Pivot - Musk vs. Altman, Trump Admin's DEI Crackdown, and Netflix Stock Surge

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss Netflix's stock surging as subscriber growth breaks records yet again, and the SEC forming a crypto taskforce. Then, the Trump administration's disturbing new policy orders federal employees to report on their colleagues as part of the DEI crackdown. Plus, Elon trolls the new Trump-supported AI venture, and gets trolled by Sam Altman in return. Finally, the latest names in the mix for a TikTok deal, including MrBeast. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social 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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Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. Download the free CBC News app or visit cbcnews.ca. or visit cbcnews.ca. Mike has always wondered what makes some people want to play action hero. When I see people speeding or skydiving or surfing on 100-foot waves, I always think, are you crazy? What are you doing? Because I'm like risk averse. I'm trying to like, you know, keep Mike in one piece. But what about people who get their thrills from playing cop?

This week on Explain It to Me, Citizens Arrest. Is it a real thing? And should it be? New episodes every Wednesday. Let me just say, let's go around and give tips to really successful people. Well, isn't that what this show is? Isn't that what Pivot is? Yes, it is. Unsolicited advice. [♪ Music playing. Vox Media Podcast Network theme song playing.

Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. I'm Scott Galloway, and I endorse Lauren Sanchez's dress code. I do too. I'm here for them. I mean it.

No. Singular double breast, chest, chest, help me, help me. Listen, we at Pivot do not like talking about people's personal foibles and looks and everything else. We don't, we don't, we never do. But yeah, yes we do.

Who is we white man? I very much enjoy objectifying people. I understand. I'm an equal opportunity objectifier. You gotta give me that. Here's what I think got Scott going. Megyn Kelly went on a rant about Lauren Sanchez's lady parts.

It was really kind of strange and weird about, you know, essentially calling her a whore. That's what she was essentially doing. And I felt like I ran to her defense. I'm like, if she wants to wear a bustier in the Capitol of the Tundra. She looked great. She looked good.

She looked great. It was good. She looks great. It was sexy and I like it. And we're all for you, Lauren. We're not so much loving your boyfriend, but we really like your outfit and you know, whatever. I feel like people should wear what they want. I, you know what? I relate to her.

Cause when I'm on the beaches of San Tropez, I wear a banana hammock, a speedo, cause it would just be unfair not to share this youth, this raging hot sexuality. You have to put it in the window a little bit. Yeah. Okay. No, I'm serious. I thought she looked great. Everyone was saying she wore a bra.

I thought she looked great. Well, it was a bustier. It's called a bustier. Whatever. Okay. I agree. You like people calling women sluts for wearing bustiers. He's banging a porn star and. Whatever, okay. I agree. You'll find people calling women sluts for wearing Boustiers. And he's banging a porn star on a woman who was in Playboy, like a play to the crowd.

It's apparently Boustier, Boustier is how you pronounce it. I just say yay. Yay. I just say yay. Meghan wears sleeveless dresses. My guess is that's not her natural hair color. And she wears form-fitting dresses because she's got fantastic genetic attributes and more power to her.

And she, I think people should do what makes them feel right. I'm more, quite frankly, I'm more uncomfortable with the way Senator Fetterman showed up. Really? Oh, because he's sloppy. He showed up in shorts. Yeah, that's his thing though.

I mean, it's his brand. He cast us to kind of wear that all the time. It's sort of like Richard Simmons. Yeah, but it's kind of it's sloppy. He showed up in shorts. Yeah, that's his thing though. I mean, it's his brand. He cast us to kind of wear that all the time. It's sort of like Richard Simmons. Yeah, but it's kind of like, I'm bigger than you. And it's this whole, it's this whole Sam Bankman-Friede thing. Anyways, back to much more interesting topics.

Anyway, Lauren, we're with you. We're with you. We're with you. Team Sanchez. Team Sanchez on the Boustier. Whatever. Yay for the Boustier. If Musk can have double E breast, so can she. No, I'm sorry, if Bezos. Oh God. He's got big tits, that guy's got really big tits.

It's got a set, it's got a set. Oh my gosh. It's all real, every bit of it. Anyway. No, not really, there's a definite amount. Take it from me, there's a lot of HGH and testosterone running through those. Do you take that?

No, I've been on testosterone for about two or three years. For what reason? I'm aging and I want to be starting in the gym and have longer erections. Would you like to go into greater detail? I'm curious. No one ever asks, so I ask. Go ahead. But I go off it. Anyways, it's, or on it to try and make sure

that I can still actually produce my own man juice, my own man gravy. Wow, oh no, you didn't just say that word. And anyways, but yeah. All right, that's enough information. Thank you. Sorry. Okay, all right, does it affect you in any way,

taking it? I'm just curious. I know steroids can make your penis smaller, that's what I understand, but. Yeah, that would be difficult. Okay. We've got a lot to get to today. We've got a lot to get to.

I'm just saying my nickname in college was tripod. I'm not gonna say anything more. I'm not gonna say anything more. That is like a, that's a 12 year old- Stop inquiring about my personal life. That is a 12 year, you could up the level of-old-wise joke. Stop crying about my personal life. That is a 12-year. You could up the level of your jokes. My other one was anteater.

Anteater. No more. I'm not saying anymore. Okay, we're done. We're done. I'm not saying anymore. We're done with the boobs and penises now, people. Let's get to the news because there was not a dick measuring contest going on between

Elon Musk and Sam Altman trolling each other to get Trump's favor and lavishly trying to get Trump's favor, including byly trying to get Trump's favor, including by Sam Altman. That was quite a tweet. By the way, Bill Gates is doing the same after having trashed him previously. Anyway, whatever, it's a new day, apparently, kind of a scary new day in many ways, and we'll talk about that too. Plus, new names in the mix for the TikTok deal. We have a lot to get to today, Scott. We've got to get off of Lawrence and Justice Booth. Anyway, this story is really disturbing, honestly.

Federal employees have been warned, if they don't report coworkers working in DEI and accessibility positions, they will face repercussions. The warning told employees to notify the Office of Personnel if they were aware of any change in position descriptions to obscure the connection to DEI. I think it's DEI truth, you know, is the email address, which is kind of frightening. Feels like 1984.

One employee told the New York Times they felt like they were being recruited into the Gestapo. The Trump administration also called agency heads to place DEI roles on pay leave by Wednesday. They haven't fired them, but they're putting them on pay leave. They're sort of, this is one of their promises to rid the government of DEI rules on pay leave by Wednesday. They haven't fired them, but they're putting on pay leave. This is one of their promises to rid the government of DEI. Of course, at the same time, there's all these lawsuits trying to get corporations to pull back on those things, and some are dying it and others aren't.

But it was really disturbing. The last time they did this, I think it was the Eisenhower administration, it was targeting gay people, report gay people so that we can get them out of government. I'm not loving the report and commies. Yeah, I'm not loving the reporting thing. It's interesting because Amanda and I,

I love your thoughts, but Amanda, I have a little bit of a thing and I said, Biden administration shouldn't change the names of these jobs just to hide them and obscure them. They should make them fire these people in plain sight. That's to me instead of trying to hide them away. At the same time, getting employees to report on each other, that is a freakish thing to do and it's really quite disturbing.

I find it very disturbing and creates all kinds of different problems between employees. It has that Gestapo-y feel to it. What do you think? Actually, I think that's the wrong analogy. I think the correct analogy is the Stasi. By the way, one of the best movies, most underrated movies, The Lives of Others about an East German who

eventually gets to the West and the life he led in East Germany. But essentially, there was currency and power in ratting out your neighbors. Ratting out. And over time, people started ratting out innocent people and it created such a society of distrust that no one wanted to talk to their neighbors. Which was the point.

Yeah, but it's really, well, okay, but it leads to everything that's horrible about America. And that is we used to be a group of people that when we bound together to try and help people, other Americans we didn't know, we were down with that because we knew that we had more in common with them. We had regard for them. We trusted them.

We generally assumed that other Americans were good people. So we were willing to invest. We were willing to be drafted. You know, we had a certain comity of man as it related to other Americans. When you create this, this is just terrible for a culture. It also speaks to mismanagement in the sense that they should be able to figure out who these positions are without incenting people.

It's their job if they really want them gone. To rat on each other. But something you inspired another thought, and that is I would argue that this is really, not the first example, but the most brazen example the last two weeks about how much ridiculous, brazen, outrageous corruption and grift and general weirdness has taken place. And in any other era, there would have been nonstop coverage

and shaming of exactly all the scenarios, the grift of these meme coins that the president launched. And you know what? I just don't think there's enough, I think there's too much grift. They do it. They flood the grift zone. They've just flooded it.

And I don't think people can focus and I don't think there's enough journalists out there to actually cover this and do actual reporting. Agreed. I think one of the things, we'll get to there was some layoffs in CNN and one thing that Mark Thompson said, which I do not agree with and I think I can say it pretty clearly, that you take them, let's not have an opinion. I think you can have an opinion once you do reporting.

My opinion on this is snitches get stitches. You know that expression? It's really, it's snitches. That's what you are if you do things like this. And again, if Trump wants to get DEI out of things, which by the way, probably targets women and people of color more in those positions, would be my guess, but I don't know, I don't have the statistics. If you want to get rid of that, get rid of it in plain sight and say you're doing it and find them and find the people and get rid of them. And that's how you do it. And if you really believe in your ridiculous obsession

with DEI, then do it and be proud of your shitty behavior. That's my feeling instead of forcing employees to rat on each other. I hate rats. And you know how I feel about it. As it relates to DEI, I think there are likely government agencies that were DEI and affirmative action were needed.

And I'm not sure they're as needed now. And I think in many instances, they create more problems than they solve. This is- So I'm not an enormous DEI fan in government agencies where you might have 60% non-white or 30% non-white. In other words, the problem, and we should collectively celebrate this, a lot of the problem has been addressed.

Not all of it, but a lot of it. And oftentimes it ends up in propagating the exact things you're trying to solve for. Now, having said this, just some advice to younger people or people in the workplace, a really smart strategy is that you always talk well of people behind their back. And that is, you are the first person to acknowledge someone's work behind their back. You're not kissing their ass. You talk up your colleagues when someone does something good, you constantly talk well of people behind their back. This is the polar fucking opposite. It is.

It creates distress. By the way, if word gets out that you're the one narking on people. Yeah, I know. Yeah, try and manage your group of people after that. Snitches get stitches. This is ugly and also just generally speaking. No one likes snitches. Couldn't they figure this shit out on their own? Yeah, I agree. Now, and this is ugly and also, just generally speaking. No one likes snitches. Couldn't they figure this shit out on their own?

Yeah, I agree. Now, there's a difference between snitches and like something terrible happens in the workplace and you report it like a whistleblower, right? That is a different thing. This is snitches. You know what I mean? Like, I do think people, if their abuse is happening, should feel safe to whistleblow. But anyway.

If it's a crime, but I'm actually a fan. I hate suggestion boxes. I like identity. If you should be able to assign, you know, people will say, well, granted, that's easy for you to say because you're wealthy and can afford lawyers, but I hate anonymous anything.

I just think it creates, I don't like this person for the following reasons. I mean, we had this shit at schools. We had parents of kids who had been broken up with by other kids calling anonymous hotlines for child abuse. I mean, this shit gets so ugly so fast, and this is not a way to build a culture around a group of people.

So if you guys are real proud of what you're doing and you're so obnoxious about it, by the way, they're so obnoxious about it, then just do it and let people see it and then decide if they think you're an asshole. They just don't, they want to hide behind everything. Anyway, well, moving on, the SEC's new leadership has created a crypto task force. The force will develop a regulatory framework for crypto assets and address issues surrounding

registration of coins. Bitcoin rallied in response to the news and is up almost 10% in the last month. Nothing wrong with the crypto task force. It just depends on who's on it, right? There should be critics and people who want more regulation. There should be boosters, I suppose. There have to be legitimate people on it. Anyone that thinks meme coins that Donald Trump pushed are the best thing ever should not be on it.

I don't know, what do you think? Nothing wrong with the task force. They're usually useless, but you know. This thing is rendered castrated before it forms. The person whose idea this is, who's assembling it and has total influence over it and can fire any of them on a dime has introduced two coins under the cover of darkness,

letting a few people that he knows get a 7,000% gain and then seeing ordinary investors absolutely take a bath. The Melania coin is off 67% in the last 72 hours. I mean, what do you want in an asset class? You want credibility, you want people to trust it, you want the rule of fair play, you want it to be a store of value or have utility. This is literally, just as my generation has pulled prosperity forward

in the form of, form of deficits. Hi, I want your future prosperity, Gen Z and millennials pulled forward to my current prosperity. Uh, Donald Trump, president Trump took the increasing credibility of this asset class and it has been increasing over the last year, and future increases in credibility, and pulled it forward for essentially what was a grift and a scam. You know who is outraged about this?

The crypto community. They were. They're like, Jesus Christ. The legitimate crypto community. But what is going to happen with this thing? You are going to see whenever this quote, whenever this quote-unquote task force attempts to pass anything resembling laws and regulation that would have given crypto more of a shot, I can't wait to see the Democratic representative and senators and some Republican

senators putting up the data on the Trump and Melania coin and saying, let me get this, this is what we want? Right. Yep. So the idea, I mean, it's literally like, Jeffrey Dahmer puts the task force together on lunchtime meals. It's just what, this task force has lost all credibility because the guy assembling it is the greatest offender. I like that you got high judging about the cryptette, that the meme coin, the shit coin. I like that you got high-degent about the crypt,

that the meme coin, the shit coin. I love that this, I love, you're offended because you don't not believe in it, but that it's like not fair play, right? It isn't something that's not done in a way that improves the use of crypto or keeps it, makes it legitimate instead, makes it sort of like Alex Jones selling vitamins, right?

Or whatever, Selenium tablets or whatever. That's the kind of stuff it feels like. Physical violence is the most heinous crime, but when you steal from people, when you're already rich, money is the transfer of time and work. When you take people's trust or their desire to help you or whatever it is, and they lose 70% of their money, and what is an obvious grift, you're taking time from their kids.

You're taking their retirement. The whole point of having an operating system in capitalism is that we do need some protections. We do need some guardrails because some people will try and exploit it. When the person in charge, the person who's supposed to be the ultimate exemplar of trying to prevent a tragedy, the commons,

engages in the theft of other people's time and money, the whole fucking thing collapses. How do my kids get rich when no one trusts this economy? And then everyone wants to be in on the grift, right? Then the grift is the thing and not the- And everyone's like, I'm grifting. I'm grifting. It's a race to the bottom. So why not? He's grifting, he's grifting, absolutely? Then the grift is the thing and not the- And everyone's like, I'm grifting. I'm grifting. It's a race to the bottom.

He's grifting, he's grifting, absolutely. I have a compassion to make. I almost stole your cashmere sweater, but I didn't. It was so soft. Well, if you'd taken it, if you'd taken it and started wearing it, it would mean we're going steady. The next thing is I borrow your car.

I know, it's true. It was so cold and I did wear it. And then I gave it, it was so soft. I have some very nice sweaters. I have the GDP of a Latin American nation in Loro Piano and Bruno Cuncinelli sweater. You do. This happened to be out. That's what it was. That was when Loro Piano was very soft.

I thought about it and then I thought I can't take it. Anyway, it was warm. All right, let's move on. You're right completely. Netflix is upping its prices after reporting its biggest ever subscriber jump. The streamer gained 19 million new subscribers in Q4 bringing the global total to 302 million. Revenue increased 16% topping $10 billion for the first time. Netflix attributed the growth to Mike Tyson and Jake Paul boxing match in November.

Interesting these live events, they're doing these live-ish events which drew in 108 million viewers. And probably a whole new class of people using Netflix, I would guess. Shares are up 12 percent in five days at the time of the taping. Wow, this group of executives really does not make very many mistakes these days, I have to say, and they're doing all kinds of live events. This live event thing which a lot, I'm curious if they ever jump in a news, right?

If they jump in a news, probably not, but live TV certainly around sports and whatever that fight was, which was a shitty fight, but still it drew in a lot of people. Thoughts on their continued march toward dominance everywhere? Well, you asked, will they jump into news? The answer is they're gonna jump into everything.

I mean, there was, at one point it was unthinkable they were gonna have their own house, before House of Cards it was unthinkable they were gonna have their own house, before House of Cards, it wasn't obvious they were gonna have their own production. And then no one ever thought they'd have live events. Which is how HBO started, FYI. HBO used to be movies that would be broadcast. That's right. And then they had HBO Boxing. Boxing.

They're going into live, there'll be a news. Amazon broke the seal with their election night coverage. I don't know what the results are here. There'll be a news, Amazon broke the seal with their election night coverage. I don't know what the results are here. They are also, they always thought, well, it's bifurcated into the large, actually the bigger part of the market, think of it as Android that is ad supported.

That broadcast television was supposed to own that for people who don't wanna pay, who are willing to endure the ads. Guess what, 55% of their new subscribers were in their ad tier model. And if you look at, they have basically doubled their price over the last 10 years when inflation is up 33%, Netflix has so much pricing power in the face of every-

Can I just say, worth it, worth it. That's called pricing power. I know, but I'm just saying, I find, I get a lot of value out of my Netflix things. I watch a lot on- And so do 300 million other subscribers. Because these things are very easy to subscribe. So what do you have? They not only have power, but they've just raised prices. So do 300 million other subscribers. Because these things are very easy to subscribe.

So what do you have? They not only have power, but they've just raised prices. They are getting so much more money and have so many more people. No one else is gonna be able to compete unless they go very niche. Well, why do you think like the Amazon? Amazon, I sometimes go to,

I have to say I go to Peacock more and finding more stuff I like there. Why does Amazon seem so flaccid in terms of, they have some good shows, but Netflix always has something I want to watch. Say the three places would be Disney for my kids and everything, although Disney has some other stuff I really like with Hulu. Peacock and Max are the other ones.

Max I think it's getting better and better, it is 100 percent, has a lot of shows I want to watch. But Netflix just is always interesting to me. And I would not, if I had to get rid of any of them, they would be the last one I'd get rid of. Well, maybe Disney would be the last one because of my kids. But why do the others seem so, blah, like much of them?

Why are they so far behind the other streamers? Well, Netflix, quite frankly, Netflix is spending $18 billion on content. Even Apple with a $3 trillion market cap has said, we can't spend more than four or five billion. So you have just the biggest investor, the biggest company that offers the most for the lowest price. If you looked at the amount of shows they have

relative to the price they're charging, it's still the best value. Then the only way you compete is through focus. And so you have HBO, which has still managed to maintain this incredible culture that is artisanal. And if there's someone talking at the water cooler about a show, it's usually on HBO. And the people, their ability to attract top talent. When I was pitching our show, we ended up we ended up with Netflix, but we had, there were a lot of people in the group that wanted to go with HBO, because HBO has a rep.

You can see that HBO attracts the cream of the crop in terms of talent, and they are able to, they've created a culture where they punch above their weight class. And then Disney has the best positioning. Disney is family. And if you have kids, you gotta take your kids to Disneyland and you gotta have Disney Plus. Everybody else, Kara. They also have Spider-Man on there. Everybody else is a guy at 3 a.m. who's fucked up, who's just like, gotta find a dance partner.

It's just like, everybody else has either gotta merge, cut costs, or sell to some billionaire son. That's it. Some of them are interesting. Like Tooby is, I really like Tooby. I think they're fun. They're kind of, she's, I just interviewed the CEO as a young woman CEO, but she used to work for Barry Diller,

I think, but they have interesting stuff. Like I go around and kind of look at it just to see what I like. And they have, they've put together some, because of the way you pick it, like stories about, you know about sad sack lawyers or whatever. They do a lot of that and that's interesting to me. But you really have to be creative in getting people

the things they want to watch, if that makes sense. I have to say, Netflix is a little bit down. You're right, HBO feels fancy restaurant, like not fancy but really good restaurant. Netflix feels a little bit like Cheesecake Factory sometimes. Again, I like the cheesecake. I know it sounds crazy, but it doesn't always feel like there's a new Cameron Diaz movie.

I love Cameron Diaz and this is her first movie in a decade. Not a very good movie, but I watched it anyway. It was not great, but I don't care. Or a Jared Butler movie. or you know what I mean? Like I'm like perfectly happy in those genres that they don't have to be spectacular in some way. Look, Netflix is Toyota. It'll be the biggest in the world.

It produces the most for the lowest prices, really well managed. HBO is more like an Audi or maybe even a Mercedes. It's a higher end's a higher end. A higher end. HBO, Netflix's strength is how much they produce. HBO's strength is how much they don't produce. They've just got a higher bar and there's more trial.

I think when HBO comes out with a big series, you're very inclined to trial it because there's a chance it's going to be the thing. Whereas Netflix says, okay, 99% of our stuff is shit, but 1% of a shit ton is enough for you. And so everything else is like features, it's like heated seats, so I can't live without GPS. But Netflix is now the car.

Apple does some really interesting things, I have to say. They have some very interesting, like Severance and Ted Lasso, and there's a bunch of shows and horses, whatever, slow horse. They have some shows that are quite good. Slow horses. They're sort of going for HBO, it seems like, but they're not quite there. Well, they hired Plepler. Yeah, they hired Plepler. Anyway.

It's a great time to love edibles and have a really nice couch. That is true. Okay. I thought that was a dick joke, but it wasn't. I won't go there. Did you remember couch fucking? Anyway, that was wild. I never understood that one. Oh, Shady Binks. Oh yeah, that's the guy formerly known as the VP.

Yeah, right, right, yeah. Yeah. Anyway. I love streaming. That story got lost in some more, but that was a good story. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back,

Elon Musk attempts to undermine Trump's new AI deal. Badly, I have to say. And of course, his nemesis is back, Sam Altman. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC optimum points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Support for Pivot comes from Delete Me. The personal data that you enter online every day, it might be worth more than you think.

Data brokers can make a profit off of selling it, which can lead to phishing, identity theft, endless spam calls, but you can help protect your data with DeleteMe. When you sign up for DeleteMe, you can see exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. DeleteMe sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what information they found, where they found it, and what they removed. I've tried DeleteMe myself and I'm honestly so shocked by how much information there is about me out there and I am

a very big privacy nut. I know all about how the tech works and so it's pretty shocking that they could get me so badly and some of the people that have it, I mean just these companies, I don't know who they are. This is one way of getting especially the more pernicious stuff off the internet. You can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Today you can get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Miles Bryan. Senior reporter and producer for the program. Hello.

Hi. You went to public school, right, Miles? Yes. Go South High Tigers. What do you remember about school lunch? Oh, I remember sad lasagna, shrink-wrapped in little containers. I remember avoiding it. Do you remember the nugs, the chicken nuggets?

Yeah, if I had to eat school lunch, that was a pretty good option. I actually liked them. But in addition to being very tasty, those nugs were very processed. And at the moment, America has got processed foods in its crosshairs. It's true.

We are collectively very down on processed food right now. None more so than Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert Fullride Kennedy Jr. I'll get processed food out of school lunch immediately. About half the school lunch program goes to processed food. Penn the man who once saved a dead bear cub for a snack, fixed school lunches. Today Explained. Every weekdayday wherever you get your podcasts. Scott, we're back with our first big story. President Trump is embracing artificial intelligence in a big way, announcing Stargate, a joint

venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle that aims to build up AI infrastructure in the US.S. But Trump unveiled it. There's no government money here. I've got so many people like, why is the government giving these people money? They're not. This is an initiative. It's just a press release from the White House is what it is.

That's why he was there. Had Sam Altman was there, Larry Ellison was there, Massey Oshisan was there. All of them have up and down startup experience, if you want to say that. They're sort of big time investors. And Sam Altman took the opportunity to briefly thank Trump. Let's listen. I'm thrilled we get to do this in the United States of America. I think this will be the most important project of this era. And as Masa said, for AGI to get built here, to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, to create a new industry centered here, We wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President.

And I'm thrilled that we get to. So this has been in the works, just so you know, it's been in the works for a long time. This is not a new thing. And I believe they offered it to the Biden people to do it sooner. And they didn't bite, I suppose. Trump knows how to bite.

Trump's done almost nothing here to do that, except for pose with them in the White House, which is not a bad thing. It's already broke ground. I know a lot about this. I've talked to all the different players in it. And just for history's sake, Massa had promised this in the last administration

and didn't really make a lot of the investments that he said he was gonna make, the last Trump administration. That said, he's also a very good entrepreneur on many things and a very bad one on others. There also was Foxconn in the last era, never got built, which Trump had promised and touted and everything else. That said, this is a much more substantive group of people and they're already building the thing.

After the announcement though, Elon Musk, who was not in the room and purposely not in the room, in case everybody's interested, I have talked to a lot of people, they made sure he wasn't there. He was stirring the pot posting on X that these companies don't have the capital to invest. Sam Altman responded wrong. He went on to say, I realize what is great for

the country isn't always what's optimal for your companies, but in your new role, I hope you mostly put America first. The word mostly is doing a lot of work. It's such a troll. It was such a perfect troll. I think part of, let me say, because I've done a little reporting into it, is they don't have the money yet, but they have a lot of money also, and they'll get the money. And I've talked to all the parties, Microsoft's a partner, there's other partners, and essentially it's to build a data center and build them all over the country. They still also need energy centers,

they need all kinds of chips, building chips here. There's going to be a lot of this stuff, a lot of money, not much result yet. So start on that because I want to also get into this tech telenovela as I'm calling it between Musk and Altman, because they continued through the night to troll back and forth. And we'll talk about that in a minute, but talk about the announcement itself, Scott.

It's genius branding on the part of the administration, the president, because he basically took other people's assets and money and pretended it was his idea. I mean, most of this was underway during the Biden administration, but what he's done is he's branded it and taken credit for it. And most Americans will go,

a half a trillion dollars, US government weighing in like the space program, we're gonna be number one in AI, that's leadership day five. All he really did was just take existing efforts and capital and brand it. So this was brilliant from the president, quite frankly. The one I don't get,

I can't figure out that Masayoshi San is still hanging around the hoop. I don't think he's a great entrepreneur. I think he's one of the luckiest investors in history. I'm convinced, and this is my theory, that Masayoshi San is an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency that has been tasked with transferring oil capital

back from the Gulf to American entrepreneurs. Oh, oh, okay. There's been few people that have lost more of other people's money, more of other people's money than Masiyoshi San. SoftBank, I mean, come on, Kara. Yes, I agree. I think he's had some wins. Well, okay, broken clock. If, remember at your, I used to speak a lot at your code conferences,

whenever there was a really attractive entrepreneur on stage saying, I have this internet powered mattress and we just raised money at a valuation of 7 billion, you knew it was a SoftB entrepreneur on stage saying, I have this internet powered mattress and we just raised money at a valuation of seven billion. You knew it was a soft bank back company. Yes. Yeah. They were literally, they weren't drunken sailors. They were drunk sailors on meth with dad's credit card. Yeah.

And doing rails and they just found out they had terminal ass cancer and they were at a weekend in Vegas. Yes. Let's put the context here. Scott was incredibly critical and correctly throw on, and like they just found out they had terminal ass cancer and they were at a weekend in Vegas. I mean, it- Yes, I would, let's put the context here. Scott was incredibly critical and correctly throw on WeWork on the WeWork example, of which Son lost a lot of money and then continued to throw good money after bad. You're right, he's had more disasters than he has,

plus there's all kinds of controversies around his companies. He gets a lot of money from the Gulf States, as you know, he was one of the first to go there. He would drive technologists and venture capitalists crazy in Silicon Valley because he'd spend like a crazy person and then they'd have to. So it got really ugly in terms of messing up the venture capital ecosystem in a way that was weird.

There were all these bad companies, like one after the next. Go ahead, Scott. Yeah. In terms of the group, the other interesting thing is the group. I have no idea what Masayoshi San is doing in this group. I think it diminishes the credibility of the whole thing. The biggest winner is the president here, and the other big winner, quite frankly, is Oracle. Oracle is all of a sudden,

I went to this wonderful, our friends, Patrick and Tatum had this wonderful Christmas dinner, and there's a kids table and an adults table. I said to my 14-year-old, why don't you join the adults table, and we played these games. He was just so excited to be there. I feel like Oracle with

this announcement is officially at the grown-ups table around AI. Agreed. They've been behind in this area a lot, quite a bit, And Sam needs capacity. That's what he needs because he's not getting enough from Microsoft. He needs computing capacity. That's really the situation because I'll tell you, Musk has done a great job scaling in terms of shoving all those chips in the place, polluting an area where he was opening one

of the things. He's done a great job with scaling and Altman needs to keep up here and needs to look like he's on his front foot. The two of them, what a relationship. They were very close and now are like arch enemies. They've continued this back and forth trolling through the night. Elon's been resharing some of Sam's old anti-Trump tweets. They existed. Sam posted he's not going to agree with Trump on everything,

but he thinks he'll be incredible for the country in many ways. Very much like Bill Gates saying, I was impressed with him, more impressed with him than I thought. Obviously, every one of these people is going to do a kiss ass to Trump because it works so well. But Elon's trying to paint him as anti-Trump. Elon should be careful. I have some texts from Elon that are not so positive towards Donald Trump. You know, a lot of them were not pro-Trump, a lot of them. And then they were. And in this case, I think Sam is doing it for, I would imagine, I think a lot of people are pissed at him for doing it and I can see why.

But he's definitely, all these people, whether it's Bill Gates now in an interview with the head of the Wall Street Journal or Sam, are going to say Trump's going to be incredible. It's the only way to get through to this guy. But it's interesting that Elon was sort of shoved out a little bit here, which I think is vintage Trump. Again, I think a win for Trump to have all these people competing, that's my feeling. Yeah, but I initially thought that, that,

oh, this was Trump saying, I'm on top. But basically, Trump just played the hand he was dealt. This group, I think, was already assembled and already on their way, and he just wanted credit for it. I do think, though, that this is probably the beginning of the end of their bromance, because I don't think Trump likes sharing the mic with anyone. Musk fired Vivek because he didn't want to share the mic with Vivek. Musk is used to doing whatever the fuck he wants.

And Trump, when he appoints you to something, and now you're off hogging all of the media echo chamber and you're criticizing his new pet project, I gotta think that Trump and his folks are like, all right, everybody said we couldn't control this guy, but we were under the impression he wouldn't shitpost us five days into the administration.

I gotta think that Trump and his circle are like, okay, this is not. But what do they do? They rely on his money, they wanna use him as a cudgel against the primaries. They gave him a West Wing office, not an East Building office. So you're saying he's more powerful. There's nothing they can do.

Except they kept him out of this meeting. They, I mean, people there, you know, one of the many people involved said it was the greatest engineering feat of all time to keep him out. Right? So I think, and I think Sam felt emboldened to attack him, right? Or to make fun of him. What's really interesting about Musk that you really have to understand is he loves to troll people.

He loves to troll people. It gives him his greatest pleasure. If I do this, what will they do? I've heard out of his mouth so many times. It's usually a stupid prank. That he got pushed back on by Sam, who he's also in a lawsuit with OpenAI, by the way, calls him a liar all the time, et cetera. That he got pushed on. When he gets pushed back on, very typical bully, he gets all mad. He gets all beside himself.

He trolls, but he can't take a troll in any way, with any sense of humor whatsoever. And so I think that's something Trump will not like. Sam is a more appealing character, like if he's assembling billionaires to have around him. You want the Gates's and the Sam's and the Tim Cooks. Musk is a lot if you have him in proximity, and he takes a lot of attention. But my theory, and I talked to you about this,

and you may be right here, you're just closer to this and more knowledgeable than I am. I thought that the twofer that Musk was getting, one, he likes to troll, and two, he has to push out of the news cycle this Roman salute slash Heil Hitler gesture. He just needs to change. It's like when Don Draper said,

if you don't like what people are saying, change the conversation. Well, he doesn't want to change the conversation, and Elon seems to be doubling down on the Nazi thing. He put up a post on Thursday morning with all sorts of puns playing on the names of Nazi leaders like Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels, and writing, bet you did not see that coming.

That was the least irritating one of all of them. They were really quite a heinous group of stupid jokes about Nazis. Of course, CEO Linda Iaccarino, also known as the Quizzling Ad Lady from Queens, responded with a laughing emoji. There is no low she will not sing to. He's just strange. She's just, he's just, I don't know what to say. She is. Anyway, does he get the benefit of the doubt? I don't know, Scott. You can have your own opinions about this, but he's just, I don't know what to say. She is. Anyway, does he get the benefit of the doubt? I don't know, Scott. You can have your own opinions about this, but he's absolutely what I just said.

He's a complete troll and he just wants attention focused on him. I think the Trump administration, believe me, which is sort of the Olympics of trolling, doesn't like this because it takes focus on their own troll, who is a much better troll, by the way. These are not funny jokes. This is a 53-year-old man. Let me just underscore this. He just has to have all the attention on

himself and to cause all kinds of controversy on himself. I think the best thing that has been said of all things, you can like or dislike Sam Altman all you want, but I think his tweet today, I thought was sort of said it all. Just one more mean tweet and then maybe you'll love yourself. I actually don't think he will. I think he's a sad,

sad man, Elon Musk, and he will never feel loved because he's unlovable. Scott? I mean, where I go with this is, you don't make jokes about AIDS. There are certain things that are so painful and so raw and represent so much of the worst of us that you just don't go there. Beyond the decorum, which he seems to enjoy kind of poking, beyond the decorum, which he seems to enjoy kind of poking, and some people like that he does that, what this is for me is, you know, look at what money has done to us.

If you showed up, if you wrote this, if you were a public, if you were a late time TV host and you started making these jokes, if you were the president of a school board or a member of Congress and you started making these jokes. If you were the president of a school board or a member of Congress and you started making these jokes, you'd be pretty swiftly reprimanded in your career and your, I don't know, status, your social capital would have rode pretty fast. But when you're worth $400 billion,

you have your CEO weighing in with a crying emoji because they want money from you. You have your CEO weighing in with a crying emoji because they want money from you. You have your stands weighing in. I just think if you, I go to the whole dad thing. If my son was having trouble with drugs, was saying his employees were committing sex crimes when they weren't such that they had to leave their house, living with a gun next to me, not living with any of my 13 kids, and then mocking or making fun or light of the Holocaust,

you'd move in, you'd say, look, son, this just isn't, you're not acting like a man. You're causing unnecessary harm to, the definition, I like Carlos Chipola, this, you could say, is this cruel. What this is is stupid. And that is there's a great matrix. People who help themselves and help others are intelligent. People who help themselves and hurt others are bandits, the above tech CEOs. People who help others but don't help themselves, philanthropists slash artists, if you will. People who help, people who hurt others and hurt themselves, that's just stupid.

This is a definition of stupid. This hurts others and it hurts himself. I'm writing a post about corruption and money for No Mercy No Malice. And my kind of closing line is, look what money has done to us. I was on my kid's school board and I had the pleasurable assignment of calling someone who I knew and saying,

you can no longer drop your kid off a drop-off because you cut in line and pissed everybody off. The cutting in line. Well, yeah, but imagine showing up to a parent-teacher night and accidentally making a fucking Nazi gesture. Try doing that at work and see what happens. By the way, that gesture in Germany is against the law. It is. In any case, Elon, not a good week for you. I don't know when you're going to break up with Donald Trump, but it doesn't, you probably,

you have enough money. The only reason he's still there is there's not quite enough billionaires kissing Trump's ass yet. And once they do- Or willing to spend that kind of money. Well, they don't. Like, you don't see Sam Altman funding Donald Trump in the next election. But does Trump need the money any longer? No, he don't see Sam Altman funding Donald Trump in the next election. But does Trump need the money any longer?

No, he doesn't. So that's the thing. Or unless he wants to be permanent, you know, dictator of the United States. But we'll see. Who—I shouldn't say that in such a glib way. It's scary if that would happen. Let me just ask the last question. Oracle shares jumped over 7% on the heels of the Stargate announcement.

And again, Oracle's been behind other people in this area. And it's their sweet spot, by the way. SoftBank surged 11 percent. Nvidia was up more than 4 percent. This idea of them raising the money, let me just take away, they don't have the money yet. I think they will get the money.

And I think Elam was making a point which is vaguely accurate, but he left out the fact that they'll probably get the money because he raises money for all manner of good things and nonsense, right? So he'll out the fact that they'll probably get the money because he raises money for all manner of good things and nonsense, right? So he'll get the money. I think they'll get some of the money or at least a lot of it. And I think we do need to start doing this stuff on US soil and it has a great political benefit.

So it'll probably be Gulf money by the way, FYI. Well, it already is. There's a Gulf entity in the group. Saudi Arabia just said they're gonna invest even more in this country. And I hope they do. I want their cheap capital and I wanna increase our ties and binds with the Gulf, quite frankly.

In any case, who benefits the most from this idea of Stargate and projects like this? Because the money is not there in terms of profits. There may be overspending. We've talked about that before. Well, I mean, it's easy just to get incredibly excited about AI when you spend any time on it. It just, it does blow your mind.

And the applications are just sort of endless. Having said that, the revenues have not kept pace with evaluations, right? These companies are willing to make these staggering commitments and investments because the last time they made these sort of staggering investments was in the cloud and the cloud has paid off wildly. So they have the confidence to make these types of investments. Who benefits?

If America maintains its lead, I was on diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett and people always ask me or the question I get the most living in London is how would you summarize the difference between the US and the UK? And the way I would summarize it is my mom and dad in the late 50s at the age of 19 and 23 got on steamships from Glasgow and London and came to the US with like $300. And I say, everyone here, referencing people

who are in London, you're the ones that decided to stay. And what I mean by that is that there's $5 million in venture capital for every business started in the US versus $1 million in the US. There's five times the number of entrepreneurs. It is in our DNA to take crazy risks like this. And occasionally it ends up being crazy genius in about 90. Name an important AI company that's not in the US. Okay, list over. And it's because we are willing to make these types of, take these staggering risks. I agree.

It's always been like that. It's always, and the same thing with people who stopped in Pennsylvania and didn't go to California. I always think about that. Like who stopped and who kept going? We don't think small. I was on one of my other panelists on Stephen Barlett. This is really impressive, intelligent guy

named Constantine, who's kind of, I would call him center right if not right, but he made a lot of really interesting points. And he said in the UK, if you go into a restaurant and you like it, you eat there. In the US, if you go into a restaurant and you like it and you have money, you give them your card and you wanna open a second,

a third, and a fifth, and you want to try and scale it to 200. And so we benefit from this economic growth. And I think it's amazing and wonderful how big we think, half a trillion dollars. There'll be a lot of failures. I said that to someone. I said, imagine not investing in the internet when they were over-investing. You know what's interesting is when you talk about that,

years ago in the UK, I went on this thing, it was called Silicon Valley in the UK. Then we went to Cambridge and Oxford and we did debates at the Oxford, the famous debate series that they have there. It was me and Reid Hoffman on one side saying, the posit was the US or Britain will create the first $1 billion company. It was billion at the time.

That was Reid's advice, I was the US would win and then they had some British people. Must have been trillion. You mean trillion. No, it was billion at the time. Swear to God, it was billion. How long ago was this? It was almost 15, 20 years ago. There was billion dollar companies.

I'm not going to split hairs here, but go ahead. Yeah, it was billion. I have the stuff from it. And so who's gonna create the most billion dollar companies, I guess it was, in the internet? And all Reid and I did is we got up, because we're shitty debaters, and we're like, we just listed Google, dun-da, dun-da,

dun-da, dun-da. It was early on, before they were really big. And we listed like 20 US companies and we go England. And that was our whole debate. We still lost. We still got voted against because the British were better talkers than us. But I remember thinking they're not going to make these here. It was with the guy Mike Lynch's company was the only one. He died. Remember he died in that weird voting accident.

His company was the only one that was pretty big. Since 2020, our economy has grown 10%. It's barely half of that in Europe and in Germany, in the UK, it's like a third of that. And there is something about the culture here, and I can't quite figure it out. They have all of the, well, in America, I'm a beneficiary of this.

I raised crazy amounts of money on really stupid fucking ideas, and occasionally one like panned out. And not only that, the amazing thing about America is even when my crazy ideas didn't work, as long as you're a good person, as long as you treat people well, you can go raise more money.

In Europe, you have one startup failure, and you're that guy that was a high flyer, but crashed and burned. They're more interested in cutting the daisies or trimming the daisies, whatever the term is, and the US really embraces risk takers. We're crazy, cruel, and greedy. We're the ones who left, Kara. We're the ones who said, I'm out of here.

I want religious freedom. I want to practice breath work. Breath work, that's the goal. I want to wear. Yeah. You know, I want to practice breath work. Breath work, that's the goal. I want to wear a bustier today. A bustier, Lauren, is exemplification of our country. I wore a bustier and I'm proud of it. All right, let's go on a quick break. I love how we come back to bustier all the time.

Bustier, when we come back, we'll talk about TikTok's potential suitors and take a listener mail question on those drones in New Jersey. Scott, we're back with our second big story. ByteDance is exploring a deal to keep TikTok running in the U.S. without a sale, according to one of its directors, General Atlantic CEO Bill Ford, who sits on ByteDance's board, told Bloomberg that one of the options is to change and control locally. That could comply with U.S. legislation. They're always looking for tricks. Meanwhile, President Trump told reporters he'd be open to Elon Musk

buying TikTok or Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. YouTube star Mr. Beast, I see I was right about that, thank you. YouTube star Mr. Beast is also rumored to be in the mix to buy the Apple. Those reps says he hasn't officially joined any bids. Or willing to spend that kind of money. What do you think about,, Oracle's already in there. Oracle is one of TikTok's leading server providers. But does Trump need the money anymore? At risk to the company.

TikTok is still not on the Apple or Google app stores, and they are not going to be on the Apple or Google stores. Trump hasn't imposed his promised tariffs on foreign countries, just yet he's threatening to do so by February 1st. Maybe he's going to hold off to get leverage on the TikTok deal. Very over-thoughts. I knew he would say Elon Musk, of course. But Ellison seems an obvious partner in that.

As I said, they're going to do some deal that hides the fact that China still runs the place. But anyway, your thoughts? Look, the criteria for anyone who potentially does a deal here, first and foremost, is capital. And that just sweeps off the deck. Mr. Beast and what's his name? Mr. Wonderful.

They're just, hey, look at me. I'm relevant. I have a big idea. There's just no chance in hell. You need compute. Oracle brings that. But more than anything, you need China. You need the CCP.

And that probably, I hate to say it, puts Musk and some other people in a bit of a pole position because the primary criteria for if and who this gets sold to is who the CCP believes they can control. And when Musk- Unless Trump says no CCP, but he's not going to do that. Well, it'll be a negotiation. But there's just no way. They own the asset.

You don't have to sell your house if you don't want to. And 20% of the revenues come out of the US. There's a lot of pressure, but they will spin this as if it was some sort of great victory. But the only thing I know here is the Chinese are gonna have a lot of influence. And everybody says about Musk, well, he's a child. You gotta give him some break. he has Asperger's,

he just says this thing, he doesn't mean, never says anything mean about China. China. He's got a lot of maturity and discipline around China. He does. I think China given us, you've highlighted this to me. He's a fuck, FOC.

That was the first person saying he was going to get it. From China. But you pointed this out to me, they have real leverage over him because a lot of his factories and a lot of his sales are in China. Or it'll be someone they see as very friendly to their interests. But look, the bottom line is everything has changed because our negotiating leverage has been dramatically reduced. When you say, unless you do the following things, I'm leaving,

and the next day your spouse does those things and you don't leave, your threats become somewhat hollow. And so they know they have the upper hand here. The CCP doesn't need TikTok. Doesn't need the Capitol, especially when they can say, look guys, you're getting 80% of your capital overseas. We're not going to, we're not going to put up with this shit. If they come up with some sort of accommodation that gives Trump a win.

That looks like it. Yeah, that looks like it. It's gonna be very, I call it the Elon faint. It's gonna be a pretzel. This deal is gonna be a pretzel if it happens. Yeah, so one of the things that'll be interesting is how senators like Tom Cotton, who've been very adamant, who's a China hawk,

reacts to whatever the deal happens to be. And if they get him in on it and say, Elon's a great owner, it's over. The second thing I was just thinking of one the other day that could be, see if you were doing this in a really fair way, the person that you, the company you might give it to is Snapchat, who is very strong in video, has been an innovator. It creates a much more competitive playing field in the area.

Here's a company that knows how to do this stuff and is, again, meta steals ideas from them all the time. I don't know, I just was thinking of them the other day, give this company an opportunity to really compete. They'd be creative, creators love them, they're based in LA, etc. That was my weird thought of the day. It is a weird thought. That's like giving a bazooka to an eight-year-old.

No way. They have been the most innovative in these spaces. No, what I mean by what I mean, that was the wrong analogy. Evan is a super smart guy, super creative. My guess is he would do a pretty good job managing it. They don't have the capital or the compute. No, with capital, with partners. I'm just thinking that's who would make it something really interesting.

That's all I'm saying is it would be, and then you have a competitor to Instagram, you'd have a real competitor that's US owned. Then you have a real competition, you get better products. I just was like that would be- My idea, and I'm name-dropping, I met with Ted Surandis, and I'm like, if you want to be a trillion dollar company, and you get better products. I just was like, that would be. My idea, and I'm name dropping, I met with Ted Sarandos, and I'm like,

if you wanna be a trillion dollar company, you should start a competitor to TikTok. And you should take all of your 99%. I take all of your 99% that doesn't get viewed, chop it into little digestible bits, and start a Netflix, start a TikTok competitor called. Great idea. Called Netvibes or something like that.

I think actually the best partner here would be a giant compute company and Netflix. That's a great one. Another one, Mark Cuban sort of trying to put something together using Blue Sky protocols. I love competition and so that's all I'm thinking of it. Giving it to Elon is just such a weird gimme and thank you,

and he would not innovate on it and he will ruin it. I want it to be a really good competitor to Instagram. I want there to be a US-owned competitor to Instagram. I love the Snapchat idea. I really like the Netflix idea. That's a great idea. I like what Mark Cuban's doing. It should not go to Elon.

He will wreck it and it's a gimme and a payback for its corruption again and it's the worst thing and then the Chinese will have much more control over it. I don't think there's any deal done without Oracle involved. Netflix has a $420 billion market cap. Say they paid 80, that's like a 15 percent, what is that, 15, 20 percent dilution. It's kind of worth it. Yeah, without the algorithm.

And they have all the content and- They should buy Snapchat. That's who should buy Snapchat. Think about that. Netflix should buy Snap? Yeah, and then do that there too and they also get TikTok. Anyway- I don't think Netflix wants to be in the business of get out and do that there too, and they also get TikTok. Anyway. I don't think Netflix wants to be in the business

of messaging kids, but. I know, but they do a lot. They're doing a ton of videos. Ted had the right response. He's like, Scott, we're killing it, and we use TikTok to market our products. Yeah, what do we need? Why do I need to get distracted?

And, you know, I mean. That's always the case. As evidenced by the fact that they just increased their subscriber base 17% year on year. Thanks for the tip, Scott. Yeah. It's like giving a tip to Michael Jordan. Hey, if you spin your ball just a little bit more with your thumb,

you might have a better shot or something. Now, I remember saying to, in my past life, I was a consultant and I used to consult the CEOs of big consumer brands. I remember meeting with Johann Rupert and they prepared me. It was this big deal and he's the head of Richemont. He's kind of this larger than life character with this deep rumbly voice.

And all of his brands from Cartier to Panerai, they have kind of the best watch brands in the world. I said, you have to get on the internet. You have to establish this as a distribution channel. This is like 10 years ago. And he's like, let's just listen to me. He's like, young man, I can't find enough parts in Switzerland for my watches.

I don't have to do anything. And he's like, my watches are sold out. I don't, you know, and you're telling me I have to be on the internet. He's like, no, I don't have to do anything. That was pre-Apple watch, by the way. Yeah, that's true. Oh, FYI, what's this they're gonna buy,

these guys' watches. But let me just say, what's this they're gonna buy, these guys watches. But let me just say, let's go around and give tips to really successful people. Listen up what this show is. Isn't that what Pivot is? Yes, it is. Unsolicited advice. Let's guide people who are really killing it and say, I start almost every sentence with my friends.

I think, look, I'm really good at running other people's lives. So let me tell you what you should do. Okay, let's pivot to a listener question so we can advise them. This question comes from Kelly. Let's listen. Hi, Kara and Scott. So my name is Kelly Applegate-Nichols and I live in Champaign, Illinois. I don't know if you need to know that or not, but I'm calling to say that of all

the things that Trump said, I am very disappointed that he did not tell us what the mystery drones in New Jersey are because he said that he was going to do that on day one. are because he said that he was going to do that on day one. So I want to know, what do you two think about the mystery drones? Thank you. I love you guys. Bye. Oh, that's funny. I just interviewed Mayorkas, Secretary Mayorkas, who was Biden's director. We talked a lot about the mystery drones. Apparently they were private drones. People were flying. That's what he seemed to indicate. I agree. Why didn't they tell him?

Trump has said he's going to shoot them down if they come back, I guess. That's the shoot first, ask questions later. Of course, people on the ground could be killed, which is why Arka said that's why they didn't shoot them down. I don't know. What do you think, Scott? Any quick drone thoughts? What do you think?

And by the way, we love Champaign, Illinois. I just like the name. Herbana, Illinois, or the Illini. She sounds like she's from Illinois And by the way, we love Champagne, Illinois. I just like the name. Urbana, Illini. She sounds like she's from Illinois, by the way. Look, this reminds me of a couple personal experiences, because I don't talk enough about me on this show, but I was in Mammoth Mountain when I was like 16 on a high school skiing trip,

and this, what was at the time, stealth bomber came rolling over the mountain. Those are scary. Well, you'd never seen a picture of one before. A friend of mine went to work- One went down the mall once when I was living here, George Bush's administration, it was terrifying. Yeah, but in 1980, whatever it was,

85 or I don't know what it was, with these things, a friend of mine went to work for Lockheed Martin Marietto, and I remember him telling me, I go into this weird place through an elevator in a hangar and I'm like, wow, you must see, you know, I, I'm like, I've seen a bunch of cool stuff in aviator and he's like, no one has ever seen any of this shit. Anyways, I remember seeing it and thinking, wow, our government does a lot of weird things. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of government surveillance drones. The honest answer is I don't know, but what was one of the most enjoyable flights

I've ever taken, I used to commute from Delray Beach to New York and I was flying up and I saw a bunch of fighter jets rolling the other way. And then I looked up and they said, the pilot said up to your right around 11 o'clock is the balloon. And I- You went by the balloon? I went by the balloon and I looked up and it said,

we're calling about extending your automobiles insurance plan. No, just kidding. And then literally 30 minutes later, they shot it out of the sky. They shot it out of the sky. They had to wait till it's somewhere safe. Trump's not going to do this. He makes all kinds of demented promises. What do you think they are? What I want from him? I think they're probably private commercial things that were just up

there fucking with people to see what would happen. Maybe they were a government thing. I know they couldn't have shot them down with areas of people that just can't do that because you'll kill a kid or something like that. I want him to tell us who killed JFK. And I'd like to know, to see an alien. Those are the two things I want out of this administration. Who invented Bitcoin? I'd like to know that. Who invented Bitcoin? The CIA did that too. The CIA is the only organization in the world that can keep a secret.

Okay. For the rest of you listeners, it's time for this week's threads poll. This one's open-ended. Who do you think will be the next member of Trump's inner orbit to get the boot? Oh, that's good. Let us know. What is your choice? I don't know. I don't know who's gonna to go first. I haven't really thought about it.

Have you thought about it? I don't know. Probably Eric. Anyway, visit us at Pivot Podcast Official on Threads to answer. Oh, Cash Patel. I think it's going to be over before it starts. I do think there is a line, I think. They like him. They like him. He was loyal to Trump when he was on the outs. And then again, I said that about Pete Hexseth. But in honor of Pete Hexseth, I last night tried to do five sets of 47 push-ups. And tonight, I couldn't do it. I got through three.

Tonight, I'm going to start with a gin and tonic and see if it helps. Okay. And I'm going to do five sets of 47. All right. Good luck. If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for Predictions. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. I just want to call balls and strikes here. I've been indignant, outraged, incredibly upset about these meme coins. That is 3D level chess compared to the checkers of the corruption of Speaker Pelosi. And the most recent example of Speaker Pelosi's corruption is Tempus AI, which is a healthcare AI company, announced on Tuesday, or it became public on Tuesday, that Speaker Pelosi, who is in confidential hearings about where Medicaid is going to spend their money, it's

not unthinkable that she saw Tempus on a list of where they might be investing in AI diagnostics and care management. And it comes out that parties affiliated with Speaker Emerita Pelosi bought $50,000 to $100,000 of call options in Tempus AI. When that was announced on Tuesday, Tempus AI had its biggest gain in its history. It was up 35%. That is bullshit. Now granted, if you're going to abuse your position, do it for billions like Trump, and his is more outrageous and more brazen, but this is the same flavor of the same sorbet. And that sorbet is corruption.

It is an abuse of power. Grab the Speaker of the House buying call options on a company that could be getting hundreds of millions of dollars from our agency. So this is a bipartisan issue here, this corruption. Okay, enough of my ranting. My prediction is the following. Oracle has officially been invited to the grownups table. They trade at a price to sales ratio of about eight. Microsoft's at 13, OpenAI's at 40,

NVIDIA's I think at 28. Anthropic, interestingly enough, trades at like more like 60 to 90 depending on how you define revenues. Oracle's at eight. Oracle is a great company, great revenues, great management, and they're going to start to get... The peanut buttered and chocolate right now of a kleptocracy are one, proximity to Trump, and two, and this isn't a kleptocracy, is how close you are to the epicenter of AI. And now Oracle, with its proximity to Trump

and its credibility in AI being invited into Stargate, is going to result in multiple expansion. I think in the next 90 days, Oracle is going to outperform its peers. All right. Oh, that's a good one. That's a great one. Okay. All right. That's an interesting choice. And I would agree. I think they've been behind. They have been behind, and now they're trying to make a move and using Altman to do so. The speaker is buying call options. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. No, they shouldn't be doing this. At the very least, it's a perception thing. Anyway, elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this week, this week

on ProfG Markets, Scott spoke with Rich Greenfield, partner and media and technology analyst at Lightshed Partners. He's very smart. Let's listen. media and technology analyst at Lightshed Partners. He's very smart. Let's listen. I think it's highly likely that you're gonna end 2025 and TikTok is still gonna exist. Will there be some subtle shifts in its ownership? The word salad that came out of Trump

when he was signing the executive orders about needing to own or someone in the US owning 50%. It's hard to understand what that means, Ed, because TikTok is already 58% owned by international investors, well-known international investors. Yep, that's right. It's gonna be some deal that is a faint.

It's gonna be all a faint. And we are still in danger of China having influence over our world. Good job. Good job. Rich is really smart. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.

Can you read us out? Today's show is produced by Lara Neim, and Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miss Severio, and Dan Shulon. Nishak Kherwa is Vox Media's Executive Producer of Audio. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. We're headed to the

movies. We'd like Lauren Sanchez to sit in between us.