Pivot - OpenAI Lawyers Up, Paramount's Messy Merger, and Guest Isaac Arnsdorf

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Kara and Scott discuss Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez's showstopping appearance at the White House state dinner, David Chang's chili crunch drama, and Meta facing pushback on its political content restrictions. Then, OpenAI prepares to fight numerous legal battles, but do they have a winning strategy? Plus, Paramount Global's proposed merger with Skydance Media is facing opposition from shareholders. Will the deal go through? Finally, our Friend of Pivot is Isaac Arnsdorf, Washington Post national political reporter, and author of "Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy." Isaac explains why Steve Bannon believes the MAGA movement could "rule for a hundred years." Pivot has been nominated for a Webby for Best Business Podcast! Vote here. Follow Isaac at @iarnsdorf 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. Term'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. I don't know what to say. We have to talk about Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez at the White House State Dinner for Japan's Prime Minister. Wait, hold on. She wore this to the White House? That outfit she wore. I think she looked great. I loved it. I like that she did it. I have to say, I know everyone's trashing her for it and saying she belongs at Mar-a-Lago, but I just love that she did it. He looked thrilled. I'm liking this couple. There's a couple reasons I like her outfit.

Anyway. Oh, God. I walked right into that. You didn't even get it. I walked literally. You didn't even get it. It just occurred. I was like, what?

And then I'm like, oh, my God. He literally just made a boob joke right in front of me, and I didn't hear it. of me and I didn't hear it. He looks like an 18-year-old who went to prom with the hottest girl who lost a bet and has to go to prom with him. I mean, look how happy he looks. And by the way, I just want to say regarding his midlife crisis, I am so here for it. I am too. I just think it's fantastic. I think the guy is literally- People wanted me to dump on it. I couldn't. I was like, what is wrong with that?

If that, you know, if loving her is wrong, I don't want to be right. That's what I have to say. All I got to say is, like, sometimes divorce is a good thing. Like, both Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott get to be the people they want to be. She gets to give away billions of dollars anonymously. He gets to buy a yellow canary, canary yellow Corvette T-top and crash it into a hair transplant clinic. I mean, this guy is literally like a midlife bomb detonating over and over and over. But it's great. It's great content.

Oh, it's amazing. I don't know. I mean, it brought a little Trump back to the White House. Good for him. It did bring a little Trump back to the White House. Good for him and good for them. And by the way, I have met both her first two husbands, the football player. I forgot his name. Is it Tony Gonzalez?

What's his name? He's this big, handsome, articulate, charming guy. I mean, he's just like the most impressive man. Patrick Weissel. Who's also like a total fucking baller, tall, handsome, smart. I mean, okay, what is, she must be literally the most captivating woman in the world. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. Anyway. Oh, my God. I liked it. All the haters, just leave her alone. So what? It's not inappropriate for the White House. I mean, the Trumps were there with like blood trees. Come on. Like, it doesn't bring it down. It's not inappropriate for the White House. I mean, the Trumps were there with, like, blood trees.

Come on. Like, it doesn't bring it down. It was funny. It was fun. It was fun. Leave them alone. Leave them alone. Stop being mean to them.

I'll cry. I'll do that crying thing. He's the world's richest man. He gets to be. Good for him. Jeff, you do Jeff. That was quite a list of people there. Did you see the list?

I didn't see the list. I'm totally sequestered right now. I have no insight into it. First time ever I looked at a list, but it looked like a fantastic get-together. And, you know, we're sidling up to Japan because of China. Obviously, we're trying to create better relations. But this is who was there.

Like, it was Robert De Niro was there with his new wife who he just had a baby with. He looked fancy. He looked so sexy. He was, like, dead sexy, by the way, he looked when he walked in. He's very handsome. It was, like, a very sexy dinner. And then they had Christy Yamaguchi, who looked fantastic and looked like she was having a great time.

Is she the ice skater? Yes, she is. Yeah. Yeah. And she does a bunch of other things. Tim Cook was there with Lisa Jackson, who works at both. She works at Apple and a range of things. Jamie Dimon was there.

I want to meet Tim's partner. I want to know. I'm sorry. I want to know who Tim's fucking. He doesn't have one. I don't know about that. I don't think he does. He's so big and handsome and rich.

I think he dates. I don't think. I don't know. He should hang out with Bezos. Bezos would get him laid. Yeah. Okay. All right.

In any case. I love how we're not allowed to talk about Tim Cook as if he's a saint. The patron saint of Gainus. No. You know who's there? He's a big, handsome man. Tim, you're not getting any younger. Okay.

God is here for you. By the way, I've got a great, I've got a great pickup line for him. I would like to move along. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. He should say to any hot young man he meets, there's only going to be seven planets after you see what I do to Uranus. Oh, no.

That is such a bad—I hope all the gays come after you for that, and I'm not going to defend you in any way for that one. I'm not. I hope they come. Gays, have at her. Have at her. Just words. He's not a saint. He's the CEO of a company.

He's a big, handsome gay man. Get out there. I'm continuing. Rahm Emanuel, who's the ambassador to Japan, for people who don't know, I did a good interview with Rahm recently. Sean Fain there, who just had those negotiations over the automakers. He was there. Oh, yeah. The smart union guy.

The smart union guy. He was there. I thought that was cool. It was such a cool. Doug Emhoff and Vice President Harris looked fantastic. I like when they dress up for these things. She's an attractive woman. I like when they dress up for these things.

I think we look good as a country. It's a White House. It's meant to be pageantry. And I actually think you could pull this off. I got the fat padded in Soho. You got the connections. And you got this total, like, woke cred. I think we should do a fundraiser for the president, and I will wear Lauren Sanchez's outfit. Oh, we don't want you back in a dress. Remember,

we got you out of the dress. Remember, we got you out of the dress. Oh, yeah. That upset people. You can't do that. Yeah, you're not wearing the dress. She looks great in it. You would look terrible in that dress. You would look, by the way, you would look terrible. I have more legs than a bucket of chicken. If I was a woman, I would have amazing legs. You would look so fucking bad in that dress. That was in my head. That's really mean. Janet Yellen was there. Janet Yellen was there.

Anyway. Seven planets. Look, I love a state dinner. I covered them as a young reporter for the Washington Post. I used to have a ball doing those. And I just, I'd like to go to one. We should go to one. I bet we'll never get invited.

I'm down for it. You got to work on that. All this fame. You keep talking about all the cool shit you do without me. Yeah, I should get an invitation. This does look like a good party. Which country do we want? What country?

Yeah, I know, because it's a different state. It's a state dinner. It's a state dinner. What country? We have it for prime ministers, but go ahead. I'm going to a party tonight at the U.S. Ambassador's House here in the U.K. about sustainable fashion, which I could give a shit about. But anyways. Right, yeah. Sustainable fashion. Yeah, right. We're in a consumption

culture, folks. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. OpenAI is going on the offensive as a company tackles numerous lawsuits. And Paramount's possible merger with Skydance is getting a little messy. Plus, our friend of Pivot is Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, who has a new book, Finish What We Started, the MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy. That's to follow our last one with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. And people like that interview, by the way. But first, David Chang's Momofuku finds itself in the middle of some chili crunch drama. Momofuku has trademarked chili crunch, a spicy, oily, crispy condiment popular in Asian countries

after sending cease and desist letters to manufacturers using the name. The brand has been accused of trademarking a generic cultural product. Some critics have compared the move to trademarking ketchup and suggested it's monopoly behavior. A company in Denver previously owned the trademark and sent a cease and desist letter to Mamafuku, which instead worked to purchase the trademark for itself. Scott, you're a branding person.

What the heck, Chili Crunch? I've seen Chili Crunch stuff all over the place in Asia. And also anytime you go to an Asian market, there's a million Chili Crunch things. This seems crazy for Momofuku and David Chang to do. He looks like an asshole. What are your thoughts on this marketing thing? Well, it's like the majority of bad ideas started out as good ideas, and that is our ability to protect IP is really important. Whether it's someone's likeness, whether it's the patents or the chemical context of a pharmaceutical, America's innovation and our economy relies on what you would loosely call intellectual property protection and our ability to legally protect it.

This has gone crazy. This reminds me of when Paris Hilton tried to trademark, that's hot. Remember that? And it was like, and someone said, no, you can't trademark this. So the reason why we have thoughtful judges in law and cases is that we can say, all right, there is a line here. Because what you have is, it's been weaponized in the sense that these especially big companies or well-resourced companies send cease and desist letters to everyone for anything that smells of anything remote. And they use it as a means of suppressing competition. And also they use it as a means of trying to get unearned PR. For example, Amazon will file a patent for not only a floating warehouse, which is probably physically impossible for the next couple centuries, they will file a patent for a projectile defense shield of their floating warehouse. And the reason they do it is they know that reporters at Forbes and other business magazines troll patent filings

and then write about them. So IP protection has taken on all this different nuance, including intimidation, including well-resourced monopolies. Because if you get a cease and desist letter and you're a small company, you're sort of inclined to say, am I really going to take on this well-resourced company or am I just going to find another name? But this is an example of a gone haywire. These are generic terms, and I believe the court will say, sorry, this term has become generic. You can't own it. I think this is exactly why I want to talk about this. Even though people are sort of losing their minds on the internet here, it's really important what he's done here. And I agree with you. I agree with you. Where do you think it's going to end up? It'll be dismissed.

Dismissed. Meaning he won't be able to cease and desist them. No. Yeah. This will be, as you call it, legal harassment. They'll say, you have no domain over this name, and you should pay back the legal fees for the people where you're creating, you know, whatever you call it, a superfluous or whatever the term. But it's an issue around the trademark office, too, because I think he does own the trademark, right? He owns it. Well, but if it's trademarkable. Right, that's right.

I can't believe he got the trademark at all. Right. So I just don't. I don't know. So I just don't, I don't know, you know, like this is for IP lawyers, but your ability to maintain, your ability to encourage people to make the requisite investment in developing important differentiated intellectual property is really important to provide that protection. At the same time, you have to ensure that there's a competitive marketplace where people who are trying to develop their own IP don't bump into IP that's been inflated beyond reasonable protection.

All right. Okay. All right. And moving on to a more controversial subject, abortion decision in Arizona. In 1964, when Lincoln was president, law that would ban abortion at conception with no exceptions for rape or incest or put doctors at risk for two to five years in prison for providing abortions. The ruling is on hold for 14 days. It's being sent back to the lower court to hear additional arguments. Voters could overturn the ban, and they probably will, if abortion rights groups are able to get the measure on the ballot, and they probably can. It looks like they're going to. What a friggin' mess here. Carrie Lake is losing her mind because she, of course, was for this and now she's against it. She's running for

senator against Ruben Gallego in Arizona. Donald Trump recently claimed that he wouldn't sign a federal abortion ban. If it comes to him, I bet he does sign it. I think he's lying about that. I don't know if it'll ever get to his desk and if he becomes president. A lot of ifs. But I don't know what to say. I mean, obviously fodder for jokes and everything else. But this is nuts. This was nuts.

The Republicans keep shooting themselves in their tiny little feed. Yeah. In a strange way, I was kind of happy to see this because I'm worried that, or I was worried that people would say, okay, it's been sent back to the States. People who want to terminate a pregnancy can actually, I was worried that people were going to think, this isn't that big a deal. And I think laws like this bring home, and Arizona, I think, is now technically a swing state, that Jesus, these people are fucking insane. And this has gone way too far. And not only that, I think this, essentially what this has done is basically inaugurated Senator Gallegos. I just think they're going to go, I think they're going to have a field day with Kerry Lake. just think they're going to go, I think they're going to have a field day with Kerry Lake.

So this is a reminder that these laws are important and that this isn't a group of people looking to moderate it or have a thoughtful discussion around it. They're looking for the handmaid's tale. And this is, I mean, so I saw this and it's a dangerous game to play, but I was sort of happy because I thought the public in Arizona need to see just how fucking crazy these people are. of rape or incest or anything. You know, there is, and Trump totally missed the boat on doing this, there is a place where you could probably get most people to be okay, largely because, you know,

I think the GOP has been trying to say they want to have abortions up until birth. It's not what they want. It's such a lie when they say this. They want to be able just to have abortions, and no one is allowed to have abortions up until work. It's such a lie when they say this. They want to be able just to have abortions, and no one is allowed to have abortions up until work. It's just-

Yeah, no doctor will do that. That ad that Biden did, I think was really effective. Like, this woman got sepsis, can't have kids. This is just nonsense. And this is what I've been talking, this is why I've been saying this on our show last week and earlier this week. This is a big topic for people, not just women. Anyway, speaking of political stuff, hundreds of creators on threads and Instagrams have sent meta an open letter asking the company to reverse its move to limit the reach of political content. Facebook is running from the room on political content because it's handled so badly every

single time before. So they decided not to deal with it. The company's decision has impacted the reach of accounts posting on issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and disabilities. One prominent account covering abortion rights has reported seeing a decline in reach from 10 million to 800,000. The letter suggests that Meta should let users opt in or out of restrictions rather than making it a default setting. This is a huge mistake from Meta. Just a dump. They want to get out of a thing they do badly. And so they just said, we're not going to do it anymore. There's a, oh God, this company is constantly just speaking of shooting itself in the foot. They're just, you know, this is their idea of getting rid of political misinformation by killing everybody.

Like, it's just, honestly, these people just don't have any kind of, like, ability to make a good decision on these things. I don't know, your thoughts on this? Well, for a long time, Meta has said that we're not subject to the same liability, not only because of Section 230, but just philosophically, because we're the bulletin board, and we can't control what people put up. Sure, that's their argument. subject to the same laws, defamation, slander, misinformation that every other media company is subject to. And personally, I don't like it because I love Jessica Yellen's content. It's called News Not Noise, way to just get up to speed in like 90 seconds. And she tries to do a good job of just calling balls and strikes. And unfortunately, because Meta's like, we're just not good at this and we don't want to allocate the resources around fact-checking. We don't want to have anything resembling a responsible media company. We'd just rather leave the room

and not have any of it. Fine, you get to make that choice. But then guess what? You're an editor, which means you're a media company, which means you can be sued. Right. I mean, just like someone was pointing out, like if Taylor Swift decides to back Biden, she'd be blocked. Is that political? Yeah. Yeah. It's freaking ridiculous.

Just because the shitty users are fucking things up doesn't mean you have to hurt the good users who are trying to have good political discourse. I mean, seriously, Meta, like get yourself together

and pay the price it costs for being a media company. And that's what you are. I hope this convinces. Recently, I've been talking a lot in events I'm doing for the book. I'm like, they're a media company. Let's stop pretending they're a modern media company, but they're a media company. And if Rupert Murdoch can get sued, and believe me, I'm thrilled he did and lost,

they should be able to get sued. Anyway. All right. Let's get to our first big story. Speaking of that, OpenAI and Meta are getting closer to releasing new AI models capable of reasoning and planning, according to a new report in the Financial Times. Both companies confirm they're working on models that will be more sophisticated when it comes to problem-solving and handling complex tasks. The ability to reason would bring the technology closer to artificial general intelligence, where AI has some form of

human level cognition. And I don't like to anthropomorphize these things, but reasoning, they have reasoning. It's not human reasoning, but it's reasoning. What do you think about this next step? And, you know, this is the fear game for a lot of people. You know, Elon Musk, as usual, had to weigh in because he can't shut the fuck up. Said in an interview, my guess is that we'll have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year. This is, you know, I think that's probably correct. You know, I have been in a thing many years ago where they said, you know, AI was like a dolphin now and it's going to surpass humans and then go way past humans in thinking. I don't think that's the big thing. But do you see

any kind of problem with this? Obviously, it's fraught with potential problems. When you say this, do you mean the speed of its development? The speed of its development, which seems natural that this would happen. Well, the author of Sapiens, his analogy was a really interesting one. And he said, you know, at some point it was just amoebas. And then eventually these amoebas evolved to Tyrannosaurus rexes, and it took billions of years. He said, what AI now is an amoeba, but it'll get to T-Rex in about 10 years. And I think he's right. I don't think you can slow it down. What I think you can do, though don't think you can slow it down. What I think

you can do, though, is put in place pretty stringent regulation and also bilateral cooperation. We actually, just as, remember when we had Senator Warner and he said that the American public doesn't realize that behind closed doors, there's actually more bipartisan cooperation. I think there's more, I think that's also true of bilateral cooperation across countries. Even Iran, North Korea, and the U.S. come together and say, okay, we're not going to have battlefield technologies where we can blind soldiers in a nanosecond. We're going to try and slow down the development of bioweapons because we realize that could just be bad for all of us. And so, what I don't like is the hand-wringing and all the posturing and the catastrophizing. I think what we need is just really, I mean, I was, and I continue to flex and name drop, but I've had some dialogue with the DHS, and I'm like, play to their greed and get them working, give them economic incentive to help develop the regulation and regulatory

bodies. Because in create economic incentive here, the only thing I ever see these companies react to is money. They pretend to give a flying fuck about the world and all that. And maybe they do in their spare time, but their day jobs are just getting more and more money. I mean, create economic incentives to have the equivalent of kind of the Iron Dome missile shield. There is no reason why we can't have defense and guardrails that are sophisticated as the missiles are the problems themselves. Yeah, I agree with you. You know, this new privacy bill that Maria Senator Cantwell, I'll be interviewing her very soon about this, but, you know, it has a lot of money things in it. Like, there's some fees and there's some incentives, you know, in it, which I think is important. And also, speaking of which, there's legal issues too, which is great. Liability is a

great cleaner, is a very clarifying situation for many companies. We're getting some insights into OpenAI's legal strategy. The company's been hit with more than a dozen high-profile lawsuits and government investigations in the last year. The company has hired about two dozen in-house lawyers to work on issues, including and especially copyright, according to the Washington Post. As the Post put it, these actions underscore the new reality OpenAI is at war. You know, one of their strategies is to paint it

as a bulwark against China. They have other strategies. I've heard them all from them. The New York Times has a very significant lawsuit against OpenAI, and I urge everybody to read it. The tech companies are saying that training is not the big deal. They're not really stealing. They're just training. And it's not. And they're trying to use fair use and everything else. I think these, I think it's Sarah Silverman suing. It's a whole

range of people from the New York Times to Sarah Silverman to authors and things like that. And of course, I had my own experience with AI making Kara Swisher books. You'll have that with your book coming out soon. What do you think of where these copyright lawsuits are? I think my fear is that we make the same mistake we did. I mean, the two... We weren't suing before the first time, but go ahead. That's right. The two original sins I see as making the internet ad supported and not having micropayments.

I think that led to just terrible places. And two, back in the aughts, we should have bound together, all the traditional media companies should have bound together and demanded that these companies pay their fair share to crawl our data and slice up the block of cheese and then sell it for more money. I mean, again, the thing, I've told this story before, the thing that brought home to me, I had dinner with the managing editor of the New York Times once at a board dinner, and it was a guy named Bill Keller. He had to excuse himself early from the dinner because he was negotiating the release of one of his journalists from the Taliban. And I'm like, okay, that's what the New York Times has to do. The New York Times has to negotiate the release

of a journalist, and Google just pulls up a dump truck and takes money from us. They don't put their people in harm's way. They don't fact check anything. And we had an opportunity to bind together News Corp, you know, News Corp, Condé Nast, everyone, Hearst. I wanted us all to bind together. That was my idea. And then say, you are not allowed to crawl our content and we're going to have a bidding,

a licensing war between Microsoft, Bing, which was viable at the time, and Google and anybody else. And there was all this antitrust concern, and we fell into the idolatry of innovators. We thought, no, we're going to make money. They're going to send us traffic. We're at that moment now, except companies seem to be smarter. The only thing I'm worried about here is they're being atomized. The New York Times should not be going at this alone. There should be, and we've talked about this. Well, Barry Diller wanted them all to go together. Yeah, they did. Yeah. And that's how they absolutely should have done it. They should

all be speaking with one voice, similar to the way that there's a group representing all music artists that says to KROQ, KROQ, 106.7, the best radio station in the history of the planet, that says, if you're going to play The Cure this number of times through the year, you owe us X dollars. And it's an ecosystem that works. What's really interesting that people don't think about, and we'd love to talk about this at some other point, not today, is these companies still don't have a business plan, and it's got to have to be advertising or something.

You know, none of these AI companies have a business plan yet of how they're going to make money. OpenAI has a bit of a plan. A little bit. They have a little bit. It's small. It's a small subscription, et cetera. But how they're going to make money here in the big way is going to be an interesting thing. And there's plenty of money if they do it right with these media companies, right, in cooperation and everything else. I think they're going to tend towards not wanting to give them much of the pie eventually, but we should not be giving away the milk for free, as they say, in the old cow metaphor.

lawsuits, and then we'll see. Then they have their arguments, and maybe we'll bring them on and hear from them about their arguments. It would be good for people to get illuminated on what each side is saying, even if they're posturing. Well, according to Marissa Mayer, it's still early. And according to Sheryl Sandberg, we're proud of our progress, but we need to do better. They're going to deploy the same number of- Same nonsense. Sam Altman is Sheryl Sandberg with hushed tones. He's very attractive. He's very nice. He gives you the illusion that he gives a flying fuck, and he's going to deploy his army of lobbyists, and they're going to try and say it's about progress.

They'll use jingoist behavior. Well, China's AI weaponized warriors are coming for us. They will pull out the same playbook. We're here to help. And our golden girls, the walking dead Congress, will want to be part of the young. To serve man. It's a cookbook.

The same thing, not as bad, but the same thing is happening again. And they absolutely need to bind together and say, you crawl any of our data, any of our data. I can't. I want to have Tom Petty's Even the Losers for our opening song. We can't play five seconds of it. There's no fair use. That would cost $80,000. I looked into it, $80,000 a year.

But oh, but OpenAI can crawl every article in history off of the New York Times. Yeah, I agree. All right, we'll see where it goes. All right, Scott, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about why shareholders are not thrilled with Paramount Global's merger plan and speak to a friend of Pivot, Isaac Arnsdorf, about the rise of the MAGA movement. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

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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. Scott, we're back with our second big story. Paramount Global is facing some headwinds in the midst of exclusive merger talks with Skydance Media. That is run by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison. I've done an interview with him. He's a really interesting guy. He does the Star Trek and Mission Impossible movies and Top Gun, too. He's a very successful movie maker. Paramount has currently lost more than one-third of its market value since early December when reports about the possible merger first come out. That's kind of interesting. Shareholders are worried about the deal's structure. It would unfairly

benefit Sherry Redstone. The way it's formulated, and we could go into it, I guess. Let me go into it. Four directors are also expected to step down from Paramount's board in coming weeks, according to Wall Street Journal, because they're pissed about that. There's a lot of rancor. Under current terms, Redstone's National Amusements Company would receive over $2 billion in cash from Skydance as a first step of the deal, then Paramount Global would acquire Skydance in an all-stock deal valued around $5 billion. Very complex. National amusement controls Paramount Global, and so it would advantage the Redstone family. Paramount also has had a $26 billion all-cash offer from private equity firm Apollo Global Management, who you and I know,

Mark Rowan. But they're going with Skydance because it's better for Sherry Redstone. It is. The Paramount's board formed a special independent committee to evaluate the company's options. The board seems to be trying to push back on the deal by threatening quitting. But Sherry Redstone has control here because she's a controlling shareholder. So what do you think, Scott? I'd love to hear your thoughts. There's no doubt about it. Sherry and the bankers have just fucked this up so badly. I can't think of the last time a company with this type of assets, and even though it's in a declining industry, this is an iconic company with iconic brands. Everything.

Cash flow, all kinds of shit. And it's in the midst of merger talks, and the stock is off 24%. I mean, you just never see that. talks and the stock is off 24%, I mean, you just never see that. And what you have here is a dual class shareholder structure where the one shareholder who can block everything, despite the fact she's sitting on a melting ice cube every day, crosses her arms and says, no, I want a premium to what other shareholders would get. So the other shareholders have said, sorry, girlfriend, we're going to try and block this deal. And what's obvious here is that when there's only two bidders and one's a financial bidder, it's clear this is kind of shaping up to be a

failed auction. And then shareholders see internal strife. This is not only a clusterfuck, but it's mom's addicted to diet pills and dad's a pedophile, but the neighbors didn't know. Now everybody knows. I mean, it's just- Oh, wow. That's a pedophile, but the neighbors didn't know. Now everybody knows. I mean, it's just- Oh, wow, that's a cinematic show. Their dirty laundry is just being, this company can't get its shit together. The shareholders are at war with them. West Moon Vast, this company, honestly.

There's an interest in warfare. All the strategic players that should own this thing have said, we don't even want it. And a financial buyer, Apollo, is in there. If Apollo was in there. If Apollo is in there, it means the cash flow alone at the price it's at right now is justifiable, meaning the thing is a failed auction. And then you have Ellison in there. What's going to happen? All right. You're Mr. Dealmaker. What's going to happen here from your perspective? What should

happen and what will happen? Because the assets are good for someone. Obviously, Mark Rowan wouldn't be sniffing around if he didn't think it was interesting. It's an opportunity. I think Ellison and Rowan are grownups, and I think they're going to split the baby. I think they're going to end up each taking, I think the thing's going to be sold for parts. I think the movies, I think certain assets will go to one player and certain assets will go to another. She has literally overplayed her hand for five years and no one believes her. She can't bluff. And there's only two people in the world who are even interested in this thing right now. And at some point, and they're not precluded from, I don't think, from partnering and saying,

okay, I want the studio. You're going to take the cable assets. One's a distressed asset, good bank, bad bank. But I think this ends up, she has to get out now. If she doesn't get out, the stock's going to go another 30 or 40% down. But she doesn't have to because she doesn't have to, right? So she could hold firm, right? Correct? Oh, sure. She could continue. She can stop shooting herself in the feet. Her bankers, if she has, she can't be a stupid woman, all right? She's made some stupid moves here, but they're going to say to her, if we don't do this, your company's off another 30 or 50% next year. And we're going to,

every day she doesn't close a deal, this thing goes down in value. Yeah, it's been a long, it was worth like a lot more five years ago, right? It's just been like- Oh my God. This is one of the, this was an iconic brand trading at a very strong multiple. You can put out a rumor, and CEOs and bankers do this, saying there's been an inbound inquiry or we're open to selling the company. The stock pops 10 or 20%. The stock's gone down here. So I think this is going to be sold for parts. And who wins, Apollo or Skydance? The answer is yes. Yes. That's a really smart thing. So you think there's, Mark is on the phone to this guy and saying, hey, girl. It strikes me that, first off, this thing has become- Who calls who in that situation? This thing has become an ungangly robot built in a factory of lesser robots. It's got subscale parts. They're

all assets, but there's not really a ton of synergy here at subscale. I would imagine Skydance wants certain assets and not others, whereas Apollo just wants cash flow. These guys are adults. They're super smart. The bankers in Sherry have demonstrated neither of those things. They're going to split the baby. They're going to buy the same. Yeah, the board, this board move was something else. That takes a lot for, those people are like- That means they're at war with each other. Those people are professional board members on there. It's Don Ostroff, a whole bunch of people. They don't do this lightly because they love being on boards. No, it means they're at war with each other. Yeah.

So they love being on boards. It means it's one of those boards. And being on private planes and everything else. Yeah. It means the boards, it means individual board members have lawyered up. They're not speaking to Sherry. It's gotten really fucking ugly. And every board member on this board is regretting going on the board of this thing. And it's now thinking about reputation and getting sued and being 100%. Yeah, yeah.

100%. All right, well, we'll see where it goes. Sherry, get with it. Come on. Even if you have control, you don't have control anymore. I think that's pretty much it. I think she should start dating Lauren Sanchez. Well, I'm sure you're going to tell me a dating story about you and her someday.

But anyway. Well, you had mentioned Senator Cantwell before, and I just can't comment on it because she and I, you know, we don't talk publicly about our work life. Scott is dating. Fact check. Scott is dating none of these people, nor do they have any interest. And Kara Swisher has asked them. I'm going to be asking Senator Cantwell about that, too, just so you know. It's my job to fact check Scott's dating history.

Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Isaac Arnsdorf is a national political reporter for The Washington Post and author of Finish What We Started, The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy. Isaac, welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Cara. Earlier this week, we talked about these issues around dictatorships with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. And you're our follow. You're our follow because we thought it was important. And it's a topic I'm thinking about a lot, especially because I'm thinking about Steve Bannon almost continually, who you write about a lot, which I appreciate for people to understand how important he is in all this.

But this is a book where, for once, Donald Trump is not the main character, as I said. It's about MAGA as a movement. Talk about why you wanted to dig into it and why you made Steve Bannon such a big character. It's absolutely correct to do so, but talk about that. Well, thank you. Yeah, the book is kind of like a search to discover Trump anew. I mean, he shows up at the very beginning, and then we see people kind of hearing him and trying to contact him, but we don't actually meet him until the very end. And part of that was just like, what else is there to say about the most

famous person in modern human history? But part of it is also like, you know, I started the reporting at a time when Trump was actually out of the picture, right? This was early to mid-2021. He was basically in hibernation at Mar-a-Lago. And it was actually the movement. It was his supporters as harnessed and guided by Bannon, who, through their activism at the ground level, paved the way for Trump to make this comeback. It was not at all clear or inevitable that we would be where we are now. Right. You know, Bannon is, you know, I think of him as a marketer in a lot of ways. I pay a lot of attention to what he says because he's quite brilliant on communications, marketing, and he has a media background for people who don't know it. He was part of a lot of weird things, too, including the biosphere.

He's a longtime media executive. He's a little Roger Ailes in that way. So let's talk about a couple of things. You interviewed him several times over the last few years. You write he believes that the MAGA movement could, quote, represent a dominant coalition that could rule for 100 years. Sounds very Third Reich in that regard. And I recently interviewed Tim Ryback about how Hitler did a similar kind of revival of himself. Talk about Bannon's role here and his and especially before and after January 6th, because he's got his own legal problems, obviously, which he has tried to squirrel out of. Yeah, well, you know, there was the first indictment for the fundraising for the wall that he and the other people involved were actually spending on themselves, allegedly. But Trump helped him out with pardoning him for that. And that actually really helped him, you know, in that moment, right after January 6,

when, you know, again, Trump sort of disappeared. And a lot of pro Trump voices were disappearing from we're getting deplatformed from from mainstream social media, and weren't getting a lot of mainstream news interviews either. That really kind of supercharged the development of this alternative ecosystem of MAGA media. And Bannon really became the son of that solar system. And it helped that he, you know, had the validation of that Trump pardon. But you're also right to think about Bannon, you know, really, the weird period for Bannon was when he was a White House or campaign strategist. I mean, he came on through Breitbart. He came on as a media figure.

And so there's something very natural about him as this outsider media figure, actually. Yeah, one might compare him to Goebbels. Honestly, you would in a lot of ways. But also brilliant the way, I hate to compliment Goebbels, but he was brilliant in terms of selling Hitler. Talk a little bit about, you know, what is his role? What is his role has developed? He obviously was on the outs, and then he was in trouble legally. And then he came back after the pardon. He has his show, The War Room.

I spent a lot of time focused on Steve Bannon, I have to tell you, myself. Talk about what would you say, you called him the the son how would you explain that a little further well actually i literally just came here from the war room before this i was doing an interview on his show uh we're neighbors on capitol hill so uh you know i've just gone through the looking glass and and back out but you know about your book yeah exactly about him um okay because you know it's it's kind of their story um But but the case for their story not being, you know, when when I first heard about that Bannon was telling Trump supporters that they needed to go become low level officials in the Republican Party, you know, it's sort of like, okay, well, but there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff that that people talk about online. And what matters is, does it actually cross over into a real physical political action? And what became amazing to me about this story is that it was, is that I would call around to local party offices all over the country, but focusing on the key

states and say, like, are people coming out of the woodwork to be precinct chairs, which is like a nothing position that no one's ever heard of? And the answer was yes. And so that's when I knew that that is actually the power of Bannon, is that what happens on his show doesn't stay on his show. It actually crosses over into action. And he's very intentional about that. He is trying to give his listeners a feeling of empowerment and agency. And particularly in that particular time after January 6th, when many Trump supporters were so confused and disillusioned and disoriented about what happened, that guidance was crucial. How do you assess him as a person? Like you were on the show, obviously, I wouldn't say you're friendly with him, but you know him and spend time with him. How do you assess him as a power figure?

He's very smart. He really does read. I mean, he reads voraciously. And, you know, I kind of, there are times when I feel like it's Steve Bannon's world and the rest of us are just living in it. He does understand, he has a generational talent as a political strategist in kind of understanding, both understanding the mood of at least a part of the population and understanding how to channel that into meaningful political action. and understanding how to channel that into meaningful political action. Nice to meet you. This guy is such an interesting character.

What do you think his endgame is? When he, I don't know if he's married or, when he's with people he trusts, you know, he's not a young man, and they say, what is your endgame here? Like, what are your goals? What do you want to accomplish? If you were to try and look into his soul or his head, what do you think the end game is for Steve Bannon? Well, there was a point in the reporting where he said very explicitly to me, I'm not in the rebuilding business. I'm in the tearing down business. Right. So he views history as a cycle of building up and tearing down, and he wants to be an active agent of that tearing down so that something new can be rebuilt. And what he has in mind is redefining the two-party system.

So instead of having two national pluralistic parties, you'll have a left-wing globalist elitist party and a right-wing populist nationalist party. And he thinks that's a rubric for the nationalist party to dominate. Right. Of course, he's using the word nationalist, which has its recriminations of that. So he doesn't want to be there. I always say some people just want to burn down the world. And they're like, they want to change it. I'm like, no, no, no, they want to burn it down for the next thing kind of thing. How does he react to that idea that people are kind of onto him on that thing? I don't think he cares, right? Correct? Because he'll talk, he talks to you, right? He was very, I wrote him once, he wrote me back in five

seconds. It was really something to see, right? And you don't usually get that from figures, because he's got his finger. He knows who everybody is, correct? usually get that from figures because he's got his finger. He knows who everybody is, correct? Yeah, but as a media figure, he appreciates the importance of media. He's not one of these people around Trump or like Ron DeSantis who really believe we make stuff up and we're the enemy. He's much more like Trump in the sense that he is dying to use us for his purposes. You know, he is unapologetic about using terms like nationalism, and nationalism is a hell of a drug. But he is a little bit sensitive about, and we got into this a little bit on the air just

now, he is a little bit sensitive about this idea of ending democracy. little bit sensitive about this idea of ending democracy. And he points out accurately that this precinct strategy, what the Trump supporters are doing, is using the machinery of democracy to try to achieve their political objective. But it's important to understand that democracy often ends not at the end of a rifle, but at the hands of its elected leaders. Democracy. Hello. This is precisely what the Tim Rayback's book is about. It's that Hitler used democracy to end democracy.

That's the old. I mean, that's this nonsense, what he's saying to you. Anyway, Scott, go ahead. What role is he playing in the election for 2024? From what I understand, he is not the campaign CEO like he was in 2016. He is not frequently in touch with Trump himself, like other advisors. He is in touch with some members of Trump's team on a fairly regular basis. But it's helpful to Trump to have that little bit of kind of critical and plausible distance, while at the same time, you have Bannon kind of as a laboratory

for developing the movement that fuels Trump. And in terms of, I would imagine, you know, one of the things he called Trump was his instrument, right? That when he saw him coming down the elevator, escalator at the Trump Tower, he thinks, I think it feels like he thinks Trump is not dumb, understands the aesthetics of power and how to make himself a vehicle, a vessel for the grievances and desires of a lot of Americans. And Trump has the charisma and the fame and the stature to do that. And Bannon and Trump have slightly different goals. Everything for Trump is about himself. And when Bannon describes him as his instrument, what he's talking about is trying to channel the movement into an institution of the party where it can transcend the limits of being a cult of personality around a single leader and actually achieve the durability through the party structure that it would need

to be a hundred-year regime. Yeah, that's why it's not going to work, just FYI. Anyway, it's been a busy week for Donald Trump and his legal team trying to put a stop to the hush money trial. It's not working. It's slated to begin next week. He loves to do those delay tactics. I know you've been following all that. I just would love you to talk about the Trump legal issues helping him with these MAGA supporters that you've been chronicling. Yeah, so there was an amazing moment where I happened to be at a cigar party on the sidelines of the Georgia State Republican Convention. Oh, wow. That sounds like fun. with these Trump supporters when they were finding out in real time, or even in some cases being the one to break the news to them and seeing how they reacted. And it helped me understand, because I think, you know, for people outside the movement, there's very much a sense of like, what is relatable about like, paying hush money to a porn star or mishandling classified information? Like, how could that be something that anyone else could

think could happen to them? But if you believe that that's all made up, politicized charges, planted evidence just to stop him from his political opponents, then you see it as, well, what chance do I have if they can do that to him with all his power? And I mean, these were people in the Georgia party who knew people who had been subpoenaed or charged because of January 6th or the fake electors investigation. And so it was personal to them. And there was a way in which there actually was something very powerfully relatable about the sense of alienation of how can this be happening in America that the supporters very strongly identify with when you see Trump and these all caps truths about how can they be

taking away my businesses and how can they be putting me on trial and this is so unfair. Yeah, it's the grievance industrial complex, I call it. Do you, as you've gotten to know Bannon, how did it change your view on politics in America? Yeah, the only way that I ever became comfortable understanding what happened in the last few years was to understand it in a much longer timeline, and that there is actually a lot of continuity between what we call MAGA and the dawn of the modern conservative movement with Barry Goldwater. And the issue was that it was systematically marginalized by the Republican Party for many decades. And it kind of made an outside attempt with Pat Buchanan and with the Tea Party,

but it never, until Trump, had someone with the charisma and the resources and the fame and the wherewithal to mainstream it. And that, to me, was really the only way it made sense is how this could spread so far so quickly was to understand that it was actually something very deeply rooted in American political culture. Absolutely. Yeah. They never got their chance, really. And now they've got their guy. He's right about the instrument part. He's right. It is a lot of marketing too. And tapping into long held feelings by not much of the country, but enough of the country, about grievance and being left out and left behind. And beyond that, and just being, it's never your fault.

That's the other part, which, of course, it's never their fault. They could possibly never imagine they did anything wrong that deserves this kind of treatment. But it'll be interesting. So do you have any predictions about what's coming with this, where it ends up? Does it have the strength? We were just earlier talking about the abortion thing. There's a lot of hits it's been taking. At the same time, it still continues to have remarkable resilience. When you're looking at it, I'm not asking you to make a prediction, how do you feel about its resilience? I think there are two sides to that coin. The way that the party infrastructure is more

unified and consolidated behind Trump is a huge asset, especially, you know, as an offset to, like, the mess of his legal troubles and the RNC's finances. And, you know, whatever's going on with that campaign, the fact that you've got the field organization out there in the party and it's full of really dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporters is meaningful. The flip side is that Democrats and the book deals with this strand of the story also, how Democrats and some anti-Trump Republicans figured out a way to use an anti-MAGA message effectively to wedge off Republicans who are uncomfortable with MAGA and what they see as how the party has changed and gotten more extreme. And that's really an underappreciated story about how the midterm results, surprisingly, were so favorable to the Democrats. And that's key to understanding the bid that the Biden campaign

is making. And that is going to, I think, you know, it's a vanishingly small slice of the electorate, but it's going to be a close election and that could be decisive. Yeah, absolutely. I've always been amazed how, and Bannon does this beautifully, how much losers can pretend they're winners and convince you that they didn't lose. It's really, they've lost everything over the past couple of years and they continue to act like they're the biggest winners ever. And that's a strength of Bannon to do that. Don't believe your lion eyes. Anyway, this is a really important book. There's several books recently that I think are really substantive. Isaac's is one of them,

which is called Finish What We Started, The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy. Thank you so much. Thank you. Man, that's Steve Bannon. I watch him carefully, Scott. I really do. Yeah. I pay a lot of attention to him. Anyway, I really urge you to read this book. He's someone we think of as an unmade bed and kind of a schlub, but he's certainly not. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Okay, Scott, before we do predictions, I just want to know some news that just came in. O.J. Simpson has died at the age of 76.

His family posted a statement on X. During this time of transition, his family asked that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace. The Simpson family, I don't know what to say. I have no regard for him, so I don't want to say rest in peace. I don't know. What do you think? I think he's a murderer, and I hope he suffered. in peace. I don't know. What do you think? I think he's a murderer and I hope he suffered. Took two innocent lives, was exonerated by a jury that fell into the trap of identity politics and incompetent prosecution and go straight to hell, boss. Yeah. I think I'm with you on that one,

Scott Galloway. All right. Let's hear a prediction. Well, on that note. We're so, like I was at a thing the other day and I said someone should die. I think I was talking about Alex Jones because he's so heinous. And someone was like, you shouldn't wish death on people. I said, I think I shall. I think I shall. Anyway, let's hear your predictions. I think big bank stocks are about to kick off their earnings tomorrow when this releases with JP Morgan. I think they're going to beat their earnings expectations because their stocks, what had been priced into their stocks was the assumption that interest rates were coming down. interest margin. And that is, they loan out money to mortgages for 7%, and they pay you kind of 3% or 4%. And that margin is where they make the bulk of their money. And people are assuming that the interest rates they were going to have to offer people because inflation was declining was going to come down. It hasn't. And in addition, there's been some consolidation. Some regional banks have gone out of business. And also, there's been a flight of capital from regional banks who are worried about an SVB-like situation into the biggest banks.

So you're also seeing the IPO markets come back a little bit. So I just think it's champagne and cocaine for these guys. And I think that despite the fact they have actually outperformed the S&P and had a great year, I still think they're going to continue to outperform and they're going to surprise to the upside this week. Yeah. They also, though, were looking for a rate cup. They look like they're not getting one. For some reason, Jamie Dimon's been a little irritating lately in his pronouncements. Have you noticed that? He's been a lot of pronouncing and he was wrong the first time about where the economy was going. Now he's sort of gloom and dooming it. Yeah, I think he'd make actually a pretty good Treasury Secretary.

He's going for it for whatever administration. He's sucking up to Trump and sucking up to Biden. He was at that Japan party with Mrs. Sanchez yesterday. Go ahead. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. He's on the list. He's on the list, but we're not. We must have just barely been cut out.

Barely. But I am going to the Embassy on Sustainable Fashion. I wonder, should I, you know, if I got a White House state dinner, I'd have a hard time picking between you and Amanda. I would. I kind of want to go with you in a weird way. You know it. Amanda, I'm sorry, but Scott would be, that would be like, we'd get arrested. Oh, yeah.

No, that'd be fun. We would get arrested. I feel like we'd be wandering. It'd be bad, but good. We'd be wandering around. It'd be bad, good. We'd be wandering around and then go up. Somehow we'll be up in the residence and we'll go to jail. Stealing the China. Stealing things. Stealing the branded China.

Sorry, Amanda. I may have to take Scott if I get arrested. Putting pastries in my purse. Yes, exactly. You're not wearing the dress. What would they do? There's nothing they could do. They'd arrest us and put us in jail. Us and the J6 hostages would be in jail. Yeah. Fuck those people.

They broke the law. They should go to jail. This White House have a jail. I mean, you're the only date I've ever had to the White House. You and Tammy had a— We had a good time. You dressed up. You were such a good boy.

You were such a good boy there. Let me just tell you. I was very intimidated. You were on your best behavior. When the Secretary of State stops and goes, Kara Swisher! And I'm like, Jesus Christ. This—Jesus. Maybe I should be nicer to her.

Anyway, listeners, 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. Okay, Scott, this is such a good substantive show today, I think.

I like it a lot. But before we go, we're nominated for a Webby Award, and we need you to vote for us at the link in the episode description. We're in second. We need to get to first place. But anyway, we'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Vote for us for the Webby.

Desperate for other people's affirmation. Daddy is addicted to other people's affirmations, so please feed my habit. In any case, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Ertad engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Emil Severio. Nishat Krua is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. 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. You can subscribe to the magazine at newyorkmag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Rest in peace, Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.