Pivot - Mamdani’s Tax List, Zuck's Media Blitz, and SpaceX’s Trillion-Dollar Wipeout

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Kara and Scott unpack Mayor Mamdani’s controversial luxury tax list, Mark Zuckerberg’s AI messaging campaign, and SpaceX’s trillion-dollar wipeout. Then, they discuss the growing divide over AI safety, Apple’s new leasing program, and calls for Mitch McConnell to prove he’s still fit to serve. 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 email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWave powers the world's best AI, go to CoreWeave.com slash Ready for Anything. Life is full of inevitable unpleasant experiences. But thanks to modern medicine, paraminopause doesn't have to be one of them. There is still this idea that we have to suffer through it. And I am here to say to anyone listening that suffering not only is unnecessary, there's no metal at the end, but it will derail your health.

This week on Explain It to Me, how to navigate the change before the change. Find new episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Can Europe defend itself without America? And what is Ukraine's path to victory? I'm John Feiner. And I'm Jake Sullivan, and we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Roddick Sikorski joins the show to break down the shifting transatlantic alliance and what comes next in Ukraine. China, unlike us, actually could force Russia to end the war.

But my guess is that the war suits China just fine. The episode's out now. Search for and follow The Long Game, wherever you get your podcasts. Mark Zuckerberg right now is using basically this corporate Vaseline as Axe Body Spray. He thinks if he sprays enough on himself, he'll no longer stink. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I've been doxed. You've been doxed. Tell me. So I don't know if you've heard, but Mayor Momdani has decided to release a list of the 950,000 residences with addresses and names that might be eligible for his pieter tax. Yeah, this is from the Wall Street Journal. This is a story.

You explain it. Do you want me to explain it? Let me read from the Wall Street Journal. Mom Domini's administration fired a warning shot last week and it published an online list of property owners that might be subject to a surcharge of luxury second homes. The list includes owners' names, addresses, and market value. of properties. The release list threatens to stir up existing tensions, being the mayor and the city's elite. The city has also been sending out notifications to homeowners. They might be subject to the new tax. If you have a second home in New York worth more than $5 million, check your mailbox when you're back in the five boroughs because you've got mail, the mayor said in a post on social media.

I assume I am not, I have an apartment here, but I don't, I'm well below that number. I don't love this. I can't say I love this. It feels like a little bit Doxing, just tax them and get on with it, is my feeling. Here's the definition of doxing. Okay. Doxing is publishing private identifying information to expose someone to publicly pressure or harm without their consent. Tied to status, the publisher's disapproval, swap elite for any other disavowed group, and nobody's calling this a tax role.

I'm a fan of this tax. I was supportive of it. Yeah. absenteeism should subsidize a nurse in the Bronx paying 40% of her income on rent. I came out in favor of this tax. This is the definition. He's taken a legitimate source of tax revenue, and he's turning it into a wanted poster. Yeah. And the question I would have is, other than trying to identify and imply these people have done something wrong, and then 18 months after a healthcare CEO was executed in the street and then published the list? What is the upside here? Why is he doing this?

There's two things. I think he's been largely successful, but there's two things that I think are real misses, and they're both, well, they're not related. They're all related in some way. One is this luxury tax. They should not have focused on Ken Griffin. I understand what, if they got it past, Hogle agreed to do it, just tax people. That's it. That should be it. It got passed. The leader going to be mad about it. some are, some aren't like you, and then just tax them. This was a big mistake to try to put targets on these people. I find it really disturbing. The second thing was, even though I agree with problems with Benjamin Netanyahu, to say you're going to arrest him seems ridiculous

because it's not your job, right? It's not, I get why you might say I don't like him and I wish I could arrest him, but it was sort of weird. I thought it was a weird, another weird, about, which is not his job. And so in this case, I think he's going to piss off the elite anyway, or many of them, not all of them, over this tax. I don't know why he would, these records are public, I think, I believe, but why call attention to them, correct? Is that, I can look up any home if you know the address, essentially, but maybe not who's here as a second home. I don't know. That I don't know. Well, I'll just touch on the, the him saying he was. he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.

His legit, he basically, the justification was that he's been convicted in the international criminal court. There are dozens, if not hundreds of people have convicted in the international criminal court, but he's decided to announce he's arresting the Jew. Well, I'm not sure. Okay. Okay. Who else does he announce he's arresting?

He hasn't. He shouldn't have done this. I said he shouldn't have done it. I just, I think it's people have lost. So we went on violent agreement on this. And when he's decided, he's, he's not only playing into the worst fear. about him. But he's making it harder for all progressives. I believe in a progressive tax structure. I believe we should raise tax rates. And the Republicans, in order to create deficits and continue

to transfer money from the poor to the rich, they argue that progressive tax structures are persecution. And this plays exactly into that entire narrative. And let me, of course, I never miss an excuse to talk about myself. I left San Francisco in 2000 because I thought I was going to be rich. Red envelope was going public and I thought, what I want to do with my life? And I thought, I want to teach and I want to live in New York. New York is the greatest collision of proximity, humanity, culture, creativity, weirdness. And I'm like, I want that. Yes, you've said that. Yeah. And I moved there in 2000. I ended up I was not rich. And I worked my ass off in New York and I decided, you know what, I can't afford to live here, and I moved to Florida. But I decided I'm

going to start a business intelligence firm called L2, and I started it in New York, because A, it's an amazing place to start a business, and B, I always wanted to have a foot in New York. I started L2 in 2010. I sold it in 2017, and I spent a bunch of time this morning trying to figure out what are the taxes, not the federal taxes, but the state franchise tax, real estate taxes, payroll taxes, paid by L2 from 2010 to present to New York City and state. And it's about $51 million. The average, in other words, L2 is paying for what the budget for one of the largest firehouses in downtown Manhattan is $26 million a year.

But quite frankly, what he's saying is, okay, and when I sold my company in 2017, I was living in faculty housing, my dean called me and said, congratulations, I just saw you sold for this. You need to move out of faculty outling, which was fair. Right. You bought your apartment. And I bought an apartment. And now when he starts putting, quite frankly, when he starts putting a tar, implying, he's implying we've done something wrong. Right. He's implying that we're guilty of something. Yeah. There's no, they have the tax rolls. They don't need this for tax reasons. As a matter of fact, if Amazon released a list of a million names and said these people actually owe taxes or they've done something wrong or they're implied something bad about them,

and it had a 95% error rate, the same attorney general under Mom Dhani would be issuing subpoenas right now. Right, yeah. This is, this plays into... It's doxing. This is plain, and like we've... He's implying we've done something wrong

because we're successful. No, I agree. New York is the last place you want to demonize success. Yep, I would agree. The reason people move to New York is they think, I want to be successful on Broadway. I want to be successful in business.

I want to be successful in the arts. And no one's going to get in my fucking way if I'm really talented and work hard. We're going to celebrate it. We're not going to put a big R on your door and say you've done something wrong because you're successful. Yeah, yeah. I don't know quite why he did it since he got the tech.

The tax was going through. He's seeing some polling where it's not. He's already won, and I'm not sure why he's doubling down with a losing move. It's bizarre. I find that bizarre. And I don't, you know, in a time when people, public information, even if it's public, to call attention to it when you're so prominent is a

real problem. I mean, we all complain about Facebook and others using our information and justifiably. To do this is very similar. It feels very creepy. It feels very surveillance. It feels very, even if you don't like Ken Griffin, even if you don't like all these rich people lording it over New York, they'll pay, they should pay their taxes. And that's that. It should be that's that. And it is, it seems really unusually pugnacious toward, I don't, I don't understand, I was sort of shocked by this story. And I'm going to wait for more reporting on this, but it seems ridiculous to, to call attention to it when it's people you want to also stay here and you want to get their taxes. Anyway, I would agree with you, Scott. I just, I don't like it. I don't like it. And people can call us friends of rich people, but it seems unfair on, on every aspect. 95% of the people on the list suppose not going to be subject to the tax. Like what other than implying these people have done something wrong and publishing their address without their permission, without their consent,

what possible upside is there from publishing this list? I'd like to know. I would like to know what the ideas. It's not a good one. I mean, it's not good. It's not good. I know. It's been a tough morning.

By the way, I've gotten yelled up by Facebook. And then Ari Emanuel called and yelled at me too because I didn't like his column. So that was my morning. Yeah, they didn't like your Jeffrey Dahmer joke. Didn't like it. Well, I'm sorry. Meta called you about something I said? You know, because it's on social media.

All the jokes we made on the last show about you did remarketing. I was like, you know what, we didn't like the Michelle Obama as a man joke and you didn't object to it enough, you know, or whatever. I just feel like, anyway, let me say, I feel like there's not going to, that they were not happy with our jokes about Mark. But he's still on his AI optimism tour. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg asked whether AI will be centralized and restricted to a few institutions or a tool that empowers everyone. His own proposal, he says, is a philosophy based on individual empowerment as a source of prosperity and a balance of power as a foundation of safety. In the piece, which was rather long in desperate need of editing, Zuckerberg expresses concern that others

creating AI talk about it in a way that is filled with. Doom. He continues this idea in the New York Times interview, which he's on a chatting tour, saying developing AI in a tightly controlled manner is akin to abandoning values and stifling innovation. He was taking aim at Open AI and Anthropic, who were way ahead of him, actually. I suspect he wouldn't be making this speech if Meta was ahead. It was interesting that they're very, they're really doubling down on this We Love Humanity thing and AI optimism, and rightly so because they went too far in the other direction and saying how bad it would be for everybody except themselves.

And so they're sort of doubling down. What do you make of this? I know Jeffrey Dahmer jokes today, if you don't mind. No, no, it's not like he's buying bottle service after being dumped and trying to pretend everything's okay. Look, he's, CEOs consistently, consistently try to focus on their reputation, right? And as CEO trying to convince us that AI will empower everyone,

It's not marketing, it's preemptive regulation. And I thought it was just so hilarious that he's claimed to be worried about the concentration of power of AI. What he's worried about is it's not concentrating around meta. I would agree with that. Well, when one company controls, I think it's 63% of all or 68% of all social media, he's worried about the concentration of power. So that comes across as cynical. Companies of the largest distribution will likely be the most successful in

meta has 3 billion users, that's an unfair advantage if you want to talk about concentration of power. And history highlights that we consistently overestimate the short-term impact of technology and underestimate the long-term impact. So AI will likely disappoint this year, but will likely permanently reshape certain parts of our society and economy over the next decade. And essentially, it feels like every AI ad right now is an attempt at a reputation management campaign. It's not even talking about the products. It's saying, I mean, it's really interesting.

They're running their ad saying it'll connect everyone. And then someone who founded one of these companies will say it's a human extinction event on PBS. It's just sort of, well, which is it, guys? Is it going to connect us or is it going to destroy us? Well, I think they're coordinating their talks now. They're like, maybe we should slow down on the doom saying, right? Or maybe maybe we should say open is good because Dario Amodi also noted that there should be open systems. I think what it is is they've got microphones in front of their faces and they've said too much. And now they're trying to pull it back. And so Mark is sort of walking into this breach by saying, I believe it's for everybody, except he's not handing.

He did this in the beginning of the, I remember very vividly a late night phone conversation when he did this long essay, another long essay in Desperate Need of Editing, where he talked. talked about how it was about how social media was about community and he wanted to lean into people and that we're all in this together. And I recall asking him, if we're all in it together, why do you control everything? Like, why are you the monarch of Facebook? And he never had a good answer for that. Like, you know, he was like, well, I said, if we're all in it for community, why don't we all share your money? Why don't we all share if our privacy is being used? Why aren't we being paid? We're in this together, Mark.

We're in this together. Like, together, I would like some of the money. you're using my privacy to sell. Like, I had the same argument with Steve Case many years, many, many years before that. They all are like, we're here for you, but except when it comes to divvying up the goodies and or control. And so I was, I was, it's the same, if you go back to that essay he wrote about social media, none of which came true. It became a very negative force in society, although there are some definite positive aspects, no question. It's weird that he's trying this out again, because I think he actually believe. believes he's helping people. What you were right, I have to say, away from all your jokes,

which they did not like. And I feel like ads are not forthcoming in the future, is that they should just stick to, we're making capitalism and there's going to be a lot of jobs from the things we make. I think that's, or here's a vocational training, or here's, like, I think they should lean into the stuff that they actually deserve credit for, I suppose. This is, this is not only wasteful advertising, which is everyone's worried about, this, this hurts. This brings up, this will just inspire a lot of conversations like this one showing just how cynical this is. And reminding people that this is a firm that when social went on mobile, we saw the greatest increase in young adult depression that we've registered since we begin tracking it. I mean,

it just stirs up a lot of things that are not going to be good for them. So I don't, I think this was a real own goal, but just going to the story of, you know, if you will, open AI versus closed AI, open systems usually win. Linux won the cloud, Android 1, Android 1 mobile. The internet beat AOL. You were talking about Steve K's. Closed models try to ring fat and maximize profits. Open models optimize for adoption, right?

And you're probably, and this is how this war is playing out with China. You don't win or beat China by restricting knowledge. You beat China by commercializing it faster. Now, Nvidia's incentives are obvious. They sell the picks and shovels. The more AI models that exist, the more GPUs they sell. But trying to stop open source AI is like trying to ban calculus. It's just, it's not going to work.

And but for Zuckerberg to talk about it, it's because he failed trying to ring fence his own AI. Yeah, I would agree. All right, let me do an exercise. Instead of calling him Jeffrey Dahmer, if he was sitting in front of you, you obviously aren't going to insult him possibly. Maybe you would.

What would you say to him, how should he be messaging this? How should he be marketing this? How should he be messaging around AI or meta? Meta, AI, whatever. At some point, your actions reveal more than your words or an ad campaign from someone hot you want to hang out with who wears black. I fell into that.

When red envelope in public, I heard all these ad agencies so I could hang around cool people and see ads on bus shelters and have lunch with David Carey at the Condonass Cafeteria in New York. His actions are his branding now. I mean, anything meta does is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in print advertising because it gets reported on and crawled on by a ton of people, including us. The best branding that Mark Zuckerberg could do right now would be for him to age-gate his platform. Yeah.

I think Mark Zuckerberg never intended to hurt children. I don't think that's who he is. Their evil and their mendaciousness is not a function of their malice. It's a function of their indifference and their obfuscation. And they're guilty not of errors of commission, but omission. And they constantly push back and say ridiculous shit, like, well, we're worried about 14-year-old's First Amendment rights. as opposed to saying, look, we make a lot of money from teenagers,

and until it's a law, we're going to continue to serve them ads, even if it's extreme dieting. Yeah, I would agree. I did push back. I said it's really interesting that you would cut all ability to stop really heinous speech about trans and gay people. That's what you did recently. And then you're worried about Scott making a Jeffrey Dahmer joke.

Or I noticed there wasn't a real pushback on Michelle Obama as a man. I noticed there wasn't a real pushback by any. anyone in the GOP on the heinous things that Trump said about this time, any day of the week, but Caitlin Collins. I was like, no one said anything. So he's sort of in the vein of what you were talking about with, speaking of Ari Emanuel, he did an essay saying this deal should go through. I wrote him back saying, you might point out that it, because it makes us a banana republic, essentially. He's got money all over this deal. Exactly. I agree with that. But aside from that, it was, I think he does actually believe that there's, there needs to be four strong

studios to have a healthy Hollywood system. I think that's fair. I agree with, I completely agree with him. But he was, I was like, the reason why the state's attorney generals, all of whom are dramatic going to push back, is because the very first approval, which was the Justice Department, was so tainted with political things. So if you're going to do politics, they're going to do politics. And he was like, but that's not the point that there should be four. I said, yes, but you, they've, wrecked it from day one by being so egregiously political in so many ways that this was the natural this democrats are there's a song by the by the chicks um which is not ready to make nice and the democrats are not ready to make nice now and they better get used to this that's my and and trump started it all

by like insulting people and having the gop stay silent like doing these grievously cruel things and the same thing with Zuckerberg he's created us he's created us he's created a a platform where ugliness is far too powerful. And then he's like, why are things so ugly? And you're like, I don't know, maybe you could have done something. Like you said, the actions. I agree with you. Can I go on about the open source?

Nvidia, SpaceX, Microsoft, and other tech companies have launched an AI safety initiative to develop open source tools for AI safety and cybersecurity. The initiative follows a recent cyber attack involving an open AI agent that breached hugging phase during internal testing, raising new concerns about, A.I. Security, notably absent from the alliance, are OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, highlighting the growing divide between supporters of open models and companies building clothes systems. This follows Anthropic and OpenAI lobbying, Washington for some restrictions on the latest open source models coming out of China. However, Anthropics Dario Amodi, as I noted, emphasized in a

letter this week that the company has never advocated for a ban on open weight models. Like you said, OpenA will win, correct, no matter what they do? The honest answer is what I think is going to happen, and I said this on our last one, I think the market for AI is bifurcating into a series of frontier models that aren't open source that are better. And people will pay a premium for them. And I think they'll still be the largest businesses by a dollar volume level. And then the Toyotas and Hondas of the world will be the open source coming out of Asia. Yeah, Corolla is a great way to think about it.

Toyota Corolla. And there'll be a market for both. but I think the more relevant one are the open-away models. They tend to, in technology, they tend to be the ones to kind of win long-term. Now, iOS is, I guess, technically a closed system and Android's open.

Android has more users. iOS creates more shareholder value. Right. So, but I, but there's, you know, there's huge, I mean, you could argue that Android creates more shareholder value because it informs what is the greatest toll booth in history. You could argue both ways.

I think there's a market for both. I mean, it's so funny. Business and technology usually comes down to iOS versus Android. And that's what's happening. That's what's happening here. It's the frontier models versus the open-weight Chinese models. It's weird they're having this weird beef. It sort of happens all the time, doesn't it? Well, there was so much pushback when Linux and the others came around. It's always the same. It's always the same. Mark Zuckerberg right now is using basically this corporate vaseline as Axe body spray. He thinks if he sprays enough on a, himself, he'll no longer stink. Mark, you fucking reek. You have terrible B.O. I just got you another call. I just got you another call, Carrie. I tried. I tried. I tried. I smelled the axe, but there's something else I smell here. Oh, it's teen depression and self-cutting. All right. And we're out. Okay, I tried. It's polarization of our elections. It's a coarsening of our discourse. I think they have a lot to answer for it. I don't say he has B.O. There was a lot of B on the subway this morning, but I don't know.

way. While we're on the topic of AI, we've been hearing feedback from some of you have been impacted by data centers in your communities. So we wanted to bring an expert voice. Let's listen to a clip from Evan Halper, a business reporter at the Washington Post, who's been covering data center buildouts and their impacts about how tangible these issues are. This is not propaganda. This is not media misinformation. The backlash is driven by very real concerns in these communities, many of which I've been to. They get all kinds of promises made to them by tech companies. The things are going to be run on clean energy. They're going to bring all kinds of jobs into the community. They're not going to have impact on the water, et cetera, et cetera. But what we're seeing on the ground

is the impacts are very real. Suddenly, a community that wasn't expecting it that was rural, has seen the large amount of land rezoned, big power plants getting built. The power plant is big enough to serve a medium-sized American city, all to serve just one data center. It's run on gas. gas creates public health problems. It creates climate problems. There's backup diesel generators on top of the data center. Those backup diesel generators are major polluters that are supposed to run very infrequently. But now because there's not enough power on the grid, because the data centers need so much, these emergencies get declared and the backup diesel generators get to function even more, often on the lowest air quality days, creating an even bigger air quality

problem. So these problems are real. This is not just an imagined thing. This is not political opportunism. These communities are suffering real impacts from these data centers. Yeah, I think, you know, as you said, some of them should be fine if they're done correctly, but they aren't being done. They're running over these areas. And real people are very concerned. They really are. And this is a message that I have been trying to get through to these tech companies. They really do. think it's fake. They think it's the media being negative. I've heard this over and again. By the way, Willie Nelson just spoke out about data centers saying an AI data center is the last thing his

Texas hometown needs. So again, one of the things is it's the same theme that we're talking about. They have painted themselves into villains and then they wonder why we think they're villains. And we don't trust them. And you know, you can talk all you want about trust the media. I agree. People have never trusted the media. But they really don't trust tech companies at this point. and it's a real problem. And doing these ads about humanity is not, you're right, actions speak louder than words. And these data centers, we are going to suffer as a country if we don't stay ahead in this area. But the way they're introducing data centers is so overwhelmingly feels corrupt, feels like, feels bad to the citizens of this country.

And I like that they speak up. I do, even if some of them are necessary. Look, I think his comments are powerful, and our nation has a terrible legacy of outsourcing the externalities of progress, whether it's the factory, the coal plant, a chicken processing plant, or a plant that contaminates the water table, we have a habit of putting these in the most vulnerable communities who have the least resources to push back on it. That is nothing new. So I think it is up to local civic officials, and I think it's great that when the populace speaks up and asks their fiduciaries, elected representatives to make sure that the upsides. And I do think there's an upside around tax revenue and growth to a data center that's well planned and well regulated. I do think there's an upside. It's up to the local civic official to say, is the upside greater than the downside here?

Or is this a function of me getting money from meta for my next campaign or just making a stupid decision? I do think it has become, I think a lot of people talking about this are having a knee-jerk reaction around what has become an empty vessel being filled around rage around income inequality and because these individuals have not acquitted themselves. And I think what could fix this is essentially a Facebook ad that says Facebook, where your parents go to get catfish by AI Jesus. I think that would solve everything. Seriously, meta putting out fucking ads right now is like trying to put lipstick on a landfill. Okay, lipstick on. Should I stop? At what point should I stop?

It's just funny. It's just funny. I'm going to get in their call. In any case, it is a real issue here. And I think Gavin is speaking exactly. Willie Nelson is speaking to it. You better listen to these people, all you tech companies. You're really better.

It'll become an issue in the next. electrical cycle. 100%. Anyway, let's go in a quick break. When we come back, SpaceX is a trillion-dollar wipeout. Support for the show comes from Zbiotics. Being in rough shape the day after drinks comes with the territory. It feels like it's just the contract you sign with that first drink.

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It's spurring a revolution across all industries and reshaping itself to become a big part of our future together. CoreWeave is at the center, powering some of the biggest names in AI. As the essential cloud for AI, Corweave provides an AI platform that combines next generation infrastructure, intelligent tools, and expert support. It's powering the world's most complex AI workloads, faster and more efficiently. For medical research and diagnosis to education, from complex visual effects from movies, to breakthroughs in science and technology. If it's AI, CoreWeave is uniquely ready to power it with purpose-build tech.

The big ideas, the wild visions, and what ifs, and why not? CoreWeave is working to build what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI, ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to corweave.com slash ready for anything. What's the best way to think about age in politics? You don't want to be ages, right? I do think term limits are more important than age limits. Some old people are really sharp.

Mary Sanders is popping off, and he's like, what, 2000? I'm so fed up with the fact that most of our lawmakers are so old. The gerontocracy feels like a huge problem in American politics. We're now in our third oldest Congress in history. So why won't the boomers retire? I gave serious considerations last year to not run again. I asked 17-term congressman Jim Clyburn. that exact question.

And I get being asked, how do you feel? Clyburn, who turned 86 just this week, is running for re-election in South Carolina again. And I get answering. I feel fine. And I said, well, then why would you quit? This week on America, actually, Congressman Clyburn makes the case for experience

and the establishment. Scott, we're back. The SpaceX roller coaster continues. The stock plunge more than 20% below its IPO. price this week, wiping out more than $1.2 trillion in market value, roughly the market cap of Tesla. Tesla is also suffering. The stock has bounced back somewhat as of this recording, but it's down 3%. Next week could be another wild ride with SpaceX reporting earnings on Tuesday and the first insider lockup expiring two days later. How low can these shares go? They look like they're headed to,

they look like they're headed 200. I feel like they're going down. But I don't know. I'm not, again, I'm not a stock picker. And again, Elon has enormous power. But it seems like, especially after that interview, he seems insane. Like, it seems people are not meming him as much. Well, price is what you pay. Value is what you own. And the price that people paid after what was arguably, I think, one of the greatest engineering feats in history between Goldman and J.P. Morgan and Elon Musk and the NASDAQ 100 and President Trump and the head of the SEC to get this thing out at 120 times revenues. There's a, my son told me this, and it just fascinated me. No basketball, no basketball player has ever been able to be in the air longer than a second. It's really weird for some reason the unit of measurement of a second. No one can stay in the air for a second. Gravity eventually pulls them down. Valuation is gravity.

Eventually, I don't care if it's game stock. No one has been able to defy gravity. No one gets closer to that one second limit than Elon Musk. Hey, look over here. Oh, we're autonomous. Oh, we're robots. Don't value me like a car company. Let's talk about being an interplanetary species.

Let's not talk about the fact that it's, you know, it's an interesting company and one great company and that a bunch of money losing companies. The lockup expiration here matters more than earnings, and that is supply, I think any reasonable math shows that supply is going to overwhelm the fundamentals in the short run. And retail investors, and this is what happened at the IPO, retail investors consistently confuse a great company with a great stock. And at some point, the best company in the world is overvalued. And at some point, the worst company in the world, unless it's going to zero, is undervalued. But where's, I mean, I, rather than making a recommendation, I tell people what I'm doing.

I'm not getting near this thing. Because Elon's not afraid to come out and say, I have funding secured at $450 on Twitter and not get punished. and run up the stock. He's also, his stocks tend to be meme stocks that totally disassociate from value. From actual values. So stay the fuck away from this thing. But if you're looking for a bottoms of valuation in terms of comparing this to its competitors and saying it's the best in that space, that bottoms of valuation would put it at like 20 to 30 bucks a share,

which, by the way, would still make it one of the most valuable companies in tech. Right. Yeah. It's down 30%. It was at 201, when it, the highest has been 201, or 202, 202, really, and now it's at 113.

If it crosses that $100 barrier, I would worry. You know what I mean? I think I would worry of where it was going, 100%. And I would. And same thing with Tesla. They seem like that, right, today it's on a real decline. But over the past six months,

it's dropped. If you look at anything, the past month, it's dropped like a, like it's credibly, it's down to 302, it probably will pass $300 barrier. And those are, those are mental things for people, you know, I think they're mental things for people. And, and again, valuation may be making a very strong return here. And Elon's various, you know, jazz hands is not seeming to work here. I don't know, what he could do to, well, he could have results.

Well, he's, okay, but even to. To look at the glasses half empty, the fact they were able to engineer such an incredible valuation out of the gates gives some people the impression that it's cheap now. If it went public at this valuation, we'd all be like, Jesus Christ, can you believe this? Yeah, you're right.

So like the IPO was a win for him, even if, no matter what you say, even if it's down and it's technically a broken IPO now, the fact that he was able to put that number on this set of assets, is nothing short of remarkable. And also, a lot of the people who he has said, finance a $44 billion purchase of a micro blogging platform that I signed the paperwork under probably some sort of drug-infused haze that by most measures that were $3 to $5 billion, he said to his investors, just hold on, trust me, I always make you whole. And you know what? He did. He probably gave those same people, Those are probably many of the same people

who have invested along the way in SpaceX. And quite frankly, they're not subject to lockups. When you got in at 20, it sounds great. Like 100 is great. 200 is better, but 100's great, too. Yeah, but I had lunch with a guy here in L.A. who's this really charming, smart, intelligent guy who's what I would call totally agnostic

about all this stuff. And he's known Elon for a long time, and he's invest in everything Elon does. And so we started investing in SpaceX, like 10, 12 years ago, someone just told me he's made $5 billion. Yeah. And regardless of what you think of Elon's paranoid white nationalist rant on with the head of the economist and calling her a traitor because she asks him tough questions, if someone

makes you that wealthy and if someone is able to create that kind of value, you just put money into anything they do. Right. And so, you know, his ability to do that, I mean, there's a lot of positives. There's a huge one for him. I do think there's positives for the economy. But in terms of any bottoms of valuation, forget that it was a 204. Just look at it now, and in the absence of any history, you would go, this thing is the most

overvalued stock in America right now. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, speaking of a very valuable stock, Apple briefly hit a $5 trillion market cap for the first time, a day after passing Nvidia to become the most valuable public company. It's a busy week for Apple. The company is launching a new program for customers to lease iPhones, iPads, iPads, Macs, and

Apple watches instead of buying them outright. This was interesting. The program called Apple Upgrade uses Buy Now Pay Later company, Clarna, to let people make monthly payments on the device and upgrade buyer return when the lease ends. The cheapest iPhone option is $1799 a month. Apple's move comes a month after the company raised prices on iPads and Mac, citing skyrocketing chip costs.

iPhone prices are expected to rise later this year. Do you like this idea? I didn't know what you would think of it. And I also note, we're recording ahead of Apple's reporting the Q3 earnings, Tim Cook's final earnings, as a CEO. And whatever we think of his stupid golden statue, he has done an astonishing job here as CEO in the years after Steve Jobs died. What an impressive CEO he's been except for the golden statue, which will follow him

the rest of his days and going to the Melania premiere. But go ahead. I don't know who the head of strategy is at Apple, but I think this group of people, this man or woman, are literally some of the brightest people in the history of business. and whether it was taking $6 billion out of broadcast advertising and moving it into 550 temples of the brand in a market, one of the biggest markets in the world technology that had just shitty distribution.

Remember we used to go to buy computers? Egghead, CompUSA. Oh, CompuSA. You literally walked in or where you'd go to get your computer fixed there'd be some guy in a Harley Davidson shirt and you'd give you a number and put it on a steel rack and tell you to come back in two weeks so it could tell you it doesn't work

and you need to buy a new computer. And then they built these places. I'd like to live in an Apple store. I think if Apple owned an opened a coffee counter in their stores, it'd be the most successful retail in the world per square foot, and it already is it to surpass Tiffany when they open their stores. Most successful retailer in history is a tech company. In addition, their stock.

Okay. You want to talk about genius? Genius is not only what to do, it's what not to do. Mm-hmm. Who has invested the least in big tech in AI? AI. Well, Warren Buffett? I don't know.

Apple. Apple, yeah. Apple's decided, okay, kids, you go playing traffic. We'll wait to this all get sorted out after trillions of dollars in CAPEX, and then we'll move in with an elegant interface and ownership of the consumer, and we'll monetize it, or we'll just brand it from you and give you access to the billion wealthiest consumers in the world. Apple's stock, it's no accident that the company, the one company that's still, that's decided not to get into these AI wars is up 61% over the last 12 months. The most valuable

company in the world is up 61% over the last 12 months. These guys, these guys, and this is, this is what separates the truly the great CEOs from the iconic CEOs. It's not what they do. It's what they don't do. So what do you think of this upgrade then? What do you think of this? I think it's actually a good idea. Oh, I'm sorry, long-winded, long-winded preamble. This is fucking genius because the reason why hardware companies and services companies don't trade it as the same multiple of software companies is not because software is just, quote-unquote, a better product, it's because it's a better business model because it's recurring revenue. Adobe changed everything. Adobe used to sell, I forget it was called director, whatever, for, you know, software in a box for $2,500. And then they hope

three years later you go buy another one for $2,400. And instead, they said, we're going to charge you $25 a month. And their stock got cut in half. And since then, it's up 40x. Because the market loves recurring revenue. You can better plan your CAPEX. You can better plan your revenues. It's just more, the way I described, I was in a relationship with someone who was bipolar.

And I said, I'm in a relationship with a transactional business model. I don't know who I'm waking up next to. I don't know how to predict this person. A recurring revenue business is being in a relationship with, someone who's just totally consistent and you know what to expect. But no, you don't always like, you often decried buy now, now pay later. Yeah, but that buy now pay later is you come up to the till at Urban Outfitters and you're going to Coachella and they go, you know what, go go shop and buy another $300 and

we'll give you instant credit. I think that's different than this. This is basically selling a subscription to the Apple ecosystem. I would agree. It's hardware as a service. It's has. And people, it's easier to say I'm not going to buy the next iPhone versus I'm going to cancel my subscription. It increases lifetime customer value, and it lowers the psychological

barrier to higher prices. So I believe, I've just presented, I'm bragging, I just presented to the CEO and the management team of Mercedes. And I basically said, the future of consumer products is an ownership, its recurring revenue, its subscription. And they asked me for one idea, and I said, I love the Mercedes brand. I think it's, they do great products, love the brand. I want to pay a monthly fee and have you just show up with the car I should have, take care of everything, service it when I'm out of town, know everything about me, maybe you don't invite me to a cool couple of events, say, okay, you've had this thing three years, you just had a kid, you need a truck now, and take all of the decisions, all of the brain damage. I never want to go into a car dealership again and give me a good deal. I don't want to negotiate price. By the way, include insurance, include finet. Just do everything for me and charge me a monthly fee. It might be slightly more. It might be slightly more, but you don't care because it's the convenience factor. I'm doing this. I have to say, I had never, I have not bought a new phone and I was going to buy another one. I'm like, oh, it's $1,000. It probably will cost me more, but I can always upgrade it. Like, I feel like good about it. I know it sounds, I can, I feel that I just want to rent it. I just want to rent it, really, in many ways. If Apple said to you and me, all right, Scott, you buy everything Apple. We have your purchase history. With your permission, we want to use. AI to know exactly what you need when you need it, we're going to charge you $100, $300 a month, and you're going to get everything a month early. And by the way, in case you're interested,

you can come to the cool Apple event or whatever if you're really that big a fan. Oh, and by the way, we're going to invite you occasionally to a premiere of a great Apple movie. You're going to become, and it's $300 a month. And I'd think, oh, $300 a month. I spent so much on these for our $200. I spent some. We're going to send you the latest MacBook. We're going to send you the coolest We see you're an AirPod weirdo and you love these things. We're going to send them with your name inscribed. You want a t-shirt, cool t-shirt. Whatever it is.

I'm in. And then the market turns around and it says, okay, my first company, profit brand strategy was a strategy firm. It sold for 2.8 times revenues. I started the same business called L2, basically helping firms make better decisions with data, but I charged an annual membership fee. I charged Nike a half a million dollars a year instead of charging them a million dollars every three years for a strategy engagement. L2 got sold for eight times revenues.

The market loves recurring revenues, and Apple keeps figuring out big decisions in ways to not only be the most valuable company in the world, but to provide unbelievable return on investment. I'm just, I'm so impressed not with what they do, but what they don't do. Do you remember how many people were calling for Apple to launch new products, launch a car? You know what it takes big balls? not to launch a car, but to pull the plug on a car, because you don't think it's going to offer the same return on invested capital as other projects. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm very impressed with Apple. I agree. I agree. I actually had just a funny little basket of tech stocks with $10,000, and Apple just, I was losing money on a bunch of them. I'm just testing things, and Apple has taken me back up the top. I was like, thank you, Apple. Just interesting things we talk about is just sort of a test thing.

And I do thank them. I'm going to do this program. I am. It's just easier. It's just easier and more convenient. And it also lets people who want to have an Apple phone and can't maybe, can't afford the $1,000 to be part of it, like in a way that's much more, you know, it sort of, it gets them to the lower price customer. I do think this happens. And it doesn't break these customers the way, say, like a ridiculous mortgage or something would do, and it gives them a better phone. All right, let's go on a quick break.

But just before we go on a quick break, I do have another tagline for Facebook. Okay. You ready? Meta. Meta. Ignore the smell coming from the basement. I shouldn't have said anything. Oh, Scott.

God, this show brings me so much joy. I know it does. All I'm doing is I'm addicted to the meth and I'm shitposting the dealer. I'm allowed to do that. Okay. Okay. When we come back, Mitch McConnell gets an ultimatum. Scott, we're back.

Kentucky government. Andy Bashir is giving Senator Mitch McConnell an ultimatum prove you can still serve or resign. Bashir sent McConnell a letter this week demanding he directly and verbally addressed the people of Kentucky to prove his capacity to serve. If that doesn't happen, Bashir is urging Senate Majority Leader John Thune to investigate McConnell's condition. This comes as McConnell's office released another photo that again sparked conspiracy theories because of the shirt or something. The statement of the center is not medically cleared to leave his rehab facility. It was very, I have to say, the note was very, what it left out, speaking of omission.

It didn't talk about cognitive issues. It just talked about physical issues, which was interesting. The doctor tried his best to tell the truth, is what I looked at it. But it's not enough for Bashir. Let's listen to what he told reporters on Tuesday. All I'm asking for, and the people of Kentucky are asking for, is transparency and honesty that Senator McConnell still has a capacity to serve. and I hope he does.

I wish him well. I hope his health is improving. But if he can have a 17 minutes conversation with his protege, he can call into any of your news stations for three. All we're asking is just a little bit of proof. And I get that everybody wants a certain level of privacy, but when you run for these jobs, you know you're given some of that up. We have seen rampant speculation across social media and elsewhere.

It could all be fully avoided, and it's all within Senator McConnell's power. So under Kentucky law, Senate vacancies are filled by a special election. Bashir is not allowed to appoint a temporary replacement. It's also important for his presidential run for him to look strong here. That's what it's playing into. Is this a strongly worded letter going to do anything here? Because that's what it is.

I urge you to say something. Or would they just ignore it. I would assume McConnell, who has always been sort of taking the lowest road he could in many ways. although Trump has managed to get on lower roads than he is. I think they'll do nothing. They'll just ignore this. I don't know. I think the pressure will mount.

I mean, I feel like Mitch McConnell has become the modern-day equivalent of Bigfoot. Like, oh, wait, we saw them. It's not real. And look, this is, America has mandatory retirement ages for airline pilots, but not for people making decisions about nuclear weapons and fiscal policy, which is just insane. And this is an example of it. This is, this story really isn't about Senator McConnell.

It's about a political system that has no graceful exit for aging leaders. And every institution, especially democracy, needs succession planning. And politicians are some of the few people that are allowed to ignore mortality and biology. And just another shout out to Apple and Tim Cook. Again, one of the hardest things in leadership. isn't knowing when to take over, it's knowing when to leave. And it's insane that these people, when you get older, we purposefully have a difficult time believing that we're ever going to die.

We know it, but we don't believe it. And that is, we think, oh, I'll figure it out, and I'm still adding value. And also, to be blunt, for a lot of these people who have devoted their lives to work, them leaving is them acknowledging they're about to die. And so they don't want to leave. And they keep coming up with reasons why they should stay. the political system rewards incumbency. I know.

And so we need mandatory retirement ages and term limits. Well, can I say, one of the things that's been interesting about the besides the social media stuff, which some of it is very funny, some of the fake things. It's been a very, it's been a very amusing people doing things around McConnell. And actually, I was at Joanna Coles and Ben Sherwood last night at dinner. And they were saying the McConnell stuff really is popular. Like, I was surprised. I thought it would be all Trump or whatever, but McConnell stuff is really popular on the Daily Beast.

But what's interesting is some things that I think are more serious where people are going, okay, I had a cesarean and I had to get back to work in five seconds. Like, you know, I was out for a medical thing and my work didn't let me. And I think even if it's like kind of, like, that to me is actually very resonant. It's like he gets to be quiet.

He has one of the most important jobs. in the country, and he gets as much time off as he wants it, he doesn't have to explain himself. I have, like, a minor thing that requires a lot of medical attention, and I've got to get back to work. There is something brewing. It's like the data centers. I feel like there's sort of this anger, like, why does this guy get to be, have privacy when I have to get back to work immediately? I've seen a ton of that lately, and I think it's people, it's a very good. It's another vessel. Mitch McConnell is another empty vessel for rage.

And people look, I think the most secretive thing in the world right now would be if all of a sudden, everyone over the age of 70 had to announce the retirement, would the world be a better place? Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump are too old to be serving. They're too old. And, yeah, you need wisdom, but more than that, you need rigorous, critical, thinking and energy, and also you need a fresh creative dynamism. The best thing, in my opinion, that the far left that we talk a lot about, they are bringing the creativity and the dynamism. You need that. You need turnover. And it's the same. This is why I think we're going to win the

seed in Maine, or when I say we Democrats. I think people see, are going to see, at some point, Susan McConnell seems to be. like hiding in Mitch McConnell's hospital bathroom. It's not Susan McConnell. I'm sorry, Susan Collins. You can call her Susan McCall. It might as well be Susan McConnell. I get the sense. She's in the room next door. I mean, she's not, she's an old lady, and she presents as even older. Yeah. And aging comes for all of us. It comes for all of us. That's not, it's not an indictment. It's a reality. And I think that's why we're going to win the seat. We found a guy with chest hair who doesn't appear to be a rapist. and he's not 105.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. But it is a proxy. It is a proxy of, like, why don't we know about the president's health? All of them. Like, why don't we get, why do they get off? Why do they get to build data centers and we have to put up with it?

Why do we have, why do they get all the money? Why do they get all the deals? There is a, it's part of the same, like, you're getting, these people are fucking you. And I do think it's, I think it could take very ugly turns as I agree, Mom Donnie should not have done that. It takes ugly turns instead of, yeah, why not?

Why can't we get our fair share? And I think it's a very good, fair share is a very good way to talk about it. And why does Mitch McConnell get to be quiet? Why does he precisely? I don't care about his privacy. He shouldn't have been the majority leader or whatever. That's like saying a 65-year-old pilot can't be tested for cognitive ability or reflex is because of his privacy.

Yeah, exactly. Same thing. Like, I feel like, I said this to a public official. They were giving me our time. I go, you know what, you work for me. Like, sorry. Like, I know you've forgotten that. But the fact of the matter is you work for the public.

And you don't get to, you don't get, like, we don't have to be nice about it. I just, I, there's just a brewing thing and it could go in a really ugly direction. I wish it wouldn't if these people would just, he should resign. He's clearly not able to do his job. He should resign. Well, this is all, isn't it's like they're trying to hold out such that the governor doesn't get to appoint it? No, I don't think there's, I don't, I think he's not there so he doesn't vote. So great, let him sit there like and stew.

He doesn't get to vote. He doesn't. There's, the vote is gone in the Senate right now is what it is. The vote is gone. If he tries to vote, that's, he better walk in. That's all, you know, if he tries to vote or anything. No, I meant in terms of who's his replacement. Who gets to decide when he dies?

I think it doesn't matter at this point. Doesn't? Okay. No, I think it's just a point that, and I think Bashir's presidential election is going to hinge a little bit on this. I'm sure he doesn't love it. But if I were him, I'd show up at the hospital, I would. For the people of the state, I'm here as for representing as the governor of the state.

I want to see how you are and assess your ability to do your job for the people of the state. That's what I would do. He won't do it, but that's what I would do. And then just get turned away, then get turned away, even if he did it. I think it's a pretty good stunt. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction and try not to make an insult to Mark Zuckerberg if you can't.

It's really, yeah, no, it's totally inappropriate what I've been saying. My prediction is that this ridiculous notion that one of the most corrupt organizations is going to get finessexed. from a crime family, the Trump family, to take FIFA private and or turn it into a public company, this won't happen, or it's gonna get watered down beyond recognition, and here's why. It's a $20 billion. It's a $20 billion company.

UaF has already fired an opening shot, and they have, and they effectively have veto power. I'm not just saying this because of what I want to see happening. I think just if you look at the industrial logic here, the mechanics, this isn't gonna happen. The bottom line is the World Cup is not featured. is to sell. And UEFA, the governing body, has already said none of us are the owners of football. That's not a press release. That's the body that controls the Champions League, FIFA's most credible

commercial threat, declaring war on day one. And there's also a precedent in 2018. Infantino tried the exact move of soft bank Saudi money at 25 billion. And UEFA killed it because they saw it as a threat to their own prize assets. So this is the same playbook, same opponent, and same likely outcome. He's, you know, he's already tried this and he's 0 for one in the exact same context. And 211 members have to say yes. And FIFA's already trying to buy their votes with cash,

not consensus. You know, and also the Kushner connection makes this whole thing radioactive, just not, you know, not just controversial. Kushner is even less popular. Have you seen what's happened at this Albanian island that Ivanka decided which is magical? Yeah, yeah.

The Albanians are not having it. Trump's son-in-law running the money side of the World Cup, right after Trump and Infantino stood together at the final, after Infantino gave him a peace prize, it's a conflict of interest story that writes itself for every journalist and every rival federation looking for a reason to vote no. Anyways, this isn't, FIFA doesn't need the money.

By the way, it's Josh Kushner's investment vehicle. Right, it's just going to finance it. Look, they're trying to monetize what is this global asset of good They are separate, just so you're aware. They're separate. But go ahead. So anyways, my prediction, this thing gets rebranded or negotiated or shrunk to a much smaller Kushner Optic Scrub version before September 19th.

Because Infantino keeps proposing commercialization deals that die the moment of rival confederation smells a threat to its own assets. There are competing assets here. So he'll probably get some increased member payouts, but he won't get FIFA. he won't get kind of a privatized World Cup. The soccer, you want to talk about an asset that the world believes they have a vested ownership in? Everybody does, yeah.

So I just... It's the same themes we've been talking about. This is going to be more... You want to see the emotion of data centers times eight. By the way, speaking of which, I'm going on Bill Maher today or whatever this thing's released. And you know who the up-front interview is? Who?

Aaron Brockovich. Oh, yeah, she'll, she's coming on my podcast in a couple of, in two weeks. Yeah. Yeah, she's doing the data center stuff. So that'll be, make for an interesting, that'll make for an interesting conversation. She's actually galvanized a lot of people, which is interesting. Let me just read something from a story in Politico, that, that Infantino's political future may be on the U.S. midterm ballot. There's a lot of Democrats waiting to pounce here because it's such a popular thing. He's, of course, this says if control of Congress flips in the fall, those same ties. could become a political liability for Infantino as he seeks reelection atop the Swiss-based nonprofit has led for a decade. Listen to this quote,

the perfect storm scenario in the FIFA world said one person involved in the highest levels of global soccer granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal politics. I think they will find a candidate to run against him, especially if midterm slip control and if things were to start pouring out, but a lot needs to happen in the next three or four months.

I think he's reached too far in 15. Actually, you know what? That would have been a better prediction because his rival, competing for the top spot, we'll just attach him to Trump who's even less popular overseas than he is domestically.

That would have been a better prediction. That would have been more elegant. Anyway, I'm excited to listen to you on Bill Maher, by the way. Oh, thanks. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot. To submit a question for the show or call 85551 Pivot. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Make sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.

Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zilley, Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Weissman. Ernie Intertod engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Mia Severo, and Dan Shalon. Desha Koura is Fox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Fox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great weekend.