Pivot - Zelensky's White House Return, Newsom Trolls Trump, and Guest Co-Host Abby Phillip

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

As Scott-Free August sails on, Kara is joined by CNN's Abby Phillip. Kara and Abby discuss Zelensky returning to the White House alongside European leaders, and whether a peace agreement will be hammered out. Then, Gov. Gavin Newsom has turned trolling Trump into an art form, but will that actually help Democrats? Plus, GOP governors send National Guard troops to D.C., the Trump administration floats a new ranking system for companies, and Costco says no to selling abortion pills. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠.Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠.Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠.Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at ⁠⁠nymag.com/pivot⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Jessica Tarlove. Last week, I sat down with the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We got into how Democrats should approach their relationship with Israel, what it would take for her to actually nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, and why she's worried that he's getting a little too comfortable in the White House. I personally believe that if he can, Trump is going to try to stay in office. I don't say that lightly, but I think all the signs are there. You can hear the full conversation on raging moderates wherever you get your podcasts. Would you rather have good laws or good people? I think that justice is a direction rather than a destination. I don't think you will achieve it. I think you're constantly striving for it.

I'm Preet Bharara. And this week, former dean of Harvard Law School, Martha Minow, joins me on my podcast. Stay tuned with Preet to discuss the limits of law, the role of forgiveness, and why justice is always a work in progress. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet.

wherever you get your podcasts. But I will just say that I don't think that your presidential chances are related to your social media cloud. Yeah. So he does look good. A stride in Eagle with a chest. He does look. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Welcome back to Godfrey August. Scott is still away, so I have yet another fantastic co-host, Abby Philip, the anchor of CNN's News Night with Abby Philip. Abby, welcome. I'm so honored to be here when Scott is not around. I know. We can do all kinds of naughty things. I don't know if you listened to Rachel last week,

but this last week, but we can do whatever we want. I did. It was very lesbian. It was great. Yeah, you also get a little great because you're usually the host. You're just a wrangler, so I will wrangle you if you don't mind. Great. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit a couple things you're up to. One is your show, your show, which has been very successful, incredibly busy, as I said, wrangling and sometimes wrestling to the ground, all sorts of personalities on your five nights a week show. This week, incredibly, you have a lot of viral moments. It's usually with Scott Jennings. We're not getting into Scott Jennings here. But I have to say that Jillian Michaels thing really took off this week. I'm going to play the

exchange that she had and how you dealt with her. And I'm going to talk a little bit about how you handle this. Let's listen. He's not whitewashing slavery. So he's not. No. He's not. And you cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery to just one race, which is pretty much

what every single exhibit does. But let's talk about the fact that when you United States, let's talk about the fact. I mean, slavery in America was did you realize that only less than 2% of white Americans owned slaves? But it was a system of white supremacy. You realize that slavery is thousands of years old?

Do you know who is the first? What was the first reason? Did you realize this was controversial? Wait a second. Well, what's controversial? I'm very surprised. This is an extraordinary exercise in historical revisionism. I'm really surprised.

Do you realize that? Jillian, I'm surprised that you're trying to litigate who was the beneficiary of slavery? I'm not. Okay. You handled that. I don't know how you jumped in there. That was nuts, what she was saying, in my opinion. I mean, it was wild.

Look, everybody was shocked. It was unexpected to be frank. because we were not really in a discussion about that at the table when she just brings it up. And, you know, my philosophy about the show, first of all, I think I've seen some people questioning, why was she even there, she's a fitness guru, all of that. I believe I have texted you that. Well, no, no, not just you, but a lot of people have said that. I'm just saying, I get it.

I understand that there are some characters in our politics today who are like, how did this person even get here? But the truth is that she represents, first of all, she is a kind of MAGA influencer. She represents that point of view. And just like we have, not that I'm comparing the two, but we have comedians and actors, we have Roy Wood Jr. come on.

We have Wendell Pierce. We have people who are not Washington voices come on and share their views. Jillian Michaels has views that represent about half the country. So there's that. The second thing is that you heard me there not really weighing in when she started talking. There were other guests weighing in.

And part of it was because I was literally listening to her, trying to understand what the heck she was talking about. And then when it became clear that she was trying to sort of downplay slavery, I was just shocked. Like, are you really going to do this on national television, giving her an opportunity to not do it? But she continued on, and then later on she said that she got this list of talking points from the White House about exhibits that they wanted to dispute. And frankly, it was pretty ignorant.

Look, I don't like to talk negatively about guests who come on the show because I just don't think that's good form. Even when I disagree with people, I respect their right to embarrass themselves on national television. I think it is their right to do that. But I, and I don't want to, I don't want to disparage people, even when they disparage me, to be quite frank, online. But I'll just state as a factual matter what I told her, which is that it is nonsensical to suggest that slavery in the United States was something, it was about something other than race, A, and B, even this idea that 2% of white people own slaves, that is such a ridiculous point because you don't have to own slaves. to enforce white supremacy and slavery to benefit from it, to gain generational wealth as a result of it. And the percentage of Americans, where slavery was lawful,

who had slaves or participated in slavery, is much larger than 2%. So it's completely disingenuous. This whole thing is ridiculous. It's embarrassing more for her than anything else. But look, I also, you know, I've been on this earth long enough that I know many people believe this.

I have not, that was not the first time that I had heard that argument. Me neither. Okay, I've heard it from that. You've heard it, right? Yeah. So we've heard this before. So let's be honest, like people believe this stuff.

Right. And don't be shocked when they come out and say it on national television. That was a really smart thing you said. You're trying to litigate who was the benefits. You were very even-handed, but also smart-minded. Talk a little bit about how you do that, how you think about what your job is there.

I'm never bringing people. people on to say crazy things. Let's be frank about that. That is never the intention, okay? People's decisions to say crazy things are never expected or predictable. However, I mean, and I know that folks really dislike Scott for his views, but I would say that, you know, there are views that you don't like, that you think are unfounded, but that are pretty widely shared, and I think Scott falls into that category. Now, there are definitely

times, if you watch the show, that we have conversations where I will say to Scott and others, just stop, because we're not playing whatever game it is that you want to play in this moment. We're going to clarify, by the way, we're talking about your Scott, not our Scott. I have a Scott. I have a different Scott. Not your, yeah, which is a point of major confusion between us, Kara, all the time. You will say, oh, I did this thing with Scott, and I'm like, you did? Yes, off-screen Scott Jennings and I are really, we play pickleball together. I do not.

That would be good, though. I would beat him. But I do think that what I try to say is, if I detect that what you're doing is playing a game of, let me say something that I think is going to go viral, let me misrepresent what's being said here to try to create a moment. I will stop that. Yeah, you did that around Gaza.

Who is that? There was one. I mean, Scott was involved in that one. I mean, Scott is often involved in those moments. What I say, no, we're stopping. And I think that there are guardrails, but I also think it's, you know, this is an imperfect exercise, right?

So what you think should be a guardrail, I may not think should be a guardrail. I try to give people a decent amount of leeway to express their points of view, liberal and conservative. And I will tell you that there are times, when many times, frankly, when liberals cross a line.

And again, the same leeway that I give to the conservative guests, I give to the liberal guests to express themselves, but there are times when I have to stop things to keep things on the rails to, you know, we don't want to libel people on television, we don't want to, I don't like the personal attacks, which actually do happen more than I would like them to.

So, you know, again, but I think the bottom line is there's an acknowledgement of the imperfection of this, right? This is a conversation. Oh, I think you handled it. Sometimes I want to send you a bottle of tequila. Like, I'm like, because you're

face. I can see the exasperated look on you. I couldn't do it. I would... Sometimes I need it. I mean, there are, look, are there times when I'm like, that was absolutely ridiculous? Totally. And, but somebody's got to do it. So, last question on this.

When you think about shows like this and this sort of the partisanship, one of the things I remember you and I talked about was breaking, having real discussions and breaking partisanism. And you think it's gotten not necessarily in your show, but worse or better, or how do you look at sort of the landscape and what you're trying to do here in general in this country?

I don't think that we're solving the issue of partisanship on our show by any stretch of the imagination. I think what we are doing is creating a platform for us to really be honest about what the contours of the debate really are. And one thing that I've grown to really have very little tolerance for, just personally, I just find it to be boring, but also a little bit disingenuous, is when we have partisans kind of talk. past each other where they're sort of like, you know, they're kind of like on parallel roads and they never really intersect. And I just, I don't think that that really is a accurate reflection of where the country is. So we're in a hyper-partisan moment. And do I think it's getting better? Not really. But do I think that we need to better understand where we kind of agree and

disagree, yes. And the only way to do that is to really take that on head on. And I like that what we do is actually we get into the nitty-gritty about what it says about us that some people, you know, everything that Trump does, they loves. Some people think that it's the dawn of fascism. And I think that we have those values debates and those conversations are important to, look, we have understand our neighbors because these are people that we know, right? More of your neighbors than you think probably voted for supported Trump. And I think we need to understand them a little bit better, but we also need to have a little bit more honesty about what it says about our democracy, our values as individuals and as a community that we want certain things for our country or we don't.

So that's what I think we are doing. Yeah. I think when wrestling medicine, are used. I don't love that, right? Like the idea of wrestling, because then it's a game. Then it's the game. I mean, I think that's the difficult part that you face. I don't envy you in that regard. But let me ask you about something else you're working on. You have a book coming out in October. And it's sort of in that genre. It's called A Dream Deferred Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power and Focles on Jackson's presidential runs in 1984 and 1988. I'm surprised this is your first book. For some reason, I would imagine you have written books. before, but why did you want to write about Jesse Jackson, who is, he's not gone from our history, but in a way he is. He was such an enormous figure for so long, at least in my political upbringing. You know, Jesse Jackson was a permanent figure in politics. Talk a little bit about what you've learned and what will people be surprised to learn. I think it's exactly for the reason that you just laid out that I decided to write this. book because he is both this ever-present, seemingly ever-present figure in our understanding

of the world and also somebody that has kind of faded from memory in recent years, especially, and I don't think has really ever been well understood. And I thought that there had been so many years it had passed since there was a real kind of comprehensive book about Jesse Jackson. The last one was in the mid-90s. And so since then, as you can imagine, a lot has happened with him, with our politics, there was the Barack Obama of it all, there was the Donald Trump of it all, Joe Biden of it all, and all of those events that have occurred since then, I think actually need, it forced

a re, forces a reframing of Jesse Jackson's legacy. And that's what this book is about, is really just to understand what, let's really look back now that he is in his 80s. He, as you know, is suffering from Parkinson's disease, I think, is not really in a position to be a participant in the framing of his own legacy. And so you obviously couldn't talk to him, correct? Right? I did talk to him, actually. You know, I started working on this book, and right as COVID was happening in 2020, and I went to Chicago

So he's had Parkinson's then, but he could still talk, and we had a lengthy interview, and we talked a lot over the years, sometimes about the book, sometimes not. Increasingly, he has not been able to speak. So I was able to talk to him just enough when he was verbal. So he has Parkinson's but not dementia, correct? Yes, he has Parkinson's, but not dementia. As far as I know, I don't want to speak too much about his. medical diagnosis because I don't I'm not fully read in on the latest on that but but as of right

now he has a lot of difficulty speaking and that was beginning you know five years ago when I first started talking to him about this book so one of the things about Jesse Jackson is that a lot of people don't even remember if he didn't live through it that first of all he was insanely family famous. He was like, he was a level of fame that people compared to Michael Jackson and to, you know, these massive celebrities. It, too, he was a black man who grew up in the segregated South, who really kind of came from a very not well-to-do family. I mean, his mother, his father was his next-door neighbor and his mother became pregnant with him

when she was unmarried and his biological father had a whole other family. So his improbable rise, I think, was part of the story. But I mean, he was also the celebrity candidate before Donald Trump was a celebrity candidate. And had a long political history before that.

Yeah. He was a populist candidate before Bernie Sanders was a populist candidate. He was, he came in second place in the 1988 campaign before Barack Obama became the nominee. And had he not won concessions from the Democratic Party to change the rules of how you nominate candidates, Barack Obama probably would not have been the nominee in 2008. So there are so many aspects of his legacy.

that I think just are not very well understood. I think he is a very complicated figure, which made writing this book very interesting because it's a lot of good things and bad things. It's like personality traits that we see in politicians, arrogance, you know, narcissism, grandiosity, you know, all of that, incredible eloquence along with, you know, just, they're tied together.

The good and the bad are very much tied together. But I think fundamentally, his story of running two presidential campaigns at a time when the Ku Klux Klan was still running rallies in Georgia is incredible. It's an incredible story. What made you want to cover him? I think that I would just start by saying I wasn't really jazzed about writing a book just in general because I, I'm not the type of, some people are like, I was born to write a book. I need my name on a book. I'm not one of those people.

I was like, if I have something to say, I will say it. I don't really want to write a book just for the sake of writing a book. But I did, I was convinced a little bit, frankly, from my agent that there was some responsibility that I had as a journalist, a woman, a black woman journalist in this moment to participate in the telling of history. And I think as a political journalist, I wanted to choose a political figure whose story was not that well understood. And I think Jesse Jackson's story was, I realized as I was researching it, was not terribly well understood, but super relevant in this moment of, you know, rising economic populism, of questions about whether or not the Democratic Party should have a coalition that is... actually diverse that represents, you know, black people, white people, Asian people,

Native American people, LGBTQ people, all of that. He was the person who really explicitly said that is what the party should look like, and that is why the Democratic Party looks like that right now. So I felt like, okay, yeah, I do have a responsibility to tell these stories and to tell it with an understanding of the community that he spoke to, which is black Americans. And the more you research it, the more you realize that in the 80s, he was always viewed through the lens of white journalists who discounted him, who minimized him, who did not understand his appeal among black Americans, who largely saw him as a heroic figure, who saw him as a kind of manifestation of their dreams and their aspirations. And I think that was

never fully represented in the media. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, of course, he is involved with Martin Luther King. the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was also important. But he was really one of the first. I remember being struck by his talking about economic issues over, even though he's thought of as a racial figure. You know, I mean, like that kind of thing, the way he was portrayed. He had one quote, and I'm going to read, I found it,

when we changed the race problem into a class fight between the haves and have-nots, then we're going to have a new ball game. I mean, I think he clocked that. Same thing with Sanders, same thing with a lot, you know, in AOC in some ways. And that's, and Mamdani, really, in a lot of ways. Yeah. I mean, people misrepresent him as this person who's like all about race. But when you look at his actual campaigns, he was actually arguing that the real commonality

between people should be their interests, their class interests, their economic interests. He was rallying farmers in Missouri and in rural states and in Iowa on the basis of what we have in common is our need to be treated fairly economically. That was the basis of his campaign, not a racial appeal, which is contra how he was conveyed to the public during his campaigns. Right, because he did suffer from egomaniacal,

you know, and look at me, you know, everything he did was sort of, and he was a fantastic looking person, right? You wanted to look at him in a lot of ways, but an important figure. I'm excited. We'll talk about it more on when it comes out, hopefully we'll a longer interview about it.

But we've got a lot to get to today, including Gavin Newsom trolling Trump and the Costco abortion pill controversy, among other things. But first, President Trump is set to meet Ukraine's President Zelensky and European leaders of the White House as we record on Monday. This follows Trump's summit with Putin in Alaska on Friday, where he rolled out the red carpet, but no deal was made. Trump seems to be siding with Putin right now after going in not siding with him, saying over the week and the best way to end the wars to go directly to a peace agreement, not negotiate a ceasefire, which he was talking about. He's also telling Ukraine to give up on getting back.

Russia annex Crimea or joining NATO. You were part of CNN's live coverage of the Alaska summit. I just loved your thoughts. And the last time Zelensky was in the White House, things got pretty ugly. Dan's kind of trolled him. He's bringing backup this time and others. He may wear a suit, which is so inane, but there you have it. They were making comments about his outfit, which was a military outfit. Talk to me a little bit about this, even though it's going to go by the time we do, But how are you going into this? How do you look at it, especially from the Alaska summit? I think it's extraordinary that this is even happening.

I mean, think about the fact that you have a phalanx of European leaders getting on planes at a moment's notice to flock to Washington to give Zelensky backup in this meeting with Trump. That's a level of concern that I think some people say hasn't been demonstrated since 9-11. And it reflects a deep worry about Trump's decision-making and his need to be surrounded by a certain point of view in order to come to what they view is the right conclusion. So I think that alone, I mean, says a lot. And I think that, you know, I said this on Friday.

I mean, Trump really believes that he, He can get Putin to the desired outcome by simply treating him right, by giving him the red carpet, by giving him, you know, the military welcome by the smiles, the round of applause, all of that. Which is what he wants, which would work for him. But Putin doesn't really care about those things. He wants what he wants in the interest of Russian Empire, which is what he wants to reestablish. And so I still think we don't know terribly much about what was talked about and decided. There was some talk of security guarantees that do not involve NATO. So the obvious question is, what does that really look like?

But I think that the devil is 100, 1,000 percent in the details here. Which is not Trump's strong suit. Not exactly. I do think that's the problem, is that Putin is worried about the details. Trump, not so much. And the details also become insanely important to Ukraine because they have been in a situation before where they've been given security guarantees

and it's just, they've still been bulldozed as a result of it. Putin also wants to divide the United States and Europe. So it is also in Putin's interest to disentangle Ukraine's security from Europe and NATO. And so it does work in Putin's favor to say, well, we'll give you security guarantees but it's not going to involve NATO.

So will that fly? Something tells me, no, it will not. Because he will say, we'll do it and then won't do it, right? Won't send U.S. troops. Exactly. Exactly. I also just wonder, I mean, how does the American First crowd feel about Trump giving security guarantees unilaterally, perhaps?

Like, are we going to be sending troops? Right. That's the thing. If fresh invades, because that's literally the thing that the American, Erica Fo's first crowd said that they did not want. So I think that there are a lot of words being spoken right now, but, you know, time will tell. What was your takeaway from the summit itself?

Obviously, the Trump people trying to spin it as something positive, but nobody is. There's not even a coverage, even on Fox News. I think it was not much. It was much ado about nothing. And that was told, by the way, that they came out of, the meeting. They came out of the meeting. They said almost nothing. There was no sort of paper. There was no joint agreement. Putin and Trump were saying different things. Then over the

weekend, you had Marco Rubio also downplaying it saying, hey, we have a long way to go. And the ceasefire thing is super important. Putin wants to continue to pummel Ukraine while he spins his wheels on an end to the war. And that's what Trump is allowing him to get. So why? Why did he's he's going to, because that's what Putin wants? But why did Trump shift in that meeting? Nobody knows. Right. But, you know, the readout from the call with Zelensky seemed to point to what is happening here, is that Putin is convincing Trump of a particular military reality on the ground that Zelensky disputes, which is that they're winning, right? And Zelensky disputes that. And my question is, Trump has a whole military and a national security apparatus and an intelligence apparatus

who he can ask about what is happening on the ground. So I am confused about why Trump would ask those experts about what's happening and not take Putin's word for it and why he would regurgitate Putin's view of the war to Zelensky without filtering it through what we know to be true about what's happening on the ground. It still reminds you of the hold that Putin has on Trump, you know, over and over again. We seem to get the same result every time he walks in a room with him and comes out. He comes out difference if his brain has been fried or something. I think Trump is super impressed, by the way, Kara, by Putin. I think that's, I think that's a big part of it. He's just very impressed by him. He thinks that he's got it figured out,

that he's arranged Russian society in a way that he admires. I think Trump really just thinks Putin is doing it better than anybody else, and he's not concerned about the moral quandary of Putin killing dissidents and perhaps doing war crimes and all of that stuff. It's an admiration at the heart of it. And he doesn't admire someone like Zelensky. By the way, First Lady Melania Trump entered the chat, oddly. She wrote what's being called a peace letter of Putin that Trump hand delivered at the summit. The letter, she tells Putin it's time to protect children and says he can single-handsly restore their melodic laughter. It was a strange letter, but I see her point. Some people are wondering if the letter was AI-generated. They don't know. It's about the children that Russia has taken from Ukraine and are bringing to Russia. It's really quite a heinous act on behalf of the Russians. Any thoughts on this? Were you surprised? I'm not surprised, no, because I think this is how Melania likes to engage in these things. She picks an aspect of it that she thinks is sort of universal, which I think this probably is, and weighs in.

And I think it's fine. I think it's good and it's nice. Do I think it matters? No. Yeah, she's somewhat anti-Pooten, from what I can read, that she's the one shifting him over. her a little more against. She's obviously from countries for this. Right, yeah.

I mean, I think that would make sense, just like given her background. But I also think that, I mean, she has a lot of influence over her husband. So if it were me, I think that's probably the best place to exert influences with the president of the United States.

Yeah, presumably. Yeah, I was sort of surprised, but it was a strange letter, but I was like, okay, sure. We'll see what happens. Talk a little bit about this takeover of Washington. You don't live there any longer, but he's Republican governors from three states are sending national guard troops to D.C., joining already 800 mobilized in the capital.

The Wall Street Journal's reporting that guard troops may soon be carrying weapons, which is frightening for a D.C. resident like myself, a reversal from the original orders, but the Trump administration has backed off its official original push to take over the police force after the city filed an emergency restraining order calling Trump's actions a hostile takeover. It's been one week since Trump announced the takeover. He's obviously putting troops on display in places where there's not high crime, such as a Union Station or on 14th Street. I mean, there is petty crime in 14th Street, really, for the most part.

But what do you think about what's happening there, has a former D.C. resident and what it represents. Yeah, alongside. Yeah, alongside. I mean, you know, Kara, I was there on Friday briefly, very briefly. And I don't know if you feel this way. I don't know how recently you were, because you travel so much, but I was shocked by how quiet and almost deserted the city felt.

Well, it could be the summer, but yeah. It could be the summer, but it was striking. And then, so I say that, and that was my gut feeling. I was like, this is odd. I was in the middle of Chinatown. There were no people. Yeah, restaurants are down, restaurant reservations. Tourism.

there's this reporting about a dramatic drop, 25%, 33% in restaurant reservations and foot traffic and bars. Bars are, you know, these businesses are just saying this is totally unsustainable. And look, we will know more later, but I'm starting there just because the premise of this whole thing is that D.C. residents want this deep down inside because they want to feel safer so that they can go about their lives without fear, a threat of violence against that. Yeah, we don't fear that. But go ahead. But the reality of it is that people are avoiding being in the city right now, because nobody wants to live in a society that is militarized. Right. I don't like going to countries that are military when you go to a country and

nobody likes going to countries that are militarized. When we travel, I've been to places that are more militarized than here, and you see the tanks in the street and the guards where, you know, with the semi-automatic long guns and all that stuff, it does not make you feel more safe. It makes you feel surveilled. And I think that the proof is in the pudding. So even if you take their premise that DC is so unsafe that there's a quiet support for this among people who live there,

I think the proof is that that's not the case, because otherwise they would be running around like, Woo! Now we can finally have sushi. Yeah, now we can finally do all the things. No, they're avoiding being in parts of the city. That's the first thing. And I think the second thing is that I, D.C. is the place that they are doing it because they can.

And that's the challenge with D.C. is that truly the citizens of the District of Columbia have very few rights compared to other people in this country. None. No voting rights. None virtually. And our representative. seems to be aged and not speaking out. And so, but even if they were, I mean, he can do this.

He can do this. And so should he do it? Probably not, but he can. And, and as you pointed out, I mean, where are they sending these troops? It's not to the places where the crime is actually happening. And they're also predominantly doing immigration arrest, just pulling undocumented immigrants from mopeds and delivering ice cream. coffees from Bluestone Lane. So I just think the reality versus the rhetoric is so stark here.

I want D.C. to be safe. I think crime is absolutely a problem in the city. But I also think that the people who need protecting are not being protected. Well, that's because it's also racial, right? It's like scary city run by black people. Like, I think that's a lot of it. Like, the visuals is what they're going for in some fashion and then doing nothing. Like, their union station. I mean, maybe at 1 o'clock in the morning, the station's a little sketchy, but otherwise, not at all. It's a very strange thing. I don't know where it's going to go, and we'll see if he extends it to other cities like New York if Mondani wins. Have you also noticed, Kara, like, I mean, the thing that I think we should keep an eye on with this is the videos of the

masked agents, the ones who, there was the one that went viral over the weekend where one of them said, you know, liberals have already ruined America. the degree to which Trump has successfully turned immigration agents, now the Secret Service, you know, HSI, which typically are tasked with some of the most sensitive, you know, federal law enforcement investigations into his personal police force that are ideologically aligned with him, I think is one of the most important developments in the last several months. And it's gone almost entirely unchecked. and it will only be exacerbated as we go down the road.

Yeah, I don't think it's a long trip, Abby. I think these people are already down that road in a lot of ways. But wearing of the masks, he's creating his own personal stasi, and that's what's really disturbing. And it's going to be hard to put them back in the box, for sure. Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, how Gavin Newsom has become the ultimate Trump troll. Support for this show comes from Delete Me.

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Go to selectquot.com slash pivot today to get started. That's selectquote.com slash pivot. Abby, we're back. California Governor Gavin Newsom can play President Trump's social media game too. He's quite good at it. Newsom's press office social media feed has been focused on capital letters and AI memes mocking the president's tactics and it's winning the attention game. The strategy is part of Newsom's response to a Trump-backed redistricting plan in Texas.

That's where it began. The California governors responded by saying he would pursue a special election to redraw California's congressional maps to offset Republican gains. It's a dicey thing to do because other states could also participate. A post from Newsom's office reads in all caps, Donald Trump, the lowest polling president in recent history. This is your second to last warning. Stand down now or California will counterstrike, in parentheses, legally. To destroy your illegal crooked maps in red states, meme posts include comparing Stephen Miller to Lord Voldemort,

responding to a photo of a rainbow over Marine one with happy pride, an image of Newsom on the cover of Time magazine saying long live the king. Meanwhile, Texas Democrats who fled the state to stall redistricting plans have returned, the state legislature wrapped its first special session last week with Governor Greg Abbott quickly calling for a second special session. Talk about what Newsom's doing here in your thoughts. You know, the right is trying very hard to say he's cringy and this and that. I think he's very funny.

It's getting a lot of attention and certainly a lot of views, et cetera. But what is happening here from your perspective with him and has he break to the code on how to break through in the Trump era? You know, my views on Newsom are that he's trying to get attention

and he's getting attention. And I think that you enjoy it. I'm neutral on it. I don't, it's all just trolling fine. My filter on some of this stuff is, what's the actual electoral impact? Because you can rally the base, you can make Democrats, you can tickle their funny bone with this stuff, and that's great. But at the end of the day, Democrats need to start winning elections. So after all of this is done, what I want to know is what are they actually doing to change the electoral reality in the country?

because that's ultimately the only thing that matters. I mean, on the redistricting bit of it, is it a race to a bottom? Absolutely. It's interesting that Arnold Schwarzenegger is like very much opposed to this. Yeah, he had, when he was governor, he passed something that could,

they couldn't do this. He was trying to get to. Yeah, and has made it more difficult. And even within that paradigm, you know, Gavin Newsom is still trying to actually, I mean, it's the hard way. You have to take it to a referendum in order to get this to happen.

So, I mean, look, if he's able to take it to a referendum and get approval from voters to redistrict, then I guess by all means, but I do think, and I see this a lot, Democrats do get held to a higher sort of almost like moral standard than Republicans do on stuff like this.

There's always a question of, why aren't you moving to the middle? Why aren't you trying to appeal to moderates? Meanwhile, the fact of the matter is that Trumpism and the rise of MAGA has occurred by completely ignoring this, even the mildest concept of moderation. I mean, Trump and Republicans have gone as farther to the right than they have been. Right. They don't care about the very long time. The rhinos at all. Yeah.

So I do think that it's worthwhile Democrats saying, okay, let's really address the desires of voters. here. And if this is what their voters are asking for, I think that politics is the business of, you know, adding and not subtracting, so building support for people, with people, for the things that you want to accomplish. And I think Democrats probably do need to start listening to their voters more. And I'm not sure how many of them are asking for this sort of like mushy middle. They're asking for people to stand up for something. And what that thing is, I think they're going to have to figure out. But they do need to start standing up for something as opposed to trying to be in this weird, like, neither here nor their place.

Neither place. Yeah, we're supposed to be real nice and the others can do whatever they want, in other words. So when you look at the Texas Democrats standing up, which they did, they fled the state to stall these plans. It may not work, but they did it. That's sort of a version of leadership. And then what Newsom's doing, how do you compare them? Like, do Democrats have to be doing things like this that show some level of backbone? Because a lot of complaints you hear from Democrats are everyone's a noodle, like Chuck Schumer or whoever it happens to be, noodles, noodles, noodles everywhere. And they are kind of like this. Do you think it pays off from a political point of view for Newsom or these Texas Democrats? I think the Texas Democrats, it's an exercise

and futility, but there was also a precedent for doing it. There was an attempt to do this very same thing in Texas in the early 2000s. They did the same thing. They left the state, but ultimately the courts sided with Texas Republicans in the redistricting fight. So they knew that this was going to end

the way that it is ending. But more, you know, I think if they want to make a statement by leaving the state, then fine. I think that's totally fine to do. And I think that there is some value in showing your voters

that you care enough to put yourself on the line, even if it's going to end a certain way. On the Newsom part of it, I mean, same thing, really. I mean, Democrats have to figure out how they fight back. And they may need to fight back by simply fighting fire with fire. Because I don't think that by Democrats sort of unilaterally disarming, you're going to resolve the problem of gerrymandering in this country.

gerrymandering needs to be resolved, but it's not going to be resolved by one side just kind of laying down and getting rolled over while the other side gerrymanders the place into oblivion. Right. Although some Republican state governors have resisted in New Hampshire and elsewhere, they don't want to be pulled down into this muck, but they probably will be resolutely. And we should be clear that some of the most gerrymandered states are not just Republican states, places like. Illinois are heavily gerrymandered. So it's not to say that gerrymandering is the domain of one party over another, although Republicans do utilize it heavily, especially in southern states. But, and I would also add that Democrats nationally have been way more willing to say, we would like to take this off the table for everyone, ourselves included, whereas Republicans have not said that. And so there is. Well, he needs it for the midterms, the majority.

And they don't want to not use, utilize gerrymandering, period. So, so, I mean, in this moment, I think it makes sense what Gavin Newsom is doing. If he's in, and I think it helps. But you're neutral, it's interesting. You're like, I'm not amused by Gavin. I think I think that the Twitter, X, whatever, I guess I should call it X, the ex, shenanigans do not move me at all. Like, I find them to be very unimpressive, not important, does not matter to the average person, but it tickles people's fancy so great. Go for it. It's giving him a lot of impressions on social

media. Great. Go for it. Does that up his presidential chances from your perspective? Because that's starting now, right? No. That's another discussion for another day. But I will just say that I don't think that your presidential chances are related to your social media clout. Yeah. So he does look good. a stride an eagle with a chest who does look. You will become well known, but that doesn't mean that you are more likely to be elected president. And so that's the other part of this that I think is why I'm kind of super neutral about it, is that I just feel like people often mistake those two things, is does this person go viral

on social media versus can they actually bank votes? And those things are not the same. And the folks who are interested in Democrats beating Republicans should pay very close attention to that distinction because that's also one of the reasons why they didn't see Kamau Harris's loss coming because they falsely believed that chatter on social media was related to votes and it's not.

It's not. Snakes on a plane, that's what they're called, which was very popular and then didn't do very well. It's a movie because it was a bad movie. But it's so iconic and it's still iconic. It still has to be a good movie. That's what I say. All right, Abby, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, the Trump administration's plan to rank companies. Support for the show comes from Hymns. If you're someone who values choice in your money, your goals, and your future, then you know how frustrating traditional health care can be. One size fits all treatments, preset dosages, zero flexibility. It's like trying to budget with a fixed expense you didn't even choose. That's where Hymns and HERS comes in. They're in the business of reimagining health care around you.

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That's G-R-U-N-S dot CO using the code Pivot for 52% off. Megan Rapino here. This week on a touch more, we are welcoming a very special guest to the show. She speaks multiple languages. Her middle name is literally tough. and I used to dread playing against her on the field. That's right, it's five-time Champions League winner Lucy Bronze. And now two-time. You're a winner.

Plus, Sue and I discuss the bonkers scoring in the W and share our new workout of the week. Check out our latest episode of A Touch More, wherever you get your podcast, and on YouTube. Abby, we're back with one more story. The Trump administration has reportedly created a scoring system to rank 553 companies and trade associations based on support and promotion of Trump's big, beautiful bill. Factors in the rating include social media post, press releases, ads, and attendance in White House events,

very similar what they're doing to people who are immigrants looking at their social media, looking at them, and law firms and universities, etc. Companies that have the honor being labeled highly include Uber, DoorDash, United, and AT&T, and one company may be looking to work its way up the rankings. Costco announced it won't dispense myth of Preston, the abortion medication at its pharmacies. The company said the decision was made due to lack of demand. Groups from both the left and right have been placing political pressure on Costco. Should we expect even more corporate sucking up a responseless ranking?

Why not? The law firms have and others have other administrations obviously have corporate favorites and they play it more quietly. How do you look at this ranking? It's sort of the list. you're on our list kind of thing, which Trump has done any number of ways with other groups of people. Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising at all. I mean, I know many people who work on K Street and they've been operating in this environment since the very beginning with Trump, where there has always been a clear sense that you have to prove your loyalty to Trump by things that

you say publicly, things that you say privately, your willingness to put money behind. the things that you do, that's how they've been operating from the beginning. So now we just know that there's like a spreadsheet that they're using to keep track. Right, yeah, yeah. But the truth of the matter is, is that the way I look at this is that corporations, especially multinational ones, which is what we're talking about here in most cases, they operate all over the world. They operate in free countries and they operate in unfree countries.

They operate with strong men and they operate with democratically elected leaders. And so they have been doing. doing this stance in other parts of the world for a very long time. They are not new to this. So they know how to operate in Trump's America. Their willingness to very quickly adjust to a White House that A wants loyalty, B wants control. I mean, Trump doesn't just want them to say nice things. He also wants to own shares of private corporations. He wants to tell them how to operate their boards. He wants to hire their economists. He wants to all of it. He wants his hand in all of it. But they know how to deal with that. And I think if people

thought that corporate America was going to be like the place where there was going to be resistance to Trump, you are not paying attention. Yeah, no, it's the last place, right? It's particularly unctious and repulsive, but, you know. It's, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to do what they need to do in order to sail through this era of American history. Yeah, like, Tim Cook giving that stature. Everyone was so upset. Totally. Are you kidding?

Totally. And they are going to do it. If you think that there is not a thing that they're willing to do, you are wrong. Yeah, that's true. Totally wrong. They will do it, all of it. They will say, yes, Mr. Trump,

you can own shares of our company. Yes, Mr. Trump. You can select members of our board. Yes, Mr. Trump. We will stop utilizing hiring practices that we don't like. All of it. They will do all of it.

And they will do it because they know that it's for a time, maybe four years. Maybe something else will come after that. But they just have to weather the storm and maximize the shareholder value, and they will do that. Yeah, I think you're 100% right. Certain groups will resist. Certain companies will. But Costco is quite a liberal company and resisted DEI pushing on DEI. They may be telling the truth about lack of demand, or they just are like,

this is just causing us so much of a headache. We'll just do it. I wonder if they're afraid also of lawsuits, because I think there's a little bit of it with the Mifoprestone stuff. I do think that there is a sort of almost like, it's different from the DEI thing. There's like a threat of, you know, lawsuits about the safe,

even though the Mifraestone is a safe drug, there are these organizations that have been threatening on safety grounds to go after companies that provide it to patients. And so there are, layers to this with the medical stuff that I think are different. Yeah, you can see, you can be in those rooms. They're like, oh, let's just get this off our plate. Let's give them a gold statue. It's fine, whatever. These are small little things to them. They aren't ultimately because it creates us,

it feels very Putin-esque, right? It feels, you know, he doesn't have to like kill them to get them to do these things the way Putin does, of course, with his enemies. But it's a version of that. And don't be surprised. For companies, I'm not, some people I'm more surprised at, of by others, but last week I was talking to Rachel about university it's not like they were an ad for tolerance and anti-wokism, any

of those university presidents ever, like if you've ever met one, including corporate owners, corporate owners of media and things like that. You've seen it all over the place. All right, Abby, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. I'm Henry Blodgett, host of solutions from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Every week, I grill the world's best thinkers on how to actually fix our problems, starting with the U.S. economy. In our first episode, out now, I asked Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman about everything. Tariffs, the deficit, China, manufacturing, taxes. What is a good progressive tax scheme? The answer actually is 73%. So we can stop fighting about that one. Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. I know it can seem like we're drowning in problems,

but the truth is for every issue the world is facing, there are sharp, brilliant minds conceiving big ideas to solve them. That's why my friend and business insider co-founder Henry Blodgett, whom I brought to Vox Media, is launching a new podcast, solutions with Henry Blodgett. Every week, he'll interview leading thinkers across business, tech politics, and more to get to the bottom of how we finally put these pressing problems to bed. Make sure to check out the first episodes of Solutions with Henry Blodget

on Monday, August 18th, on YouTube and other podcast apps. This week on Criminal, at 6 a.m. on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. People in the Fisher Housing Projects were trapped without food, water, and electricity. It didn't seem like anyone was coming to help. And then 20-year-old Jabbar Gibson found about a dozen park school buses. I decided right then and there that I was going to drive one of these buses, but I didn't know how. Listen to the latest episode of Criminal to hear what happened next.

Listen to Criminal, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Abby, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first or I can very quickly? You can go first. I think my win is Steve Wozniak. He's the co-founder of Apple computer with Steve Jobs. He made an appearance and a threat about his lawsuit against YouTube over Internet scammers using his likeness, which happens, by the way, to you, Abby, and to me and everyone else all across the Internet.

He said, I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. He liked that. I remember I'm telling you about it. He is about $10 million, I think. Of all the money he's made, and he's always been like this.

And I just like a reminder of someone like this in this sort of get while the getons good kind of thing. He is a very happy, jolly person. And I find it really nice that he, you know, there are other kinds of billionaires. They're not all the same or very wealthy people. And he certainly has, his impact has been massive on us. Steve Jobs gets all the attention, but Steve Wozniak was also critical to Apple, which we all use today. And so I really like that. My fail is something I talked about with Rachel last week was the name Versant, which is the new company about to come out.

And we were joking. It sounds like, you know, a Medicaid. that would be advertised on late-night cable to resolve your rash, and results may vary. But they're now having to change MSNBC, which when it was started, it was Microsoft NBC. I was there when it was started when they had that deal a long time ago.

Now it's changed to MS Now, which is short for My Source News Opinion World. What? Semaphores Josh Billinson said MS Now sounds like a short-lived Windows operating system for the early 2000s that needlessly redesigned too much and failed to be adopted by MS-critical. This is bad, Karen.

I know, MS-N-N-ROW. Sorry to say, but it's... You can say. It doesn't roll off the tongue. It does not roll off the time. I don't know what you... Do you have a name you'd call it? I don't know.

That's the thing. It's like how do you, how to rename a thing? Yeah. In this day and age, it's so hard. I mean, I empathize because there are no good choices here. No. But MS Now is not. You know.

Shirt the Windows off. It's true. They made me download MS Now and I hate it. It's like ChatGBC5. Those people are all upset. They don't have Chad GBT-4-0. But whatever. It's just like, oh, come on.

It'll matter how they do, ultimately, not the name because, you know, HBO now, HBO then, HBO this, Max, this and that happens all the time. but it's a particularly bad name. Sorry. Sorry, Rebecca Culler. Yeah, I know. We love Rebecca. It's not her fault. It's, I thought it was nice to hear Rachel being so optimistic about it.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and I think she's right. I think this is nothing but opportunity going forward. Well, it's coming for you, Abby. That's what they're doing over. Yeah, exactly, right? But who cares what it's called? I mean, at the end of the day, that's not what matters.

Yeah, you get to keep CNN. There's no name conflict over there. And it should keep CNN as a global world. No, no, I don't think CNN is good. I mean, I don't know, but I don't think CNN is going anywhere in terms of the U. Well, you're about to go on that journey, too, and it's all about being an entrepreneur. It's going to be a fun little trip that we'll be on. Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

All right, your wins and fails? All right, my turn. Okay, let me start with my fail, because I want to end on a high note. My fail is the president of the United States going on this bizarre, anti-male-in-voting, screed over the weekend about how he's going to, he wants to outlaw mail-in voting. Maybe this is because Putin brought this up with him on Friday as a way to try to flatter him. But he said all kinds of false things, including some things that led me to question whether anyone had shown him the actual constitution because he does, he does claim that the states

are merely an agent for the federal government in counting and tabulating the votes, which is, needless to say, not what the Constitution says. I cannot wait to hear how states' rights conservatives defend this, because not only does it make no sense at all, but his opposition to mail-in voting

just defies reality. If Democrats were so good at rigging voting, votes, do you think that he would have won in 2024? No. Truly? I mean, no. Right? So, Democrats have done a really crappy job of rigging elections with mail-in votes.

I think he's trying to deal with 2026. He did the census of the voting, right? Yes. And he says he wants to do it before, right, before the midterms. I say this somewhat lightheartedly, but is also super important and terrible at the same time. I do think that this is just a bald-faced lie that ought to be immediately slapped down. And voting machines. Same thing.

He wants to get rid of the machine. I think he wants to use rocks. Everyone gets a rock. He wants, he said something about watermarked paper. Yeah. Okay. I don't, I can't even begin to unpack that one. It creates distrust in voting.

That's my fail. Continue. Okay. Good fail. He just wants more, he wants more paper, which I don't know what to tell you. My win is, I have a four-year-old now, Kara, and I successfully executed a four-year-old birthday party this weekend, and I will tell you that this one was hard. It was harder than the ones that came before because she had so many freaking opinions

about this party and about the gifts that she was expecting and about, you know, I mean, I was, like, tracking down the RSVPs, like, it was my party. Like, is her best friend coming? You know, like, oh, my God, what if there are not these people that she really loves? And I just, I'm glad to be through it. But that's my win. First of all, I've kept a human alive for four years. Yeah.

I successfully planned a birthday party for said human. Yeah. I still have my hearing because the kids. screamed like banshees for at least 45 minutes at the start of this party. Yeah. Just nonstop running around and screaming. Yeah. And I'm here to live to tell the tale.

Oh, happy. You have no idea what's coming. I have four kids in Vermont right now, and let me just tell you, it's, you're going to love seven, and 10, 13. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm worried, because the way four went, I was like, wait a second. You're not supposed to do this yet. endurance going here, Abby.

You're not supposed to do it. Yeah, she also asked me for a gift, that then she told me that she didn't want anymore. Seven. And then I should return. I'm going to give you some advice, seven, ten, thirteen, sixteen, let me just, twenty, I didn't have the right yogurt this morning. Seriously, for his macros.

Don't even talk to me. I'd buy two chickens. The macros, not the macros. I don't even. I'm not going to let you know about that yet. You've got a protein monster in your house. Oh, my God. even talk to. Everyone has a different situation. Anyway, congratulations on that and get ready.

That's all I have to say. We want to hear from you, send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to NYMag.com slash pivot. To submit a question for the show, or call 85551 Pivot. Elsewhere this week, I talked to philosopher and author Jason Stanley about fascism in the Trump era for just a light interview. Let's listen to a clip. It's a kind of paint-by-numbers' fascist dictatorship that is emerging. It's something that you would read a book and it says, this is what they do, and that's what they're doing. Sometimes I feel like they're reading my books. You know, it's not hidden.

It's not a sophisticated version of authoritarianism, not even as sophisticated as Putin. Right. But does it have to be? It doesn't appear so. It appears that the United States is exceptionally vulnerable to fascism. Just what you were saying, Abby. He's really an interesting fellow. He's the one that moved to Canada, which I chastised him for.

The one thing I would say is that even though I think it's super important to understand the history of all of this, I think people need to be very focused on the here and now in terms of tactically what is being done to, if you disagree with what Trump is doing, to address it. And I think people forget about that as they are sort of like, well, this is like what happened, you know, X number of years ago or over there. And the question is, how do you convince your neighbors to vote for something different than next time around? Right. Although he did point out there are primers of how to resist its civil rights movement, speaking of which you just wrote a book about this. In the civil rights movement, the images that work there, especially the brutality, moved over a group of people. people, mostly white, that suddenly became empathetic and things change, right? And more and more protests happen. And Jackson was part of that, right, calling attention to it, as you noted. So we'll see.

He's an interesting guy. Okay, that's the show. Abby, thank you for joining me. I really appreciate it. And people can watch you on news night every week night on CNN. And your book, A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson, and the fight for black political power comes out in October. And again, we're going to have you on it on to talk about.

that. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, Kara. I really appreciate it. We did it. Anyway, everybody, thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is growing by leaps and bounds. We'll be back, because now podcasting is video. Abby, I don't know if you know that, but FYI. We'll be back on Friday, and I will read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Jim McEl I'll edited the video. Nishot Curwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks 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 later this week for another breakdown of all things, tech and business. Again, thank you, Abby. And say hi to your Scott. I will.