MAGA War Chest, Nuclear Subs, and Texas Dems Flee

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Speaker 22 Who's smart? Who in that administration? I know you probably are not a Luttnick fan, would be my guess.

Speaker 21 Well, I mean, Howard Butnick, Butlick, not Lick. You're allowed to say Nutlick on the paper? You're allowed, whatever.

Speaker 22 Hi, everyone. this is pivot from new york magazine and the vox media podcast network i'm kara swisher and guess what kicks off today

Speaker 21 scott free august

Speaker 22 that's right it's the first week of scot free august when the dog's away and the jungle cat gets to experiment with a bunch of different co-hosts and today i'm with the one and only anthony scaramucci mooch uh the mooch a lawyer podcaster founder and managing partner at Skybridge Capital.

Speaker 22 And you remember that he did a quick 11-day stint in the White House during President Trump's first term, but that's in the past, actually. I don't think about that as much.
Anthony, welcome.

Speaker 21 All right. Well, I'm very, I'm very flattered.
I appreciate that. You're never invited into my apartment or my kitchen, Kara.
You'll have to stay in the living room when you come over.

Speaker 21 I want to make sure you know that.

Speaker 22 No, I'm going to look through all your things.

Speaker 21 By the way, that was incredible. That was A plus trolling, Kara Swisher.
A plus trolling.

Speaker 22 He's referring to a video of me in Scott's apartment looking through his things, which I do constantly.

Speaker 22 And if I came to your apartment, I'd be right up in your medicine chest, just so you know.

Speaker 21 And you would learn that I have a lot of skin products. Uh-huh.
Okay, lots of electricity.

Speaker 22 Semen, what do you have? What is it?

Speaker 21 No, no, I haven't gone into that yet. I probably should talk to some of the actresses about that.
But no, I just said, you know, just general stuff,

Speaker 21 retin-A and things like that. Bernova.
All right.

Speaker 22 Well, what would be the craziest thing I would find in your closet?

Speaker 21 I think, man, there's too many crazy. I mean, the craziest thing that you would find in my closet is the original hood from Batman in the 1966 television series.

Speaker 22 With Adam West? With Adam West.

Speaker 21 Yeah, I purchased.

Speaker 21 You know, I'm a superhero kid. I grew up with comics and superheroes, and I was four or five years old when he was on TV.
And I thought he was hip and cool.

Speaker 21 I used to own the Batmobile.

Speaker 21 I owned the Batman Returns Batmobile, the one where Danny DeVito played the penguin and Michael Keaton

Speaker 21 was in the movie with

Speaker 21 Michelle Pfeiffer. She was the catalyst.

Speaker 22 I note this. What do you mean you owned it? Where did you put it?

Speaker 21 You can't have a store. Well, that was the big issue.
So I had it for many years. It cost a lot of money to store it.

Speaker 22 What did it cost to buy? What did it cost to buy?

Speaker 21 So that car is probably worth about $3 million now. I bought the car for $150,000

Speaker 22 and I sold it. $150,000.

Speaker 21 Yeah, $150,000. This is 20 years ago.
I sold it for $300,000.

Speaker 21 But if I kept it,

Speaker 21 it would have been a great investment. But you know what? I didn't keep it and life goes on.
But I did you drive it?

Speaker 21 Yes, I did.

Speaker 21 It's on an F150 frame. It does not drive well, frankly.
There's a little propane tank in the back.

Speaker 21 It's not registered. You can't insure it.
It's a show car, but there is a button that you can click and it shoots the propane flame out of the back.

Speaker 22 That sounds dangerous. That sounds very dangerous.

Speaker 21 And you know, if you're an overgrown 12-year-old, it's one of the funnest things you can own.

Speaker 22 Can I ask you a personal question? Do you put on that outfit?

Speaker 22 Adam Westfield?

Speaker 21 Did you get it dry cleaned? Yeah. I'm going to bring my wife on the podcast to let you know I chase her around in the bedroom with the hood and the cape.

Speaker 21 I actually don't do that, but I wish I did that, but I don't.

Speaker 22 Yeah. You know what? I love Adam West.
I like when he used to dance. Remember he used to dance.

Speaker 21 Remember the bed of the swivel?

Speaker 22 The swivel when he danced. You didn't buy the Robin outfit?

Speaker 21 You didn't do that? I didn't buy the Robin outfit. No, I'm not.
Burt Ward was obviously a very colorful, fun guy, but I

Speaker 21 identified more with the aloof Batman.

Speaker 22 All right. When I come over, you're putting that thing on and we're having some fun.
We're having some fun. I don't know what we're going to do.

Speaker 21 I'm definitely hiding that from you. No way.

Speaker 22 That is so now that I know. Anyway, I'm so thrilled you're here.
There's so much to talk to you about.

Speaker 22 You are a very tanny observer of everything that's happening.

Speaker 22 But we've got tons to get to, including MAGA's war chest, which is huge, nuclear submarines, and the latest on the Epstein saga. I'm excited to hear what you have to say.

Speaker 22 But first, Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives have fled the state in an attempt to stop Republicans from adopting a redrawn congressional map.

Speaker 22 The Republican state legislature has been pushing for a map that flips five Democratic congressional districts in favor of Republicans.

Speaker 22 Governor Greg Abbott called the departure of the Democrats an abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office, saying he would take steps to remove the missing Democrats if they don't return.

Speaker 22 And then, of course, a lot of democratic governors are including gavin newsom are threatening to do the same in their states thoughts on this strategy

Speaker 21 terrible terror terrible strategy they should get together and declare a detente statewide detente uh uh people like you and me it's very important for us uh to explain to the american people what they're doing okay gerrymandering everybody is when the politician picks the voter in a liberal democracy the voter is supposed to pick the politician and so these guys guys have totally corrupted the system.

Speaker 21 The Republicans did this better than the Democrats early on. There was something called Operation Red Map, Cara.
You probably remember that. They went into the state, local legislators.

Speaker 21 The Koch family was big, big donors to this. And they influenced the local elections to get the local elections to redistrict the congressional districts.

Speaker 21 Trump is looking at the map and he's thinking to himself, I'm going to lose the House. I'm not a popular president.
He's below 40%.

Speaker 21 I'm going to lose the house he calls up governor abbott and says i need five republican congressional seats uh and this will cause an escalation of complete nonsense you and i both know that the american leaders were once public servants we're now in the age of public self-servants they're serving themselves nice way to put it and they're and they're doing terrible things to the american people and this is an example that so what happens here what is the game if if if they do this and they get these democratic legislators back, they can't take them out of office, or maybe they can in Texas.

Speaker 22 They probably can't. No, but

Speaker 21 they'll get them back to force the vote and cause the redistricting, which is legal and is allowable, to cause the redistricting of

Speaker 21 the districts, which will allow more Republicans on a percentage basis into those districts. And then the Democrats will probably lose those House seats.
And so Newsom is saying, okay, I can do that.

Speaker 21 There's some Republican districts here in California. Let me get the chainsaw chainsaw out and let me redistrict.
And so,

Speaker 21 I mean, this is something people should know.

Speaker 21 Very, very bad.

Speaker 21 We would need a constitutional amendment, frankly, to end gerrymandering. Maybe AI could pick the districts, make the districts flat, make the districts even.

Speaker 21 It would cut the extremists in the society, but it would also end the redundancy of incumbency. Okay, and so that's what's going on.

Speaker 22 Right. So if Abbott does this, should Newsom do the same thing?

Speaker 21 Well, he will do it. No, no.
So if Abbott does it, he will definitely do it. And then you'll have an escalation and

Speaker 21 you'll have an escalating war. You know, you're asking me if he should.
In a normative world, they should de-escalate. They should cut the nonsense.
They're not serving the American people.

Speaker 21 But... you know, there's something that someday we're all going to have to write about.

Speaker 21 Maybe you and I won't be here. I don't know.
But 50 years from now, someone will write, what the hell? How did this orange

Speaker 21 tanned maniac get a hold of one of these parties like this, where everybody is crippled with moral weakness, moral depravity, and just literally allowing him to do whatever the hell he wants?

Speaker 21 And he laughs at these. By the way, I know the guy.
So when they're kissing his ass, Kara, he's laughing at them. You know, he's picking up the phone.

Speaker 21 He's calling his friend Kara Swishter and say, ha ha ha ha ha. Can you believe Governor Abbott is actually willing to do this for me? You know he's doing that, right?

Speaker 22 Yeah, he loves it. So, speaking of which, he said he planned to appoint a new commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics over the next three or four days.

Speaker 22 He fired the head of the agency last week following a jobs report that showed weak hiring in July, a major downward revisions to jobs created in May and June.

Speaker 22 These revisions happen all the time, by the way. Trump called the jobs numbers phony and rigged, his favorite two words, and offered no evidence except my opinion.

Speaker 22 His economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, who's quite a minion, defended the move in an interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. Let's listen.

Speaker 7 Is the president prepared to fire anyone who reports data that he disagrees with?

Speaker 25 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 26 The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable.

Speaker 26 And if there are big changes and big revisions, we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example, that we want to know why. We want people to explain it to us.

Speaker 22 Yeah, they need to be explained to. We've seen this firing routine from Trump many times, as you well know.
But is he taking it to a whole new level here? Your thoughts on this? Because

Speaker 22 you and your Wall Street pals must be freaked out by this one.

Speaker 21 Yeah, well, I mean, you know, listen,

Speaker 21 I don't think. I don't think anybody on Wall Street is freaked out anymore.
I mean, that was a freak out moment in 2018.

Speaker 21 In this moment, now you're going to expect anything from Donald Trump. You may remember this.

Speaker 21 It's sort of obscure now, but Jack Welch, the very high-profile CEO of GE, questioned the job reports numbers under the Obama administration once. And so this is a political tactic.

Speaker 21 I find those statistics like the CBO to be very nonpartisan. The numbers are the numbers.
I will say that they can be antiquated though, Kyle. You know, like, you know, the cliché statistics are lies.

Speaker 21 There are damn lies and then there are statistics. We can make statistics look any way that we want.
And so I don't think it's the right thing to do to do that.

Speaker 21 He would be better advised to say, okay, how are we getting this data now?

Speaker 21 And can this data be sourced better and sourced in real time, given all the great technology we have in the country to make the data a little bit less laggy and a little bit more accurate in real time?

Speaker 21 And so he's not going to do that. But here's the irony, and I push this back to you for a second.

Speaker 21 This data supports a rate cut. And so he's railing on Jerome Powell.
What I don't understand is why didn't he take the data and say this is purely voracious data? It's absolutely accurate.

Speaker 21 And this more emphasizes that the Federal Reserve Chair and the board there is on the wrong side of where rates are. And so why didn't he?

Speaker 21 You know, it's an interesting question because I think his knee-jerk reaction was, oh, shit, the economy is doing way worse than it did under Joe Biden.

Speaker 21 And of course, I can't let my minions, because these people will believe anything I say, can shoot people on Fifth Avenue, deny them on the Epstein list. I could do do all these different things.

Speaker 21 And so let me keep the narrative going that there's another conspiracy afoot and that they're lying about the statistics because it's an Obama slash Biden legacy appointee and their group in there doing the statistics.

Speaker 21 But he would have been better served actually to say, hey, this is accurate. Where is Jerome Powell? Why is he not cutting rates? Because Trump clearly wants a rate cut for various different reasons.

Speaker 21 So

Speaker 21 that's the irony there. I'm surprised he didn't go in that direction.

Speaker 22 Who could he appoint here here that would satisfy? Will Wall Street freak out about this or not at all?

Speaker 21 I don't think so. I think Wall Street has said to themselves, and this is the weird thing about Wall Street.
Wall Street says that this guy's gone in three and a half years.

Speaker 21 But I submit back to Wall Street, do you know anybody that builds a $200 million ballroom onto their house and then moves out in three and a half years? I'm just pointing that out to people.

Speaker 21 The guy's making expansive renovations to the White House. It doesn't smell like a guy that wants to leave anytime soon.
So I think we're going to be up for a potential fight there.

Speaker 21 But I think Wall Street looks at this and says, okay, this guy's leaving in three and a half years. There'll be a cleanup on Aisle 7.
He's breaking all the pickle jars at the local supermarket.

Speaker 21 There'll be a cleanup. There'll either be a Democrat that comes in or a non-personality cult member, because I do believe this is a personality cult and it'll die off with Trump.

Speaker 21 Someone else will come in. and be a little bit more normal, won't be able to get away with the nonsense that Trump is getting away with.

Speaker 21 And so Wall Street's like, okay, we can live with this for three and a half years. Tariffs are ridiculous.
Guys like Jamie Dimon are saying so far so good.

Speaker 21 But you know, they're mumbling in the back room saying, what a disaster.

Speaker 21 You know, Jason Furman actually had a great piece in the New York Times over the weekend describing that the tariffs are not going to cause a great...

Speaker 21 recession or a potential depression, but they are slowing down the economy and they are slowing down capital allocation decisions in the economy and it's frankly starting to show up in the data.

Speaker 21 So you know this is the again the MAGA narrative is ho ho ho still got a strong economy despite our tariffs but the real narrative should be no, the tariffs haven't fully kicked in yet. Right.

Speaker 22 So speaking of that, he's continuing his mission to upend global trade. He launched a new round of tariffs targeting over 60 U.S.
trading partners and set take effect August 7th.

Speaker 22 They keep moving these dates. These tariffs range from about 10% to 40%.
Canada is at 35%. India is at 25%, which Trump says he's going to increase because India is buying oil from Russia.

Speaker 22 And somewhat inexplicably, Switzerland is at 39%. He's already signaling more tariffs to come, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and critical minerals.

Speaker 22 The markets initially fell on the tariff news as well as in the jobs report. They seem to have rebounded as Monday morning.

Speaker 22 As you say, they're just sort of a wait and see kind of thing?

Speaker 22 Or are they, is Wall Street actually concerned? Even if they're trashing them behind the scenes.

Speaker 21 Well, I think Wall Street thinks that all of this stuff ends up at about 10%,

Speaker 21 possibly 15%.

Speaker 21 Terrible, but tolerable. I think that's how Wall Street looks at it.
I don't think that 39% number that you're referencing in Switzerland is going to stick.

Speaker 21 I think that's a remnant number from April 2nd. You remember when he came down?

Speaker 22 Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 21 He's like orange Moses coming down from Mount Evil with the tablet. You know, he's like walking in.
You know, no one knows what the hell he's talking about.

Speaker 21 I think that's one of those things that's like left over, the 39%. And I think that's going to get reversed.
I know the Swiss government is frantic about getting that reversed.

Speaker 21 They're working on it right now. And I think that will.
I think these things settle out 10 to 15.

Speaker 21 The person that's handled Trump better than anybody, in my opinion, is Mark Carney. Mark Carney has held the ground there.
There's no way that the American economy can have a 35%

Speaker 21 reciprocal tariff with Canada. It's just

Speaker 21 not sustainable.

Speaker 21 You'll knock everybody out of business.

Speaker 21 You have lobstermen that are buying, they're catching lobster in U.S. waters, but they're sending it across the border to have it processed in Canadian processing fans and then sent back.

Speaker 21 So you'll knock the price up 70% in terms of the way the tariffs work. You'll put everybody out of business.
You hurt the restaurant industry.

Speaker 22 Which most businesses have been absorbing until now, right? They've been sort of. Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 21 look at the GM print. GM lost a billion dollars by absorbing the cost.
But you know who isn't absorbing it, Car, is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is not absorbing it because they've lost the Canadian tourists.

Speaker 21 They've lost the UK tourists. They've lost the guys coming in from Australia that used to gamble and go crazy in Las Vegas.

Speaker 21 You have no tax on tips, but you have a 50% reduction in revenue for the people that are receiving the tips. So Trump's nonsense, his rhetoric has really hurt tourism.

Speaker 21 I mean, there's an estimate of about $80 to $90 billion of tourist revenues that have been lost in the U.S.

Speaker 21 And so rhetoric matters when you're the president. These tariffs, though, Wall Street again saying 10 to 15%, somebody smart will come in and revise these things.

Speaker 22 Who's smart? Who in that administration? I know you probably are not a Luttnick fan, would be my guess. Well, I mean, Howard Butnik, Butlick,

Speaker 21 Nutlick? You're allowed to say Nutlick on the page? You're allowed, whatever.

Speaker 21 Coward Nutlick. Is that what you're talking about? Is that who we're talking about?

Speaker 22 That's who I'm talking about.

Speaker 21 I mean, you know, the guy's unbelievable. I mean, I know Howard a long time.
Yeah, I bet. But Howard, if you said to me there's a picture in the dictionary of Potomac Fever.

Speaker 21 Okay, it would be Howard Lutnick. Okay, Potomac Fever.

Speaker 21 I'm in the mix. I'm driving around in the Secret Service vans.
I'm an important guy. I'm an important guy.

Speaker 21 The phone calls are coming in, and I'm going to have this very smug, arrogant, jerk-off smile on television every time I'm talking.

Speaker 21 I'm going to be pedantic and I'm going to be demeaning to the interviewers. I mean,

Speaker 21 come on, Howard. I know what you took the wrong pill.
The side effects of Potomac fever are career ruining.

Speaker 21 And he's heading in that direction. He should really calm down and get a grounding wire up his ass, calm himself down a little bit.

Speaker 22 Who do you like there?

Speaker 21 Who do you think beset i like you know kevin's a good guy hasrat's a very smart guy he's a reasonable guy he steered the president away from some of the really bad things besides

Speaker 21 besides or ever how you pronounce his name i know scott a long time uh i think he is a person if you talk to the wall street guys that really know him he's blocked trump on a few things uh even to the point where i think he said you know i can't do this uh and so you may have to find somebody else of course trump capitulates when you tell him that, particularly somebody like Bassett, where he needs him.

Speaker 21 Remember something about Treasury. Trump doesn't give a shit about Treasury.
Trump wants the trains to run on time. He wants the bills for the American government to be paid.

Speaker 21 And he wants the taxes collected. The places he really cares about are justice.
That's a place he really cares about. Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 21 Okay, so it's very important to him that he has full-on sycophants in those roles. But Beset, he's smart enough to know that he needs somebody that Wall Street is going to accept.

Speaker 21 And of course, you know, it's been reported, so it's worth talking about. Jamie Dimon is now in direct

Speaker 21 conversations with the president. And he's a very moderate guy.
And he's trying to guide the president towards doing things that are less stupid, frankly.

Speaker 22 That's what he's there for. Yeah, that was an interesting.
I was like, oh, I see.

Speaker 21 I like Jamie. He's probably the smartest of all of us.

Speaker 22 He's probably giving very good advice to him.

Speaker 22 And Trump probably looks up to him in a weird way or in some level, has not respect, but just probably thinks he's smarter than him. And so we'll listen to him.

Speaker 22 So one of the things, though, that doesn't feel too smart, speaking of State Department, he's ordered two U.S. nuclear subs to reposition near Russia just in case.

Speaker 22 That move was in response to a series of fiery social media posts from former Russian president Medvedev.

Speaker 22 Medvedev warned in one post that each new ultimatum Trump issues over the Ukraine Ukraine is a threat and a step toward war.

Speaker 22 And the Kremlin has responded to Trump's remove saying we believe everyone should be very careful about nuclear rhetoric. I would agree with that.

Speaker 22 Trump is also threatening sanctions unless Russia ends the war by August 8th, which is the end of this week. But Putin has dismissed pressure for a ceasefire.

Speaker 22 Talk about what he's doing here from your perspective.

Speaker 21 Well, I mean, saber-rattling. I don't think it's a much-ado-about-nothing.
I think it's a good news story. It shows his base that he has some muscularity.

Speaker 21 I think the Iranian hit showed some muscularity. His base likes that.

Speaker 22 Why he is threatening them when he spent almost both administrations sucking up to them is really interesting to me. Why now? Why here?

Speaker 21 Well, he doesn't have a choice. Well, okay, well, I can answer that.
So what's happening to Trump is that the

Speaker 21 lame duck clock is ticking. He's 18 months away from being a full-on lame duck.
And there's a little bit of flex by some of the conservative Republicans that are for democratic freedoms.

Speaker 21 And there's also some institutional memory in the Congress, particularly the Senate, related to the security guarantees that President Clinton signed in 1994.

Speaker 21 The Ukraine government gave up their nukes in exchange for these security guarantees. So there are a group of institutionalists in McConnell's, the Thunes, that have gone to Trump and said, hey,

Speaker 21 you're not being tough enough.

Speaker 21 You've got to help these guys more.

Speaker 21 We can have a defeated ukraine government at this point and so trump is under the gun he's afraid of putin i think we have to state that publicly uh i always tell people if the windows open cara and you hear clippity clop it's it's a horse it's not a zebra you got to look at the obvious they've got something on him that scares the living shit out of him and he won't move against putin and you have to say to yourself well putin's a declining country his gdp now is uh 14 smaller than Italy.

Speaker 21 He's got a failed Defense Department or War Department. Just look at what's going on there.

Speaker 21 And so, how could a very rich man, which Trump is, who runs the largest military and arguably one of the most powerful nations in the history of the world, be kowtowing to Vladimir Putin?

Speaker 21 And the answer is they got something on him, and they got something on him that scares the living daylights out of the side of the street.

Speaker 22 And yet, he rattles the sabers here. Why?

Speaker 21 Just for because he has to, because I know Trump's personality, so he's a great compartmentalist. He's got pressure on him from these congressional leaders.

Speaker 21 And so he has to do something, but he never does the thing. He'll say 50 days.
He'll say 10 days. He'll say 22 days.
But he never, never does it because he's so afraid of Putin. You know,

Speaker 21 he could bitch slap Putin super hard. He could send those HIMARS.
He could send more Patriot batteries. He could get permission to launch a few ICBMs into Russia from Ukraine territory.

Speaker 21 He could do all those things, and it would probably collapse the Putin government, and it would probably cause a replacement of Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 21 Of course, we'd have to worry about that from an intelligence perspective. There could be harder right radicals.
Maybe we don't want Putin necessarily replaced as much as we want him contained.

Speaker 21 But there's a lot of things that Trump could do. He's not willing to do them because he's scared shit of Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 22 Okay, Anthony, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump's super PAC rakes in the cash and we'll talk Epstein as well.

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Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 27 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 31 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 9 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 36 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 7 Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 10 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 9 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 46 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 49 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 51 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 54 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 14 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 18 Try Odo for free at odo.com.

Speaker 19 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 27 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 31 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 9 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 36 This is where Odo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 7 Odo is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 10 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 9 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 46 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 49 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 51 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

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Speaker 22 Anthony, we're back. MAGA Inc., Donald Trump's main super PAC, is currently sitting on a war chest of nearly $200 million, according to a new FEC filing.

Speaker 22 Donors include Elon Musk, who gave $15 million to MAGA and the other GOP PACs just weeks after his spat with Trump, venture capitalist Mark Andreessen, who's always creepily around the basket, and TikTok investor Jeffrey Yass.

Speaker 22 Contributions also came in from crypto executives, an energy, which makes sense to me, an energy company, and a mother seeking a pardon for her son, who got one. A spokeswoman for MAGA Inc.

Speaker 22 rejected rejected claims that the donations were exchanged for AXAS, saying Trump, quote, cannot be bought and works toward the best interests of the country.

Speaker 22 It feels pay-to-play to me. The New York Times had a pretty devastating piece about that.

Speaker 22 But does the money go towards helping Republicans in the midterms, or is Trump really considering that third term, which you referenced just. A second ago?

Speaker 21 Well, I think you have to take Trump seriously about him wanting a third term. And I think you have to take Steve Bannon seriously about him running for a third term.

Speaker 21 Now, up against that, he'll be 82 years old. It looks like he does have some vascular issues.
I mean, they've reported that. So let's say that that's probably true.

Speaker 21 And he's got an unsteady gait, and he's getting older.

Speaker 21 But I don't think a guy like him lease power

Speaker 21 easily. I just don't think that.
And so I hope that. And I hope that my buddies who are institutionalists in Washington say that that's the last stand for them, that they'll fight that tooth and nail.

Speaker 21 Those are republicans saying that who i'm still a donor to several of these republican senators but i don't i don't know i you have to take him literally and seriously when he's thinking about these things uh i don't think that money goes to lots of people in the midterms trump is for trump he's not for other people he doesn't give a

Speaker 21 and so i think this is something very smart that he's done though And I think people should understand this. He's not a traditional politician.
A traditional politician, an Obama, a George W.

Speaker 21 Bush stops raising money in their second term for their own PACs. He didn't do that.

Speaker 21 And I think he's now setting a precedent for future politicians to not do that because that will give him, let's say, he was a normal politician.

Speaker 21 He'd go, oh, I got leverage now in the system long after I'm lame ducked, and I can pick and choose who I'm going to give this money to in different congressional races.

Speaker 21 I don't think Trump's going to do that. Trump will figure out a way to use that money.

Speaker 21 I think the pardons are going up now, probably $100 million now for a pardon. I think they started at the three to five million dollar level.
And Trump should just put out a retail price list.

Speaker 21 You know, say, look, here's the list for all the shit that you can get from me. You know, you want to come out and dinner with me? You're a crypto guy, $5 million.

Speaker 21 You want a pardon now? It's got to be $100 million.

Speaker 22 You didn't go to that dinner, did you?

Speaker 21 Did you go to that dinner? No, I haven't seen or been around Trump. Do you want to know the last time I talked to Trump?

Speaker 22 When?

Speaker 21 That was April. It was Easter Sunday, April of 2019.
He called me. I thought he was calling me to wish me a happy Easter, but he wasn't.

Speaker 21 He was calling me to lay into me because I had written an article that said that it was an open letter to the president. The press is not the enemy of the people.

Speaker 21 Stop saying that. The press is there to protect the people, but it's also the font of our financial innovation.
You and I have talked about this.

Speaker 21 Being able to speak freely in a society, you teach second grade children that they can speak freely. They go on and become Kara Swisher, or they create a Facebook or they create an iPhone.

Speaker 21 Other countries that don't do that, they have to steal our technology. Trump got really pissed at me, laid into me

Speaker 21 and he told me that I was a deep stater and some other shit that he said. And that was the last time he spoke.
So no, I haven't been around Trump

Speaker 21 since then.

Speaker 22 Happy Easter. Yeah, happy Easter.
What do you say when someone says that? Okay.

Speaker 21 I disagree. And I think you're being wrong.
I think you're wrong. I think history is going to judge what I'm saying to be more right than you.
Right.

Speaker 21 And then he more or less abruptly hung up the phone. Oh, wow.

Speaker 21 But I got in the happy Easter, by the way. He did derisively say happy Easter back to me.
Yeah. He's a miserable dude.
You know, he's a miserable dude.

Speaker 21 Let me give a news flash to every pivot listener.

Speaker 22 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 21 News flash. Anybody close to Trump hates his guts, okay? Okay.
If you're in Trump's orbit, you're in the first electron orbit.

Speaker 22 Laura Loomer seems to like him.

Speaker 21 Who does? Laura Loomer. Yeah, you know, I think Laura's not in the, I don't think she's in the first electron orbit.
Right.

Speaker 21 I'm talking about you got to be in the first electron orbit you're melania trump you move out of the goddamn white house you know you got to get if you're ivanka and jared you got to stay away because he eviscerated jared after the abraham accord thing and so you got to get out of his electron orbit but if you're in the vortex of the orbit general kelling

Speaker 21 hr mcmaster you pick the person they hate the guy's guts uh because they see how malevolent of a guy he is they see how dishonest and how ruthless he is and And that shit rubs off on you, Kara Swisher, if you're sitting around it too long.

Speaker 22 It's toxic. Sounds like it.

Speaker 21 Yeah, you start to stink like it.

Speaker 22 Speaking of toxic, let's do a quick rundown of the latest happenings with the Epstein saga, which I predicted would continue. And it is.

Speaker 22 Charlemagne the God suggested the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein information is causing a political coup among Republicans on Fox News.

Speaker 22 Trump reacted on Truth Social, saying the radio host knows nothing. Jelaine Maxwell has been moved to a minimum security prison camp in Texas against

Speaker 22 sexual offenders aren't allowed there, but she has been allowed. And Republicans are still split on which side to take as polling shows almost 80% of Trump voters in favor of releasing the files.

Speaker 22 I have not talked to you about this.

Speaker 22 Thoughts on what's happening and how long it lasts? Because everyone felt it was a distraction. I never did because it's at the core of QAnon.
It's at the core of the deep state stuff.

Speaker 22 And he himself has fed these toxic creatures for far too long for them to just give up.

Speaker 21 I think think he's going to survive this too. I mean, maybe I'm on the other side of this trade than you.
I think he survives.

Speaker 22 Oh, I think he survives it. I just think it's damaging.

Speaker 21 Yeah. Well, I think it's damaging.
Maybe Charlemagne's right. It sets up a 26 divergence, meaning there could be conservative Republicans that say, I'm MAGA light or I'm a little less MAGA.

Speaker 21 I'm MAGA without pedophilia.

Speaker 22 I see Marjorie Taylor Greene doing it constantly.

Speaker 21 Yeah, maybe I'm MAGA without pedophilia. I don't know.
That could be a good bumper sticker. I don't, you know, I'm, you know,

Speaker 21 I'm 18 plus. I'm not 14 and below.
These disgusting sons of bitches. But, but Trump is, you know, he's where there's smoke, there's fire.
Okay. You can't see him with Epstein.

Speaker 21 You can't, there's smoke, there's fire there. The letter.

Speaker 21 has got Trump so crazed because the letter plus the doodling on the letter is implying something that Trump does not want out there in the marketplace, which is why he's put a $10 billion speed bump together together against Rupert Murdoch and the news court.

Speaker 21 But, you know, and Rupert doesn't give a shit. You know, Rupert hates Trump like everybody else.
And his attitude is, I'm 94, have at it. Let me drop a few more bombs on you.
We have the bombs. Okay.

Speaker 21 So now.

Speaker 21 Again, you have to tell me if there's something unthinkably nefarious, and I'm not going to say what it is, but you know what it is and your viewers and listeners know what it is.

Speaker 21 If that comes out and it's incontrovertible, it's not AI generated. It's not any of that.
It's incontrovertible evidence of something unthinkably nefarious. Is that enough to remove Trump?

Speaker 21 I think you think it is. You know, oh, the McCain thing is going to ruin him, doesn't ruin him.
Oh, we're going to grab him by the, you know what, in the bus with Billy Bush. No, that doesn't.

Speaker 21 Nothing hurts Trump.

Speaker 21 It could damage him. The insurrection.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 21 The insurrection. I mean,

Speaker 21 people are dying. He fomented the violence.
They have him on tape doing it. They had his former chief of staff basically was going to be their key witness.
He wins the election.

Speaker 21 I think we should stipulate for the pivot people. He's one of the luckiest son of a bitches on the planet.
Every time he flips the coin, it comes up his way.

Speaker 21 So, you know, I don't think he gets knocked out by this, but I do think

Speaker 21 that just Ghelain thing is interesting. See, so the Ghelane thing is like, okay, let me send my lawyer who I trust.
Hey, let me knock on the

Speaker 21 Ghelane, are Are you there? Hello. Are you there? Okay, listen.
I know you know a lot of bad stuff. Keep your mouth shut.
We're going to move you to a minimum security prison.

Speaker 21 We're going to make it easier for you.

Speaker 21 You listening? And then in about six months, when this blows over, we're going to commute your sentence or we're going to give you work relief or we're going to do something for you.

Speaker 21 But you got to keep your mouth shut. It's a great mob move.
They're doing it right out in the open, like the way the KGB would do it.

Speaker 22 So it's keep your mouth shut because if she starts to just tell on democrats that's a problem too correct no no no you got to keep your mouth shut

Speaker 21 you got to keep your mouth shut because

Speaker 21 as us italians you and me knows almerta you got to keep your mouth shut that's like a full-on sicilian move the code of silence and uh and by the way with omerta you keep your mouth shut we're going to take remember when a mobster went to jail keep your mouth shut we're going to take care of your family and they're going to get vig from our operations to take care of your sons and daughters and your wife and when you come out of jail we're going to get you a job.

Speaker 21 Now, you can end up like Sylvester Stallone in Oklahoma, but you're going to get a job, right? And so that's what it is. And that's what Trump and Todd Blanche are trying to do.

Speaker 21 I think that's pretty obvious. And, but this is the thing that makes me laugh.
You know, John Thune, you're an American jellyfish. I mean, you should write, you write such great books like

Speaker 21 Burn Book and shit like that. You should write the American Jellyfish, you know, starring John Thune and Mitch McConnell, starring, you know, the American jellyfishes.
What are you guys doing?

Speaker 21 You really this big of cowards? You got a guy that's morally depraved. He's bringing down your party.
He's a millstone on the morality of the American people.

Speaker 21 We always like, when you and I were growing up, we liked to think of America in our patriotism as benevolent and generous and good-natured America that was going to help other nations.

Speaker 21 And now we have this morally depraved lunatic in the White House that's stealing our thunder and is reducing our soft power all over the world, okay, which is never a good thing for a superpower, by the way.

Speaker 21 You can go throughout 5,000 years of history and know that's never a good thing.

Speaker 21 And yet he's doing that. We're allowing him to do that because we've got a bunch of bozos that are supposed to check him, the American jellyfishes.
What are you guys doing?

Speaker 21 And the answer is no, no, we're going to wait Trump out, wait him out. We're so afraid of him and we're afraid of his MAGA base.

Speaker 22 Yeah. So why? When do they turn?

Speaker 21 Is there well yeah the midterm that's that's why Trump has got all that money in the war chest. You know, he right he knows they're coming for him in the midterms.

Speaker 21 You know, you remember that scene in The Wizard of Oz where the witch gets accidentally hit by the water bucket and she starts melting. Right.

Speaker 21 It's actually like an orange witch, though he's not really like the green witch, but he's like an orange wicked witch of the West Wing. The water's about to hit Trump.
Okay.

Speaker 21 And that's like a November 2026 water hit. And as as he starts to melt, these guys are going to, oh, you know, we didn't mean this, or oh, we didn't realize this, or oh, we're sorry about this.

Speaker 22 If he melts, if in fact if he melts.

Speaker 21 Like,

Speaker 21 let me say this to you, and I want you to really think about this. Okay.
They're running around saying they're going to arrest Clinton, Hillary Clinton. They're going to arrest Barack Obama.
Okay.

Speaker 21 It's all contraindicated from an intelligence report that the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio, signed off on, which was irrefutable, that everything that they're saying is not true.

Speaker 21 Why are they doing that? They're doing that to distract you. They're doing that to rev up the MAGA base.

Speaker 21 They're doing that to say, don't look at the man behind the curtain that's flapping behind the curtain. Focus on this, which is important to you.
Obama is bad.

Speaker 21 There's underlying racism to that, by the way. I think you know that.

Speaker 22 Obviously, I just don't think it works. I don't think it works.
I think the Epstein stuff is much stronger.

Speaker 21 No, hasn't worked yet.

Speaker 21 He's tried with the Washington Redskin Commanders and the Cleveland Guardian Indians. He's now going at it with the young woman who was in the gene commercial.
I think her name is Sidney Sweeney.

Speaker 21 And yeah, so he's definitely trying stuff.

Speaker 21 Remember, he's the Napoleon of the culture war. Like the best thing that Trump has going for him are the Democrats.

Speaker 21 because he knows how to drop a bomb on the battlefield and they run towards it and then he's doing something over here. You know, he's master of deflection.

Speaker 22 All right, we're going to get to that next, actually. We're going to go on a quick break when we come back.

Speaker 22 We're going to talk about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as it winds down operations because there are very real repercussions to everything he's doing with these distractions.

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Speaker 22 Anthony, we're back with more news. The Corporation of Republic Broadcasting says it will begin winding down operations following an over $1 billion cut in federal funding.

Speaker 22 The move, it's not a very big, it's about 100 people. The move will, what they do is they distribute funds out to local stations, a lot of them rural, by the way.

Speaker 22 The move will severely impact local operations of PBS and NPR. Both NPR and PBS say they're committed to maintaining service after the closure.

Speaker 22 The CPB told employees most positions will be eliminated on September 30th.

Speaker 22 This is a loss of local news in rural communities. This is a closing not of the big NPR stations or not of PBS stations, but the small ones,

Speaker 22 which provide all kinds of news and other things like that, and places that don't have them.

Speaker 22 And I'm going to link it with

Speaker 22 institutions worried about losing funding. The Smithsonian will restore information about President Trump's impeachments after removing a placard on the topic in July.

Speaker 22 This was reported by the Washington Post.

Speaker 22 The museum says the placard was removed after a review of legacy content, which was demanded by the Trump administration and was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year exhibition.

Speaker 22 The exhibition in question notes that only three presidents have seriously faced removal, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. That's not true.

Speaker 22 A person familiar with the plans told the Washington Post the content review took place following this pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director.

Speaker 22 So museums altering history, closing down of long institutions, which is something Republicans have wanted for a while, but it will actually affect the small the small local news and rural communities more than anybody else.

Speaker 22 This is more than a distraction because it actually, things happen. Things actually happen.

Speaker 21 I mean,

Speaker 21 this is Trump. He's the, you know, look, there were certain rules in Washington.

Speaker 21 The sacred cow of the left was the

Speaker 21 public broadcasters. Ronald Reagan railed on it, but he never did anything.
Remember, Ronald Reagan railed on Roe v. Wade, but never did anything.

Speaker 21 And Trump has come into town and he's basically now saying, hey, those sacred rules where we rail on you're on the left and you rail on something on the right and we, and you don't do anything and vice versa.

Speaker 21 We're ending that. And again, I think it makes for a coarser society.

Speaker 21 If you're asking me practically, will the society survive the end of that? It will.

Speaker 21 Does it suck for those rural areas? It does, but it will survive it. Okay.

Speaker 21 And could something else creep up or could there be a publicly funded or non-publicly funded, a charitably funded replacement? It's all very possible.

Speaker 21 But I think

Speaker 21 to me, it's more about the rules, Cara. It's more about, okay, we're going to smash people.

Speaker 21 We don't want any civility to our government. We don't want anybody having lunch in the cloakroom or the cafeteria.
They can barely work.

Speaker 21 Apparently, they can barely work out with each other in the gym now. They're in separate areas of the gym.
And it's just bad for America.

Speaker 21 That's not how we got here. The idea was that we were going to have some consensus, we're going to have some compromise, and we're going to have some civility with each other.

Speaker 21 And Trump doesn't like that. Because remember, there's nobody that Trump hates more than himself.
Nobody, which is why he's always got three things of a self-hater.

Speaker 21 Humiliation rituals for people that you're insecure around. That's every world leader.
He tries to bring them into the White House and ensnare them in some type of humiliation ritual.

Speaker 21 Public humiliation. Or yeah, or he'll bring him to Scotland, even though he's the head of state.

Speaker 21 Kirstarmer, he's showing up as a guest in his own country to be humiliated, where Trump is railing on the London mayor. And so what self-haters do is they create and foment hatred.

Speaker 21 They excoriate and try to humiliate through humiliation rituals. And then the third thing they do is they want to leave a stain and legacy of that.

Speaker 21 They want people to be turned on each other because it makes them feel better. They get satisfaction out of seeing people turn on each other.

Speaker 21 Trump gets off on the idea that we're going after each other. He likes it.

Speaker 21 So those are things.

Speaker 21 He's a, I mean, he's, he's a, he's a, you know, a lot of weird things about the guys like a weirdo, but like the self-hatred thing, do not underestimate the self-hatred.

Speaker 21 You know, it could be the the side effects of all the orange shit that's going into his bloodstream. You know what I mean?

Speaker 22 Everyone talks about these are distractions. You've said it several times.
These are actual things that happen now. Like we're changing things in museums.
We're closing down this.

Speaker 22 And so I was at a

Speaker 22 book fair this weekend, and Jeff Goldberg, who has had some good licks in on Trump at the Atlantic, was saying that he does all these distractions.

Speaker 22 And I almost got him and said, well, here's six things that actually happened because of the distractions. They weren't, they're not minor.

Speaker 22 We use that term a lot, like, but they're actually distractions with results, right?

Speaker 22 Like this is something that the right has been trying to close down PBS for years or the corporation for years, decades.

Speaker 21 Okay, but let me just take the line. Think about what I'm saying, though.

Speaker 21 We're going to close down PBS because it's going to make people sore. And it's a sacred cow that the Republicans always talked about, but never did anything about.

Speaker 21 So now we're going to drop a bomb here to widen the divide between us. I see.
Trump wants to do that.

Speaker 21 So you have to understand that, yes, there are distractions, but there's also, I want to leave a legacy of disrepair and hatred. And I want you guys to hate each other after I leave.

Speaker 21 You know, because by the way, Jackie, oh, F her, I'm going to pave over her rose garden. Okay.
Because why am I going to do that? Because you're going to get triggered and pissed about that.

Speaker 21 And I want you triggered and pissed because I hate myself so much that I want hatred to be an exponential force for my personality.

Speaker 21 Like, you know, Monroe had a doctrine, stay out of the Western Hemisphere. Truman had a doctrine.
We're going to contain

Speaker 21 communism. The Trump doctrine is a manifestation of his own self-hatred.
And once you see that prism clearly and you see, oh, okay, he hates himself. So this is what he's going going to do.

Speaker 21 Oh, wow, he's really afraid of Putin.

Speaker 21 Putin must really have something on him that's scaring the living daylights out of him, which is why he's immobile and paralyzed against the guy that's running a failed state with a declining population and high alcoholism.

Speaker 21 But I'm going to go, I'm going to go in that direction. But everything is through the prism of self-hatred.
So if he can hurt you, Cara, he will. If he can humiliate you, he will.

Speaker 21 If he can put J.D. Vance in a meme where he looks like a big fat Cabbage Patch doll riding in a separate clown car from him as they're chasing Obama on the freeway in the OJ Bronco, he will.

Speaker 21 And by the way, JD says, ha ha, this was funny. He's crying on the inside.
He's crying on the inside.

Speaker 22 That's another episode.

Speaker 21 No, but Carol, you have to understand this because Trump is going to put him through. You remember that scene in Fargo where the guy's going through the wood chipper? That's J.D.
Vance. Okay.

Speaker 21 Trump is going to throw him so definitively into the wood chipper because

Speaker 21 he doesn't want a younger guy replacing him when he leaves. No, he wants there to be a total fiasco with Civil War.

Speaker 22 Who does he want? Just very briefly, who does he want if you had a guest?

Speaker 21 Nobody, who would he pick? Nobody. No, remember when he fired that blonde girl, I can't remember her name, the blonde woman from the first season of Apprentice, he replaced her with Ivanka.

Speaker 21 Remember, she got a few speaking gigs, it pissed him off, right? And so then he put Vavanka. So if Ivanka and Don Jr.
are not replacing him, or Eric not replacing him, nobody.

Speaker 21 You know, remember, remember what it, remember what it is. I know I'm not comparing Trump to Hitler, but just remember this piece of history.
When they told Hitler he was losing, he said, okay, great.

Speaker 21 Flood the coal mines, bring down the electrical grid in the country. And they looked at him and said, what? Yeah.
Well, if there's not going to be a thousand-year Reich,

Speaker 21 let's destroy the whole thing.

Speaker 22 If you were to pick one of the kids that he would pick to run, which one would it be?

Speaker 21 Well, you know, Ivanka's very smart. She's very talented.
She's capable. Eric is a very smart guy.
You know, when I listen to Eric talk about things like the blockchain, he understands it. Okay.

Speaker 21 But the heartbeat of MAGA is Donald Trump Jr. Okay.
They like him. Okay.

Speaker 21 And so I don't know, you know, I don't know which of those three, but I think Trump would be happy with all three, but they're three different flavors. You know, Ivanka is basically a Democrat, right?

Speaker 21 So, you know, probably no on her.

Speaker 21 Eric is not politically motivated, but he's probably smarter, you know, than most people think. But it would have to be Don Jr.
Don Jr. is beloved by the base.

Speaker 21 If you ever see him with the base, you'll know they hold him in very high regard.

Speaker 22 And do you?

Speaker 21 Okay, so I have a peace agreement with those guys. You know, when I got into the fight with Trump, I always got along with them.

Speaker 21 And my agreement with them was, Don't say anything bad about me on Twitter. I won't say anything bad about you.
Kara Swisher is going to ask you about me on the Pivot podcast five years from now.

Speaker 21 Don't say anything bad about me. Yeah, and I have lived up to that agreement, and they have lived up to that agreement.
So I'll simply say, I get on with those guys.

Speaker 21 Eric wanted to come to my Bitcoin conference in Wyoming. I invited him.
No problem. I think they know that their father wants to pick fights with lots and lots of people.

Speaker 21 And I don't think they want to be fighting with all the people that their father wants them to fight with.

Speaker 22 God, that makes sense. All right, Anthony, one more quick break.
We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Speaker 58 Sometimes, the difference between success and failure comes down to one chance encounter, or following a counterintuitive instinct, or ignoring conventional wisdom to make a bold decision.

Speaker 58 Like when the founders at Palo Alto Networks wanted to redefine cybersecurity for the modern age.

Speaker 21 Everybody thought we were crazy.

Speaker 58 Nobody would use the cloud for cybersecurity. Or when mobile gaming giant Supercell could only rewrite the rules of the industry after failure in the company's formative stages.

Speaker 59 Many of the best things we've learned have actually come through failures.

Speaker 58 These are all examples of Crucible Moments. Turning points in a company's journey that made them what they are today.

Speaker 58 Hosted by Sequoia Capital's Rolof Botto, Crucible Moments is back for a new season. With stories from Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Supercell, and more.

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Speaker 58 Listen to Crucible Moments today.

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Speaker 22 Okay, Anthony, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first.

Speaker 21 Okay, so, so, so wins. I'm going to say this.
You're probably not going to like this, but I think Elon Musk is winning.

Speaker 21 I think he's backed into business. I think he raised a lot of money on XAI.
I participated in that. I will fully disclose that I'm an investor.
But I think Elon Musk is winning.

Speaker 21 And I think so much so. And I think Donald Trump is so afraid of Elon Musk.
He must be.

Speaker 22 He started the Epstein thing.

Speaker 21 The Epstein thing, and and he tweeted out: oh, I love Elon. I'm not coming after his businesses, you know, blah, blah.
Okay, so I think Elon Musk is winning. So that's a big win.

Speaker 22 He got, he just, so people know, Tesla just granted shares to Elon worth of $29 billion, describing so that's another big, that's another big win, less than the $55 billion. That's correct.

Speaker 22 I was like, well, it's a half.

Speaker 21 Yeah. But, but, you know, that's also a win.
But I think Elon's winning, whether people like that or not, I think that's a definitive objective win.

Speaker 22 So you invested in XAI. You think that's a winner? Or I think

Speaker 22 he's a real behind. He's really quite behind in the race compared to Google or ChatGPT.

Speaker 21 You think he's behind? I don't know.

Speaker 21 I put $300 a month into Super Grok. I think the thing is phenomenal.
Okay.

Speaker 21 And I think it's distinctive. But again, that's me.
I'm not an AI expert. I'm just, I used it for different things.

Speaker 21 I'm a cloud claude, I guess it's called subscriber,

Speaker 21 chat GPT subscriber.

Speaker 22 You use them all. Use them all.

Speaker 21 I do spend a lot of time.

Speaker 22 If Elon goes and does his businesses, he's better off, that's for sure. But I do think he is quite involved.
He was the one that started the Epstein stuff. So that was a warning to Trump.

Speaker 21 So

Speaker 21 I'm going to tell you another winner. I'll give you three winners and I'll give you three losers.
Okay. Another big winner, controversial, Jerome Powell.

Speaker 21 Because Jerome Powell's legacy is intact. The guy's done a decent job.
Not perfect. He got transitory inflation wrong.
It was more secular, but he's done a decent job. He's a good human being.

Speaker 21 And he's one of the few guys that have have

Speaker 21 stuck it to Trump a little bit. And he's done it in a very diplomatic way with some level of aplomb.
And I think people need to learn about it that way. And then

Speaker 21 the third winner, believe it or not, is actually the U.K. government related to the U.S.

Speaker 21 because they got the deal. They moved first, took advantage of Trump's love affair with

Speaker 21 the monarchy and the Anglophile nature of Trump and his mom from Scotland. And they got a 10% trade deal done before anybody else.
And I think that they're a winner.

Speaker 21 I think the three failures, okay, are Vladimir Putin, huge failure.

Speaker 21 He's coming to the end here, Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 21 I don't think Vladimir Putin will survive what's coming because you can't do what he did, declare war on Ukraine, lose the war, and stay in power in Russia.

Speaker 21 And you say, well, he hasn't lost the war, but he also hasn't won the war. And it's three years into it.

Speaker 21 And, you know, he may be able to stalemate this because of the compromise he has on Trump till 28. But I think you'll see Putin out to the great surprise of people.
So he's a failure.

Speaker 21 Another big failure is the American car industry is going to be slammed around by these tariffs. They won't be able to absorb all the prices.

Speaker 21 They're making good cars, but they're not making great cars.

Speaker 21 The tariffs on the European cars are not going to overly help them, frankly, because a lot of Mercedes and BMW are being made in the country now.

Speaker 21 And so I think there's a problem there for the American Car Company. I think that's on the side of failure.
And last but not least, the biggest failure that I've seen in the five years,

Speaker 21 what I would say, if he's put out the yard markers, is said, okay, last five, there's been 10 years of Trump. Who's been the greatest failure in the last five years? That's the American Congress.

Speaker 21 The American Congress had a responsibility to check check and balance the American system.

Speaker 21 And to use an Italian expression, they did UGATS. They did UGATS.
Okay, and your viewers and listeners could look up what UGATS means, but they've really done nothing.

Speaker 21 And they're going to be judged very poorly by history.

Speaker 21 So those are the three winners. Those are three failures.

Speaker 22 All right. I'm going to do mine.
I'm going to do just two failures, actually, that I were really striking in two different places.

Speaker 22 One, the Israeli government just votes to remove the attorney general who's a Netanyahu critic.

Speaker 22 I think they have done more to diminish their standing, especially among young people, and they have only themselves to blame, especially with what's happening in Gaza.

Speaker 22 More and more people are calling it a genocide. We can see with our eyes what's happening there.

Speaker 22 And so I think this government is hurtling towards illegality, you know what I mean, in the things they're doing. And I think the thing that holds up a country is a country of laws.

Speaker 22 And, you know, you believe in the stock market, you believe in the laws, you believe in the courts. And I think

Speaker 22 he's going to see a lot of pushback from people in that country at some point.

Speaker 22 And I think they've done it to themselves. They have lost a generation of young people who would have been supportive of Israel.

Speaker 22 So I think that's, especially this voting to remove the Attorney General, which is, I think, at the heart of things like that, because he's a Netanyahu critic.

Speaker 22 And Netanyahu is sucked up into corruption that is so obvious.

Speaker 22 And he's bad at it, by the way. Trump is quite good at corruption.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 yeah, who's bad at it? The other thing is Nancy Mace running for governor of South Carolina. I think I've never seen a politician just sort of run herself into a wall on so many things.

Speaker 22 Someone who seemed promising, for sure, has become really a joke to everybody in Congress that I talk to. I think she's looking for her exit to try to run for governor.

Speaker 22 She'll certainly be ahead in the beginning because of her name recognition and the antics that she pulls. But I think she's probably like a lot of

Speaker 22 men can do it a little better, but they're not necessarily. And I think she has ruined what could have been a really interesting political career.

Speaker 22 But I think she's got a lot of personal problems that are on top of that.

Speaker 22 If I had to say, I agree with you about Elon, if he gets back to business, I think he's, I think Trump should be, everyone was talking about him being, he should be scared of Trump.

Speaker 22 I think Trump should be scared of him. That's my feeling.
I think he is, he's not Omarosa, like I say. He's not Omarosa.
And he is the first person who mentioned the Epstein stuff.

Speaker 22 He has enormous power around the world. And so I think if he gets back to business

Speaker 22 and focuses there, he has a lot of levers to pull.

Speaker 21 Not to interrupt, but just remember this one tweet, which was very insightful. Elon said,

Speaker 21 you're going to be around for three and a half years. I'm going to be around for the next 40.

Speaker 22 Correct.

Speaker 21 Correct. And I think Elon, whatever his weaknesses are, and I'm sure we all have strengths and weaknesses.

Speaker 22 He's got a lot of weaknesses.

Speaker 21 Okay, but you're very kind to him. I think we have to stipulate that he's a smart guy.

Speaker 22 Absolutely.

Speaker 21 And he sees the egg. He sees the hair on the egg, particularly as it relates to.
And by the way,

Speaker 21 I told his buddies he was going to get blown out of there. Elon lasted 12 Scaramucci's.
He did. Okay, 12 times longer.

Speaker 21 By the way, it was exactly 11.8, but I'm the official scorer of Scaramucci as I think I should be. And I'm a generous guy.
I round up. So he lasted 12 scaramuccias.

Speaker 21 And that was 12 times longer than me. But here's the thing.
Elon has seen the malevolence because you don't write, you're on the list if that's a code for you're a really bad FG.

Speaker 21 You're a really bad FG.

Speaker 22 Yep, I agree with you. I think he's someone who's going to endure.

Speaker 22 And if he cleaned himself up, I mean, a lot of what he's done is unforgivable, but he will be forgiven, especially if he creates economic value and he will be around around a lot longer.

Speaker 22 I don't think that's necessarily a win, but I think he definitely is in much more of a commanding position than Trump realizes. And I think he was wrong to

Speaker 22 fight, to do what they did to him. I think there would have been a nicer way to part.

Speaker 21 But you can't do that with Trump.

Speaker 22 You can't do that. You can't do it.
That's right. I would see Trump maybe embracing him again.
Anyway, I don't know if Elon will embrace Trump, though. I think he's moved on.
We want to hear from you.

Speaker 22 Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 22 Go to nymag.com slash pivot, submit a question question for the show or call 85551 pivot over on on with kara swisher this week i spoke with former labor secretary robert reich uh about why democrats are struggling right now let's listen to a clip the reason democrats are so unpopular is they don't have a a coherent and authentic message that translates

Speaker 60 to average people as authentic and real because the corporate democrats the financial democrats the the wall street Democrats don't allow them to.

Speaker 60 You know, a lot of Democrats I know are scared.

Speaker 21 They don't want to bite the hands that feed them.

Speaker 22 I think you'll probably agree with that, Anthony.

Speaker 21 I agree. He is a former professor of mine.
I have an enormous amount of respect for him. But he also gave an interview in one of the Sunday news magazines.

Speaker 21 I can't remember if it was the New York Times or the FT, but I read the interview, and he's calling for the Mondamis, and he's calling for the sort of harder left people to coalesce the party.

Speaker 21 I think that'll be a 1972 McGovern-like nightmare for the Democrats.

Speaker 21 And I think it's a big mistake because it's a center-right country.

Speaker 21 We have religious orthodoxy in this country.

Speaker 21 You and I might be secular. I'm not saying you are, but I'm more secular than the religious Orthodox.

Speaker 21 But I think that Europeans in general don't understand this because they, by and large, now the majority of the population is secular. But this country has a lot of religious ferocity to it still.

Speaker 21 And I think the Democrats have really missed the mark on that. You know what Trump once said to me? This is an important thing to tell your viewers.

Speaker 21 Trump said to me on the campaign plane, he says, you know, you're an idiot. I said, yes, I know I'm an idiot, but why am I an idiot? He said, well, you're a Wall Street guy.

Speaker 21 You're fiscally conservative and you're socially liberal. Am I right? I said, yes, I'm fiscally conservative, socially liberal.

Speaker 21 He says, my my base, Anthony, my base, fiscally can, fiscally, excuse me, my base, Anthony, fiscally liberal, socially conservative.

Speaker 22 He's correct.

Speaker 22 That is actually, I just was talking to Kristen Saltis Anderson. She said that exactly.
It is true.

Speaker 21 Yeah, by the way, he said that to me in 2016, the Democrats wake up. Wake up.

Speaker 21 He understands his base. And believe it or not, a lot of his face used to vote for you.
Okay. And so wake up and get in the middle before it's too late.

Speaker 22 Well, I have a different take on this. I think everybody should be who they are and authentic of where they are.

Speaker 22 If you're Abby Spanberger, you're a centrist right in Virginia or Mickey Sherill in New Jersey.

Speaker 22 And if you're Mom Donnie, be mom, be yourself. I think be yourself is, and it may be different across the country.
And I'm not sure anyone should stand for anything with the Democrats.

Speaker 22 I think they should stand for a lot of things.

Speaker 22 And I know that sounds crazy, but if you're genuine to who you are, I think you do well where you are.

Speaker 22 You're always looking for someone who represents everybody, and that's impossible in this day and age.

Speaker 21 I think it's well said, but I just think if you're going to go hard left in this country right now, particularly with the woke-ism ending, go hard left, you're going to lose elections.

Speaker 21 That's what I think. You may win in New York, and you may win in Minnesota.
You may win the mayor's race in Minnesota, Minneapolis, but you're going to lose the big general election.

Speaker 21 And it's going to be very popular.

Speaker 22 If you're not, for the general election, for the larger country, that's absolutely true. But we'll see.
We'll see where it goes. Can I ask you one last question? Please.

Speaker 22 Right now, I want to do a prediction.

Speaker 22 Who are the two presidential flights in 2028?

Speaker 21 So I think Newsom is going to be the nominee for the Democrats. I think he'll pick a Midwestern moderate.

Speaker 21 He'll probably pick a white guy. I know that sounds crazy, but I think he probably will.

Speaker 21 It'll end the virtue signaling that's going on on the left, and he'll get the same policies. And they'll be more acceptable to some of the anti-woke moderates that are out there.

Speaker 21 So I think it's Newsome.

Speaker 22 Not Westmore.

Speaker 21 Not Westmore. No, I don't think so.

Speaker 21 I don't think so.

Speaker 21 I think, you know, I mean, I don't know how honest you want me to be on this podcast, but I think

Speaker 21 Obama has hurt the ability for an African-American to get the nomination. I don't think people realize the existential damage that Obama did.

Speaker 21 Van Jones called it a white lash. That was the apotheosis of Donald Trump.
And so I think the way Obama handled the presidency has hurt that, if I'm just being brutally honest.

Speaker 21 And I think the last two women that were the nominees for the Democrats have hurt the women's standing in the party for now. And people could be very mad at me for saying this.

Speaker 21 I'm talking about this as a realist, as an analyst,

Speaker 21 not a normative thing of what ought or should be. I'm just talking about what actually is.
I think Newsom gets it. Newsom has shown some muscularity.
Newsom did a good job in L.A.

Speaker 21 in terms of the way they defended themselves against Trump's brown-shirted lunatics.

Speaker 21 And Lucom is standing up on the gerrymandering, and Lucom is putting a finger in Trump's eye, and he's doing a better job trolling him in social media. He's doing a great job.
And

Speaker 21 I think he wasn't. And by the way, I was on Gavin's podcast.
Yeah. And I read to Gavin.

Speaker 22 He's gotten to every white guy, but I joke with him. I'm like, another white guy today.

Speaker 21 How interesting. The other thing I would tell you, just quickly, is that it will not be, it will not be Marco Rubio.
It will will not be JD Vance.

Speaker 21 But I think there will be a candidate that comes out of the woodwork that surprises people. I know this is crazy.
It could be a Charlie Baker, who's now running the

Speaker 21 NCAA. He was the former governor of

Speaker 22 Massachusetts.

Speaker 21 It could be a John Thune, okay, although I think he's a jellyfish. I think he's a well-regarded.

Speaker 22 He's a president jellyfish to you. Go ahead.

Speaker 21 Yeah, president jellyfish to me, but I think he's a guy that could

Speaker 21 help the Republicans get back to something that's more normal to their principles and their philosophy.

Speaker 21 But I don't think it's going to be Vance. And I don't think, remember, the MAGA ends with Trump.
It's a personality cult.

Speaker 21 The people have more or less accepted that, even though they don't like pedophilia. They're holding their noses, lots of them.
But they won't be able, Vance won't be able to command that or Rubio.

Speaker 21 And so I think it's like a Thune Baker sort of a guy going up against Newsome. It'll be white males.

Speaker 22 Yeah, white males as far as you could see.

Speaker 21 Going up against white males, Gary.

Speaker 22 The males are as high as an elephant's eye.

Speaker 21 I can hear the derision in your voice, but I just think that's what's going to happen.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I agree with you. I have to say I do agree with you, although I'm not sure it's Newsom, but there's a number of choices in that regard.

Speaker 22 Okay, that is the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back on Friday. Anthony, as usual, thank you you for joining us.

Speaker 21 Appreciate being on. Give my regards to Scott.

Speaker 22 I will, and thank you so much. I will read us out.

Speaker 22 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode.
Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Speaker 22 Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 22 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech tech and business. And Anthony, I'll be right over to look in your closet and put on your Batman outfit.
Thank you.

Speaker 21 You could fit in my Batman outfit. You know, you have the same facial structure as me.

Speaker 22 Goodbye.

Speaker 21 Me and Adam West have a lot of fun.

Speaker 24 Goodbye, Mooji. Talk to you later.

Speaker 21 All right. See you.

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