Pivot - The endless election, Twitter keeps Jack Dorsey as CEO, and a listener question about Pinterest

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about the seemingly endless election and how the platforms have kept false information in check. Also, Twitter's board has decided to keep Jack Dorsey in his position at the company after a months-long review. In listener mail, we get a question about social media and retail and whether Target should acquire Pinterest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm what the actual fuck. Fuck. What the actual, I mean, Cara. I don't know what to say. I need to speak to the manager. I have had it.

I think in this case we need some Karen-ing happening here. We need Karen to get up there and talk to the manager. I haven't slept. What? I need soup and a cuddle. I can't handle this. Everyone's up till 3 a.m. I need soup and a cuddle. I can't handle this. Everyone's up till 3 a.m. getting information they're not getting. I just can't handle this.

It's really bad. Someone said, a funny tweet was, someone said, when is mommy going to stop looking at the map, the man, the man with the map show? Oh my gosh. First off, okay. I have watched, I have watched, is it John King or Peter King? I guess John King. I have watched him. I can't take Steve Kornacki. He just exhausts me. Well, first off, those guys must be sweet, sweet lovers.

I mean, look at John King. First off, did you know he was married to Dana Bash? Yes, I do, because I know Dana. It's Dana Bash, and I know Dana. Dana Bash, I'm sorry. I happen to know her. She's great. They're both these super impressive journalists who are so good looking.

And I was so sad to find out it didn't work out. She must have been crushed. She has a great boyfriend. She must have been crushed when she found out he was having an affair with a plasma screen. I mean, that guy, I need somebody to touch me the way he touches that screen. He's good. He's good. He gently touches it. He's like the chess players in the Queen he touches that screen. He's good. With those big, soft hands. He gently touches it.

He's like the chess players in The Queen's Gambit. He's so good. And do you notice they have like these hot guys who everybody wants to touch their body doing the screen? Steve Kornacki is the dork you made out with. And then Bill Hemmer, very handsome guy on Fox, he's doing the screen. But nobody makes sweet, sweet love to a TV monitor like that King dude. Oh, my God. I know.

He's very comforting. Because he's also kind of fair. He's very like, well, let's just wait. Let's just wait. But come on. Let's be honest. The big loser. Well, I think one of the big losers.

By the way, I have a lot of predictions. I've been watching CNN for 30 hours, and it's like changed my view of media. First off, okay, I couldn't handle MSNBC. MSNBC was like a hysterical boyfriend or girlfriend. I just couldn't handle it. And I went over, so I went over to CNN. There's Ando. He makes me feel much better. Ando is your boyfriend. Has he called you yet? Jake Tapper is definitely should be Secretary of State. And then, I mean, they're just all so good. And then they literally—the only thing I really take away from the last 36 hours is I absolutely need super beta prostate. Yeah.

And I need to sell my house to Tom Selleck so he can finance it through Higgins and Joe Namath will get me a reverse mortgage. Uh-huh. CNN—so I predicted—remember six months ago when I said, well, not six months, 11 months ago, I said, all right, I'm going to go after Twitter. You said it was going to be a landslide, but let's keep going. Okay. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. We'll get to that. I'm getting into the business of polling. And the way I'm going to predict Florida is I am going to perform a vivisection on all aborted livestock and look at the liver. It's all about the liver.

And I will have more luck figuring out, examining the organs of dead animals than these. Okay. My suggestion to Nate Silver and Maris and Quinnipiac is in 2022, they should take a poll and stick it up their ass. All right. Okay. We're going to get to them in a minute. I am so sick. Two things before we start on the election stuff.

First, that's our big story. Bring me back. Where am I, Kara? Proposition 22 passed in California. That means app-based drivers will stay classified as contract workers. So what does it mean for the future of AB5 and other measures to give protections to gig workers? And then the Ant Group's anticipated blockbuster IPO has been halted.

What the heck, Scott? You're literally trying to distract me. You're trying to help. I'm going to get to, and then the ant groups anticipated blockbuster IPO has been halted. What the heck, Scott? You're literally trying to distract me. You're trying to help. I am. I'm going to get to the election in a minute. We're going to do all election the whole time. All right. So look, Prop 22, basically Uber has become big tobacco.

Tobacco is not in the business of selling cigarettes. Tobacco is in the business of lobbying and gaming the government such that their network can sell more cigarettes that continue to levy death, disease, and disability on America at 90-plus points of margin. Yeah. And when a company like Uber can't figure out a way to make money, but it can figure out a way to put hundreds of millions of dollars into legislation that attacks the dignity of workers, that's a negative forward-looking indicator for Uber. Because unlike tobacco, it's not a profitable business. And by the way, to their credit, everyone said it's ridiculous they're putting hundreds of millions of dollars into cramming through Prop 22. But in the last 48 hours, Cara, the company with the passage of Prop 22, which basically emasculates union power and makes sure that workers can continue to make substandard wages.

Their market capitalization is up $15 billion. Yes, it is. So, quite frankly, okay, that's chump change. That's water off a duck's back, which goes to a lot of issues. Anyways, Uber is now kind of the big tobacco focused on legislation as opposed to innovation. Well, I think it's going to go court. I mean, it'll happen to AB5 and other things. So, it's going to be interesting to see how they're going to reconcile these things. I don't think there's any goodness in them looking like they're anti-employee at this point,

correct? Well, so, you introduced me to the CEO of Airbnb, and he's doing the right thing. He's trying to become the non-gig economy gig economy, and that is he's setting aside a fund to try and create economic security for their 40 million hosts. They're going the other way. They look at Uber. They look at Lyft. They look at Instacart, and they say, okay, that's just not how we want to roll, right? And look, I think it's a really bad, these companies are becoming, I think they're unprofitable companies that prey on, you know, this is becoming, unfortunately, a permanent underclass. Yeah, it is not a good look.

Was that money well spent? I think they spent $200 million getting it passed. Oh, yeah. Incredible. That's the problem. This money seems ridiculous. And then you go, okay, if I can increase my market cap $15 billion. Why not? By continuing to cement my ability to exploit and arbitrage humans and force them to go to work with a cooler full of Diet Cokes and diabetes medication and then contract corona and come home and die, and my family doesn't have the opportunity to file for unemployment, or I'm sorry, for death benefits because my company doesn't want to pay payroll taxes. I mean, yeah, that's a fantastic business to cover a wallpaper over a business that is a bad business. I don't know. What is your sense of what happened there?

I don't know. I asked Yara to come on my Sway podcast to talk about it, but I do think it was good for them to pass that. It was kind of egregious how much money they spent on it. So we'll see. We'll see what happens to them. I think they are going to slip out of not helping employees quite as easily as a proposition.

But we'll see. Ant Group, very briefly, what's going on there? This is a big deal. I had Neil Ferguson, very briefly, what's going on there? This is a big deal. I had Neil Ferguson, the historian, and a fellow Glaswegian from Scotland on the Prop G podcast. And this guy's a gangster thinker. He is indeed. A blue flame thinker.

Really opened my eyes to a lot of stuff. And we had talked about my kind of premise has been that China has seized the baton of global leadership. And you said that he disagreed and really opened my eyes to the notion that a one-party system, the communist system makes a structure or a construct or a society fragile. Because if we don't like the Democrats, we can rebel against them and the Republicans come in office and we find out they're no better than us and then we kick them out. But it creates a robust society to have multi-parties. When you have one party, it creates real fragility. And the thing about China was their best ad,

their best kind of geopolitical brand building effort, in my view, was that they were moving towards capitalism with these incredibly innovative global companies that were largely in a capitalist move. They were saying, okay, capitalism and rule of law and consistency is important. We're moving the other way, of course, doing kind of these one-off weird bans and everything. And then what happens? They pop up and say to Ant Financial, which is about to be the most successful IPO potentially in history, they say, not so fast. Not so fast.

We've decided to stop it. That is literally the worst brand move China could have made in the last 12 months. What is happening there? Well, that's the thing we don't know. We just know they're allowed to stop an IPO in its tracks. I can't tell whether there's some weird corruption going on or there's some numbers or who knows. Who knows? That's the thing. It's so veiled. If I had to speculate, if I had to speculate, it's Ant Financial is embracing this global capitalism look because they'll all get much wealthier. And China said, no, we want to ensure that we get the data. We want to weaponize the platform.

We want to use it if we want as a surveillance mechanism. And my guess is Jack Ma isn't playing ball. And they said, you know what? I'll tell you what. We're going to take your ball and go home. You're not doing your IPO. But something is going on here. We have to find out.

And it's a really bad look for China. Bad look for China. All right. Okay. Now, speaking of bad looks, America. Big stories. As we wait on the election results, let's talk about how social platforms have been doing at stopping the spread of misinformation. Twitter and Facebook slapped warning labels, Twitter very quickly,

on several of President Trump's posts and all of them one from the QAnon lady who won in wherever the hell she's from, Kentucky, I guess, that makes false claims about vote counting. Twitter hid two of Trump's tweets behind the screen saying they might be misleading about an election,

an other civic process that slowed the spread of misinformation. Facebook took similar measures, but much slower, did not take any steps to slow down posts from spreading. Three of Trump's posts falsely claiming victory were among the top four posts on the platform Wednesday. And also they helped people organized to protest at, so far, peaceful at election centers, people who are Trumpies. Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that YouTube was much more successful at stopping the spread of these false videos on the platforms

than in 2016. But again, it gave boost to lots of stuff that Kevin Roos has been pointing out, lots of false information. So what do you think, Scott? And you can go on and on about the election. You can do whatever you want about the election here. Go right ahead. Well, I've just done a lot of thinking because I have not been drinking, which has been a real – by the way, you seem very calm. I'm a mess. Well, what am I going to do? What have you been doing?

You've been drinking tea? What have you been doing? No, I mean, I just can't. I just turned it off. I can't do anything about it. I can't. There's nothing – I'm not, like, in there voting. I mean, doing the counting or anything like that.

I'm not like in there voting, I mean, doing the counting or anything like that. And when I got to the point where I thought I could affect it by watching it and like if like and doom scrolling, I do do doom scrolling for sure. But I just yesterday I decided to just do funny tweets, like point out, put on a pumpkin head and take a picture of it. I mean, I made some funny ones when like Kaylee, whatever her name is, was declaring victory pre-Dill declaring victory. I was like, stop trying to make fetch happen, Kaylee. You know, so I've tried to do funny stuff that everybody can laugh at versus like, I cannot believe you are saying this, Donald Trump, stop the election. So I've focused in on the funny ones, like when he did the stop the count thing in capitals, which is his way. And someone, you know, there's some very funny memes going around about it. And I've pushed those out. So I'm just going to focus in on the humor

part of the portion of the thing. And then we'll see. I think feeling badly is just, it's hard, it's hard not to, because the whole thing feels so chaotic. And by the way, whatever side you're on, you're going to feel like out of control. So I don't know. I don't know what to say. But I do think Twitter has done a nice job. I have been very impressed by Twitter. I have been much less impressed by Facebook, and they're very slow. And YouTube, eh, I'm in the middle of them because I've seen some really bad stuff going crazy. So what do you think? So look, a couple observations after watching CNN 30 hours straight. The whole world is going iOS or Android. Fox is Android. It's about 70% of the quality of CNN. The anchors just aren't as smart. The writing isn't as crisp. The graphics aren't as aesthetically pleasing.

Fareed Zakaria, Anderson Cooper, Christiane Amanpour, Michael Smirconish, these are all underleveraged brands. And you have this gorgeous content interrupted by a stupid app telling me to do nothing for 15 seconds called Calm when I haven't done anything for 30 hours. Yeah, shut the fuck up, Calm. You're stressing me out. The Calm app is literally pissing me off. The ads ruin everything. The opportunity, the opportunity. And if AT&T stock goes below 20 bucks a share,

it's already down to 27. I'm going to raise two to $3 billion, force the company to spin Time Warner. You put CNN behind a paywall. It goes iOS and potentially, potentially the gangster move would be to merge with Twitter so Twitter can go vertical with content.

But CNN needs to be the iOS. It's just a superior content platform relative to the other networks. MSNBC doesn't have the depth. Fox just doesn't have the quality of CNN. And the thing that ruins CNN and ruins everything else is the advertising industrial complex where they put these ridiculously fucking stupid ads to break up the content. Time Warner, AT&T, the whole AT&T-Time Warner synergy has just not happened. And at this point, AT&T, which is an amazing business, would probably trade higher without Time Warner because it'd be a pure play, and they're paying a conglomerate tax right now. So the opportunity for Twitter

is one to get rid of their part-time CEO. And by the way, there is a behind-the-music story around that ridiculous endorsement, quote-unquote, board review that Jack Dorsey's comps people are outspending as an endorsement of his leadership. We'll come back to that. But the opportunity is AT&T, if it goes below 20 bucks a share, is going to invite an activist, and they're going to re-spend Time Warner. And the real opportunity for CNN is to put that amazing content and those incredible individuals behind a paywall and to become the iOS. Think about it. Every piece of content, whether it's motion picture quality movies like Mandalorian, whether it's amazing original scripted television, it's all gone

behind a paywall and created hundreds of billions of value. The only thing that hasn't gone behind a paywall, really, in media is news and politics. And anyone who watched the fucking election is like, I am sick of someone telling me how big my prostate is. Yeah, I understand that. I get that. I don't know if that—because I think you've been watching a little bit too much. Oh, you think? You know, I sometimes like some of those ads. I don't like Mr. Pillow over at Fox, but I do like the guy who has the paste that you put on

water stuff and it sops water from coming into your house. Flex tape? Flex tape. He lives three houses down from me and he has the best toys. Can you tell him? I love him so much. I love him. He's a really nice guy. I don't know what his politics are. I don't care. He's a really nice guy. I love when he does flex tape commercials. I love when he does the boat made out of flex tape.

He's a genius. That guy's a genius. I find it actually very calming in this time to watch him do things like that. I'm like, oh, look, the hole is fixed. Good. Okay. Good. Democracy, no, but the hole is fixed. In any case, I think it's very hard for them to go a paid route because I don't think you pay attention except at these moments.

One of the things that the problem is they've done very calmly during this election. I thought they've done a really good job of not allowing misinformation. But then last night, they went right back to form with the screaming and the angry Cuomo guy and Don Lemon, for example, on CNN. And so, and then it was...

I wouldn't pay for it. I wouldn't pay for it. I wouldn't pay for it. Oh, I think you would. No, I wouldn't. I think if they went niche... Unless they have, like, Anderson Cooper and John King, and Wolf Blitzer did a nice job, I have to say. Wolf did a nice job.

He's very good. He's very calming. I have to say. But I think that it just degenerates into so much bullshit that I would not pay for it. But that's because of the ad model. That's because they have to go to the lowest common denominator. Because I was thinking they're trying to gin. There's no information and they're ginning up problems.

A hundred percent. The Situation Room. You know what the biggest lie? At the beginning they weren't and I liked it and then they did. The biggest lie they told and they kept repeating it

was the story is unfolding fast. I'm not, no it's not, it's barely even unfolding. it's slow. And then David Chellian has something. I'm like,

he just said that. Advertising on CNN has become a tax that the technologically illiterate and the poor have to pay. And it's time to put that content behind a wall. They could cut their costs. They could take their revenues down 10 or 20 percent and massively increase shareholder value. And then rolling all that great WarnerMedia content. They need to go gangster. They need to disarticulate from AT&T.

That is a failed acquisition. And they need to sell auction off HBO, which, by the way, would pay for a lot. Auction off. Interesting. Well, here's the thing. How much would Amazon – talk about a bidding war. Oh, fair. Between Apple TV Plus and Amazon Prime Video, what do you think they'd pay for HBO?

Why not keep it? Why not just keep it? Because I think you could get such a big number right now because you have the deepest pockets in the world. And then you take CNN content and put it behind a paywall and you let AT&T be a pure play telco as it should have been and always was. You're unwinding everything. Yeah, it's time to unwind it. I mean, it's at $27 now. Why sell HBO?

I don't understand. Why not keep it with the CNN stuff? Like, keep it all together. That's an option. I just think, right now, I think HBO, unfortunately, because they've junked it up with all this shit, like the Big Bang Theory, is unfortunately part of now the shrinking ice cube, which is the

cable bundle. And to disarticulate and go back to the gorgeous positioning of HBO, it may be too late. They may have jumped the shark. And I think you could, quite frankly, and if you're thinking like a shareholder, you could get some crazy fucking number for HBO right now. Because the deepest pockets in the world are all looking for a way.

That's an interesting little aside here during this thing. So let me ask you this other question. So what are the learnings from 2020 be applicable going forward? So you're thinking more of a report. I've always thought, as I've said this, it should be a reporter-based system with actual experts, like John King, for example, who's very good at what he's doing, and not like all the pundits. Like Rick Santorum, I want to

gouge my eyes out. Not just him, though. It's all of them. I have to tell you. They have to have a conservative up there that they can beat up. I know it, but all of them. I just don't need it. I'm like, this is done. This doesn't give me any fresh information. I want interviews with but all of them. I just don't need it. I'm like, this is done. This doesn't give me any fresh information. I want interviews with the newsmakers, and I want good reporters telling me what's happening on the ground. That's what I want.

That's all I want. Yeah, but you know what the role model is? The role model in the business segment is your organization. The New York Times, two-thirds of the revenue is subscription. It's behind a paywall. Yeah, all right.

And also, it's hardcore investment and rigorous journalism. Speaking of the cable bundle getting destroyed, if Biden is elected, how do you hope to – the new president is not going to use Twitter. He's not going to be like a – the only people that will benefit is Fox from screaming at him, right? I mean, the others, what are they going to do? He's not going to be like, you know, malignant narcissist of the day does something. He's not charismatic like Trump because malignancies are charismatic, as Sarah Perel just pointed out to me. Well, Twitter's going to have to do some soul searching. And for a while, they got this sugar high of a guy with 70 million followers who said incendiary things that created massive enragement and engagement. And that's going away because Biden is going to treat Twitter as he should. He'll use it for press releases and to talk about, you know, the turkey that they acquit or whatever the term is. I mean, it'll become much less interesting and much more responsible as it should be. Twitter's strategy

is very straightforward. They can't compete with Google or Facebook. It's not an ad-supported model. It's a subscription model. Anyone with less than 10,000 followers, it's free. Anyone more than 10 to 100,000 pays 10 bucks a month. More than a million, you pay 1,000 bucks a month, and they would absolutely pay it. They move to a subscription model. They do verticals around investing, around politics, around, I don't know, agriculture, whatever these little niches they can find. But they move, they get away from this advertising industrial complex, which is collapsing on itself and creates a hate-for-profit platform. And this thing would skyrocket. Anything that has a fraction of the influence of Twitter trades between 10 and 30 times the valuation. And somebody recognizes and actually reads the AK filing that came out last week, the quote-unquote board review of management. Oh, we're getting to that in a second. That's a big story, too. Okay, sorry.

So what happens to the MSNBCs and the Fox News of the world? Fox News seems to be good in either direction, right? Anyone who goes behind a paywall, anyone who goes behind a paywall to superior model is a Gulfstream and starts picking off the pilots. Well, what about Fox News? They could actually, those people, my mother would totally. Fox is fine. They're Android. My mother would give her an iPad. Eyeball. They're Android. They'll have the biggest audience of crazy. Oh, so they can just go. And they'll have, it'll be Android. And they'll be my pillow guy. It's not as good as iOS, but a lot of people watch it and it's free. That's what Fox will do. So they should stay there. So MSNBC, what should they do? MSNBC slowly but surely. As soon as somebody says, we're going no ads, we're going hardcore, we're going higher quality.

So it has to be valuable. And they start picking up the best people. They start picking off Stephanie Rowe. They start picking off Katie Tour. She's so good. I talked to her last night. They start picking up Brian Williams. They start picking off the best people.

And all these people think, you know what? I'd rather go behind a wall, focus on journalism, focus less on sensationalism, not be interrupted with all this bullshit. You're right. I mean, it's interesting. I actually called, there's two people who actually called it, Brooke Hammerling and Stephanie Ruhl, about rich people voting for Trump. They were like, they're not voting their conscience. They're voting their wallet. A hundred percent. Both of them said that to me. I'm like, come on, they've got enough money. They should do the right thing. Like the kids and kids, they're like, no, they don't care.

And I got to say, I got to say they were both right. And I talked to Stephanie last night and she had a wonderful take on the suburbs of Philadelphia. I'm not going to go into it, but I was like, I wish she was on saying these things, like being smart and stuff like that. And how much, the reason I called her is because she was smart, right?

And so I wanted to hear a smart take versus anything else. And she needs to be unleashed from this six-minute segment or this nine-minute segment where we have to go nine minutes and then two minutes of these ridiculous ads.

And by the way, if the content is strong enough, we're going to go 35 minutes. And if it's not that strong, we're only going to go 19 because it's on demand. Yeah. And we're going to bust out of this advertising industrial complex.

And to your point, I mean, the money thing is really interesting. And it's the most obvious but underreported story or influence. And that is, and I have a lot of friends like this in Florida. And that is they think, you know, politics in Washington is like this really old crickety rudder that just doesn't work that well. And whoever's in office, it kind of changes things, but not really. Like, if you didn't know who was in office, you wouldn't know who was in office. So, at the end of the day, they're like, I'm just going to vote for whoever keeps the most money in my pocket. And right now, people believe that's Trump. And they're not, you could argue, well, aren't you just transferring

capital or time with loved ones from your kids and grandkids with irresponsible fiscal management? And I think their attitude is, it's all irresponsible. Whoever puts the most money in my pocket, that's who I vote for. I think 10 to 15% of the electorate is that full stop. Doesn't matter. You can be a pedophile and they're like, if you're going to cut my taxes or keep them lower, keep my estate tax down, I'll vote for you. All right. Well, that makes sense.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about Twitter's board leadership, which Scott is dying to talk about. I am. I'm dying.

It's board leadership review and a listener mail question. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting, crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night.

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And we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things. And it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks

is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system, you can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature, Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. And Scott, we are back. Jack Dorsey will be staying on as CEO of Twitter after a months-long board review

of the company's management structure. This panel established in March said, given recent improvements in Twitter's product and operations, including a substantial third quarter financial results, was the basis for the decision. And as a reminder, earlier this year, an activist investor took over 4% of the Twitter stock and obtained a board seat with the interest then of ousting Dorsey, which didn't happen. He had some people who came in and saved him.

He's also CEO of another company, the payments app Square. Scott, this is your thing. This is your bearded whale, I guess. I don't know. My bearded whale? Well, he's got the beard, white whale, bearded white whale. I got it. I got it. Okay. So disclosure, I'm a Twitter shareholder and I am advising people or investors in the company. And if you look, I mean, what clearly happened, I read that thing and I'm like, what? What is going on? Are they, they've endorsed this guy? And then it's like, okay, first off, it's Dorsey's comms people running around telling everyone that they've endorsed management, right?

They're not serving shareholders. They're not serving the company. They're similar, probably the same people who are for Sheryl Sandberg, who are just focused on manicuring his image. This is setting up a peace with honor, basically an attempt to declare victory and leave. Because if you look at the actual filing, what happened, the board has de-staggered the board. That is big. That is big. Because it's no longer a staggered board, it's a weapon of mass entrenchment that protects management. It's been de-staggered the board. That is big. That is big. Because it's no longer a staggered board. It's a weapon of mass entrenchment that protects management. It's been de-staggered. Mass entrenchment. Weapon of mass entrenchment. I like that. Go ahead.

Elliott, which had a standstill as a function of getting that, as a function of getting those board seats, which means they couldn't buy additional stock. That standstill is coming to an end at the next annual meeting. The ultimate buffer and apologist for Dorsey, Omid Kordestani, who's the chairman, no one noticed this, he's left. He's left. Oh, did Omid leave? The reason we like this stock

and the reason it's going to be up 60 bucks, to 60 bucks within the next six months, is there's a floor on it because Egon Durban, the president- Egon, can you not pronounce people's names? What are you, like David Perdue of Georgia? Egon is so much more Star Wars and cool. He'll forgive me.

It's Egan Turvin. That's awesome. It is Omid Kordestani. I have covered both and know them quite well. Keep going. Bring in that Sundar Pichai. Listen, Dave.

Bring in that Sundar Pichai. It's also Kamala. It's Pekan. I'm old and I'm white. I'm an old white guy. Oh, my God. You can pronounce Omid Kordestani.

It's all vowels. Come on. All right, go ahead. Listen, Swisher. So, okay, okay. So, Omid Kordestani has left. He's left. Scoot Golaway.

He's left, right? Okay. The standstill's off. They've de-staggered the board. It's basically, and then you have a guy on the board who, if the stock goes below 30 bucks. So, what is the activist guy doing? What are they doing, the Elliott people, letting this one go by? Well, I think the difference between them and me is they understand the difference between being effective and being right.

And I think they're saying, okay, we're here for the long game. But think about it. If the stock goes below, kind of stays below $40, you have Egon will take a private because he has Silver Lake. But most likely, they're going to bring in, call me crazy, a full-time CEO. They announced, what a shocker. But Egon's been a supporter of Jack, though. He supports everybody. He's in the business of being friends with everybody.

I like Egon, but he would cut his knees off if he needed to. He's one of those people. Yeah, but he'd do it behind the scenes. I read a bunch up on him. He's very, very savvy. He'd be a nice bottle of wine. He's an economic animal, but he's a very nice guy. He will never publicly criticize anybody because in private equity, you have to be very likable or you have to be at least perceptually.

Anyways, to take a company private, you have to have the biggest shareholders and Jack is a big shareholder. But I think people missed the story here. I think if you actually look what's going on at Twitter, you're going to see a change in management. You're going to see the move to certain subscriptions and potentially you have a floor in the stock because Silverlake is sitting there waiting to take the thing private if it goes down.

So I like this a lot. I think there's going to be big changes there. All right. And you keep saying there's going to be a CEO and it never is. It's like several of these that never happen. This is the big one. Well, at some point, he'll die.

I mean, if I keep predicting it, at some point, like— Guess what? Mark Zuckerberg's not going to jail either, FYI. There's no perp walk that you keep wishing upon that company. I don't think he's—well, hold on, hold on. A perp walk. There's going to be—what was my prediction? My prediction was that a Facebook executive is held in a foreign nation. They're going to land somewhere and somebody's going to escort

them to jail for, if it's 24, 48 hours. There's no perp walk in this country for them. I'll tell you that. There's zero chance. It's all been so politicized. If Carlos Ghosn can be incarcerated in Japan, you don't think some SVP of Facebook isn't going to end up in prison somewhere? No. We didn't put anyone in the banking thing in prison. We don't put bad people in Japan. You don't think some SVP of Facebook isn't going to end up in prison somewhere? No. We didn't put anyone in the banking thing in prison. We don't put bad people in prison. And they're not as bad. It's just not happening.

Jack Dorsey's staying CEO. I'm going to go the opposite way. He's staying CEO of Twitter as long as he wants to. And Facebook executives will not pay the price for what they've done. Thank you. Cynical Kara. That's the way it goes.

That's it. That's it. I'm going to Peter King. What's his name? John King? And Donald Trump can still win. Sorry to tell you that. I have told you this a million times.

Yeah. Yeah. I can't even. Oh, God. I just can't even go there. Listen, those super spreader events were appalling but effective. Appalling. Just appalling.

Someone willing to do that. It worked. He works it. You know, you effective. Appalling. Just appalling. Someone willing to do that. And you think they worked? He works it. You know, you look at Barry Diller the other day. Barry Diller the other day was like, I hate him, but good on him. Like, he's a worker. I was like, are you kidding me? He's a worker.

You know, he like keeps going. He's relentless. And he is. He is. He's shameless. Shameless is a different word that I would use. If he does lose, his legacy, I think the actual one thing he'll be known for in a positive light, was I do think he got China right.

I do think the tariffs... Well, partially. Well, it was executed poorly, but I do think saying, look... That's what I mean. A lot of stuff he's right, but executionally... Chimerica thing, this whole thing that's a symbiotic relationship, he said, no, this is bad for us. We've got to bust out of that. Except here's a guy taking loans from...

You know, honestly, he's an imperfect vehicle, a vessel on that one. Imperfect is the mother of all understatements. You know what I mean? Like, fine. He didn't have any, if he had actual policies behind these statements, that would be one thing. I think it's just whatever sticks. And that's why he's shameless. And he is relentless in terms of, like, he's willing to, to do anything.

And that's, that, that someone like Barry Diller, who really is negative towards him, admires, I sort of was like game knows game, I guess, sort of, sort of anyway, everybody's, it's interesting how much bet hedging is going on everywhere. Even the Republicans are not backing Trump. The people who don't like Trump are not saying anything. It's really a lot of bet hedging going on here. OK, Scott, let's go to a listener mail question to be read by Rebecca Sinanis, our producer. You've got, you've got. I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail.

This question comes from David Talbot. Target is clearly a shrimp compared to Walmart and Amazon, but it's been punching above its weight for a few years now. Walmart and Shopify got me thinking when they looked into TikTok, would Pinterest be a smart acquisition for a retail giant like Target? What does the future of retail and social media look like? Thanks, guys. Interesting. Scott, I think I'm going to give you this one. You're Mr. Retail, Mr. Retail and Commerce. So it's not realistic because Pinterest, I think, I'm trying to find the market cap here. Pinterest is too expensive. It may be even more. It's more likely that Pinterest would acquire, just financially speaking. It's more likely the acquisition would be the other way around. Pinterest now has a $40 billion market cap. And

I think Pinterest is one of the companies that has benefited from what will be one of the real lasting tectonic shifts of the novel coronavirus. And that is a dramatic transfer of stakeholder value from commercial to residential. And one of the strongest offerings on Pinterest is people go on to see a soapstone counter. It's really strong in the home. It's really strong in weddings. But I think Pinterest has really benefited from this, what I'll call, massive reallocation of spend into the home.

So it's just not realistic. And Target, the opportunity for Target, in my opinion, is to double down on home and to go very strong into home decor and also to double down on organic foods and take advantage of the fact that we're about to see such a massive reallocation from eating out into eating into the home. But that's just not – it's a fun idea to think about. It's just feasibly or financially not realistic. All right. So this is this idea of

Pinterest. What does Pinterest do then? Do they think about that on the other side? What do they do? I think Pinterest is in a difficult spot right now, I think, with a $40 billion market cap. And issues within the company, a lot of diversity issues, as you remember, a couple months ago, their COO quit and there's lawsuits, et cetera. But go ahead. Yeah, I know. I just, I know Ben. I know the CFO there, the CFO and COO.

And I don't want to have empathy, if you will, but I just kind of, I have trouble believing these guys created a culture. I do not. You do not, yeah. Okay. Fair enough. But go ahead. But, yeah, I think Pinterest, I think Pinterest is in a weird spot. It's too expensive to be acquired. Probably the only way out for them to grow into the market capitalization,

if I were them, I'd be sharpening my pencils and trying to find other assets with more EBITDA to acquire and tuck in. They now have a $40 billion market cap. They're trading at a ridiculous multiple of revenues. I would be hiring Terry Kawaja and other great media bankers to say, go out and find us accretive acquisitions. I don't know. I think Pinterest is a tough one right now. Pinterest and Snap, to their credit, I thought they were both going to be roadkill. I was wrong. They've both done a great job carving out really nice niches. Yeah. I've always had a great belief in Snapchat. Well, you love it. Your kids love it, right?

Not just that. I think he's really creative. I haven't always gotten along with him. I actually do like him now, but I've always found him. We had one lunch that was so, I will be depicting in my book, was so tense. But I think he's really evolved and I think he's super creative and he has a great product. And I think he's evolved in a way that's really good. I think he's hired some and he has a great product. I just, and I think he's evolved in a way that's really good. I think he's hired some great people.

I like a lot of the people there. A lot of women. He's put a lot of women in power there, which is interesting. It's one of the advice, advices I gave to him at one point. So, yeah, I think. What do you think Pinterest should do? I don't know. I don't know.

I always thought it should get bought by Google, but that's not happening. Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. Or Amazon. That's not do? I don't know. I don't know. I always thought it should get bought by Google, but that's not happening. Yeah, that's tough. That's tough. Or Amazon. That's not happening. I don't know. It's neither here nor there, right? It's too big but too small, but not impactful but impactful.

You know what I mean? Like, I know it's used by a lot of people, but it's something that people could stop using. But it's ahead in other people. I imagine it should get bought. I don't think that particular management team has the kind of ambition you're talking about necessary. Let's go by target. I just don't, I never see that coming out of my mouth. I don't think they would do that.

There's quite a passive gang of people, which is why a lot of that stuff happened. You know, I also like Ben, but I got to tell you, and he did talk to me after all those issues. There's a weird passivity, male passivity there. They're very male heavy. I don't have empathy for them. I think they are. Male passivity. I like that. Male passivity, but aggression at the same time. It's a weird situation. And I think the people of color and the women talking there are telling the truth. I know too many people there. But it's a different kind than the sort of hyper-aggressive, Uber, Donald Trump kind of thing. It's implicit versus explicit.

Anyway, we'll see what's going to happen to them. Good question. Thank you for that question. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. I want you to predict the election because you were wrong about the landslide. Just so you know. Okay.

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Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees? And it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing,

and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Okay, Scott, tough to predict things right now. I just did a little doom scrolling while I was listening to you talk and nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Like things look up, things look down. Who knows? It's a mess. Blah, blah, blah.

All right. Give me a prediction. Well, I'm sticking to my guns. I got the calibration wrong, but I think it's Biden. And I think my prediction has always been that the civil unrest, the massive lawsuits, the post-election post-results, agita. I just don't think that's going to happen. I think the most interesting story or the story of the election is one word. And we're saying this.

You and I are recording this before we know. I think it's Georgia. I think Georgia is going to be the really interesting, end up being kind of the state, just as it was the blue wall in 16. I think Georgia is super interesting. It is interesting. I've been looking at that, obviously, that goddamn screen that John King makes sweet, sweet love to. And if you look at the votes that aren't in right now, it's around Atlanta. But anyways, I think Georgia is interesting.

It's around Atlanta. But anyways, I think Georgia is interesting. And I just don't think – I think that the moment – if you look at even Fox, they're not – Oh, no. They're not ginning up. The reporters have taken over. Well, no. Sean Hannity was insane last night. I made sure I watched it to see what was going to come out of my mother's mouth.

But it's – They were actually more calm yesterday than MSNBC. They were not. The reporters were excellent, I have to say. I've always thought, I've thought Red Bear is fine, and the other Dana Perino is quite good. They're very good reporters. I may not agree with them on some things,

but in general, as reporters, I think they're just as good as Anderson Cooper and the others. Well, I like Anderson Cooper. Come on, Donnie. Bite your tongue. Bite your tongue. Bite your tongue. He has a point of view. They have a point of view.

It's fine. They have less of a point of view than he does. In any case, I happen to agree with his point of view, which is different. So here's the situation, though. I think it's really hard. I'm going to make a little prediction. One of the things that I hate coming out is all these tsk-tskers about we don't understand the Trump voter and he got a lot more votes. I never, ever thought

there was going to be a repudiation of him. I am related to people who love him, and it is vexing to listen to them, I have to say. And it is, I got some good advice from Esther Perel about how to deal with it, but they just stick to their frigging guns,

and underscore guns. Although one of my brothers, my Trumper brother now has bows and arrows. So that's... Oh, he's a hunter. No, he just likes to shoot things. He also has apocalypse stuff. I'm not going to go into it. In any case, I know these people. I have lots and lots and lots of relatives

like this on both sides of my family. And I'm not surprised at all. Not in any way whatsoever. And I'm not surprised that he's going to be around for a while. I'm not surprised that they like him. But here is what is irritating to whatsoever. And I'm not surprised that he's going to be around for a while. I'm not surprised that they like him. But here is what is irritating to me. So I think there's a lot more light. And also, as Esther pointed out, people love a malignant narcissist.

They're compelling and they're addictive and everything else. Even if you hate them, you love them because you love to hate them. And the people that love them, love them. And so this is not going away. Populism is not going away the second the thing that drives me up the wall and back down it is being lectured about this by silicon valley bros who are now like people you know this is a repudiation of liberal blah blah blah blah blah this and that they're not listening to people let me just tell you silicon valley bros you haven't seen a people and you hate these people and ever like i had one exchange someone you don't like, Jason Gallaghanis, he was doing that

kind of, this is a repudiation of people telling people what to do. I am not going to be lectured by the elite, the elite of the elite about elites. Like, honestly, it's exhausting. Secondly, when I pointed out that, hey, guess what? These people are loathsome and want to ruin my family's life. Oh, yes, I didn't think about that. I don't want to hear word one from the richest people in the world about how this is a repudiation of liberalism. I'm a lot more centrist than people realize, although liberal compared to most people. And I'm very patriotic, but I will not be lectured by the richest people in the world about the regular people of the world and how we have to listen to them. We have to listen to some of them, but some of them are homophobic.

Some of them are racist and they're allowed to go on and on and say these terrible things. And it's not a repudiation of liberalism. It's just that some people have other reasons and overlook negative things. And that's the thing that has been driving me nuts on Twitter is Silicon Valley people, all men, all lecturing people about what Trump means. I don't want to hear word one from them about what Trump means because they don't know. And again, just like Trump, they don't like the base either. They don't like the people and they'd never put them on their planes. They'd never give them money.

They'd never help them. They'd never have them in their houses. And they don't have any idea what it is like to suffer. Thank you. That's my rant. All right. So, Kara, I think you are a strong woman with a beautiful mind. And I am very – I do.

I really feel grateful to work with you. I really do. I think you're an impressive person and a very strong spokesperson for people. So, let's take a moment to recognize – I think they also go after you in a way that I think is bullshit, by the way. Like, you have made mistakes in your calls. So what? And you admit to it and you always say, oh, that was wrong. They are always, like, doing that.

I'm like, you little bunch of shitty little boys. Like, you know, honestly, I'm so tired of them. Like, yeah, you've made mistakes. You want me to go over your mistakes, all of you guys? Because I got the receipts for all of your fuck-up-ness. And by the way, all of them have some pretty bad ones. And again, I know all about them. And so, that drives me crazy, too. I don't like that either. Well, I think what infects San Francisco, and I lived there for 10 years, and I was part of this, I had this virus, is conflating luck

with talent. And also, rather than confronting people for the real reason, the reason they go after people, including doxing female journalists or going after me, which is fine, I'm out there, I deserve scrutiny, is they don't want to, the reason they're going after you is because you perform the crime against humanity of saying that the septic tank that is their portfolio isn't as worth as much as they'd like

to convince retail investors is so they can foist their unicorn feces on people. And rather than having a discussion around that, whether Robinhood is addictive and overvalued, whether Uber is exploitive and overvalued, they'd rather come after you and attack you personally. They do that. And it's like, okay, well, why don't we have a discussion, a fact-based, data-driven discussion to make some progress around why you believe that these things you've invested in. But at the end of the day, the only thing, it goes back to those Trump voters, the only thing they're fighting for, their only principles are what gets me richer. And everything else is just a head fake. Everything else is just a head fake.

Trump supporters, they hate you. They hate you. Like, you can't, they would walk over you in two seconds if they could make another dollar, honestly. Seriously. I like you more, and I'm related to a lot more of you. You know what I mean? Like, I don't like you that much, but you know what I mean? But let's take a moment to talk about some of, there is some wonderful things that happen. The first two openly gay black men were elected to office, first trans. Yep.

So there is, you know, look, I don't think- A lot of marijuana drug laws were loosened up, which is interesting. That's right. A ton of that. But there's no getting around it. Very complex. I totally am in a bubble. The media here, I'm rethinking, where do I get my sources of information? Because all the signals I was getting from the media were entirely wrong about what actually happened.

Yep. Entirely wrong. I mean, for God's sakes. Agreed. Collins? How the hell did that happen? Yeah. How the hell did that happen?

And wasn't Biden supposed to be up by 10 points in all these states? I mean, it was just – and I bought into it. And I thought, I just don't realize. It's really interesting. The Collins thing was fascinating. Yeah. Colin's thing was fascinating. She trounced Gideon. I was not surprised by Lindsey Graham. I've been, that state, that state likes, doesn't like him. No, it wasn't going to happen anytime soon. And he wasn't loathsome enough, and, you know, whatever. He's just not, that wasn't going to happen. In the area of, some of them were very close, though.

Some of them were very close, which I think was, you know, in Iowa, I think that woman gave her a run, Joni Ernst. I think Joni Ernst is on notice in that case. On Georgia.

And I think she should feel good about her win. She should know, she almost lost it. Collins' one was really interesting because that, I didn't read a lot the Maine coverage, and I don't know what the Maine report said. That shocked everybody. I think that shocked people in Maine. Well, someone said it's like Maine voters are just like Susan Collins. They're very distressed and disappointed and will do nothing about it. You love that.

You love that. I don't know. I think they just stuck with her. They didn't mind her being sort of anti-Trump and yet not. I think that's when she went a little bit anti-Trump, they said she was going to lose all the Republicans. I think the Republicans were comfortable with her stance on that. Like, we don't want to decide. You know what's also interesting is if you think of the market. That was a big one.

I still don't like her. is if you think of the market as this incredible sponge of millions of signals that spits back a number around the prospects for wealthy people, the prospects for the market, it feels as if, and I don't think I'm reading too much into this, but it feels as if the market feels fairly good about a potential Biden win. That every time I've been tracking the market gyrations relative to what's going on with the race, and it feels like every time Biden starts, the narrative gets more positive for Biden, the market seems to like it,

which I found really interesting because- Yeah, they want a divided government. They want a divided government. They want Nancy Pelosi. And you know, it's interesting. It'll be interesting to see how everyone deals with each other. It's the question I asked Astaire about this. And she feels that, like, Nancy Pelosi should be super nice if Trump wins, like, real nice. Like, it'll unsettle him rather than being in his face. He doesn't, you know, that's how you deal with a narcissist. But they really do have to start figuring out a way to talk to each other. That is 100% true. And I think Wall Street likes the idea of everybody sort of blocking each other so that they have to. They have to legislate, they have to govern, and enough of this fighting. Like, I think that's one thing that Wall Street probably hopes is going to happen, but we'll see.

I'm exhausted, Kara. I need soup and a I know. I need soup and a cuddle. I need soup and a cuddle. What can you do today? Go outside. Take a walk with your lovely wife. Take a walk with your children. Go outside. Put the phone in like a lockbox and lock it away.

Yeah. You can't do anything. It is what it is. The ball's out of our hands. It's out of your hands. The ball is out of your hands, like you said last week. So take it out of your hands and just do something else. Don't be so fucking mature.

I'm going back and I'm watching CNN until it's all over. Just day drink then. How about day drink? Be a day drinker in a heavy amount. That's the other thing to do. Nice, nice. No, none of those things. Anyway, we'll see.

We'll see. We'll know by Monday, maybe. Probably not. We're just going to have two presidents. Nice, Uncle Nice and Uncle Mean. God, that'd be interesting. Can you imagine? No, I can't.

Oh, my God, that would be like, that would be a reality show to end all reality shows. Put them both in the White House and have hijinks ensue. What do you think? Yeah, I don't like, I can't even go there. Okay, all right. I just can't even go there. I can't even go there. All right.

Thank you so much. That's the show. Email us with questions about companies and trends in tech and business at pivot at voxmedia.com. We love your questions. Scott, please read us out. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Fernando Finite engineered this episode. Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts, or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or Frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like the show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for a breakdown of all things tech and business. And next week, Cara, we'll still live in the most wonderful experiment ever. We'll still both be Americans. We'll still have each other. I will see you next week, Cara. Have a great weekend. Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things, and it's never too late to reinvent

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