Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Fox News Poll Shows Democrats Leading In the Midterms — Republicans Should Be Very Worried

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway break down the news, starting with the Trump administration's newly announced peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. They talk about the biggest risks and concerns, how the optics play against the backdrop of the U.S. campaign against Iran, and what it means that Yemen's Houthis have now attacked two Saudi tankers — opening yet another front in an already sprawling conflict. Meanwhile, the House has adopted a $95 billion budget, funding the Iran war while providing money to encourage states to adopt new voting restrictions. The House and Senate still need to agree on a unified resolution before moving to a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill, and the proposal faces much more potential opposition in the Senate. Trump rallied in Georgia last night, targeting Sen. Jon Ossoff and warning of a Democratic “radical left” takeover. Meanwhile, a new Fox News poll shows Democrats leading 59-41 in counties where the 2024 presidential election was close. Scott and Jessica dive into the numbers and ask: are Republicans worried about the depth of the Democratic bench? Plus, the Trump administration is moving to dramatically scale back federal teen pregnancy prevention efforts. Why?  And, Scott has been appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to serve on the University of California Board of Regents. What will his first order of business be? Get your tickets now for our live show at 92NY: https://www.92ny.org/event/scott-galloway-and-jessica-tarlov For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Fox News poll that came out last night was like, inject this into my veins, level good. That is a crazy poll. The quotes that Republicans are giving, we're preparing for the bottom to fall out. We're freaking out. So if these numbers hold, it will be blue tsunami territory. And then there will be incredible opportunity to get things done. What do you think about them, apples? Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.

And I'm Jessica Tarliffe. Before we get started, Jess, we're heading back to the 92nd Street, Y, December, 92, NY, and tickets are on sale now. Grab yours through the link in the show notes below. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay on top of all the latest political news. All right, let's bust into it. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have signed what the Trump administration is calling a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement. The Energy Department says the deal lays the groundwork for a multi-billion dollar partnership to expand Saudi Arabia's energy capacity.

However, lawmakers are raising flags that countries, including Turkey and Egypt, could soon want similar deals. Jess, the agreement still has to go through a mandatory congressional review. What do you think are going to be the topics of concern here? The topics of concern is that it's giving Saudi a pathway, a golden pathway, to a nuclear weapon if they should decide to go that route and that it would actually be even weaker than the JCPOA, which seems like a theme with the Trump administration that you rip up a thing in 2018 and then Iran ends up in a stronger position and then perhaps we set Saudi down that path

as well. I assume that Congress is going to block this, that there are going to be, you know, enough Republicans that are concerned about the chances of. of Saudi moving from a civilian program to a nuclear program, lots of authoritative figures on the topic specialists that are speaking out against this, talking about how it doesn't have the safeguards that it needs, calling it a terrible precedent, that it goes against longstanding bipartisan support for negotiating nuclear cooperation agreements that prohibit enrichment and reprocessing. it's no good. And he posted on truth social this morning saying, you know, we're going to do this and then Saudi is going to join the Abraham Accords. But as usual, there are no guarantees of that. And it does not seem that Saudi is interested in doing that beyond, I guess, you know, making sweet nothings to Trump when they get on the phone with him versus actual reality, which looks like they are not moving any closer to that. So flailing, bad deal, Congress should block it.

It's my top lines. Yeah, I thought that was a great summary. I mean, we've been transacting with the Saudi since 38. Oil for arms, basically, or arms for access. This is just sort of the latest invoice, if you will. 41 billion in bilateral trade, 575 billion of commitments just last year. And people don't write checks of that size for, cooperation, they write them for access. And we have a tendency on the left to understand the right

and acknowledge, you know, kind of both sides things. The Trump family is a criminal family. That's the bad news. The worst news is that is that Michael's running the grift and Fredo's running the government. And there's a certain amount of grift and corruption in every administration. This is taking it to the next level. And unfortunately, all the elegance and intelligence is going into the grift. The Trump family pocketed 50 million off Saudi deals in just 2024. Cushner's firms, the president's son-in-law, nets $125 million in fees off a $3 billion commitment from PIF, the Saudi sovereign fund. So this isn't foreign policy. It's a family business where the business development department is the state department. And we're, I mean, it's just all of this,

if you look at it, makes no fucking sense. We're bombing one nuclear program while blessing another. And the through line here isn't non-proliferation. It's who's willing to pay a toll to the Trump family. And the thing will be interesting here is don't watch the ceremony here around these deals if they ever go through. watch the Houthi blockade. Two tankers have already been hit, and that's where quote-unquote, and these energy partnerships turn into a security guarantee that we haven't priced in yet. This, again, is monetizing future defense and security for present-day corruption and payoff for the administration. Nailed it on the corruption front. And I love how they talk about what an incredible investment opportunity this is for American businesses without delineating the fact

that this administration has been giving no bid contracts across every single level of the bureaucracy to their friends and family members. Some of it has been made public like in the humiliation of Christy Noem. A lot of it, though, continues to fly under the radar. I think, you know, pointing out what's going on now with the Houthis is really important. So they've hit these two Saudi tankers. And I was reading in the time, times that Iran actually flew in IRGC commanders to be in charge of this mission. I also sent missile gear with them over to the Houthis. So remember back in the day when we had these lofty goals for the war in Iran, which was supposed to take like 48 hours to a couple of weeks, but we're

talking about proxy forces being an enormous problem here. We're like creating new proxy forces at this point. Just the imagery of an IRGC commander getting on a plane. to head over and to take over, you know, what's going on with the Houthis is such a smack in our faces. As Trump is blustering away on truth social about how he's going to take out a bridge and a power plant every day that, you know, we don't get a good deal or that they don't acquiesce to our demands. I mean, no one believes him about anything. And I don't know, I guess broken record. I don't know how this ends. I know it ends badly if it doesn't.

if it does it all. But a forever war or a forever little battle or whatever is going on where people are just kind of like shooting back and forth at each other feels a lot more likely and that this is certainly going into the midterms. Right. Like they, you know, and that gas is just on its way up, like over $4 a gallon nationally this week. But there will be no return to quote unquote normalcy because the administration knows that they can't grant Iran those waivers again because they took advantage of it and we have new

sanctions on them. So they're completely like cornered rats right now. And the IRGC is just flitting around, I guess, right? figuring out which tankers they want to shoot at. I'm in L.A. right now and I saw, and I drove down to Palace Ferdice last night and I saw several gas stations that were offering gas at seven bucks a gallon. Jesus. You struck a chord when you said this ends badly. I think most, great or terrible presidents have very good or bad endings well after they're gone. And that is, you know, the great society or Social Security or sacrificing tremendous, you know, treasure and in blood in World War II.

I think the benefits of FDR have been registered over the last 80 years. And I think some of the poor economic policies of Reagan, in my view, have been fully felt. The real damage was 20, 30, 40 years later. And I don't think people realize just how damaging this is going to be well after. Some of these decisions are going to be well after, or felt well after Trump is dead and gone, whether it's trade policies that work around us, economic growth loss, because we have basically decided to take our allies and encourage them to do deals with each other around us, a less secure Middle East, a ascendant China that now the world trusts more than us. a lot of these things in the short term don't register that much negative impact, but they build. And these decisions are just going to make it much harder for future administrations. In related news, the House has now adopted a $95 billion budget plan that would fund the war in Iran while providing money to encourage states to adopt new voting restrictions.

No worries there. The House and Senate still need to agree on the same budget resolution before moving to a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill, but the proposal faces a tougher path in the Senate. Meanwhile, Trump rallied supporters in Georgia last night, railing against Georgia Senator John Ossoff and warning of a Democratic takeover. Let's take a listen. The Democrats are going to terminate the filibuster as soon as they have a chance. And then they're going to approve Puerto Rico and D.C. as a state.

They've got four more senators. They're going to get up with 12 more congressmen. They're going to get like 40 electoral votes. If they are allowed to do that, by that time I'll be sitting home. And I'm not a big cryer. I don't think you want to see me cry, you know. There are some people they do very well when they cry, but you don't want to see me cry, but I may be crying when I...

I'll be sitting home and I'll say I told them they got to really terminate the filibuster, get everything approved right away. Can you see all the orange makeup streaming down his face as he cries at Mar-a-Lago? Don't tempt me with a good time is what I would say to all of that. I hope that Democrats get as ruthless as Mitch McConnell is as he lays in his bed wherever. You know, Trump is telegraphing the fear that the Republican Party writ large has about what's going to happen in the midterms. And they rammed through this spending package to fund the Pentagon through the House. It will not be as easy in the Senate.

There are a few outspoken voices on this, like Rand Paul, for instance, who said, you know, this has just been a disaster, watching Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski. But, you know, turning everything into a poison pill with aspects of the Save America Act as a surefire way to make it so that you're never going to have any bipartisan support for anything. And then you have slim margins and you can't afford to lose people. You know, the spending package also had a bailout for our farmers. And you could certainly make the case that we shouldn't be in the same. position where we have to give bailouts to our farmers, but we have the highest level of bankruptcies that we've seen. They desperately need that money. They don't want to have to need that money, but when you cut off fertilizer supplies and when you mess with global trade to the level that they

can't export their products, like, you're going to have to do something about it. And I would imagine that a lot of Republicans felt like they didn't want to give Pete Hegsess the Pentagon money. But when it's all tied together, you kind of have to make your deal with the devil, right? And you have to, you have to do with what's in front of you. I'm curious your thoughts on that. And then I want to talk about the horse race and the midterms because there's a lot of very exciting new polling for Democrats. Yeah. So the thing I took away from that speech in him being in Georgia and trying to rail against Senator Assoff is the following, that whenever Fox turns its sights or Trump turns its sights on an individual, that's a badge of honor. That means that individual is a viable candidate for president.

I don't think people register, even on the Democratic side, how much damage the Fox News Empire did to Secretary Clinton. I just think every day they tried to find different ways to shippost her and convince people she was a bad person because they saw her as the most likely nominee on the Democratic side. I think they're doing the same thing or have been for the last 24 months to Governor Newsom. and the fact that Trump is now going after personally Ossoff means all of a sudden he is now on the presidential nominee radar. So I think it's sort of, I think the Osov campaign

can basically be high-fiving each other that, you know, it's like in a debate. You can tell who's leading in the polls because everybody goes after that person, right? Yeah, I'll just add to it that Senator Ossef, I believe, has over $90 million in his war chest. I mean, this guy is a funder amazing phenomenon. So the more Trump calls him, I think he called him Pinky Herman, and it was like a

mashup of Pee Wee Herman and Pinky in the Brain or something, like, all to the good for Asaf, who it looks like is going to cruise to victory in a Senate race and also be able to help Keisha Lance Bottoms on the gubernatorial side as well with a very strong ticket there. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in, an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all-in-one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets.

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Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, The line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. The Fox News poll that came out last night was like, inject this into my veins level good. So on the congressional vote preference, Democrats up 53 to 46. And when you look at only the counties where the 2024. presidential vote was close. Trump and Harris within 10 points. The Democratic candidate leads 59 to 41%. So on inflation, October 22, it was Republicans plus 13. We know what happened in 2024. Republicans won. Now it's

D plus 10, which is a new high in the history of the polling on the economy. It was Republican plus 15. Now It's D plus nine. That's the highest since 2006. And on immigration, which was Trump's best issue, it was R plus 15 in 2022. And now it's D plus one. So plus one, I would like it to be more. But he went from, it went from his best issue to that we're leading on it. Breakdown across all the categories, 18 to 29 year olds, up 24 points, independence,

up 14. women plus 11, 65 plus 8 for Democrats. Old people vote consistently. This one kind of blew my mind. Up two with men. Remember how we hear that like we're, there's no real masculine man. There's no like real dude with high T levels that would ever vote for Democrats. Not sure what they'd say about that. And then with white voters still GOP plus one. The whites we continue to struggle with. But that is a crazy poll. the quotes that Republicans are giving, we're preparing for the bottom to fall out and we're freaking out. So what do you think about them, apples? I find the most encouraging thing there is, did you say 18 to 24 are up 23 points? 18 to 29 and 24 points. And that's the category that he made huge gains with in 2024. Well, that was, I would argue that's what gave.

Trump to presidency was that cohort who feels like the Trump or the Biden administration wasn't working for them and they were just not doing well. So you just want chaos when you're not doing well. And also the 45 to 64 year old female vote swung pretty, pretty aggressively from blue to red. And my thesis was that's their mothers. If you're 25 year old son or daughter isn't doing well, you just want change. And I think especially my young men, because I still think there's a lot of women, specifically mothers who will vote for whoever they think is best for their their son or their husband. But those numbers are, those are really staggering numbers. Like you said, there's got to be a lot of people on the blue side feeling pretty good.

Can I ask, though? Do you think that it's a result of just how badly it's going for the Republicans and how they're basically picking like every wrong door? You know, people are like, I don't have any money. And they're like, more tariffs, more war. Or do you think the Democrats, are actually doing things right. I know we don't have those policies that we've been asking for, like our bumper stickers, but do you think that they're turning into

a not just a viable option for people, but an option that they're excited about? I would call it, Sun Tzu said, when your enemy is shooting itself in the foot or whatever, you just stay out of the way, you just don't do anything. There's a certain amount of own goals

that are just unprecedented here, whether it's new announcements and tariffs that'll take the costs on American households from $1,000 to $1,300, which is supposed to with the impact the new tariffs will have. 90% of those costs are being borne by American consumers. Every study shows gas at, as I said, here, see above in California, $7 a gallon. But the other side, the Democratic side, I would call it the Cheers effect. And that is, I think Ted Danson and Shelley Long and Kirstie Ali are talented. But the reason that Cheers was such an incredible series and so successful was because of the ensemble. I think the Democratic leadership right now is remarkably weak, but the cast, the ensemble, has never been stronger.

And when you're seeing these clips from Prisker, from Assoff, from Newsom, from Shapiro, from Governor Hockel, just every time you see kind of the demo, we have, what is it in the NBA, the Sixth Man Award for the best person who comes off the bench, we have like the six seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and a 12th. The cast here, the supporting cast is just so strong. I think a lot of people look and say, okay, I don't think Governor Bashir will likely be president, but I could live with that guy. He seems pretty, and then look at the supporting cast on the Republican side, J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio. And then, like, where do you go beyond that? Is it Ken Griffin? Is it Tucker Carlson? Is it Ambassador Haley, the supporting cast of Democrats right now, I don't think we've ever had a stronger

bench. Our center and our coach, you know, and I'm talking about minority leader Schumer and leader Jeffries, I think that's the week. I think the top of the pyramid is the weakest part of this pyramid. But in a social media world with the algorithms keep putting in your feed these clips of Asov very elegantly with great hair, and he's clearly a little bit more jacked. That guy's on creatine. Trust me, I know. It's a good glow-up. Yeah, good glow-up. Giving Hexeth, just giving him his best. I think our bench is just outstanding right now. And I think that's, that's, I think that's paying off dividends for us. I think every time somebody in the middle sees one of the, quote-unquote, potential Democratic contenders for president, they go,

You know, I think I like the idea more of that person than a president Vance. Any thoughts? Yeah, I would just add to it that even if AOC's politics are not your cup of tea necessarily, that I think the strength of the left flank of the party is also helping to rise that tide. And people look at her and they look at Mayor Mom Donnie and they see a bright future. for the party. And so I think that's how you get that range, right, from the 18-year-olds to the 65-year-olds, saying, okay, there is something in there for all of us. And yes, we have to figure out our DSA versus, you know, moderate, bickering, et cetera. But in general, I would definitely put up our team against their team on any given day. And I think that it's a complete route. And I'm happy to see that reflected in this. The Emerson poll was also very good. We'll see if it sticks. But if these

numbers hold, it will be blue tsunami territory. And then there will be incredible opportunity to get things done. And there are some heroes also who are wearing capes but are not on our feeds all the time, like Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Mary Potola in Alaska, who is just doing an incredible job and knows exactly how. fly under the radar, but still get those donations and really push their opponents. I mean, North Carolina, I feel very, very good about it, but Alaska would just be incredible. So my extra sense. Yeah, just to just to acknowledge the point, the creativity and dynamism on the left is coming from these what people, you know, think are more left candidates, that Mondanis, the AOCs

of the world, they are bringing the RIS, they're bringing the energy. And as a boomer, you always have to be more Gen X than Boomer, but as even as a Gen X, you have to realize that you're going to get to pick your flavor of disruption and you don't know what you don't know. And the energy, how incredibly articulate and compelling the mayor and AOCR, you're right, that, that RIS is, you know, who are the dynamic young Republicans right now getting a lot of attention? I can't, I can't think of them. And when you think about the lab, how you can tell they're most effective is the gag reflex they inspire from the right

because I think they're very threatened by them. Yeah. Take this is your sign to go. Just get out there and go. This summer at Best Western, get 1,000 bonus points and a chance to win 250,000 bonus points. Life's a trip.

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promote what it calls radical leftist ideology in disputing their effectiveness. Jess, why do you think he's pushing for this now? Because they're still all religious nutbags. And like there's somebody that's praying around Trump, you know, when they do their circles and they take those really scary pictures and then he memes himself as Jesus. Like, that's happening. And I think it comes from what is it, a tremendous reversal. at least data-wise, that this year for the first time women aged 40 and older are now having

more babies than U.S. teenagers. Isn't that wild? It's so, I mean, it's being driven by New York and New Jersey represent, you know, 40-year-old mom, a daddy game when I was 40. But it is a crazy reversal. I just don't understand being so angry about taking the mantle from teenagers. If you said that this was like women in their mid to late 20s, When you really are at a wonderful child-bearing age, and I wish that I had known the right guy and been ready for that, but I wasn't. And I had more school to do and more life to live. And I ended up where I am and it's, you know, the right path for me. But when you're standing up there saying that you're upset that more teenagers aren't having babies, you look absolutely insane. And they're just lying about these programs that they're cutting friends from. Like literally making up lessons that they're giving. Like, literally making up lessons that they're giving.

quote advice on making condom use more pleasurable, normalizing pornography, and a video, it said, contained a scenario of adolescents engaging in sexual activity. And the people who are running these organizations are pushing back saying, we absolutely don't do that. We are trying to provide adolescents and opportunity to come somewhere safe to talk about sexual health, which we know, by the way, leads to better outcomes and less unwanted pregnancies. I know that they would just say that's a straight line to more abortions, especially with Miffipristone on the market. But this feels like Mike Pence may be gone, but this feels like a Mike Pence's back in action kind of scenario. Would you make of it?

Well, I mean, it kind of foots back to what we were saying before, that some of these bad decisions and bad policy will haunt us well beyond the time that, you know, the current documents move out of the house. the poltergeist is going to stick around for future occupants. So the teen mothers' kids face higher dropout rates, unemployment, behavioral risks. This isn't cutting costs. It's moving the bill from prevention to a lifetime of downstream expense that someone else pays. One of the greatest public health victories in America has been that over the last 30 years, there's been a 78% decline in teen births. Just the rate was cut in half just from 2010 to 2019.

And we're headed in the right way. 2025 provisional data shows another 7% drop in its steepest amongst 15 to 17-year-olds exactly who the program targets. It's, yeah, having kids at 15 was a great idea for me and my kid said almost no one ever. And this is a victim. And again, we're going to shortchange, short-sheet the whole economy by cutting programs that are giving people specifically women, specifically usually non-white women, of fighting chance in a more prosperous life. And by the way, folks, most people who terminate pregnancies go on to have kids. And when you're practicing safe sex or teaching people about their sexual health, you create more prosperous, secure households further down in life.

and talked about my mom exercised or used family planning, which is a, I don't know, a polite way of saying. She had an abortion. When I was 17, I remember the exact moment I'm in LA and it just stirs all these emotions and memories when I was a kid. I worked in the mail room of Southwestern University of Law, and I was driving home. My mom and I used to carpool there together, and I even remember what I was wearing. I was wearing Brown Levi Corderoys in a Bruce Springsteen concert shirt. And my mom said to me, and my mom's been gone for 21 years, and she wouldn't mind me talking about it. She spoke openly about it. She said, I'm going, I'm not going to be at home on Wednesday night. I'm going in for a DNC. I didn't know what a DNC was. And then the next day I asked my friends, what's the DNC? And someone said, it's an abortion. I'm like, oh, my mom's getting an abortion Wednesday night.

And I remember panic that I had just found out I had gotten into UCLA, or I was either applying or that I just got into UCLA. And I remember thinking, what if she decides not to do this? I'm going to have to drop out of school and take care of my mom and a new kid, and I'm not going to get to go to college. And that's what would have happened.

My mom was his secretary. She wasn't working for fucking Google. She wasn't going to get six months maternity leave. She was going to have to quit her job or take a lot of time off. And I was, as the man of the house at 17, going to have to put off college. which probably meant I wouldn't gone to college.

These types of programs have so many second order impacts on impoverishing people. They really go after. This is, again, I don't even see this as a war on women. I see it as a war on non-white women who are in poverty, specifically in the South. Many of the same people who actually seem to promote Trump's policies. This is, I feel like ground zero for the depravity of the Trump administration is the war on women, specifically the war on women's health. And we keep thinking it's going to be a big issue in the election. It almost never is. It's something people talk about. It's not something people typically

vote on. But when you're talking about 53 of the 67 grantees, you know, have already had cuts. And now we're talking about the full elimination, defunding one of the few programs that actually works in America. It is, this is a huge ROI. advances the rights of women protects the well-being of women who are disproportionately obviously younger, disproportionately non-white. This is when a budget reflects values, and these values are really poor values. I love that a budget as a moral document has become a raging moderates motto. I think it's a we could take that to the bank. That could be a bumper sticker. I just want to add to it. And I always love when you talk about that decision-making, though

it was a new element that you told your friends. My mom's going to have an abortion tomorrow, so I'm free for dinner if anyone wants to hang. Anyone want to roll? Yeah. But it also just shows how disconnected from reality the Republicans are because the new criteria for this program to get grants is that they must teach abstinence as the only means to prevent teen pregnancy.

Kids are going to do it. Tale is old as time, right? Like they're going to feel activated and want to touch themselves and touch each other. So making that as safe as possible is a good thing. They also have said, you know, in the new criteria that they want to encourage people to have families. I, too, want that. There are a bevy of pro-family policies that you could support and fund so that people have families. Child care, maternity leave, paternity leave, paid sick leave, a higher minimum wage.

All the things. That cut poverty by 50 percent. Why don't you try that? Why don't you make also adoption easier for people? Right? If you think that every life matters, it happens at conception, don't make it insane. Don't attack good families. Like my friend Guy Benson, my colleague at Fox, Republican, gay, just had his second child via surrogate.

He is being destroyed online by the religious right, saying that gays shouldn't be able to have babies, you know, the commodified. of the family, that you're just bringing a motherless child into this world. You're talking about two loving parents, Adam and Guy, who are incredible parents to their older son, Conrad, and now to this little baby girl. It's sickening. Anyway, I'm upset about it. Lowest divorce rates? Lowest divorce rates, highest, and by the way, highest rates of college attendance. It's... And best incomes. They've got a lot of money also. to be able to take care of their families. And by the way, Charlie Kirk was wrong.

This myth that he and his accolades tried to foment that there's all these women who focused on their career because they were told to by Democrats and they make a lot of money and they end up 35 alone and on antidepressants without a family. That is a lie. Fertility is correlated to how much money the woman makes. When women make more money,

they have the option to have children and they generally choose to have children. This notion that somehow women having their own, not being economically indentured to men, results in them being less happy and having less children, is a lie. When women make more money, they start using their ovaries more

because they have more domain and they have more purchase and control over their lives. And they have usually a partner that meets their standards, because they've gone out looking in a different way in their 30s for who to meet with versus in their 20s. Or not. Yeah. But I largely agree. Small sample size, certainly, of my friends. They went and met their match and also paired up with someone who is not threatened and is incredibly supportive of what it is that they do because they also understand the bottom line is our households don't work without our incomes. Well, yeah, my snarky comment is I think men haven't kept pace in terms of leveling up the way.

the women have. And I think women are having a difficult time finding emotionally and economically viable men who have kept pace with the advances of women. And women are understandably raising their standards, which is to be expected. Anyways, I'm cool with that too. There you go. All right. Before we go, I was so excited. I'm pretty sure I texted it to you like, yay, and you ignored it and didn't even give me a thumbs up. But you were just appointed to the University of California Board of Regents. tell us about it, how you got the appointment, and then also what is this confirmation process going to look like? Like, are you nervous about all of the stuff, like topless photos being dredged up? Or you think it's going to be good?

The ancestors, I don't know. I've never been through this kind of confirmation hearing before. So how it came about, Governor Newsom texted me. I don't even know how he got my phone number. I've been in a room. I gave it to him. Is that right? I mean, a while ago.

He slept into your DMs. Yeah, so I got it, I got it, I thought it was a joke. I got a text message saying, Scott, Sgevenor Newsom, would you consider going on the board of the Regency University of California? And I'll be honest, Jess, it's, it's the only board I've ever wanted to serve on. It's, I think when you get to a certain point in your life, you have an obligation to reverse engineer the parts of your success that weren't your fault. And all those roads reverse engineer to the University of California where I got to go to UCLA with a 74% admissions rate, and then I got into Berkeley graduate school with a 2.27 undergraduate GPA and got my shit together in business school and inspired an upward spiral of prosperity, the generosity of California taxpayers and the vision of the Regents of the University of California, like, were transformative for me. And one of the things that really upsets me about higher education in general, is it the accessibility and the bandwidth to take bets on remarkably unremarkable kids, such as myself at 18, that that window is being closed.

74% of missions rate when I applied. This year, it'll be 9%. So this is, you know, really incredibly rewarding for me. I'm super grateful to California. I'm super grateful to the governor for coming up with the idea. And he asked me if I'd be willing to do it. And I said, well, makes no sense. I live in London.

It's six times a year, two days each meeting. I don't have time. I'm building a business. Commuting from London to a different UC campus every other month makes absolutely no sense. And I'm like, of course I'll do this. So I'm, you know, this is a really, I got to be honest, this is a nice moment for me and my family. And my mission and my aim, I've been meeting with all the different regions over the past couple days and talking to them. My mission and aim is very simple.

its accessibility. I think that higher education, unfortunately, has adopted this bullshit rejectionist LVMH strategy of trying to lower admissions rates such that faculty and alumni can feel better about themselves by rejecting 70, 80, 90, 95 percent of applicants. I think we need to absolutely reverse that tide, dramatically expand freshman enrollments, dramatically expand opportunities for young people to not only afford college, but have access to it. So this is, you know, like, this is a nice moment for me. I'm really excited and just some stats. The University of California is, I would argue, the greatest innovation machine in history, 74 Nobel laureates for the five U.S. Nobel recipients last year were UC faculty, 300,000 students, 200,000 employees, 50 billion

dollar budget, interesting, 60% of that comes from their hospital system, produce more startups, creating more economic value than any organization in history. So I feel wonderful about this. And I'm just very grateful to California taxpayers and to the governor. Yeah, I think picking up on, you know, your big theme for the kind of impact that you want to have is accessibility. You've already been giving into the UC system with that in mind, you know, grants for kids from immigrant households and economically disadvantaged households. Like, have you gotten an idea of how much input you get to? How does this actually work, the Board of Regents?

The honest answer is I don't know. What I know is there's 21. It's either a 21 or a 24-member board, which to me sounds like a nightmare. I've been on a bunch of public company boards, and I find the most effective ones are the smaller ones. But I can understand they want a lot of representatives from a lot of different groups. But they have a lot of power. I mean, they oversee the chancellors. They oversee policies around curriculum, diversity, where budgets go and where they

don't go, but I don't have a sense for the vibe and the mechanics of governance for this type of organization. So, you know, the learning or what I would advise anyone is that I've been on going on public company board since I was in my 30s, and I was very blustery. And what I found is that whenever you come into a new context or environment, you generally find that you're not as smart as you think and they're not as dumb as you'd hoped. And I would advise anyone coming into a new organization or a new entity, whether it's a board or a new company, that for the first couple meetings or the first six months, you just listen and try and understand the dynamics of what's going on. And then I think the rest of it is just hard work and speaking your mind.

But my, again, my focus is going to be on how do we expand freshman class size faster than population growth such that unremarkable kids can, you know, again, have the types of opportunities that a lot of us had back in the 80s and 90s. But thank you for your generous words and thank you for bringing it up. Although, you know, I don't like to talk about myself. I made an exception here. Yes, let's move on really quickly. There you go.

All right, let's leave it there. Thank you. Thank you for the kind words in bringing it up, Jess. Of course. Congratulations. It's awesome. Thank you. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project.

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