Pivot - The Newsom-Trump Beef Heats Up

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Kara and Scott discuss the tensions flaring between President Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom over the National Guard’s LA deployment. Then, Elon Musk regrets “some” of his recent posts about Trump, and X lures advertisers by getting litigious. All of that plus: the U.S.-China trade deal is back, OpenAI makes a deal with Google, and more. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, this is Peter Kafka the host of channels and this week I'm talking to Scott Frank the writer and director who moved from movies to Netflix Which is where you can see Department Q his newest hit and we talked about how no one knows what the future of Hollywood is gonna be like except that it won't be like the past this business hasn't landed where it's gonna land yet and People keep looking backwards and saying no We just need to get movie going back to where it was. That boat sailed, that's not going to happen anymore. That's this week on Channels,

wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Support for Pivot comes from Virgin Atlantic. Too many of us are so focused on getting to our destination that we forgot to embrace the journey. Well, when you fly Virgin Atlantic, that memorable trip begins right from the moment you check in. On board, you'll find everything you need to relax, recharge, or carry on working. Buy flat, private suites, fast Wi-Fi, hours of entertainment, delicious dining, and warm,

welcoming service that's designed around you. Check out virginatlantic.com for your next trip to London and beyond, and see for yourself how traveling for business can always be a pleasure. beyond and see for yourself how traveling for business can always be a pleasure. That's true. You're not a journalist, but you're something. I don't know what you are. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway.

I am about to be in a city that has having a military parade, Scott. I am wishing I had gotten out of town. We'll talk about that in a minute. Are you in LA? I'm in DC. No, not LA. There's nothing. I have all the tanks here.

That's where the actual insurrection is going on. That's what I caught. Literally, why doesn't he just stay at home and like, masturbate to the apprentice martial law episode or something? I mean. I don't know. I don't know. There's tanks.

Can you believe it? A military parade. It's insane. It's insane. Last time I was recalling one was during the Bush, the first Bush administration, there was, it was after something with Iraq. I don't know. It was something, but he had a lot of military people and it was after something with Iraq. I don't know, it was something.

But he had a lot of military people and it was very disconcerting. It wasn't like this gang here, it's like there's a lot here. It's like North Korea plus old Russia stuff. The only thing I remember is a stealth bomber going down the mall in Washington from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. And it was terrifying. I was like, this is not America, like the stealth bomber.

Even though it was cool and enormous, but it was just chilling to the entire crowd. Yeah, I mean, we don't want to put tanks on the ground in Ukraine as Russian troops pour over the border, but a guy wants to roll out tanks as he, you know, shitposts or tweets from a golf cart in orthopedic shoes. I mean, the whole thing is just such cosplaying masculinity.

It's so weird. It's so... It is. It's so sad. It keeps every one of these things. I'm thinking, how small is this? Well, anyway. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Elon groveling and Trump and China making nice for now.

And just for everyone to know, next week, Scott and I will be together in France again. Our annual trip to France. They tried to keep us out with the impenetrable Maginot Line. Do you have a French accent? Was that your French accent? I used to do amazing accents. Now it sounds like a dead language that twins speak to each other. I could do an amazing Glaswegian accent.

You could, oh my God, you could even do Pepe Le Pew, that famous day rapist, Pepe Le Pew. You could do that. You didn't love Pepe Le Pew? Oh my God, it's so bad when you watch it now. It's literally- Oh, it's the best. Come hear my love. It's literally Harvey Weinstein of-

Come hear my love. Of cartoons. It really is. You're like, go back and look at it. All right. Between Pepe Le Pew, I Dream a Genie, and what was the other really sexist thing I was watching all the time? Oh my God, the Threes Company. Oh, the Price is Right.

And now a new car and a woman in a bathing suit showing you the new car. That one was tame compared to like, oh, they're all terrible. I liked I Dream a Genie, I hate to say it, but it was really sexist with that outfit. Yes, master. Jeannie, go to your bottle. Is it, I'm literally the only, everyone should just appreciate how far I've come.

How far I have come. Yeah. Yeah. Why, why have you come? You liked I Dream of, I liked I Dream of, I still like I Dream of Jeannie, still like iDream of Jeannie. I'm sorry, Barbara Eden Ross. Yeah, I wouldn't. But watching,

I'm not exaggerating. I watched two hours a day to iDream of Jeannie during my formative years. I'm not sure that was the right baseline level for how you interact with women. I did the same thing. That's why we love each other. I watched, I loved iDream of Jeannie. I watched it all the time.

I bet you did, you little less pro. I am, I'm a little less pro. Yeah, I bet you did, you little lisp. I am, I little lisp. Exactly. I think essentially, Jeff Bezos is I Dream of Jeannie. He finds a 2,000-year-old magical woman with Botox and instead of freeing her, makes her his roommate. This is Jeff Bezos. It's literally Jeff Bezos is I Dream of Jeannie. Anyway, kids look at I Dream of Jeannie and watch it sometime.

It's a classic. Anyway, we've got a lot to of Jeannie and watch it sometime. It's really, it's a classic. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to, as I said. Elon groveling and Trump in China making nice for now. But there's a lot going on, including the protests against Trump and administration's immigration raids are now spreading nationwide. Nice job, Trump. Trump is claiming that Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated without National Guard deployment, which is a flat out lie.

Talk to anybody in Los Angeles, it's ridiculous, unless you're watching Fox News and then it's true. He also deployed 700 Marines in the LA area against the objections of every single group of people, most of whom don't get along. In recent days, Trump has floated invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that grants the president the authority to deploy the military on US soil. It's a big move. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has gotten a lot of attention and is doing quite a good job pushing back, spoke out about Trump's actions in a televised address on Tuesday, calling this a perilous moment for

democracy. Let's listen to some of that speech. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes. This moment we have feared has arrived. He's taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding father's historic project.

Three co-equal branches of independent government. There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility. The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don. Well done, Gavin. I have to say, he's taken every opportunity here to show himself off, which he is. More protests are expected this weekend, tied to the massive military parade in D.C. that's official, as I noted, celebrating the Army's 250th birthday, but just so happens to fall on Trump's 79th birthday, which will call attention to the fact that the man is really

old. The No Kings protests are set to be the largest nationwide mobilization since Trump took office. These look like astonishing actually. They're all over the place. Trump is already warning that any protesters at the parade will be met with very big force, whatever that is. They are allowed to protest by the way, FYI. But many of the No Kings people are saying don't protest in DC and give them a reason to attack us. But they are pretty much nationwide. First let's talk about Newsom and then let me just also add that Tom Cotton, as usual,

popped up like a bad penny with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled Send in the Troops for Real, playing off his infamous New York Times op-ed in 2020. We're recording this ahead of Trump's military parade, which is on Saturday. Talk a little bit about Newsom, Trump, these protests. It feels a very North Korean to me, but your thoughts? I think Newsom has basically identified himself right now. I think he's the big winner in all of this. I think he kind of accidentally has become the spokesperson for the pushback. So I think this one of the silver linings here is that it is,

we now have what is kind of a de facto leader of the Democratic Party. And I think it's essentially Governor Newsom leads the fourth largest economy in the world. It's a net giver in terms of federal tax income for all the problems California has. It's actually on most metrics doing really well, whether it's the center of the newest technology in the world, more people are moving back to California now. And California has more billionaires than any other state. And these are people with options for all the shitposting these techno libertarians like to do about California, they could move anywhere in the world

and they decide to stay in, see above California. And so he- FYI, Scott, they're all back, just so you know. Yeah, you've been saying that for a while. You said there was gonna be a boomerang and you were right. I told you it was coming back. Because of AI especially, but go ahead. So look, and anyone who has driven up Highway One

or checked out the servers or Zoomed a beach or been to the Hollywood Bowl or, I mean, it's just, or been in the desert. It's in the sunset in the desert or been to Carmel or Yosemite. I mean, you just- It's a stunning state. Yeah, it's arguably the most beautiful country in the world. It just happens to be a state within the United States. And it offers the best universities, best technology.

Anyway, he has become sort of overnight kind of the spokesperson for, or the leader of the Democratic Party. The bad news here is that I think a lot of these protesters are playing into Trump's hands. And that is you can't tell people how to protest, but when you see images, so for example, if you could give the protesters, if the protesters are generally trying to help their own cause,

and that is say, look, a lot of us have been here for 10 years. It's one thing if you want to deport criminals, but if you're deporting people, if you're rounding up people at a Home Depot that have paid their taxes for 20 years and then going to their schools and their churches, I don't think most people are on board with that. No, they're not. According to polling, not at all, but go ahead. But in my opinion, they hurt their own cause when they show up with more Mexican flags than American flags.

And I understand what they're doing, but keep in mind, a lot of Trump supporters and a lot of moderates, when they see protesters with Mexican flags, they think invasion. And the things that really hurt this protest protest in my mind, and there's nothing you can do about it because it's free speech. When someone shows up with a Palestinian flag and a mask,

what people see is terrorism. So, and unfortunately the media will cover those limited instances, which are 0.01% of these protests, as opposed to covering a really thoughtful civil protest with signs. And that's what most of this is. And just to show you how incredibly asinine this is, how the snake is eating its own tail, is that who is the National Guard that's been deployed or activated?

A lot of them are cops. A lot of them are people who work in law enforcement, and a lot of them are in this division called the Rattlesnakes, that Governor Newsom uses for fire reclamation or clearing out brush, and then they get called up to the National Guard. But during the day, if they get called up to be police officers or if the LAPD gets called up, the LAPD is being deployed, the LAPD is being deployed.

Additional LAPD forces are being deployed to where the National Guard is because the National Guard's presence increases hostilities and likelihoods of violence. Right, which is why the police department is like, get the fuck out of here. Like, we're handling it. The LAPD has to be deployed to protect the National Guard, who is creating problems in dissent and agita where there doesn't need to be any. I do think that is sinking into people.

They're like, what are they doing here? And especially in areas, I think the protests, I get it. They're going to play the picture of the burning Waymo over and over again. The flags don't look good. But I think this weekend will be interesting because I think this No King's thing could be really effective. I was just looking at some of the stuff and Amanda was pointing out to me,

they have 20 different No King's events in Maine, and they're very oversubscribed. They think a lot of people are going to show up. So if there's a peaceful show of support, I think Americans do like that. Agreed. But that's not what's getting the media right now. And the Republicans have tried to weaponize protesting, right? They're trying to say protesting is insurrection, when in fact, of course, because they're the

most critical group on the planet, you know, the real insurrection was, of course, that attack on the planet. The real insurrection was, of course, that attack on the Capitol. When it suits them, they say protests are dangerous. When it suits them, they say they're patriotic tourist visits or whatever they call it. I think Penny seems to be dropping with a lot more people, I think, than you think.

I hope so. I really do because I think that at the end of the day, this is, I mean, first off, let's go to some historical analogies here, right? Kent State, right? The Ohio National Guard hopped up on authority and bad intel basically killed four kids protesting the Vietnam War.

And the governor called in troops to quote unquote, restore order, right? That sounds familiar. He didn't restore anything. He radicalized a generation and permanently scarred the American psyche. The, the, the really, the best analogy here is Hitler in the thirties, the Reichstag fire decree, and that is he wanted to consolidate power. So when an autocrat wants to consolidate power, essentially Hitler didn't invade Poland to consolidate power. So when an autocrat wants to consolidate power,

essentially Hitler didn't invade Poland to consolidate power, he invaded civil liberties. Yes, he did, yeah. And the playbook here is you use the threat of chaos to invoke emergency powers and suspend basic rights and criminalize dissent. And that's exactly what's going on here. And this is essentially,

President Trump is lighting a match and kind of pointing at the smoke, so to speak. Which is why I do think there's a lot of push, a lot more pushback than you, I think there's a lot of pushback. Every Democratic governor is now prepared as seeing his playbook, are trying to handle this in a different way. I think he's just incompetent at it.

Now, I know, again, you don't have to be competent to do this. You can be cloddish and idiotic. But to me, I mean, the question is, which message will get through? And I do think Newsom has been an effective messenger finally, right? And so it's a question of messaging is we're not, we've been trying to get out of, he's also, every time he speaks, he goes, we've worked to remove criminals, immigrants from our, you know, from our state. We do it all the time.

But these are, there was images today of ICE people chasing farm workers across a field. This is not, this is weird to people, especially employers. It's weird. You know, it starts to hit businesses because of, because Steve Miller can't find enough immigrants. It's a similar, reminds me a little bit of Doge. They didn't really find as much, right? They didn't find as much trouble.

They have to go after law-abiding people who are here illegally, who are paying taxes. I feel like which of the dueling messages is going to work is, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Well, when ICE has to go to a Home Depot, a church or a school. And a field. It doesn't end in a field where people are picking our crops. They were chasing them across the field.

They were picking like avocados, whatever the heck they were picking. It's a larger point and that is, are these the people we should be kicking out? Mm-hmm. I mean, are these church going people working at Home Depot picking your crops? Are those really the people you want out? And so like, I hope you're right.

If I could, you can't manage or procure or manicure first amendment speech. But if I had any advice, if I wanted to say, I've struggled my whole life with the difference between being right and being effective, and I think civil protest against, you know, the no Kings movement, it's very powerful. They're right. Where they lose all effectiveness and play into the enemy's hands is when they show up with masks, Palestinian flags, and Mexican flags. Bring the fucking American flags and be civil

and make it impossible. I remember once you said to me, I always used to say very provocative things and all of these things people were attacking me on Twitter and you said something, you said, Scott, don't give them anything. And right now I worry sometimes the protesters. And I'll give you an example, I mean, I'm really

Machiavellian. If I were part of this Trump, MAGA, weird fucked up Stephen Miller movement, I'd send out a hundred people with Palestinian flags and masks to try and cause trouble. Yes, I get it. To invoke an overreaction. And they would do exactly what they claim other people do, the false flags and all the nonsense. And to give people the impression that these people on the left are out of fucking control

and get your anger glands going. I don't think they're competent enough to do that. Yeah, I hope not. I think they are not competent actually. More American flags, less masks. I would agree, but I do think this has not been a protest that's given them enough stuff. Like the George Floyd ones.

I think they're disappointed at how civil it is. I know. They don't have enough stuff. And if this no-kings seems bigger than this military parade, it's a dueling messages here. So one of the things that doesn't help the Trump people, there's new reporting of this incredible piece on ProPublica, on Trump's favorite autocrats, President Bukele of El Salvador. A U.S. investigation found that Bukele colluded with MS-13. Of course he did, even paying the gangs for votes, according to ProPublica. And despite his crime-fighting reputation, Bukele has his top aides blocking extraditions of MS-13 leaders to the U.S.

This guy is working hand in glove. So US money is going to pay MS-13 people. This piece is astonishing. And of course, no surprise whatsoever. This guy is such a sleazy. He presents sleazy and he is sleazy. And the way he's gotten into, you know, this is like the plot of a Harrison Ford movie

of a, you know, a Ford movie of a Tom Clancy thing where the alleged good guy crime fighter is up in the grill of drug dealers and other people. So this piece is really not great for Trump because it looks like Trump is paying for MS-13 leaders. I don't even think that'll rise to the top. I don't know, I think it has a little minute. I sent it to a lot of people I know from El Salvador.

I'm like, you might wanna read this. Cause they do, it looks like he's not pushing back crime. He's just like, he's getting, one of the things in the story is he's getting people, like there was a lot of crime in the streets and so there'd be dead bodies on the streets. And what MS-13 is doing at his behest is burying them. So it's sort of, I don't know, this guy is, I think this guy is going to be eventually cooked.

I mean, what I was trying to do is I try and step back from the forest, if you will, or get outside the matrix. I think the biggest takeaway is, I think this is all going to come down. I think to your point, I think the administration realized, this isn't working as well as we'd hoped. One, I think the big takeaways here are that, I think to your point, I think the administration realized, no, this isn't working as well as we'd hoped. One, I think the big takeaways here are that, I think to your point, a lot of states are gonna prepare for this. This has created, I think, a bit of a fascist indigestion. I do think more and more people are like, wow,

is this really, I mean, all of these emergency, fake emergency orders to violate people's rights, it seems like it's going really far. Two, I do think that Newsom is now kind of the de facto party leader. But the biggest thing is that it will be a two-week distraction from thoughtful, robust discussion around this tax bill, which is really, will have much more impact on the nation than this. Absolutely, but let me just say,

these polls that are coming out, the Quinnipack poll that show very bad polling from Trump on immigration, he's underwater on every issue, including the bill, right? Including Medicaid cuts, including immigration. I thought he was still positive on immigration. I thought that was the one thing he's still had a net positive on.

It's not, he is way down. And we'll see how the rest of them, but there's several polls where people are, including what's more interesting is obviously Democrats are gonna be against all this stuff, but Republicans are particularly irked. And they were irked by the Elon thing too. That seemed to set them off.

And so this polling is interesting, is he's not, it doesn't give him strength with going into this bill, because polling is showing that people don't like it, don't like the bill itself. And so I do think at some point, the Republican members of Congress are going to look very carefully at these polls. And if Trump is not as strong as he seems, it'll take some shine off of him. I think it absolutely does. Because projection of strength when polling is showing lack of strength is to me a problem.

Speaking of lack of anything, Trump says the US and China have a trade deal again. It's essentially the old deal, which going back to zero, he posted on True Social the deal is done, pending final approval both him and President Xi. It's such nonsense. According to Trump, China will resume shipments of rare earth minerals, though the Wall Street Journal reports China put a six month limit

on those export licenses. The US will back some of the export restrictions and scrap proposed visa limits on Chinese students. More taco. But tariffs will remain. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods will now total 55 percent, while Chinese tariffs on American products are 10 percent.

I feel like we're back at square one. It's a surprise. No one, of course, also that Trump is highly likely to push back his July 8th deadline to reach trade deals according to Treasury Secretary Beth Sand. This is like spinning wheels. It's like, and you're back exactly where you started, essentially. Yeah, that's been our prediction all along that after all of this nonsense, after this erosion of brand equity of the US, after creating a brand association, toxic uncertainty, we're

going to end up kind of where we were before the tariffs. I would argue we may even be a little bit worse off. They have just- Worse off because of the brand is, US brand is broken. Well, but even on straight empirical terms, because I think China has recognized they have a very strong hand because of their,

of all things, their rare earth mineral magnets, which I guess are key to automakers. They are key to a lot of people. A lot of people. And they kind of have a monopoly on. And again, the calculus these guys just haven't been able to do is they look at both sides of the equation and who is bigger or where the sum is greater. But what they forget is that it's a different scale

because China will starve people. We freak out when our Netflix goes down for 30 minutes. Their tolerance for pain is much greater than ours. And their leadership's ability or willingness to impose pain for national interests are just, it's just such a different system. We say to our companies, our companies that donate money to PACs, who get people nominated because of gerrymandering. So essentially you have kind of corporate profits, sort of in the most, at this

point of the most influential thing. America's run for profit. You know, China's run for power. And that is they decide what would be best according to the CCP would be best for the long-term interests of China, according to them. And for them, they, the number one thing is we maintain power. But it's different in kind of the long-term thinking, if you will. It's much more on China's side because they're not worried about quarterly earnings. They're not worried about BYD hitting its numbers this quarter for fear that BYD

isn't going to give money to the CCB because basically all the money BYD has is in the CCB's control. Yeah, control. So- because basically all the money BYD has is in the CCP's. Control. Yeah, control, so. You know what he should have just done is settle the situation in Gaza and settle the situation in Ukraine. He'd get his famous Nobel Prize, right? Like that's all he had to do and shut the fuck up

instead of all this manic, he confuses. There's an expression I use with people, I use it when I was a manager and I'm not a manager anymore, but that people that confuse activity with productivity, right? People that are manic and move around a lot, they look like they're doing things. It's sort of like, look busy, Jesus is coming kind of thing. This guy confuses activity with productivity. And none of this is productive whatsoever. And it makes us look stupider. And it gives an enormous amount of tells to

all kinds of people, whether it's Europeans or Chinese or whoever we're dealing with. Everyone can tell what's going to happen here. You know, world's worst poker player of all time. Like really, the sucker, when you don't know who the sucker in the room is, it is as it's turned out Trump. But I find this just ridiculous waste of our time, and not good for the US economy. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Elon's caving continues. What a surprise. plans to cruise through Muscogee or down Toronto's bustling streets. From now until June 30th, lease a 2025 Volvo XC60 from 1.74% and save up to $4,000.

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Trinet, your path, their purpose. The data analytics company Palantir has been working with the US government for about 15 years on all sorts of things. This year, ICE is going to pay Palantir $30 million to improve how it targets and surveils undocumented immigrants. Your response to this probably depends to some degree on your politics. But the Trump administration is also expanding Palantir's reach on something that would affect all Americans.

The idea is to link together all the data that the government has about us. This is unprecedented. So anyway, Theo von freaks out. This sounds crazy, dude. And confronts JD Vance. It can tell if your kids are, you know, if your kids can have a limp or whatever, if he'll be in the Christmas play. Veep is like, uh, it's going to be okay, but FYI, I also just learned about this.

I actually just read about it earlier today or maybe yesterday. Coming up on Today Explained, what's Palantir up to? Scott Rebac, Elon Musk says he regrets some, only some of his recent posts, he didn't say which ones, about President Trump writing in an ex-post at 3 a.m. this week that, quote, they went too far, although he didn't exactly say which posts or what he meant and which ones. The public groveling comes after a private phone call with Elon reaching out to Trump late Monday, according to the New York Times.

Vice President J.D. Vance and White House Chief of Staff Suzy Wilds were reportedly the peacemakers pushing Elon to repair his relationship with Trump. When asked about Elon's post, Trump told the New York Post, I thought it was very nice that he did that. I don't know what to say. I don't think he can hold on if Trump does some things he doesn't like. I think he'll have another 3 a.m. something else happening, but we'll see. He's trying to turn his attention to Tesla, hyping the robo-taxi launch in Austin next

week. He says it could slide because Tesla is being super paranoid about safety. Also, we'll talk about this advertising thing in a second, but talk about this apology. I mean, it's just, Trump's never letting him back. That's what I read from it. And Suzy Wiles has played this beautifully in jacking this guy out of the picture. And by the way, speaking of polling, his polling is even worse than Trump's. Yeah, I think right now he looks like

a dog roaming around with one of those domes. It's like, okay. I'm going to give you one of those. I've just been neutered, and I look stupid and I'm upset and depressed. I think he's just walking around with his dog dome right now. The president is more powerful than Elon, and I think he's just walking around with his dogdome right now. He just, he, he, the president is more powerful than Elon.

And I think he was under the impression that, you know, I'm, I'm invincible. I'm rocket man, I'm Iron Man. And, and he gets into a fight. It's a giant fucking distraction. He's not going to get anywhere near the West lawn again, unless it's highly catered and manicured. And I just thought it was so funny listening to all these Fox people talk about how sad it was the fight was. None seemed to be worried about Ukraine or Gaza. They just don't, but they're just so like heartbroken over the breakup. I know.

Of Musk and Trump. They all turned on Musk in a second after being his biggest cheerleaders, which was hysterical to see. Yeah. Again, another, I don't know. I know. Sad. Another distraction. Who cares? Yeah. His robotaxi thing is, I mean, it's incredible how many people are using Waymo, even though some of them got destroyed in Los Angeles.

But we'll see if he catches up. You're not going to the launch event? I was looking at it last night, 2015, he said it was going to be two years. And then every year since 2016, he said it's going to, self-drive is going to come. Every interview I've ever done with him, he's like, well, next year, when we have full self-driving. It's going to come within the year. One of my interviews was in a lawsuit where he lied about it, right?

And then he said the interview was fake. It was just crazy. He said it so many times. It got comical after a while. It's like, oh, this here, this here, is it going to be this here? Of course, we'll see. I'm sure they'll get them out on the streets because other people are deploying them, so he can just copy them.

But I feel like I don't think this is going to be the winning move for him. And also for people who don't know, the optimist robot thing is the other thing. They're trying to do a Tesla and the person who ran it just left. There's all these people leaving Tesla. I think it's in a spiral. Well, it's going to be interesting because they have

a launch event which they delayed another couple of weeks. It's being done in a geo-fenced area of Austin to try and control it. But even he said Tesla is either going to be worth a lot more with self-autonomous, and Cathie Wood's out there saying that autonomous is the future and putting a thousand-dollar price target on Tesla. Or he said, or it's going to be worth next to zero. And if you were to value Tesla as just an automobile company and say, all right, that looks like they are losing slash loss, the autonomous race, and you valued

every Tesla, the same market cap as BYD, which is generous because BYD is doing better and it seems to have a better car for less money. But if you gave Tesla the benefit of the doubt and said, okay, it's at least a BYD-like brand and gave them the same market cap per vehicle that BYD commands, it would mean that Tesla stock would decline by 95%. It's such a brand destruction. Honestly, Scott, when I see them on the street,

I don't let them in. I don't know why. I just hate the brand now, and I like the brand. I really did like the Tesla brand. But I just don't like people in them. And I know that's unfair. I feel like a jerk for doing that. You know, first time in a while I saw a cyber truck in D.C. There were a bunch of them here at the beginning of the Trump era. And I saw one and I hadn't seen one in a while. And having seen it not in a while,

I was like, what a terrible, who didn't stop him and say, you can't do this, you cannot release this Trump. Yeah, but just some compensation for that is, it's good to know that right now there are more National Guard troops and Marines in LA than there are stationed in Syria or Iraq combined. Correct.

I mean, if you're the president, for me, it always comes back to management. What is a manager supposed to do? You're supposed to deploy capital to a greater return than your competitive set. And this is how he is deploying the military capital. He's taking it down in Syria and Iraq. He's not using his sway and power to force Israel to announce a multinational Arab force into Gaza and stop the destruction there. He's not figuring out a bipartisan legislation

which he could get to put more teeth into the sanctions against Russia to get them to the table. He's sending in the National Guard to paramount Boulevard to Culver City. I mean, he does not know how to allocate capital. I just don't. And at the end of the day, the president folks, who you want as a president

is someone you don't hear about. And it's just a very good manager. And knows how to allocate more capital than any capital allocator in history. And this guy is just a terrible capital allocator. Oh, he never did. Come on, you're such a shitty business person. One of the things that my favorite part, we'll go back to this LA thing, is all these

people posting pictures of having lunch in LA. It's terrible here. There is a lot of AI slop, by the way. I grew up in LA. I've texted all my friends and I said, what's going on there? How is it? And they're like, you're watching the same thing I am. That's not, I mean, granted, a lot of my friends are pretty privileged.

They're not living in downtown LA, but we haven't seen anything. Yeah. I have friends all over LA and they're like, this is fucking ridiculous. But anyway, there's a lot of AI slop out there showing much worse than it is. It's just not true. A lot of the imagery that's being used. Fox, of course, it's Armageddon there.

I feel like they're using clips from that movie, Escape from LA or something like that. Anyway, the second thing, this is interesting because we're headed off to France, which for con lions and it's the, or is it con leon? I don't know. Can, it's called can, I know it's not. Can, can, can, whatever.

We're going to France underpants. And, and, and advertising is the big deal here, but this was an interesting story. And I don't know if Linda Yakerina is going to be there, but I hope not to see her. Elon Musk's ex has made a habit of threatening advertisers with legal actions. I love that. Advertiser those, or we'll sue your ass. Sue your ass. Exes bring these threats of lawsuits. This is a Wall Street Journal story. It's really interesting.

Everybody, I've heard this from a lot of people. So, to secure at least six large advertisers that pressure campaigns targeted advertisers like Amazon, Verizon, Pinterest, Ralph Lauren, including some of the illegally, including accusing of illegally colluding in an ad boycott after must take over the platform and the threats for an empty Pinterest declined to increase ad spending on X and found itself added to the ad boycott suit, which is they're going to lose. And as the world goes these days, the FTC is investigating whether antitrust laws are violated by coordinated boycotts of advertisers.

So I think this is probably going to go away. What in the actual fuck? You have to take my ads if I don't think it's a safe place. I'm sure they've tried to make safety improvements on that platform, but it's not working. It's not a safe place to advertise so easily. It's so clearly not a safe place to advertise. What do you think about this? This is nuts.

I know very little about XNOT. I got off it two years ago, but NBC did a study and they found that over 150 verified premium accounts, I guess that's the blue check ones, have all posted or amplified pro-Nazi content. And I think the easiest way to get fired in media is to buy ads on X, because if you buy ads on X, it's like going to work for the mob.

There's no getting out. It's like you're not allowed to mob. There's no getting out. It's like you're not allowed to leave. And what basically is happening here is there's a non-zero probability. If you begin advertising on X, if you decide to stop, you might end up in a lawsuit. They might sue you.

I can't think that's a good business strategy. I can't imagine how hard it must be to be, generally speaking, ad salespeople that end up at Cannes, they're either former athletes or hot women, because that's who media buyers want to hang out with. And they're generally like 105 IQ, 135 EQ people. They're the fraternity rush chairman. They weren't the president.

They weren't scholars. They're super social, super likeable, nice people. And they make good money. Their colleagues hate them because they're the most overcompensated relative to their IQ and their work ethic. But they have, they're really attractive and they're nice people to hang out with.

That job at X must be the worst job in the world right now. Well, Hunter, threatening them. They don't like being threatened. I imagine most of the salespeople at X are not threatening people. They're probably just trying to sell fucking ear cleaner ads. I mean, whatever it is, they're doing their best to get L'Oreal to test again on this platform that doesn't work. And then I would imagine a lot of advertisers who have no shortage of places to spend their

precious ad dollars are like, boss, why would I advertise with you? Is someone going to call me and threaten to sue me if I decide to pause my campaign? I don't need that shit. Yeah, I think, listen, Lydia, I can tell you she has a great reputation. Speaking of this cadre of people, she's never going to work in this business again.

Will she need to though? My guess is they're not dumb. He probably promised her enough fucking money. But you know how that works with him. People who work for him don't always end up in the best place. But it must be, just realistically, Kara, he's been able to attract so many talented people to run different companies for him. I don't believe that his compensation system must be very generous.

Possibly. Well, I've heard different things. I've heard mixed things. A lot of people couldn't get out fast enough, and then they didn't get what they were paid. He does a combination of things. In this case, it is an embarrassment that someone who was a well-regarded advertising person is resorting to lawsuits in order to sell ads.

And in a paranoid fashion, I've heard from lots of people that she truly believes that there was a conspiracy. And because she's in that world, she's sort of a trumper and everything else. But it's just, it's an embarrassment, Linda. You used to be, I worked with her, she was good. This is an embarrassment. And she should be ashamed of herself, what she's doing. Anyway, she was good. She was really, she was the top one and, or one of the top people. And she worked at NBC, is that right?

She did. I worked with her and she was, you know, she was an ad person, right? You know, though, that type. And I sure do. And good at it. I hang out with them. And good at it. But this is just you have covered yourself in shame.

And then let me tell you all your old friends say that to me. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back. We'll talk about Open AIs, Google deal. And then let me tell you, all your old friends say that to me. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back, we'll talk about OpenAI's Google Deal. Hi, this is Scott Galloway. If you're listening to this, you likely already know who I am. Kind of a big deal. Everyone's laughing.

This message is for you, our loyal listeners. Proff G Markets is now drum roll daily. That's right. Monday through Friday, ProfG Markets breaks down market moving news, helping you build financial literacy and security. Don't miss it. Subscribe to ProfG Markets wherever you get your podcasts. There are two big trends happening in tech right now. I mean, fine, there are a lot of trends happening in tech right now, but there are two that

we're talking about on the Vergecast this week. The first is Apple redesigning all of its software to make it glassy and see-through and basically designed for a very different world than the one that we live in. The second is Nintendo and Xbox and others thinking that maybe the future of consoles is not giant boxes next to your television, but smaller things that you can hold. We talk about why and whether any of that is a good idea all this week on The Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts.

Scott, we're back with more news. OpenAI plans to use Google Cloud Service to meet its computing needs. The deal doesn't replace OpenAI's need for Microsoft's Azure, which used to be the company's exclusive partner. Google is not yet delivering compute to OpenAI, but the deal was probably signed last night. It's important. They need more compute. In a similar story, Facebook is working with ScaleAI, this very talented guy who's the founder of it,

in trying to reboot their AI. The llama stuff wasn't going as well as Mark Zuckerberg expected and he's now shook the trees there and is redoing it, which is good. He's good that way to do those things. On the AI news front, OpenAI has delayed the release of its first open model in years, which is really expected this month, but it's pulling away.

Even I've talked to meta people and other people and they're like, OpenAI is pulling away in terms of features, constant features. So it's still a real race going on here. Google's extended voluntary buyouts, by the way, to US employees in multiple divisions, cost-cutting measures to help fund for AI spending. And they're all rejiggering. And even at Google, there's new people. They're reassessing who should be running this and what their focus should be,

each of these companies. But they're all doing a lot. And this new research lab that MED is doing is going to be dedicated to pursuing superintelligence. There's just a lot going on in the sector. Yeah, I thought that both announcements, the announcement that OpenAI was going to work with Google, the Google Cloud, kind of blew my mind because I would have thought that Microsoft would have captured all of that business. I don't know if it's a falling out and OpenAI wanting to diversify their compute supply

chain or if, according to Microsoft, Microsoft is saying, we just don't even have enough given how amazing and how dominant OpenAI is and we need more than one, um, more than one source of compute. It just kind of blew my mind when I heard that. The other thing that that was really interesting is that Google is now a newspaper company. I remember at the New York times, we were constantly sending out letters saying, uh, voluntary buyout. Google just sent out voluntary buyout letters to a ton of people and basically

saying that these are the jobs that are most vulnerable to AI. And typically the way it waterfalls is that, all right, we offer you a buyout and if you don't take this buyout of X, if you get fired in three months, you only get 0.5X. Now the problem with these types of buyouts is the people, the best people leave. And the way you usually do these buyouts is you go to your top 10% and you say, FYI, you're on the inside. We're doing a buyout, buyout slash layoff, trying to encourage people to leave,

but you're doing really well here. You're about to get promoted. Just ignore the letter. That's the smart kind of buyout move is you go to the people who don't want to leave. The other thing they're doing is everyone talks about quiet quitting. The new quiet firing is back to work mandates.

And if you'll notice on the same day, Google announced a return to work mandate. Because they know they'll lose 10, 20, 30% of people who got really used to walking their dog in Prospect Park every afternoon. And so a lot of people will leave. So, but what's interesting is Google, which has got the greatest concentration of intellectual IP around AI, has real insight into the world, where the economy and jobs have said, AI is going to eliminate a lot of these jobs. Which we've heard from a lot of companies, you know.

We've heard from a lot, when even when we're together, we were with, I forget who it was, Diller or someone else. he was talking about it. All these companies have been talking about this. Around the front end, I think it's actually a good thing that Google does this. I think it's a good thing that Mark, everyone was writing, oh,

Meta's AI thing got shook up. I'm like, good. They're doing it quickly. They're adding and subtracting people. Mark is a going for it kind of guy, right? He always like, Met is not working, gone. That kind of thing. That's his superpower, I think, is his control. Speaking of good managers, he is a good manager.

It's interesting that people look at it as a bad thing. I don't think any of this is a bad thing. I think it shows that people are sort of adjusting as they're extending, if that makes sense. Yep. Yep. You know, it makes sense to do this. And the more these companies do this, the stronger they're going to be. But I do, pretty much everyone at the other companies I've been talking to, a lot of these other companies, do acknowledge that OpenAI has been running away with it in terms of features moving faster, getting

things done. Obviously, one of the worries at Meta is that chat GPT has become the Kleenex, right? It's like Google became the word for search, that chat GPT is now the word for this. And so can you catch up if one company represents, you know, that's what people think of when they think of AI. From a marketing point of view, it's an interesting moment, I think.

I agree, I have nothing to add. Yeah, but I mean, it depends on how important. When have you heard that from me? I know, yeah, they're the Kleenex, everyone thinks it's interesting. All right, lastly, these two interesting little stories, which I thought we should talk about very briefly. ABC News has parted ways with senior and national correspondent Terry Moran

after he called President Trump and Stephen Miller world-class haters on X. If you remember, Moran was the one who did that testy MS-13 interview with Trump, who kept pretending a Photoshop thing was real. The network announced it would not renew Moran's contract after a 28-year stint calling the X ex-post a clear violation of policies. As a reminder, ABC paid $60 million to settle a case over comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos last year. Moran seems okay. He's already told followers he did a really delightful video that will be on Substack

shortly, sort of taking it well. Any thoughts on this? He shouldn't have posted that largely because he was a beat reporter and was covering the White House. He probably, even if he thought that, he should have kept it to himself. He could have done it in a different way by pointing to polls or things they've done or videos or other people talking about it.

He shouldn't have done that. Yeah, but Dan Rather and Peter Jennings did much worse. But when the market was booming, they didn't fire people for this. They just called them in and said, hey, boss, sucks to be a grownup, don't do this again. So he wasn't fired by ABC, he was fired by Alphabet and Meta,

who are sucking so much oxygen out of the room of cable ad-supported news, that these guys are looking for reasons to fire people. And I think this is, quite frankly, I think this is bullshit. I don't think this is how you treat people. He, the guy worked there 28 years. He was the kind of guy that in my mind sort of did the work and was good at what he did. So what you do is you call him and you need to say, you know what?

You made life hard for us, business sucks. Um, you need to announce it. I, I know, I don't know, I don't know Terry. I mean, I know Terry, I don't know Terry. I mean, I know Terry, I don't know him well. I think he was looking for his next gig. ABC needs to cut costs. There's a way they could have done this without publicly shaming the guy

and pretending to have fucking virtue. If the company was going, if the company's revenues were increasing 10 or 15% a year, they would have called him in and said, boss, you can't do this again. He would have said, fine. And they would have wink, wink, see at the country club. But now they're all looking to cut costs.

So they pretend to be virtuous and have these journalistic standards. If, if Terry had been anchoring a news program where they had more and more opioid induced constipation ads that were, they were increasing the out rates faster than inflation. They would have found. Skyrizzy. It's skyrizzy is the ad. But go ahead.

But they, they, Mark Zuckerberg fired him, not ABC. ABC is looking for any reason it can to lay off people and then pretend they're journalists. Meanwhile, they're about to get fucked in the ass by, in a bad way, not the pleasurable way, by a fascist and bend the knee like every other media company that's scared to death of this guy right now trying to stay out of his crosshair. So yeah, fine. When people work for you for 28 years, they're given do-overs. I agree.

Scott, I think he's a talented guy, but he did put himself in a, given the history here recently, not a smart move on his part. I agree. He should have been just taken off for a little while, talked to, and then I would have had him say-

Remember when Dan Rather walked off set and CBS went to black for what was it, six minutes? Yes, I remember. He'd left the air, but they found excuses to keep big Dan around. Yes, until he did that lawsuit that didn't work out so well. They definitely. I agree, I agree. When I saw it, I was like, oh no, no, no.

All these companies talk about how we're a family and a team. You don't need a family or a team when you're doing well. You need them when you fuck up. They should have treated him. He was there 28 years doing the work. You show the guy a little bit more grace. And if at the first false move that you fuck up, you get ceremoniously drawn and quartered,

guess what? All of us are gonna be unceremoniously fired at some point. Well, except now he's not, cause he's on his own. I'm like, welcome to the, do whatever the fuck you want. I hope so, I hope he does well. Yeah, I think he will. What's the substack, let's promote it.

Do you know what it's called? Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna bring him on on Scott Free August. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Oh, that's a great idea. I'm gonna bring all troublemakers, bringing in Scaramucci,

I'm making troublemakers for you. I really like Terry, because more than anything, he's very handsome. He's very handsome. He's a handsome man. In any case, I agree with you, is given this environment, he shouldn't have done, he should have known.

Oh, ABC, you're so righteous. No, here's $10 million, dear fascist, dear leader. Oh, ABC, good for you, Bobby Iger, you're a man of principles. Here's the thing. I've never thought of anywhere I worked as my family. Have you? I've never had been under that delusion. You have a much more romantic version of companies, don't you?

Yeah, but my companies are smaller and I get very strong paternal reward from my companies because it's a bunch of young people. So I'm very rapacious the first year or two years. I'm like, this is like the Navy SEALs, anyone can try out but most of you aren't going to be here in a year. But the people I've worked with,

I mean, you know my people, I've been working with my people. No, you have. I had 20 years of same people working for Code. I get it. I get that. And I never would have treated them like this. But it's a really interesting thing is that a lot of these, I kind of would rather the Google thing like, okay, it's not working, we're shifting. It sort of feels cleaner to me in a lot of ways. And not be offended by it. But Terry Moran is a very talented broadcaster

and we wish him incredible wealth and health and whatever the heck. And don't feel bad, Terry. Don't worry about it. Fuck them if they can't take a joke. Anyway, you'll like it better on the outside. It's much more fun. That's right. Come on in, the water's fine. Independent, independent, well, you're an independent journalist. Independent like whatever it is I do. You're going to enjoy it. It's fun. Yeah, it's true. You're not a journalist, but you're something. I don't know what you are. I'm something. You're a turducken. It's fun. Yeah, it's true. You're not a journalist, but you're something. I don't know what you are.

I'm something. You're a turducken. You're a turducken of some sort. I'm not alien from close encounter. It's like we don't understand him, but we think he's nice. Yeah. In other Disney news, this is interesting though. Disney and Universal have sued AI image generator Mid Journey, which is people really don't like Mid Journey for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges mid-journey helped itself to

countless copyrighted works to train some of its software, while news organizations, record labels, and others have filed similar suits. This marks the first suit by a major Hollywood studio. This is a good move on their part, mid-journey. Just like this, doing shit with Mickey is not cool. Maybe he's out of copyright, but I think he's parts of Mickey is not cool for whatever. Mickey's out of, maybe he's out of copyright, but I think he's parts of Mickey is. But what do you think about this?

When I was in the fraternity, one of my fraternity brothers or one of my close friends was the head of campus events at UCLA or involved in campus events. He ran this ad that showed for Simba, they were doing a screening of the Lion King and he showed Mickey Mouse riding Simba in the Daily Bruin and we got a call from I think it was Disney's lawyer saying, hire just FYI, you'll be served a subpoena. We wanted to give you some forward notices of courtesy, but you're not allowed to do this." And I'm thinking, I can solve every problem. And so of course, we did like three bong loads. And then I said, I know Michael Ovitz was president of our fraternity,

he was president of ZBT UCLA. We'll call him. We know these powerful people. I know how to solve this. I think I can fix any problem. Total arrogant, douchebag American male. I think I can fix every any problem, total arrogant, douchebag American male. So, and I'm like, but first we need to get high. So we call the lawyer and we say, look, we apologize, this was clearly wrong, we won't do it again, but we were fraternity brothers with Michael Ovitz thinking that would carry real weight.

And we won't do it again and we apologize, we're just a bunch of college kids. And the council said, the general council was like, oh, my daughter goes to UCLA and ended up with no, we had a nice conversation, da da da. He's like, anyways, guys, he goes like back to the lawsuit. He's like, he's like, guys, I'll see you in court. You don't fuck with the mouse.

And then he hung up. And what happened? You took it down, right? Right. And here's the bottom line, the best companies usually invest a lot, have good people, and they're also rapacious about the defense of our IP. And as I go full circle for my fraternity in this situation, this is a moment for content creators to absolutely rally together and not do one-off deals, but to get someone really mean and really angry and a lot of law firms and charge everyone

a certain amount of money and go after all these guys and say, okay, if we see you're crawling our books, our content, our songs, our speeches, anything, we're coming for you. And you gather it all, similar to what the artists do around the rights labels, where they say, you can, and then we'll license it to you. We're gonna make a lot of money here. You guys are making a lot of money, that's fine. If you wanna use all of Penguin Portfolio Randoms'

houses archive of every single book they have, fine. And then we're gonna figure out a deal with our authors. We're gonna do this for all artists. By the way, I literally met my favorite artist last night. We'll come back to that because I know you're dying to talk more about me. But this is a moment. We passed that moment about 20 years ago,

letting Google crawl our shit. And now it's too late. This is that moment in AI. All of these guys should be binding together. Everyone from Axel Springer to News Corp to the Royal Academy of Arts, to everyone that has intellectual property should be coming. That's what Miller said a year ago, a year and a half ago. 100 percent.

Yeah. I said it a year and a month ago. Thank you very much. So, but they need one, they need to speak with one voice and they need to be very aggressive in the pushback here. You're fucked with the mouse. All these little efforts pushing back. Reddit filed a lawsuit last week. They all need to come together.

They do. You're 100% right. 100% right. Well, we'll see if they do. So the mouse, we like this move, which you did to Terry. Eh, not great. You didn't want to hear about my favorite artist?

Oh, well, who's your favorite artist very quickly? So I went to this very, very fancy event last night. I went to the Royal Academy of Arts summer gala last night. I don't like to go out. Do you wear spats? I was forced to go out. And I only own one piece of art. I don't buy wine or art because all my friends as they got rich

started buying art and wine. And I'm like, I'm just not that guy. But someone very important to me when I was in Istanbul with them took me to see this exhibition, said, I know you'll just love this guy, even though he knows I'm not into art. And it was a guy named Grayson Perry. And his art, he has, do you know that big orange,

you probably know better than I do, you know that big orange sketch etching I have in my living room? And it's called Map of a Politician. And I just fell in love with it. And then this person for my birthday bought it for me. And it was the only piece of art I own. And he's a really interesting dude. Did you buy any?

Oh, no, I didn't. No, I literally own one. I own two pieces. I own one piece of art and one photograph. The piece of art makes me feel closer to the person who bought it for me, and I love it. I have a photograph of Otto Frank and returning to where his family was.

And whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, I just go look at that photograph. But anyways, he was there last night and I got to meet him. And that was really exciting. He's a really lovely man. But anyways, I got to meet the artist of the one piece of art I own. Oh, that's nice.

That's lovely, Scott. Freaking art just evolving into such a lesbian. It's fantastic. By the time I'm 90, I'm going to be like, I'm going to have manners. I'm going to be able to read the room on my 100th birthday. The journey of Scott Gallagher. There you go.

All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. He's a human boy. OK, Scott, let's hear a prediction. I sort of had kid gloves around this, but that one prediction. What was that noise? Say that, do that noise again. What is that? Why did you just make that noise?

I don't know. I have a prostate exam later today and I'm just practicing. Elbows on the table. Elbows on the table. Cough, cough, That's all I know. Run your hands through my hair. Yeah. Yeah. I think Gavin Newsom is now coming out of this the de facto leader of the Democratic Party,

and that was a void the size of the freaking Grand Canyon. As you've noted. Now, should he declare for his presidency? I was thinking this. I almost texted him and said, you should declare for his presidency right now. He has. He has. But you need to actually and then start making pronouncements. No, probably not yet, because it would warrant, but he's already, he's,

the people who should declare presidency, the people that nobody knows, because they'll get a ton of, he is already the de facto candidate by virtue of what's happened this week. And he should start. And he's also, and I said this a few months ago, him bringing Charlie Kirk on and Newt Gingrich

on his podcast, as much as the Taliban of the left hates that, that was the right move. It was just a bad interview, Scott. I don't have a problem with him having it on. He didn't do a good job, but go ahead. I think he's the de facto leader of the Democratic Party right now coming out of this too. Can I ask, can I add something?

Who do you think if he was running, I was thinking if he ran, his vice president should either be Pete Buttigieg or someone I saw the other night, Gina Romundo. Anyway, those are my ideas. I think she's fantastic. She is amazing. She's just sharp as a frigging tack.

If you want someone that's good for the economy and just does the work, she's that person. It's a question of she may run for president by the way. A woman will not be the Democratic nominee, and nor should she be. If we have another woman lose for the third time, Carrie, you're not kind of a female president for 50 years.

I thought she would. As much as I think she is utterly capable of being president, I thought she should be the vice president for Gavin Newsom. That would be a really interesting. Let me be luxus and sexus in one fell swoop. I can guarantee you, not one person, the Democratic nominee will not be under five foot 10.

No president in the last hundred years has been under five foot 10. We are a luchus nation. He's a handsome man. He's a handsome, so is Westmore. That's my point, I hate to say it. What handsome man. The first, we will have a female president,

she will be a Republican, and the key attribute she will bring is a reputation that if your family runs a stop sign, she'll drone your ass. She will be the first female president of the US, will have to be someone so fucking scary. She'll drone your ass. Well, that would have been Liz Cheney, right?

That would have been in the old days. Liz is probably the closest we could have had to an electable female president. Someone else will come along. She would drone her ass. Anyways, it's not going to be a Democrat. And the Democrats are not going to take their chances on a gay man. They're not going to take their chances on a woman. They Democrats are not gonna take their chances on a gay man.

They're not gonna take their chances on a woman. They're not gonna take their chances on someone who's less than five foot 10. I'm sorry, that's the bottom line. Anyways, as VP, that's a really good one. Just play that game for a second. I'd probably match you it up and bring in like a former military person.

I don't know. Mark Kelly, there's a lot of. There's so many good VP candidates. I think, yeah. I don't know. They'll figure out what states they need help in. Who do you like? I think there's a lot of interesting people. I don't know yet because I think Wes Moore is always talked about and most feared by the right, that's for sure. He's very good.

I still like, in my life, Michael Bennett would be such a good president. I always think of who'd be a good president. Of course, that doesn't matter anymore. Celebrity matters. Probably, I think when I ran into Gina Rondo the other day, I was like, she's so fucking impressive. She's so fucking impressive.

You know who we just had on the Raging Moderates party yesterday was Ritchie Torres. Oh, I'm not a fan. What? Not a fan, sorry. Oh my God. I love that guy. I think he's so performative. I still keep thinking,

I agree with you about the woman thing. Raised by a single mother, struggled with depression. Not impressed. I don't like him. Oh, he's really good. By the way, our producers are saying there have been presidents under 5'10". But not this- In the last 100 years? Who?

Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy was 5'10"? Under, I guess. Yeah, must have been. That's what our producers did today. What did you do? 5'9.5". 5'9.5".

I don't know how tall Harry Truman was. Okay. 1.7. That wasn't a particularly successful presidency, even though he had a great post-presidency. Harry Truman, 5'9", and he came to office because the president died. Five foot now, Jimmy Carter was five foot 10. He's 9.5. Well, whatever.

He's that tall. He wasn't tall. Whatever. All that matters is I'm eight inches. Oh my God. Okay. Oh my God. I won't tell you my nickname in the fraternity. I won't tell you my nickname in the fraternity. I won't tell you my nickname in the fraternity. Don't force me to tell you my nickname in the fraternity, Kara.

It's tripod. So you've already told me. God, we're like an old couple. I know we are. Give me the Republican candidate then. I think it's going to be JD Vance. I do not think that. No? Go ahead. It's either going to be Marco Rubio or like a Glenn Youngkin. That's my feeling. Youngkin's the be JD Vance. I do not think that. No, go ahead. Mm-mm, it's either gonna be Marco Rubio or like a Glenn Youngkin, that's my feeling.

Youngkin's the guy who would win. Well, I'm just saying, although he hasn't had the most spectacular Virginia situation. But Trump's gonna have so much power that he'll basically, unless he has a huge erosion in his base, he'll be able to pick the person and I think it'll be, I don't think it'll be,

I think, oh shit, I don't know. I think he likes Vance. I don't think he likes Vance. I don't think he likes Vance. You don't think he likes Vance? Vance is unlikable. He really is. He's just, he repels voters. They need a interesting looking person. It's gotta be like a, a youngin or a,

and Trump wants to keep it there. So it's not gonna be his son who forget that. I mean, he knows he's a loser. Probably, it's gotta be, it's gotta be Rubio or something like that. I mean, he knows he's a loser. Probably, it's got to be Rubio or something like that. Something like that. I think Rubio's too short. All right. Okay. Anyway, he's also somewhat charmless too. Also, that's true. When he said Lil Marco, I thought, mm-hmm, that is correct.

Oh, wait. So my actual prediction is that the worst, I think probably the worst acquisition of the last decade in terms of value destruction or overpaying happened last week. OpenAI's acquisition of the design firm, I think it's called IO. Oh, yes, Johnny Ive. I think Johnny Ive's fantastic. Just to be clear, a company with no products gets acquired for $6.5 billion for a guy who is a genius designer. He deserves all his due. Sorry, boss, that's not worth $6.5 billion. Yeah, maybe he's cosplaying Steve Jobs.

This thing will be written down by, let me be clear, iconic legendary designer, maybe even worth like $100 million, which means a $6.4 billion write down. In addition, OpenAI is going to find that designing products, they'd be much better off. Let me save them some time, partner with hardware firms. Right. Actually, hardware is fun. You thinking that you're going to bring in

this Guy Ritchie like genius who dresses incredibly well, and rightfully is considered one of the great designers of all time. It's going to figure out a way for you to get into products. No, a very charming guy. He is, he was the last speaker at Code along with Lurene Powell Jobs and Tim Cook. Yeah, by the way, amazing.

I'm not, I'm not this, I'm not, the whole thing when the two of them did this promo video on the acquisition. And it was so much like, I'm just a billionaire standing in front of a billionaire wanting to be trillionaires. It was just so like. It was strange. Oh God. Whatever, let's give it to them. They've done a nice job.

All right. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on ProfG Markets, Scott spoke with Katherine Ann Edwards, PhD economist and columnist for Bloomberg News. She weighs in on the latest jobs data and unpacks how the economy has reacted to Trump's policies. Let's listen to a clip. What we are seeing is the effect of uncertainty. And uncertainty is all about idling.

I'm not going to move much in either direction until I know which way the wind is blowing. So I'm not going to hire that many people. I'm not going to fire that many people. I'm not going to make massive investments, but I'm not going to pull back from the ones that I have. I'm just waiting in place to understand what the world is going to fire that many people. I'm not going to make massive investments, but I'm not going to pull back from the ones that I have. I'm just waiting in place to understand what the world is going to look like. And that has been the economy really since September. Really, very absolutely true.

No one knows what to do because he's crazy. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Scott will be back next week from France, where I will be charging things to Scott's room very soon, very, very soon, overpriced, whatever it happens to be. But that will be the charge there, Scott. We'll be back next week from France. In fact, Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neyman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miss Severo, and Dan Chalon. Dushak Kherwa is Vox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine, Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at n1mag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. This is not leadership, it's fascist foreplay. And history will not be kind.