why didn't he take the data and say this is purely voracious data. It's absolutely accurate. And this more emphasizes is that the Federal Reserve Chair and the board there is on the wrong side of where rates are. So why didn't he? You know, it's an interesting question because I think his knee-jerk reaction was, oh, shit, the economy's doing way worse than it did under Joe Biden. And, of course, I can't let my minions, because these people will believe anything I say, can shoot people on Fifth Avenue, deny I'm on the Epstein list, I can do all these different things.

And so let me keep the narrative going that there's another conspiracy afoot. and that they're lying about the statistics because it's an Obama-slash-Biden legacy appointee and their group in there doing the statistics. But he would have been better served to actually say, hey, this is accurate. Where is Jerome Powell? Why is he not cutting rates? Because Trump clearly wants a rate cut for various different reasons. So that's the irony there.

I'm surprised he didn't go in that direction. Who could he have a point here that would satisfy? Will Wall Street freak out about this or not at all? I don't think so. I think Wall Street has said to themselves, and this is the weird thing about Wall Street, Wall Street says that this guy's gone in three and a half years, but I submit back to Wall Street, do you know anybody that builds a $200 million ballroom onto their house and then moves out in three and a half years?

I'm just pointing that out to people. The guy's making expansive renovations to the White House. It doesn't smell like a guy that wants to leave anytime soon. So I think we're going to be up for a potential fight there. But I think Wall Street looks at this and says, okay, this is. guy's leaving in three and a half years, there'll be a clean-up on aisle 7. He's breaking all the pickle jars at the local supermarket. There'll be a cleanup. It'll either be a Democrat that comes in or a non-personality cult member because I do believe this is a personality cold and

it will die off with Trump. Someone else will come in and be a little bit more normal, won't be able to get away with the nonsense that Trump is getting away with. And so Wall Street's like, okay, we can live with this a three and a half years. Tariffs are ridiculous. Guys like Jamie Diamond are saying so far so good, but you know they're mumbling in the backroom saying, what a disaster. Jason Furman actually had a great piece in the New York Times over the weekend describing that the tariffs are not going to cause a great recession or a potential depression, but they are slowing down the economy and they are slowing down capital allocation decisions in the economy. And it's, frankly, starting to show up in the data. So, you know, this is, again, the MAGA narrative is, ho, ho, still got a strong economy despite our tariffs.

But the real narrative should be, no, the tariffs haven't fully kicked in yet. Right. So speaking of that, he's continuing his mission to up in global trade. He launched a new round of tariffs targeting over 60 U.S. trading partners and set take effect August 7th. They keep moving these dates. These tariffs range from about 10% to 40%. Canada is at 35%.

India is at 25%, which Trump says he's going to increase. because India is buying oil from Russia, and somewhat inexplicably, Switzerland is at 39%. He's already signaling more tariffs to come, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and critical minerals. The markets initially fell on the tariff news as well as in the jobs report. They seem to have rebounded us Monday morning. As you say, they're just sort of a wait-and-see kind of thing? Or are they, is Wall Street actually concerned, even if either trashing them behind the scenes? Well, I think Wall Street thinks that all of this stuff ends up at about 10%, possibly 15, terrible, but tolerable. I think that's how Wall Street looks at it. I don't think that 39% number that you're referencing in Switzerland is going to stick. I think that's a remnant number from April 2nd. You remember when he came down. Yeah, that crazy. He's like Orange Moses coming down from Mount Evil with the tablet. You know, it's like walking in. You know, no one knows what the hell he's talking about. I think that's

one of those things that's like left over the 39%. And I think that's going to get reversed. I know the Swiss government is frantic about getting that reverse. They're working on it right now. And I think that will. I think these things settle out 10 to 15. The person that's handled Trump better than anybody, my opinion, is Mark Carney. Mark Carney has held the ground there. There's no way that the American economy can have a 35% reciprocal tariff with Canada. It's just not not sustainable. You'll you'll knock everybody out of business. You know, you have lobstermen that are buying, they're catching lobster in U.S. waters, but they're sending it across the border to have it processed in Canadian processing fans and then sent back. So you'll knock the price

up 70% in terms of the way the tariffs work. You put everybody out of business. You hurt the restaurant industry. Which most businesses have been absorbing until now, right? They've been sort of... Yeah, I mean, look at the GM print. GM lost a billion dollars by absorbing the cost. But you know who isn't absorbing it, is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is not absorbing it because they've lost the Canadian tourists.

They've lost the U.K. tourists. They've lost the guys coming in from Australia that used to gamble and go crazy in Las Vegas. You have no tax on tips, but you have a 50% rate. production and revenue for the people that are receiving the tips. So Trump's nonsense, his rhetoric has really hurt tourism. I mean, there's an estimate of about $80 to $90 billion of tourist revenues that have been lost in the U.S. And so rhetoric matters when you're the president. These tariffs, though, Wall Street again, saying 10 to 15 percent, somebody smart will come in and revise these things. Who's smart? Who in that administration? I know you

probably are not a Lutnik fan, would be my guess. Well, I mean, Howard Butnik, Buttick, Nutlick? You're allowed to say Nutlick on the Piddlek? You're allowed, whatever. Coward Nutlick? Is that what we're talking about? Is that who we're talking about? That's who I'm talking about. I mean, you know, the guy's unbelievable. I mean, I know Howard a long time. Yeah, I bet. But Howard, if you said to me, there's a picture in the dictionary of Potomac fever, okay, it would be Howard Ludnick. Okay. Potomac fever. I'm in the mix. I'm driving around in the Secret Service vans.

I'm an important guy. I'm an important guy. The phone calls are coming in. And I'm going to have this very smug, arrogant, jerk off smile on television every time I'm talking. I'm going to be pedantic and I'm going to be demeaning to the interviewers. I mean, come on, Howard. I don't know what. You took the wrong pill.

The side effects of Potomac fever are career ruining. And he's heading. in that direction. He should really calm down and get a grounding wire up his ass and calm himself down a little bit. Who is, who do you like there? Who do you think, Besson? Kevin's a good guy.

Hastert's a very smart guy. He's a reasonable guy. He steered the president away from some of the really bad things. Bessent or however you pronounce his name. I know Scott a long time. I think he is a person. If you talk to the Wall Street guys that really know him, he's blocked Trump on a few things. even to the point where I think he said, you know, I can't do this.

And so you may have to find somebody else. Of course, Trump capitulates when you tell him that, particularly somebody like percent where he needs him. Remember something about treasury. Trump doesn't give a shit about treasury. Trump wants the trains to run on time. He wants the bills for the American government to be paid and he wants the taxes collected. The places he really cares about are justice.

That's a place he really cares about. Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense. Okay, so it's very important to him that he has full-on sycophants and those roles. But Bessent, he's smart enough to know that he needs somebody that Wall Street is going to accept. And of course, you know, it's been reported, so it's worth talking about. Jamie Diamond is now in direct conversations with the president. And he's a very moderate guy, and he's trying to guide the president towards doing things that are less stupid, frankly. That's what he's there for.

Yeah, that was an interesting. I was like, oh, I see. I like Jamie. He's probably the smartest of all of us. He's probably giving very good advice to him, and Trump probably looks up to him in a weird way or in some level, not respect, but just probably thinks he's smarter than him, and so we'll listen to him. So one of the things, though, that doesn't feel too smart speaking of State Department,

He's ordered two U.S. nuclear subs to reposition near Russia just in case. That move was in response to a series of fiery social media posts from former Russian president Medvedev. Medvedev warned in one post that each new ultimatum Trump issues over the Ukraine is a threat and a step toward war. And the Kremlin has responded to Trump's move saying we believe everyone should be very careful about new legal rhetoric. I would agree with that. Trump is also threatening sanctions unless Russia ends the war by August 8th, which is next. the end of this week. But Putin has dismissed pressure for a ceasefire. Talk about what he's doing here from your perspective. Well, I mean, it's saber-rattling. I don't think it's a much ado about

nothing. I think it's a good news story. It shows his base that he has some muscularity. I think the Iranian hit showed some muscularity. This base likes that. Why he is threatening them when he spent his almost both administrations sucking up to them is really interesting to me. Why now? Why here? Well, he doesn't have a show. Well, okay, well, I can answer that. So what's happening to Trump is that the lame duck clock is ticking. He's 18 months away from being a full-on lame duck. And there's a little bit of flex by some of the conservative Republicans that are for democratic freedoms. And there's also some institutional memory in the Congress, particularly the Senate, related to the security guarantees that President Clinton signed in 1994, the Ukraine government, gave up the They're nukes in exchange for these security guarantees. So there are a group of institutionalists in McConnell's, the Thunes, that have gone to Trump and said, hey, you're not being tough enough.

You've got to help these guys more. We can have a defeated Ukraine government at this point. And so Trump is under the gun. He's afraid of Putin. I think we have to state that publicly. I always tell people, if the windows open, Kara, and you hear clippity clop, it's, it's, It's a horse. It's not a zebra.

You've got to look at the obvious. They've got something on him that scares the living shit out of him. And he won't move against Putin. And you have to say to yourself, well, Putin's got a declining country. His GDP now is 14% smaller than Italy. He's got a failed defense department or war department. Just look at what's going on there. And so how could a very rich man, which Trump is, who runs the largest military and arguably

one of the most powerful nations in the history of the world be coutowing to Vladimir Putin. And the answer is they got something on him. And they got something on him that scares the living daylights out of him. And yet he rattles the sabers here. Why? Just for because he has to. Because I know Trump's personality. So he's a great compartmentalist. He's got pressure on him from these congressional leaders. And so he has to do something. But he never does the thing. He'll say 50 days. He'll say 10 days. He'll say 20, two days, but he never, never does it because he's so afraid of Putin. You know, he could, he could bitch-slap Putin super hard. He could send those Haimars. He could send more Patriot batteries. He could get permission to launch a few ICBMs into Russia from Ukraine territory. You could do all

those things. And it would probably collapse the Putin government. And it would probably cause a replacement of Vladimir Putin. Of course, we'd have to worry about that. from an intelligence perspective, there could be harder right radicals. Maybe we don't want Putin necessarily replace as much as we want them contained. But there's a lot of things that Trump could do. He's not willing to do them because he's scared shit of Vladimir Putin. Okay, Anthony, let's go on a quick break when we come back. Trump's super PAC rakes in the cash and we'll talk Epstein as well.

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And we've all, unfortunately, left a breadcrumb trail for data brokers, those people who compile your personal information and sell it. But Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. I think it's really important for people to do this. I am a huge privacy person around my stuff, and I've been shocked by the stuff that I found on Delete Me, especially as they assemble stuff about me in like old addresses, all these things. Dresses I've forgotten.

And it just sort of creates a profile of me that is actually pretty accurate and also is wrong in many ways. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for it, Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join DeleteMe.com slash pivot and use the promo code pivot at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join delete me.com slash pivot and enter the code pivot at checkout. That's join delete me.com slash pivot code pivot. In 1961, President Kennedy's FCC chairman Newton Minow gave a speech deriding commercial TV programming. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast,

He wanted to do something about it. Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can't do better? So Congress created something called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He might not have realized when you were interacting with the CPB, but it happened all the time. When you were tickled by Elmo. Happy International Joke Day. When someone moved you on the drive home. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross.

CPB is the reason you're hearing my voice right now. But due to big, beautiful cuts, the organization and announced on Friday that it would be shutting down next year. What's taken its place? If you ask this White House, they might say something like Prager You. What is Prager You on Today Explained? Anthony, we're back. Maga Inc., Donald Trump's main super PAC is currently sitting on a war chest of nearly $200 million,

according to a new FEC filing. Donors include Elon Musk, who gave $15 million to. MAGA and the other GOP PACs just weeks after his spat with Trump. Venture capitalist Mark Enderieson, who's always creepily around the basket, and TikTok investor Jeffrey Yass. Contributions also came in from crypto executives, an energy, which makes sense to me, an energy company, and a mother seeking a pardon for her son, who got one. A spokeswoman for MAGA, Inc., rejected claims that the donations were exchanged for

access, saying Trump, quote, cannot be bought and works toward the best interest of the country. It feels pay to play to me. The New York Times had a pretty devastating piece about that. But does the money go towards helping Republicans in the midterms, or is Trump really considering that third term, which you referenced just a second ago? Well, I think you have to take Trump seriously about him wanting a third term. And I think you have to take Steve Bannon seriously about him running for a third term. Now, up against that, it'll be 82 years old. It looks like he does have some vascular issues.

I mean, they've reported that. So let's say that that's probably true. And he's got an unsteady gate, and he is, he's getting older. But I don't think a guy like him leaves power easily. I just don't think that. And so I hope that. And I hope that my buddies who are institutionalists in Washington say that that's the last stand for them, that they'll fight that tooth and nail. Those are Republicans saying that, who I'm still a donor to several of these Republican senators.

But I don't, I don't know. You have to take him literally and seriously when he's thinking about these things. I don't think that money goes to lots of people in the midterms. Trump is for Trump. He's not for other people. He doesn't give a shit. And so I think this is something very smart that he's done, though. And I think people should understand this.

He's not a traditional politician. A traditional politician on Obama, a George W. Bush, stops raising money in their second term for their own PACs. he didn't do that. And I think he's now setting a precedent for future politicians to not do that because that will give him, let's say he was a normal politician. He's, oh, I got leverage now in the system long after I'm laying ducked. And I can pick and choose who I'm going to give this money to in different congressional races. I don't think Trump's going to do that. Trump will figure out a way to use that money. I think the pardons are going up now. Probably $100 million now for a pardon. I think they started at the $3 to $5 million level. And Trump should just put out a retail price list, you know. Say, look, here's the list for all the shit that you can get from me, you know. You want to come out and dinner with me. You're a crypto guy, $5 million. You want to pardon now.

It's got to be $100 million. You didn't go to that dinner, did you? Did you go to that dinner? No, I haven't seen or been around Trump. Do you want to know the last time I talked to Trump? When? That was April. It was Easter Sunday, April of 2019.

He called me. I thought he was calling me to wish me a happy. Easter, but he wasn't. He was calling me to lay into me because I had written an article that said that it was an open letter to the president. The press is not the enemy of the people. Stop saying that. The press is there to protect the people, but it's also the font of our financial innovation. You and I have talked about this. Being able to speak freely in a society, you teach second grade children that they can speak freely, they go on and become Karaswisher, or they create a Facebook or they create an iPhone. Other countries that don't do that.

They have to steal our technology. Trump got really pissed at me, laid into me. And he told me that I was a deep stater and some other shit that he said. And that was the last time he spoke. So, no, I haven't been around Trump since that. Happy Easter. Yeah, Happy Easter. What are you saying when someone says that?

Okay. I disagree. And I think you're being wrong. I think history is going to judge what I'm saying to be more right than you. Right. And then he more or less abruptly hung up the phone. Oh, wow. But I got in the Happy Easter, by the way.

He did derisively say happy Easter back to me. He's a miserable dude. You know, he's a miserable dude. Let me give a newsflash to every pivot listener, okay? Okay, newsflash. Anybody close to Trump hates his guts, okay? Okay. If you're in Trump's orbit, you're in the first electron orbit.

Laura Lumer seems to like him. Who does? Laura Lumer. Yeah, you know, I think Laura's not in the, I don't think she's in the first electron orbit. Right. I'm talking about you got to be in the first electron orbit. You're Malanya Trump. you move out of the goddamn White House.

You know, you got to get, if you're Ivanka and Jared, you got to stay away because he eviscerated Jared after the Abraham Accord thing. And so you got to get out of his electron orbit. But if you're in the vortex of the orbit, General Kelly, HR McMaster, you pick the person. They hate the guy's guts because they see how malevolent of a guy is. They see how dishonest and how ruthlessly is. And that shit rubs off on you, Cara Swisher, if you're sitting around it too long.

You start to stink like it. It's toxic. Sounds like it. Yeah, you start to stink like it. Speaking of toxic, let's do a quick rundown of latest happenings with the Epstein saga, which I predicted would continue. And it is. Charlemagne the God suggested the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein information is causing a political coup among Republicans on Fox News. Trump reacted on true social, saying the radio host knows nothing.

Jelaine Maxwell has been moved to a minimum security prison camp. in Texas against sexual offenders aren't allowed there, but she has been allowed. And Republicans are still split on which side to take as polling shows almost 80% of Trump voters in favor of releasing the files. I have not talked to you about this. Thoughts on what's happening and how long it lasts? Because everyone felt it was a distraction. I never did because it's at the core of Q&ON. It's at the core of the deep state stuff. And he himself has fed these toxic creatures for far too long for them to just give up. I think he's going to survive this, too. I mean, maybe I'm on the other side of this trade than you. I think he survives this. Well, I think he survives it. I just think it's

damaging. Yeah. Well, I think it's damaging. Maybe Charlemagne's right. It sets up a 26 divergence, meaning there could be conservative Republicans that say, I'm MAGA light or I'm a little less maga. I'm MAGA without pedophilia. You see Marjorie Taylor Green doing it constantly. Yeah, maybe I'm Maggot without pedophilia. I don't know. That could be a good bumper sticker. I don't, you know, I'm, you know, I'm 18 plus. I'm not 14 and below. He's disgusting sons of bitches. But Trump is, you know, he's where there's smoke, there's fire. Okay. You can't see him with Epstein. You can't, there's smoke, there's fire there. The letter has got Trump so crazed because the letter plus the doodling on the letter is implying something. that Trump does not want out there in the marketplace, which is why he's put a $10 billion speed bump together against Rupert Murdoch and a news court. But, you know, and Rupert doesn't give a shit.

You know, Rupert hates Trump like everybody else. And his attitude is, I'm 94, have at it. Let me drop a few more bombs on you. We have the bombs, okay? So now, again, you have to tell me if there's something unthinkably nefarious, I'm not going to say what it is, but you know what it is,

and your viewers and listeners know what it is. If that comes out and it's incontrovertible, it's not AI generated, it's not any of that, it's incontrovertible evidence of something unthinkably nefarious, is that enough to remove Trump? I think you think it is, you know, oh, the McCain thing's going to ruin them, doesn't ruin them. Oh, we're going to grab him by the, you know what, and the bus with Billy Bush. No, it doesn't. Nothing hurts Trump. It could damage him.

The insurrection. The insurrection. I mean, the people are dying. He fomented the violence. They have them on tape doing it. They had his former chief of staff. Basically, he was going to be their key witness. He wins the election. I think we should stipulate for the pivot people. He's one of the luckiest son of a bitch is on the planet. Every time he flips the coin, it comes up his way. So, you know, I don't think he gets knocked out by this. But I do think that just Galane thing, is interesting. So the Galane thing is like, okay, let me send my lawyer who I trust. Hey, let me knock on the, Galane, are you there? Hello, are you there? Okay, listen. I know you know a lot of bad stuff. Keep your mouth shut. We're going to move you to a minimum security prison. We're going to make it easier for you. You're listening? And then in about six months, when this blows over, we're going to commute your sentence or we're going to give you work relief or we're going to do something for you, but you got to keep your mouth shut. It's a great mob move. They're doing it right

out in the open, like the way the KGB would do it. So it's keep your mouth shut. Because if she starts to just tell on Democrats, that's a problem too, correct? No, no, no, you got to keep your mouth shut. Mouth shut. You got to keep your mouth shut because... Omerta, as us Italians, you and me now. As Omerta, you got to keep your mouth shut. That's like a full on Sicilian move, the code of silence. And by the way, with Omerta, you keep your mouth shut. We're going to Remember, when a mobster went to jail, keep your mouth shut, we're going to take care of your family, and they're going to get Vig from our operations, to take care of your sons and daughters and your wife, and when you come out of jail, we're going to get your job. Now, you can end up like

Sylvester Stallone in Oklahoma, but you're going to get a job, right? And so that's what it is, and that's what Trump and Todd Blanche are trying to do. I think that's pretty obvious. And but this is the thing that makes me laugh. You know, John Thune, you're an American jellyfish. I mean, you should write, you write such great books like Byrne, Byrne Book. and shit like that. You should write the American jellyfish, you know, starring John Thune and Mitch McConnell, starting, you know, the American jellyfishes. What are you guys doing? You're really this big a cowards? You got a guy that's morally depraved. He's bringing down your party. He's a millstone on the morality of the American people. We always like, when you and I were growing up, we like to think

of America in our patriotism as benevolent and generous. and good-natured America that was going to help other nations. And now we have this morally depraved lunatic in the White House that's stealing our thunder and is reducing our soft power all over the world, okay, which is never a good thing for a superpower, by the way. You can go throughout 5,000 years of history. No, that's never a good thing. And yet he's doing that.

We're allowing him to do that because we've got a bunch of bozos that are supposed to check him, the American jellyfishes, what are you guys doing? And the answer is, no, we're going to wait Trump out, wade him out. We're so afraid of him and we're afraid of his MAGA base. Yeah. So why? When do they turn? There is there? Well, yeah, the midterm. That's why Trump has got all that money in the war chest. You know, he knows they're coming for him in the midterms. You know, you remember that scene in the Wizard of Oz where the witch gets accidentally hit by the water bucket and she starts melting? Right. It's actually like an orange witch, though he's not really like the green wish, but he's like an orange wicked witch of the West Ring.

The water's about to hit Trump. And that's like a November 26 water hit. And as he starts to melt, these guys are, oh, you know, we didn't mean this or, oh, we didn't realize this or, oh, we're sorry about that. If he melts, if, in fact, water hits. Like, let me say this deal. I want you to really think about this, okay? They're running around saying they're going to arrest Clinton, Hillary Clinton. They're going to arrest Barack Obama.

Okay, it's all contraindicated from an intelligence report that the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio, signed off on, which was irrefutable that everything that they're saying is not true. Why are they doing that? They're doing that to distract you. They're doing that to rev up the magabase. They're doing that to say, don't look at the man behind the curtain that's flapping behind the curtain, focus on this, which is important to you. Obama is bad. There's underlying racism to

that, by the way. I think you know that. Obviously, I just don't think it works. I don't think it works. I think the Epstein stuff is much stronger. No, no, no. It hasn't worked yet. He's he's tried with the Washington Redskinned commanders and the Cleveland Guardian Indians. He's now going at it with the young woman who was in the gene commercial. I think her name was Sidney Swimmy. Yeah. So he's definitely trying stuff, you know, he's a, remember, he's the Napoleon of the cultural war. Like, the best thing that Trump has going for him are the Democrats, because he knows how to drop a bomb on the battlefield and they run towards it and then he's doing something over here. You know, he's master of deflection. All right. We're going to get to that next, actually. We're going to go

on a quick break and we come back. We're going to talk about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as it winds down operations because there are very real repercussions to everything he's doing with these distractions. This week on criminal, in 2008, detectives from the Minnesota Police Department were called to investigate a drive-by shooting. Everything they did was recorded by a camera crew for a TV show. Those camera people are allowed to ride around in police vehicles.

They're allowed to be on the scene of crime scenes that are very active, that things have just happened, people have just died. Years later, the Attorney General's office would say, say the TV show had completely misrepresented the case. Listen to our latest episode on Criminal, wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Framer. Kids today, they never understand what we went through back in the day. Building a website, for instance, used to be a lot of time and a lot of money,

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at Framer.com and use the code Pivot to get your first month of pro on the house. That's Framer.com promo code Pivot. Framer.com promo code Pivot rules and restrictions apply. Anthony, we're back with more news. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting says it will begin winding down operations following an over $1 billion cut in federal funding. The move, it's not very big. It's about 100 people. The move will, what they do is they distribute funds out to local stations, a lot of them rural, by the way.

The move will severely impact local operations of PBS and NPR. Both NPR and PBS say they're committed to maintaining service after the closure. The CPB told employees most positions will be eliminated on September 30th. This is a loss of local news and rural communities. This is a closing, not of the big NPR stations or not of PBS stations, but the small ones, which provide all kinds of news and other things like that in places that don't have them. And I'm going to link it with institutions worried about losing funding. The Smithsonian will restore information about President Trump's impeachments after removing a placard on the topic in July.

This was reported by the Washington Post. The museum says the placard was removed after a review of legacy content, which was demanded by the Trump administration, was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year exhibition. The exhibition in question notes that only three presidents have seriously faced removal. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, it's not true, a person familiar with the plans told The Washington Post the content review took place following this pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director. So museums altering history, closing down of long institutions,

which is something Republicans have wanted for a while, but it will actually affect the small local news in rural communities more than anybody else. This is more than a distraction because it actually, things happen. things actually happen. I mean, this is, this is Trump. He's the, you know, look, there were certain rules in Washington. The sacred cow of the left was the public broadcasters. Ronald Reagan railed on it, but he never did anything.

Remember Ronald Reagan railed on Roe v. Wade, but never did anything. And Trump has come into town, and he's basically now saying, hey, those sacred rules where we rail on, you're on the left and you rail on something on the right and you don't do anything and vice versa, we're ending that. And again, I think it makes for a coarser society. If you're asking me practically, will the society survive the end of that? It will. Does it suck for those rural areas? It does. But it will survive it. Okay. And could something else creep up or could there be publicly funded or non-publicly funded, a charitably funded replacement. It's all very possible. But I think to me it's more about the rules, Kara. It's more about, okay, we're going to smash people.

We don't want any civility to our government. We don't want anybody having lunch in the cloak room or the cafeteria. They can barely work. Apparently, they can barely work out with each other in the gym now. They're in separate areas of the gym. And it's just bad for America. That's not how we got here. The idea was that we were going to have some consensus, we're going to have some compromise, and we're going to have some civility with each other, and Trump doesn't like that. Because remember, there's nobody that Trump hates more than himself, nobody, which is why he's always got three things of a self-hater. humiliation rituals for people that you're insecure around.

That's every world leader. He tries to bring him into the White House and ensnare them in some type of humiliation ritual. Publicly humiliating. Or, yeah, or he'll bring him to Scotland. Even though he's ahead of state, Kirstormer, he's showing up at a guest in his own country to be humiliated where Trump is railing on the London mayor.

And so what self-haters do is they create and foment hatred they excoriate and try to humiliate through humiliation rituals. And then the third thing they do is they want to leave a stain and legacy of that. They want people to be turned on each other because it makes them feel better. They get satisfaction out of seeing people turn on each other, right? Trump gets off on the idea that we're going after each other. He likes it. So there's a thing.

He's a, I mean, he's a, he's a, you know, a lot of weird things about the guys. Like a weirdo, but like the self-hatred thing do not underestimate the self-hatred, you know. It could be the side effects of all the orange shit that's going into his bloodstream. You know what I mean? But you, you, everyone talks about these are distractions. You've said it several times. These are actual things that happen now. Like, we're exchanging things in museums.

We're closing down this. And so I was, I was at a, at a book fair this week. and Jeff Goldberg, who has had some good licks in on Trump at the Atlantic, was saying, you know, that he does all these distractions. And I almost got on and said, well, here's six things that actually happened because of the distractions. They aren't, they're not minor. We use that term a lot, like, but they're actually distractions with results, right? Like, this is something that the right has been trying to close down PBS for years

or the corporation for this, the years, decades. Okay, but let me just take the line. about what I'm saying, though. We're going to close down PBS because it's going to make people sore. And it's a sacred cow that the Republicans always talked about but never did anything about. So now we're going to drop a bomb here to widen the divide between us. I see. Trump wants to do that. So you have to understand that, yes, there are distractions, but there's also, I want to leave a legacy of disrepair and hatred. And I want you guys to hate. hate each other after I leave, you know, because by the way, Jackie O, F her, I'm going to pave over her Rose Garden, okay? Because why am I going to do that? Because you're going to get triggered and pissed about that. And I want you triggered and pissed because I hate myself so much that I want hatred to be an exponential force from my personality. Like, you know, Monroe had a

doctrine, stay out of the Western Hemisphere. Truman had a doctrine. We're going to contain communism, the Trump doctrine is a manifestation of his own self-hatred. And once you see that prism clearly, and you see, oh, okay, he hates himself, so this is what he's going to do. Oh, wow, he's really afraid of Putin. Putin must really have something on him that's scaring the living daylights out of him, which is why he's immobile and paralyzed against the guy that's running a failed state with a declining population and high alcoholism.

But I'm going to go, I'm going to go another. But everything is through the prism of self-hatred. So if he can hurt you, Cara, he will. If he can humiliate you, he will. If he can put J.D. Vance in a meme where he looks like a big fat cabbage patch doll riding at a separate clown car from him as they're chasing Obama on the freeway in the OJ Bronco, he will. And by the way, J.D. says, ha, ha, this was funny.

He's crying on the inside He's crying on the inside That's another episode No, but Carrie, you have to understand Because Trump is going to put him through You remember that scene in Fargo Where the guy's going through the woodchipper That's Jady Vance

Okay, Trump is going to throw him So definitively into the woodchipper Because he doesn't want a younger guy replacing him when he leaves No, he wants to be a total fiasco Who does he want? Just very briefly, who does he want If you had a guess,

Who would he pick? Nobody. Remember, when he fired that blonde girl, I can't remember her name, the blonde woman from the first season of Apprentice, he replaced her with Ivanka. Remember, she got a few speaking gigs. It pissed them off, right?

And so that he put Vavanka. So if Ivanka and Don Jr. are not replacing him or Eric not replacing him, nobody. You know, remember what it, I know, I'm not comparing Trump to Hitler, but just remember this piece of history. When they told Hitler he was losing, he said, okay, great, flood the coal mines,

bring down the electrical grid in the country. And they looked at them and said, what? Yeah, well, if there's not going to be a thousand-year Reich, let's destroy the whole thing. If you were to pick one of the kids that he would pick to run, which one would it be? Well, you know, Ivanka's very smart. She's very talented.

He's capable. Eric is a very smart guy. You know, when I listen to Eric talk about things like the blockchain, he understands it, okay? But the heartbeat of MAGA is Donald Trump Jr. Okay. They like him. Okay. And so I don't know, you know, I don't know which of those three, but I think Trump would be happy with all three, but they're three different flavors. You know, Ivanka's basically a Democrat, right? So, you know, probably no on her. Eric is not politically motivated, but he's probably smarter, you know, than most people think. But it probably would have to be Don Jr. Don Jr. is beloved by the base. If you ever see him with the base, you'll know. they hold him in very high regard. And do you?

Okay, so I have a peace agreement with those guys. You know, when I got into the fight with Trump, I always got along with them. And my agreement with them was, don't say anything bad about me on Twitter. I won't say anything bad about you. Karas Swisher is going to ask you about me on the Pivot Podcast five years from now. Don't say anything bad about me. Yeah. And I have lived up to that agreement.

And they have lived up to that agreement. So I'll simply say, I get on with those guys. Eric wanted to come to my Bitcoin conference in Wyoming. I invited them, no problem. I think they know that their father wants to pick fights with lots of, lots of people. And I don't think they want to be fighting with all the people that their father wants them to fight with. Got that makes sense. All right, Anthony, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails. Okay, Anthony, let's hear some wins and fails. you go first. Okay, so wins. I'm going to say this. You're probably not going to like this, but I think Elon Musk is winning. I think he's backed into business. I think he raised a lot of money on XAI. I participated in that. I will fully disclose that I'm an investor. But I think Elon Musk is winning. And I think so much so, and I think Donald Trump is so afraid of Elon Musk. He must be. He started the Epstein thing. The Epstein thing. And he tweeted out, oh, I love Elon. I'm not coming after his business.

This is, you know, blah, blah. Okay, so I think Elon Musk is winning. So that's a big win. He just so people know Tesla just granted shares to Elon worth of $29 billion, describing as a good-based award. That's another big win. Less than the $55 billion. That's correct.

I was like, it's a half. Yeah, but, you know, that's also a win. But I think Elon's winning, whether people like that or not, I think that's a definitive objective win. So you invested in XAI? You think that's a winner? Or I think he's a real behind. He's really quite behind in the race.

compared to Google or chat GPT. You think he's behind? I don't know. I put $300 a month into Super Grock. I think the thing is phenomenal. Okay. And I think it's distinctive. But again, that's me.

I'm not an AI expert. I'm just, I use it for different things. I'm a cloud, I guess is called subscriber, a chat GBTBT subscriber. You use them all. Use them all. I do spend a lot of time. I would say, if Elon goes and does his businesses, he's better off.

That's for sure. But I do think he is quite involved. He was the one that started the Epstein stuff. So that was a warning to Trump. So I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you another winner. I'll give you three winners and I'll give you three losers. Okay. Another big winner with controversial, Jerome Powell, because Jerome Powell's legacy is intact.

Okay, the guy's done a decent job, not perfect. He got transitory inflation wrong. It was more secular. But he's done a decent job. He's a good human being. And he's one of the few guys that have stuck. stuck it to Trump a little bit. And he started in a very diplomatic way with some level of aplomb.

And I think people need to learn about it that way. And then the third winner, believe it or not, is actually the UK government related to the U.S. Because they got the deal. They moved first, took advantage of Trump's love affair with the monarchy and the anglofile nature of Trump and his mom from Scotland. And they got a 10% trade deal done before anybody else. And I think that they're a winner. I think the three failures, okay, are Vladimir Putin, huge failure. He's coming to the end here, Vladimir Putin.

I don't think Vladimir Putin will survive what's coming because you can't do what he did, declare war on Ukraine, lose the war, and stay in power in Russia. And you say, well, he hasn't lost the war, but he also hasn't won the war. And it's three years into it. And, you know, he may be able to stalemate this because of the compromise he has on Trump till 28. But I think I think you'll see Putin out to the great surprise of people. So he's a failure. Another big failure is the American car industry is going to be slammed around by these tariffs.

They won't be able to absorb all the prices. They're making good cars, but they're not making great cars. The tariffs on the European cars are not going to overly help them. frankly, because a lot of Mercedes and BMW are being made in the country now. And so I think there's a problem there for the American car company. I think that's on the side of failure. And last but not least, the biggest failure that I've seen in the five years, what I would say, if you put out the yard markers and said, okay, last five, there's been 10 years of Trump. Who's been the greatest failure in the last five years? That's the American Congress. The American Congress had a

responsibility to check and balance the American system. And to use an Italian expression, they did ugats. They did ugats. Okay. And your viewers and listeners could look up with who gotz means, but they've really done nothing. And they're going to be judged very poorly by history. So those are three winners. Those are three failures. All right. I'm going to do mine. I'm going to do just two failures, actually, that were really striking in two different places. One, The Israeli government just votes to remove the Attorney General, who's a Netanyahu critic. I think they have done more to diminish their standing, especially among young people, and they have only themselves to blame, especially what's happening in Gaza. No question.

More people are calling it a genocide. We can see with our eyes what's happening there. And so I think this government is hurtling towards illegality, you know what I mean, in the things they're doing. And I think the thing that holds up a country is a country of laws. And, you know, you believe in the stock market, you believe in the laws, you believe in the courts. And I think they're, he's going to see a lot of pushback from people in that country at some point. And I think they've done it to themselves. They have lost a generation of young people who would have been supportive of Israel.

So I think that's, especially this voting to remove the attorney general, which is, I think, at the heart of things like that, because he's a Netanyahu critic. And Netanyahu's sucked up into corruption that is so obvious. And he's bad at it, by the way. Trump is quite good at corruption and Netanyahu's bad at it. The other thing is Nancy Mace running for governor of South Carolina. I think I've never seen a politician just sort of run herself into a wall on so many things. Someone who seemed promising, for sure, has become really a joke to everybody in Congress that I talk to. I think she's looking for her exit to try to run for governor.

She'll certainly be ahead in the beginning because of her name recognition and the antics that she pulls. But I think she's probably like a lot of men can do it a little better, but they're not necessarily. And I think she has ruined what could have been a really interesting political career. But I think she's got a lot of personal problems that are on top of that. If I had to say, I agree with you about Elon. If he gets back to business, I think he's, I think Trump should be, everyone was talking about him being. he should be scared of Trump. I think Trump should be scared of him.

That's my feeling. I think he's not Omarosa, like I say. He's not Omarosa. And he is a first person who mentioned the Epstein stuff. He has enormous power around the world. And so I think if he gets back to business and focuses there, he has a lot of levers to pull. Not to interrupt, but just remember this one tweet, which was very insightful. Elon said, you're going to be around for three and a half years.

I'm going to be around for the next 40. Correct, correct. And I think Elon, whatever his weaknesses are, and I'm sure we all have strengths of weaknesses. He's got a lot of weaknesses. Okay, but you're very kind to him. I think we have to stipulate that he's a smart guy. Absolutely.

And he sees the egg. He sees the hair on the egg, particularly as a relation. By the way, I, you know, I told his buddies he was going to get blown out of there. Elon lasted 12 scaramuchis. He did. Okay, 12 times longer. By the way, it was exactly 11.8.

But I'm the official score of scaramuches, I think I should be. And I'm a generous guy. I round up. So he lasted 12 scaramuchis. And that was 12 times longer than me. But here's the thing. Elon has seen the malevolence because you don't write, you're on the list. If that that's a code for you're a really bad FG.

You're a really bad FG. Yep, I agree with you. I think he's someone who's going to endure. And if he clean himself up, I mean, a lot of what he's done is unforgivable, but he will be forgiven, especially if he creates economic value. And he will be around a lot longer. I don't think that's necessarily a win. But I think he definitely is in much more of a commanding position than Trump realizes. And I think he was wrong to do what they did to him. I think there would have been a nicer way to part. But you can't do that with Trump. You can't do that. You can't do it. That's right. I would see Trump maybe embracing him again. Anyway, I don't know if Elon will embrace Trump, though. He think he's moved on. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to NYMag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 Pivot.

Over on, on with Kara Swisher, this week I spoke with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich about why Democrats are struggling right now. Let's listen to a clip. The reason Democrats are so unpopular is they don't have. a coherent and authentic message that translates to average people as authentic and real because the corporate Democrats, the financial Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats, don't allow them to. You know, a lot of Democrats I know are scared. They don't want to bite the hands that feed them. I think you'll probably agree with that, Anthony. I agree that. He is a former professor of mind. I have an enormous amount of respect for him, but he also gave an interview in one of the

Sunday news magazines. I can't remember if it was the New York Times or the FT, but I read the interview, and he's calling for the Mondamis, and he's calling for these sort of harder left people to coalesce the party. I think that'll be a 1972 McGovern-like nightmare for the Democrats, and I think it's a big mistake because it's a center-right country. We have religious orthodox In this country, you know, you and I might be secular. I'm not saying you are, but I'm more secular than the religious orthodox. But I think that Europeans in general don't understand this because they by and large now the majority of the population is secular. But this country has a lot of religious ferocity to it still. And I think the Democrats have really missed the mark on that. You know what Trump

once said to me this is an important thing to tell your viewers? Trump said to me on the campaign, plane. He says, you know, you're an idiot. I said, yes, I know I'm an idiot, but why am I an idiot? He said, well, you're a Wall Street guy. You're fiscally conservative and you're socially liberal. Am I right? I said, yes, I'm fiscally conservative, socially liberal. He says, my base, Anthony, my base, fiscally can, excuse me, my base, Anthony, fiscally liberal, socially conservative. He's correct. That's how, that is actually, I just was talking to Kristen Sultes Anderson. She said that exactly.

It is true. He said that to me in 2016. The Democrats, wake up, wake up. He understands his base. And believe it or not, a lot of his face used to vote for you. Okay? And so wake up and get in the middle before it's too late. Well, I have a different take on this.

I think everybody should be who they are and authentic of where they are. If you're Abby Spanberger, you're a centrist right in Virginia or Mickey Cheryl in New Jersey. And if you're mom, Donnie, be mom. Be yourself. I think be yourself is, and it may be different across the country. And I'm not sure anyone should stand for anything with the Democrats. I think they should stand for a lot of things. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you're genuine to who you are, I think you do well where you are.

We're always looking for someone who represents everybody, and that's impossible in this day and age. I think it's well said, but I just think if you're going to go hard left in this country right now, particularly with the wokeism ending, go hard left, you're going to lose elections. You may win in New York and you may win in Minnesota, you may win the mayor's race in Minnesota, Minneapolis, but you're going to lose the big general election. And it's got to be very painful.

If you're not, for the general election, for the larger country, that's absolutely true. But we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Can I ask you one last question? Please. Right now, I want to do a prediction. Who are the two presidential flights in 2028?

So I think Newsom is going to be the nominee for the Democrats. I think he'll pick a Midwestern moderate. He'll probably pick a white guy. I know that sounds crazy, but I think he probably will. It'll end the virtue signaling that's going on on the left, and you'll get the same policies, and they'll be more acceptable to some of the anti-woke moderates that are out there. So I think it's Newsome. Not Westmore. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think, you know, I mean, I don't know how honest you want me to be on this podcast. Yeah, I do. No, I want you to lie. But I think Obama has hurt the ability for an African-American to get the nomination. I don't think people realize the existential damage that Obama did. Van

Jones called it a white lash. That was the apotheosis of Donald Trump. And so I think the way Obama handled the presidency has hurt that, if I'm just being brutally honest. And I think I think the last two women that were the nominees for the Democrats have hurt the women standing in the party for now. And people could be very mad at me for saying this. I'm talking about this as a realist, as an analyst, as an analyst, not as not a normative thing of what ought or should be. I'm just talking about what actually is. I think Newsom gets it. Newsom has shown some muscularity. Newsom did a good job in L.A. in terms of the way they defended themselves against Trump's brown-shirted lunatics. And Lusum is standing up on the Jerry Man.

And Luson is putting a finger in Trump's eye, and he's doing a better job trolling him in social media. He's doing a great job. And I think he wasn't. And by the way, and I was on Gavin's podcast. Yeah. And I read to Gavin all the- He's gotten to every white guy, but go ahead, I joke with him. I'm like, another white guy today, how interesting.

The other thing I would tell you just quickly is that it will not be, it will not be Marco Rubio, it will not be J.D. Vance. but I think there will be a candidate that comes out of the woodwork that surprises people. I know this is crazy. It could be a Charlie Baker, who's now running the NCAA. He was the former governor of Massachusetts. Very popular governor. It could be a John Thune, okay, although I think he's a jellyfish. I think he's a well-regarded.

President jellyfish to you. Go ahead. Yeah, President jellyfish to me, but I think he's a guy that could help the Republican can get back to something that's more normal to their principles and their philosophy. But I don't think it's going to be Vance. And I don't think, remember, the MAGA ends with Trump. It's a personality cult that people have more or less accepted that, even though they don't like pedophilia.

They're holding their noses, lots of them. But they won't be able, Vance won't be able to command that or Rubio. And so I think it's like a Thune Baker sort of a guy going up against. Newsom. It'll be white males. Yeah, white males as far as you could see. Going up against white males, the males are as high as an elephant's eye. I can hear the derision in your voice, but I just think that's what's going to happen.

Yeah, I agree with you. I have to say I do agree with you. Although I'm not sure it's Newsom, but there's a number of choices in that regard. Okay, that is the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Anthony, as usual. Thank you for joining us.

Appreciate being on. Give my regards to Scott. I will. And thank you so much. I will read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things, tech and business. And, Anthony, I'll be right over to look in your closet and put on your Batman outfit. Thank you. You would fit in my Batman outfit. You know, you have the same facial structure as me. Goodbye. You and Adam West have a lot of comments. Goodbye, Moogh.

Talk to you later. All right, see you.