Trump's D.C. Crackdown, Putin Summit, and Cuomo's Mamdani Jabs

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This whole thing is so we are in a simulation, David, just so you know, this is none of this is real.

Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

Welcome back to...

Scott Free August.

That was explosive.

I like it.

I know.

Well,

that's for Scott.

And while Scott is off gallivanting, who knows where, I have yet another brilliant co-host joining me, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Radio Hour.

He's a podcaster now.

David, welcome.

Oh, it's great to be here, Kara, since we've known each other for about 242 years.

242 years at our old alma mater, the Washington Post.

How is it going?

How's the New Yorker going?

We're doing okay.

There's wood here, so I can knock on it, but editorially, we're doing great.

And, you know, despite everything, I mean, we could be frank,

we're doing all right.

Business is okay.

Yeah.

Are you going to be in the Devil Wear's Prada 2?

I am not.

I'm just asking.

I am not.

If I can reveal this, I got a phone call to be an extra in it, and I decided maybe

it's better to watch the film than be.

Oh, really?

Interesting.

You don't want to wear nice clothes and everything else?

Do you get to keep it?

I don't think so.

All right, then forget it.

You'd be playing David Remnick, so whatever David Remick.

I can think of better things to play.

What is David Remnick's fashion sense?

You're looking at it.

You're looking at it.

If you had to name the style, what would it be?

I think it would be late middle-aged slouchy.

Nate million daddy like cool dad?

Not even cool dad, just dad or, you know, waiting, awaiting senescence.

Senescence.

You're wearing a Guinness t-shirt.

I could easily work.

I could easily rock that.

Oh, yes, I am.

I don't ever, I have so many t-shirts.

I don't even know what I'm wearing.

I like to send send messages with my t-shirts sometimes.

What are you telling me now with the Guinness thing?

Nothing.

I've got a clean one.

I almost wore my old Twitter t-shirt.

I still have the t-shirt that I was wearing in July of 1998 with Leon Russell on it.

I came into work to write a piece.

Tina Brown had told us the day before that she was leaving the New Yorker.

And I came to work the next day in a Leon Russell t-shirt that even then had some holes in it, had some hole problems.

And I was called in to see see Sign New House, the owner of

my job for what reason I had no idea.

And that was Destiny.

Oh, wow.

What did he say anything about your outfit?

Not very Condé Nast, that's for sure.

Your cafeteria upsets me every time I go there because I feel like a homeless person or something.

Like, I look like, hi, I'd like some free food.

And then everyone's eating tiny little things.

It's all egg whites.

Egg whites, yeah.

Anyway, we have so much.

Just David, it has been a long time.

When was that?

19.

What year did you join?

You said 19.

It was the last century.

A New Yorker?

Yeah.

I left the Washington Post.

I'd been in Moscow and came home, wrote a book for, took me a year.

And then in 1992, Tina Brown became the editor of The New Yorker and asked me to come be a writer there.

And I was thrilled.

Yeah.

And you became editor in six years later, something like that.

Yeah.

Wow.

So it's a long time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Are you going to outlast Anna?

Well, she started before I did.

I know, I know, but, you know, it'll be a flexibility.

as well.

I have to tell you, my relationship with her, which is longstanding, and I don't think anybody would mistake me for her or vice versa, we get along terrifically well.

She's actually

incredibly smart as a business person

and obviously as an editor.

And

I remember asking what makes Anna Wintour a great editor?

And this person said, she knows what she wants.

And

it was actually the scales fell from my eyes because I think editors who don't know what they want

confuse everybody and make everybody else crazy.

Oh, that's interesting.

Did you use that?

You don't feel that way, Kara?

I mean, if you...

I wasn't much of an editor.

I mean, I was because I ran the thing, but I guess I do.

I did know what I wanted.

I did.

I wanted people to.

Yes, when I started running All Things D, yes, I wanted them to tell you what they actually were telling each other.

It doesn't mean you're not filled with uncertainty or bound to make mistakes, but you do have to make a call at a certain point.

Right.

One of the things Tina Brown had speaking of Tina and told me he says, you can teach someone how to write, but you can't teach them how to see.

Like in terms of getting the stuff that you need to report on.

I thought that was smart.

I couldn't agree more.

You know, you go out into the world, you go to the Middle East or New York City, and you're going to write a quote-unquote story.

And you feel like one of those quarterbacks in a video game that a lot of commotion is happening in the field of life in front of of your eyes.

And finding a way to locate a story that's both honest, accurate, depending on the circumstances, entertaining or serious, that is a skill.

I think that's what she meant.

It is.

I think she said, what to see.

I can't teach you what to see.

Yeah.

That's what it was, which I thought was a very, very canny actual.

She's also a canny editor, as are you.

So I want to ask you about your latest piece in the New Yorker called The Politics of Fear.

It's very serious, speaking of not entertaining, but it is.

It's beautifully written.

It's all about Donald Trump's long, lifelong bullying tactics.

You write specifically about the us versus them mentality and he's using in his second term to intimidate people and bend them to his will.

And you call his cabinet a quivering collection of yaysayers.

Nice, well done.

Well, look at Pam Bondi.

Yeah, I know, I know, but yaysayers, I just like the word.

Though you do, you do say cartoon bullies do not inevitably prevail.

You say pushback like the South Park creators, but talk about how well it's worked, actually.

It may not be effective, but it's worked well.

You know what?

Maybe I'm trying to gird my own

loins there when I say that to myself and to the reader, because if you're being honest with yourself, horrible things do happen.

Democratic systems have disintegrated under pressure historically.

So maybe I'm being only three-quarters honest there, but I don't think it's inevitable.

I don't think it's inevitable that the project that Donald Trump has set out on, which I think at its heart is authoritarian and anti-rule of law and all the other things that you discuss on this show quite a lot.

I don't think it's inevitable that it prevails.

Has it been corrosive?

You bet.

Has he won lots of victories?

You bet.

Has he intimidated

all kinds of institutions, including our own business,

with terrible consequences?

That has all happened.

And I guess it's important

on all kinds of media, all kinds of circumstances, to rally people's spirits as best as you can.

I'm not deluded that a common piece in the New Yorker is suddenly going to cause

truth, justice, and the American way to prevail.

But I look at the place where you and I worked.

The Washington Post.

The Washington Post.

I was there for 10 years

as a young guy.

Me too.

I was a young guy, too.

And I'm watching this drama with a broken heart, with a broken heart.

The idea that the Washington Post was not just mutable,

but that could be undermined to this degree so that so much of its talent runs screaming from

the building.

To see a gazillionaire like

Bezos

do the right thing when he first had the Washington Post and then turn tail

is

really chilling.

I have an interest.

I mean, I don't think he did much of anything.

He kind of left it alone, which is one of the problems.

They didn't do anything post-Trump.

They do no harm, right?

It's like being a doctor.

Yes, yes.

I wouldn't call him particularly like he said a lot of tech stuff, but I don't think he was.

I mean, he brought Fred Ryan kind of like sailed along under the Trump thing.

Fred Ryan might not have been the most

perhaps inspiring leader on the business side, and there was all kinds of things that they could have done better, I guess.

But Marty Barron, as an editor,

had the same long leash as the editors of the New York Times and all the places that were doing their job well in the first Trump administration, including our place.

Can I ask you?

I think about someone's asked me why is he doing it?

What's the point?

I have not answered that question.

I'm not sure.

I think it was like that before because I've never particularly liked him.

I think he's tough and aggressive.

And is he tough?

Yes, he's not a nice person.

I never thought he was a nice person.

So

I don't mean nice person.

I mean the ability to say, look,

I have power too.

I can stand up to this.

And he has made a decision for, I think, business reasons, first and foremost.

Look, the Washington Post is hardly his biggest business.

It's his smallest.

I don't think he really likes journalists.

That was always my experience.

And you have to ask yourself, why buy it?

I don't know.

That's the part.

What do you think, Kara?

I think he got guilted into it by Mrs.

Graham, and he thought it was interesting.

I think his ex-wife was interested in it too.

And she's very, she's very, she's distinguished herself since, like with her giving and everything else.

I I think she, she, he was on, not under her influence.

I wouldn't say that.

He was in that world.

And then now he's in a different world.

That's, let's take over Venice and be very performative in our outfits.

You know, I think that's what he was actually like versus what he, he was cosplaying, like friend of liberty kind of guy before.

I don't, I think before was not what he was doing.

So it's not a, it's not a lack of self-awareness.

I think he's doing, but I, but what I want to understand, at least for being there, is he's not even, he's not even being bullied in this case.

He just is doing it, right?

He's he's anticipating bullying or wants more of the space game or whatever it happens to be.

But I, I, I want it, like, what's the point?

Where's the end game here?

Because I can tell you, the people that have left, I hear from all of them every day.

There's so many more leaving.

And so, how do you run an institute?

Like, maybe that's the point to hollow it out, to fill it with who you want.

I don't know.

I, I just, if you have any thoughts, I don't.

I don't, I don't think he cares that much.

Number one,

Don Graham and Catherine Graham, for whatever, I think there was always an illusion that somehow these were lefties.

That actually is not the case.

Catherine Graham was great friends with Nancy Reagan.

She was an establishmentarian.

But when the push came to shove to do the right thing on the Pentagon Papers, on Watergate, and much smaller decisions along the way,

They did the right thing.

And they made the staff feel, and I'm not talking just about star reporters and editors i'm talking about people in the press room they felt like they were part of something part of something important

not just an instrument of a billionaire's a multi multi-billionaire's um a power complex yeah i i i it's inexplicable at this point because now it's just like suicidal it feels but one of the one of the things you say the quivering collection of yaysayers at the trumpet like the tech people have become yaysayers you saw tim cook do this the other day with with the golden the golden statue.

What the hell was that?

I don't know.

I can't even write them.

I was just like, are you fucking kidding?

But I get it.

I get it.

He wants no tariffs.

Man, you get one chance on this earth.

I agree.

I had someone say that.

Yeah, well, shareholders is his goal.

Shareholders.

That's all he cares about.

I know.

Great.

But when you say yays, talk about the Trump cabinet because it's particularly

bending.

I don't think they even have to bend.

They've bent.

They started off bent.

The first Trump cabinet in the first term was not my idea of

my politics, or obviously, but

these were kind of establishmentarians from the business world, in defense, in intelligence, and the rest.

They were, by the way, not absolutely top rate, all of them.

But they had some sense of what too far was.

They had some sense along the way of limits, of the law,

of

what is just

shame is a good word.

I don't see many people in this cabinet who are

possessed of shame

or a sense of

what a limit is.

When you look at the press secretary, there's nothing she will not say.

When you look at the Attorney General, there's no limit she will not break.

Her client is not the law.

Her client is the president of the United States.

She's the personal lawyer.

She's behaving as if she's the personal lawyer for the president of the United States.

That is an immense difference.

You know, you could argue that maybe John Mitchell did the same when he was

under Nixon.

But here it's across the board.

And also, there's a competency problem.

Pete Heck Seth,

I don't know,

Karl, would you hire him to run a grocery store?

I wouldn't hire hire him to watch my kids.

Well, yeah, well.

And you could say that about a lot of people in the White House and the top of the federal bureaucracy.

Do you see anyone in the writing of this that you thought, okay,

possibly good or possibly?

I mean, Marco, Rubio was considered competent by many before, but now everyone who was close with him is like, we don't understand what happened to this person.

Well, Marco Rubio seems to have been kind of put in a corner.

I mean, he does things, but he knows his limits.

Look, remember, Marco Rubio is a guy who was insulted so many times in the 2015, 2016 presidential race.

I don't know at what reach of one's character you can say, you know what, that's just between friends.

Now I'll be the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor.

It's a signal to Trump that I will do anything you ask without limits.

And that's not what these people in those jobs are supposed to do.

How does pushback become a larger and more successful moment?

It can be South Park.

That's certainly satire is often a way that happens.

Very funny, very tough satire.

You see it a lot from comedy.

And you see it, I've just got Chris Eisgruber's, who's the head of Princeton's book.

Tough book, like he's writing, you know, pushing back.

You see it in different law firms.

You see it in different reporters, certainly.

How do you make that larger?

I think people, regular people, you see when you you see these videos of people on the street stopping ICE from arresting people, you see it there.

It's civil society in various forms.

It can't be underestimated, but it isn't absolutely everything.

I mean, finally,

we have a Congress that's completely in its majority obedient to a president who is, by instinct, an authoritarian, and a court that is

suspect in many ways as well.

So finally, political power can be influenced by and maybe limited by civil society, and it's essential.

You know, it's exactly what Russia does not have.

Civil society has been all but crushed

with very, very limited corners of civil society still exist in today's Russia.

It's infinitesimal.

We still have that.

And if we squander it,

whether it's

managing partner of a law firm or university president or boards of trustees of universities.

If we keep squandering it, the picture will get worse and worse and worse.

And people seem to be changing their minds too.

Look at Harvard University.

Harvard University seemed to be standing up, and they had all the money in the world to do so.

Now it looks as if they're going to make a deal.

And you could say, well, I don't blame them.

You know, they'd be losing all their research money and, and, and, I, I, I get it.

These are complicated positions.

Otherwise, they wouldn't be moral quandaries in the first place.

But if we keep

backing up, bending down, you use whatever metaphor you like,

the sum total of that will be the gradual and then accelerating erasure of civil society.

Civil society.

Yeah.

Well, speaking of Russia, we've got a lot to get to today, but I want to move move to several stories on the politics of fear on full display.

So let's get to it.

Trump and Putin are set to meet in Alaska this week for a summit.

You can see Russia from Alaska.

I don't know if you know that, according to

the end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

After announcing the summit, Trump said there will be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.

It's very Chamberlain-esque.

Ukraine's President Zelensky, who's not attending the summit as of this recording, called decisions made without Ukraine decisions against peace.

European leaders are backing Zelensky, saying that Ukraine and Europe's security must remain a top priority.

And Trump just said a little while ago that the next meeting will be him, Putin, and Zelensky.

So talk a little bit about this.

Trump is now calling it a feel-out meeting, which sounds kind of

a little gross, yeah?

Yeah, a little Epstein-y.

And what realistically is going to,

going to come out of it?

You wrote this back in 2022, ahead of Russia invading Ukraine.

Few leaders have leveraged inscrutability the way Putin has, but his general imperative is obvious, the preservation of power.

Talk a little bit about this summit, this feel-out situation.

Well, it's more than just the preservation of power.

It is the

resurrection

of Russian supremacy in as much of the old Soviet Union as can be mustered.

Not because of communism.

Communism

went out the door even before the fall of the Soviet Union.

But I mean, just in terms of great power relations.

Trump is, I don't know if this is news,

I don't know if it will require a flash across our phones, but

is a pretty inscrutable person and has changes his mind and his temperament from hour to hour.

So

the spectacle of his berating Zelensky in the Oval Office was one of the most depressing moments of the past six months.

It was just inc it was the opposite of what an American president should be doing to a leader like Zelensky, who's been nothing but brave and tireless and an advocate for his people and incredibly shrewd.

And he just sold him out.

And then, lo and behold, Russia

kept up its attacks on doing what it does best and

killing lots and lots of people and destroying lots and lots of Ukrainian infrastructure.

And lo and behold, Trump said,

this guy is bullshitting me, meaning Putin.

So who knows?

I think it's if we ascribe to Trump some sort of that he's tallyrand or Metternich and has some sort of grand strategy and all along he's thinking ahead.

Metternich and Trump don't go together.

No, no, no, don't go for it.

Or anybody else possessed of a strategic mind.

Rashilo,

then you're kidding yourself.

Now we're showing off our college.

Whatever.

I've just exhausted it.

Yeah, exactly.

So the other truth, though, is that Putin has lost a lot.

This adventure has lost him 1 million Russian casualties, deaths and

people wounded combined.

It has expanded NATO, which is exactly what he didn't want.

in his northern northwestern region.

It's isolated Russia and Russians.

Russian life is not better.

Economic life is more perilous, although they've survived better than one would have thought.

So this adventure

is not great.

It's not great.

Now, he's gained some territory, about 20% of Ukrainian territory, Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and he wants to hold on to it as much as possible.

This is the Donbass region, correct?

Yeah, I think he'd like to call it a day, but with maximal gains so he can come back and declare a great victory and have lots of parades.

The question is, is the United States

going to let him do that?

So?

Is?

Well, I think we'll see.

What are you looking for from this meeting besides a lot of performative nonsense?

I don't think it's performative nonsense.

I think you need some clarity from Donald Trump.

It may be asking too much.

Some sense of

that Russia cannot just have what it wants.

And also, Russia has lost Ukraine.

It may have gained territory in the East.

It may have gained Crimea, maybe for the foreseeable future, which it took in 2014.

But if you think Ukrainians are now more sympathetic to Russia, that want to be part of Russia and its sphere of influence, you're crazy.

Right.

They want to be part of Europe.

They want to be part of Europe even more intensely than ever.

So what should he do here?

If If Trump listened to everything you said to David, what should I say exactly?

What would you think the best thing, should Zelensky be there from the start?

Or

there needs to be a process in which Zelensky and Putin and Europe and the United States are involved.

It cannot be a situation in which

Trump, in all his bluster and weakness, is alone in a room to the end with Vladimir Putin.

If this meeting sets off a process that becomes one that's wider,

I don't think Zelensky is going to get back everything he wants.

Which is a horrific tragedy, but a reality.

But if Trump goes to Alaska and just sees everything,

Zelensky will be in a horrific shape, and we will have committed a strategic and moral

blunder, the likes of which we haven't seen for quite some time.

Do you have any guesses of which way that's going to go?

And where is Europe?

I mean, Europe's been obviously pressuring.

Europe is still, it is, you know, it's complicated, but Europe is much more stalwart in Zelensky's corner, without question.

Yes.

So what does it do here?

Because this will affect them.

Right, exactly.

Who's threatened more than Europe?

You know, if you're sitting in

Estonia, Poland, Lithuania,

you're watching this a lot more carefully, necessarily, than if you're in New York or North Dakota or California.

Do you think Putin would do that at this point?

Does he have a sell-by date at all?

I think the one provided by God.

Oh, well.

Mortality.

You know how long Lenin is still sitting there.

Well, Lenin died of a stroke.

I went and saw that.

No, I know, but I went to see him dead.

I did.

Well, I don't think Putin is going to be followed by the living incarnation of Navalny, though.

I mean, he has set up a system that's both personalist and

highly, highly, highly nationalist and authoritarian.

And I don't think,

unless you're a fantasist, you'll suddenly revert to the flux of 1991, 92.

Right, right.

Where is Boris Yeltsin when you need him?

Well,

Boris Yeltsin is not a pure picture either.

Boris Yeltsin,

I guess you could say he peaked in August of 1991 with his strength of standing up to the coup.

So you're going to be watching, what would be, give everybody one sign of good or bad.

If we don't get a repeat

of

Trump coming out, as he did in Helsinki years ago, and say, I believe Putin, I don't believe my own intelligence agencies.

Remember that incident?

Yes, I believe.

If we we don't get a repeat of the Oval Office meeting with Zelensky, where he just humiliated him and he went out of his way to do so with the help of J.D.

Vance,

then we'd have to count it as a small victory.

In other words, if he doesn't entirely sell out Ukraine,

that would be nice.

Yeah.

Well, he wants that Nobel Prize, doesn't he?

He's jumping.

So we'll see.

Listen, if he settles the thing

with a modicum of like not losing everything, he could possibly get it.

Okay, David, let's go on on a quick break when we come back.

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David, we're back with more news.

Another thing about the politics of fear.

President Trump says the police department in D.C.

will be placed under federal control because of, quote, totally out of control crime.

Let me tell you, as a citizen of the District of Columbia, things are not totally out of control here.

It's actually a very safe city.

The U.S.

military is preparing to activate several hundred National Guard troops in the city on Monday as we tape.

Let's listen to a clip of this speech on the matter on Monday morning.

Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth.

drugged out maniacs and homeless people.

And we're not going to let it happen anymore.

We're not going to take it.

Actually, all those people work at the White House, but

I got to tell you, there is,

anyone who lives in D.C.

is like, what are you talking about?

Crime is down.

Meanwhile, he's trying, we'll get to marijuana in a minute, but what do you take for this?

He did it in California.

The governor resisted,

but still he did it.

And D.C.

is under a really unusual situation where the government can't take over the city or has much more purview over the city, including its elected officials.

Sorry, this is the oldest tactic authoritarians have.

Drugged out maniacs are robbing your houses and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Fear, politics of fear.

And then he wants to show that in his own backyard, it's a swamp and he's going to clean it up.

This is a repeat of L.A.

in some way, right?

Where the governor and the mayor, I think

they.

Karen Bass,

in a way, the mayor of Los Angeles, after having a rough time during the wildfires,

I think reasserted her

reputation and her authority by pointing out very clearly in various interviews and news conferences.

We had an interview with her in the New York Radio Hour that was very good.

And she made it very plain that this was just absolute bullshit and a manipulation by the federal government in the name of Donald Trump to make it seem like drug-addled maniacs, in this case, immigrants,

were just running rough shut over

the

ability of the LAPD to control the situation in an isolated spot in downtown L.A.

Yeah, there was a small spot.

And I have to think, and also cable television didn't help by 24 hours a day focusing its camera on one burning car.

I'm not saying that, you know, violence in the streets is a great thing, but a sense of what it actually was and its

what was reality and what was exaggerated and the ability of this president to manipulate that situation made it a hell of a lot worse.

Why D.C.

Now, obviously, the Epstein stuff is another distraction from the Epstein stuff, but what can the mayor do here?

Because at one point, remember after Trump really had those troops downtown with the Bible, the whole thing,

you know, they painted the plaza.

They painted the plaza right near the White House to mock him.

She has since gotten rid of that to try to please him and work with the Trump administration.

And now, of course, this is what she's getting, right?

This is what cooperation yields you.

Why?

And of course, it started with this guy named Big Balls, who worked for Elon Musk.

This whole thing is so, we are in a simulation, David, just so you know, this is none of this is real.

This guy named Big Balls, this kid was working for Elon Musk.

He He got beaten up.

I'm sorry, Big Balls.

That's really terrible thing to happen to you.

But, you know, living in this city, the crime is down.

All kinds of major crimes are done.

It's a very safe city.

Same thing with San Francisco is now on the upswing and everything's looking great and everything else.

So trying to paint it as this.

Oh, we have this in New York City.

Well, it's coming for you.

Of course it is.

And by the way, Andrew Cuomo, in his rhetoric, is participating in this.

Right, exactly.

So I'm going to get to him in a second.

So the boxer,

what do you do here?

What could happen here?

You've been in Russia.

You've been in lots of hotspots like this of authoritarian rule.

Is this just posturing just so we can make a speech and get

the things away from what's really happening in this country?

Or what's the danger here?

Like as a citizen,

I'm like disturbed that there would be U.S.

military on the street.

Whenever I'm in a country where that's the case, I'm like, I don't like this country so much.

I've arrived in a banana republic.

Right, exactly.

Well, one thing traditionally that's been in the authoritarian playbook is not just the use of troops, but it's the

taking,

either staging or taking an incident in which there is a clash and using that as an excuse for a crackdown that's even greater.

You saw this in the Soviet Union.

You've seen it all over the world.

You know, that something will be...

I remember in Lithuania, for example, was still Soviet times.

Troops went in where they were not needed because there were demonstrations, there were nationalist demonstrations.

And the next thing you know, 13 people were dead and the crackdown became more.

And

the central authorities, particularly in that case, the KGB, were delighted.

Delighted.

They exploited it, they staged it, and the whole thing.

Now, how sophisticated and what kind kind of forethought is going into this, I don't know.

I couldn't say because I'm not in those rooms.

But I dare say that we'll find out soon enough.

I think the more adjectives they use, the stupider it is.

Violent crimes, bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs, wild youth, drug doubt maniacs, and

homeless people.

Homeless people didn't get a qualifier.

But look, things will always happen in cities that are terrible.

You know, it is a bad thing that Big Balls or whatever his real name is, gets beaten up.

It is a horrible thing when there's a murder in the Bronx or in whatever part of

New York City.

That's always going to happen.

And it's never completely satisfying to say that the statistics are down because

one sentence is filled with life and loss and bloodiness, and the other feels cold and statistical.

Derocratical.

I got it.

But in fact, but in fact, it's a huge accomplishment in your city and mine that crime, violent crime is down.

And you don't feel unsafe.

I don't feel unsafe in New York or D.C.

And I have felt unsafe in both places.

Look, when I was a kid applying for college, my parents, I grew up in New Jersey, my parents said the one place I couldn't apply was Columbia.

It was on 116th, and to them, sitting in suburban New Jersey, it just seemed very dangerous.

And probably the 70s, it wasn't so great.

But I think it would have been fine if I'd gone.

And

now nobody would dream of saying that about Columbia.

They have other things to say about Columbia, but not that.

Yeah.

You know what's interesting is that there was a shooting in Montana.

Should he send the national troops there?

It's like, it doesn't matter.

It's the same.

It's just such a good thing.

No, but we know what it's about.

But his ability to change the subject, as you said, Kara, is amazing.

You know, three weeks ago, the Epstein situation was going to be, you know, yet another end of Donald Trump.

i think the epstein situation still has legs that's what i'm feeling i do what what what will take place that will

if you go to you if you go to the um

places i read on the internet with the mag at people it illuminates them it still does and i don't think they've let donald trump i think they're trying to let donald trump off the hook but they're still he's trying to sideline it and it will not be that particular thing won't be sidelined but what could they find out that they don't know already that would turn them against trump Oh, I don't think they would turn against Trump.

47% of Republicans would still vote for Trump, even if he was implicated in Epstein's activities, which is disturbing.

So I don't know.

I think something like that could happen.

I think something like that could be.

This is part of the whole, too, this whole business that,

you know, the phenomenon that seems to stun liberals all the time, that evangelicals

will vote.

for Donald Trump, even though they know X, Y, and Z about his character, that it's quote, and this is the phrase that's always used in Washington talk, that it's baked in,

that they know that about Trump, where if they heard it about, say, Obama,

they'd be shocked, shocked, shocked, and

shield their eyes.

Yeah, it's true.

But he is going to

make marijuana, reportedly considering recasting marijuana as a less dangerous drug after companies in the industry have donated millions to his political groups.

That's fine.

That one, I'm okay.

I'm fine.

I'm going to move on from that.

So last thing on this segment, Governor Greg Abbott says the registering fight in Texas could literally last years as he defends his push to arrest Democrats who fled the state to block GOP efforts.

I think they popped up in California this week.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, by the way,

please Google Ken Paxton divorce, has also asked the state Supreme Court to remove 13 of those Democrats from office as registering battles spread across the country.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing for a special election to get a new House map approved by 2026, and Trump is now calling for a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants, a move he's tried before.

A new census would reshape congressional acts and impact federal, state, and local fundings if it were to happen.

Talk a little bit about redistricting.

Redistricting is nothing new, and it's something that's

look, Barack Obama's district as a state senator, as a state senator in Illinois was a

absurdity.

You know, kind of a little strip along the north side, and it kind of came down down and then went into Hyde Park.

And these congressional districts historically have been shaped in ways that are congruent with all kinds of political interests.

Early on, racism, and to this day, racism, and anxiety about

so many other subjects.

So both parties and American politics has been given to redistricting for less than high motives for a very long time.

But as usual, in the Trump administration, they're taking it to its very heights.

To do this in the way they're doing this, this is not something that has clear precedent that I can see.

Aaron Powell, yeah.

No, he's doing it because he thinks he's going to lose the house.

Of course.

And then it's over.

Then it is kind of game over for him in many ways.

He'll just spend his time.

you know, trying hard to do executive orders that won't be.

Well, I think this was the illusion of some people in the Democratic Party that after an initial explosion of activity and noise and all the rest, that this term, like the last term, would see him have his interest flag and maybe he's getting older and he'd play a lot more golf.

But I think we have to admit that in numerous ways, maybe too many to count, this term is not only much worse than the first term,

but the

dark sophistication that he's gone about so many things, some of them collapse like Doge,

has been a surprise to a lot of people.

Yeah.

No, he's a lively old man.

He is.

Have you ever gone to my mom's own assisted living?

There's a guy, there's a guy in every assisted living home that's like this.

Real,

real anime.

The aspect of the Biden guy who's wheeling around, who's actually a little more with it than he seems.

And then there's the Trump guy, and he's really crazy and really irritating.

definitely like walks

it's not just the usual trump character that we've known for for so many years he's surrounded by people where age

isn't an issue.

Stephen Miller's a young man.

He is.

And he is filled

with

all kinds of impulses.

And he is, so far, in a dark way, good at it.

Right.

He is.

Absolutely.

Is that the person you would focus most on?

Would you consider him a quivering yaysayer?

I think that's a good question.

No, I think he isn't an actor.

He is,

from what I understand, especially in terms of domestic policy, but not only, he is the most essential

figure in that building.

And in fact, what we learn from that chat group that Jeff Goldberg was invited on inadvertently, but what you learn there in that discussion, that it wasn't the Secretary of State or the Defense Secretary that was in charge of the conversation.

It was Stephen Miller who brought things to a conclusion, who said, okay,

we've discussed this enough.

President.

Very interesting.

He was clearly the one speaking in Trump's name.

He was.

Absolutely.

And Jeff pointed that out.

It was clear, you know, Hex S was sort of performatively saying, playing the Secretary of Defense on television kind of thing, like, look, I have some dates and times and stuff like that.

And

he was surprised.

Vance was quite against it, which was interesting to see that.

But nobody cared.

Nobody cared.

Nobody cared in that conversation.

Miller came in and wiped this floor with everybody.

So is it a good idea for Gavin Newsom to do this?

Or, you know, now

a Republican governor in New Hampshire said, absolutely not.

I'm not going to redistrict, even though she's under pressure to do so.

You know, this is the dilemma that stretches out to a lot of areas.

I just had on our own podcast

a conversation between Ruth Marcus and Jeannie Sukgerson.

They were talking about the Supreme Court and how it should deal with certain things.

And

the dilemma is, do you answer in kind in a way that feels extra-legal or goes outside the bounds of normal politics?

And that's the tough thing.

And I think Gavin Newsom is basically saying, you know, we can't afford to just let Trump and the Trumpists do whatever they want.

And we have to answer in kind, otherwise too much will be lost,

even though we know these tactics are ugly.

You know California a lot better than I do.

You think he has a shot in the end as a presidential candidate?

It depends on the atmosphere.

It depends on the 2026 elections.

If he sort of wins and pushes Trump back, and yeah, I suppose he could.

Yeah, I suppose he could.

He's got a lot of negatives, but yeah, he's tall.

And I think we're going to elect a tall, handsome white guy for sure, you know, as the president.

So not a short, handsome white guy.

So Pete Buddy judge, no.

No, no.

Why?

Because I think the gay thing is still a problem for many people.

I'm sorry.

I think he's terrific.

I think he's incredibly well-spoken.

He's really thoughtful.

I just don't.

Wes Moore is the other person I would just think could be an interesting character.

He's not a white guy, so far as I can.

He's not, but he's so fantastic looking.

And he's got, you know, he's got, just, I think he's got a lot of attributes.

You know, you look, maybe it's someone from we don't know, David.

I don't know.

Maybe it's someone we don't know.

I have to say, anyone who has any charm against JD Vance, if J.D.

Vance is their thing, I find J.D.

Vance charmless and repellent to voters ultimately.

The one thing, though, that gave me real pause is his performance in the vice presidential debate was extremely skillful.

Yeah, but on as president, that's different.

If he's the man, he's not really the man.

He did give a speech recently.

I don't know if you caught this at Claremont.

I always listen to him.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

In other words,

Trump is an instinctual authoritarian.

Right.

This guy.

J.D.

Vance is a very sophisticated nationalist authoritarian ideologist.

I mean,

he is a different set of qualities.

He absolutely does.

And we're going to be paying for the fact that his mama didn't love him enough for the rest of our lives if he wins.

I'll tell you that.

I mean,

it's just that 100%.

Mama didn't love him, didn't hug him.

I find him charmless.

I think the voters, most voters find him charmless.

And the fact that South Park made him tattoo kind of said everything for me.

Plain.

Surprising that South Park, how long has South Park been on the air?

26 years.

And that it still has the juice.

Well, it goes in and out.

My kids love it, have loved it since they were small kids.

But yeah, it does.

It has the juice.

You still have the juice, David.

Ah, you're so.

You still have the juice.

You do.

You actually do.

Every now and then you come at the story.

I'm like, oh, look at that guy.

Anyway, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, Cuomo comes after Mom Donnie in what he calls a heavyweight bout.

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David, we're back with more news.

In New York City, your home, in the mayoral race, Andrew Cuomo is targeting front-runner Zoran Mamdani in a series of social media attacks.

And I use that term broadly because they're really stupid.

Cuomo is now framing the race as a heavyweight bout, which is what someone who still lives in the 1980s when Rocky was hot would use.

Cuomo slammed Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized apartment, calling him rich and saying he should move out.

Cuomo, I'll note Cuomo moved to the city about a year ago and pays about $8,000 in rent.

And New York Times also reported last week that Cuomo recently spoke with Donald Trump about the mayoral race, though both men have denied that.

It's very sad.

I have to say that he is proof positive that there is a such thing as a sell-by-date.

When you saw him in the debate, Mamdani, Cuomo, and some other figures, Brad Lander, and so on, and I have never seen a clock cleaned so efficiently as Mamdani cleaned Cuomo's clock.

He just, Cuomo had lost it.

This was a guy who really had prided himself on a certain kind of,

I get things done,

tough guy, but I'm your tough guy, that mode, very different from the titanium.

I have the tiger, very I have the tiger.

And Mamdani, who's very young, right?

And he just came in

very cool, funny, engaged.

Look, there's all kinds of things we can discuss and argue, and

he's a fascinating figure.

But just on raw politics, as a boxing match,

that was the kind of decision where the, you know, you win by 10 points.

You win every round.

Besides, Kuo's terrible boxing, though, using that metaphor feels so dated at this moment.

I don't know why.

I bet the youngs are like, what?

Yeah, boxing is not exactly at the center of attention.

Here's the thing.

We live.

in a very, it's a young city.

It's a city where certain constituencies have been totally overlooked.

we have in this city between 750 000 and a million muslim voters

we have a city filled with young people who are deeply depressed by national politics and see no hope in it and are fed up with all kinds of versions of the familiar and feel that they've been they're they're not going to have the kind of life care that you and I have been privileged to have.

And so I think they look at somebody like

Cuomo as just worn out and cynical.

And it matters.

His ads and his social media are just very 20 years ago.

Eric Adams comes across as, you know, at this point, not very much.

I'd vote for Eric Adams over Cuomo at this point.

I can't believe I just said that.

I understand, but you also have this hilarious phenomenon that Adams and and Cuomo are waiting for one or the other to drop out, even though they're neck and neck in the polls.

And I bet you that neither one of them do.

No, Adams would have a better chance against Mom Dani, actually.

Actually, if I had to like

that Adams has a better chance.

Right.

I think that's absolutely right.

Well, he could still get a substantial African-American vote.

There might be some people who see Mom Dani as

that comes from a privileged background, no matter what the ethnic background is, or some people that feel rightly or wrongly alienated by his views on the Middle East, even though the mayor of New York very rarely controls foreign policy.

But they may feel alienated by that.

But I think Montani's going to win.

Right.

No, he's way up.

But to people to know, right now, the polls are showing him doing very well.

No, and we're forgetting Curtis Sleewa, who I first covered as a young Washington Post reporter.

And he lives up the street from me, I think in a studio apartment with about 15 cats and his wife.

He's an odd bird, but he's getting some votes.

He is, actually.

You know, actually, of all the people presenting, he's actually somewhat funny.

And I'm like, and he's himself.

He's himself.

And actually, some of the things he says, I'm like, that's a fair point.

I literally, from him with the hat and from when he used to be.

He's not wearing the hat and he's given up the...

No, he had the hat.

He gives it up

here and there because he wants to look, you know, mayor.

I think he should go with the hat.

That's why we know who he is.

Yeah, exactly.

Like Groucho without the mustache and the cigar.

I actually literally was like, okay, this is my stack rank.

Mom Donnie,

Sila,

Sila,

whatever, him, the hat guy,

Adams, Cuomo.

Literally, that's how I go.

And it's like, I cannot believe I'm saying this.

I don't live in New York.

Do you talk a little bit about Mom Donnie's weaknesses, though?

Because

my son lives in New York, has just recently left New York, who's at NYU.

Love Mondami.

So does my other older son.

And it's not for, you know, he knows that

some of the stuff is like he can't do grocery stores necessarily, but he likes the idea that he's talking about it.

He's not sure he can do,

he's like, well, he's thinking about people's food.

He's thinking about like, he goes, I don't know if he'll do it, but everyone else says shit that they don't do.

Part of it is it costs a fortune to live decently in New York City, period.

And so forget the poor for a moment.

But to live a middle-class life on an income in much of the rest of the country would seem quite comfortable is really, really hard.

And one of the truisms of politics is that parents want to know that their kids are going to live slightly better than them.

And here,

the numbers are the opposite for a big part of the population.

At first, Mom Dani's support seemed to be isolated in what's called the Brownstone Belt.

Comfortable, young creatives

whose politics are left and who

are

struggling to make it work in Betsy

or

Park Slope, which is wealthier, and so on.

In fact, that's not the limitation.

He's not limited to that vote.

He

has done quite well on the west side of Manhattan and downtown and other, in Queens.

So I think he's just going to rump.

I think he's going to win by a lot.

I think he's going to win by a lot, and Cuomo not by a lot.

What's his biggest weakness?

If you were Cuomo and not living in the Rocky period, Rocky I period of the world, what would you tell Cuomo to do?

Well, there are three areas of conversation.

I don't know if they're weaknesses, but three areas of angles of attack that we've seen.

One is the false accusation that he's somehow an anti-Semite.

It's just really nonsense.

There's no question that he's pro-Palestinian rights, and that was an energizing issue

even in his college days.

And some of the vocabulary that comes along with that alienates some voters, some of them Jewish.

That's one area.

The other area is he comes from a background where his father is a very distinguished Columbia professor and his mother is a movie maker.

And while not wealthy in the New York sense,

they're wealthy and privileged in every sense elsewhere, and certainly to the majority of New Yorkers.

So, there's one thing like that.

So, he's the privileged kid of the left, that sort of thing.

Yeah.

Then the third thing is: well, he can't do what he's promising.

So, he's talking about grocery stores.

I think maybe

when it comes to grocery stores, what he's talking about is having some models of how this would work.

It's not like he's going to return us to the Soviet Union of empty state grocery stores in 1978.

And

how you go about affecting rent prices and limiting raises in

rent prices and how you have an effect on the really radical income differences in New York City and elsewhere depends on the state legislature,

as Kathy Hochle has pointed out a number of times.

And it's likely that he's certainly not going to win every battle.

But what a lot of people see is that he, and I hate to use the new AG, he sees them

in a way that, you know, Eric Adams is too weird to do, and Cuomo is past his sell-by-day.

Past his sell-by-day.

Do you worry about Donald Trump coming in if he wins?

Are they going to use it, the win as something?

Of course.

You know,

it's unpredictable.

But clearly, Donald Trump sees himself as a New Yorker, even though he's mainly abandoned New York for the delicious tax comforts of Florida.

Yeah, so he will come in.

In some way or another.

Look, he came, he's doing this in Washington.

Now, to what degree and how much of it is a show and

there to just prove that he can do this with swagger like he's done to universities and any number of other institutions?

It's hard to say.

Yeah, The Battle for New York.

That was a movie with Kurt Russell.

Yes, that movie is amazing.

He plays Snake.

Escape from New York.

There was Escape from LA too, but he plays Snake.

That's his name.

I think his name is Snake.

And he's New York becomes sort of a bad place.

And then a rich guy's daughter gets

plane crashes there, and then he has to go in and get her.

Can Kurt Russell run for Mayor?

Trust me,

you and Esther watch it tonight.

You'll thank me.

All right, David, one more quick break.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Okay, David, wrapping up.

Let's hear some wins and fails.

Why don't you go first?

Can I be patriotic in my win?

Sure.

David Kirkpatrick, who came to this magazine first as a fact-checker many years ago when I first got here, and then returned here from a career at the New York Times to be a writer at the New Yorker, has published this week a huge piece in the New Yorker called The Number.

And what it is, is a meticulous, fair-minded, non-jumping to conclusions accounting

of how much money, of how much money Donald Trump and his family has made off of the president in six months.

$2.5 billion.

It's $3.5 billion, which is a lot in six months.

And I will say that

he's, if anything, Kirkpatrick bends over backwards to be conservative in his accounting.

By nature and by what I can see in the reporting and the fact-checking.

So I think that's

a win.

It's a tragic win because of what it's telling you, but there's that.

Yeah, the griff.

Do you have a win, or should I go to fail?

No, go ahead, go to fail.

And this is sentimental, but also I think important.

It's what we started our conversation with.

I think Jeff Bezos's behavior

with the Washington Post.

I don't care how he gets married.

He wants to take over, you know, the city of Rome or

Albania to get married, as we say on my block, Zygesund.

You know, fine, maybe, maybe that pays a lot of catering bills and wonderful.

But to take an institution, and what we're discovering in recent years to our pain is that institutions are fragile.

Things that seemed like they'd last forever and were a good thing

in their sum total, they're fragile.

And to watch really

earnest, good reporters and editors have to live through this is really painful, not just because I worked there a million years ago, but

it's a big deal to have the news outlet in the capital of the country be put in this kind of deeply uncertain position at best.

I'm glad to see that the Wall Street Journal in many ways

has shown itself up lately.

Emma Tucker proves to be a terrific editor,

and that's good for competition with the Times and others.

But to see this happen to the Post

is on Jeff Bezos, and that's a fail.

It's a real fail.

I just, it's astonishing.

You should buy it with me, David.

He won't meet with me.

He might meet with you.

You're a white guy.

But you got

the dough.

I'm the white guy.

Together we can conquer worlds.

Worlds.

The doe and the white guy.

That's like a reality show.

That would be such a Kurt Russell would play me.

Who would play you?

Yes, with a patch.

Kurt Russell would also play me.

All right.

My fail is, I got to say, this story in the New York Times.

Mark Zuckerberg was running a private school for his two daughters and a dozen other children out of his house in a compound in Palo Alto, and it's in violation of city code.

Meanwhile, a school he and his wife established for low-income families in East Palo Alto announced it would be shutting down in April because he stopped funding it.

I just, the idea of this private school for his children and a few other rich kids in the area or rich friends or whatever is grotesque.

These people are already they already go away from people and

reality, and now they're even further raising their children to do so, so, to be out of,

they should be in schools in Palo Alto.

They have excellent public schools in Palo Alto.

And to do this is really, I find it grotesque.

And so to do this just in a high-handed way, he's already taking over great swaths of this area.

Now, Palo Alto has always been

a rich place, but

he's grotesquerized it in a way that's, and

it's just icky that this is what he's doing with his children.

Kids should not be sequestered like this.

I like that word, grotesquerise.

Grotoseraise.

It's a word for our age.

It is.

It is.

Grotesqueries.

And speaking of Fantasteries,

the season finale of the Gilded Age was so good.

I can't.

Oh, my God.

Have you seen it yet?

I watched like an episode when it began.

I had to.

Oh, no, stop.

Stop.

Start with this season.

Start with this season.

You'll pick it right up against rich people.

You know, this is a different version of rich people.

And

there's Train Daddy, who is who is Vanderbilt, who's playing the character.

His name is Russell.

But no exploding vehicles.

Oh, it's the same guy who did Downton Abbey.

So yes, there's things that happen

that guy.

And so it's great.

It's really great.

The costumes are great.

I got to say, Carrie Coons, who plays Mrs.

Russell, Mrs.

Bertha Russell, is just fantastic.

Such a groping, grasping.

It's billionaires I get behind.

Like, I love these billionaires.

They're so fantastic and awful, but they're in the greatest of American ways.

And at one point in the finale, I'm not going to give away stuff,

but she goes,

she's letting divorced women into the balls.

And so one woman says to her, you know, it's really important that we move into the future.

And the woman, Carrie Coons, who's fantastic and deserves every Emmy in the book, goes, this is the future and the future is America.

Like, and it's so MAGA.

It's so good.

i'm sold i am so good at the same time they have their they've really doubled down they have a whole they're showing this sort of uh sort of upcoming black upper class and upper and middle class in a really beautiful way and they juxtapose these balls and just wonderful just really and they first people thought it was the most low stakes show ever like they're worried about whether someone should crosses the street to go to a party it's actually really it's turned into something very heartfelt so fantastic fantastic finale and And I'm excited for season four.

I'm there.

I'm there.

And I want to, one thing is, it's not a fail, but Sarah Jessica Parker is going to finally do her final show this week, which is essentially Sex in the City

franchise.

And I have to say, pound for pound, and she doesn't weigh that much.

She's given a lot.

Speaking of New York City, you can have all your criticism of that show, but really well done over the many, many, many years.

And lots of, I personally like her a lot.

Me too.

Yeah, she's a lovely person.

And good.

And it's been, it's gotten really good the last season.

So it's one more episode, and she deserves all the kudos too.

So, to both of those ladies, Bertha

and S, uh, SJP.

Um, anyway, we want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-Pivot.

And before we go, this week and on with Karis Wisher, I spoke with Gary Ginsberg and Carol Razzowill about America's enduring fascination with JFK Jr., also a New Yorker before before he died.

Let's listen to a clip of Gary Ginsberg, a former senior editor at George magazine, talk about JFK Jr.'s political stance.

He had a vision about politics that I think is really important for today.

He thought of himself as kind of a post-partisan.

He didn't believe in partisan politics.

Even though he was a lifelong Democrat, his family embodied the Democratic Party.

He really thought that effective policymaking would be done through post-partisanship.

As it turned out, he was wrong about that, but he he was very pressing about that magazine and entertainment and politics and celebrity.

Really interesting is a series on CNN that's really interesting.

And of course, a tragic early death of JFK Jr.

But it's full of fantastic photos of JFK.

The entire thing is handsome JFK wandering through it.

It'd be interesting to know what he would have been.

Do you think he would have run for office?

Absolutely.

Oh, God.

Why would anybody?

I know, but he would have, don't you think?

I think probably, yeah.

Impossibly handsome, very, quite smart, actually.

Very interesting.

Yeah, he probably would have.

We probably would have been better off with someone like him.

Do you think rich person who tried?

Yeah.

I like rich people who try.

We're going to have them.

Getting thinner on the ground.

I agree.

If we're going to have them, let's have the ones that try.

And again,

Bertha Russell.

Okay.

And please watch that.

And Escape from New York, David.

I've given you your two assignments for you and your wife for this.

I think I know which one I'm going toward first.

All right.

Okay.

But Gilded, I just said.

That's the one.

Anyway, okay.

That's the show.

Thanks for listening.

Be sure to like and subscribe subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We'll be back on Friday, and I'll read us out.

David, thank you so much.

What a pleasure, Carol.

What a pleasure.

You're always a pleasure.

You are one of the finest editors in the land, I have to say.

Thank you.

And you do an amazing job, and you still have the juice.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naaman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver.

Ernie Enderdrott engineered this episode.

Nashot Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

You can subscribe to magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Thank you, David, again.

My pleasure.