Making Trump Pay with E. Jean Carroll and Roberta Kaplan

Speaker 1 Hi, Eugene. I don't think we've met.
Oh, you two are going to like each other.

Speaker 2 I can't wait to hear the Adam Becker say: I plan on being very scared after I hear your podcast.

Speaker 3 It's on!

Speaker 5 Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Speaker 6 This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 8 My guests today are writer, former advice columnist, and renowned Donald Trump ass kicker E.

Speaker 9 Jean Carroll and her attorney, the formidable Robbie Kaplan.

Speaker 10 They are here to talk about Carroll's new memoir, Not My Type, One Woman vs.

Speaker 5 a President.

Speaker 5 As you may remember, Not My Type is what Donald Trump said about Eugene Carroll after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the New York City department store, Bergdorf Goodman, in 1996.

Speaker 6 At the time, she was a well-known advice columnist for L Magazine with her own TV show, Ask E.

Speaker 10 Gene, and had written a couple of books, including a biography of Hunter S.

Speaker 12 Thompson.

Speaker 5 She was something of a gonzo journalist herself.

Speaker 10 Carol told two friends, but otherwise she didn't talk about what happened in that dressing room until 2019.

Speaker 5 Then she hooked up with legendary attorney Kaplan, a legal powerhouse who defended U.S. v.

Speaker 8 Windsor, the Supreme Court case that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, and won a $26 million verdict against the violent neo-Nazis from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

Speaker 14 Together, they took on Trump, and in 2023 a jury found him liable for having sexually abused Carol and for defaming her.

Speaker 12 To be clear, Not My Type was not even close to the worst thing he'd said. The jurors awarded her $5 million.

Speaker 10 And then Trump kept joking about it and calling her names and she got death threats from his acolytes. So she sued him again and won again.

Speaker 7 In 2024, a different jury awarded her $83.3 million in damages.

Speaker 14 I want to talk to Carol and Kaplan about the trials and tribulations in Carol's memoir.

Speaker 11 I really thought it was a really interesting book.

Speaker 14 She's very honest about herself and her mistakes. And at the same time, she's gone through a harrowing process that has resulted in victory.

Speaker 5 And she's surprisingly, I guess, I don't know, funny, entertaining about what's happened.

Speaker 5 I also want to hear about how they've been standing up to Trump's appeals and what their plans are if the cases go to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 19 Yes, folks, this could go to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 5 Our expert question today comes from writer Lisa Birnback, author of the 1980s classic, The Official Preppy Handbook.

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Speaker 32 So, Eugene and Robbie, thanks for coming on for a conflab.

Speaker 14 Eugene, you use that word conflab a lot and ask Eugene, you call your readers conflabians.

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 33 What makes for a good conflab?

Speaker 35 And can we have one about President Donald Trump, the hideous man, as you've called him?

Speaker 2 Well, this today is

Speaker 2 a marvelous conflab because it contains wit.

Speaker 2 It contains women of various opinions. It contains people who are smart and want everybody to get off their lazy asses and do something about what's happening right now in the country.

Speaker 4 Why conflab?

Speaker 23 What does conflab come from?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Confab, of course, is the correct word.

Speaker 37 Sure.

Speaker 2 Conflab, because if people are going to fat shame, we are going to control that word and we're going to turn it into something wonderful. Conflab.

Speaker 23 Boom. Okay.

Speaker 38 All right.

Speaker 35 Robbie, are you ready for a flab?

Speaker 15 I'm totally.

Speaker 1 She's been my client now for years, so I'm completely ready for it.

Speaker 39 All right. So let's start.

Speaker 20 Let's start, talk about your new memoir.

Speaker 10 Not my type.

Speaker 4 Very funny, surprisingly funny.

Speaker 15 I didn't think I'd laugh so much about something so terrible.

Speaker 35 It's about you preparing for and then sitting through two trials against Donald Trump, one for sexual abuse and defamation, the other for defamations that have led you to being threatened, harassed, etc.

Speaker 20 Pretty heavy stuff.

Speaker 17 But you've described it as high comedy.

Speaker 34 And again, the book is funny.

Speaker 33 I think it's because of you.

Speaker 35 You've been a funny writer.

Speaker 11 I've followed you for many years.

Speaker 8 So talk a little bit about laugh even when you want to cry, rah-rah, cheerleader, writing style.

Speaker 35 Where do you think that comes from? And why did you do it this way?

Speaker 2 Kara, I had court transcripts, court transcripts. So when people read the book and they say, that's so absurd, that's so funny.
What it was, it's real. It's what actually happened.

Speaker 2 You've been inside of many courtrooms. You understand there is no normal conversation going on.
It's all heightened conversation and dramatic.

Speaker 2 And the presentations people are trying to persuade one another. I was surrounded with a group of characters straight out of Jonathan Swift.
I mean, it was,

Speaker 2 as a journalist, at the end of every

Speaker 2 night trial, I go back and I would put notes into my phone. I was flabbergasted.
Thank God I got those details down.

Speaker 36 And it just turned out to be funny.

Speaker 45 Except you're the main character, you know, and usually when you're a journalist, you're watching other people.

Speaker 46 You're not the person in the scene itself.

Speaker 2 No, this this time it was all about a tragic attack.

Speaker 2 And all the characters that I found so funny were surrounding to either argue that this attack happened

Speaker 2 or this attack is a totally made-up thing because I'm a gold digger, I'm a slut,

Speaker 2 I'm out to help the Democrats get elected,

Speaker 2 I'm a dangerous woman, and Robbie's role

Speaker 2 was to convince the jury I was none of those things. So it was an interesting situation.

Speaker 2 And watching Robbie take hold of the lectern to address the jury was like watching Alexander the Great land in Persia.

Speaker 2 Have you ever heard Robbie argue in court?

Speaker 2 Brilliant. Fact after fact after fact after fact.
She is a sensation

Speaker 2 and just this tiny woman.

Speaker 2 And she drove Donald Trump

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 48 insane,

Speaker 2 Kara, that in her

Speaker 2 argument in the trial when Trump was sitting listening, final argument,

Speaker 2 he stood up turning vermilion with like steam coming out his nostrils and his ears like his hair had swelled to twice its size because of the fire in his brain and walked out of court.

Speaker 2 And it was so sane because that's what a guilty man does. Guilty man stands up and runs out of court, right? If you haven't done it,

Speaker 2 you sit there and you say, this is ridiculous.

Speaker 2 If you're guilty, you just turn tail. And of course, we won the minute he stood up and walked out.

Speaker 17 Right. So, Robbie, we talked about this when you came on in 2024.
How did you look at it?

Speaker 5 Because there is a comic element to this tragedy, obviously.

Speaker 19 And then there's gallows humor.

Speaker 20 When you're in court like that, the ridiculous of it is so apparent, right?

Speaker 40 And at the same time, it's dead serious.

Speaker 20 Talk a little bit about how you handled that, Robbie.

Speaker 1 So, you know, that is true in almost every case. It obviously was much more dramatically true here.

Speaker 1 And in a lot of ways, a case or certainly a trial is like a play.

Speaker 1 This you see in all this, in a lot of the litigation versus the Trump administration right now, everyone knows, including the judge and the lawyers, what's really going on.

Speaker 1 Because of these time-worn and frankly effective rules of how to present evidence in court and how to make arguments and decorum and all those things.

Speaker 1 There's always two levels going on.

Speaker 1 And it's very important.

Speaker 1 I think Eugene and I make a pretty good Mutt and Jeff that way or Abbot and Costello, whoever you want to say, because Eugene, you know, my strategy with my teammates was, you guys, we just have to let Eugene be Eugene.

Speaker 1 We're not turning Eugene into a yes, no witness. That's not who she is.
She won't be believable if she tries to do that. And she is who she is.

Speaker 1 And I think the jury clearly, certainly the judge, and I think also the jury was charmed, as 99.9% of the population are when they meet Eugene. So that was Eugene.

Speaker 1 And then I was there kind of being the straight guy, for lack of a better term, and kind of just making the arguments as simply as I could and applying legal principles.

Speaker 1 And you have this guy getting up like a, like a teenager, really. I mean, my son, who's 19, is more mature than that, getting up and storming out.

Speaker 1 And when that happened, I remember thinking to myself, okay, you just lost another $10 million.

Speaker 1 That was my thought process as I was continuing to give my closing argument.

Speaker 15 Explain as a lawyer.

Speaker 1 It was so contemptuous

Speaker 1 of the court and the judge's authority and so disrespectful to me that the jury, which had already spent days listening to the horrendous threats Eugene receives almost every day, which I had categorized by type of violence.

Speaker 1 So I think we started with rape, is that right E?

Speaker 1 And then we went to strangling. And then we went to to shooting, and then we went to disemboweling.
I mean, literally, there were so many in each category, it was the best way to organize it.

Speaker 1 I'll give you another example. We were in the jury selection process.

Speaker 1 Judge Kaplan asked everyone in the room, all the potential jurors, I guess there were probably 100 of them in the room that day.

Speaker 1 And he said, if anyone believes that the election of 2020 was rigged, please raise your hand.

Speaker 1 No one, none of the 100 potential jurors raised their hand, but Donald Trump did. He like sat there in the middle like that.
So it was

Speaker 1 incredible. The irony and the sense of comedy in this particular case was very, very strong.

Speaker 16 So, E.G., I want to play you this section of your book where you describe how you started pitching stories to magazines when you were 12 and didn't get your first story accepted until you were 37.

Speaker 6 Here it is:

Speaker 2 Can you imagine the relentless, insane,

Speaker 2 glorious, hot, blistering, beat yourself up, plow-ahead, never say die enthusiasm that drives a woman to go on and on and on through a blizzard, a blunt editor's numbing nose

Speaker 2 for 25 years.

Speaker 47 It's really funny. I had the same thing.

Speaker 13 I actually saved the letters of all the rejections I got from the newspapers.

Speaker 33 And at one point, I did, you know, they were always on that onion skin paper because I'm that old.

Speaker 9 And one editor came up to me.

Speaker 46 He said, you're the kind of people we should have hired when you were, you know, young.

Speaker 16 You're the kind of person.

Speaker 20 I go, I have an email from, I mean, I'm not an email.

Speaker 23 I have a letter from you. And I pulled it out.

Speaker 51 I'm like, here you go.

Speaker 52 You rejected me in quite rudely.

Speaker 38 I love it.

Speaker 41 But that's fine.

Speaker 35 And he's like, I'm an idiot.

Speaker 41 And I go, you're an idiot, but that's okay.

Speaker 39 But you say that it's a never stop attitude that.

Speaker 35 leads you to say yes to shopping with Donald Trump and Bergdorf Goodman in 1996, despite a number of bad experiences with hideous men throughout your life.

Speaker 43 Looking back, talk about that.

Speaker 34 Were you naive or did you think a calculated risk that went sour? I mean, you've done a lot of crazy things.

Speaker 52 You took drugs with Hunter S.

Speaker 15 Thompson, for example, and that to me is like a pretty risky thing to do. But talk maybe less risky than this.

Speaker 41 Talk a little bit about that attitude that you had then and maybe even now.

Speaker 44 Well,

Speaker 2 Kara, as you know, the great moment in your life is getting on that airplane, snapping that seatbelt across your lap, flying off to go do a story about somebody you've never met in a place you've never been.

Speaker 2 Yep. That is exciting.
You're after the story. After the story, there was no way in hell

Speaker 2 I was not going to go shopping with Donald Trump. When he said, hey, you're that advice lady.
Come help me buy a gift.

Speaker 44 I mean,

Speaker 2 I just thought I died and went to heaven. This is what I, this is my purpose in life, to help people, you know, to advise them.
And Donald Trump at the time was not like the Donald Trump of today.

Speaker 2 He was, you know, the man about town.

Speaker 2 Yes, he was a hustler. Yes, but it looked like a lark to me.
Also, it reminded me of a sketch I had written on Saturday Night Live. There was no way in hell.

Speaker 2 And also, we were having, I was flirting my brains out with him, correct?

Speaker 2 He was being very funny. It was light.

Speaker 2 It was funny. It was joshing.
It was witty. And then it just turned

Speaker 2 dark.

Speaker 2 Laura Miller at Slate said,

Speaker 2 this is exactly what Donald Trump did to the country. We all laughed at him.
We all said he was a clown. We all said he was absolutely an empty suit and laughed our asses off.

Speaker 2 And then boom,

Speaker 2 it turned dark.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. So I'm not the only one, you know? No, no, no.

Speaker 53 A lot of, I think there's not a woman woman who hasn't had that experience with a person, right?

Speaker 13 Everybody has a version of that somewhere.

Speaker 35 And it's always a, people don't realize how much of a surprise it is, actually.

Speaker 17 Even I have been surprised.

Speaker 20 Like, and you don't see it coming, right?

Speaker 52 Kind of thing in a lot of ways, which is

Speaker 46 so, Robbie, you came on the show in February 2024, shortly after you won the second defamation trial, and the jury awarded Eugene 83.3 million in damages.

Speaker 12 You said that you wanted to let Eugene be yourself, but you had to make sure the jury didn't believe Trump when he said that she was not his type.

Speaker 38 Talk about how your team prepared Eugene for the trial, including hair and outfits, because you, you know, and Eugene, you said you needed to seem fuckable, right?

Speaker 40 I mean, that's what you yourself said.

Speaker 2 Got to be fuckable, or the jury will not believe me, because Robbie ran a mock trial beforehand. And all the jurors agreed that we were, yes, two people could be in a Bergdorf dressing room.

Speaker 2 Yes, two people could be in the dressing room. Something sexual had happened.

Speaker 2 And yes, Donald Trump and Eugene Carroll were the two people in the dressing room but Eugene Carroll was too much of a dissicated crone

Speaker 1 to believe anything but that I was begging him for it so Robbie has a plan okay Robbie let's hear about that so I think we did two things in prop one at kind of a surface level and one more serious at the surface level you're hearing how Eugene speaks.

Speaker 1 She signs a lot of her emails ravishing regards.

Speaker 1 It was very important to me while I didn't want to cage her in any way. I wanted Eugene to be able to be Eugene.
I didn't want her. I think the rule I said is no words greater than three syllables.

Speaker 22 Right. Okay.

Speaker 1 I was worried that she would speak in a language that the jury, some of the jury might understand, but some might not. And that would be off-putting to the jurors.

Speaker 1 And that just took, frankly, just a lot.

Speaker 1 of prep sessions where we would go through it with her over and over again. And by the end, she was actually phenomenal at it.

Speaker 1 And I knew and crossed she would be great because when Joe Tecopina or then Alina Haba crossed her, that's when she was really in her element.

Speaker 1 And it's often easier to answer questions with a hostile questionnaire than it is to kind of tell your story, especially this kind of story on direct.

Speaker 1 The more fundamental issue

Speaker 1 which also came out of the mock jury exercises was that Eugene, as you can again tell, is very, has a very hard time, understandably so given her history and her background, of admitting any weakness.

Speaker 1 And so she had a very hard time

Speaker 1 even saying

Speaker 1 how what Donald Trump had done to her had irreparably damaged her life. And just so there's no mystery about that, Eugene was never able to date again.

Speaker 1 after they happened and there are psychological reasons that explain that. But she had a very hard time coming to terms with that.
And so on that we we did a couple of things.

Speaker 1 One, probably the smartest thing we did is we hired this phenomenal expert witness, psychologist out of California, who was one of the people who developed trauma theory back when they were using it with Vietnam veterans and really knows this area really well.

Speaker 1 And she spent how many hours with you?

Speaker 2 26 hours locked in a room. I'd never been to a therapist.
Can you imagine the hideous thing?

Speaker 37 I can't.

Speaker 33 I've never been to one myself, but go ahead.

Speaker 15 Tara,

Speaker 2 trust me, don't do it.

Speaker 22 Really? I won't.

Speaker 24 Don't worry.

Speaker 23 Not happening.

Speaker 2 Well, I learned after the end of 26 hours, my stomach was killing me because I learned that I had given up everything erotic and romantic in my life just because of this attack.

Speaker 2 She put everything together for me and it made me sick to my stomach. It made me sick.

Speaker 17 So that you did that in order to...

Speaker 2 What? Because

Speaker 1 during the jury exercises, particularly the women jurors

Speaker 1 really did not like when Eugene said or suggested in any way that she was not a victim.

Speaker 23 Right.

Speaker 1 Not only did they not like it, they hated it. And the reason is, is because I assume some of them had prior incidents themselves, and certainly all of them knew other women who'd experienced this.

Speaker 1 So it was very important that Eugene not only say it, but say it in a way that was believable. And in order to do that, she had to believe it.

Speaker 1 So a lot of shrink time with a phenomenal, phenomenal psychologist, Leslie Lewowitz, got us that.

Speaker 1 then as we were preparing for the second trial remember the first trial donald trump didn't show up the second trial uh we all believed he would show up and we knew that it would be the first time that e would see him

Speaker 1 um since 1996 since the spring of 1996 when this happened and as we were doing kind of prepping the outline and going through the questioning uh it was about two days before it's the weekend as i recall e

Speaker 1 uh e gene lost the ability to speak which again for e gene is quite dramatic because she's phenomenal at speaking. And she literally couldn't answer the question.

Speaker 1 She had a hard time coming up with words and for me sentences. So I had already suggested that maybe the psychologist should be there for the second trial.

Speaker 1 Eugene thoroughly rejected that suggestion on my part.

Speaker 1 But when we had the session where she was having a really hard time speaking, I said, look, I really think you need to talk to the psychologist again.

Speaker 1 And she did. And they came up with a strategy for how she would confront Donald Trump when she saw him.

Speaker 20 The issue of how to be a victim is very hard for women, right?

Speaker 40 Because there's downsides to both parts.

Speaker 42 If you're too strong, it's a problem.

Speaker 11 If you're too weak, it's a problem, correct?

Speaker 1 Exactly. And here's this woman who lived her life 25 years submitting stories, goes to live, believe it or not, with Hunter S.
Thompson and Aspen. She was fearless.
And so she had a very hard time.

Speaker 1 I probably would too, of acknowledging the really fundamental damage that this incident had done to her.

Speaker 2 Also, I always worried that with the women on the jury um i didn't know what they'd been through and you know just complain that some man jammed his fingers in you may be nothing to compared to the trauma they had so it was i'm i never want to say i'm feeling bad because i don't want anybody else to right that's a good point to feel bad when they hear that i'm feeling bad it was hard it's very indiana it's very bidwestern indiana the book is a pastiche of memories stories from your past court records and mixed in are side notes with descriptions and inner monologue now some of them do pack an emotional punch, like in the middle of the transcript of your cross-examination by Trump's attorney, Joe Takopina, who's grilling you about why you didn't scream during the attack.

Speaker 46 You write, it's a surreal feeling being beat up by a man who is asking me to describe being beat up and assaulted by a man he is beating me up to defend.

Speaker 39 I think it's the fear many abuse survivors have about going to court.

Speaker 50 Talk about that moment in court.

Speaker 2 Well, there's a perfect victim, Kara. Perfect victim.

Speaker 2 Never is silent, always screams, always goes to the police, always reports to the police, no matter if the guy attacks her after she goes to the police, no matter if he tears apart her reputation, perfect victim always goes to the police.

Speaker 2 And here's the thing, perfect victim just goes back to her cave and covers herself with a dishcloth. Never smiles again, never goes to a party, never laughs, never does anything.

Speaker 2 But mainly she screams. And Joe Takapina, straight out of the 16th century, could not believe that I

Speaker 2 didn't scream. What I had done was I had laughed.

Speaker 2 And boy, did he make a big deal out of that. Just, I mean, Robbie had arguments against it.

Speaker 2 She laughed. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, she laughed.

Speaker 2 Of course I laughed because of course in an erotic situation, what you do is you laugh at a man man to, you know, it sort of calms things down. But being questioned about it, it just

Speaker 2 pissed me off because he was trying to knock me down, just trying to knock me down.

Speaker 36 So, man.

Speaker 34 Which is his job, to be fair.

Speaker 11 This is his job to do so.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 he's an excellent, excellent defense attorney. Let me tell you, Joe Takapina is one of the best.
But the thing where I did break down on the stand was our own great attorney, Mark Ferrara, asked me

Speaker 2 this question:

Speaker 2 Are you sorry that you've gone to trial, E.G.?

Speaker 2 And that did it.

Speaker 2 Hot, blazing tears behind my eyes. That's when he cried.
It was why. Because I just hated Donald Trump so much, and they just came gushing down my face.

Speaker 5 We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaker 42 There are three chapters in the book about evidence you did not or could not introduce, including evidence related to Jeffrey Epstein, who obviously has been in the news a lot recently.

Speaker 17 Robbie, explain why you didn't want to introduce it as evidence. And what do you both think about Trump and A.G.

Speaker 35 Pam Bondi saying there's no Epstein list? Let's start with you, Robbie, and then E.G.

Speaker 1 I mean, the main reason is I don't think Judge Kaplan would ever have let it in.

Speaker 1 And we need, you know, one of the most important things when you're a court is having credibility with the court and not making arguments that he's going to be disdainful of.

Speaker 1 So I just thought under the rules of evidence that there's no way he would let that in and I didn't even try.

Speaker 1 There was other stuff that I did try that he didn't let in. For example, Trump wrote a book in one of his books he wrote.

Speaker 1 He suggested going to Berdorf Goodman to buy gifts, and he had denied that he ever went to Berdorf Goodman. And the judge wouldn't even let that in.
And the argument was, well,

Speaker 1 Tekapina said, well, he didn't write it. And we were like, what do you mean? The copyright's in his name.
Like, what do you mean he didn't write it?

Speaker 1 But I think Judge Kaplan was thinking at that point, you know, we had what we had and he wasn't going to add anything into the case.

Speaker 2 Carol, Robbie's not telling you something. Oh, okay.

Speaker 37 All right.

Speaker 2 When the Epstein stuff came in, it was in Michael Wolfe's book, and he had a tape recording. He had hundreds of hours of Jeffrey Epstein on tape.
Robbie's so calm here at the time. She was like,

Speaker 2 Jeffrey Epstein, in 1996, shortly after the attack in Bergdorf, running into Trump on the street and Trump, quote, regaling him with the, quote, torrid details of what happened in Bergdorf.

Speaker 2 Robbie was dying to get this into court.

Speaker 15 But all right, talk about that, Robbie.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it would have been great evidence, but under the rules of evidence, I couldn't get it in. It was hearsay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He was dead. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It wasn't necessarily all that reliable. I mean, there are all these strict rules of evidence, which is why we won the case in the first place, because these rules generally are good.

Speaker 1 But they limit the kinds of evidence that may not be as reliable as other kinds of evidence. And I just knew I had no chance in hell with Judge Kaplan on that.

Speaker 7 So first you, Robbie, what did you think of what's happening right now?

Speaker 8 And then Eugene?

Speaker 1 Look, you know,

Speaker 1 what's always been most astounding to me about Jeffrey Epstein is that it happened in plain sight, right? He wasn't hiding in some upstate cabin somewhere where he was doing this.

Speaker 1 He was in a townhouse.

Speaker 23 In the middle of Manhattan.

Speaker 1 In the upper east side of Manhattan that people would come to all the time. Yeah.
And so, you know, I don't know whether you call it a client list. I doubt he even called it a client list.

Speaker 1 But there's no question that there were a number of other, he wasn't the only person

Speaker 1 engaged in the kind of misconduct he was engaged in with women. That wouldn't have made any sense.
I mean, I just would be shocked if that were true.

Speaker 1 And so, look, I don't know what's going on and I don't know who's on the list and who's not on the list.

Speaker 1 But it was obviously a grave miscalculation on the president's part to kind of trumpet.

Speaker 1 this all these years and then become president and need to squash it.

Speaker 15 Right, absolutely.

Speaker 53 He trained them up in QAnon, and now he's saying, please don't behave the way I've trained you, which is interesting.

Speaker 9 What about you, Eugene?

Speaker 37 How do you look at this?

Speaker 2 Well, I interviewed Jill Harth in Vanity Fair, and she was running a beauty contest back in the day in the 90s, actually.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 she was in

Speaker 2 Mar-a-Lago, and she's got all her beauty contestants. She brings Jeffrey Epstein.
He brings, Trump brings his best friend, Jeffrey Epstein, with him to meet all these beauty contestants.

Speaker 2 They lived, I don't know why people don't talk about this, back in the day, very close to each other in Florida, very close. A jill sort of led me to believe walking distance.

Speaker 2 I don't know if that makes sense, but maybe to a New Yorker it does. But there's Trump running over with Jeffrey Epstein to meet the girls.
Ignorant,

Speaker 2 had not been around money or even out of their home states at the time. I mean, total prey.

Speaker 3 Horrible.

Speaker 44 You know, horrible.

Speaker 1 One of Epstein's selling points, as I understand it, to people, was that he was really good at saving people on taxes.

Speaker 35 Yes, that was one of the things.

Speaker 1 Right, saving taxes. So I can't imagine that that wasn't attractive.
He's probably more attractive.

Speaker 15 That's probably the most attractive thing.

Speaker 41 It's interesting.

Speaker 33 At the time, I think a lot of people did know what was happening, especially after the Florida settlement.

Speaker 41 I had been invited to his house for one of those dinners.

Speaker 16 You remember he invited well-known people and he was particularly fixated on tech.

Speaker 16 And the person, his representative, said, Oh, Jeffrey, we'd really like you to come.

Speaker 13 And I said, I don't dine with pedophiles.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry.

Speaker 37 Bravo. Yeah.

Speaker 32 And they were like,

Speaker 24 well, it was, you know, I was like, I just, no, it's not happening in this life or the next.

Speaker 38 Love it.

Speaker 4 Which was interesting because a lot of people did.

Speaker 15 A lot of journalists did, that's for sure.

Speaker 43 So let's go back to the trials really quickly.

Speaker 5 The juries came back quickly.

Speaker 4 How surprising was that, both of you?

Speaker 40 Talk about the moment the $83 million verdict came down.

Speaker 41 Robbie, you first on why it came back so quickly, and then Eugene.

Speaker 1 So both of them came back very quickly. It was under three hours for both, which is shockingly fast for almost any case.

Speaker 1 The first case, we had a much tougher jury. We had this guy who's at Tim Poole, who got all his news from Tim Poole's podcast, who we couldn't get off the jury.

Speaker 1 And it had to be unanimous, so he had to vote with us. So I thought that was going to take longer.

Speaker 1 And the second jury was more, there were people from New York City. So I thought it was a more sympathetic jury.

Speaker 1 But I was actually, I mean, two things. One,

Speaker 1 I thought they were going to issue punitive damages that were going to be hefty. You know, I wasn't expecting, honestly, the number as high as we got, which is really only 3.6 times the compensatory.

Speaker 1 So it's well within constitutional limits. But I was surprised by that.
And I think the reason for it was Donald Trump's own behavior in the courtroom.

Speaker 1 It's a really bad idea if you're fighting a punitive damages damages claim to act like you're contemptuous of the court in the courtroom. And they saw that every day.

Speaker 1 He would come in in the morning, he'd sit through court, make lots of nasty comments, make huffing and puffing and derisive comments.

Speaker 1 And then he'd leave and he'd go to, I think it was Trump Tower, somewhere downtown town, and they would do a press conference that he would videotape in which he continued to defame Eugene.

Speaker 1 So like, imagine what a case this was for us. I got to say to the jury, not only do you need to give enough money to make him stop, he continued to do it through this very trial.

Speaker 1 We showed all the videos.

Speaker 1 So in retrospect, that all makes sense.

Speaker 46 Eugene, what about you? Were you surprised by the speed and also the money?

Speaker 2 When the jury goes out,

Speaker 2 we had a Manhattan jury for the second trial. We had an upstate jury for the first trial that came from Trump counties.

Speaker 2 That we won the first trial was a real achievement because that was not Manhattan. Those were upstate red counties.
This jury,

Speaker 2 she stands up. The judge says, do you have a verdict? The forewoman stands up.
She says, we do your honor. She says, hand it to Andy the clerk.

Speaker 2 Andy the clerk opens it, starts to read it, cocks his head, frowns, goes like this, hands it up to the judge. Judge Kaplan looks at it, his eyebrows rise, and he says, Madam Forewoman,

Speaker 2 what does the M

Speaker 23 mean?

Speaker 2 And just

Speaker 2 Robbie was on this side of me. We were holding hands.
Sean G. Crowley was on this side.
We floated up to the ceiling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because I'm going to be giving away

Speaker 2 that $83.3 million to everything

Speaker 3 Donald Trump hates.

Speaker 42 Once you get it.

Speaker 15 We'll get to that in a second.

Speaker 54 I think you're right.

Speaker 2 Robbie's going to, we're going to get it. No, we're going to get it.

Speaker 11 Totally. So first, before that, every week we get to a question from an outside expert.
Here's yours.

Speaker 1 Hi, it's Lisa Birnbach of the Official Preppy Handbook and True Prep.

Speaker 1 I've met Donald Trump, and I have this question for you all. Why do American women vote for him? Why did they support him? He is a bully.
He has only contempt for women.

Speaker 1 He claims he can grab us whenever he wants, wherever he wants.

Speaker 1 And yet, women not all women, find him charming, amusing. He tells it like it it is.
But yet he votes against all of our interests and has taken away so many of our rights. So what's in it?

Speaker 5 For transparency, Lisa is one of two people Eugene told about the assault right after it happened in 1996.

Speaker 20 She testified on Eugene's behalf.

Speaker 39 But to her point, were you surprised that Trump won the 2024 election?

Speaker 7 First you, Eugene, and then you, Robbie?

Speaker 2 Yes, I was surprised and not surprised.

Speaker 2 It's just that they don't know it. They don't.
We live in a Berlin Wall. On this side is all the liberals.
On this side, it's the conservatives. They didn't hear the news.
They just didn't hear it.

Speaker 2 Their Facebook feeds don't give them that kind of information. After he was voted president, the news that he lost in the

Speaker 2 United States Court of Appeals to Robbie on his trying to overturn the

Speaker 2 that was the first time many people in this country heard he had been found liable for sexual abuse, only when Robbie beat him in the appeals court. So it's not really women's fault.

Speaker 2 They just didn't know it in the number of people that we needed to know it.

Speaker 23 What about you, Robbie?

Speaker 1 I agree. And I think it's due to a lot of other factors that are somewhat unrelated.
One, and I know you focus on this, Kara, the rise of disinformation and misinformation on the internet.

Speaker 1 I mean, people were probably getting access to Alina Haba's videos, but not to any like real news about what had happened at the case.

Speaker 1 And two, there's obviously this incredible resentment, obviously, in our society

Speaker 1 of certain very large segments now. And that Donald Trump appeals to that because Donald Trump himself is very resentful.

Speaker 1 And he can channel that in ways that...

Speaker 46 So the grievance industrial complex.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in ways that no one has been able to do.

Speaker 45 One of the things that's interesting is, you know, he is funny, like you just said at the beginning, I watched all the apprentices.

Speaker 49 I was like, he's very good at social media.

Speaker 33 And to pretend he's not is kind of silly on our part.

Speaker 41 And I was saying, this is not an excuse.

Speaker 45 This is an explanation. I'm explaining it.

Speaker 41 And I have to tell you the one thing that really, it didn't surprise me, but much on the left was like, how dare you say that?

Speaker 16 I'm like, it's factual.

Speaker 33 The man is really good at social media. And if you pretend he's not, you know, he's loathsome.
He's not good. I'm like, no, he's good.

Speaker 15 He's also loathsome.

Speaker 5 It's very hard for people to do that. And so I do think a lot of people miss that, especially with women, because he has an appeal that is hard to

Speaker 46 understand and yet is obvious, to me, at least.

Speaker 1 You were charmed by him that day at Bergorf until you got to the dressing room and he pounced, right?

Speaker 2 No, he's look, you know, I'm going to say something that's going to cause fire to be lit across the Kara Swisher universe. But to me, he's one of the great geniuses of the 21st century.

Speaker 2 Not only is the country following him,

Speaker 2 people all around the globe. He has set off a firestorm around the globe, this conservative backlash.
Women in this country, half of us have been put

Speaker 2 50 years behind. This is Donald Trump.
He is smarter than any of us give him credit for. And we got to do what Kara just said.
We got to realize he is a genius at social media.

Speaker 2 And he only thinks of himself. And

Speaker 2 therefore, everybody around him. only think of him.
Right, right, right. And that is what we're dealing with.

Speaker 35 And all the great demagogues have been good, whether from Hitler to Huey Long to everybody else.

Speaker 52 And whether you like them or not, it doesn't seem to matter.

Speaker 35 It does matter, but it doesn't matter.

Speaker 11 So it's not over yet.

Speaker 16 Obviously, Trump appealed both cases, but you've had new wins in recent weeks, including the court blocking Trump's attempts to get the Department of Justice involved in the case because he's now president.

Speaker 1 For the third time, just so you understand.

Speaker 13 They're trying to wear you down, presumably.

Speaker 46 But can you explain to where things stand in the appeals process?

Speaker 10 Where is the money now? And

Speaker 8 the $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict, the only option Trump has left is to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 35 And in 2024, you told me you didn't think he had any federal issues, that the Supreme Court could legitimately take it. But his new claim is that he has presidential immunity.

Speaker 35 When he made those defamatory comments about Eugene, you've won a case before the Supreme Court, U.S.

Speaker 13 versus Windsor, which was a landmark gay marriage case.

Speaker 40 You may be arguing that again soon.

Speaker 4 But it was a different court at a different time.

Speaker 17 So talk about where we are from a legal point of view with this claim.

Speaker 1 So on the first verdict, which is kind of the cornerstone of everything, because that's the underlying sexual abuse verdict, the money, Trump, believe it or not, I've never seen anyone do this before, but they deposited the $5 million plus with the court.

Speaker 1 And I've been doing commercial litigation in the Southern District for eons at this point, and I've never seen a defendant just deposit the money with the court. I don't know what the reason was.

Speaker 1 I don't know why they didn't just take out a bond, which is what he did for the bigger verdict.

Speaker 37 But they didn't.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you're right. That case, they're going to try to, they've told us they're going to try to take it to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 The main issue, there's no issue really of presidential immunity there because when he made that statement, he wasn't president. And obviously when he assaulted E.G., he wasn't president.

Speaker 1 Their main argument

Speaker 1 at the second circuit, and I think they'll try it at SCOTUS, is this argument that we admitted the testimony of Jessica Leeds, who was on a plane in 1979 when Trump, she got bumped up to first class.

Speaker 1 It's the same pattern. They were making polite chit-chat, and then all of a sudden he kind of pounced.

Speaker 1 The other Natasha Stoinoff, who was the People Magazine reporter, who came to Mar-a-Lago

Speaker 1 right before Barron was born, as I recall. So that would be

Speaker 1 probably 05, I think, or late 05. And she also, he brought her into a room and kind of did the whole pouncing thing with her.
And their main argument was kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Their main argument was really about Jessica Leeds. And it was this argument that because she was on a plane and you didn't know what state they were flying over when this happened,

Speaker 1 then it wasn't necessarily a federal crime, then you couldn't admit it under the rule of evidence that allows prior bad acts to come in when it's a case of sexual assault.

Speaker 1 In most circumstances, they don't come in.

Speaker 1 The problem with that argument is, I said in my argument at the court, is it was too many lawyers trying to screw in a light bulb because it was a crime in 1979

Speaker 1 to do what Donald Trump did to Jessica Leeds. It was just a different crime.
Even if the Supreme Court thought there was any doubt there, it's not what's called a SCOTUS-worthy issue. It just isn't.

Speaker 1 There's no split between the circuits. There's no big deal.
And we have so much other evidence that came in as the court concluded it wouldn't have made a difference anyway.

Speaker 1 The big verdict

Speaker 1 is in a different position. So there we have argued it.
They raised two issues. They raised this Westphal Act claim, which is how they got the case to federal court at at the very beginning.

Speaker 1 And he's now trying to reassert that for the third time. And they raised the underlying claim of presidential immunity.
They're related claims, but they're under separate legal doctrines.

Speaker 1 That I argued before the circuit three weeks ago.

Speaker 2 And she killed. It was like King Henry at Agincourt.
It was unbelievable.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 23 I thought I was Alexander the Great. What happened to Alexander the Grey? Now you're king.

Speaker 55 Now you're the king at Agincourt.

Speaker 1 So I think that argument went well. As you noted, they've already rejected the Westfall Act argument because that they made in a different route to the Second Circuit.

Speaker 1 I think they're going to reject the presidential immunity argument because he waived it in this case.

Speaker 1 At the very beginning of the case, when we were installed in state court, the other side submitted a letter that literally said to the state court judge, no one is seeking to escape accountability here.

Speaker 1 Eugene can pursue her claims when he is no longer president. If that's not a waiver of presidential immunity, I'm not sure what is.

Speaker 20 So if it gets to the Supreme Court, what is the, do you have, do you think it has a chance of getting there?

Speaker 45 This is a different court, a different time.

Speaker 1 I think it certainly has a better chance than the $5 million, which I think has very low chances.

Speaker 1 On the second claim, I think if you're the justices, you have to be thinking to yourselves, is this really

Speaker 1 the factual scenario where we want to deal with presidential immunity again? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And my guess is most of them, for most of them, the answer to that question will be no.

Speaker 53 We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaker 20 So, Robbie, President Trump separately has been targeting big law firms.

Speaker 4 You have a new law firm, but many of them have struck deals with the Trump administration to avoid being penalized.

Speaker 16 So far, at least nine firms have promised pro bono work for Trump support initiatives, totaling $1 billion.

Speaker 46 Many lawyers are leaving those firms.

Speaker 33 You have a new hire who has done that.

Speaker 11 It's turned out a lot of these things have turned sour for the firms who had acquiesced.

Speaker 33 What happens here, including potential Trump opponents like yourselves?

Speaker 1 So let me say, first of all, that the first firm that did a deal with Trump was Paul Weiss, and that was the firm where I learned to be a lawyer. And I was there for over 20 years.

Speaker 2 She made partner before she was 30 at Paul Weiss.

Speaker 1 That's I paid in to be my press agent.

Speaker 2 I'm glad I'm here for this interview so I can instruct people what a brilliant mind you were at 29, 28.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 there were certainly

Speaker 1 tears in the culture. It wasn't perfect, but a lot of us, certainly my generation and up at Paul Weiss, really believed in the culture and the principles that the firm had.

Speaker 1 And so this kind of

Speaker 1 this quote-unquote deal that the firm did with him is just devastatingly painful to so many of us. Paul Weiss was known for its litigation practice.
That's what people came to Paul Weiss for.

Speaker 1 That's what I did. That's the kind of work they did and for their dedication to pro bono and public interest work.

Speaker 1 It's not clear to me today that if a law firm has a big private equity MA hedge fund practice, that that practice is necessarily compatible with having a truly independent litigation department.

Speaker 1 And so kind of the movement of big firm lawyers to smaller firms has been happening now for years. It's like in media.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 And I think this is only going to make it more pronounced because you can't have, it's not even just having technical conflicts.

Speaker 1 You can't really be a litigator if you have to worry that what you say or do in a case involving a completely different client is going to irk one of your private equity guys. You just can't do it.

Speaker 15 Yeah, you look at someone like Abby Lowell's who defended

Speaker 46 Jared and Ivanka or Jared, and then you look at, and he's done

Speaker 41 Hunter Biden, right?

Speaker 13 He should be able to do whoever he wants.

Speaker 33 So speaking of people who have been helpful, Eugene, LinkedIn co-founder, he's founded a lot of things.

Speaker 40 Reid Hoffman helped finance your case, someone I know very well.

Speaker 20 It might have played out differently if you hadn't had that option.

Speaker 39 One, are you worried that Trump will use that promotion money to go after you again?

Speaker 35 And what is the prospects of that happening again given the shift of tech?

Speaker 40 Now, not Reed by any means.

Speaker 46 I think he's probably doubled down on his beliefs in many ways. How do you think about that money and the kindness of billionaires?

Speaker 33 In this case, it benefited you, but most of the billionaires have gone to Trump's side in tech at least.

Speaker 2 Reed Hoffman is a hero. He not only helped

Speaker 2 our case, he

Speaker 2 called Robbie because he wanted to help with the Charlottesville case. When, you know, Robbie trounced the Nazis, the white supremacists, the good old, the proud boys, she took them all down.

Speaker 2 That was it. Reid Hoffman made that possible.
Then there was a little bit of money left over, and Reed called Robbie and said, How about using that for the Eugene Curl

Speaker 2 case?

Speaker 2 So he's, listen, you don't get better than Reid Hoffman. He is fighting the

Speaker 2 billionaires who are, well, I don't need to tell you.

Speaker 45 Would you be worried about getting that now?

Speaker 16 Because a lot of them are acquiescent at this point.

Speaker 32 Who were not, actually, that much.

Speaker 2 You know, oddly, I'm not.

Speaker 37 Oddly,

Speaker 2 I think we're going to get that 83.3 million, and I think we're going to give it away. First of all, to help women get our rights back.

Speaker 2 Because Robbie and I have enough money. You know, we don't need more stuff.
But the country is hurting right now.

Speaker 2 He's torn it apart. Democracy is hanging by a thread.
And I am not worried about getting the money.

Speaker 34 I think it's going to take a while, though.

Speaker 38 It's definitely going to take a while.

Speaker 47 Yeah, it's definitely going to take a while.

Speaker 33 He'll do everything possible to slow you down.

Speaker 40 So, and has have done that.

Speaker 46 So you're also going up against Trump with the MTA congestion pricing, and you had the Elon lawsuits.

Speaker 4 You have a lot of...

Speaker 1 CCDH.

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 39 You're sort of the, I would say, the go-to Trump gladiator or whatever.

Speaker 17 Talk a little bit about that because it's a slightly dangerous role, including with tech people like Elon, although now they're on opposite sides inevitably.

Speaker 34 Interesting.

Speaker 17 Talk a little bit about that and the difficulty.

Speaker 33 I think about it all the time, right?

Speaker 40 When I'm saying things.

Speaker 35 But litigation is a a little different.

Speaker 17 You're causing them financial and other harms that they consider harmful.

Speaker 1 You know, it's something that I think is on my wife's mind for understandable reasons all the time.

Speaker 1 In order to do what I do, I'm very good at repression.

Speaker 1 And so I can't tell you that I like wake up or, you know, think in the middle of the night that I'm afraid. This is who I am and what I do.

Speaker 1 And if

Speaker 1 people like me don't fight back if lawyers who know how to use the court system and who have judges respect don't fight back then who will what are you afraid of actually

Speaker 54 um

Speaker 1 i you know it's not trump or elon so much it's all the people who follow them and you know like that poor will stansell

Speaker 1 who was attacked you know uh based on garak that's that's the people you have to worry about kind of the nut jobs who actually believe all this QAnon craziness.

Speaker 16 Well, they're fighting with each other right now. So

Speaker 47 the ball is, the eye is off you.

Speaker 42 But do you imagine it returning once the money gets, because he will have a fit.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do think that he is not attacking Eugene

Speaker 1 or myself right now because he's very worried about how that will be perceived by the justices of the Supreme Court. I think that's absolutely correct.

Speaker 15 Eugene, you're also a fighter.

Speaker 17 We've talked a little bit about your threats, the threat level you get.

Speaker 9 Talk about that and how your life has changed.

Speaker 50 Do you ever believe there will be a moment to move on? You know, Robbie had talked about sort of a moment where everything stopped for you.

Speaker 3 Oh, listen.

Speaker 2 I don't care if they shoot me. I don't care.
I'd like to get shot in the arm. I like to get shot.
I don't want to be shot in the head and dead. I don't care.
I do not care.

Speaker 2 I want everybody in the country to get off their lazy asses and walk outside. Look at their neighbors.
That's what I'd like people to do.

Speaker 2 We're living in

Speaker 2 it's stupid to be afraid. Why live your life that way? I've been here 81 years.
I'm not going to waste the last of it worrying about that guy in marmalade colored makeup. It makes no sense.

Speaker 2 So that's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 15 That's what you're going to do. And

Speaker 46 when this money gets to you, is there anything you're going to do for yourself?

Speaker 2 I got it. Look, you can see

Speaker 2 I got all my stuff. I don't need anything.
I don't like stuff. You know what? It occurred to me, Kara.
Okay, we won't tell anybody. I was thinking of getting a facelift, $65,000.

Speaker 2 Then I think, what do I want a fucking facelift for? $65,000 that, you know, that's

Speaker 2 six scholarships to a community college. No, you know, if I'm sagging and bagging all over the place, good.
I don't care. No, it just, I can't wait.

Speaker 16 Eugene, you wrote about all of Robbie's superstitions.

Speaker 45 Which ones do you think are funniest?

Speaker 16 And Robbie, which ones ones do you believe helped you win this case and ensure that you prevail in the future?

Speaker 2 Oh my.

Speaker 1 For me, every single one of them. No question.

Speaker 2 You know, I was on the stand for three days. Joe Takapina cross-examined me for two straight days.
After I got off the stand, we went back to the offices.

Speaker 2 And Matt Craig, who was on the Carroll team, went over and guess what he did? He opened

Speaker 2 a bottle of, oh my God, of champagne. It may as well been a hand grenade.
Robbie backed up like,

Speaker 2 no champagne until we win. No champagne.
I mean, she was terrified. And Matt just said, fuck it, I'm drinking.
But Robbie wouldn't touch it. So that's.
Yeah.

Speaker 42 That's the one that was funny is what you think they all helped you, Robbie?

Speaker 52 That's very.

Speaker 1 Every single, look, I have no way of knowing. Obviously, none of us do, what helped or what doesn't.
So I believe every single one of them is necessary.

Speaker 1 I had to do it. And if we have to do another case, I will do it again.

Speaker 2 Carol Martin got off the stand. Robbie's in the car next to me.
She said, Carol Martin just won our case. And then she spits three times.

Speaker 37 Meaning.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 God is listening to Robbie Kaplan say that Carol Martin just won the case and God will punish Robbie Kaplan if she doesn't spit three times.

Speaker 1 I pretend to spit. I don't actually spit.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 40 My grandmother used to do that, Robbie.

Speaker 13 She She was Italian.

Speaker 2 Kara, what are you superstitious of, Kara?

Speaker 47 Nothing.

Speaker 37 Really? I believe that.

Speaker 40 No, not at all.

Speaker 2 You don't wear special shoes, special socks, no special.

Speaker 2 You have a lucky outfit?

Speaker 50 Nope.

Speaker 2 Lucky pair of jeans?

Speaker 50 Nope.

Speaker 23 Lucky sunglasses?

Speaker 40 People ask me what I'm scared of.

Speaker 15 I said, scary things

Speaker 52 to tell you. Like most things, no, but scary things, yes.

Speaker 41 Nope, nothing.

Speaker 40 I am not superstitious at all.

Speaker 2 You weren't raised Catholic, were you?

Speaker 6 I was, but I walk under ladders, I guess.

Speaker 43 So

Speaker 6 let me ask you your last question.

Speaker 59 When we're in this situation, and there's a feeling of spiraling out of control of the Trump people with this Epstein thing, you're seeing, you're sort of, I was telling Scott on pivot just a second ago, you're starting to see their ass, right?

Speaker 13 You're starting to see the fractures and fissures and things like that.

Speaker 15 That said, the damage being done is vast and will continue until he either is gone or he lacks power or

Speaker 23 both or whatever.

Speaker 17 And the likelihood of it continuing, I feel, is not,

Speaker 33 is very clear that no one can hold it together except him.

Speaker 46 How are you looking at this moment right now?

Speaker 40 Despite your victories and everything else, how do you look at this moment?

Speaker 1 I just believe that my job is to keep fighting. And that

Speaker 1 even though a lot of people would say that my cynical instincts as a lawyer are very good, at bottom, I think I'm hopeful. And I do think we will be able to turn this around.

Speaker 1 It's going to take some time. It's going to take a lot of pain for a lot of people.

Speaker 2 This moment, Kara, I grab the joy whenever it comes on. That's how I'm looking at this moment.
We have to stop being despondent and look at each other. It's called praxis.

Speaker 2 We organize. When we organize, we can change laws.
That's what we need to do.

Speaker 2 I'm going to suggest that at the end of this month, we all get together on social media and all text the same thing. I don't know.

Speaker 2 Do you have an idea what we could all text? Really, Kara.

Speaker 15 Yes, I do.

Speaker 34 This fucking guy. Oh,

Speaker 2 there you go. May I put that on substaff?

Speaker 46 You may, please do.

Speaker 34 This fucking guy is my favorite expression for someone.

Speaker 2 Why don't we all get on whatever social media we have? We have

Speaker 2 publish that at the same time, the same day, at the same hour.

Speaker 44 Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 37 Beating the pans.

Speaker 24 This fucking guy.

Speaker 15 I say that about a lot of people, this fucking guy.

Speaker 36 Oh, boy, I am going to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 Rebecca Trace says this.

Speaker 2 All over. Let's get this going.

Speaker 37 Okay. All right.

Speaker 22 All right. Okay.
This fucking guy.

Speaker 36 Okay. Well, yeah.

Speaker 37 well you seem to have beaten him anyway you guys

Speaker 33 thank you so much for both of you and three spits for everybody thank you thank you cara i appreciate

Speaker 21 On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor Roussell, Kateri Yoakum, Megan Burney, Allison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch.

Speaker 11 Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Speaker 33 Special thanks to Annika Robbins.

Speaker 21 Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Tracademics. If you're already following the show, you're ready for a battle like Henry V at Agincourt.

Speaker 19 If not, Pew Pew Pew, three spits for you too.

Speaker 6 Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at On with Kara Swisher.

Speaker 12 Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

Speaker 5 We'll be back on Monday with more.

Speaker 48 Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab.

Speaker 48 At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices.
You can invest and trade on your own.

Speaker 48 Plus, get advice in more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab.

Speaker 48 Visit schwab.com to learn more.

Speaker 61 This message comes from ATT. America's first network is also its fastest and most reliable.
Based on Root Metrics United States Root Score Report, first half 2025.

Speaker 61 Tested with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types. Your experiences may vary.

Speaker 61 Root Metrics rankings are not an endorsement of ATT. When you compare, there's no comparison.
ATT.

Speaker 58 Support for this show comes from Figma. Figma is the place where teams turn ideas into the world's best digital products.

Speaker 58 And now, Figma is introducing a faster way to make those ideas real with Figma Make.

Speaker 58 It's an AI-powered prompt-to-code tool that turns your ideas or your Figma designs into interactive code-backed prototypes in minutes.

Speaker 58 And because it's all in Figma, you can use your team's existing design building blocks, making it easy to create outputs that look good, feel real, and represent your brand.

Speaker 58 Whether you're a designer, product thinker, or founder, Figma Make helps you go from concept to something real fast.

Speaker 58 Figma Make, a prompt-to-code tool for making ideas real. Try it now at figma.com/slash make.

Speaker 58 That's figma.com/slash m-a-k-e.