Pivot - The Wonder Woman premiere, Georgia's run off election, and friend of pivot Olivia Nuzzi
Episode Date: December 29, 2020Kara and guest host Hilary Rosen talk about Wonder Woman and the future of streaming. They also talk about the stimulus package, the January 5th Georgia run off election, and how the media and politic...al landscape will look in a Post Trump America. Wins and fails include Joe Biden and the Americans who still aren't taking this pandemic seriously. Olivia Nuzzi is our Friend of Pivot. Send us your Listener Mail questions through our site, nymag.com/pivot and use Yappa to leave a video or audio message. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
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.
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. to get your customers to notice you, Constant Contact has what you need to grab their attention. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform offers all the automation, integration,
and reporting tools that get your marketing running seamlessly, all backed by their expert
live customer support. It's time to get going and growing with Constant Contact today. Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your
free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca.
Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher.
Scott is out this week doing God knows what. So instead, we have a brilliant co-host, Hilary Rosen, who I've had on before.
Hilary, how would you like to describe yourself and also hello?
Hi there, Cara. I describe myself as a jack-of-all-trades, but mostly I do politics and PR and I'm one of those
inside the beltway people. You're an operative is what I like to call you. I'm an inside the
beltway operative. Operative, which is a very sketchy term, I think, frankly. I think it's
operational. Operate. All right. Okay. What you do, but you do it on the Democratic side. You're
not an operative for the Trump side, correct? Or the Republicans? No, I don't pretend to be neutral.
Okay. All right. So let's make that clear. We're going to talk a lot about politics.
We also have Olivia Nuzzi from New York Magazine coming up to talk about it, but let's start Warner Brothers. Let's, cause you also worked in media for a long time. Hillary's worked for the
recording industry in various places and you've been through the wars. You were, I always call
you Napster killer, you know, as a fond term of love. Yeah. Yeah. So Warner Brothers
released Wonder Woman 1984 in the U.S. exclusively on HBO Max on Christmas Day. It was also in
theaters. It did okay in theaters. It was a small haul, but it was pretty good for the pandemic in
actual physical theaters. And it did well for the streaming services, adding on a couple million
people and about half the people on the service were watching it. This is their HBO Max streaming platform.
What do you think of this development?
Because, again, you went through it with the music industry,
which resisted this for a long time,
and Hollywood's been pretty pissed about Wonder Woman and other things,
all these movies going out on streaming platforms.
It is pretty amazing how much attention just putting one movie on,
one new release on streaming has gotten.
But this one has gotten sort of the most attention.
And, you know, I was chairman of the Recording Industry Association for many years during the advent of digital. faced at the time was just an overwhelming onslaught of new releases coming up every single
day on streaming, mostly illegal. And so you would have thought that Hollywood would have just
learned a little better that example. The difference between music and movies, though,
is Hollywood has had more control over this kind of windowing release, as you've said
many times and smartly on your show, because the copyright laws are different so that they could
actually control whether something went to TV first and then, you know, or went to studios and
then they got paid that way and then theaters, then they went to the TV and then they went to
streaming rights. Whereas music, it just got all released at once because they didn't have that sort of copyright law advantage.
I think the lesson here,
when you have half the people who are HBO subscribers
watching it on the first day,
is that consumers are going to make this decision.
Right.
You know, not the studios.
We argued about many years ago, you and I,
when you were, you know, the recording industry, I thought went went too whole hog. I mean, obviously, a lot of it
was illegal. But when the reason it was illegal is it never put in place things that were not illegal.
Like, I think people got used to stealing it because they didn't, they didn't want to lean
into the future. In this case, streaming has been around. People have been buying these big
televisions. It's much cheaper. It's less of a hassle. Movie theaters have done a bad job at their product, expensive and filthy, etc., and has been innovated. What advice from going back, if you were yourself 20 years ago today, what would you have done differently?
Well, my advice then was the same as my advice now, which is, you know, do things that are consumer friendly.
And, you know, people didn't listen to me then. And so we ended up where we are.
And the music industry is just now recovering a bit from the fall of those early years because they finally embraced streaming.
streaming. But the interesting thing then is a fault right now, which is music fans don't care whether Bruce Springsteen is on Sony the same way they don't care whether Wonder Woman is on
Warner Brothers. And so this idea of forcing consumers to go to six different platforms and
figuring out where their favorite movie is going to come out,
I think is going to end up being a shit show. How do you solve it? Because everyone...
Well, you solve it by licensing it in multiple places instead of what's happening now, which is
that the studios, and let's not forget that the studios are not really the companies running
these businesses anymore, right? It used to be that the heads of the studios were the biggest people in the business
now the heads of studios are merely like employees employees of giant cable and telephone companies
and and and the like but they're trying to own the whole vertical and that's not going to fly
over the long term.
I think the solution is sort of multi-licensing on multiple platforms, right?
So Warner Brothers has made a lot of money in television by licensing TV products to
ABC and to NBC and to multiple places.
If your advantage isn't the Mandalorian or, you know, for Disney or Game of Thrones for Warner.
They're going to try to lean heavily into that.
That's their IP.
I know you buy HBO, too.
I think this is going to end up falling flat.
I think for the first couple of years it may work, but I think ultimately there's going to be a limit on how many different platforms consumers are going to be willing to subscribe to.
And what we have now is that the money is in the platforms, not in the content,
as we've seen by the people complaining about these releases on streaming.
You know, you have directors and actors not making nearly as much money
on these streaming platforms as they do with theatrical release or other windowing. So
I think there's a lot of mess yet to be sorted out here and including for the consumer.
All right. So Wonder Woman, I want to talk about one more thing before we get to the big story,
but Wonder Woman 1984, did you like it? I did not. Oh my God. Same. Same. I loved the first one.
Me too. I thought the best parts of the story
were about the story of all the, you know, women on the Island and, and, um, her history.
And it just went into this kind of crazy male megalomania, very Trumpy, you know, how do we
Trumpy rule the world? And I just feel like the story got lost. Having said that, watching Gal Gadot
on screen is mesmerizing.
We both like it. It's really charming.
She's compelling. I can't wait to
see actually her do some other things
besides Wonder Woman because
she is so compelling. She's got a lot of small roles.
I catch her every now and then in movies
in tiny little roles and you're like, oh my god,
that's Gal Gadot. But it's a franchise
that has to last. It was also a franchise
that was interesting that was about women. I think
a lot of people felt it was like the first
woman, a strong
woman depiction. In this one, she's just
pining for her man. Right. That's really
and same thing with Kristen Wiig.
She just wants to date. That was
really their two motivations. She wants
dating and power and she wants
her man to come back.
Having said that, if I could just buy
the movie ten times, I would because
I love it that Patty Jenks, the director
and this
franchise matters so much. I feel like
it's so empowering for young girls.
This particular movie was not empowering, I thought.
I thought it was actually anti-empowering, which was it because so many
women were involved. So, all right, we're going to get
into that with a big story. We're going to have two big stories. It's politically orange
because that's what you are. First is the politics of the stimulus. Trump finally signed the
coronavirus relief bill last night. No one knows why. After holding it up for a week for no one
knows why, at a peak, the $900 billion relief bill means a new round of stimulus checks and
unemployment benefits, including for gig workers. It also frees up funds for vaccine distribution and
means no government shutdown on Tuesday. Obviously, this Section 230 is still in the bill.
It's not still in the bill, but he didn't get it taken out. He says he hates the law because it
allows them to discriminate against conservative voices, which is a canard. Biden has said he's against it too, because it lets big time he
shirk their responsibility. This is a bill. It's been a, this is a law that's been in place for
decades. In any case, he says Trump that he'll have a red line version of the bill back to
Congress to get rid of wasteful spending, but it's kind of ridiculous. No one told him he can't do
that. But he, they seem to convince him that he did. So how do you look at all this? Because,
you know, when we talked yesterday,
he hadn't signed it, but then he did late last night.
What do you imagine is going to happen next?
You know, the bizarre thing about this is all of the media today
and everybody's mocking Donald Trump.
Oh, he got nothing out of this.
And why did he do this, et cetera?
But, you know, I don't think that's how Donald Trump operates. And I think that
if we've learned one thing, it's that he can't be shamed into doing anything. You know, his advisors
played to his vanity about what was in the bill, what he could take credit about. And then they
went out and bragged about it, you know, anonymously to reporters who all dutifully reported this morning that, you know,
that's how they got him to sign it. But essentially, he just, you know, turns his
objections into rage, and he communicates above and beyond the insider world. He is not really
interested in what people like you and I have to say about how he does.
The only message that he's gotten out there that he cares about is that he wanted more money for people than Congress gave.
And the facts that he did nothing to get them more money for eight months will be lost on
those same people.
Because he tried.
He was there for the little guy.
And so people won't believe us when we say, wait a minute,
he actually could have done this quite a long time ago for a long time and didn't.
I think that that's all he cares about and that that's his, you know,
he's much more simplistic.
Was it a smart thing that he's doing?
Because someone in the Washington Post columnist wrote,
Trump is growing smaller before our eyes every day.
And there's proof what a bad deal maker is. So he's not a bad, he got the simple messages,
I'm here for you. I tried and these swampy people didn't want to give me what I wanted,
even though the swampy people were actually the Republicans. I think that, you know, from day one, Donald Trump has simplified a message that Washington has complicated. And we consistently
forget that. And that simple message works on a group of people who will continue to be in his
enthrall. And that may be up to us and, you know, in the media as to whether we pay attention to it
or not. I've heard multiple people today begging the media to give him less and less
attention. And whether we do, I mean, this will be something we'll talk to Olivia about later,
but whether we do, we'll end up deciding whether or not he matters going forward.
Right. So whether this was a victory or a fail.
Why did he think he decided to do it Sunday? I thought that he'd wait until, like, to be the most dramatic moment possible right before shutdown.
Why did he decide to change his mind?
Was it the parade of Republicans on Fox News or congressmen pressuring him because they didn't want to come back to D.C. during a holiday week or what?
My guess is it's some of that.
But, you know, he had a golf game scheduled for this morning.
We know he already went to the course. So I think he might've had other plans. I wouldn't assume it was anything,
you know, bigger, generous. I assume that everything he does is more personal.
Right. More that he just didn't feel like doing it and just wanted to show he stopped.
Yeah. And he's surrounded by people who do that. You know, Steve Mnuchin,
our friend Stephanie Rule yesterday got a scoop. Steve Mnuchin flew to Cabo, Mexico, in a private jet. He was escorted to his house
by federales. You know, he wasn't there renegotiating additional money for people.
You know, the Secretary of the Treasury, who supposedly was in charge of the stimulus bill,
he was figuring out his own vacation plans. Same thing with Pence. Yeah, they were all going other places. So a lot of
Republicans said if he hadn't signed the bill, it would have hurt their chances for Georgia
in the coming weeks. Was he concerned about the runoff races, which will determine the controls?
Was this very hurtful in Georgia for Kelly and David on the Republican side or helpful
for John and Reverend Warnick on the other side? I think it's been a bad few weeks for Georgia
Republicans because of Donald Trump. And, you know, the Senate Republicans are doing everything
they can to push money and businesses to get in there and help them. But essentially, Donald Trump succeeded in stealing all of the thunder about the Georgia election for himself.
And, you know, I look, my personal theory is that he wants these Republican senators to lose.
Oh, tell me about that. Why? Because I think he is perfectly happy for the House to be
on fire when he leaves and he wasn't on the ballot. And he will say, look, when I'm not on
the ballot, when I'm not out there helping these people, Democrats win. So you got to get me back
there so that I can help Republicans. And so he takes credit for, you know, these Republicans being in office and he doesn't
want them to win when he's not there. Huh. So he's going there, what, next week, right? Is that a good
thing? Well, I don't, I think it might be a little too late. I mean, millions of people have already
voted. You know, we obviously only have a few days left. We'll see his, you know, whether his peak can do anything, whether he'll get there and call about, you know, his desire for $2,000.
That may be in Mitch McConnell's hands.
It'll be interesting to see if McConnell thinks that.
If they add to the stimulus.
If they add to the stimulus, that will be because Mitch McConnell will think that Donald Trump's message will be successful in Georgia, saying that, you know, I wanted to give you more money, but the Republicans wouldn't. But what we've seen from
this election in Georgia, the thing that interests me the most is how many people are invested in
government that doesn't work. And the reason we know that is because there are so many businesses and rich people who are giving money to the Republicans so that the Democrats don't take control of all three branches of government.
And that tells me that they don't want peace on earth.
They don't want the government to be effective for the people. They like the
gridlock. They like the drama because it serves their business interests. We're going to get to
that in a minute, but let me ask you a question. When you think about that, what is your assessment
of what's going to happen in Georgia? Do you have a prediction or do you see any trends? There's
been some troubling trends down ballot in Georgia. Republicans did really well. They did really well. We saw that the two Democratic candidates underperformed relative
to Joe Biden in November, so that getting those same voters back there for Joe Biden,
for Warnock and Ossoff is going to be a challenge. There's a renewed effort to get out the black
vote on the southern part of the state. So I look, I'm optimistic because I think that the
enthusiasm and the heart is on the Democratic side. And I think the Republicans are focused
on this kind of negativity around Donald Trump. And election fraud. And election fraud. But,
you know, having said that, the money advantage for Republicans is very significant. And so
whether that money advantage affects turnout is... Well, I think Democrats have raised more on the
lower end. They have more money. Democrats actually have more money. No, no, no, no. That's
a misnomer. Okay. The Democratic candidates have raised more in direct contributions, only about $50 million
more combined.
But the Republicans have raised over $300 million more, $300 million more in the so-called
dark money or soft money, so that the attack ads going against Ossoff and Warnock have been
funded by outside groups, which the Republicans have spent a significant more for.
What is their best message for the Republicans and what's the best message for Democrats?
Look, the Republicans best message is you can't let Joe Biden and the socialists take over Washington.
That's a message that has been effective in some places. And as we saw in November,
particularly where we lost a bunch of house seats and the Democrats best
message is that Republicans have not taken care of you.
They let you get sick.
They did not support you when you need it, when you're, you know,
friends and neighbors were out of work
and they've wanted to do more for you individually
and they've taken away your healthcare benefits.
And the only way to get it back is to give us control.
I see. Okay.
All right, Hillary, let's go on a quick break and we get back.
We'll talk about President-elect Joe Biden's cabinet picks
and how pro-business they are.
And then welcome friend of Pivot,
New York Magazine White House reporter, Olivia Nuzzi. 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.
And honestly, that's not what it is anymore.
That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.
These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists.
And they're making bank. Last year,
scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure
that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands,
of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized
criminal rings. And
so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better.
One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed
to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple.
We need to talk to each other.
We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize?
What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive?
Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam,
but he fell victim 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.
Hillary, we're back. We're going to talk about Joe Biden's cabinet picks. I know you're close
to the Biden folks. Progressives have been complaining that Biden's cabinet is way too
corporate friendly. There's no one in the cabinet to advocate for all the progressive things he
campaigned on. Free college, universal health care, Wall Street agenda, raise the minimum wage.
Reports from financial papers that Wall Street was thrilled about Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary.
BlackRock executive Brian Deese is being tapped to head the NEC.
Climate activists are suspicious of him as a placater.
He's always find a corporate-friendly way to compromise in the climate shift.
He defended Arctic drilling and used his influence to kill shareholder resolutions to make companies more sustainable.
So tell me, here's the relevant picks.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Economic Advisor Brian Deese, U.S. Trade Representative Catherine Tai, OMB Neera Tanden.
So is there no way Joe Biden can make people happy? I mean, Democrats don't love to be happy,
as you know. We don't love to be happy. We see the gray when there's potential black and white. And we kill our own. So you take
those three things, and there's no way that this transition would go as smoothly as a potential
alternative. Having said that, you know, I fully believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know
what brought them to the table. And what brought them to the table was this just giant
sense of three things, giant sense of inequity in the world today, in the United States today,
a pandemic that let the most vulnerable among us flounder, and a climate that is being ignored.
And so I fully believe that they know what they have to do, that they are putting people in place, not because they care more about companies than people. 20th with a fully in place group of people who can start acting immediately.
Right. Except that's the old tagline. It's the same old, same old people. And not, you know, you don't see an Elizabeth Warren on the cabinet. You don't see a Bernie Sanders getting a big role, AOC.
Bernie Sanders getting a big role, AOC.
Well, Elizabeth Warren's top economic person is actually going to be in the National Economic Council
next door to Brian Deese.
So you can be sure that a multitude of voices
are going to be there.
So what else would they need to do to ensure that?
Because they could spend a lot of time
fighting on all the flags, you know what I mean?
The business flank and the more pro-business
flank and the more progressive flank. How to avoid that or is it unavoidable?
I think that Joe Biden is feeling like this is not a trade-off he has to make right now.
I do think that the one issue that may end up defining that is something like,
who knows when they get around
to repealing the Trump tax cuts.
I think that the Biden team will be unlikely
to wanna shake up the economy
or do bad things for the economy,
that they'd rather stimulate the economy
by getting more money into the hands of individuals.
So I think that they're hoping that this is sort
of a false choice right now. They're going to sign the climate agreement, the Paris Accords,
the day that he gets inaugurated. They're going to reinstitute fuel efficiency standards that
the Trump team pulled back on and that the new energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, is committed to.
So I think that we will see a lot of action very quickly that will demonstrate that they actually are going to care about the issues that he ran on.
Are you worried about infighting, though? I mean, there is still sort of an opposition within the party, which is typical, but also you see it flare up.
Is it going to be a problem? The other issue is if they do lose in Georgia, there's going to be a
Senate that's not friendly to the change. Yeah. Georgia is everything, right? What happens
on January 5th is everything in terms of what they can do. I liked what AOC said recently,
I liked what AOC said recently, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said.
She said, it's actually our job to encourage the government to do as much as we can to further a progressive agenda.
And so let's not see policy fights as personal or problems.
Let's see them as, you know, desire to get to some good solution.
And, you know, I ascribe to that. That there can be. There can be. And by the way,
we're not lockstep. We won't fall in line the way that Republicans did with Donald Trump. The
Democrats will not do that for Joe Biden. And he has no such illusions that they will.
Well, how did they shake the populist part,
the populist attraction that Trump had and the idea that they're socialists? How do you,
you said that this is a factor in Georgia. How do you shake that, especially if you want to be
pro-business, if business wants this to be chaos in order to prevail? How do you shake that idea
of socialism? Yeah, I don't think he's coming to office to make
businesses feel better. Look, we have a stock market that's creating value in these companies
for shareholders in a very healthy way. But what it's not doing is bringing the bottom up. And that
I think is going to be his focus. So I don't think he's too worried about what companies say. I think he's more worried. And the accusations of socialism, I think he's actually more worried about the logistics of getting health care to more people and raising the minimum wage and requiring some standards. So from a business point of view, one of the issues he's inherited, a disaster.
Trump has left, speaking of burning down the house, it's really burnt. There's disaster all over the country. We still have to roll out vaccines. The country probably won't. Most
presidents have that year. This year is not going to be a year he's going to get
to roll out his big, giant, bold platforms. Is that a clue? Yeah, I think the Biden campaign
has created these four pillars,
if you don't know that.
The four pillars are getting the COVID pandemic
under control, rebuilding the economy,
instituting more racial equity
in cultural and business life,
and addressing climate change.
So they've said consistently
that those are their
four things. But the first issue is really number one, two, and three. And they know that if they
don't get this pandemic under control, businesses are screwed and people are screwed. And so that is,
I think, going to take up a huge amount of their energy. So Hillary, just to finish up on this,
one of the things that Democrats
have been that has united them has sort of been to be anti-Trump. Is that, that's not going to
work presumably anymore. I mean, he's going to float around, but we're going to talk in a second
with Olivia Nuzzi about that. But what is the organizing factor then if it's not Trump or can
it still be Trump? By the way, we still hate Trump this week and Trump next week.
Yeah, I think that gets, it's a great question. I think it gets to two big issues. The first
issue is just, are people going to disengage and ignore politics because they're so fucking
exhausted by Donald Trump? And, you know, the Biden team believes that one of the reasons he
was elected was that he would just calm the country down and they would not have to think about politics every day.
And that is going to be an operating principle of theirs.
They're not going to so-called feed the beast all the time, you know, generate a lot of news and make try and make people, you know, get all hyped up, etc.
get all hyped up, et cetera. And so it begs the question about if there are these policy fights,
since there will be such a close ratio between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and therefore be hard to get things done, how are they going to move the people to one side or the other
to get that kind of action? And so I think the jury is really out
on that. That's one big question for me. The other big question is, are we so conditioned now
about campaigning that the next presidential campaign, the next election will start on
January 21st because it's a disease. It's an addiction.
And, you know, whether we have decided that we can't make it happen any other way. And so
those two big questions I think the jury's out on, and I honestly don't know where we go with it.
Perfect, since we have a brand of pivot.
Perfect, since we have a friend of Pivot.
Olivia Nezzy's New York Magazine's White House reporter.
She is on the horn right now.
Olivia, welcome to Pivot.
Thank you for having me on the horn.
It's a horn we have.
So talk to us about this idea of what comes next.
I have a lot, we have a lot of questions for you.
I want it from whether Trumpers have started their rehabilitation campaigns, but
coming out of this, what, do we stay in a permanent campaign mode? Can we ever quit Donald Trump?
Well, I don't think it's just about Donald Trump. I think Hillary is right that this is kind of a
disease. I was just talking about this with an editor at New York Mag this morning, where our
politics is so broken that if you want to be a part of the conversation
in a meaningful way, if you want to be a part of the kind of crew of people who is quoted,
they're quoted a lot in stories, they're on cable news, maybe they have cable news contracts,
they get to decide in part what the quote unquote conversation is. The best way to do that is to run
for president. That's why you have Eric Swalwell or Pete Buttigieg or any number of people on the right. And we've seen this,
we saw this in 2012, famously with that enormous field. We saw it in 2016. We saw it most recently
on the left with the Democratic primary field. And I think we're going to see it starting
immediately. I think it's already begun on the right for 2024. You see people like Kristi Noem or even Chris Christie suggesting through their statements, through their motions, that they are already looking ahead to, you know, Iowa and New Hampshire.
think it is kind of a disease, not just on a personal level, that people become obsessed with the idea that they could be president and it's like a mental illness. But I think it's also a
disease in the media where we help to create this environment where that is the best way to have
your ideas heard. But part of it, and Hillary will have a question in a second, is Trump hasn't left.
Is he leaving? I mean, you covered him for so long
and you've had some of the best interviews.
The one of you in the office
as he kept bringing people to impress you
and was a classic.
But does he leave?
Does he, does he,
how does the leaving happen?
Because we still have the stupid January 6th thing
where everyone's worried about.
My birthday.
Yeah, whatever.
Really?
Yeah.
Happy birthday. It's important for so many reasons. Yeah, whatever. Really? Yeah. Happy birthday.
It's important for so many reasons.
Yeah.
So what happens in the next couple of weeks?
Sort of lay it out.
And then does he go or what?
Because a lot of what you're talking about
predicates the fact that he leaves the scene.
Right.
Well, it's hard to know.
I mean, he spent decades prior to his run in 2016
pretending that he was running for
president all to generate media attention. And at the beginning, you'll recall, of his run in 2015,
even after he made the announcement formally, it was still sort of conventional wisdom that it
wasn't real, right? That he was not really going to file the paperwork. I remember
that being a big thing in my newsroom at the time, like, wait till he actually files the paperwork,
don't pay attention to what he says. And obviously, the joke was on all of us. I'm still covering him
like five years later. But I think that he so when I talked to people who were close to him,
who talked to him a lot, the fact that he hates being president is so central.
You know, he hates the responsibilities of the office.
He likes to be in there because it makes him feel important.
He likes to give White House tours.
He likes to be in the Oval Office for purely superficial reasons and reasons relating to the ego.
But when it comes to actually governing, I mean, he just doesn't do it.
He sits it out most of the time.
Does he care about that though, Olivia?
Because you're exactly right.
He loves the trappings of the office,
but he seems to have zero interest in the actual job.
But that's our analysis.
Does he actually care that he has no interest in the job
or are the trappings so attractive?
I mean, it's hard to know, right? Without being in his head, I would love to be in his head, but it's hard to know.
All that I can do is talk to people who talk to him a lot, right. And people who work for him.
And, and those people have said for years now, and especially now that he's had to,
he doesn't have to pretend to be even mildly interested in it anymore because it is over. And he knows that it's over, even if he's not saying that out loud, or he doesn't have to pretend to be even mildly interested in it anymore because it is over.
And he knows that it's over, even if he's not saying that out loud or he doesn't want to talk
about it. He has no interest. He's a man with no intellectual curiosity, right? We've seen that
again and again for years now. And so I find it very difficult to believe that in all of his
exhaustion, when he finally leaves and he heads back to Mar-a-Lago permanently, that he's going to want to do anything other than the stuff that he enjoys
from the campaign trail. He likes to be out in front of a crowd. He loves his rallies, right?
He loves to get the energy from a crowd to feel important, to be leading on every cable news chyron, right? He loves to drive a news cycle.
But when it comes to actually getting into a race again,
when it comes to all of the complications that that entails,
I don't know if he's really going to want to do it.
And so many people I talk to who are close to him say, like, there is a certain amount of relief that they detect when they speak to him now.
So you've been to how many rallies?
You've been to... I have no idea. Lots and lots. So how do you, how do the Trumpers, the people who
have been supportive of him and who haven't said anything, no matter how egregious what he says,
including around election fraud recently, how do they, how do they stick with him and yet not,
or is there, Chris Christie seems to be going a different way, you know, like doubting him and throwing a little bit of dirt on the Trump machine the way
others, when Reagan wasn't around, they did not do. They sort of wrapped themselves in Reagan,
despite lots of problems with Reagan, but he was, you know, affable and people had an affection for
him. In this case, what's the best strategy to wrap yourself in Trump or is that a mistake? Well, I think it's kind of like, it's not going to matter. If you
wrap yourself in Trump right now, and then the second that he's gone and 2024 begins in earnest
for people like Kristi Noem or Nikki Haley or whoever else starting to run, Josh Hawley,
I think that people have fairly short memories. I mean, if the architects of the Iraq
War can have MSNBC contracts and be out there on cable news all the time, I don't think that
as much as we would like to believe that those people will be shunned from polite society,
I think history suggests otherwise. And I don't think that it, I think it might matter to the president's base you know to see who is
supporting him now who jumps when he says jump but I think that when it comes to the general
public and people who casually observe this stuff I don't think it's going to matter that much I
think people are probably going to be able to have it both ways as much as we would like to think that you can't.
That's smart. Do you think that the pardons and what the legal situation will end up being with
him will have an impact on this? Because if he is all of a sudden really mired in just constant legal problems that it will end up finally penetrating
and that people will, you know, distance themselves from it. I heard Michael Cohen this week, who you
know well and you've interviewed multiple times, make an interesting prediction that Donald Trump
won't pardon his own children or Jared because he
doesn't want any of them to lose their Fifth Amendment rights. Because, you know, when you
pardon someone, they lose their Fifth Amendment rights and you have the ability to testify
and cannot refuse to tell the truth. And so there's a theory that he's not going to pardon
anyone who could actually testify against him, including
his own children. That's smart. So that there's a, that there's just this sense that he will be
consumed with legal troubles. Yeah, I mean, and that's something that he's been aware of. I've
talked to people close to the president who say that he is terrified of the idea that he might find himself arrested or in
serious legal jeopardy post-presidency. It's something that he's certainly thought about
for years now. I mean, if you're Donald Trump, think about how many people you know who have
been in prison over the last several years, right? A lot of members of his social circle were imprisoned. And I imagine
that that kind of rattles you. I imagine that that kind of rattles you, kind of like a death.
And it's something that he has certainly been preoccupied by. I mean, it's not fake news that
he has talked openly about whether or not he is able to pardon himself.
It is a preoccupation for him.
All right.
But one of the things that he's been doing, too, the preoccupation is this election fraud.
Now, you wrote a fantastic piece about Four Seasons, totally.
It's so good.
Very important.
Thank you.
So what was the funniest part of that?
And what do you think was the most important part of that? You know, Julianne, and you keep tweeting at Giuliani to call you,
which is both pathetic and fantastic at the same time.
But tell me about what the funniest part of that was
and what it meant with him sticking with all these sort of just awful people,
whether it's Sidney Powell, who was in the White House,
or whether it was Giuliani, I think is probably the
king of all of them. But what have you brought away from your experience with these sort of
freaks, this freak show? You know, I didn't find any of it particularly funny. And I think it's
because I actually slept through the actual Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference,
and I woke up to just like thousands of messages from people asking me to
figure out what had happened. And so when I finally saw it, I kind of,
I was never in on the joke the way that everyone who experienced it in real
time was. But I felt like that gave me
enough distance to kind of approach it analytically in a way that maybe I
wouldn't have if I had experienced it as a meme in real time.
So my sleeping late, I think, worked in my favor once.
But I don't know if any of it was particularly funny.
I thought it was more disturbing than anything else that in after election or after election night, people started, people around the president,
multiple people reported to me that they were just outright avoiding him and that it was no
longer worth it. They didn't use these terms, but from my own perspective, it's like the,
whatever you might gain from dealing with this fucking lunatic, right. From being verbally
abused by him, from tiptoeing around him,
from trying to very carefully navigate a conversation with him without angering him.
You can't gain that anymore, right? It doesn't matter if you have proximity to a loser, right?
You're not going to get the White House job of your dreams or whatever in the last month.
And so a lot of people around the president were like literally not going into
work or were showing up very late or were just staying away from the Oval Office and were only
around him when he personally summoned them. And those interactions were extraordinarily brief.
And in that vacuum came the crazies. And this has always been the case for Trump, right? Anytime
that he's left alone, whether it's late at night, early in the morning, anytime he's left to his own devices,
he is calling up people on the phone. Crazies and sycophants. Totally. Getting in touch. Telling
him how wonderful he is. Exactly. Getting in touch with people who make him feel better,
who tell him what he wants to hear, who energize him, right? Who tell him it's not over, sir.
Stay in the fight. He loves to hear that shit.
And it is because of that, that entire mess of a legal strategy, if you could call it that,
unfurled. And you had this kind of old school for Trump, in the beginning of the Trump presidency,
this was always the case, but it was especially true in like the first nine months that the infighting consumed like 80% of everyone's time internally. They just spent their days knifing each other and leaking against
each other. And there was kind of something reminiscent of that with the legal team,
where you had the litigators and quote unquote serious people on the one side who were ready
to deal with Supreme Court cases, were ready to deal
with serious legal challenges. And when I talked to those people, they were just furious. And
it was unbelievable to hear their disappointment at this stage, because if you've been paying even,
you know, moderate attention, you know what this is all about, you know how it works.
But I think you've kind of got to be a bit of an optimist and a bit of an idiot to stick around for that long. And these people were
newly disappointed by Trump's willingness to let the show take over. And people like Sidney Powell
and Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, they kind of filled the void left by the people who might
ordinarily, you don't have to think that they're ordinarily, you don't have to think that they're
good people, you don't have to think that they were effective, but they might ordinarily at
least argue with Trump or present Trump with inconvenient information or something to
complicate the narrative. They were kind of out of sight, out of mind. And yet everybody talks. I
mean, that's the other thing that fascinates me is that
everybody talks. And so, you know, I'm so curious about this because you are, you're not just a
brilliant reporter, you're also a really lucky reporter. And you kind of have a really broad
birth, right? You can sort of write about what, you know, any aspect of politics that, you know, feels important in the moment. And so I'm
wondering, like, is the media addicted to this crazy? Because the point Karen made is the right
one, which is we have between now and January 20th, and then we have post-January 20th. So
is there, you know, what happens post-January 20th around the crazy, around the Trump attention? What do you think?
I think there will always be interest in him. And I think there's a bit of Stockholm syndrome
for some reporters, right? And certainly some members of the media. I mean, we're all addicted
to conflict, right? Everyone wants to talk about the left or the right bias in the media, but it's
more true to say that we're biased towards conflict.
If there's no change, right,
if there's no friction,
then there's no story.
And so I think people are always going to be interested in whoever it is
generating the most conflict,
and that is reliably Donald Trump.
And I think that he will continue
to be important to Republican politics, right?
If we're wondering, as you do after any election, what becomes of the party that lost?
It's not as though you can explore that without exploring what becomes of Donald Trump and how he continues to affect things.
And so I think he'll continue to be important to the story. I think the question is like, if he summons a press conference at Trump Tower in,
I don't know, March, are we all going to show up?
Are you?
I am, yeah.
You are.
What about you, and I have two more quick questions,
and we got to go.
Giuliani, what happens to him?
I have no idea.
I hope he calls me.
I'd love to ask him about it.
I don't know what happens to him.
I mean, people who worked for him for a long time, who admired him when they felt there was something to still admire,
talk about him like this great tragedy. This man who is just withered before their eyes has
succumbed to God knows what and completely destroyed his legacy. And to quote him
from our interview, right? I mean, I asked him, what do you say about your legacy. And to quote him from our interview, right?
I mean, I asked him, what do you say about your legacy?
And he said, I'm paraphrasing,
but he said, my opinion on my legacy is fuck it.
Yeah, yeah, well, there you have it.
And badly, by the way, bad, bad fucking,
he's done it himself.
So last question, as a reporter,
can you get excited about covering the Biden campaign
or administration?
What's your strategy?
I can.
I mean, I prior to-
Zeroing in on.
I can.
I had a very short career prior to Trump, right?
I got my, that was the first campaign I ever covered.
This is the first White House I've ever covered.
But prior to Trump, I thought that if I had a talent, it was for identifying the interesting characters kind of on the periphery and the people sort of outside of where reporters usually looked, who might be influencing things in a different way. And so I'm kind of excited to be able to be creative again and to not have to
focus on the gigantic circus that is at the center of everything.
Who are you focusing on?
Who are you focusing on?
Who piques your Olivia Nuzzi interest right now?
Oh, I can't tell you that because they might get scared.
Oh, well, they're already scared.
But you think that you can find things, you can find.
It's certainly not not circus freak time.
It's sort of like going from a Ryan Murphy thing to something else.
But with Trump, I'm not the first person to say this,
but it's like if you just described in plain prose what was happening,
you sounded like Hunter Thompson, right?
Right.
I didn't take any special skill to find something hilarious or poetic
or fucked up about Donald Trump. But I'm excited to
kind of report on things that are not so obvious now. It's been a bit exhausting and it's felt a
bit ridiculous at times, just devote so much energy to something that's playing out before
everyone's eyes that anyone who's half conscious could notice, right?
I think it'll be interesting to have to work a little bit harder to understand people, again,
in politics and their motives and what they believe, right? But they're not just shouting
at you in all caps. Yeah, the Republican side will be interesting. Is there any candidate you
are interested in on that side?
I'm fascinated by Christine Elm.
Yeah, me too.
Absolutely fascinated.
We got to talk about that when this podcast is over.
All right.
Okay, good.
She doesn't hold that fascination for me.
Oh, I think she is.
Well, you just wait.
I'll show you. Smart Sarah Palin, or maybe not.
I don't know.
I feel like Nikki Haley's probably got more skills.
Christine Ohm seems to have stumbled a lot
during this pandemic.
Well, we'll see.
Olivia, get on there on a plane.
Get on a plane.
I've never been to Mount Rushmore.
I'm excited.
Oh, well, you'll see.
Anyway, Olivia, thank you so much for doing this.
And good luck in the next iteration.
Are you going to miss Trump?
No, I can't.
Don't ask me that.
Don't cancel me.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Bye.
Thank you.
All right, Hillary, one more quick break.
We'll be back for wins and fails.
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, Hillary, here's the part of the show
where we decide who is winning and who is failing.
So I would like your wins and fails this week, please.
You know, my win is not,
I swear I'm not kissing his ass. I've known him for 40 years. I
don't have to. But Joe Biden consistently impresses me over these last few weeks. You got to give it
to him. He has been classy. He's been thoughtful. He hasn't, you know, made a lot of mistakes that,
you know, he had a reputation of being gaffe prone.
And every time he shows up, even when he's spontaneously speaking,
and he has done that a lot.
Well, he is standing next to a dumpster fire.
But still he's,
I think he is inciting a level of calm and among people that,
that is comforting. And so he's my win for the year.
He definitely has a Gramps vibe, a good Gramps vibe.
A good Gramps vibe, but a smart Gramps vibe. So I'm feeling good about that.
All right.
The fail, look, it's too easy to blame Trump and the congressional Republicans for this fail.
It's too easy to blame Fox News for this fail, even though
weren't we personally delighted
to see Rupert Murdoch finally attack Trump in the New York Post today? Of course he was going to do
that. Of course he was going to do that. But he doesn't do it on Fox News though because he can't
afford the ratings competition, right? Never turn your back on Uncle Satan, I say, but go ahead.
So I'm going to say that the fail has to go
to those Americans that still are not
taking this pandemic seriously,
that are just buying it.
It's like one thing to spout the stupid,
it's another thing to listen to the stupid
and not turn your back on it.
And when you still have every single day
people throwing their masks away, not putting them on, ignoring it, and pretending that these holiday
travels are not relevant to people getting sick, that, you know, that's a big fail.
Yes, I would agree with you. I think it's interesting, though. I think at some point
when there's a reassessment of this, we do have to look at what works and what doesn't work. You know what I mean? In terms of politicizing something that should
have just been sensible. And I think having a side either you had to shut down or you had to stay
open, it's not, neither of which was smart because a lot of stuff we don't know what worked, but
certainly masks and social distancing works. But the way it got so quickly politicized largely
because of a reaction to Trump was, I think it probably was impossible not to, but the way it got so quickly politicized, largely because of a reaction to Trump,
I think it probably was impossible not to,
but there's going to be a lot of reassessment everywhere.
Yeah, there would have been more.
That's a fair point.
There would have been more patience for learning on the job
if it were not for Donald Trump.
Yes, yes, 100%.
And so I think it's really,
it's an interesting time to reassess. I just think you're not going to convince people that shut, I still hear it from a lot more people like these shutdowns are bad. I'm like, it's complex. People and a fail in the Washington Post about a young man who put up a short video
of a young woman, a white woman, saying a terrible word,
and she got tossed out of college.
And of course, it started again,
the whole cancer culture brigade on it.
But it was a very complex story.
It was a, and I liked that.
I was like, this is not an easy thing.
And, you know, of course, the cancer culture people are like, oh, it's all right. Because they think that's the most
important topic of our age right now, despite all these people losing jobs and having hunger issues,
which I think are bigger. It is unbelievable how it takes over, right?
Yeah. Oh, it's ridiculous. But what it is, is the idea that it's complex. And I thought that story,
if you read any story this week, that one really was
because you can't come to easy conclusions
on either side.
And that's, I think,
where we have to get to.
Reprehensible, what she said at the same time
was this idea of how we,
complexity should be back.
That's why complexity is a difficult thing
to do in this world.
And I think once Donald Trump leaves,
I think things aren't going to be,
things are complex.
Complex, I say.
It is, but it puts more on us on all of us to,
you know, for our own behavior, right?
Yes, that's true.
In terms of how much we're willing to listen.
That's true.
But I'm still mad at my mom
for going to inside restaurants
and showing up at my house without a mask.
Yeah.
Well, certain things won't change.
And that's including your relationship with your mother.
That's true.
That's true.
Okay, Hillary, that's the show.
Thank you so much for being on.
It's a lot of great insight to politics.
So let me ask you for one prediction because we don't usually do predictions for you.
January 20th, does Donald Trump fade away or does he continue?
If you're part of the Biden administration, what's the strategy with him?
If he keeps making noise or he announces something, he's going to do crazy things between now,
whether it's I might do martial law, I might do the Insurrection Act, all this stuff that
they keep popping out there.
What do you expect on January 20th?
Well, I know the Biden people are expecting to ignore Donald Trump and what he does.
They don't expect him to show up at the inauguration and they expect him to try and create some alternative event or news.
And they're going to ignore him.
I think whether the media does and whether the public does is an open question.
We heard from Olivia that they probably won't ignore him because he's too tempting as a, you know, a conflict figure. But I'm pretty
confident that the Biden folks are going to try and move this country along. So thank you next.
Yeah. Or not thank you. No, thank you. No, thank you. Next. Okay. All right right i'll be taking a rest this new year's eve hillary thank you so
much thanks for having me back in your feeds next tuesday i have another guest who is stephanie
rule at this point um and then my son and casey newton are coming on for another one until scott
gets back as a reminder we love listener mail questions we're trying something new go to new
ny mag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the Pivot podcast.
The link is in our show notes.
And I'm going to read us out.
Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis
and Camila Salazar. Ernie
Indridot engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows.
Make sure you're subscribed to the show on
Apple Podcasts, and if you're an Android user,
check us out on Spotify or, frankly,
wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our 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 another breakdown
of all things tech and business. 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.
Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo.
You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you.
Deliver that feeling to your customers every time.
Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections
across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count.
Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond.
Make every moment count with Klaviyo.
Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM.