Pivot - Middle East Messaging, Microsoft's $69B Deal, and Guest Rick Wilson

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

Kara and Scott discuss whether companies should speak up or stay silent on the Israel-Hamas War. Then, what Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of video game company Activision Blizzard means for future tech mergers. Plus, Taylor Swift rules the box office and Rite Aid files for bankruptcy. Our Friend of Pivot is Lincoln Project co-founder and former Republican strategist, Rick Wilson, who breaks down the speaker's race and looks ahead to the 2024 election. Also, Kara has her annual cold. Follow Rick at @therickwilson. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher back with my annual toddler cold. How you doing, Scott? Yeah, I'm good.

People your age should not have children. I understand that. That's why I got an RSV shot early, five years early. So I didn't get that this year, if you remember. I got that, too. People my age should have children. I'm going to get a GLP-1 shot because it's not that I'm obese or have diabetes, but I'm rich and looking to lose that last 10. So that's what Ozempic.

I'm pretty convinced you're on Ozempic. You're looking. Are you on Ozempic? Are you Ozempic? We're on a diet. No, I'm not on Ozempic. Sorry. You're convinced?

I'm convinced everyone's on it. I had a toddler party this weekend, which probably contributed to this cold, for Claire's fourth birthday. And they were all dressed as princesses, which was really a sight to see. And a lot of the parents were looking good. We're looking really healthy and slim compared to last year. So I figured they were. I don't care. Do you? I think it's great. I just hope it gets to the right people. I think I told you, I literally can't stop thinking about what this is going to do to the economy. I think it's going to be bigger than AI. Yes, I know.

You've written about it quite a bit, too. Yeah. I think it's going to be. Yeah. Well, if the right people get it, if everybody gets it, and it's also safe. They have to continue to do studies on issues around the pancreas and the thyroid and things like that. Yeah. and the thyroid and things like that. But being overweight has also got its issues around diabetes and heart attack, et cetera, et cetera.

Cancer, all kinds of stuff, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, what did you do this weekend? I went to a toddler party and took my mom to see a new place to live in Princeton, New Jersey. Your mom might come back to Princeton? Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. Okay.

We found a really nice community that a lot of her friends are there when we live there. So, you know, New York's getting to be tough for her. And, you know, you have to get help. And I think it would be nice if she was around people she knew and had a better time. Yeah, I know that stuff's always tough. So I hope the transition is as smooth as it can be. Yeah, we'll see. She liked it a lot.

And we ran into a lot of the parents who are friends of mine since sixth grade, which is kind of fun. And she's known them for a long time. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. She was great. We had a good time.

I took a train up to Princeton, New Jersey and took a train back the next day. But we had a nice visit, and I ran into lots of my old friends, which was super fun. And she'd be neighbors with me. It's interesting. So, it's kind of good. I'll be able to see my friends from, again, middle school, which will be kind of cool. You have your dad under care, correct? Yeah, my dad's in an assisted living facility in San Diego, and he has a full-time, I don't know what you call him, caregiver. I'm affectionately referred to her as his fifth wife. I mean, it's really tough because my dad's struggling with, I don't even want to call it dementia, 93. It just is 93.

But he started falling at night. He would get up to go pee, and he would fall. And so we have to have somebody there, just a nurse there, just at night. So that's, you know, he's got, because the alternative is something they call memory care. Oh, yeah, they have those. They have those. This is not that where Lucky's going. It's just a community of older people.

Because she's as sharp as a frigging tack, I wouldn't turn my back on Lucky ever. But a lot of people, it's a real crisis in terms of I've talked to a lot of friends since and they all are, you know, dealing with it, dealing with the issues. Yeah. And memory care is kind of ugly. They have locks on the doors and stuff like that. But yeah, it's a big issue. I like Bill Ackman's idea, distinctive as tweeting, where he said,

give every baby $7,000 and you put it in an ETF. So by the time they're 65, it should be a million. Oh, interesting. What's our plan, Scott? What's our plan? Each other.

Each other. What should we do? What should we do? Let's imagine that. You're going to push me around in a wheelchair and I'm just going to tell really lewd jokes, and you're going to roll your eyes. It won't be easy for you, though, to see over the back of the wheelchair.

It'll look like you're riding along on my shoulders. But no, you're my retirement. Will you be grabbing people and stuff like that from the wheelchair? I see that. I see that's an issue. I'm not. No, I'm not a grabber. I'm not handsy.

I'm not like that. Oh, okay. Just making lewd jokes. Yeah see that's an issue. I'm not. No, I'm not a grabber. I'm not handsy. I'm not like that. Oh, okay. Just making lewd jokes. Yeah. Words are not violence. So basically, you will have dementia, and I will be sharp as a tack, but kind of crusty. That sounds like a married couple. Yeah.

I think it'd be good. We could live together. We could have breakfast every morning. That doesn't sound good. But anyways. It does sound good. I think you would love it. It's a beautiful cottage.

It's a beautiful house. It's a beautiful house. I have friends stay there. By the way, again, I extend welcome if you'd like, if you're in San Francisco. We're going to be there next week together. You can stay there. I like people I can yell out. I like to stay at hotels. You have to be nice when you're staying in people's homes.

I'm like, where's my fax? Well, you can stay there without me. It's an empty house, just like yours is. Daddy likes the hotels. Much easier when you're trying to coordinate a pro. It's just easier. Okay. Okay. All right. My house used to be, the person who lived in the cottage was a prostitute, actually. So, when I first bought the house, people would knock on the gate and be like, this gate wasn't here. And I'm like, I know I moved it. And he was a prostitute who lived back there many years ago. Anyway, it was very nice. They were very nice people looking for sex, and I felt fine with that. But I did not provide them with it.

Very nice people looking for sex. Well, it was a male prostitute, so, you know, Castro, whatever. I don't care. I don't care. They were very pleasant people, but I disappointed them because it was me and a bunch of children when I had this same voice, speaking of which. Anyway, we have a lot to talk about, and you're going to do most of the talking. Today, we'll talk about Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, whether companies should be weighing in on the Israeli-Hamas war, and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and a former Republican strategist. But first, Taylor Swift's

era's film is the highest-grossing domestic concert film release ever. The film racked around $96 million, slightly below the projected $100 million during its opening weekend with almost 5 million viewers. It's also the widest release concert film ever, hitting more than 3,800 locations globally. 80% of the audience was female. AMC and Cinemark Theatres are distributing the film exclusively, unlike Swift's last two films, in which she partnered with Netflix. Beyonce will put out a documentary about her Renaissance tour later this year, also released directly by AMC. It didn't do as well as people thought, although it was a blowout.

People thought much higher globally. Matt Bellany wrote pretty persuasively that a studio would have been a better job marketing it. There wasn't a whole lot of marketing around it. And people were a little scared off by the Swifties dancing in the aisles and things like that. So, although I heard a lot of people going, a lot of my people I knew were not female, were going, taking their kids, but were going. We're going to take Clara, by the way. Regardless of the success, AMC's stock is down 6% over the last five days. Thoughts? Any quick thoughts? Good for her. Phenomena. It strikes me that the media has a bias towards getting really excited about anything that manages to get people in a movie theater.

And it's just, I don't know. The bottom line is, there's so few things I care less about than Taylor Swift's movie. Okay, all right. I think movie theaters, I think AMC is going to be bankrupt at some point unless they can convince young people who have a gambling addiction

to turn it into a meme stock. All right, I'm going to challenge you instead of being a big old sad sack about this is what would you do to get people into movie theaters? Or is it over? I would turn them into Ikeas and Chipotles. Oh, wow. Look at the quality of your home viewing experience. I mean, it's gone, the screens keep getting smaller. It's gone from this big screen to your home TV where Euphoria is better than any R-rated film. It's like, okay, I can do this in the privacy of my own home. And then Breaking Bad.

And then now I have found, again, that we're all moving to a computer screen or your phone. And that distribution mechanism that we're also focused on, specifically the motion picture screen or the TV screen. It's like, folks, these screens, no one cares. They're losing relevance. And I wonder, I mean, I was even thinking, I'm curious about that. So I had Fareed Zakaria on my podcast and we put it on YouTube and it's now at 780,000 views. And I thought, okay, so 780,000 views on the YouTube video, which was posted yesterday, it'll be at a million in two or three days. We're going to get a quarter of a million downloads on the podcast. So call it, by the time it's all said and done, it's one and a half million probably views and it's a 45-minute view or 45-minute podcast or whatever you want to call it.

His show, I looked up his show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, gets about 900,000 viewers. So I'm like, okay, so let me get this. Podcasting in YouTube across very similar content. I mean, I'm a good interviewer. I'm not as good as you. I would actually say I'm kind of a mediocre interviewer. But him giving his views in a timely way on something outside of CNN, but on a pod...

It's like he's getting more impressions on YouTube and on my podcast than he does on Sunday morning or whenever it's Saturday morning on CNN. Yeah, I agree. I don't know what to say. I agree with you. It's a really interesting phenomenon. I always think about what would get people into the theater. Now, I still like the theater experience, and you know I've been tough on theaters, and I get a lot of shit for it, especially back when Jason Kylar was, you know, during the pandemic. It seemed dead obvious that they'd have to release them online at the same time as theaters. It seems to make sense. But I do think that I have a hard time imagining,

would I go to a play there or concert? There's some Broadway shows I would like to see but never am going to. Would I go to that? I might. But I'd rather see it on my screen, not in a place. What's the difference? I just try to think about what could make me want to go to the theater. And the only thing I think of is, I'm going to San Francisco next week, is the Castro Theater has events, right? And so they show the sound of music, and then all these drag queens come in, or people dress up, or you get stuff to throw at the screen.

And then the organ comes up and you can't replicate that. That's really fun. Yeah, I saw 2001 Space Odyssey. There's something similar, I think, on the upper. George Hahn talks about it a lot. I forget. Netflix owns a theater. But what you're going to need to do, it's just getting harder and harder. The bar to get people out of their homes, A, they're spending more money on their homes. B, the entertainment in their homes is amazing. C, I used to go to the movies twice a week, every week when I was young. And now young men are finding reasonable facsimiles of relationships at home. And so they don't want to leave the house. And I mean, I am going to a, I am more excited. I'm

going to a theater or what you would call a venue that I'm more excited about than anything I've done in a while. I'm going to go see you two at the Sphere in Vegas. Oh, the Sphere, uh-huh. My friends are going to that this week. It's supposed to be just phenomenal. Yeah, they traveled all the way across country to see it. Yeah, it's supposed to be incredible. Explain what the Sphere is for people who don't know. I don't know. It's basically a performance venue that is revolutionary. They spent $2 billion on it and it's been organized or they've been coordinated perfectly such that the acoustics are unrivaled. It has seats that even did even kind of rumble a rock. They're putting out sense.

It's supposed to be like literally sensory overload. And the screens, the screen. And they create production values. So it's sort of like imagine, you know, your brain on drugs, but in a good way. And then you production values. So it's sort of like, imagine, you know, your brain on drugs, but in a good way. And then you too, as they're playing, it's just, it's supposed to be incredible. Yeah. Everyone who's been there, it says it's amazing. It is in Vegas. Okay, well, let's move on to something less interesting, but interesting to you. 85,000 healthcare workers have reached a deal with Kaiser Permanente. The tentative agreement effectively ends a three-day strike, includes a boost in minimum hourly wages and a 21%

pay increase over four years. Previous contract was negotiated in 2019 before the pandemic. There have been almost 200 strikes this year that lasted a week or less, including employees of Starbucks and CVS. Are shorter, more disruptive strikes more effective? I think this is good. My understanding is it's mostly this impacts kind of what you call the non-doctor part of health care, which tend to be lower wage. I like that they've gone to, I think it's like a minimum wage of $25. I'm happy for them. I think that these people did great work and deserve to make more money.

And Kaiser has the scale to do it. for them. I think that these people did great work and deserve to make more money and Kaiser has the scale to do it. I don't think I have a ton of insight here that other than that, I think it's great that they're back to work because if the writers don't go back to work and I don't get to see- Actors, the actors, the writers are back. Okay. But if the writers and the actors don't get back to work, then I might miss season nine, episode 11 of The Witcher when healthcare workers are not back. The interruption of the economy or to people's lives

when writers or actors go on strike is meaningful. When healthcare workers go on strike, it's profound. And so I just think it's good for them, good for the country, good for the planet that they figured out an agreement here.

Also, Rite Aid has filed for bankruptcy. The company's been struggling with declining sales, mounting debt, lawsuits related to the opiate crisis. The drugstore announced it would reach a deal with creditors and begin restructuring to reduce debt. You know, there's just CVS and Walgreens, but even they're under pressure from Amazon and all kinds of other ways to have things delivered. I see my own CVS is just less nice than it used to be. I can tell you that as a retail experience. Rite Aid, I mean, it's sort of the joke, well, I need another bank and another CVS on my corner. I mean, they overexpanded. It's coming out a $13 billion market cap in 1998.

I don't know if it's Amazon or who's been putting all the pressure on them, but this retail was sort of tailor-made for bankruptcy, and that is they'll get to go through all of their stores and cherry-pick which ones still work, and they'll get a stocking horse, and it'll emerge from bankruptcy. But it'll come back. I think Rite Aid will be an example

of why bankruptcy is a really good thing, and that is it'll come back a much smaller, much leaner organization. Right. Yeah. We'll see. It's interesting. The whole drugstore market is, I hate drugstores now, and I didn't used to.

You probably don't go in them at all now because you're in London. But I have to say, the experience has gotten worse and worse. And I think more and more about online options than I ever did before, which I didn't trust around drug delivery, like, you know, things that you take all the time. I always thought there was an opportunity. In France, they have wonderful drugstores. They sell beauty products. They feel very bespoke. There's something quite similar in the, is it CO Bigelow in New York? But I've always thought that there's opportunity at the high end for it.

You know, I like, but I loved when I love, my favorite thing is I go to a pharmacy and they're not very good. They'll say, oh, you know, they'll say out loud, are you here for your diabetes medication? If there's a lot of seniors around, I like to stand up and raise my arm and go chlamydia, chlamydia, just to see.

You do that, don't you? Chlamydia, chlamydia, just to see. You do that, don't you? Chlamydia. Just to see, just to see how people respond. Oh, that's a really nice story, Scott. I thought that'd be funnier. Wow. Oh, God. I'm going to switch it.

Clara loves the CVS because she loves all the- It sounds like a man just showed up to the podcast. Is this still Cara? Is this a joke? Is Mark Cuban here? Yes. No, not Mark Cuban's not here. I heard your voice.

Anyway, it's the way it is every year. It's the annual. It's like Scott 3 August. It's cough, cough, full Kara. I just, I'm telling you, if you don't get rid of this shit or go on antibiotics or put your kids up for adoption, we're going to get a co-host next week. No, we're not. You're going to have to deal with it. You're going to have to deal with it.

You're so kind and good. I thought your whole thing this year was to be nicer. You remind me of sickness and death. I get that every day when I see myself naked. I don't need you showing up with your horse voice. Okay. I'm in very good shape otherwise. It's because you're on Ozempic. I have young children and everything else. All right, Scott, when you decide to become less of a douche nozzle, we will move on. Douche nozzle? Douche nozzle. It's Douche-nozzle. It's my favorite word. That's what the young people say.

Okay, let's get to our first big story. Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of the video game company Activision Blizzard is finally closed after a year and a half negotiations. This is the largest consumer tech acquisition since AOL bought Time Warner in 2000. The deal faced concerns from regulators in the U.S. and Europe who argued that it would raise prices for gamers and harm competition in the gaming industry, which I think was overblown. But the last major hurdle lifted last week from British regulators gave the green light. The deal is finally happening. I wrote a column about this when the deal was announced. Everyone was wondering why Microsoft was buying a video game company.

I said it was because they can, and also other reasons. What do you think? These tech mergers keep winning and sailing past obstacles. What do you think about this one? Yeah, but I think you got this right. I don't think this was the one to block. And just the industry, again, we tend to just focus on two anthills warring against each other and ignore the elephants roaming through camp. And the elephant roaming through camp has been the video game industry. this nice man from i think it's electronic arts sent me some codes to download the new fifa game and i forwarded it to my boys and they're just like oh my god finally dad is coming through with

something of some value and my youngest likes movies my older doesn't want to go to them but they both play a lot of video games also uh the the worry about video games as it relates to i hear a lot of people lump video games in with social media and other things that are bad. Because what I have found, and I think the research bears this out, is that video games actually aren't that harmful. That was a big deal in the 90s, I guess. And I'm an investor in Epic Games. I bought a bunch of stock in the private market. But I think video games continue to be, it's just an incredible business. Microsoft continues to be just really well managed.

They want to, they're saying, I guess there's an internal document showing they want to be half a trillion in revenue by 2030. They're not the biggest Chinese and Japanese video game makers. No, this just gives them a toehold. They're going, of that 500 billion, they want gaming to go from 18 to 36. So it would still be, what is that? You know, 7.5% of their business. So I think it's just, and it's the amount of creativity.

Do you ever play these games? I don't, but my sons play them all the time. They're just incredible. I mean, they really are. The creativity and the graphics. I don't want to get into it because I know I'd love it. That's why. That's one of the reasons I don't.

Because I know I'd be sitting in front of it the whole time. You know what I think is going to happen? I'd be really interested. I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if when they put kids suffering from obesity on it, if their video game usage goes down. Oh, interesting. I think that essentially, as again, I reverse everything back to these GLP-1 drugs,

I feel as if we're putting scaffolding up on our instincts that haven't caught up to institutional production or DOPA hits that we can get. And when I see my kids on those games, I mean, there's definitely, their brain has been a bit rewired. And I wonder if at some point you'd be able to calibrate these drugs

to reduce the cravings around different types of addictions. And I do see it not any longer, but at one point in one of my boy's lives, it did feel very like, okay, he's really comes home, throws off his backpack, bombs into the room. And if we'd let him, he'd just want to put on diapers until he, like, passed out playing video games. But anyways, good for them. Yeah, my kids do it, but they walk away from it. They're not quite that much, but they do love them. If they had to pick

other things, that's what they'd pick of all the entertainment options they have at home. It's interesting because the FTC hasn't given up on this fight. Back in July, the FTC lost the bid to block the deal and quickly appealed, so it's not over yet because the FTC hasn't given up on this fight. Back in July, the FTC lost the bid to block the deal and quickly appealed, so it's not over yet. The FTC spokesperson said last week the FTC continues to believe the deal is a threat to competition. I have had this argument with Lena Kahn. I was like, they're Chinese and Japanese-owned businesses or Chinese-affiliated

business. Epic has a big Chinese investment. They're much bigger. Why are you doing this? You know what I mean? This doesn't make any sense. You know, they had some great lawyers, Microsoft did, and I think they made the case that they weren't going to do things. And they also gave in on a number of things that they would allow certain games to be on all the platforms. They seem to have done it right. Brad Smith led the effort at

Microsoft, but they seem to have done it in a way that acquiesced and yet at the same time didn't give up anything. I also think a lot of it comes down to public perception. I mean, it's gone from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader and then back to Anakin. Microsoft is the tale of Anakin Skywalker, and that is Microsoft is well-liked again. And I think public perception, do they really want to pick Microsoft to go to the mat when they have Meta and Alphabet and Amazon? So, I think they've done just such a fantastic job managing their image and being, and a lot of it it's real. They've changed the culture and the approach.

People will tell you that they are Microsoft is a good partner and that they enjoy working with them. And whereas before, in the 90s, they had sort of that alphabet kind of Amazon. Douche nozzles, if you'd like to use that term again. There you go. That sounds like a minor league baseball team.

Don't you like that word? I love that word. Anyways, Microsoft, I would, I think this would probably, you'll have some panic buying, right? And that is, and I don't know who the independent players are,

but this would be a great time to be a small independent, I would think game producer or medium size because I think the bigger players are now, everyone looks at Microsoft and thinks, oh, they're the smartest people in the room, right? So when Verizon bought Yahoo, AT&T thought, oh, that must mean we need to buy content and we need to buy Time Warner or whatever it is, or I don't know who went first and it's by the

other. But I would imagine that the bankers are, for any independent video game company, I wouldn't be surprised if Epic's having conversations. But the thing is, the people that are going to afford a company like Epic right now are under more antitrust scrutiny than Microsoft. So Microsoft is sort of bumping right up against, I think, the ceiling of what could get through. Yeah, I guess so. We keep thinking mergers and acquisitions are going to happen again, but it seems like it hasn't been. There are actually, there's some very big ones, but there's a bunch.

There's some oil ones. Well, Exxon just took out Pioneer, I think it was, for $60 billion. Yeah, Michelle something, yeah. Yeah. That was a big one. I would think you're going to see more M&A activity in the space.

Yeah. All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the pressure and risks for companies to weigh in on the Israeli-Hamas war. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Rick Wilson, about the race for speaker and more. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting,

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make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, live Laugh Lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Scott, we're back. Speak out or stay quiet. It's a question many corporations and institutions are wrestling with as the Israeli-Hamas war enters its second week. And the Washington Post put it this weekend, in a moment this heavy with emotion and rage, few moves are safe. So do companies have an obligation to weigh in here? A number of CEOs and companies have spoken out already condemning Hamas, expressing support for Israel and calling out anti-Semitism to their employees and publicly on social media, but not as many as people had hoped, for sure, as in other

situations like Black Lives Matter and Me Too. 41% of Americans say in general businesses should take a stance on current events, according to a Gallup and Bentley University survey. That's down from 48% last year, but that's a lot of people. That Gallup survey was conducted last May while the light backlash was still happening. What advice would you give to companies and CEOs trying to figure out the right move if there is such a thing? The right move is to be quiet. Unless you're directly involved or you have a large employee or customer base that is very emotionally invested in the issue on a risk-adjusted basis you're better off just listening because you've

been very outspoken against some it's interesting but go ahead outspoken against hamas and everything you've been emotional yourself and you know we talked about it last week and i was like i think people should just say it's a heinous attack and then let's calm down a little bit from everything else and stuff like that. But a lot of companies have been very, I know there's been a lot of debates within companies. It's not, for the most part, a corporation is there to be a platform to help people develop economic security for them and their families. They do have an obligation to the community. They do have an obligation as a global citizen. But the power of listening is underrated, and it's across all dimensions. Oh, interesting.

And that is, on a risk-adjusted basis on an issue like this, you got to ask yourself a couple questions. One, do you need to say something? And because of these social media platforms that encourage you and create incentives and help you believe that as a DJ, you should weigh in on what's happening in Israel, not everyone needs to hear from you. And if you're a company, on a risk-adjusted basis, what I tell people on boards is, let's absolutely stay out of this. Why do we have unique insight? Why would we do this? We're not a social commentary company. We sell shoes or we sell people chicken cup salad sandwich or why do we feel a need to weigh in here? I think a lot of it is narcissism.

I think people will go online and try and put pressure on you to say something. And I don't... Is there a risk to saying nothing at all, though? Well, it depends who you are. It's situational. If it's Black Lives Matter and 88% of your endorsed athletes in the United States are people of color, you should probably have a viewpoint. athletes in the United States are people of color, you should probably have a viewpoint.

Or, you know, I get it. But in terms of what's happening in the Middle East, I would argue, unless you have domain expertise, Palantir puts out this big statement. Just six months ago, you can find Joe Lonsdale saying the company should be apolitical. Yeah, I know that. It's so funny. A lot of the virtue signalers are people who hate woke people, which is really interesting. I kept saying over the weekend, I saw a bunch of tech pros particularly going on and on. And first I said, you don't know what you're talking about, so you look like an idiot. And secondly, you're doing it precisely what you complained about. And then third, just sit down, Joe, sit down, sit down, whoever you happen to be, and stop talking because you should not talk so much. Well, there's a few things here.

One, and I think about this depending upon the stakeholders. When Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who's a hero of mine, a professor of leadership at Yale, started putting pressure on companies to withdraw from Russia. He used public shaming, and these companies, rather than putting out Instagram posts of the Ukrainian flag, he got them to actually pull their business. That was more meaningful. And in general, I think that there's a lesson here, and this is something I didn't learn as a young man until much later in life. As a leader, really good leaders, they have a tendency to listen and ask a lot of questions and then make decisions. I used to think as a young man and as a young CEO that leadership was coming up really quickly with an opinion and

then advocating for that opinion tirelessly and winning and arguing, and my opinion is the right one. No. In relationships, I think that a lot of times the solution to a relationship or when your partner is upset with you is your instincts are to counter them and defend yourself. It's just to listen and to show some empathy and concern. When my friends would call me for advice as a younger man, I would get a quick assessment of what I thought, and then I'd immediately bust into advice. And now what you realize is most people are just going to do what they were going to do anyways. What they're looking for is someone to ask thoughtful questions and suss out some thinking that they're thinking, and just to be really supportive. Yep, I would agree. I can't believe I agree with you on this, but I actually

do. I was thinking about this the other day. I was sort of like, take a seat. I think about take a seat to myself a lot more than I used to. A hundred percent. Like, I'm going to take a seat here. And it works a lot better. And let me just say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in one interview, my favorite interview with her, someone asked her why her marriage was so successful. Be deaf sometimes. Be deaf. Sometimes it's really good to be a little bit deaf. And I think more she meant is listen,

is what she was actually saying. But in the case of this instance, what I think is, first off, do you have any real domain expertise here? Do you really feel, and I don't want to, you don't want to squelch anyone's feelings. Do you really feel passionate about this? And if you really feel passionate, ask yourself, what am I actually doing versus saying? Am I sending money? Am I trying to be supportive by doing actually something? Or do I just want to go on Instagram and virtue signal or express anger and emotion? And if the answer is the latter, then, I mean,'t know i'm gonna call soul searching but i thought i immediately have a tendency to go oh i need to weigh in on any big world situation with

something thoughtful or interesting and i thought no i shouldn't i should get ian bremer and farid zakaria to come on and talk about it because that's how people are going to learn and but do you have domain expertise are you adding anything to the dialogue? Otherwise, what you want to figure out as a friend, as a spouse, as a leader, a vastly underrated skill in an environment that has convinced you that your opinion matters on everything is just to fucking listen. Yeah, agreed, Scott. Speaking of which, we talked last week about what's happening at Harvard and other colleges. We're hearing more about donors getting involved when they don't agree with students and administrators.

The New York Times published a piece saying the violence in Israel ripped open a chasm between donors and students and administrators and their largesse. The Times had conversations with a dozen donors who felt they had a right and obligation to weigh in, though. It's generational, though. And it's also, I mean, the bottom line is that the majority of alumni of Harvard are older and whiter, which over time, they have grown up in a history and in a context where America was always very pro-Israel. And the current student body at Harvard is 51% non-white. And I would say goodwill, justified or not, towards Israel has declined and has increased towards Palestinians. And so you have a generational divide that's coming out here. And then, so, but going back to your question around who should say something, I think the leadership of these universities, and they're in a tough spot in my view, I think once you get to a certain point,

you know, you go to the, you go to the basics, right? We, we, we want to be empathetic. Any violence anywhere is bad.

We have empathy. We're going to give people the opportunity to help. There's all sorts of wonderful charities or whatever it is. Yeah, but nothing you say is right. We got some emails of people saying, you didn't condemn Hamas. I'm like, yes, we did. Like, you're not telling us what to say. Oh, I've got a lot of emails.

I know, but I was like, yes, we did. Do better, Scott. Learn about the genocide against the people of Gaza and go live in an open-air prison before you make your Zionist comments. I mean, but just to return to, I had a university president call me and ask me for advice around, and his question was the following, should I say something around this? And I said, well, one, do you have domain expertise? Is for some reason your university at the middle of this controversy, I think you go to what is a university at the end of the day? A university is a place where we're supposed to help catalyze a dialogue and bring people into the light in terms of learning such that they can stretch, damage the muscle in between their ears, such that it grows back stronger, and then they can go into society and help craft better solutions to make for a better world. And I think your go-to here should

be protecting, A, protecting kids' rights to say what they want, but also encouraging them to be thoughtful, recognizing their words have ramifications. But also tell your alumni to sit the fuck down. That, okay, remember all the shit you did in college? And here's the thing. When you were in college, everything wasn't going on your permanent record of 24 by 7. Look at that. I mean, when I look at the shit we were saying in college as like literally fraternity brothers, thank God we didn't have social media. Oh, I agree.

And so, it's like, you got to encourage alumni and kids to be thoughtful, a little bit more measured, research the topic, and be generous with one another, and be more forgiving, right? I would agree. On the other side, I got the same thing, which was really interesting. Let me just, we got to get to our next thing. But before we go, someone who was getting praise for saying the right thing. Oddly enough, Pete Davidson on SNL this weekend. Davidson explained in the show's opener why it made sense for him to actually speak out. When I was seven years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack.

So I know something about what that's like. I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering, Israeli children and Palestinian children. And it took me back to a really horrible, horrible place. And, you know, no one in this world deserves to suffer like that, you know, especially not kids, you know. He went on to make the point that laughter was healing for him at the time and made a very funny joke about not being funny. And it was an unexpectedly powerful moment. I was not expecting that from Pete Davidson of all people.

It was very powerful. I thought that was, I thought that was, I thought it was very strong. Anyway, let's bring in a friend of Pivot. Rick Wilson is a former Republican strategist, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and author of the bestselling book, Everything Trump Touches Dies. Welcome, Rick. So let's start with the Speaker of the House mess. Where is it right now? It's going to change by the time this lands, which is tomorrow. What is ultimately going to happen here?

You've got a very small group of Republicans, some in the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus, some who are just like relatively sane, and I use the phrase relatively. Those folks are really, really, really, really fighting against Jim Jordan. They understand that Jim Jordan is electoral poison, uh, an election denier, uh, a madman, a weirdo, um, and someone who will lead them down into a, into a path where the entertainment wing of the Republican party will be very happy, but their electoral prospects will dwindle dramatically. Their, their chances of holding the majority will fall off dramatically.

So they're trying to find a way to do everything they can except the one thing they should, which is to support Hakeem Jeffries for speaker. Make a deal, cut a deal where they get a couple of committees and Hakeem Jeffries agrees not to bring anything hyper-progressive and the crazy like jeffries agrees not to bring anything hyper progressive in the crazy like edge of the party stuff to the floor until next november or after next november um where they basically run a coalition government where we get the bills paid we get the lights turn we keep the lights turned on uh people keep getting their social security checks and all that um and look i think it would

be great for the country but i don't think that even these so-called moderates have the the political guts to do it they know they'll all catch a primary they know most of them will lose their primaries if they do this but once in a while a sacrifice of your personal ambition um and your sense of security is probably a good thing for the country but what will probably happen is they will all in the end sort of grump and groan and say, well, I had to support Jim Jordan, otherwise communism would be here, and they'd seize the means of production, or whatever crazy excuse they make up for themselves. So you think it's a possibility that he's going to strong arm?

It was like there was a story in the Times about he's basically bullying them into his speakership, which he's good at. And over the weekend, you know, we saw the stories about Hannity calling people. I heard over the weekend Don Jr. was calling people. You know, all the sort of grandees of Trump world have decided they're going to make Jim Jordan their boy. And why wouldn't you? He's an election denier. He's going to run the spurious impeachments of Joe Biden.

He's going to spend a billion hours of tv time in hunter biden's laptop so you know i think there's a pathway for him it won't be it won't be easy um and and you know again even if jim jordan gets the nomination and becomes speaker he still is going to face the suicide bombers of Matt Gaetz if he decides to bring a spending bill to the floor to keep the government open. So, even if he gets the job, it still is contingent upon keeping that crazy faction of the Nihilist caucus alive and happy. So, Rick, always good to see you. It's shocking. I can't imagine, and you have your finger much more on the pollster, I can't imagine the Republicans would ever acknowledge an inability to pick a leader and agree to Jeffries. I just don't see that as a reality. where do you think the good money is that Jim Jordan is the front runner? He gets the speakership and then like play it out. What do you think happens the next 12 months?

Here's the thing. Washington has a really bad time getting out of the old paradigm. There are two parties. They're both sort of, sort of kind of the same. Jim Jordan represents something very, very different and, and, very, frankly, dark about American politics today. And what I'm concerned about right now is, look, the scenario I laid out is the righteous scenario they should follow, not the one they will follow. I sort of gave up on heroes in the Republican Party a long time ago. But the difficulty, and you asked where the good money is, there's actually a really interesting question here. There are a lot of people who fund the Republican Party who did it under Kevin McCarthy. As I like to say, Kevin could wear normie drag and go out to a boardroom

or a golf course or some wealthy person's home and talk a good game about the old Republican Party. It's still there. Don't worry. We're going to play around with the edges of Trumpism, but that's just to get elected. That's not the case if you have Jim Jordan. He's a true believer. He's a full-on new kind of Republican that doesn't represent any of its old values.

So a lot of the folks that I talk to in private equity and the donor community, they're really worried right now. They're really, really worried because they think that Mitch McConnell is the last thin reed holding the world together. And even McConnell's not going to be that brave when it comes down to whether he wants things to happen or not. When the House is sending him these crazy bills, he'll still kill a few of them, but a lot of them are going to get through.

when the house is sending him these crazy bills, he'll still kill a few of them, but a lot of them are going to get through. So realistically, so first off, one, you keep hearing about this Washington Post expose and this George Clooney documentary, which it's not going to be good for Representative Jordan. I mean, it's either it's going to go from bad to disastrous. It's just whether it'll be bad or disastrous. And so who is, and I've got to believe that they're looking at that going, that's not a good look. Who within the Republican Party could potentially be a number two here? I mean, it sounds like all reads are leading to Jordan right now. Right now they are the the the next person in the docket um is and by the way it's ironic that steve scalise was not conservative enough for the current republican party steve

scalise who was somewhere out like past the orbit of pluto in the right winger world um was not enough um elise stefanik from new york would love to have her turn at bat. She can't quite put it together. She may end up being one of the compromise candidates, but she is in the minds of a lot of the MAGA folks tainted as too establishment, too old party, or she worked for George W. Bush in the White House. She's from an elite institution. She went to Harvard. So there's a lot of suspicion about Elise's MAGA bona fides that would probably keep her out of it. But, you know, the other sort of fantasy

baseball scenario is you end up with the support of the Democrats and enough Republicans, you put a moderate Republican in there as speaker. I don't see how that happens either. I think that's just as unlikely, but they're going to grind through this thing. In Poland, they just had an election where the centrists won. Surprise. It's not a surprise. I think there's like you're seeing a lot of elections in this country where, oh, my God, Kansas went for Democrats or, you know, I was like everyone was surprised by Poland. I'm like, should they have been actually because this nationalist rhetoric is really disturbing to most people, I think most average people. I think there's a thing about authoritarianism that it's always sort of trying to press into the door, creep inside.

But it's hard to scale it without a really charismatic leader. And look, Trump was a love him or hate him, was a charismatic leader to a certain segment of Americans. And in Poland, they didn't quite have that. So you saw this coalition of center and center-right parties and moderate parties over the weekend because you do end up with a sense of exhaustion. And that's one of the things that I think Republicans, if you have a Speaker Jordan, they're already getting exhausted by watching this monkey show that they're putting on right now.

But if you have a Speaker Jordan, it will drive the country to this edge of, they're already getting exhausted by watching this monkey show that they're putting on right now. But if you have a Speaker Jordan, it will drive the country to this edge. They're going to want to switch off the Republican message completely because all it will be is dick pics on Hunter Biden's laptop and crazy conspiracy theories and impeachment palooza and January 6th revisionist history. None of those things are what Americans are looking for right now. Not a single poll out there says, wow, I need more crazy Jim Jordan in my life. Even among Republicans, we think at Lincoln, it could expand the available pool of persuadable Republican voters if you end up with a Jordan putting on this kind of crazy performative politics for half a year. Rick, is there an opportunity? I didn't know this until recently, but the Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House of Representatives. If we were to just try and be creative here and think out of the box, is there an individual that they could find and

resurrect and say, hey, can you come back for a year and you're sort of palatable to most of the parties here? Who is not Trump, who is the other name raised, of course. Right, who's not Trump. Well, look, there's a mini-boomlet of Liz Cheney fans out there who say she is undeniably a conservative in every possible dimension. She's not a Trump person. She is an institutionalist. And maybe you could end up with a

situation where enough Democrats could pull over and, and it would also vex the Republican crazies to a degree that would be astounding. There's an argument you could get there. I don't, I don't quite see that. I don't, I can't quite make the count work. You would, you would want to think about perhaps a Republican from the old school. You know, Eric Cantor's name has been mentioned. Paul Ryan's name has been mentioned. It would make no one happy, but it would be a compromise that maybe enough moderate Republicans and enough Democrats would say, we can keep the tide of insanity back for another year, operate the government, keep the lights on, keep, you know, paying VA benefits and things like that. It's a tough assignment, though. There's no easy answer for an outside person who would meet all the qualifications. You know, John Boehner's

not doing much but golfing and drinking wine right now, and he's affable. Everybody loves John. And there are some people who talked about, you know, do you bring in some business executive to try to do this? I don't know where, I don't know how that person would be successful, because being a Speaker of the House is a complex procedural job where there's a lot of parliamentary alchemy going on all the time. So, it's hard to just, it's hard to apply a skill set from outside of politics to jump into that job and be successful. Well, speaking of business person, Donald Trump's name, of course, has come up. And of course, he's been crazier than ever, it feels like. You called him unhinged last week, noting the utter depravity, the barking lunacy,

the void of sense, reason, and empathy set records, which is, you know, it's a high bar. It's a very high bar. And you said the speech where, among other things, Trump called Hezbollah very smart, which most voters haven't heard, but a lot of the inside the Beltway people certainly heard it loud and clear. Look, I am, for better or for worse, I'm the anthropologist of Trump for the last eight years. I've written two books about the guy. I've fought against him for eight years now. And I, modestly speaking, understand him better than most people idea, oh, don't worry, it can be normal, we can just work around it. You can't work around it. He's this protean force in the Republican world. And it's why all of this primary stuff is just joke.

It's just risible. And yet, the more he becomes obviously unhinged, the more he becomes threatening to people, the more he becomes, you know, I am your retribution, the more the Republican Party base likes him. Yes, there are Republicans splitting away from him. That started to happen with Dobbs and January 6th, but they're still a fairly small fraction. They're about 11% in the best case scenario of the Republican Party is never Trump. So, but no, he is, he's actually gained political standing among Republicans given the course of all of these, his legal problems, given the sort of failed Republican primary, the failure to launch primary. And, you know, he he is you can't underestimate the ability of him to win the

presidency if he becomes the nominee because of the way the electoral college is structured and because you know donald trump has an appeal among 65 year old white voters that is and i've never seen it before in politics it's it's unbelievably powerful with them. What about, let's handicap Biden being the nominee. Is it 99%? Or do you think there's a 20% or a 30% chance? Yeah, short of some externality, some medical externality, Biden's going to be the nominee. Yeah. You're not going to see, I mean, this Phillips guy, he's a clown.

He's a guy chasing the news cycle. He'll get 1%. Now, he could be sort of a Pat Buchanan figure. And if he does that. Explain who he is for people who don't know. He is a one-term or two-term congressman from Michigan. He is, he's a backbencher of backbenchers. He's surrounded by some people

who apparently have been telling him, hey, you made some money in business, so therefore you'd be really good at being president. And he really has an ego on him. He's got a colossal ego, and he believes that he should take the bet that Biden will have heart attack or Biden will fall or something will happen and he'll be the inevitable heir apparent. It is a really bad bet. As old as Biden is and as old as he looks these days, and he does look old.

He's old. He's old. He's an old guy. You can't get away from it. I would argue he's done a credible job as president in some very difficult moments. I think his leadership in the foreign policy space as an old Republican, it has shocked me how strong he has been as a foreign policy leader because the cliche is that Democrats are weak. So I don't think there's any scenario where, and look, I've talked to everybody around those sort of, you know,

the circle. Gavin Newsom's not going to run for president this time. Folks, stop dreaming. Gretchen Whitmer is not going to run for president this time. It's just not going to happen. You know, Pete Buttigieg is in the administration, in the administration pulling the oar every day for Biden. Running a primary against an incumbent president is almost always a suicide mission. Well, you have Robert Kennedy Jr. Yeah, what about RFK Jr.? What impact, if any, will he have? Well, here's the great thing about RFK Jr., and that you know sort of in shock honestly in the democratic primary i was a little worried that the kennedy name would have a knock-on effect especially with the much older

voters older boomers silent generation folks um my parents age um but now these are going to run as an independent if you look at the profile what is is the profile? Crypto, anti-vax, conspiracy theories, social media censorship, wokeism. He basically now, I mean, Steve Bannon and Joe Rogan and the rest of these people who elevated RFK Jr. when they thought he was an Elon, when they thought he was a Democrat. Democrat. Now, with him running as an independent, there's a real possibility that he's going to end up siphoning more Republican-leaning independents away from Trump than he would have ever been able to harm Biden as a Democrat. Which is why they're attacking him. Trump is attacking him. Right. And you notice Trump kept absolutely silent. he actually said a couple of like vaguely friendly things about him in the very beginning. But they discovered that the monster that was hatched in Steve Bannon's laboratory has escaped and is trying to kill them all. So I am, I'm delighted to see Robert Kennedy in the race as an independent now because it will draw from Trump. It will hurt Trump.

I have one last question. The Lincoln Project was formed with the goal of defeating Trump in 2020. Good job. You're still at it in 2024. You said he has a distinct possibility of winning. Explain the stakes for us. And does the war in Israel factor in or is it too early? The war in Israel does factor in, Kara. It is one of these moments where, to their credit, the Democratic Party got on message right away. They understood that Hamas and the Palestinians had to be bifurcated in the messaging. They got that quickly.

the Republicans have tried to conflate the two, and it's a really difficult position for them to be in right now, because they've loved the position for years, we are the Israel party, we are the Israel party. And they can't quite hold that with Joe Biden, you know, being so staunch about it, planning a trip over there, apparently, as the reporting has out today, and really standing up and really taking a leadership role as he's done in Europe with Ukraine, as he's done in the Pacific. And again, this one as an ex-Republican and a foreign policy guy, I've been extraordinarily happy about that. But look, you know, we, we, on election day of 2020, I really wanted to go write more

books and watch my kids have kids and do anything else but worry about Donald Trump every day because I'd done it for a long time at that point. And we saw he was going to resist the legitimate results of the election. And then on 1-6, when we saw the attack on the Capitol, it made me understand that the mission of defeating Trump had been one part of it, but defeating his movement and this authoritarian nationalism was not going to go away quickly or easily or smoothly. And you had to stay in the fight. And so we won a lot of races in 22 on pro-democracy grounds. We went after candidates who were going to make a big difference, secretaries of state and governors who could change the battlefield in 24 if they were in Republican hands.

And now we're full on, once again, this is my final campaign. One way or the other, this is it for me. And believe me, I want to be done. And I want to beat him again. So a thesis and then a question. And the thesis is that 45 states have already voted, Thesis and then a question. And the thesis is that 45 states have already voted. 159 million people voted in 2020. This election of the most powerful man in the world is going to come down to 50,000 people, mostly women, small number of counties in four to five states. That's our theory of the case, Scott.

Between six and nine states are on our target list, including places you can imagine, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. We at the Lincoln Project, you know, we make great media, we make great ads, but we have a really smart targeting operation underneath it all with very, very bright math people. And it's called the game of small numbers. We're not trying to move a million voters in Wisconsin. I'm trying to move 80,000 Republican Dobbs-related women in Brown County. I'm not trying to win all of millions of Arizonans. I'm trying to shift about 35,000 people in Maricopa County, mostly women, trending slightly younger in Arizona. We have a model to pursue.

And you're absolutely right, Scott. It is going to come down. It's going to be close again. It's going to be the last minute again. And it is going to be a fight to the very, very, very finish. And how does it look right now amongst that smaller group of people? I realize that the media has to run national polls to try and pretend it matters. It doesn't. Across that small niche of voters, how does it look here and now? The good news is that in 2020, when we modeled this sort of same targeting system, between three and eight percent of these voters were persuadable. These Republican voters were persuadable away from Trump. After Dobbs and after January 6th, the number grew between 7% and 11%, depending on the states.

So we have a much bigger pool to tap this time. The voter intensity on the right is very high. That concerns me. Democrats are still a little bit scattered. And they're still like this mumbling about a primary or Joe Biden quitting. None of that's going to happen, but they still have to settle down for what the real fight is going to be. They didn't want another Biden Trump fight, but that's what they're going to have to fight. So it's a, it's going to be a hard race. It is interesting that Carrie Lake has suddenly calmed down quite a bit or on election denier. Isn't that interesting?

She backed abortion. Well, even Ron DeSantis has backed up on abortion. They understand the dog caught the car on Dobbs and it has been a disaster for them politically. Yeah, it's interesting. Just to update, Jim Jordan has won over several key skeptics in the conference. I think you were 100% right. Mike Rogers, Ken Calvert, and now Ann Wagner of Missouri, who called Jordan a non-starter for speaker last week, said she would support him. So it looks like, yes. Well, somebody got a committee. Yeah. Well, then we'll leave it at that, but he's doing it.

Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you, Rick. Thanks for your good work. Really appreciate it. And we'll check back in with you as we move along in the system, since this is your last campaign. Happy to join you anytime. All right. Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Kara. A quick note on Rick. I think personally, Rick has the best Twitter feed in politics. I find that his ability to just puncture to the right, But his ability to just puncture to the right, kind of the heart of the issue, is incredible humor. And I was on Rick's podcast, The Enemy's List, and we were just talking and sort of, we started talking about our youth.

And I didn't know this about him. When he was in high school, his father was in a terrible car accident and was in and out of a coma for several years. And he went on to talk about how all of these men kind of came out of the woodwork, his father's partners, neighbors, and were just there for him. And he got very emotional. And it was such a lovely moment. This guy who's like, you know, Rick's been so successful and he's such a power player. He's such a player. And he was, you know, you could just see him go back to the age of 16. I think he's a really, a really decent man. Yeah. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for your prediction. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans,

and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, let's hear your fantastic prediction. My prediction. So I don't know if you saw, but an activist investor, Starboard, showed up at News Corp.

Yeah, News Corp. I'm curious. These assets have now declined to the point where they're in distressed territory, but they still have really amazing cash flows. The third shoe is about to drop. You're going to see an activist, I think, in the next 30 to 90 days. Ooh, Scott, what do you know? I feel like you know something. No, I don't. But the best way to predict the future is to make it. I think you're going to see an activist at Warner Brothers Discovery. The stock is now down to a point where I think there's a lot of upside as

Zaslav, to his credit, is reducing debt and the assets here are trading at about, even including the debt, about half of what they paid AT&T for the asset. So I think that there's blood in the water. People see these assets have declined to a level where there's a decent amount of upside with not too much downside. Anyways, activist investor takes a large position and advocates for board seats and for Warner Brothers to be more stringent around cost-cutting. And you got to give Zaslav credit. He has done a good job cost-cutting, but also to more specifically get rid of the melting ice cube, which is the cable asset, sooner rather than later. So activist investor in the next 30 to 90 days at Warner Brothers Discovery.

So what happens? Because they do have control. What happens? I don't think they do. It's not a... Fox is 39% of the voting shares are controlled by the family, which basically means they have control. Yeah, News Corp. News Corp. News Corp, yeah. I've learned the hard way. Banging your head against a wall with a company that has dual-class shareholder, and the same is true of News Corp. However, at Warner Brothers Discovery, something that Stanky basically,

now I'm getting really into the weeds here, was basically the Newhouse family, which owned preferred shares in, I think it was A&E or a component of the Warner Brothers discovery, wind-up of discovery, extracted an additional payment because Stanky, to his credit, realized that if he went single class of shares, this stock would likely be worth more because it would be, quote unquote, you could put it into play. Anyways, it is about to be put into play because somebody with a couple billion dollars, and I have a few names in mind, is going to show up and say, there's 40% to 60% of upside here in the next 12 months with probably 10% to 20% downside. The stock's at about 10.50. And as they continue to decrease the debt through cost cuts, which the activists will encourage greater cost cuts, the equity value will go up. Anyways, a long-winded way of saying activist investor shows up at Warner Brothers Discovery in the

next 30 to 90 days. Okay. All right. Wow. Okay. And what happens to Murdoch? Nothing? No. This is what happens. The way you foment change at a company is, one, you can do a proxy or you can bid for the whole company. No one wants to show up with that check right now. And two, the other way is you show up at the annual meeting and you try and present a new slate of directors and you get board seats. And the problem is the voting shares. They have 39% of the voting shares. And when you have 39, and in an annual election, only 80% of the shares show up. People don't send in their votes, so they're sitting in some trust somewhere. So about 80% of the shares show up, which means that all you need is 40% to win. They've already won.

So this is a lot of finger pointing and anger. Well, the only thing is he didn't do that merger that he wanted to do because of pressure from shareholders. He had, when he wanted to merge News Corp and Fox last year or earlier this year. Yeah, that's a fair point. He gave it up in January. That's a fair point. So he didn up in January. That's a fair point. So he didn't get to do what he wanted there. Yep, yep.

I don't know. I bet I would have thought the next one, I'm shocked. When I saw activist, I thought, oh, finally, Warner Brothers. And I saw it was News Corp. I'm like, News Corp? Or Fox?

All right, okay. You think Warner Brothers. Interesting. Okay, well, that's a good prediction. You did a little shifteroo on me there. Anyway, I like it. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Scott, that's the show. My voice will be back by Thursday, I promise, because I know how much it annoys you to even question possibilities of illness or sickness. And we'll be back on Friday for more. But by the way, I'm going to outlast you no matter what, even though I'm older than you. Let's be clear about that. Anyway, please read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Joey Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mule Severio, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from

New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara, have a great rest of the week.