Pivot - X Blocked in Brazil, Nvidia Wipeout, and the Fuss Over Founder Mode

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Kara and Scott are reunited and it feels so good! They talk about the latest election polls, tech stocks continuing to struggle, and Apple's role in child safety legislation. Then, after Brazil blocks X, will other countries take on Elon Musk? Plus, what the heck is founder mode and why is everyone in Silicon Valley talking about it? Finally, a listener mail question about the future of Trump Media, as the stock plummets to new lows. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And what day is it today? It is, I don't know, what is the answer to that, Kara? Scott is back. The end of Scott Free August. But you know what, Kara? Seriously, I don't want to make a big deal out of this. We should just get, you know, I hate it when the news is about the person. It should just be about the news.

So let's just, it's not about me. Let's just bust right into the news. Oh no. What's going on here? Is it the world's greatest podcaster? Nope. Daddy loves his vaccines. Is it a tech bro that supports Trump? No, I'm not in a fucking reasonable facsimile of a man.

My testicles have descended. Is it, is it a useful idiot on campus? Nope, I don't have my head up my ass. Ladies and gentlemen, DJ Drew, start over. Start over. Rewind. Let's light this bitch again. That's right, ladies. That's right. You want to know how this became the most popular podcast in the world? One word. Midriff. That's right. That's right. You feeling a little warm, ladies? Surrender to the dog. True story.

True story. I had sex with a blind man this quarter, this summer, and he said, that's the biggest stick I've ever had my hands on. And I said, you're pulling my leg. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's the dog! Oh, my God. That's right. You're welcome. You're welcome. Oh, my God. I's right. You're welcome.

You're welcome. Oh, my God. I don't know. I think we should just stop the show now. I can feel my prostate. I'm touching it. Oh, my God. I can feel my prostate. God, it was such a quiet August.

It was so nice. We had Mike. This is not Adi Cornish. This is not Adi Cornish. I'm already friends with Mike, so I think I could be good, good friends with Adi Cornish. With Adam Grant, your nemesis. He was here. We had Louis Swisher.

I keep typing into ChatGP2 who's the most influential academic in the world and always comes back Adam Grant. Yeah. And if I narrow it down to NYU professors in marketing who have a podcast, I come in like eighths. I have a way. Do you know Trump's son, Barron, is going to NYU. If you suddenly go back and actually teach, maybe you could cause an incident. I saw that.

Perhaps an incident. If you want to beat Adam Grant, you need to teach Barron Trump. That's my... I don't know what that says about NYU. I have a lot of mixed emotions around that. Tell me. Tell me. Very briefly. Well, I wish we had a basketball team. Isn't he like 7'8"? Yes. He's very tall. I think he's like 6'7". Yeah. He's even taller very briefly. Well, I wish we had a basketball team. Isn't he like seven foot eight? Yes, he's really tall.

I think he's like six, seven. Yeah, he's even taller than Alex. Whatever. I hope he has a wonderful experience in NYU. I don't have a problem with this. Well, maybe if you want to be an influential academic, you could actually teach classes that I don't know. Oh, you're getting on that train now?

My students give me a hard time for being a professor in name only. Yeah. Here's the thing. I love NYU except for the faculty and the students. Other than that, I'm so on board with everything. Actually, I do miss the students. Very briefly, tell me about what you did in August. Tell us.

Well, you did see each other at the DNC. You were back briefly for that. We had a great time there. But what did you do? We had a nice time. That was nice. And you were very generous. Just being serious for a moment, you literally took me by the hand figuratively and led me around and introduced me to people.

I did. It was actually very nice. It was nice. It was a nice moment for us. I was in Nantucket. And then the highlight was I went to Brazil. And I was there when Twitter was banned. And you know what? The beef is just as good and the women and the men are just as hot.

I did not see much of a difference. I love Brazil. Have you been to Brazil, Kara? Yes, many times. I love Brazil. It's great. Love Brazil. Yeah, it's a terrific country. Where were you? I was in Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo, yeah.

I used to go to Rio and Floripa. Now I go to Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo is cool. I absolutely loved it. It's like New York City. It's even bigger in so many ways. It's such a cool city. I would say Rio is like LA and Sao Paulo is like New York. Yeah. So the crowd looked insane. It looked insane. Were they caring about this whole thing with Elon? We'll get to him. My general impression is it's a huge nothing burger and Twitter is not relevant in Brazil. Yeah, it isn't. No one in QAnon even asked about it.

Can I ask you, by the way, I visited Scott in Nantucket. I visited with the family. You had a nice time. We had a lovely time. You gave lovely advice to my son Alex. And Louis was there. Everybody was there. But let me, what else, how did you look upon your time away? What did you reflect upon? We're going to go through a bunch of stories,

but was it nice and relaxing? I think you miss talking about things. There's so much news. Yeah, it's trying to, though. I mean, I'm trying to have moments of silence and stillness in my life, if you will, and I'm going to start. And I cheated a few times,

and I'm going to start. Every year I do more in August. I take a break from processed food. I try and take a break from media. Next year I'm going to go dark on social. I'm not going to be, I'm. I try and take a break from media. Next year, I'm going to go dark on social. I'm going to try and turn off my email. I may even take a break from my phone. I don't know if I can do that for 30 days. But I like the idea of, like, I really enjoy silent retreats, which doesn't surprise anyone who knows me. But I like the idea of being

very still and very silent in August and only having my family around me. Yeah. So we'll see. But that's not something I think you're good at. And neither am I, I would say. No, I have trouble. But the problem is I re-engage and I get upset at shit. Yeah. Well, there's been a lot of news, let's be clear, like this whole election thing. And it's stuff that interests you. There's all kinds of business news. There's a lot going on. It used to be there was a quietness to August, and now it's just not the case. And speaking of which, we've got a lot to get to today, including NVIDIA's major wipeout, Brazil's X-BAM. We'll talk about that in more detail and why, and more other stuff, and why everyone is suddenly talking about founder mode.

I'm very excited to hear your thoughts on this. But first, Vice President Kamala Harris, just barely ahead of former President Donald Trump in several battleground states. According to a new CNN poll, Harris leads Trump in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, though she's either within or just outside the margin of error. You know, she's ahead. She's ahead. If this had been Trump, they'd call it a landslide. Two candidates, the difference of how people talk about her and him is really quite severe. The two candidates are tied in Pennsylvania, apparently, and Trump leads Harris in Arizona. I'm not sure I believe that. This CNN poll was conducted after the convention. Thoughts on this? And we're a few days away from the debate.

How are you feeling? According to the latest ABC rules, the microphones will be muted when a candidate isn't speaking, which is not what the Harris campaign wanted, but it was the original rules of the engagement, which was better for Biden in that case. Agreed. of the engagement, which was better for Biden in that case. Agreed. Especially right now, VP Harris has an advantage of at least four points in the state polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which would give her enough electoral votes to win the presidency even if she lost the other swing states. And the caveat here, and you get

nervous even saying this because you want to make sure people are motivated. And there's also a very real caveat in that most polls tend to overestimate support for the Democrat. There's a lot of closeted Trumps out there. right now, she has momentum and momentum creates momentum. I thought her first interview with Donna, oh, actually, let me ask you, what did you think of her interview with Donna Bash? Well, interestingly, I'm interviewing Dana Bash. Dana, sorry, Dana. Dan, excuse me, Dana Bash. Let's pronounce it. Our good friend, Dana, whose name I can't pronounce. Yeah. I'm interviewing her tonight, so I'm going to ask her about it directly. I thought it was fine. I've about it directly. I thought it was fine. I told her this.

I thought it was, it felt like an interview from a different era, I guess. And I mean, like, yesterday. Like, it was, things have changed so drastically, it requires a different kind of interview, right? Given the unprecedented nature of what's happening now. Not just in media, but in this particular election. I thought it was a little backward looking and I would have made it more forward looking. Obviously, people have criticized her about follow ups. I wouldn't have let her get away with the I think it was fine.

People criticize her for asking the question about the turning black thing. But I thought that was a legitimate question. I would have leaned forward more. And again, Wallace being there, vice presidents have been in lots of them, seemed a little bit awkward. So I might have done a little more with that because he was sitting there like a bump on a log. But otherwise, it was in the old days, it would have been, and I mean, like last year, it would have been fine. But I just think it's unusual. I don't know. What did you think? I had a lot of thoughts. The first is we both really like Dana.

And when you're picked to be the person to interview the leading candidate for president, it kind of says you're the premier, one of the premier journalists in the world. So I was happy for Dana just on a personal level. And I thought she did a good job. I thought it was a huge mistake to bring an emotional support animal called Walls. I just thought that was dumb and a mistake on their part. Well, it's happened before. Let's be clear. I want to be absolutely clear. Every single presidential candidate has brought their vice president in the first or second interview. But go ahead. I thought it just seemed weird. And she's trying to show the world that she is ready for prime time and that she can be a singular figure as president.

And I don't think that was a good idea. Anyways, I thought it was a giant nothing burger. I don't think she hurt herself. I don't think she helped herself. It just was totally forgettable. But at this point, that's a win for them because they have so much momentum. Yeah. But at this point, that's a win for them because they have so much momentum. You know, at this point, it's about, I don't want to say not playing to lose, but they just want to keep doing what they're doing and sort of starch the likelihood of sort of an exogenous big event. It's like when you're up, you don't want to debate and she'll have to.

But it was just sort of, I thought of it as just a nothing burger that will go down in history as nothing. I agree. I think one of the things she does have to show is her delightfulness was on display, as you know, at the convention. I thought she did a great, that was a great speech. I thought the whole thing was beautifully produced, etc. And I have a good feeling. I think in this debate, she's got to show her, not spicy side, but her funny, joyful side, I think, and compare it to Trump's dark, dank, stupid side. I think it's important to be reminded. You just can't be, I know you think it's important to be dull, but I think she needs to show why we like her.

I think likability matters a great deal here. And that she's a leader, not silly. I don't think she should say, excuse me, I'm speaking or anything. She can't anger men. And he can is the lowest in the U.S. of any GA7 nation, while growth is the strongest. We have created in three and a half years more jobs and have created an eight. She just needs to be just so ready with receipts, which is stats, to say, well, actually, let me tell you what the actual truth is. Inflation is a function of a supply shock in Europe because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, because of supply chain interruptions in China. And because, you know, we probably overdid it in our administration. I think she should say that. And the thing I would really hammer home is I would say I would just go after him for tariffs and say, I can't believe I'm telling a Republican this. The tariffs are nothing but taxes and nothing but inflationary.

But tariffs are nothing but taxes and nothing but inflationary. And a combination of tariffs in conjunction with an anti-immigration stand all leads to one thing, much, much higher prices. So this is tariff Trump. Goldman Sachs just said that, too. I mean, like a lot of, a lot. What does he have to do? I mean, he's sort of a baked in character. We kind of know him. And so he gets a pass on all kinds of nonsense that she doesn't, right? He can say all kinds of whack stuff. And the media, I mean, actually, let me give a shout out to Jeff Goldberg from The Atlantic, who has a show on Sunday where he's like, why does he get such a low bar and she doesn't? Like, this is ridiculous. He gets to say all manner of crazy shit and put together word salads of Cognitive Disabled. And nobody, everyone's like, oh, it's Trump. What does he have to do not seem old and decrepit, right, and crazy, correct? I mean, yeah, he's, the bar is so low. If I were in the Trump campaign, I would try and come up

with some, you know, sentences that actually have, you know, a subject and an adverb and a period and some actual data. This is how we're, you know, a policy. This is, the border's out of control. These are the three things we're going to do in the next 12 months. I mean, if he just kind of outlines some reasonable policies that appeal to Republicans and, and, you know, there's, there's a lot of appeal for some of the policy decisions he thinks of. And on some of it, on some of it, his instincts, I mean, his instincts on TikTok were correct, but he has absolutely no idea how to implement it. His instincts, he actually, to his credit, he got China right. He said that the trade- Although he then flipped, of course. He's the flip-flopper.

But he said initially the trade relationship is asymmetric, and he was right. He needs to have a series of themes with some data. If he just comes across, I think it's somewhat of themes with some data, if he just comes across, I think it's somewhat presidential and reasonable and attempts to say things like going after Biden or saying anything that is, you know, marginally or even an adjacent to an insult or infers anything about race or misogyny. I mean, I would just say to him, look, you can't act like you're president. Can you just act like you're a senator or a reasonable congressperson here? Because I think his fans are so rabid and so committed that in some ways they're his to lose, and he's losing them right now. Yeah.

Yeah. So he can't be crazy. He can't anger women, and I think he's going to. I think he can't. Him across from a woman of color who's younger, who he thinks is pretty, is, I think, very disturbing for him. Very dangerous. Unless they drug him in some way. Unless they drug him in some way. They give him some calming, like, have this drink, sir, right before.

He has the danger of word salad and seeming old. That's the thing. He looks old next to her, and she is attractive and sharping old. That's the thing. He looks old next to her and she is attractive and sharp and funny. And I think probably she's got the bigger lift in that she can't make any mistakes. He's allowed to make a normal. Anyway, we'll see. I don't know if I'm going to watch it. It'll upset me, I think. Yeah, I'm literally too scared to watch it. But the missed opportunity for both campaigns, and I was on Joy Reid, I think it was yesterday. What's interesting is everybody thought this election was going to be a referendum on women's rights. But the reality is in terms of winning the election, Harris, Walls have young women wrapped up.

Democrats, 85 percent believe that abortion should be available in almost all cases. Old men or older men, Trump has them wrapped up. He just has them wrapped up. The swing voters here, just as a small number of states are really important. I think the swing voters here come down to, believe it or not, young men. I think they're the new swing voters. Why? Because they're not moving towards the Republican Party. They're not misogynist turning to the manosphere typically. What's happening is they're turning away from the Democratic Party. I went on the

Democratic Party site. It has, on the DNC site, dnc.org, it has a section that says, who we serve. And it lists 16 demographic groups, everyone from Asians and Pacific Islanders to veterans, seniors, the disabled, blacks, women. I mean, it goes through, I added it all up, and by my calculations, it's somewhere between 70 and 80% of the populace. But who do they say they don't represent? Men. Young men, yeah. And when you're looking at the actual statistics around young men and how poorly they're doing, four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted,

half as likely or a third as likely to go to college. Families sense what's going on. And the reason they're attracted to this weird bullshit on the Republican side or the manosphere is at least they feel seen. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I agree. Go ahead. Sorry.

If I were the Harris campaign, I'd immediately outline a series of like vocational programs, national service, expanded freshman seats. Talk about the fact that the Infrastructure Act, the jobs there that they're creating, 70% of them are for non-college educated men, and they don't even want to take a victory lap there. Anyways, I think young men are the swing voters here. I got to tell you, though, I think Walls is a plus in that regard. My sons both love him. Like, I was surprised. I was like, oh, really? They're like, no, we love him.

We love him. He's so cool. Like, they really, they, there's something about, they hate J.D. Vance. He reminds them of someone in school they don't like. Like, you know, the asshole. And Walls, they love him. Like, a coach or a teacher. He reminds everyone of some teacher they had.

And I don't know. I think I'm surprised how much they like him. You know, he's the guy that invites you over for Bible study and won't stop offering you a massage. Yeah. Oh, that's Walls? No, that's Vance. Oh, Vance. That's Vance.

Vance, not Walls. No. Anyway, this is interesting, though. Speaking of Manosphere, the DOJ is alleging in an indictment that Russia funded U.S. media company as part of an influence operation during the election. The company, which has been identified as Tenet Media, features a number of right-wing commentators. In fact, the whole pile of the worst ones with large social followings, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, both said in statements they are victims of the alleged scheme and maintain editorial control of the content they created. You know, this is not what a surprise. The Russians are trying to take advantage of these people and use their social media operations to do so.

Useful idiots, I think, pretty much. I'm not sure what else to say. One of our great attributes as Americans is our optimism. But the downside to that is that Americans are easier to fool than convinced we've been fooled. Right. And this has been going on for a while. And to believe that the CCP accidentally has exponentially more videos being served that are in Chinese interests versus American interests, to not recognize we do the same thing overseas with our well-funded American psyops group. And to just make it, I mean, it's not surprising that they're doing this. What's shocking is how easy we make it. And then all of this falls under, and this kind of leaks into

other stories, this weird notion that free speech trumps defense, it trumps criminal activity. That free speech trumps defense. It trumps criminal activity. And it's nothing but an umbrella, usually for tech bros, to engage in inappropriate practices and behavior and not be subject to the same scrutiny. And that's the truth here. We should shut this shit down immediately. Absolutely. They have no excuse.

They always try to pretend the Russians aren't. Of course the Russians involve you dumbasses. And of course they're giving you money. You think people really, really think you're great, that you're making a ton of money for them? No, they want to influence. You're just useful idiots. I don't know what else to say. And I'd love to talk to any of you about it and talk about your victimization. September is off to a rocky start for the markets. On Tuesday, the major U.S. exchanges had their worst day since the huge sell-off last month. Markets remain unsettled on Wednesday as tech stocks continue to fall. NVIDIA in particular has been struggling.

Its stock dropped 9.5% on Tuesday, wiping out $279 billion in market cap, the biggest one-day decline for a U.S. company in history. Well, it came from a high spot. Let's talk about investors being concerned about the uncertainty. Is it temporary for NVIDIA? being concerned about the uncertainty? Is it temporary for NVIDIA? Obviously, NVIDIA is also under DOJ scrutiny, the Department of Justice scrutiny, antitrust investigation, which is another thing hanging around their neck. It has acknowledged it's been in touch with the DOJ, but denied having received a subpoena, which was reported by Bloomberg. Talk a little bit about

this, about the overall market sell-off, and then NVIDIA in particular, because that was the one that was keeping it up. Well, market dynamics will trump individual performance. And you talk about flows of capital in and out of the market. And typically, September is a bad month in the markets. And I think the last four Septembers, the S&P has declined 4.2%. Why? Because people are back and paying attention or what? Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know if it's tax planning. I don't know what it is. That's the correct question. I don't have a good answer. But four Septembers in a row, it's been off over 4%. What you usually also have is now that the Fed has signaled rate cuts, typically the market is up 17% the following 12 months after a rate cutting cycle begins. I think in the case of NVIDIA, we're going to look for all sorts of reasons. They actually beat their projected numbers.

It was an outstanding quarter on every level. But when you have a company that has a valuation that is as what the motor and highlighted, built into that valuation is the assumption that NVIDIA will dominate another industry, not AI, another one in addition to AI that's as big as AI and dominate it with the same level of market share in order to justify this current valuation. And so any hint of it's just not out of control growth that blows away every expectation is going to take the stock down because it could get cut by 50% and it still would have been one of, it'll still be one of the out-of-control growth that blows away every expectation is going to take the stock down. Because it could get cut by 50%, and it'll still be one of the best stock performers over the last three years. So this is the mother of all out-in-front-of-your-skis kind of valuation.

And the next one that will probably get hit, if there's any creeping rationalization around AI, hit, if there's any creeping rationalization around AI, will be Microsoft, who's had a huge run-up because people believe that they're one of the biggest beneficiaries of this AI wave. But my prediction, I'm putting it on my prediction deck for 2025. And one of the things I was thinking about is, I think AI finally gets traction in the real economy in 2025. I've been using a lot. My mind's just sort of blown at how powerful it is. But I think AI stocks are going to take a big haircut. I just think the valuations have gotten way out of hand. Yeah, AI-related stocks, which is interesting. AI-related stocks, yeah. But with the rate cut, you just feel it's September. It's just September blues and that it will, if you were an investor. Yeah, it just typically... And by the way,

listening to all this is sort of a moot point. It's interesting to talk about because you should never try to time the market because the majority of the gains in the market come across just 11 days and you never know when those 11 days are going to happen. So the action item here as an investor is never get freaked out, stay in the market, to believe that you can time the market. And I've made this mistake before. When Trump was elected in 2016, I sold all my stocks. That was stupid. I thought, this guy is such an idiot. The nation's going to lose confidence. The world's going to lose confidence in us. And there's going to be a huge sell-off. And guess what? Stocks ripped up. And the tax hit I took and the gains I lost probably reduced my net worth by 20% because I made an emotional decision. The only decision is to stay put.

And Ed Elson at ProfG had the best investment strategy. Someone said, what's your portfolio? And I said, my portfolio is I invest in index funds. I never look at them and I invest all of my time in becoming a better writer, a better content creator, a better podcaster, so I have more money. I never look at stocks, I don't. You have the exact right strategy.

Until I need it. Someday I'll need it, then I'll pay attention, right? And just make sure you're diversified and it's low fees. That's correct. And real estate. Another tech stock that's in trouble, Intel. Well, Intel was one of the first tech companies to join the Dow during the 90s. Boom. What's the hottest company? Analysts and investors are now saying it's likely to be delisted from the index. Intel is nearly a 60% decline in its shares this year, making it the Dow's worst performer. Its CEO,

Pat Gelsinger, I know him a little bit, is expected to present a plan later this month to cut unnecessary businesses and revamp capital spending, according to Reuters. It also received $20 billion in grants and loans back in March, a part of the chip building efforts by the Biden administration. This is a company that should be on the forefront or didn't make the switch, which NVIDIA had. Any thoughts on them? I just, they see it's an astonishing decline in a company that really once ran the world. It's amazing. You want to talk about, I was even thinking it'd be fun just to take some money and put them in a basket of what I call fallen heroes. Starbucks, Intel, Estee Lauder. You see me out there, by the way. Yeah.

Because these companies have amazing assets, amazing brands. They have very strong human capital. They have a decent amount of IP, and I do think they're going to come back. And I think that the market never, you know, the chime on a clock is it's impossible to visually capture it at the very bottom, at the center. The market is the same way. It can never, it either over-punishes or over-rewards. And when I got out of business school, the best jobs you could get were to go to work for Dell or Intel, which kind of marks the age back then. And Intel, just as recently as 2021, was worth three times as much as NVIDIA. NVIDIA, as we stand here today, is worth 30 times as much as NVIDIA. NVIDIA, as we standard today, is worth 30 times as much as Intel. It's astonishing. And people on a very reductive, you know, the very simple kind of cliff notes here is they miss the transition from PCs

to mobile, and then even miss it by a greater leap, the transition to AI. Yeah. leap, the transition to AI. Yeah. So it's, what, I want to do wins and losses today, even though, or wins and fails today, even though it's Thursday. But if I was doing a prediction, my prediction would be in the next 30 days, maybe 90 days, I always get the timing wrong.

You're going to have an activist pop up at Intel and say, you need to cut 40% of your people. You need to divest. Well, it sounds like the CEO, he's a very reasonable fellow. It just is, they're not. I love this basket of loser stock. That's interesting. You see Peloton came back a little bit with a new CEO and a bunch of- Yeah, but Peloton doesn't have, I mean, if you're talking about- I'm just saying a bunch of them like that. Peloton, Starbucks would be in there. Intel, what else? Well, you have the best one in my view- Estee Lauder. Estee my view, but the best one, the big one, in my opinion,

is Nike. Nike is another one. So Peloton was just a COVID stock that it's a cute little company. I don't know if it's ever going to come back. Whereas I've worked very closely with Estee Lauder, Nike, Starbucks, not with Intel. I don't know anyone there. But the previous three companies, amazing brands, amazing customer bases, super smart management. We should do a little basket and see how it does. A little basket of losers. Call it the loser basket.

Well, I mean, just if you look at the brands that Estee Lauder has, if you look at the move towards beauty, if you look at... But, you know, they haven't kept up. Like, there's these brands, these new brands that have just run circles around it. And it hasn't been even quick enough to buy them. The thing that's really hurt these guys is that the gift that kept on giving has now turned from a feature to a bug, and that is China. So all of these companies kind of went all in on China. And every earnings call, they kept saying, I mean, at one point, I think Starbucks was opening a store in China every two hours. And when China's economy

turned down, everyone was like, uh-oh. So big, big branded companies with big exposure to China, like Starbucks, Nike, Estee Lauder, have just gotten killed. Anyway, last thing, social media regulation for kids is slowly happening on the national state level. This is important for something Scott talks about a lot. But Apple is pushing back on some age-gating measures, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The journal cites an incident in Louisiana where Apple lobbyists allegedly worked to kill a provision of the child safety bill. Apple says social media companies should be the ones verifying user ages. I've gotten a lot of communications from all these companies this week, as I talked about a little bit.

Who do you think bears responsibility, the social media apps or the smartphone makers and app stores? And remember, the Senate passed a child online safety bill back in July. It's unclear where the House will take it up. But they're arguing over who should be responsible. My Kara Swisher take, both of them, all of them, all of the above. Exactly right. The answer is yes. I honestly can't, you know, I'm not surprised. They don't want responsibility for it. There are all kinds of privacy issues, obviously. But it seems like at the phone level, they know who has these phones, you know. 100%.

They have, they have argument. I've heard their arguments that then all your phones have to be, you know, everyone gets tracked then and they are against tracking. But it seems as if the social media companies cannot be the only ones doing this. It should be Google, Apple and and then the social media companies who bear most of the responsibility around these things. But it's very hard if you don't do it on the device level. Apple has done a masterful job of sort of starching their hat white and coming across as the good guys. And almost everyone I've heard, every nonprofit I've heard from who's focused on child safety says that Apple has been awful, awful, that they always get in the way of an attempt to reduce crimes against children, even things as heinous

as child pornography. And this bullshit that it's somehow going to violate, the worry about violating users' privacy. The first thing that Apple does on my computer to make it more utile is it asks for my fingerprint. I mean, it knows my credit card number. It knows, I mean, it asks me to turn on location services. So it knows where I am. It knows my fingerprint. But, oh, we're worried that if we ask a 14-year-old what his or her age is, that that's somehow a privacy violation. I agree. Yeah.

They need to stop hiding behind this bullshit. And we need laws. And your answer is exactly right. Should it be the apps or the platform or the phone maker's responsibility? The answer is exactly right. Should it be the apps or the platform or the phone maker's responsibility? The answer is yes. And if some 13-year-old, if something goes down here, they should all be in court. Well, one of the things, let me read this. An Apple spokesman said the websites and social media companies are best positioned to verify

users' age and user privacy expectations would be violated if a company was required to share the age of its users with third-party apps. And that's a worry. That is a doubt. Apple provides tools that allow parents to control the devices of their children. So they're saying, although I have to say they're not as good. They're very kludgy in terms of controlling kids on those things. Now, a spokesman for Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and other apps, disputed the assertion

saying that verifying a child's age by app isn't practical. And this is an interesting quote. Rather than putting the onus on parents to upload sensitive information or provide proof identity, their teen's age for every single app their children use, app stores can provide a central place for families to do this, the spokesman said. It does make a lot of sense. A match group person, this is Tinder and other dating apps, said kids are less safe when responsibility is limited only to developers. And the last thing, Alex Stamos, who we both like, noted that it's going to be a series of uploading, you know, your license to things. It's like the whole thing is problematic. problematic. And if they don't cooperate together, the companies who make the phones, both Google and Apple, it's going to be hindered and children are going to be less safe.

Look, I got stopped at the airport. I was with my son, my 13-year-old son, and they wanted to see a letter from my spouse stating that it was okay for me to travel with him abroad. A kid can't get behind the wheel of a car without all sorts of verification and testing. This all comes down to the same thing, and that is we overprotect children offline and we underprotect them online. It's a really good way to protect food. A basic check on whether an 11-year-old, if this person is 11 or 13, if I have food delivered to, I think it's Deliveroo here in London, and someone shows up and I've ordered a huge Indian meal with one beer, someone with a valid ID has to come to the door and show it to them.

Is that a violation of pride? I mean, enough of these excuses already. The damage and the dangers being presented to children absolutely outweigh any ridiculous hollow bullshit calls around the privacy of a 14-year-old. I mean, this is just a weapon of mass. This is jazz hands gone crazy, weapons of mass distraction. This is somewhere up around the league where all these tech brothers have decided that crime is speech and should be able to run unfettered on their platforms. Anyways, thank you for my TED Talk.

I agree. Let me read Alex's things. I want to do it. Setting an age per device is by far the best compromise solution out of a bunch of bad options. And I think he's right. If Apple keeps dragging their feet, eventually one of these state laws is going to stick and we're all going to end up sending pictures of our driver's licenses

to a scuzzy age verification company every time we install a new app. This really shouldn't hurt Apple, and they could do a lot of good here. I don't get it. I agree. I think they could do a lot of good and take this up. This is right in their area, and they should not resist this. It'd be on brand for them, too. Totally, totally, yeah.

To say we're worried, we want to protect people, we need age- Christ, you're not at a bar right now. There's no good option here. Yeah. What? You get asked for your ID at a bar, even when you look 49, 59. You do? Yeah, I get asked for my ID all the time.

Really? Scott. Well, there's- No, there's some bars. There are a lot of bars now in certain districts where you have to ID everybody. All right. Okay. Everybody has to show their ID every time they want to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Okay. All right. You don't buy it.

I don't buy it in any way. But you don't look a day over 70. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about X getting banned in Brazil, and you'll tell us about Brazil, and take a listener mail question about the value of Trump media shares. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting, crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly,

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Brazil's Supreme Court has unanimously voted to uphold a nationwide ban on Elon Musk's X. The social platform was suspended in Brazil late last week over concerns about disinformation and X's refusal to appoint a local legal representative. Elon's other companies are also impacted. SpaceX has moved to evacuate workers from Brazil. It's quite dramatic of them. And warned employees against traveling to the country. Starlink initially said they would defy the ban, but later backtracked and is now complying. Starlink is a division of SpaceX, by the country. Starlink initially said they would defy the ban, but later backtracked and is now complying. Starlink is a division of SpaceX, by the way. Talk a little bit about this. Do you think the ban is justified? It will set a precedent for other countries to deal with Elon.

Now, I'm going to say two things before we go, because The Washington Post had the single stupidest editorial that I've seen of this. You might agree with Elon on this one, but he goes around the world and does censors when certain countries ask him to and doesn't when others do. So his whole free speech warrior thing is a canard. And I will not accept anyone saying that he's he could be a broken clock could be right twice, twice a day. But in this case, when he's in India or Turkey, he completely cooperates and actually X is one of the bigger cooperators with autocratic governments in censoring. So his excuse here is because he doesn't like the government. But go ahead.

You just stole all my thunder. I think you're exactly right. And if he shows that they're being punitive and censoring him inconsistently with other media platforms, he has a really strong case. Your point is he's incredibly cynical because when Erdogan or Modi or any other autocrat says, I'd rather you just not do this, he's like, no problem. No problem. So he's totally inconsistent here. And to be clear, what they asked him to do was they asked him to appoint a legal representative to deal with requests to take down accounts allegedly involved in spreading political misinformation. They didn't mandate they take it down. They're like, we just want somebody to deal with. And here's the thing.

Well, it's because they're scared about them being arrested because, you know, they're arrested in other parts of the world. This is China, though. Come on. Brazil is not going to arrest the representative from X. They're just not going to do it. And that's his excuse, just so just totally inconsistent. And I don't know how he behaves in other countries as relevant in a Brazilian court. But here's the thing. I was in Brazil when this happened. And this is Pulse Marketing. I talked to quite a few people at this conference. I went to the XP conference. It has 50,000 people there. And no one, we're talking more about it than they are. You know what? They don't care. They use WhatsApp. They use Instagram. They moved to Blue Sky. A lot of the Blue Sky and Threads saw big prep, especially Blue Sky, just for people to be aware of. But it's just not a relevant... It's just not... It's a platform that is either not used or is easily substitutable. So it wasn't like people are running around angry at the government that they don't have their Twitter. I think this is part of a more

meta trend, and it's the following, whether it's the CEO of Telegram being arrested, whether it's Google being found guilty of monopoly maintenance, whether it's a DOJ reaching out to NVIDIA. People have just decided they're fed up with a distinct set of rules and behavior for someone who is in technology versus the rest of us or technology firms. And I think this is just a continuation of that strategy. And his lack of concern around, I don't know if he's trying to be brilliant here and get a lot of press and say, I'm a free speech warrior. I'm not afraid to take on Brazil. But he's gotten into, if you were a board, you'd be saying, why are you personalizing this and getting into a pissing

match with a judge in Brazil? How does that serve shareholder value? He also treated it as if he was going to invade Brazil. This is, I thought was the best quote. It was Brazilian president, let me pronounce this correctly, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva. He said the Brazilian justice system may have given an important signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk's extreme right wing. Anything goes just because he is rich. I thought that was a perfect sentence as far as I thought it was a perfect sentence. But the fear here, or the bigger concern in my view, is what happens when Starlink, which is a superior product, is contracted, engaged, and used to download important data and basically operate or be the backbone of, say, hospital systems in Rio. in Rio. And something like this happens, and I wouldn't put it past must to say, you know what, I'm going to turn off Starlink. And oh, if that means a bunch of hospital systems and your aircraft can't land, so be it. And this is the danger when one person aggregates too much wealth or power.

I think the leverage he's going to have, quite frankly, around Starlink is much more frightening. And the fact that he- Though the country threatened to take over the land, around Starlink is much more frightening. And the fact that he... Though the country threatened to take over the land, there's a bunch of... Well, the cash, right? No, no, not just the cash, but there's installations in Brazil that allow it to work better and they were just going to take them over. They're like... Well, they have leverage over him right now because of nascent Starlink assets. At some point, I think he's going to have leverage over nations because of Starlink. You know, they have to have installations on the ground. They

can always take those over. You know, I think it's stupid that he's fighting. He should sell his product and stop politicizing everything. That's my feeling is he's got a great product. Stop involving himself in every... He's fighting with Venezuela. He's fighting with Brazil. He's sucking up to India and Turkey. Like he's fighting, he fought with Ukraine, but then didn't fight with Ukraine. He should get the fuck out of foreign policy and just sell his stuff. That's my feeling. But he's not going to do that because his role in the potential Donald Trump administration is becoming more clear. Trump is set to share plans for government efficiency commission that Elon recommended in a speech at the Economic Club of New York this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. Elon weighed in on X, saying, I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises. No pay, no title, no recognition is needed. What a crock of shit. All he wants is recognition. If he had been hugged more as a child, we'd all be in a better position with this guy. be in a better position with this guy. You know, he's going to fix our government, which is so full of conflicts of interest. I don't even want to say he's got defense contracts. He's got space

contracts. He's got a car. You know, he should not be. He could be on a commission, but to have any real power would be terrifying, I think. So what I don't get is he claims that he wants to do away with all subsidies. Does that mean he's going to give a half a billion dollars back to the government for the subsidies he's received? Yeah. This is also cynical. And what is the strategy here? He's going to lay off 80% of government employees and not pay them severance, the legally obligated severance? That's what he does with his own employees.

Is he going to accuse employees working in our civil service and our defense department incorrectly of being sex criminals? Like, what does it mean when you're going to ask him to help with efficiency? I just, this is, it's sort of typical of both of them. I think it's just a gigantic press release. I mean, it's like shocking, but not surprising this shit. It's like nothing surprises me anymore. Yeah, these two are linked together in a way that is really not going to be good for either of them, I think, personally.

I think it'll end in disaster. By the way, one more thing before I forget. Tucker Carlson did a heinous interview with a historian who believes that Churchill, not Hitler. Hitler apologist. Yeah, Hitler apologist. And Elon retweeted it and then promptly took it down pretty quickly. And let me tell you why. Hitler apologist. Europe on this stuff. And so if he wants to get in a fight now, he wants to get in a land war with Europe now, that's where it's headed. So, you know, this guy is going to suck all the attention away from Trump, which I think is where they're going to fight. And by the way, he's not the only tech CEO making headlines. Scott wanted to talk about this. I thought he and I talked ourselves,

and I thought he had a really smart take on this. French authorities have charged Telegram, this happened while Scott was away, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with multiple offenses following his arrest. The charges include enabling the distribution of child sex abuse material, drug trafficking, and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement. He suddenly started cooperating in South Korea, by the way, Telegram just suddenly did around child sex trafficking, sex abuse. I'd love to hear what you think. The Financial Times also dug into Telegram's finances and discovered about 40% of the company's revenue comes from crypto. I'd love to know what you think of this. Well, I think Telegram adds a lot of value. I think there's some very positive things about it. A lot of the best information coming out on Russia-Ukraine war is off of Telegram.

A lot of people use it. But again, we have a tendency to go, well, on the whole, is it in that good? And if the answer is yes, then we don't do anything. And that doesn't make any sense. Fossil fuels and pesticides are in that good, but we still have emissions and standards and an FDA. and pesticides are not good, but we still have emissions and standards and an FDA. And the way I see this is that if you and I owned a hotel and we knew that there was sex trafficking and child pornography taking place, and we knew that there were huge drug deals going down and that people were using our hotel for money laundering, and we not only knew about it, but we kind of positioned it such that it was for money laundering. And we not only knew about it, but we kind of positioned it such that it was easy to do it.

Gave them extra keys, yeah, yeah. And then the local authorities said, we need your help busting these people. And we did everything to kind of stiff arm them and make it difficult for them to pursue these crimes. We would be in a world of hurt, as we should be. And this entire blanket, ridiculous weapon of mass distraction that is the following, and it's attack, my speech is not protected. And this guy, and I see this as part of an overdue trend, and that is these folks are saying, any other media company, any other business.

A bank. Can you imagine? Oh, no, the bank would be shut down. I wired a friend of mine $10,000, and they called me and asked me what it was for. And they said, we need to have a reason. We need to know why you're doing this because we're worried it's for some sort of money. Because you're a well-known drug dealer, Scott Gallop. But go ahead. Well, and I'm like, okay, so let me get this. But these platforms can distribute, you know, pornographic imagery of children. And then when the authorities ask them for help. They say, no, it's free speech. This will send a chill, and it's an important one. And I think unless these guys start taking a little bit more, showing a little bit more concern for the Commonwealth and cooperating with the legal authorities in those nations, you're going to start seeing people pulled off their Global Expresses and their Gulfstream 650s and arrested.

Yeah. You've talked about this. You've talked about this idea. No one else can get away with this shit. And I think people are finally saying, especially in Europe, because here's the bottom line, they get all of the downside of big tech, but there are very few hospital wings or universities named after Facebook or Google founders. Well, it's interesting because I think, I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg put a check in with his lawyers if he should be careful. Now, if you show that you're trying to take it down, like they do have efforts on Facebook and other places, they're not successful as they need to be.

To show effort and responsiveness is the critical part, like to at least acknowledge that child sex trafficking or child pornography is a problem, that's basically the lowest fucking bar in your, and by the way, you should be in jail if you don't think it is. You really should if you facilitate it in any way. And so I think that they're all probably wondering how liable they are and how much, even if they have to do hand-waving stuff, how much they have to show in court that they're trying to shut down the criminal stuff, weapons trafficking. You know, it's so interesting because one of the things that's critically clear, which drives me crazy about the media, they were like, is this free speech? I'm like, it's crime. Like, what is wrong

with you to question it? Same thing with Musk in Brazil. They were like, well, is it free speech? I'm like, but over in India, are you recognizing what he's doing over in India or wherever? of recently far-right acts of sabotage and murder and how the companies in action has allowed extremists to plan and even advertise their crimes. And Louis wrote me back, Telegram is, and he uses the number four, Telegram is for drugs and sex mom. Everyone been knowing this website is for sin.

Like, young people understand what's happening on this platform. The fact that media does not understand it's been a real learning curve for many of these reporters. And I think they need to do a better job of understanding. When you took me to the White House, and we were talking to all those lovely young assistants and pages and everybody, and I started talking about TikTok, and they said, none of us have it. We're not allowed to be on it. I'm like, that's a bad thing.

You don't realize that this could very easily be very anti-American content that is wrapped in cute dances. Yeah. Well, speaking of things I don't understand, this is my favorite one for you this week. Finally, so much things I want to talk to you about. It's crazy. There's a new buzzword in Silicon Valley, founder mode. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham wrote a viral blog post over the weekend urging startup founders to embrace a hands-on leadership style called founder mode. It was from a speech that Brian Chesky gave, which was a little taken out of context a little bit. According to Graham, founders should be involved in the minutiae of running their businesses in contrast to manager mode, where leaders engage in their companies only through direct reports. reports. He was inspired to write it after hearing a talk by Airbnb Brian Chesky, who did involve himself back in the business after having hired too many professional executives. I think that was his point, which he's talked about before. Chesky also, I've spoken to Chesky about this because I sent him all the funny memes about it. You know, Jesus was in founder mode with the loaves

and fishes because it wouldn't scale until he got involved. There's a bunch of very funny memes about it, but he also posted on X that a lot of women founders have been reaching out to him about how they don't have permission to run their companies in founder mode like many want to say this needs to change. I'd love to know what you think of this founder mode thing because there's some very good managers. I'm thinking of Satya Nadella and Tim Cook and others. So thoughts on founder mode, given you're a founder? Me too. Well, so I'm of two minds of this, and that is, I spoke on a panel once when I think it was the founder of Away Luggage and a woman who was running... Oh, she's, yeah, she's a woman. Yeah, she's the...

Yeah. And then another person running one of the hot digital agencies. And they said, what is your management style as a CEO? And I was running L2 at the time. And one person said, it's all about empowering them and letting them take risks and find, letting them find their vision for the product and the company. And the other person was,

it's all about making sure they have the right job description and being supportive of them. And they turned to me and I said, my management style is I'm all fucking over everyone all the fucking time. And that's true. When I start a company and I'm all in, I am harassing everybody. Did you do this? Did you do this? This is great. This sucks. What were you thinking with this? Who didn't proof this document? Have you called this person? Have you sent this? I'm all over everyone all the time. Now, a company can't scale beyond a certain point with that. That is key in the beginning. What I'll call kind of zero to 100 employees, zero to 10 million, whatever you want to call it. I think that's the right founder mode. You're all over everything. You are quality assurance. You are vision. You are making the

product every day. Everybody needs to see that you are just maniacally focused on a better product and all over everybody and everything. That worked for me. You can't get beyond a certain point without doing what one of my venture capitalists and general catalysts, Larry Bono, has told me, and that is greatness is in the agency of others. And you could say scale is in the agency of others. At some point, you have to find really good people you think are as good or better at this than me and stay the fuck out of their way. Say, I'm a resource for you. I'm going to find capital and people for you and maybe clients for you. but this is you. You got to run with this. It's hard though. Can I interject? Isn't it hard to make that transition, like to let people make mistakes on their own? And the danger, and I think what Brian was talking about is he hired too many of the professional executives, right? So talk about that transition when you're doing

that and scaling, because it's hard. Yeah, but I think it's, let me, I mean, it's not only hard. I've never been able to do it. There's a reason why I've started a lot of companies. I sold one for 160 million, but I've never built a billion dollar company. And I had access to capital. I'm good at what I do. I had world-class venture capitalists because I've always had trouble kind of scaling a company beyond 100 or 200 people.

And I also recognize that. So I would typically scale a company to 10 or 20 million and sell. And by the way, that was the right thing to do. I didn't want to take the additional risk of pivoting to a scalable company. I think that takes a different skill set. And most CEOs and founders can't make that transition. But some have. Steve Jobs was able to do it. Bill Gates was able to do it. The thing I don't like about this is it feels more like this idolatry of innovators where the founders of tech companies are the Yodas and all of America and big corporations should take their cues from them. And I remember in 1999, when I was invited to Davos, because I peaked early and I was an internet guy,

and I remember being invited to the session of the CEOs, a Q&A session featuring me, the founder of a decent, but not by any means profound e-commerce company, Red Envelope, to give advice to the CEOs of the largest energy firms in the world. How ridiculous. These people, mostly men, are going to forget more about management and business than I was ever going to know. But back then, there was such an idolatry of tech founders that, oh, he must have insight into how to run a company. And this feels a little bit like that. Like, oh, everybody should be taking cues from, it's not founders, it's tech founders. Let's be clear. Yeah, that's what they're talking about.

I think one of the things is, and I think the correct criticism, and let me just say, I don't think Brian meant it that way. I think he said he lost sight of the product and he needed to be re-engaged. And I think that was absolutely true. But in this case, it's sometimes an excuse

for the toxicity of certain kinds of founders that they have to run, have the minutiae to do everything. And there's very few founders that can be intimately involved that are effective once it scales, right? Again, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, I would say, for a while there. And I don't think others can. And you look, it is an attitude that actually Elon tweeted about the alpha male being the one to make decisions in life because women and men who are beta males can't. They're trying to propagate that women shouldn't have the vote even, right? I think Peter Thiel talked about that, that things went sour when women got the vote. But that only a certain type of man, and it's a tech man, is able to make things great. And you're absolutely right. The professional CEOs right now, who you would consider professional, are some of the most successful right now.

As much as the NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Wong, and he's the founder, definitely is important. Satya Nadella has took the company to greater heights than Bill Gates ever could. Tim Cook took the company to greater heights than Steve Jobs could. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the few that can make it through. And I do think he's important. He's also a very good business person. You have to have good business. And so I think it's often an excuse for toxic feeling that only white men can make alpha males and they're always white, can make decisions. And that's why it's kind of an ugly thing. It does feel a little bit like, again, these folks shouldn't be subject to the same scrutiny because they're in founder

mode. And quite frankly, Steve Jobs started it. Steve Jobs denied his own blood under oath to avoid child support payments when he was worth a quarter of a billion dollars, and yet he's our Jesus Christ because he invented an amazing phone. There's just a certain idolatry of these folks that they and everyone else propagates that they should be subject to a different standard than everyone else. A different talk show, but I think a really interesting one. We don't like to talk about gender and testosterone and the fact that men do have different attributes than women. And it's okay to say women are better managers. You can say that, but you can't say men are more decisive because anything that places men in a positive light is seen as misogynist, but everyone just nods and says right on if you say positive things about women's managerial skills. And the reality

is women demonstrate in many instances what I'll call more masculine attributes and men demonstrate more feminine attributes. And I think some of those feminine attributes lend themselves really well to being a good manager. And some of the male attributes lend themselves really, really well to being, quite frankly, more decisive. And we don't want to have an honest conversation about it because the fear is that you begin stereotyping everybody and say, he's a man or she's a woman, which means he or she would not be good for this role. Or maybe they've gamed the situation for themselves. And so they're always successful. I think a lot of women do feel that. I think it's just, what it does is enter that toxicity into it rather than, I prefer the really funny stuff. Let me just read this. Palo Alto-based youth pastor

strums guitar gently. Guys, the loaves and fishes weren't supposed to scale but you know who went into founder mode this is by jim prosser he used to be head of pr at twitter uh another one by hunter walk about to go to go founder mode on this breakfast burrito he died what doing what he loved going founder mode by matt margolis some of them are vc mode by the pool in the hamptons texting founders about founder mode. This is Matt Turk. So, you know, some of it's funny. Some of it is, it does belie, I do think, a very negative and toxic version of masculinity that we talked about earlier. But, you know, I- You demonstrate, but just to interrupt you to talk about, you demonstrate founder mode on the positive sense. And that is, when I've seen you in the businesses and the things you start, you are fearless, relentless.

Hands on. And all over people. Yeah. And emails at two in the morning. I mean, it just cracks me up that people think they're going to start a company and have balance. Right. I agree. I agree.

You've got to be all over everybody all the time. I do get. Everything. I do get what they're talking about here because I do make better decisions because it's mine, like on the things, right? Not that I can't hear people's opinions, but I want to do what I want to do. And there is a mode of being a founder that is, and by the way, I feel like if I fail, I fail. It's mine. And if I don't, I don't, but it's mine. Like, and I think it's very hard.

I agree with you. I can't go beyond a certain size because I just don't want to give up control because I'm a control freak or whatever. I think I like what I make. It's like being a chef. It's sort of chef mode, isn't it, right? I'm just going to make my food. And if you don't like it, don't eat it. If you do, it's brilliant kind of thing. So it's an interesting question.

It's deeper than that, though. But what you're talking about is one of the reasons that technology and Silicon Valley have provided such extraordinary returns. And that is they realized that giving everyone a sense of ownership resulted in much better run companies. So they were kind of pioneered the idea of giving everyone equity. Yeah, that makes sense, though, right? It makes sense. It totally makes sense. giving everyone equity.

Yeah, that makes sense though, right? It makes sense. It totally makes sense. But technology kind of, to a certain extent, was the first one to say, we're going to make everybody an owner here. And that is what I've tried to do. And I think you do it pretty well too. At every company, you have to connect

the outcome of the company to the person's economic wellbeing, directly connected. That's correct. That said, both of us like to run, like we just like to do it our way. It's surprising how well we get along, given we're both sort of founder personalities. Okay, Scott, let's pivot, pivot to a listener question. The question comes from Kisa, like Lisa, but Kisa, in Alameda, California. I'll read it.

Hi, Cara and Scott. And I'll note Cara's first once again. I'm a huge fan of the show and I'm thrilled to be writing you. My question is, I know Trump's DJT shares will be eligible for unloading this month. What I'm wondering is, who would want to buy them? Truly, what is the opportunity here? I'm assuming any individual buyers who wanted in already have made those purchases. So there is a large scale buyers who might see potential here, even knowing the price will likely drop after they buy it. Scott, please give me the investor's mindset on this one. Thank you so much, guys. Keep up the great work. Kisa, what a great question. Just for people don't know, September 19th is when Trump and others can sell. This company

loses enormous amounts of money and has very negligible revenues. It is not a company. But Scott, tell us what you think the opportunity here is, if any. What was our prediction five weeks ago? We made a specific prediction. I said it was going to be below 30 within a week. Yep. I mean, here's the thing. It's at its lowest level since it went public in March right now. And it's still massively overvalued. This is a company doing effectively no revenues, but it's losing a shit ton of money that has no user growth

and has a $3.3 billion market cap after declining by 60 or 70%. In the last month, the last month, the stock is off 40%. This company has, this is not a business. It was a tracking stock for Donald Trump's likelihood of being made president. And the fact that he can now or soon sell shares, he doesn't give a shit about these

people. He doesn't get a shit about negative press. He's going to start hitting the sell button like crazy. You do not want to get anywhere near this thing. And also, I would be careful about shorting it because there's not a lot of liquidity here. And if he has, for example, a good debate and people think, oh, he's going to be president and he'll figure out a way, given he's a kleptocrat, to force everybody to use this,

it could pop to 30 or 40 in one day. In sum, stay the fuck away from this thing. This is not a company. But who would buy it? I would think people who want to secretly support him, like it's a donation to his election, is what it is. Or speculators who think that stock will go up

if his likelihood of becoming president goes up. If he does. It's become a tracking stock. The debate will have been over when the lockup ends. It's set to expire by the 25th, apparently, according to finance. But I think the 19th was another number. Anyway, it will be post-debate. So we'll know a lot more. Should he sell it if he can? What should happen with those who, Trump has the biggest stake by far, but there's others who have stakes. What would you do if you were Trump? stakes. What would you do if you were Trump? Well, it depends on liquidity. I know what he wants to do. He wants to sell as much as possible. The problem is, okay, if I were advising Donald Trump, I would tell him to put in place a planned selling program, because that's your defense. That says this is neither a statement on whether I'm bullish or bearish on my own company. So you

have planned sales, where every 90 days you sell a certain amount and you can just throw your arms up and say, this has nothing to do with me or my views on the company. I just want diversification and some liquidity. And many CEOs have these planned sales programs. That's what I would do if I were him because he's going to have to file with the SEC when he starts selling. And when he starts selling, everybody knows this guy doesn't give a shit about anybody else but himself. But his pure objective here, full stop, is to get as much money out of this thing that is going to zero. I don't know if it goes to zero in 90 days or in three years, but be clear, there is no business here.

So someone who's trying to support him could buy it to take a loss to keep it up, right? To keep the... They could buy it to take a loss to keep it up, right? To keep the, they could buy it to take a loss, right? If they want to be supportive, if they want to make him richer, sure, have at it. I guess it's a form, some people would argue it's a form of a campaign donation. Yeah, it's a campaign. Say Jeff Yass or someone like that. I'd be curious to see who, I bet the SEC is watching this one very carefully, like of who buys it, because it has implications in the election. Would you, the selling plan for people who don't know is a lot of executives, they sell on a regular basis, right? They sell 50,000 shares every

quarter or whatever it happens to be, correct? That's exactly right. I own 10 million shares. I'm going to sell 100,000 every quarter. I'm still very invested in the company. I want some liquidity. I want some money. And because it's a planned sale of a static amount, you can or should not read too deeply into what my sale thinks, other than at some point, I want some liquidity from my investment. And I'll sell even at the highs or lows. I'm just going to sell regularly. No matter what happens, every 90 days, I'm selling. Now, they can break it.

They can go out of it and buy more or whatever. But the moment they veer from it, if he has a filing the next day saying he sold 10 or 20% of his stake, the thing goes to $2 a share. Yeah. Yeah, and then he screws all the people invested in him. But he doesn't care. He doesn't care. No, but he'd screw himself too. So what is your likely outcome here? Your thought, what do you think he's going to do? I'm unsure on the timing. This stock is below one buck at

some point. I don't know when that happens, but that is going to happen. I think he will probably not sell in the short term because he won't want the bad press. And then he'll think about a planned sale. But you know what? I cannot predict this guy's actions. What do you think? I have no idea what he's going to do. He should do a planned sale. That's how I would do it. If I were him, if I'm running for president, don't want to look like a, I think it gives Kamala Harris enormous amounts of, look, he just defrauded shareholders. You know what I mean? Look at, I think it gives her enormous amounts of, and everyone can, everyone understands this, including his own followers. He just fucked

you. Just so you know, everybody, he just fucked you. And I think it's bad for his campaign. So he's kind of stuck with owning it. And then if he loses, the shares go to zero, like it's a penny stock. Once he loses, if he wins, I don't know. Right? You don't know. That's the thing. Well, that's exactly right. So that's the bet. So there is a prospect there. The stock's lost two-thirds of its value in the last six months. 70%, right, yeah.

And it's become a tracking stock. It really started diving when Biden dropped out of the race and all of it. Because people believe if he wins president he'll find a way legal or not to drop this thing up he'll try to find a way this guy's got so much fraud surrounding him it's really kind of nuts but anyway we'll see everybody so uh kisa uh don't buy the shares don't just stay away from them they're like it's like catch speaking of catching a falling knife it's like catching a falling flaming knife um you really don't want to be around for this. There will be smart investors who will try to play it, but don't be one of those people because you're not smart. No one's smart enough to understand this lunatic and his various schemes to make money for himself.

If you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, one more quick break. This is a long show because we missed you. We'll be back with wins and fails. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first? You go first, Cara.

Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first? You go first, Cara. Some wins look like some of these movies coming out of the Venice Film Festival. I'm excited for Angelina Jolie's Maria Callas movie. There's a movie by Nicole Kidman where she plays a CEO who fucks around with an intern. That looks fantastic. I'm very excited about the movie, the fall movie scheme. Obviously, I'm excited for Wicked, which is really doing a great job marking itself.

It has an astonishing cast. And obviously, Gladiator 2. So I'm kind of thinking I'm going to get into the theater a little bit this year. I'm not going to wait for Airlines. I want to see, definitely want to see Wicked and Gladiator in the theaters. The others, possibly, I could see elsewhere. And Moana, too, I'm going to be going to, which is coming, too. So that's my win.

I'm very excited about the theater-going experience. I'll go in good theaters, not the shitty ones. But my fail is Tucker Carlson interviewing a Holocaust apologist, historian. He is a low bar, but he went even lower. Everyone has to be constantly reminded this guy is anti-Semitic, anti-everybody. It's really repulsive that he would interview. And I know he's like, I've got to hear from people,

but he didn't push back. He didn't do anything. And then to retweet it is just grotesque. And the alpha male thing, they just keep showing us again and again and again who they are. And we really need to pay attention to this. And those in the media that keep pretending this is normal, it is not normal to do this and to say these things. It softens people up for a really dire future if that's the case.

future if that's the case. And so the idea that men should make better decisions than women is such a canard and that we're even arguing about it or that Churchill was the villain and Hitler was a hero is repulsive. And I know you can say it, but you're a terrible, awful person if you do. Yeah. Back to movies. According to my film critic, Nolan Galloway, my 14-year-old son, the movie of the summer is Beetlejuice with our friend Justin Theroux. They said it's a great movie. The Michael Keaton is amazing. It's going to make a ton of money.

That's the... Yeah. They think they're going to make $140 million in the theater. By the way, you know what I watched on the plane? Have you seen Salt Burn? I will not watch that.

Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. I felt like I needed therapy after that thing. Yeah, this director is a rattling director. Yeah, I don't like those. I can't watch. I can't watch. Yeah, that was a lot. It was a lot. Okay, so my win is the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Pollen, especially Rachel Goldberg-Pollen's eulogy for her son, who along with five other hostages was murdered last week. And I've been thinking a lot about grief lately, one, because I'm macabre, but two, I'm writing about it this week.

She gave just the most powerful eulogy. I'll just read a couple lines of it. I have had a lot of time during the past 332 days to think about my sweet boy, my Hirsch. And one thing I keep thinking about is how of all the mothers in the world, God chose, my Hirsch. And one thing I keep thinking about is how of all the mothers in the world, God chose to give Hirsch to me. And she's really brought home for a lot of people some of the pain that parents are feeling on both sides of this tragedy. And as Stalin said,

a million deaths is a statistic, one is a tragedy. And I think she's really, really helped a lot of people just understand the horror of what is going on over there on both sides. There's tremendous pain and suffering across parents on both sides. And I thought you and I both saw her, Hersh's parents speak at the DNC. We did. Yeah, which was so just horrific when we found out. Such dignity. Such dignity. And you found out he was alive when they gave that speech. Anyways, but I think his parents have really eloquently showed a lot of my win is I thought the courage of Hersh's parents, specifically Rachel Goldberg. For those who haven't seen it, she put together, she talked about him every day and they put together a thing. And it's a gut punch. I've had several friends

who's lost their children recently. And I just, and to watch their dignity is, I mean, sometimes you pull away from that because if you have kids yourself, the idea is so terrible. You don't want to be around it,

but their dignity and elegance and courage is the right word, is really moving in a way that is hard to articulate, I think. Yeah. I was packing my son for his return to boarding school. I saw that. And he's got these now, these size 10 New balance and cologne, which he wears too much of, and his first razor and all this stuff. Fragrance maxing. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, God.

That was like my tip for the day to him. Like, no one should be able to smell your cologne unless you really want them to, if you know what I mean. No, that's not what they do. And, oh my God, I walked into, we dropped him off at his house. It was a Sunday afternoon. I could smell cologne when I walked in. They're all, you know, they're all at that age, right? It's called fragrance maxing.

That's what they're doing. I think it's called, yeah, it's called mating. It's like wanting to mate. Oh, it's not mating. Yeah. Yeah. That's anything but mating. But that was a very emotional day for me because I just, it just brought home like the importance of sons and anyway. Yeah. So my fail, I've been writing about, I'm writing about grief for my newsletter this week. And I've learned a little bit about Arlington Cemetery. You know, this is something, 400,000 people are interned there, basically the population of Miami. It's everyone from presidents to astronauts to army nurses, and it doesn't cost anything for them. They do 6,000 burials a year, 4,000 ceremonies. And part of grieving is that as a collective, one of the reasons we grieve as a species is it creates attachment. And that is, I know you care about your kids because I care so

much about mine that the idea of losing them makes you and me better parents. The idea of you losing them makes me a better citizen because I don't want anyone to feel the grief that I'm worried about feeling. And some of the ceremonies where we process grief, every culture has ceremonies when people die because they realize how important it is for people to process grief and to attach to the community. And one of the ways we do that in the U.S. with our service people is Arlington. And it really is. And by the way, three and a half million people visit Arlington every year. And part of the way they honor the families and the dead is they say,

this is so important to our nation that we have a code here around in terms of the ceremony and the behavior we expect and do not expect at the cemetery. And one of those things is you are not allowed to film and produce content. And of course, the Trump administration saw a moment to produce content and started pulling out cameras and filming him giving a thumbs up. And an employee there said, you can't do that. And correctly, this employee became very upset and was very stern and got into a physical altercation with two Trump affiliates or two Trump personnel. And this is essentially, in my opinion, I mean, we just continue to set new standards for what is acceptable vile behavior.

And the fact that this individual is getting in the way and delegitimizing and mocking the ceremony and the process that families need to get through this incredibly hard period. And what was even more salt in the wound was he did it at Section 60, which is where this isn't tourism. This is where people are buried, people who died in the Afghanistan and Iraqi conflicts. So the people who come here are not tourists looking for JFK's memorial. They are people who are grieving people they've recently lost. And there is a word to describe what Trump did, and it's incredibly accurate. And the definition of the word is extreme violence towards a place of sacred meaning. And the word is desecration. a rapist, and now a desecrate. This is behavior. If Vice President Harris went to Arlington and started filming herself, and then her staff got into an altercation with someone at Arlington, the entire world would be running around with its hair on fire. So anyways, Donald Trump is now officially a desecrate.

This behavior is totally unacceptable. Yep. I don't know what else to say. I have a father who was in the military. We had an opportunity, I think, to bury him there. And he's buried in West Virginia. But it's so offensive. And I don't care if some of the families invited you. Others didn't.

They don't get to decide. That family doesn't get to decide. And the fact that they're letting someone politicize their dead relative, I don't know what to say to them. And of course, Trump has been nothing but insulting to people in the military. He thinks they're losers, suckers. He said John McCain, you know, he isn't a hero because he got caught, essentially got captured. People don't want captured. Captain Bones Burrs can shut the fuck up on these kind of things. Lots of people go there. Lots of presidents go there. But it's always an official act. And it's always, it's never done like this. And to push around a person, it's a woman who is trying to stop it, is grotesque in every single way.

That's what autocrats do. And as a child of someone who's a career person who was in the military for most of their life, it's so offensive. I don't even know what to say. You're right, Scott. It's grotesque. Anyway, on that note, I'm going to end one quick thing. Happy 90th birthday to Lucretia Carney.

And I do want to thank Scott for allowing us to use his apartment. We had a lovely weekend last weekend. Really appreciate it. Made a big difference. But happy birthday, Lucky. You're still there. You're still there. You're still there.

Still good for you. Was that on her cake? You're still here. You're still here. Anyway, happy birthday, Lucky. It's good to be back. Good to be back. It is good to be back. Let me just say, I really miss you. I know I say this every year, but I really do miss shooting the shit with you. And also not just that,

but just getting your insight. When we were on the phone ourselves the other day, separately, because we do talk during the week, when you were saying that crime is not free speech, you just encapsulated it perfectly. Like, I was like, oh, thank God you're back. Because sometimes you really encapsulate things beautifully. And it was really lovely for you to come back and excited for your penis jokes. You're a national treasure. And I mean the Nick Cage version. Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. I'm pleased to say, please read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naim and Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Brandon McFarlane. Ernie and Jatat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Saverio. Nishat Kerouaz, Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show

wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Zoe, Taylor, Lara, and Kara, it's great to be back. Thanks for all your good work in August.