Pivot - Starmer Resigns, Reflecting Pool Fiasco, and Amazon Dumps OpenAI Movie

Episode Date: June 23, 2026

Kara and Scott discuss Trump's mishandling of Iran, and his vandalism claims about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Then, lots of drama in Europe as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigns, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni feuds with Trump. Plus, a new book reveals how Trump mocked Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon dumps the OpenAI movie, and SpaceX stock takes a tumble.Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠.Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠.Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠.Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's my limbist test. Or do they have their head in their hands? Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Bonsois, Kara. Bonsois, how are you?

How are you? Oh, that's our entire French. That's it. We're done. That's it. Cujo. My mom is the Cujo. Yeah.

The French, I think, are in, for some reason, I feel like, where are they? I think they were in New York doing, getting up to all kind of business because of the World Cup. Well, we're here. Oh, the French team felt standing. I hate to say it. The French team is in the United States, I believe, where they were doing all kinds of French things, and we're here doing all kinds of French things. And we're here doing all kinds of things. of American things.

You are far away from me that were in the same general area right now. I just got here to Khan. Can. I'm on this wonderful island called Hotel DuCap. Yeah, no, we've been avoiding you. I mean, we can't wait to see you. Yeah, I know.

You're not going to see the kids. They're here, though. They're out and about with the creps right now, outside in the beach and Khan and everything. So we just got here by train. I have to tell you, the weather here is lovely. In Paris, it was so hot. Like this sweltering heat dome across Europe

is not a little thing. It's crazy. It's like so hot. I've never experienced anything like it, I have to say. No, Paris and summer isn't a city. It's a convection oven with better architecture. I mean, it just, it starts to heat up. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's really, it's, it's, it's, there's something about, I don't know, like London when it's hot, when it's, when it's 78 in, in L.A., you think, oh, it's so pleasant, light breeze. When it's 78 in London, it feels like you're in Africa and you could die. Oh, right. For some reason, heat in Europe takes on a different dimension. I don't know if that's because they don't have air conditioning or what it is. No air conditioning in the apartment we rented. That was nice. That was a lovely little extra part of it.

It was a beautiful apartment, but then it was so hot. It was like an oven. Anyway, now we're here at the beach with you. No, I'll stick to 54-year-old burgers and poor boys asking me, what type of lager would you like, Mr. Galloway? I know. It's expensive where you are. We're staying in a beautiful apartment box cup for us, which is nice.

And we have lots of due. I'm sorry, Vox pays for you, but not for me. What's going on here? Because you have to stay at the fanciest places in the world. Would you like to stay in this apartment with me? There's an extra bedroom. Well, I would have liked to have been offered. No, I'm going to send him.

Where's Bangkok? Wait, I'm sending it to the Murdoch guy. He sent it to the Murdoch guy. Okay, all right. You stay at the fanciest places. I do not. I was going to, we have a lot to do. We have a live pivot here.

I've got a live on. Are you doing Prof. G here or not? Yeah, I just did, I just do raging mine. I'm not doing live prop G though. They're not just in the markets thing here. They like pivot and we're doing it at the Ad Week House, which I think is in a brothel somewhere outside of Toulouse.

Good, excellent. In the 10 years I have been here, it's literally like the second invasion of Normandy. The Americans, it used to be the ad agencies, Martin Sorrell and Maurice Levy and John Wren. No one gives a shit about the ad agencies anymore. No, it's creators. Have you noticed creators? The creator economy.

The creator economy. YouTube has a thing. Everyone has the creator economy thing, and there's a lot of creators here. Most of them I don't know. But we are considered a creator in case you're interested. We finally come round to us, I guess, in some cash. So just some data. About 500 YouTube creators are expected at Cannot up from 400 last year with new UTA and Adobe Creator beaches.

So they're taking over the beach. Can added a creative brand lion for the AI craft category for 2026, signaling creators as a core strategy. And they're attracting an unprecedented amount of ad spend. Creator revenues are set to exceed $21 billion this year more than doubling from 2022. Interesting, smaller influencers are attracting advertisers. Nano and micro influencers take 49% of U.S. creator spend more than double their share. What is a nano?

micro. Is it a tiny person? What is it? No, I mean, longtail. It used to be, so podcasting is all about the top 100. The longtail and the creator economy is actually doing really well. They get about half the spend, which is unlike other mediums where it all goes to the biggest players. Brand creator spend jumped 23% last year while traditional TV ad budgets fell 8%. So the creator economy is really booming. Yeah, we will discuss that at the Ed Weekhouse and then they will throw money at us. That's our hope, correct? Yeah, but if you look at, I mean, podcasting, it went from, it went from kind of these dramas, like serials and interesting, you know, scripted podcasting.

Then it went to the interview, the Rogans of the world. Then it's kind of gone to, I think, more like the commentators or analysts. And I think the next place is proprietary data sets and interpreting them. Actually, I'm parroting this intelligent woman's comment on a reel. I've got to find out who she isn't creditor. All right, okay. All right. Well, you know, our next act is going to be unnatural acts.

That's what I think we should do. I think we should do only fans. I'm game. You had me to an unnatural act. I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm in. But we've got a lot to get to today. There's so much going on, including Green Watergate. Get it?

Green Watergate. I told you this thing would blow up. President Trump says it will begin fixing the seriously vandalized reflecting pool, vandalized by him. Trump is claiming without evidence. He's lying that vandals cut a 250-foot gig. ash in the pool's new lining and poured corrosive and destructive chemicals into the water. This is nonsense. There's cameras everywhere in Washington, just so you know.

He said multiple people have been arrested tied to the alleged destruction. This is just nonsense. One of them was a former Olympian who was accused by the Park Police of destroying government Proust. He says you reach down to touch a strip of peeling paint. I was down there, Scott, it was peeling. Nobody was touching it. Everyone was sort of shocked and amazed by how grotesque it was.

Because, you know, you go down there, I've gone down there quite a bit, and I've never really noticed the sky meanness of it, and it really is. It's green, all this paints peeling off. So he's lying, and Trump, of course, should be accused of vandalizing a lot of Washington, whether it was the East Wing or the grass in front of the White House for his party. You know, it's just ridiculous. But it's taking on a life of its own. It really is, in terms of a metaphorical thing, or maybe you don't think that? No, I mean, the president has caught between two straits of water. And I personally, I think this is kind of a non-story. America's turning 250 and we've managed to turn a reflecting pull into a culture war. I just, for God's sakes, just fix it and let's move on. I don't, I kind of, you know, they're lying and saying that it's sabotage and vandalism. It isn't. It's incompetence. It's a government project turning into another government project. And the Democrats love to talk about, I think we have bigger fish to fry. I think I would.

I would agree, but I don't think it's a bad, I think people get it in a second, because it's, again, as I told you, it's a symbol. And it's also the guy who did it is another piece of griff. And it looks incompetent. It looks incompetent. And, you know, one of the jokes online was that, you know, Washington is now a scar after, after he took over on the Lion King. But there is more to that because then you link it, I think, with Iran, too, which continues to be, like, a problem. Like, here's kind of they keep going back and forth. And that's, That is the real problem. It is, but it's symbolic of just complete idiocy, like really stupid. We'll get to some other stupid things coming up. But talk a little about, I noticed you were talking about a lot online, the MOU, which seems the Iranians seem to have us by the short hairs. That's what it feels like to me. I don't know about you.

But they're not doing anything. They're just dragging us on, I guess, and being rude to Tadie Mance, which I completely think they did. Trump has delivered on his promise of unconditional surrender. The problem is we're the ones unconditionally surrendering. It is insane. Anyone who can do math, anyone who understands a memo of understanding, anyone who can look at their activities, in my mind,

it is just so incredibly clear and tragic what is going on. The IRGC recognizes he's left. The midterms are coming up. It is a very unpopular war. He got no support from the public, from Congress, from other nations. He underestimated the resilience of the missile systems. He has handed them something more powerful than a nuclear weapon, and that is an ability to choke the carotid artery of the global economy and the Strait of Hormuz.

They know we are out. Right. And all they have to do is operate in between is delay in obfuscation. It's just delay. Every day that goes back, it's less likely we're going to go back in with military action. So they just have to operate. They really can't. They have to operate between humor them, agree to meet in Switzerland, don't get a deal done.

They have the perfect false flag. Oh, Israel's bombed Lebanon. You're not living up to your part of the agreement. We're out. They have no intention of giving anything back. And the only thing that's going to come out of this besides Trump's incompetence and Jady Vance, you know, having about as long a presidential run as Senator Jillibrand is that we are going to look back on this and recognize that one of the greatest acts of diplomacy was the JCPOA. Right. And Obama is saying so.

He's doing a lot of press right now around it, by the way, the comparative. We had Russia and China sign. They were co-sting to terms of the agreement. We can't get Israel to sign this agreement, much less European nations. We had limits at 3.7 enrichment. They're already at 60. Very little money. There's no constraints around nuclear enrichment in the agreement.

He keeps saying all these bullshit threats. We'll open the strait of hormones. We'll get you. We'll get you. I know. The strait of hormones, to keep it open, would take, two carrier strike forces, paratroopers and Marines on the ground on Iranian soil. That is not going to happen.

The net net here is the following. America comes out of this. much weaker, Iran much stronger, and we're going to look back and realize that the JCPOA was one of the more impressive acts of diplomacy of the last 50 years. Yep, except they continue to deny it. It's really, like, it's the same thing with the reflecting pool. And the reason why I'm harping on it, it's the same thing. It's the same kind of like, no, this is what's happening. You know, you've seen all these communications from the White House. And we look, it looks so ridiculous when it's the reflecting pool, but it's the same exact communications. You know, they're,

They're blaming the New York Times. They're blaming, you know, for the coverage. He's blaming Obama. He's blaming everybody. And it's the same thing. Oh, it's vandals. It's this, it's that. It's him.

He's just a disaster. And again, I point to, finally, someone is starting to write about it. His mental state, which seems demented. And we'll get into that a little bit more. But the way he's sort of lashing out in this crazy way when it's all his fault seems. And, of course, blaming poor J.D. Vance. I mean, I never feel that sort. for that guy, but I got to say he's been dragged, he's been, he's been pensed. I don't know what else to

say. He's sort of stuck holding the bag here and trying, having to defend it. And it's worse than when Kamala Harris even lightly said, I wouldn't change a thing on the view, right? Sort of the same exact thing. So, I mean, it's disastrous for the Republicans in so many ways because he doesn't have it out. So my worry, because I think he's, he lashes out, like arresting back, Janine Piro arresting people for this thing? This is like, let me tell you, Gene. I was doing, I was down there. I didn't touch the strip of paint, but it was stripping off by all by itself. It's going to be a disaster. These people are soiling themselves in the most ridiculous of ways. And in Iran, it's day. And with a reflecting pool, it's just stupid, although costly

to us as taxpayers, the same thing with the rest of the mess he's making. But in this case, it's disastrous. I mean, really truly, I don't know how anyone's going to get us out of this because we got two more years of this lunatic essentially. I don't even know. What could happen? He gets sidelined? What? I don't know. Like, he's not going anywhere, even if he loses power.

Yeah, but I think if Democrats take Congress have the power of subpoena and hopefully if they were to get back Senate, at a minimum, there'd be enough power to get in the way of a lot of this stuff. Except that Iran will then develop a nuclear weapon. I feel like right now. You know what I mean? Like, that's with a worry. That's the only thing we all agree on.

Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, But wow, we've given him a chance here. He's, this is, and then the economy itself. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back, resignations, feuds, and more. And we'll get into all the European political drama. Support for the show comes from Framer. If your team wants a website that looks and feels handcrafted,

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with big news here in Europe. There's a lot going on. Keir Starmar just announced he's stepping down as Britain's prime minister giving into mounting pressure from his own party. Sturmer said he'll stay in office until a new party leader is selected and likely to be this guy named Andy Burnham, former mayor of Greater Manchester, a very popular guy. Trump got ahead of the announcement of the weekend, noting Sturmer would step down and saying he had failed badly on immigration and energy policy. Also, a lot of attacks from Elon Musk, by the way. Starrmer's resignation comes almost 10 years to the day since the Brexit vote, the UK. has had six prime ministers in that time. Talk a little bit about, you live there.

What has happened here? Obviously, he was going to lose an election, and he had won in a landslide in a very short time ago. I think a lot of it comes down to economics, and that is, I mean, it's very strange. Bitha, Micanos, and St. Bartz and Hawaii are parts of those nations, but they're not. They're islands that have an entirely different culture.

I feel that way about London. I think London's essentially an island in the U.S. UK. Because if you look at the UK, seven out of 10 IPOs in the last 10 years are below their offering price. GDP was supposed to take a 4 to 6 percent hit from Brexit. That's second greatest own goal in geopolitical history behind our entry into Iraq. You have now the UK as a whole has a lower average household income than Mississippi. And then there's London, which is essentially where the richest people in the world, part capital and have a European lifestyle without actually engaging in the UK economy. I mean, it's just it's a very strong.

place. Since I have moved there after we have a new UK, a new prime minister in several weeks, I've been there four years. This will be my fifth prime minister. Fifth, right? You had a conservatives. There was a conservative guy. There was Boris. It's not politics. It's speed dating. It's beginning to feel like a LinkedIn jobs page. It's just so, you know, but without growth, until they figure out a way, I thought they should do Baxit. They should reintegrate into the Europe. European economy, because without growth, all of this gets harder and harder. And the weird, the quagmire here, or the, not the quagmire, the enigma, is that the UK has all the underpinnings of a great democracy and economic growth engine.

It has incredible universities, rule of law, culture compounds. Everybody in the world wants to or wouldn't mind the idea of living in the UK for a few years. It's delightful when you're there. It's a wonderful place. And yet they, open AI, Anthropics. And SpaceX, they're going to raise $150 billion in fresh capital. The UK raised a total of $2 billion last year in its entire IPO market. They just can't get out of their own way.

And Brexit, and just to go to politics, since World War II, no individual has done more harm to Britain, in my view, than Nigel Farage, who might be a prime minister at some point. So I have stayed woefully ignorant to UK politics, but it is difficult for me to understand and how the foundation of success, how they continue to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here. And I got to think it's something, it's got to be a big, bold move.

Even the non-DOM thing, we kicked out, basically they chased a lot of billionaires out of the UK. And I understand the sentiment. It's let's tickle the middle class censors of people who are angry, but at the same time, the Treasury's gone down

because a lot of wealthy people are leaving. And that reduces your tax base to, you know, provide for the NHS and these social services. But this is, I mean, UK politics, and then what do you have, you have the rise of populism, they have had real problems. You know, to a certain extent, it's a metaphor for the West. You have, or when the West goes wrong,

stagnant wages, housing shortages, immigration anxiety, and institutional distrust. You also had a lot of meddling by Elon Musk in terms of backing a bunch of very violent people against immigrants. The American export is political. divisiveness. Right, yeah. It's not helping. But it's Elon himself that's meddling quite a bit. Yeah, but then J.D. Vance comes over and lectures them about free speech. It's like we shouldn't,

you know, in my view, Americans should be here saying, you're our greatest ally. How can we help? What can we do together? How do we open more free trade agreements? Instead, instead, Musk shows up and says, rise up white people or, I mean, essentially, and J.D. Vance comes over and waves his finger out of him around free speech. It's just, and now they've got to figure out a way to basically untangle the technology. Britain's nuclear arsenal runs on American technology. And all of a sudden, Europe is waking up and going, what the fuck?

We have become way. The conservatives aren't popular either. Farage kind of is. It's like nobody's popular. It's a very angry nation. But when you don't have growth, people's prosperity goes down, and they just get angry and angrier. So, again, not to talk too much about,

money, but they have got to figure out a way to get growth going again. How would you do that? When your growth grows, you have more money, you have more flexibility, you have more power abroad, you have more, you can't have a powerful nation that's shrinking its GDP. And again, I was in Cannes when Brexit happened and the pound crashed. It's cost them 8% of their GDP, which is like taking hundreds of billions of pounds into the street and just lighting it on fire. Yeah, they may return to the, I mean, it's interesting because Europe is getting more

and more unified, speaking of which, Trump's latest feud is one of his pals, basically his European Marjorie Taylor Green, Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney. The spat started after Trump, this is so strange. Again, I'm sorry, this guy's lost his mind. After Trump claimed Maloney begged him for a, Maloney, it was called Moni, begged him for a photo last week's G7 summit in France. Maloney responded with a video on Instagram, which was quite remarkable calling Trump's claims totally fabricated and saying Italy and I never.

beg. She also accused Trump of being more accommodating to the enemies of the West than his own allies. Trump then doubled down, saying Maloney is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, which she fired back. My popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours, pointing to his bad, is increasingly lowering popularity. Boy, this woman, even though, let me just, let's be clear, she's anti-gay marriage, she's anti-trans, she's anti-immigrant, she's not, she's Marjorie Taylor Green, essentially. This is the European version of her. And at the same time, I was like, go Georgia. Like, it was kind of interesting that he continues.

Again, the sign of someone who is having some cognitive problems, it seemed like to me. This is usually such a- She's always been like this. He's always been an asshole, but not this much of an asshole. And she just took it to him, which I found really interesting. I mean, obviously it helps her in Italy because he's not popular there. And he's not popular anywhere in Europe now. And they were tight as ticks, if you recall, you know.

But this is, again, greatness isn't the agency of others. And European countries have been our strongest allies. We share same values, same democracies. We've worked together. We've had incredible. The post-World War II world was largely shaped by America and European values. And Trump decides, again, he's figured out a way to manage to feud with and alienate, feud with and alienate allies while simultaneously praising adversaries. And we've spent 80 years

developing these alliances, and Trump treats them like some sort of fantasy football league. And Maloney, to her credit, she remains, her popularity is actually greater than most Western leaders. And picking, and then he decides to pick a fight with one of the few European leaders who actually likes him. She went at him on the Pope, too. She doesn't much like his comments on the Pope either. Yeah, well, I mean, come on. Criticizing the Pope is like if someone in Italy. In Italy, you just don't do. You don't do that.

None of this makes any sense, Kara. Doesn't make any sense. None of that. I believe her. Believe the woman. I totally believe her. I believe her. He's such a creep.

Little pieces of his brains are coming off like the paint on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. But this is interesting because she's a really, because she's really, if you actually look at a lot of our policies, they're pretty heinous in terms of how she behaves. But she's sort of shifted. I mean, she used. Trump to sort of get there, and now she's cutting him loose.

Like, more than others, actually. The others haven't been quite as critical of him. Starmor certainly hasn't, right? Or any of them have. I don't know. The Germans haven't. She's really taken it to the wall. Anyway, I don't know.

Yeah, I think most of them have decided wait them out. It's a smart move for Melanie because she comes across as a leader and not afraid. And, you know, good for her. It's not good for her. and we look terrible once again. By the way, it's really interesting to be in Europe because a lot of people are saying, you don't like Trump, do you?

To me, I'm like, no. Really? No, yeah. A lot of the Europeans sort of test it when we were in Paris several different times. Like, you're not a fan of Trump, I'm like hardly. Like, hello, lesbian family. Like, no.

And so they asked several Europeans, there's a tour guy, Eiffel Tower, or whatever, we're sort of like poking to see if we liked him, which obviously we look like an ad for not liking Trump. And anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back new details about how Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos tried to cozy up to Trump. This is an interesting story. Support for Pivot comes from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

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To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions, visit HIMS.com. Support for this show comes from Teleport. Here's a finding that should stop every tech leader cold. Organizations most confident in their AI deployments have more than twice the security incident rate of those that aren't. 72% versus 33%. That's from Teleports, 2026.

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Because in the new era of AI, the problem isn't agents. It's the privileges we're giving them. Download the free report at go-teleport.com slash pivot. Scott, we're back. President Trump probably took frequent jabs at Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos as they tried to build ties with his administration. That's according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Johns and Swan, who I'm going to have on the on podcast soon. The president told guests' stories about Zuckerberg and Bezos kissing his ass, which they were saying, you do not believe the texts I got from these tech guys. I got to show you. Among them, Zuckerberg sent Trump a photo of a letter written by one of his young children, which said they were looking forward to a golden age of America. Trump, a rally slogan,

Bezos, meanwhile, reportedly told Trump that the Washington Post was one of his worst investments and that people there are really terrible. Oh, my God. I mean, honestly. And then, of course, He was showing them to Elon, too. They all made fun of them. And, you know, anyway, it was kind of, I mean, by the way, on the other side, they insult him behind his back, too. But what has happened here from your perspective when you were reading sort of this stuff? I'm not surprised by one bit of it whatsoever.

But I don't know if they'll get their reputations back. We always thought Trump was a jerk, but this is really kind of obsequious. Yeah, but a representative flip that is sort of represents something in my mind. view kind of dark, and that is politicians used to kiss the ass of billionaires because billionaires had money and politicians wanted to get elected, and it became kind of a pay-for-play thing because of citizens united. But when you think about this, Bezos and Zuckerberg are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and yet they both still feel compelled to kiss the ass of an 80-year-old real estate developer. Capital always chases power, but Silicon Valley spent 20 years telling

us government didn't matter, and then everyone started flying to Washington. And what this signals around the dark part is the following. If you're worth a quarter of a trillion dollars and still kissing the ass of the president, you're not, this is moved from buying influence to renting protection. This is a transition for pay-for-play democracy to something even worse, and that is a mob protection racket. Yeah. Where if I want a whole, if I want to hold a whole, hold on to my wealth, I got to start paying for protection. Because anybody that doesn't sign up gets in his crosshairs and potentially, all of these guys, Jamie Diamond is the only one I can tell about these, like, this power crew that hasn't kissed his ass and is actually willing to occasionally say the obvious.

And now the government is suing J.P. Morgan. Right. So it doesn't matter how powerful you are, you got to pay the mob. And this is, what do you have? You want a democracy where money can't buy influence or can't buy too much. Then you move to a democracy, a quote unquote democracy or a kleptocracy where money buys everything. And now we're, in my opinion, a protection racket where Bezos and Zuckerberg got to like, got to kiss the ring here. It's feeling very Russia.

But do they got to? Do they got to? I feel like they're more powerful. I don't even understand it. Like, I don't know. I mean, they could wait him out. Like, they've got so much money. They could do so much damage to him.

You're going to, if they, I do think if the Democrats take Congress and we get about 18 or 24 months out, I think you're all of a sudden going to see, as I say, these guys are going to grow testicles again. I think you're going to see a switch because I know they all tell you they can't stand them. But the smart play, I hate to say it, the smart play is. is to kiss his ass. I guess. But it's so great. You don't have to do it in a grotesque with your kids. Oh, my God.

Like, my child wrote this team. Do you know how much of a loser you look like that you're pimping out your kids? And then Bezos, just sell the fucking Washington Post if it's one of your worst investments and people are general. I don't get that. We've talked that. I still don't understand why he still owns that. You know, it's not just me who was interested. There was a dozen people.

Wouldn't engage with any of them. I've talked to every one of them. Wouldn't engage. Not once. What does he? What is he like? Like, I don't know what's happening. If he doesn't like it, if it's his worst investments,

and people are terrible. And by the way, Jeff, they hate you. Why not just get rid of it? It's so weird. Yeah, I don't get that one. I don't understand why. Because it doesn't give him power. By the way, it did an amazing story on Tulsi Gabbard this week.

Like, it's done several amazing stories around the corruption and everything else. I mean, the news parts, the editorial section is such weak sauce now. It's really hard to read. But I agree. I don't understand it. I think, I don't know, when they're sucking up to the normal president, are we going to forgive them or do we care? No, they sort of soil themselves pretty significantly. I don't know, but it feels very Russian in the sense that it doesn't matter how rich you are, you got to send him put in his Vig.

And no matter where you are, you might, if you really piss him off, he's going to put a neurotoxin on a doorknob. Yeah, but he's this guy, he wasn't going to do that. That's the thing. In there, I kind of see it because that's kind of going out a window kind of thing. This is just something else. Yeah, but I think these guys in a capitalist society begin to equate success and ego and influence just with a number, and that is your net worth. And I think they're very smart and they connect all the dots

and see the matrix around how to increase their net worth. And they've connected the dots here and say, just kiss his ass. It's a really high ROI activity. They're so gross. They're just gross. They're just gross. It's just gross. Sorry, it's just gross. It's gross. in other Amazon news, this is interesting, Amazon's movie studio is dumping an upcoming film about Sam Altman saying the project would be better served in another studio.

The decision comes as Amazon plans to invests $50 billion in Open AI this year. The move will probably stun the filmmakers. Very good filmmakers, by the way. Andrew Garfield was in it. I am in the script. I don't come off very well. I look like I'm too nice to Sam, but I don't care.

Since Amazon had already spent about $40 million on the movie, tested it at four markets that's working towards a release date. I don't know. And this is not getting picked up. Netflix passed, apparently, a couple of different places passed. And it's, you know, it's a high-level film. I read the script and I didn't like it.

I thought it was fictional in a lot of ways. They sort of painted Jeffrey Hint as a party guy, which not in my experience. And they made that one guy who rebelled against Sam into a hero, and I don't think he was either. I thought it was kind of broad and I thought it was not a good script. But there's, of course, the other ones coming out about Mark Zuckerberg, the sequel, the social wrecking, which we've previously talked about, about Francis Howgan and that whole situation. That's coming out. That is coming out with the guide from the bear.

But you feel, I don't know, I'm not surprised they got rid of it if they just invested in Open AI, but it seems kind of dumb spending all that money. It's not much, 40 million. Who cares? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but we were. were well into the development or even production writer's room of our series on Netflix about big tech, that got the plug pulled. Oh.

This has gotten the plug pulled. Yeah. I think they've just decided that. They don't want to be villains. Yeah. And they don't, it's not worth the risk. You piss off either powerful people, you piss off the president, all these M&A, all these regulatory concerns.

And quite frankly, the American public seems to have soured on AI. Or it could just be the following. The story of Sam Allman isn't that interesting. And it seemed more interesting 12 months ago than it is now. So I think they'd, you know, think, well, let's just do season four of euphoria. I don't, I think they've done the math here and decided that stories about big tag. The gay hockey people seems popular. Yeah, let's do the women's hockey team this year.

Incredibly well. Toy Story 5 is like killing it. Yeah, huge opening. By the way, to your credit, I meant to tell you, you've been talking about theaters and I've been shipposting them. the best performing media stocks, the last 12 months, hasn't been meta or it hasn't been. It's been theaters. Alex Swisher went to the theater. He did.

He loved it. He's going again to watch the other one. Well, R.L is a trend again. But anyways, back to quote, quote, artificial, the name of this that they've killed, I think they just do the math and go, okay, the story isn't that interesting. It's going to piss off potentially a lot of powerful people. Is this worth it? And look, I saw this happen up close and personal.

Tell us more about this plug pulling for you. Explain to the people what your show was so people understand. So I connected with Res Media, who did the morning show, an incredibly talented guy. And then we had an amazing showrunner, Scott Burns from the Born Identity, incredibly talented guy. We signed up Rosamund Pike to play the lead character based on, you know, Mostly baser inspired by Cheryl Sandberg. It got, we did our pitch, and it got bought in the room, which never happens.

Right, I remember. Netflix committed to the entire first season. Wow. Finally, oh my God, finally, after a swing and a miss and being beamed in the face about 10 times, I got something going. Everything's going fine. Everything's going fine. Netflix doesn't like the scripts. The showrunner leaves. Rosamund has some family issues, and just the wheels came off the bus. the wheels came off the bus.

And what probably happened is Occam's razor probably just fell apart. Because Hollywood stuff tends to. And they didn't. Well, not when you get to this stage. No, I know. I agree with you. I mean, we were scouting locations. And then so I immediately went to, was there some politics?

Because, okay, meanwhile, Netflix is making a bid for Warner Brothers? And so I merely go, is something else at foot here? And then I talked to that incredibly impressive woman at Netflix, who runs all the content. Belibaturio. She was very straight with me. She said, problems with the scripts, you know, family issues for the lead,

and this happens. And I believe that. I believe that's what happened. But then you see this thing, get the plug pulled. I think the creative communities basically said, America is tired of hearing about Big Peck, and there's a ton of second-order risk

around these stories right now. Yeah. Yeah, that could be. It could be that, what's doing well and what's not doing. It'll be interesting to see how the social reckoning does, right? Although some people say it's a mess of a script with Aaron Sorkin. I haven't seen it.

But it's getting a big push. And that's the second part of the Facebook story. It's an accompaniment to the social network. This time Sork and Not Fincher is directing, which we'll see how he does. But you're right. It's like, do we want to see more about these assholes, right? Like that kind of thing, I guess. I still think the story of big tech.

is the biggest story that's never been told. I still think someone's going to produce it. I think Bezos and Musk and Cheryl Sandberg, and what I wanted, and they agreed to in the first season, was I actually think Cheryl Sandberg is one of the more interesting characters in Big Tech. I think she's actually in many ways more interesting than Musk. But when you hear about these people's lives, he just wouldn't believe it unless you knew it was real.

I think they're incredibly complex, interesting, strange people. Petty. And the stories. Angry. Unhappy. But again, it really is, and no one's told it that well. It's the biggest story that has yet to be told. People are obsessed with Succession.

News Corps is a pimple on the elephant of Big Tech. Right. You're right. This story really hasn't been told you. You know what I think it's going to be? It's going to be theater and opera. Like that, I just have this feeling that there's going to be a theatrical show or in that regard, right, where it's going to be told. Because I have a couple ones going, and I don't think they'll ever get made.

I just don't think they will. both my book, my memoir, and then another one with Brad Stone and I, that we wrote years ago. We wrote the treatment for years ago, and it's moving, but slowly. And the question is, do people want to watch? Unless you make it really, like, succession work, because it was like fantastic cast, fantastic script, you know, rich people fucking things up. I think it might have to wait a step to get to these people,

but they will. They'll be gotten. They're amazing characters in a terrible way. Speaking of things that are crashing to the ground, SpaceX hype is crashing. As we tape on Monday, SpaceX shares are down to $167, down 17% valuing the company at $2.2 trillion, still enormous. The stock is still up 24% from the IPO praise, but down over 16% from its peak. A lot of people feel this is going to keep coming down. I don't know, but some people are buying.

So will it have the effect on the upcoming IPOs? and let's hear a question from a listener about Elon's shares and his impact on the company, and then we can answer all these questions. So if he tried to actually sell or borrow against, you know, even a smaller percentage of it tomorrow, what happens to the price? If he dies or incapacitated tonight, what's the stock really worth the next morning? Zero. Zero.

Like, oh, my God, that would be. Look out fucking below. But your thoughts? Well, my understanding is, there's a lot of nuance there. My understanding is he's agreed to a self-lockup of a year. So he hasn't sold, he's not selling any shares. But he could borrow against it. That's exactly right.

And he can borrow way more than he could ever spend against it. Explain how rich people do that, Scott, for people that understand. Barring against your stuff. Okay. So the ultimate wealth accumulation and income inequality strategy is the following. If you're fortunate enough to have equity in a company that does really well, It's called the buy, borrow, die strategy. And that is, Jeff Bezos owns $120 billion in Amazon shares,

and to fund his lifestyle, he borrows against it at very low interest rates. And then he puts a lot of it in trust. And when he dies, there's a step-up in valuation, so his kids don't have to pay taxes on it. Or when he actually starts selling, he decides he needs to spend more time with his dad in Florida, such that he doesn't have to pay back the cost of the infrastructure of the great state of Washington that built his $120 billion in fortune.

And the greatest distinction between the wealthy and the not wealthy is the following. Are you an earner or are you an owner? And you want to do everything you can, whether it's tax-free, investment vehicles, getting the money out of your hands, automatic investment every month. You have to get to be an owner because the thing about owning stock or houses or assets is they increase in value tax-deferred. What do I mean by that? if you make $100,000 a year, you're an asset increasing your wealth by $100,000, but you lose 30% of it in taxes. Whereas if your stocks go up $100,000, as long as you don't sell, there's no taxable event. Now, what should happen is that we need new laws such that when you borrow

against your assets, it creates a taxable event on the capital or the asset you're borrowing against. Because what effectively has happened is the owners are just pulling away from the earners. It's never sell your stock, let it keep going up, and borrow against it for your lifestyle needs. And then you can take additional capital and start investing in other things and diversifying. And we're going to have, the last 20, 30 years in America, we've been obsessed with how to create wealth. Over the next 10 years, we're going to have a very important conversation around what do you do and what is expected of wealth. But now what's going to happen with his stock, I mean, because let's assume he's not going to be incapacitated or dead, but he will borrow against it if he needs the money. I mean, how much money does he actually need if he wants to, say, fund presidential election, for example.

He owns, he's worth a trillion dollars. Right. He can go to J.P. Morgan and say, loan me $10 billion. And they're not going to ask him what he's doing with it. And he could literally overwhelm the airwaves and social media with his chosen candidates. Is the stock going to go down? Okay, let me just be clear. SpaceX trades at a price to sales ratio.

Well, let's do it the other way. Apple trades at 10 and a half times price to sales. Alphabet, 11, Tesla, 16, Invidia, 39. By the way, all these companies are growing faster except for Tesla than SpaceX. SpaceX trades at 1331. Meta, an amazing company, trades at 7.3.7. Amazon 3.7? Oh, my God. 10 is usually the thing, right? 10 to 15, correct? 12. Yeah, those are higher margin companies. Amazon's in a low margin business. I think the only stock in all of these that I would buy right now is Amazon. Because what you get is you get a distant number two to SpaceX with the core business of their retail platform. If you want to talk about AI, the adjacent AI plays to go after industrial robots of which Amazon has two and a half times the total amount of America.

If you're FedEx, you have to be worried, too. Same thing. If I could go short any category right now, it would be a back. of the secondary eye players, and if I could go along any category, it would be GLP-1s. I don't know if you've seen what's coming out of the American clinical oncology gathering, but they're now saying that metastatic cancers get cut in half the growth rates when people are on GLP-1s. Also, these foods, as you said, two years ago, you know, the cuts in prices for Doritos and for all that shitty food is really quite significant.

there's not enough cottage cheese around and yogurt and things like, you know, it's really interesting, like in terms of how people's tastes have shipped because one in eight Americans is on this drug at this point. I think it's going to be one and two. I agree. I agree. You're going to, my prediction is both of us are on GLP ones, some form or microlosing. Oh, I'm going to start. My cardiologist was like, we're going to have your stroke ever again. We're going to give you a small amount. I'm going to do it.

They're talking about potential delay of dementia. and Alzheimer's, they're finding out. No, my cardiologist was like, so fucking Louie, we're doing it for you. They're just finding out all sorts of, there's never been an innovation that appears to have second order effects that are this positive.

Usually find externalities that are negative. You know, you get, you blast someone with chemo enough, they get leukemia 20 years later, right? There's big tech, all sorts of externalities. The externalities of GLP1, you know, and there are issues around nausea, muscle loss, but every time they do more research,

they keep finding out better and better things. Yeah, I think it's the biggest test case. It'll be interesting to see what the negative. There are some negative effects and so like that, but it's a little like a staten, you know. But one of the things is people eating whole foods and craving things that are protein-related, healthy proteins, which is really interesting.

Anyway, we'll see. I would agree with you. You called this one very hard two years ago, at least, if you recall. I remember this. I remember being struck by it. Anyway, SpaceX shares, good luck if you buy them. And let's not hope Elon dies or is incapacitated tonight because it is a look at below for that stock. Correct. I mean, let's just answer his question. If something happens to him, that price, even though SpaceX is a very fine business, it's not a very fine business. It's just a telco in the sky, essentially, without.

No, the meme, the co-leader of the meme, that would be, yeah, that would be, yeah, I, I, I, I, I got to believe that would be disastrous for Tesla and for SpaceX. Everything. Yeah. He's the one. He's the key man. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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raving about America, our food. It's nice. I mean, it's just hilarious. We love your waffle house. I mean, it's just like... Boston and the Tartan, the Tartan Army, was delightful. What the world is finding out is that America at its core, distinctive podcasters like us and Trump.

Do they like us? Americans are generous, interesting, wonderful people, and it's an amazing culture, and they're getting to see that. But we get to see just how wonderful these nations are. And like I said, I think the World Cup is doing what the UN initially envisioned it would do. I think it's bringing people together. These viral online videos show fans excited about American food, our huge portions, Chipotle, Shake Shack, and many more. Visitors to NYC were able to be part of the legendary Knicks parade. The World Cup has attracted

a projected 10 million visitors. Airbnb searches and host cities jumped 80%. Year on year, visitors are staying about 12 days, attending two matches and spending over $400 a day on average. New York City's tourism chief, Julie Coker, liken the boost to hosting as many as eight Super Bowls in six weeks. I just think the World Cup, I think FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in sport, but I think the World Cup is just incredible. It's the fans. It's the fans.

It's the fans are delightful. But you see people in Kansas welcoming, you know, these people from Norway. You see the Japanese. I just, it really is, I think we forget. that generally speaking, these cultures are wonderful. Generally speaking... And we're not Trump.

Yeah, generally speaking, people want to get along. Generally, we're not that divided. We just have the most profitable companies in the world trying to divide us. And we have a president who's trying to divide us. Agreed. I mean, I think, you know what I'm struck by here is you get the feeling, and this is just being in France for a short time, is they really want to like us.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, I had so many Europeans like, testing to see who are you one of those people Americans and you're not and then they're like thrilled to have you there one I have to say everyone's been really lovely everywhere we've gone

and I do think there's a backlash happening Scott I do people are like I'm tired of being angry at these fuckers I'm like let's just get rid of them let's just move along and like and you're right the World Cup I know you don't think as much as the next but like it's just there's a feeling I think you're absolutely right

I would agree with you these and this these people want to like us. They want to like us in a lot of ways. There you go. My fail, and this is indicative of social media, is that Pollymarket is flooding social media with fake trading videos. There's a great, I think the Wall Street Journal is doing a great job. They did an analysis that found that Polly Market paid dozens of college age creators

to post videos of fake trades and fake wins on the platform. So one of the videos, for example, shows a young man saying he won $100,000 on a bet that Trump would say McDonald's in public, but in reality, all of the accounts that made the bet lost money. And to make these clips, Paulymarket built copies of its website and then told creators to make, quote, trades on those sites and hide that they were being paid by Pollymarket. So, by the way, I feel I should disclose that at ProfiMarkets, we have to. have a data partnership with Kalshi. You do. So, but we're not doing, well, anyways, but gambling and gaming for young men is really corrosive.

And I still can't resolve what to do about it because you don't want to infantilize young people. And it's a tough one. But at a minimum, these companies shouldn't be posting fake social media posts that show someone winning when they didn't. It's just, it's praying on their worst instincts, And it's disingenuous. Yeah, it's just do your business.

If people want to use it, you don't have to, like, trick people. And these are great businesses. But Polymarkets' audience is 70% male. And the most common age demographic is 25 to 34. So again, it's young men. And a plural, and guess this. Can I use a comparison? You know those two, when you were after Robin Hood for a while

and then the other people that you worked with, public? Public, yeah, Public. They seem like the Robin Hood people, the Polymarket people. I don't know. Well, they're especially aggressive. And I have problems with all of it. I don't have moral clarity about all of it, quite frankly, any of it.

But the deceptive marketing mostly affects young men and just evidence of who they're targeting. A plurality of polymarkets display ads are on what site? I'll give you a guess. Young men. They're trying to reach young men. Twitter. Pornhub. Pornhub.

Uh-huh. That makes sense. So this is, and again, I don't know if you can regulate this. They'll say it's free speech. Everybody's making money. But this does feel like deceptive marketing. Anyways, that's my fail. That's a good fail.

That's I agree with you. I think you're, I mean, it is. It's just, why do you have to trick people? Just make it good product. They're great businesses. People love this stuff. They love the prediction markets. The data's interesting.

They're addictive. They just stupid. It's just con people. My fail is the way the Republicans are continuing. to attack James Talley over his sexuality, which is, I think it must be Trump mistook, his word cisgendered for six genders or something. But Stephen Miller is particularly heinous in terms, and especially because he's such a loathsome creature.

It's just, it's grotesque. It's really grotesque and weird, and I hope it doesn't work. I fear it might. But this idea of accusing someone of being transgender and this, so it continues, and especially he's had Cruz. I mean, honestly, I hate to say he should know better, but he guess he doesn't. But Miller and Cruz and a lot of them are just grotesque. It's just gross. I've never seen anything like this, and it's really hateful and cruel and, you know, and especially because these particular men are particularly loathsome men at the same time. And so I think that's just, I just can't stand it.

Every time I see them do it and they keep doing it, they must be seeing some polling or something, but they're also terrible people. It's just gross. Like, I don't even under, it's so, hey, it's a misogynist, it's transphobic, it's definitely, it's all manner of weirdness on these people's part.

And just, again, a bunch of people I cannot wait to see go away at some point relatively soon, and we never have to speak of them again. It's how I feel about a lot of these people. On the positive side, really thrilled to see a toy story did so well.

It's one of my favorite movies. franchises. The third one, I lost it at the end of that one. It's about toys and it's about everything. And this one is, you know, focused in on empathy, focused in on all the good things we've been talking about in this show. And I haven't seen it yet. I have my kids, my little, I saw the other ones obviously with my older kids because it's been so long. This is the fifth one. And sometimes we get to five, you're like, you've got to be kidding kids. So you just want to sell toys. but the reviews for this, and I want to see it in the theater, speaking of which, and I've downloaded all of them here,

and I'm hoping to watch all four movies with the little ones and then take them to it. I just feel like, what an astonishing franchise it's been, and it's just, I dare you not to cry at almost any of them. I just, I cry, and I don't cry. That last, the third one just killed me, just killed me. And I don't know why. I just, it's just beautiful.

And this one's about stuff that's starting out of, it's about digital. But it doesn't demonize digital. It just talks about play with kids, and I'm very excited to see it. So I'm really happy for the Pixar people for putting out a great film, and I'm excited to see it. Well, you know what my ex-wife said when I came home and found her fucking Woody. Oh. She said, she looked at me and said, you have a friend in me. Oh, my God.

How could you do it? this to me. Come on. That's easy. No. That is the worst. That is the, I'm not going with you to this movie and you're not getting near my children on this trip to call.

There we go. Can. I can. I'm pronouncing it right. Can. Anyway. Can. Can.

Thank you for ruining my beautiful, gorgeous moment about children and play and everything else I truly appreciate it. You are not allowed to go to this movie in any way. You've got a friend in me. All right. Stop. Stop right now. to seeing you. I might see you at a party tonight. Maybe I won't see you to party, but I want to ride on that

zodiac. You know, Toy Story 6 is about Andy's... Oh, no. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. I'm serious. Toy Story 6 is about Andy's mother's toys, which coincidentally are also called Woody and Buzz. Oh, my God. All right. You have ruined my win. Those are so bad. Those are so bad. They're so bad. They're so bad. Turn on your cameras. Are the producers laughing? That's my lidless test. No, no, it's not. They're going to, afterwards. I'll go Scott, do we really want to do this? And we're going to. So that's the way, that's where Lara goes, like that.

That's the voice. Anyway, I will see you in person at live. We're going to have lots of people there. It'll be fun. I think it is sold out. We are, and I am also doing a live interview with Jim Beacoff and Meredith Levian from the New York Times,

which is, oh, staff is. I mean, that sounds really interesting. Yeah. What is NPR hosting that? Yeah, it's going to be great. You're going to talk about the future meeting. You're not invited. Listen, dirty, dirty.

Oh, my God. I'm going to see Team Scotland at the Crane Club pop up on the Palais tomorrow at midnight. Then I'm going to the Spotify party. Who wants to roll with the dog? Who wants to roll with the dog? I will see you in a few days, Scott, and we want to hear from you also. Our listeners send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind, including Scott's filthy, filthy brain this week.

go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551. Pivot or elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this week on On with Carreyfisher. I talk to Harvey Levin, founder of the Celebrity News, Juggernaut TMZ, who I adore, about its new Washington, D.C. Bureau and expanded political coverage. Let's listen to a clip. I do want to just say one thing that, you know, you're referring to this as, you know, politicians being a form of celebrities. Right, yeah. You can push that. I don't view it that way. Okay. I view it as pop culture. We cover pop culture. And pop culture can be a lot of things.

You know, it can be sports. It can be entertainment. And pop culture is politics. Because a lot of the things that affect everybody emanates from Washington, D.C. And it emanates from the courts. It emanates from Congress, from the president. And it affects all of us. So they are an integral part of pop culture.

So to me, it has never been a stretch. It's a really good interview. They tried for years to do this. He's a great guy. And by the way, they're breaking some stories. I have to say they really are. They're like when they took those pictures of politicians during the shutdown, like Lindsey Graham

with his bubble wand Disneyland, I think they're doing an excellent job. It reminds me of the old Washington Post, which used to do this kind of stuff, a mix of things. Anyway, he's great. I've known him for many, many years. I like Harvey a lot. I think he's a really interesting entrepreneur.

In media, he's one of the OG ones. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday, live from Cannes. Today's show is produced by Lara Amin. Zoya Marcus Taylor Griffin and Todd Weissman. Ernie into Todd Andrew Newt of this episode.

Thanks to also Richard Burroughs, Mr. Barron, Denshala, Khoras, Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back later this week. For another breakdown of all things, tech and business, team Scotland versus Brazil.