Joe Rogan’s Trump Jabs, Blockbuster Tech Earnings, and Another Tariff Deadline

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Speaker 3 David Hasselhoff still has a few of my loose sweatshirts, but that's another story, Kara.

Speaker 4 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher from Scott Galloway's Living Room.

Speaker 3 And I'm Scott Galloway. Just so everyone knows, it's super nice to have strangers in your apartment in the morning that you are not paying for sex.

Speaker 4 We did not have sex. Yeah.
I'm not a stranger.

Speaker 3 Well, okay. But seriously,

Speaker 3 it's really, no, it's great to see you. How are you? I'm so glad you're here.

Speaker 4 You're going to spend like a part of the day with me. We're going to do our secret CNN thing today.

Speaker 3 All I care about is I've been told I can nap in that pot of oxygen or whatever it is you're going to do to me.

Speaker 4 Sound vibrations. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm trying to get you to live longer because I need you around.

Speaker 3 I was hoping you were going to probe some orphanes or something, isn't it? And none of that?

Speaker 4 No, that's okay. Yeah.

Speaker 4 You can go to a testosterone party with me.

Speaker 3 That would be fun. There's a tea party?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. All the time.
Young men. They do it.

Speaker 3 Young men have a party?

Speaker 4 Yeah, a tea party, just like when women get together to do whatever, you know, like facials. Yeah, men do it.

Speaker 3 And then what do they do? Do they like

Speaker 4 it? It's like a gay thing.

Speaker 3 No, it's not. It's like a a straight thing.

Speaker 4 No, it's like, you know, another manosphere thing. It's just ridiculous.

Speaker 4 You don't need more testosterone, just so everybody knows. And you don't need more oxygen.
You don't need more of a lot of this stuff. But we'll see how today should be just fun.

Speaker 4 I want to do something fun with you rather than serious.

Speaker 4 But we've got a lot to get to today here from your apartment in Manhattan. Blow up tech earnings.
Crazy. A big shakeup on the weight loss drug market.

Speaker 4 I really am interested in what you think about this. And how much does Trump need to worry about Joe Rogan? Joe Rogan is turning rogue on Trump, on several topics.

Speaker 4 But first, the man who opened fire in a Manhattan office building on Monday, not terrifically far from here, killing four people and injuring a fifth, was targeting the NFL headquarters with a note claiming he suffered from CTE.

Speaker 4 A page in the shooter's note accused the NFL of concealing the dangers to football players' brains in order to maximize profits. This is a long time thing.

Speaker 4 Lots of people are concerned. I didn't let my kids play football because I was worried about that.
The shooter played high school football, but did not play professionally.

Speaker 4 And of course, what he did was heinous, but pretty devastating. People, you know, same thing with Luigi Mangioni, people acting out on anger, the level of anger in the society.
And maybe

Speaker 4 you can only find out if you have CTE after you die. So I assume they'll check this and see if that's the case.
But I think Sanjay Gupta said 40% of the people who claim they have CTE

Speaker 4 before they die actually have it, like the 100%, which is quite a lot. It's not nothing.

Speaker 3 So I don't know.

Speaker 4 Any thoughts?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, well, first off, we don't know if and what role CTE played here. Right.
We don't.

Speaker 3 So just distinctive whether or not this was CTE played a role here. It is.

Speaker 3 You know, they, they, there was a study at former NFL players that found that of the 376 players studied, 91% had CTE. I mean, you just have people running.
It's not even the impact.

Speaker 3 I guess it's the rotation, sudden rotation that a helmet can't solve for, right? Your head twists and

Speaker 3 whatever it is, the cortex of the brain spine just can't respond that quickly.

Speaker 3 Everyone's been talking about it for a while, but it's sort of an example of capitalism. I'm not sure

Speaker 3 you could really justify the sport if it didn't make billions each year,

Speaker 3 if it wasn't psychologically and economically just so ingrained in our culture. But they really are sort of modern day gladiators and they pay an enormous price.

Speaker 3 But the thing that struck me about this, Kara, or I think with the

Speaker 3 obviously in addition to the tragedy, the families of the people who were murdered, is,

Speaker 3 you know, we're back to office mostly. Actually, it's interesting.
The U.S. has had kind of the most anemic return to office of almost any nation.

Speaker 3 And young people have gotten very used to, I think, as the employment market is so strong here and tech is so strong, that companies have had a difficult time getting everyone to return to the office, especially five days a week.

Speaker 3 And something I've always noticed about that I can't stand about going to meetings is that from the time you get to the lobby, by the time you go through check-in security and all that and get up to the, it's like 10 or 12 minutes at least, 10 or 15 minutes.

Speaker 3 And this is only going to make security that much more complex slash robust because the last thing you want to worry about is going to a place that is, you know, is less safe than the place you came from.

Speaker 4 And it is also porous in a lot of ways.

Speaker 4 People are, you know, it was interesting because immediately, because there's a mayor's race, there was sort of like an on kind of like, you know, why didn't Mamdani do something about him?

Speaker 4 Because he's not mayor, you know, his, he's, because he's way ahead, actually, among Jewish voters, a bunch of other things, which is interesting. I thought he handled it rather well.

Speaker 4 He said, we're only as strong as our weakest gun laws across the country and called attention to, you know, the fact that even though New York has very strict gun laws, you can't be protected because this guy was from Nevada, and I think his boss got him the thing that made the assault, that he assembled the assault weapon.

Speaker 4 And I think it's, again, it's a,

Speaker 4 you know, it's such a complex problem. Like here we have CTE.
We've got the ability to create weapons of mass destruction for people to have assault weapons.

Speaker 4 It'll be interesting, like, again, it's another thing where they'll talk about it and then do nothing about assault weapons or the ability to assemble assault weapons in the country.

Speaker 4 And probably if he does have CED, blame it on that.

Speaker 4 But it does, you know, I've always, I always feel unsafe

Speaker 4 at buildings. I don't know why.
I feel like there's such like a place where someone who has mental illness, which is growing, or people that are angry, like Luigi Mangione, can take it.

Speaker 4 Like it's, you can see how easy it is in a big city like New York.

Speaker 3 Well, this one will get, I mean, there's already been dozens of mass shootings every year. And you said something once that struck me.
You said that as a species, we're good at adapting.

Speaker 3 And that's a bad thing here. We have normalized and adapted to something that we should not adapt to.
And also, this will get more attention.

Speaker 3 And I'll be interested, there'll be articles basically saying that when it's nice white executives in Midtown Manhattan, a mass shooting gets play in the media.

Speaker 3 When it's just a mass shooting of some, a bunch of nice people at a mall in Kentucky, no one gives a shit because there's so many of them. So this will be, I think this will get a lot of attention.

Speaker 3 But again, this is really basic math or science or, you know, X, Y, validate, nullify a thesis.

Speaker 3 And if your thesis is the following, that guns are the primary or weapons of war really are the primary culprit,

Speaker 3 that theory would be validated because

Speaker 3 we do not have a monopoly on head injuries. We do not have a monopoly on angry young men.
We do not have a monopoly on mental illness.

Speaker 3 What we have a monopoly on is that all of these people have access to weapons of of war. Right.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 4 And there's ways around it.

Speaker 3 And also this bullshit notion that you can't do anything about it, that it's too late. That Australia had a mass shooting.
Reasonable people, okay, we should ban assault weapons.

Speaker 3 And they have had a dramatic decrease in mass shootings. The UK had a deadly mass shooting back in, I think it was in 96 in Dunblaine, Scotland.

Speaker 3 And where kids and teachers were killed next, you know, right away, no more assault weapons. So this is something, and I've said this before,

Speaker 3 One of the free gifts with purchase of moving to the UK,

Speaker 3 it's like a lot of things. If you actually look at statistically, I mean, a mass shooting, there's no reason,

Speaker 3 there's no reason not to go out. There's no reason not to go work.
There's no reason, in my opinion, not to send your kids to school. If you look at the real hard numbers,

Speaker 3 you and your kids are still

Speaker 3 at least mathematically pretty safe. The problem is the fear, and that is when I'm in the UK, I don't have these horror fantasies about turning on the TV and seeing my kids' school on the screen.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I agree. I think about it a lot, actually, with my kids in school, my young kids in school and public school.

Speaker 4 It's just the mental illness combined with the availability of these guns.

Speaker 3 Most anxious, depressed generation in history. And then you have weapons of war.
And the other thing I go to is just what is happiness in a society?

Speaker 3 And we tend to think that we're setting to the wrong test. We think if the Dow hits new highs, that we're happy.

Speaker 3 No, the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ, which in my opinion are two of the most damaging metrics in history, are basically just wealth indices.

Speaker 3 And that is an indices on the wealth of the top 10% who own somewhere between 50 and 90% of the stock. And spoiler alert, they're doing really well.

Speaker 3 But if you think about real happiness in a society, it's not only a function of what you have,

Speaker 3 it's a function of what you don't have. If you find out your wife has lung cancer and you live in Norway, it doesn't mean you're going bankrupt.
And that's not necessarily the case here. And also,

Speaker 3 they have an absence of this type of fear that we have to live under. So it's not, I mean, we keep talking about this.

Speaker 3 The thing that drives me crazy is we'll hear from a bunch of people on the right, thoughts and prayers and all this bullshit. But I'll be very curious to see what the studies are.

Speaker 3 They track people going in and out of buildings in Manhattan.

Speaker 4 They do. There's all kinds of technology, absolutely.

Speaker 3 But it'll be interesting to see what the trends are. If people just sort of ignore this or people think, you know, I don't know what, how you could harden buildings, you know, given metal detection.

Speaker 3 I don't know. What could you do?

Speaker 4 If you're clever enough or you're violent enough, you can get through to these.

Speaker 3 Or just sit in front of the building.

Speaker 3 Right. I mean,

Speaker 4 that's what the great city of New York is about, is being able to go anywhere.

Speaker 3 It's the crush of humanity. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's just

Speaker 4 the assault weapon. I mean, I think Cochal has called for an assault weapon.
But again, as Mamdani correctly said,

Speaker 4 if you can buy it in Tennessee, what's the difference? And drive yourself through the Lincoln tunnel. That's the end of it.

Speaker 3 It does help, though.

Speaker 3 New York's gun laws do help. And I was saying to someone a couple nights ago new york city is actually

Speaker 4 is actually one of the safest big cities in the world it's actually quite safe yeah except for this except for this again another senseless strategy for our country and and it's so common and we become used to it um speaking of something you've talked about a lot scott a senate committee voted to advance a bill that would ban stock trading by members of congress presidents and vice presidents with a convenient carve-out for donald trump lawmakers would be banned from buying stocks once the bill goes into effect and blocked from selling stocks 90 days after that that.

Speaker 4 But divestments wouldn't be required until the beginning of the new term. So Trump is in the clear.

Speaker 4 The bill originally called the Pelosi Act, for Nancy Pelosi, you like to give a hard time too, was introduced by Senator Josh Hawley, the only Republican who voted for it.

Speaker 4 Trump initially said he supported the man conceptually, but later lashed out at Hawley, accusing him of being a pawn for the Democrats.

Speaker 4 He wanted to put in a Pelosi thing just because he's such a revenge-minded person.

Speaker 4 The future of the bill is uncertain, but it is moving forward.

Speaker 4 Trump is also calling for an investigation Nancy Pelosi's stock trading, but the problem for him is there's tons of Republicans doing the same.

Speaker 4 For her part, Pelosi put out a statement saying she supports the legislation.

Speaker 4 You know, of course, he's just cutting off his nose despite his face, but and has attacked Hawley as a second-rate senator, who that and then Hawley tried to suck up to him again.

Speaker 4 But the fact that they cannot get this through, and you've talked about the idea of just paying these

Speaker 4 congresspeople more.

Speaker 4 It's just astonishing. 80%, it's an an 80-20 thing, I think.
80% of people across the country think they should do this and they're not doing this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so it's some of the most popular or it has more support of any proposed legislation in a long time. This is largely performative.
My understanding is it's not going to go through.

Speaker 3 But I mean, one of the real advantages that the U.S. has is that we have the deepest pools of capital.

Speaker 3 And that is there is a giant river of capital that flows in, has arteries reaching into the deepest corners of Thailand.

Speaker 3 That if somebody's working there and has something like a 401k or invests in stocks, 50% of that capital will ultimately end up in the U.S., flow to the U.S. because of our incredible companies, IP,

Speaker 3 colleges, R D,

Speaker 3 you know, risk aggressiveness, but also because we have a rule of fair play.

Speaker 3 And that is someone thinks, if I invest in an SP or an ASDAC fund, even though I'm not in the know, I'm not in Congress, I'm not on a board of directors, I'm not going to get fucked.

Speaker 3 Someone else isn't going to make a ton of money at my expense. There's rule of fair play.
And as a result, startups in the United States have $5 million for every startup. In Europe, it's $1 million.

Speaker 3 We have five times the venture capital here per company.

Speaker 3 And if you, these deep pools of capital, which are just enormously an enormous advantage, a lot of that is because there is quote unquote rule of fair play.

Speaker 3 It's not the reason why the Russian stock market is not worth what NVIDIA loses or gains every day is Everyone assumes the game is rigged, so they're not going to put their money in the stock market.

Speaker 3 The person or kutsk or in St. Petersburg is like, no, this is rigged.
And to be blunt, Speaker Pelosi and her husband, their net worth is estimated at $420 million.

Speaker 3 And last year, their net worth increased 54%.

Speaker 3 And Democrats managed to eke out a 31% return in 2024. And Republicans of 26%, both overperforming the S ⁇ P.

Speaker 4 And Trump's crypto. Trump, talk about someone who's really cashed in is a Trump family.

Speaker 3 Well, that, I mean, here's the problem. A small amount of corruption leads to big corruption.
And to a certain extent, Trump said these, these, you know, these congresspeople are playing small ball.

Speaker 3 They're, they're doing insider trading for hundreds of thousands or millions. I'm going to do it for billions.
But Speaker Ember Topelosi, in my view,

Speaker 3 let's talk specifically about the legislation. He was not serious.

Speaker 3 When you call something the Pelosi Act, you're saying fuck you to the the other side, because a lot of people, understandably, have a great deal of affection for Speaker Emirta Pelosi.

Speaker 3 When you call something,

Speaker 3 when you're purposely being.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they did change the name, but

Speaker 3 it showed he wasn't really serious about what would be required to pass this, and that is bipartisan support.

Speaker 3 When you come out of the gate swinging like that, the Democrats are just like, you know, fuck you, boss. You just didn't need to do that.

Speaker 3 We should, the moment you are elected to office, the moment even as i think you go through the primaries you have to put your money in a blind trust and if you're not willing to do that what you're acknowledging is you have some sort of special access or information that other people don't not supporting this bill means that you want to continue to quote unquote engage in insider trading the fact that you have people in intelligence briefings where they aren't making decisions on tens of billions of dollars that may or may not be uh spent by companies that are publicly traded and then you can literally leave that briefing and go call someone, and you're not supposed to, but you can.

Speaker 3 The fines are such that everyone ignores it and say, honey, go buy

Speaker 3 or this AI. What was the one that she bought call options on in the morning?

Speaker 4 Roger Taylor Greene did it a bunch of times, too.

Speaker 3 But Pelosi announced, when Pelosi announced or disclosed she'd bought options, call options in a healthcare AI company, I forget the name of the company,

Speaker 3 the stock spiked like 10 or 15%. I mean, it's just, anyways, they should have to put in a blind trust.
And also the other side of this, we need to pay these people a lot more.

Speaker 3 So they don't feel the temptation to do these things.

Speaker 4 I think they get 174,000. They're both equal in the Senate and the Congress.
I think it's 174,000, which is a lot for people, for regular people.

Speaker 3 Live in D.C., support two homes. It really isn't.

Speaker 4 So what would be the, what would you give them?

Speaker 4 First of all, they could put their current, they don't not have to have stocks. They just put it in an index fund.

Speaker 3 They just just have no control over it just a blind trust they're

Speaker 3 um what would you pay them i would pay congress people i would pay our representatives a million dollars a year our senators two million a year and you know the president five i would go to the singapore model and that is pay them really well and then absolute zero fucking tolerance for any of this nonsense none you can't anything you have control over in terms of capital allocation of your own personal funds you no longer have control over and if you do you're kicked out there is a criticism that like people who are good at money won't go into congress but i'm like yes they they do it for other reasons

Speaker 4 and by the way it's become a rich person's game because it costs i think i was on a panel last night and he was saying it used to cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to run for congress now it's eight or nine million so only rich people can afford it are people with access to funds and then they're on the hook for rich people right so it creates a really bad situation it's not going to discourage anyone something like that would not discourage anyone from running and it creates a distraction and then you feel like you've got to engage and play in this game because you're you know, the representative from Kentucky is making millions of dollars while you're not.

Speaker 3 And also, after taxes, that amount of money if you're trying to support two homes. And look, these people deserve to make more money.
They're impressive, important people doing important work.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I would agree. And if we're going to have zero tolerance, which we should here, we have to pay them really well.

Speaker 4 Or give them a housing allowance. Like, you know, they could create like a congressional apartment building and then we could have a reality show.
We could make it.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. That would be hilarious.

Speaker 3 What happens when Ted Cruz runs into Bernie Sanders in the shower?

Speaker 4 Romances.

Speaker 3 There you go.

Speaker 4 It would be so good.

Speaker 3 They could like do that. Smart fly.

Speaker 4 For the Congress people, they could. For the younger ones, why not?

Speaker 3 Some of them do them together, don't they? Do something fun.

Speaker 4 Like, make a thing of it. Like, it would be kind of interesting, or give them housing allowances or something.
I don't know. They do get a lot of allowances.
They get all kinds of perks.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 this is just ridiculous. Josh Hawley, we're behind you, even though I'm not really behind you.

Speaker 4 Every time they do a picture of Josh Hawley, it's the insurrectionist.

Speaker 3 The pumps, the fist pump.

Speaker 4 The fist pump.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 That guy's never escaping.

Speaker 3 I'm with you. I'm with you.

Speaker 3 I'm running from you. Run.

Speaker 3 These people are fucking crazy. Run.
I'm with you. I'm with you.

Speaker 3 I'm right behind you.

Speaker 3 I'll be in Rehoboth.

Speaker 4 Josh, you're never going to be president. Just FYI.
Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Joe Rogan has some criticism for President Trump.
He's ramping up.

Speaker 4 He's turning into a San Francisco lesbian.

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Speaker 4 Scott, we're back. Joe Rogan is turning into a real thorn in the side for President Trump.

Speaker 4 Let's listen to what he had to say about Trump's administration's crackdown on immigration and international students. Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 3 It's an over-correction, right? And it's also like they have a mandate, I think, of like 3,000 people a day they want to deport.

Speaker 3 You know, you're going to, A bunch of people that are totally innocent are going to get caught up here. They have been.

Speaker 3 They have been. A lot of people that have green cards, a lot of people that are supposed to be over here.
And then they're kicking students out that like write articles they don't like.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's nuts.

Speaker 3 It's fucking crazy.

Speaker 4 And that's not all. Let's listen to a clip of Rogan talking about Trump's reaction to all things Epstein.

Speaker 3 This is a line in the sand. This one's a line in the sand.
Yeah. Because this is one where there's a lot of stuff about,

Speaker 3 you know, when we thought Trump was going to come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved. I'm going to drain the swamp.
I'm going to figure everything out.

Speaker 3 And when you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody had been talking about forever, and then they're trying to gaslight you on that.

Speaker 4 So it's interesting. I'm not sure if Rogan's disapproval will carry as much weight as its endorsement did.
I don't know. What do you think of this?

Speaker 4 I think it's actually, you know, it's sort of late, you know, Joe. Of course he was going to do this.

Speaker 4 He seems kind of fatuous to what Trump is, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 What do you think? I don't know. I think that, I do think it matters.

Speaker 3 A lot of when I speak to young men, I feel like a lot of times they're reading back a script from Joe Rogan.

Speaker 3 I think, I think arguably Joe Rogan, in terms of young men, has more influence because he's seen as an honest broker.

Speaker 3 I think the most, I don't know what I call it, dangerous thing about Joe Rogan, but I think Joe is like, it's not an act.

Speaker 3 I think Joe is genuinely, he's not reading, he's not Fox News reading from a teleprompter saying Smart Manic has been weaponized by Hugo Chavez because we told you to say it.

Speaker 3 I think what he's saying, he believes.

Speaker 3 And also the Manosphere, if you will, or,

Speaker 3 you know, male-dominated or male-centric podcasts, there has been a significant tide shift.

Speaker 3 Shane Gillis, Andrew Schultz, Andrew Schultz, all these guys who, quite frankly, if you were to point to one person

Speaker 3 who potentially put Trump in office, It would be number one would be Musk, right? Quarter of a billion dollars, great platform,

Speaker 3 very smart.

Speaker 3 And then probably number two is Joe Rogan.

Speaker 3 And the stat I love is that if you want to talk about how brilliant the Trump campaign was and how non-brilliant the Harris campaign was, and it kind of reminds me of Mondani and Cuomo, Trump went, flew right into the manosphere, which was not only good for positioning, but by going on Rogan that one time with 40 million YouTube videos or views and 15 million audio downloads, for Harris to get the same level of exposure, she would have needed to go on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox every night for three hours for two weeks.

Speaker 3 So quite frankly, whatever, unless it was going to take her two weeks to get down and back from Austin, she should have done it.

Speaker 3 So these guys carry a ton of weight, and there has been a real significant shift.

Speaker 4 It's the combo of all of them. It's not just Rogan.
I mean, Schultz has been particularly vehement about it. And Shane Gillis is now mocking him, making fun of him.

Speaker 4 Then you have the South Park guys on his ass because they're considered pretty right in the middle, like not in the middle, but they don't beholden to anybody.

Speaker 3 Yeah, honey badger don't give a shit.

Speaker 3 They go after everybody.

Speaker 2 But what do you think?

Speaker 4 I mean, it's interesting because he's moved from the Epstein things, which I think animates a lot of these people. A lot of them are angry about the Epstein stuff.

Speaker 4 And now it's moved to colleges and deportations, which they're like, why can't these you know, kids say what they want as long as they're not violent? I think Rogan said that.

Speaker 4 He's like, if they're not violent, they can write whatever they want. So that is consistent with their thing of the left quashing them, but now they're applying it to Trump.

Speaker 3 Yeah. What was

Speaker 3 again, I thought of you last night. There was another weapon of mass distraction yesterday, something ridiculous, something outrageous.
What was it yesterday? Oh, it'll come to me.

Speaker 4 Giving Diddy a pardon. Oh,

Speaker 3 exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Megan Kelly's madness.

Speaker 3 Diddy a pardon. okay that's that's what the president should be focused on right now i mean i'm telling you every day again we got it we

Speaker 3 the moment he does this you got to start referring to diddy as did epstein you just got to make you got to let him know uh folks we're not we're not fall for it if you're sawing your assistant in half and expect us to look over here we're not going to do it we want to see you pulling the rabbit uh you know out of your coat pocket not out of the hat but yeah i don't and a lot of people aren't going along like rogan is is pretty has been pretty trump positive and he's doing it a lot.

Speaker 4 I'm interested to see

Speaker 4 what he'll move on to of something he doesn't like, right? But there's quite a lot. It's not just one thing.

Speaker 4 And as I said at the beginning of this whole thing, and let me tell you, I think Elon started this, this Epstein thing. He absolutely, by that tweet, he did.

Speaker 4 But I think Epstein is at the core, as I said, the pillar. But then there's all these other things that...

Speaker 4 are consistent with what they said before, which was, why can't those students say what they want, even if I don't agree with those students?

Speaker 4 Why can't humor, right, when he's threatening all kinds of entertainers and stuff like that? Why can't they say what they want, even if they're left?

Speaker 4 And I think they are consistent in that. They should be consistent in that regard.
They should, if they say people should say what they want, it should apply to the left and the right, right?

Speaker 4 And so that was interesting when Rogan did that. I'm curious what he'll do next.

Speaker 3 Well, they can, they can claim, and I actually, I think it's good for the medium. No matter what happens, CNN and Fox, you kind of have a sense for which way they're going to go on every story.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 3 These guys, to their credit, are saying, you know, I was wrong. I do not support these policies.
A couple of them have said, I regret voting for them.

Speaker 3 And I think the immigration raids really rattled a lot of them because I think a lot of them know, you know, are exposed to it, see how cruel it is. The thing is, I don't get is it's ineffective.

Speaker 3 There were actually more people being deported during the Obama administration than are being deported right now. They just worked more cohesively or seamlessly with local law enforcement.

Speaker 3 And this just feels like, okay.

Speaker 4 Well, because they are going after people who are like gardeners and in Home Depot a lot. They're kind of clottish about it in a lot of ways.

Speaker 4 They're doing it so performatively with the masks and the whole theater and Christy Gnome.

Speaker 4 Did you see that picture of Christy Gnome riding around a horse with her alleged paramour, Corey Lewandowski?

Speaker 3 I did. I'd like to, though.

Speaker 4 Argentina. They're just riding horses around.
You're like, what are you doing there? What are you doing?

Speaker 3 Isn't Argentina riding horses?

Speaker 4 Something like that.

Speaker 3 I'm here for it. I think I've decided Christina is super hot.
And I, the whole like, oh my God, her whole ice barbie is so strange.

Speaker 4 It's like, what are you going to become president from that? I'm like trying to figure out where this is going.

Speaker 3 It's straight to reality. Is it straight to the White House or straight to Cinemax? Either way, I'm here for it.

Speaker 4 A reality show, right? I'm sort of like, what are you doing?

Speaker 3 Sarah Palin in Alaska.

Speaker 4 Oh, that didn't work out so well for her, did it? Yeah, that's not going to work out for you, Christy, because you're a lady. It doesn't work out for ladies.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 It just doesn't. It's not going to work out.

Speaker 4 Anyway, speaking of ladies, and she's not a lady, Jelaine Maxwell has offered to testify before Congress in the Epstein situation, but only with conditions that include immunity.

Speaker 4 And on Tuesday, President Trump told reporters that Epstein stole Virginia Guffray, one of Epstein's accusers from Mar-a-Lago, who died by suicide in April following a period of serious health issues.

Speaker 4 She was the 17-year-old involved that Prince Andrew allegedly abused,

Speaker 4 paid off, I think.

Speaker 4 Anyway,

Speaker 4 she was one of the more outspoken ones and had a very tragic life. She worked in Mar-a-Lago in the spa, and Jelaine Maxwell got her to come over to his house.

Speaker 4 And President Rum keeps changing his story of why he got in a fight with Epstein.

Speaker 4 First, it was because some real estate thing, then it was because they found him creepy, and now it's because he stole, stole.

Speaker 4 The use of the word stole around sex trafficking sort of says it all to me, or I didn't have the privilege to go down to Epstein Island, which was a crazy word to use.

Speaker 4 He just continues every day to dig himself into another hole and keep this story alive. Like I said, it's almost suicidal.
It's weird

Speaker 4 on his behalf to continue to use. As for Jelaine Maxwell, She deserves nothing.
I said on CNN that, you know, what does she want? Cocoa and a warm blanket? Give me a break. She needs to stay in jail.

Speaker 4 If they give her immunity or Diddy immunity,

Speaker 4 it will continue. This story for Trump will never go away and it's already not going away.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 he's really got, and that's why he just comes across as so guilty here because he's got such weird judgment. You know, he said that he wishes Jelaine Maxwell.
He didn't wish any of the victims well.

Speaker 3 He wishes her well.

Speaker 3 And then he says, oh, you know,

Speaker 3 why he's disappointed or offended by Epstein? He took his employees.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm like, okay, so that's that's why he don't want to be associated with this guy. Like, is where any of his other activities that were reported and widely covered, did any of those offenders?

Speaker 3 Diplomatic? No, it was that he hired

Speaker 3 his valet

Speaker 3 under him from Mar-a-Lago. It's like, okay,

Speaker 3 you're kind of missing the forest for the trees here. So he continues to act like someone advised him to try and act as guilty as possible.

Speaker 3 The idea of what effectively would be a pardon, which is what

Speaker 3 immunity would offer almost, it's different.

Speaker 4 Clemency.

Speaker 3 For Ghelane Maxwell, it's like, well,

Speaker 3 again,

Speaker 3 this,

Speaker 3 why are they speaking to her now? The only reason, the only motivation to speak to her now is the desire to clear the president.

Speaker 3 There's always been a desire to find out what exactly happened here and who was involved. And if you weren't able to get that information and offer whatever it is you needed to offer back then,

Speaker 3 then the only reason that you you logically can derive from this

Speaker 3 or deduct from this is that you're hoping she will say something to exonerate the president. Cause the only thing that's happened is there's new heat on the president.

Speaker 3 So I don't, the whole thing really stinks.

Speaker 4 It won't exonerate him now because it looks like he's doing that, right? So it'll look like

Speaker 3 fixes in.

Speaker 4 So it's weird. I find this the strangest thing.
I actually believe when everything the White House says, I don't believe. What he says, I kind of believe that's what he thinks.

Speaker 4 He's mad at him for taking, stealing and a person who works in the spa that's what i he doesn't care about these women he doesn't care about the abuses he cares that someone stole his employee that's i actually believe that when he says that i don't think he's making it up in that i think this addled old man thinks that he's like all pissed that he stole one of his employees yeah i don't see that yeah the whole thing uh the whole thing is just something i have to say a lot of people who didn't think it was a conspiracy theory or just were not really paying attention to it many years on are now.

Speaker 4 Oh, that's a noise outside your curtain.

Speaker 3 Oh, shit. I forgot to call 911 back and tell them that you're not intruders.
I know you.

Speaker 3 There's a strange lady rifling through my things and mumbling to herself.

Speaker 4 I'm taking that buttery coat.

Speaker 3 That buttery coat of mine. I have.

Speaker 3 I have somebody has slaughtered several dozen animals who were llamas that were only raised on like Japanese wagu rice.

Speaker 3 I went through that skin phase where I couldn't buy enough like leather coats. Anyways, how about it?

Speaker 4 Yeah, they're very nice. I may take one, but it's sort of warm out.

Speaker 3 If you borrow my coat, it means I then borrow your car and we're going steady. That means we're going steady.

Speaker 4 We are going steady. Oh, my first girlfriend, Melanie Kayan, who's when she wore your coat.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. And she, my Letterman coat.
I was a Letterman, a D1 athlete.

Speaker 4 This is college?

Speaker 3 College. You know it, baby.

Speaker 4 Do you have any clothes from people? I still have clothes from people I went out with.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, David Hasselhoff still has a few of my loose sweatshirts, but that's another story, Kara.
That's another story.

Speaker 4 That was a loving relationship.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So beautiful and poignant.

Speaker 3 Paul Giamatti has a big bottle of my moisturizer. I don't, don't, don't force me to give details.

Speaker 4 He's such a nice guy.

Speaker 3 I would like that was pretty good. Two random names.
I love Hasselhoff half of it.

Speaker 4 I don't. But if you weren't married, I'd love you to go out with Paul Giamatti.
I think that would be good for you.

Speaker 3 Oh, wait. Hold on.
Hold on. Go ahead.
Let's unpack that.

Speaker 3 The person you have decided is for me is Paul Giamatti.

Speaker 4 Oh my God, I totally like to hang out with you.

Speaker 3 I'm totally down if Paul Giamatti can be Emily Radikowski.

Speaker 4 Has she asked about me? No.

Speaker 3 Seriously, she has asked about me, right?

Speaker 4 She has not.

Speaker 3 She's totally asked about me.

Speaker 4 Nobody who looks like Emily Radikowski. You know who asked me about you? Let me tell you.

Speaker 3 Oh, here we go. Men.

Speaker 4 Sure, Michael asked me about you. The guy you debated in Detroit, this lovely guy, Chuck Roca, I was on a panel with, asked me, men asked me about you.

Speaker 4 You have such a man crush on you.

Speaker 3 It's disturbing on men. Well, tell them to swing by.
Why shouldn't they come by my apartment?

Speaker 4 This is what women say to me, including very attractive women. They're always like, oh, Scott.

Speaker 3 Oh, God.

Speaker 4 That's all they say. People say, oh, Scott, I want to fuck him.

Speaker 3 It's, oh, Scott. No, it's literally like, I need to, that reminds me, I need new mace cartridges.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 But men are like, he's so dreamy.

Speaker 3 Scott is so, I love that, Scott.

Speaker 4 He's so dreamy.

Speaker 3 You bring up my name and like the next sense where women are like, you know, I'm thinking about like just having sex with women from this point forward. And I don't think we need marriage.

Speaker 4 It is so true.

Speaker 4 I haven't had a woman say she's hot for you. A man I have heard say no is hot.
Anyway, call Giamatti calls.

Speaker 3 That's something. I know it's self-dead.

Speaker 4 All right, we have to move on.

Speaker 4 Tariffs, tariffs. And Jerome Powell has a set, let's just say.
At the time of this taping, President Trump says he will not extend the latest August 1st tariff deadline.

Speaker 4 The president reportedly plans to sign new executive orders after we tape imposing higher tariffs on several countries that have not reached deals.

Speaker 4 The administration has managed to get only eight deals done in 120 days, but with a number of partners.

Speaker 4 In the last few days, Trump has announced a 25% tariff on India with a penalty for over-reliance on Russian energy and military equipment.

Speaker 4 It's said that South Korea has made an offer to buy down the 25% it faces. He's interested in hearing it.

Speaker 4 One of the things that's interesting is whether he's going to extend that deadline. Fear not, everyone.

Speaker 4 Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who seems to be living his best life as Trump's favorite person, told corporate America it's quote, not the end of the world if these tariffs are on for days or weeks.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, the Fed held interest rates steady, as I said on Wednesday for the fifth meeting in a row, as the Commerce Department reported that the U.S.

Speaker 4 economy grew at a stronger than expected pace, but there's lots of troubling things in the report, actually. And now inflation today just ticked up a little bit.

Speaker 4 And so Powell seems to be waiting until September to see the impact of the tariffs, which I think is probably a good thing to do.

Speaker 4 So what do you think about what's happening? In some cases, some of the countries are saying what he said happened, didn't happen.

Speaker 4 Obviously, a lot of these numbers are going to be paid by American consumers in the end.

Speaker 4 Any thoughts on this?

Speaker 3 The only thing you know you're going to get, first off, none of them, I hate it. They call them deals.
They're all frameworks that they can put out a press release.

Speaker 3 And in the press release is some giant number that is unenforceable, specifically the amount of money they're going to invest in the U.S. Yes.
Thank you. So, I hope that

Speaker 3 we just get through this, get on it.

Speaker 3 You know, I saw someone on Bill Maher, a very intelligent woman, saying that tariffs, she's like, I said to Bill,

Speaker 3 why are you against making American workers more productive, kind of like wrapping themselves in the flag? And folks, let me just remind you that

Speaker 3 free trade or tariffs are inversely correlated to economic growth.

Speaker 3 Telling American consumers that they have to pay more money for a Japanese car such that they get a shitty car for $40,000 instead of a great car for $30,000, that not only makes us consumers less prosperous,

Speaker 3 paying more for shittier things, but it also makes us less competitive because we don't need to compete. So, and I'm going to talk about this

Speaker 3 in my prediction, but Figma, this design company, is going public. And it was supposed to be acquired by Adobe.

Speaker 3 The fact that it wasn't because the EU regulators blocked the deal is going to make that market much more competitive.

Speaker 3 And so, when all you're doing is making things less competitive in the short run for companies because they have the advantage of taxing foreign companies, you make our companies less competitive, you make our consumers less prosperous, and it has been shown that over the medium and long term, it decreases productivity.

Speaker 3 And the GDP numbers were really strange. I don't know if you saw those, but the GDP numbers,

Speaker 3 so this was the strangest thing that came out of the GDP numbers.

Speaker 3 You subtract or you add to GDP, or excuse me, you subtract out of GDP imports because that is economic activity or production that took place offshore.

Speaker 3 Imports were down 30% year on year, like 34%.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's not even that the prices are too high or that American consumers don't want them, but foreign companies that build businesses importing products into the U.S., making our lives more prosperous and our products less expensive and our better quality of life have kind of stopped because they don't know how to plan.

Speaker 3 They don't even know how to price stuff. They don't know what it means.

Speaker 3 They don't know what the demand is going to be because they don't know what these tariffs are.

Speaker 3 So I'm at the part of the program now where I just hope for the purposes of just getting back to work that they get a quote unquote a bunch of these frameworks done.

Speaker 3 And all these nations are learning. Yeah,

Speaker 3 agree to the tariff and then announce a trillion dollars in investment in the United States over the next 10 years, which is not enforceable.

Speaker 4 That's what happened with all the tech companies, remember? They were like, we're going to invest. And then they never did.
That's the thing. And so Trump can tout a deal.

Speaker 4 One of the things, Richard Quest, who I like on CNN, was so frustrated trying to explain it.

Speaker 4 I love him. Yeah, that guy.
He's great. But the point he was making is the 15% is getting eaten by these companies.
They're just going to take the cost. And you'll see numbers like Ford or GM.

Speaker 4 They had the first time since 2023, Ford is losing money, which it wasn't. It was doing well.

Speaker 4 They'll start, they'll eat the cost because it's low enough, but eventually they won't. Second thing is consumers will pay for this in the end, like not the money that's going into the treasury.
And

Speaker 4 it just, it just, it literally, these, and he's like, these are, he said the same thing you did. These are frameworks.
They are not the thing.

Speaker 4 And And so you'll never, how are you going to know if they're going to invest? Like just saying they're going to invest, they will not do it. And so it's all nonsense and kind of unnecessary

Speaker 4 shaking of the economy for no reason.

Speaker 4 Now, that's not to say that being tough on people or sort of playing game of chicken with some of these countries where it's not asynchronous trade is not a bad idea, right? Like we always say that.

Speaker 4 But one of the things that's important to understand is that it's not in place. It's just not, like a lot of things with Trump, it's a lot of vaporware.
And

Speaker 4 that is the real problem. And so when Jerome Powell comes in and says, we're just going to wait about cutting interest.

Speaker 4 We'll see what happens. That's the adult thing to do.
And of course, Trump attacks him because this doesn't work without an acquiescent Fed, right, to try to feed this thing.

Speaker 4 And he's not going to be acquiescent. And interestingly, with the Fed meeting, two of the Trump-appointed

Speaker 4 people

Speaker 4 voted against

Speaker 4 keeping it the same rate.

Speaker 4 So now it's totally politicized, which are good economic decisions. Powell, this guy has a set.
He really does.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 He's doing exactly what you're supposed to do when you have a Supreme Court justice or long tenure appointments.

Speaker 3 The reason we do that is such that we get stuck with some bad people sometimes, but the reason we do that is such that they can be independent-minded. But

Speaker 3 one of the biggest risks, I think, to our economy is, so the definition of robust, a robust industry is, for example, the fast food industry.

Speaker 3 If McDonald's goes out of business, you're still going to be able to get $1,800 of calories for five bucks, right? Because there's a ton of competitors.

Speaker 3 If Jamie Dimon called the president right now and said, oh, we had some rogue trader, he levered up, got past our compliance. And if I don't get $500 billion,

Speaker 3 by tomorrow, we're out of business. That existential or systemic risk, because JP JP Morgan is so big now and so powerful, they have become, in my opinion, too big to fail.

Speaker 3 That makes an economy weaker. We now have seven companies that represent over 40% of the S ⁇ P's value, of which represents 50% of the world's value.

Speaker 3 So you have essentially 20% of the market cap of the world is tied up in seven companies. And what these tariffs are doing,

Speaker 3 there's so many second order effects here is that, okay, you know who's not affected by the tariffs? You know who's just champagne and cocaine right now? Tech companies.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we will talk about that.

Speaker 3 But if you're an investor, are you going to invest in the 70% of companies in the S ⁇ P 500 that are subject to some sort of tariff risk? You're like, oh, fuck it. Just buy Meta, right?

Speaker 3 I don't know how to predict this. I don't know how to model against it.
So what do we have?

Speaker 3 Even greater concentration of wealth and of market cap in an increasingly small group of companies and people.

Speaker 4 Who will not be able to deliver in the end. Actually, they can't keep up with the

Speaker 3 numbers.

Speaker 3 But it's like, that's the last thing. Does the president really think it's good economic policy to basically transfer market capitalization from Dow Chemical and Ford to Alphabet and Meta?

Speaker 3 Is that what we need right now? That's not these companies.

Speaker 4 It's the opposite.

Speaker 3 It's the opposite. These great American companies that are either in manufacturing or consumer products that are subject to these tariffs and subject to this insecurity and chaos.

Speaker 3 That's kind of, those are the companies, quite frankly, that is a really good point.

Speaker 3 They tend to be, they don't pay their people as well, but they they tend to employ many more people.

Speaker 3 And it's like, okay, if we were going to do any economic policy that transferred capital or advantage back from one group of companies to others for a more robust market, quite frankly, a stronger, more diverse economy, we would probably want to let some air out of the AI tech balloon and transfer it across the rest of our great American companies.

Speaker 3 That's not what they're doing. And this is effectively saying to every institutional manager, fuck it, just invest in tech.
That's right. All right.
Well, then actually, we'll get to that.

Speaker 4 We'll go on a quick break. When we come back, back, we'll talk about Microsoft and Meta's earnings, which were Blockbuster.

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Speaker 4 Scott, we're back with earnings news. Microsoft just reported a blockbuster quarter with total revenue surging 18% year over year to $76 billion.

Speaker 4 But as Microsoft doubles down on AI, the capital spending is climbing up 27%.

Speaker 4 Meta also had a huge Q2 with $47 billion in revenue, up 22% and $18 billion in profit, up 36%.

Speaker 4 Meta's AI hiring is very also acknowledged in the earnings with compensation for technical talent in priority areas cited as the second largest driver of cost growth.

Speaker 4 These big deals are paying all these AI researchers.

Speaker 4 How do you look at this? Are these AI bets paying off or it's advertising for Meta? It's their old business that's doing well, probably helped by AI, but not in the way Zuckerberg is spending.

Speaker 4 Any thoughts on this? They're really, they're really doubling down on AI, obviously, whether it's research costs or talent costs or just simple investment in compute.

Speaker 4 Any thoughts on these two earnings?

Speaker 3 So you forwarded me an article from the Wall Street Journal that was really fascinating.

Speaker 3 And it said, basically, this is the weirdest GDP report we've seen in a while, because when imports go down 30%, it sort of artificially juices GDP.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 if you're thinking about,

Speaker 3 I mean, these numbers, well, one, okay, so the numbers, the traditional business is just staggering. It's just, they continue to perform.
They're using AI for better targeting.

Speaker 3 And I think every media planner in the world is just throwing up their arms and saying, just spend more money on meta

Speaker 3 or on Alphabet. They also have the benefit of the market has decided that it loves CapEx in AI.
The market has decided that AI is going to be enormous.

Speaker 3 And whoever wins the war, it's going to be a function of brute force and that is as represented by CapEx. So Oracle, when Oracle went public, Larry Ellison, I think, owned about 24%.

Speaker 3 He now owns closer to 41%. Well, how is that possible?

Speaker 3 They would use their cash flow to buy back shares, thereby decreasing the amount of shares and increasing the relative ownership of people who own shares.

Speaker 3 Except about two years ago, he decided, nope, it's now a capital war in AI. We need to be a distant number two of infrastructure to NVIDIA.
We're going to massively spend in CapEx.

Speaker 3 Arguably, that was one of the better business decisions of the last 10 years. And Larry Ellison, you want to talk about Elephants Can Dance, is now the second wealthiest person in the world.

Speaker 3 And the most crazy stat from that article, and I still can't believe it's true, but it's stated in that article that there was more spending last quarter.

Speaker 3 on AI investments than there was consumer spending. So think about this.
355 million people in the U.S.,

Speaker 3 everything they're spending money on, their Netflix, their Starbucks, going to CF1,

Speaker 3 all consumer spending was less

Speaker 3 than the investments in AI. I mean, my God, that is.
I know.

Speaker 4 The numbers are that massive.

Speaker 3 That is just staggering.

Speaker 3 But Meta up 12% in pre-market, earnings beat, a massive earnings beat, $714 versus $589, revenue of $47.5 billion expected 44.8 a 22 percent year on year and one of the things that was so impressive is they grew their customer they they grew their customer base or their users by six percent which may not sound like a lot but when your base is 3.5 billion that's there's no other game in town there's no other game in town added They added the population of Brazil to their user base year on year.

Speaker 3 So, and in addition, the market loves this CapEx. Their CapEx spending was $17 billion.
By the way, that's double what it was last year. It isn't.
And the market just loves it.

Speaker 4 Well, someone has to pay for all those young men that they're hiring. I mean, billion-dollar deals.

Speaker 4 Whatever you say about Marco Zuckerberg, he goes for it, right? And even if he made a mistake with. Meta.
And same thing over at Microsoft. The question is, when does it not pay off?

Speaker 4 Like, here you have Grok doing it. You've got Amazon doing it.
Amazon just paid even the New York Times $20 million a year for its stuff, which is nothing, which is peanuts.

Speaker 4 You know, I just think that

Speaker 4 this is an arms race for these people. And

Speaker 4 it's being paid off in the market right now for them. And they're using that in order to like goose themselves rather.
And you're right.

Speaker 4 Everything is being shifted over to these seven tech companies and nobody else. And so Ford and GM, who have made strides, are going to suffer.

Speaker 4 So will John Deere, so will all the other companies at the expense of these people. Now, interestingly, Zuckerberg had to put out one of his essays.

Speaker 4 These people love to put out essays and letters and vision manifestos.

Speaker 4 He loves to do this, and they're always long and badly edited. But he said AI superintelligence is now in sight.
He put out this letter and video outlining his vision for it.

Speaker 4 It was described by one outlet as a mini manifesto.

Speaker 4 Let's listen to Mark Zuckerberg if we have to.

Speaker 3 A lot has been written about the scientific and economic advances that AI can bring, and I'm really optimistic about this.

Speaker 3 But I think an even more meaningful impact in our lives is going to come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, be a better friend, and grow to become the person that you aspire to be.

Speaker 3 This vision is different from others in the industry who want to direct AI at automating all of the valuable work.

Speaker 3 Blather, this is his. Go to the person you aspire to be.

Speaker 4 He did this before.

Speaker 3 He's a guy that's good. I'm going to be the person I aspire to be.
Honestly, because of Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 4 One time he called me when he wrote one of these ridiculous manifestos. He called me and asked me when he was speaking to me, what I thought of it.
And I said, one, you need an editor.

Speaker 4 Two, I don't understand this. This whole thing about community.
He just was like, social media will bring us together. Like such fucking, and of course it didn't.

Speaker 4 And I was, at the time, I was like, this is such bullshit.

Speaker 4 Just say you just want to make money on automating all our valuable work i'm fine with that right but this is these people just aspire to be these visionaries and they are the smallest intellectual they have the smallest intellects and the least amount they just love to put these things out you know jamie you don't hear this from jamie diamond much right and who is by the way he's been meeting with president trump which is a good thing like you don't hear this nonsense from our smarter people in our society because they don't feel the need to do remember when gates put these essays the Road Ahead?

Speaker 4 It was so nonsensical to do this. Now,

Speaker 4 one thing Zuckerberg did say, which I agreed with, but I didn't think he had to put on such a thing, is he said smart glasses will be the primary way people interact with AI.

Speaker 4 Of course, he said that because he has a smart glass business, and without them, people will be at a cognitive disadvantage.

Speaker 4 Do you think you're going to be at a cognitive disadvantage without AI glasses?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I mean, the idea.

Speaker 3 So, these LLMs, I've always said that the LLM is just a function of who we are, but unfortunately who we are in a certain media.

Speaker 3 And I wish the LLMs could crawl the real world because I think generally speaking in the real world, that people are lovely.

Speaker 3 But the fact is they're crawling our complexion, our personality online, and it gets really ugly really fast.

Speaker 3 And if this AI, I've always said that companies were the closest thing I had to kids before I had kids. And that is you conceive of them.
They look, smell, and feel like you.

Speaker 3 They're sort of a corporate embodiment of the personality. And if, if Lama, the LLM

Speaker 3 from

Speaker 3 Zuck ends up being

Speaker 3 anything like him, it'll be emotionally stunted, brilliantly efficient, and constantly urging you to reconnect with your ex. I mean, it's just going to be such a weird.

Speaker 3 If this thing ends up like, when you heard that, didn't it sound AI generated? It's like the non-human human.

Speaker 4 Oh, it's just, no, because he's done it before. It's like so anodyne.
It is so,

Speaker 4 I literally had this bad memory for, I was at my ex's house, like spleen being on a couch, and he called me.

Speaker 3 And I was like, You got kicked out on the couch, talked to me about that.

Speaker 3 Lesbians do that too.

Speaker 4 No, we were, no.

Speaker 4 So it was just so fucking ridiculous. It was like, I remember going, oh my God, how can I get off this fucking phone call with this idiot who just thinks, who just thinks he's a visionary?

Speaker 4 Like, literally, no, there's so many visionaries. Like, John Malone's recently written a a book.
He's a visionary. Like he doesn't talk that much.
And what he says is choice.

Speaker 4 These guys can't stop fucking talking and giving you their predictions of the future. It's exactly like, I want to hear it from you, Scott.
I don't want to hear it from this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this guy. You got to give it.
He is a visionary. He really is.
But his vision is a legless universe where people are cutting themselves. That's his vision.

Speaker 4 But like that he says, like, I'm here to help you achieve your goals. Be a better friend and grow a person who aspire to be.
It's not about automating all your valuable work, Mark.

Speaker 4 It's about automatting all your valuable work and so you can make money off of it. Could just say that? Like,

Speaker 4 honestly, this, this nonsense of being, Facebook is not going to make you, A is not going to make you a better friend.

Speaker 4 Facebook isn't going to allow you to create what you want to see in the world and grow to be a better person. And neither does Mark Zuckerberg care about that.

Speaker 4 Like, and then, oh, by the way, buy my glasses. Like,

Speaker 3 if, if I asked AI to give me an image of Mark Zuckerberg that defines who he is, I feel like it would be, granted,

Speaker 3 this might be the Oedibal speaking, but it would be a guy at a really sad malt shop sucking up the world's user data through a straw.

Speaker 3 And every time he made eye contact with you, he'd apologize and look away. I just think this guy is so unusual, so strange.

Speaker 3 And he,

Speaker 3 to his credit,

Speaker 3 he is actually smart enough to, I think he knows, he realizes it. So he brings in really likable people, whether it's Nick Clegg or Sheryl Sandberg.

Speaker 3 But just getting back to, I just want to talk a little bit about earnings. I was so blown away by this quarter's earnings, just the amount of capex these guys are throwing at it.

Speaker 3 I think Microsoft may be the organization as of today that has invested more money, more capital in the future than any organization in history with the exception of countries during war.

Speaker 3 And by the way, it's paying off. They're up 8% of pre-market trading.
They blew away their earnings, 365 versus 337. The revenue was $76.5 billion versus 73.8 expected.

Speaker 3 Revenue was up 18% year on year. And then its cloud-based unit, Azure, grew 39% this year.

Speaker 3 That is just, so if Microsoft Basically, if you applied the same price to sales ratio to its cloud unit, it would be a $1 trillion business. And right now,

Speaker 3 it's a $75 billion revenue business. And they're planning to spend $30 billion on capital next quarter.
That's up 50% from the same time last year.

Speaker 3 And if it kept constant, it would work out to be $120 billion.

Speaker 3 And that means right now,

Speaker 3 the category that is getting the most capex of any category in the world is AI. And the company spending the most is Microsoft.

Speaker 3 Microsoft is right now spending more money on AI than I think almost any organization in history has spent on anything, with maybe the exception of a percentage of GDP, what Britain and Russia have spent during wartime or something like this.

Speaker 3 It is, this is Meta's quarter, I think, is the biggest investment by a private company in history on anything. And it's paying off.

Speaker 3 This company, these companies, I mean, it's just this tariff bullshit.

Speaker 3 These companies, while Ford is trying to figure out how many times a windshield wiper comes across or not from Canada or Mexico and how to fucking build their business and estimate it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Trump is kneecapping them. Well, these guys.

Speaker 3 And then you have these guys that are just running flat out

Speaker 3 and just killing it, just literally running away.

Speaker 4 Why wouldn't they kill it? They have nothing in their way. Like they never have anything in their way.
Like Ford and GM and John Deere, they have things in their way. These guys have no obstacles.

Speaker 4 So, or they have no regulatory obstacles. They have no, like, they just buy their way into seamlessness, which is their favorite part.

Speaker 3 But think about, think about, this is what these guys do. They're like, okay,

Speaker 3 the two of them added $550 billion in market cap since 4 p.m. last night.

Speaker 3 Since they announced their earnings last night, they've added $550 billion

Speaker 3 in market capitalization. So

Speaker 3 they just added, oh, let's add Netflix. Let's add, I would imagine the French stock market.

Speaker 3 People don't get a sense of the skin.

Speaker 4 It's working for them.

Speaker 4 It's a machine.

Speaker 4 Anyway, speaking of things that aren't a machine, let's finish up. Novo Nordisk shares are plummeting after the company slashed its full-year guidance, citing weaker than expected U.S.

Speaker 4 growth for Ozempic, and Wogovi. The stock dropped 30% at one point on Tuesday, wiping out nearly $93 billion in market value.

Speaker 4 Novo Nordisk is blaming the downturn on increased competition from Eli Lillies, Munjaro, and Zeppbound, as well as, I think, more significantly cheaper GLP-1 knockoffs, which are not going away.

Speaker 4 They thought they were going away when the things got settled in terms of manufacturing.

Speaker 4 The company also named a new CEO, replacing previous CEO, who was ousted by the board in May as the stock was sliding. This is incredible.

Speaker 4 A product that is going to be so big and the company at the top of it is just losing it. This to me is just one of these amazing stories

Speaker 4 because of all kinds of pressures. Of course, competition was going to get in here.
It's only going to get bigger in the GLP1 market.

Speaker 4 But very quick thoughts on this, because it's the opposite here, right? An amazing opportunity that's been blown, I guess.

Speaker 3 Well, speaking of tariffs, the number one import into the United States from Europe is pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 3 And I said two years ago, and I was mocked for this, that I thought a more important technology in terms of on-the-ground change to society was not AI, it was GLP-1.

Speaker 3 And what's happened here is that because of a shortage and kind of a loophole, some companies have been able to offer compounded GLP-1, which is basically like saying generics.

Speaker 3 And HIM stock went crazy because they were able to basically sell GLP-1 drugs for a fraction of the price.

Speaker 3 And then, as you mentioned, Eli Lilly's GLP-1 offering Zeppbound is now more popular than Magovi. I absolutely love this.
I still think the category is going to grow like crazy.

Speaker 3 Only 8% of Americans have taken a GLP-1,

Speaker 3 but about a third of them are interested. I think if you want it, I think the most accretive thing you could do for our economy right now would be to offer

Speaker 3 access to GLP-1 drugs for everybody. I think if you look at the obesity industrial complex that wants people to buy a sugar bomb, eat shitty food, take advantage of the lowest calories to cost that

Speaker 3 people have to turn to in food deserts, and then hand these people over to the companies producing statins, hip replacements, knee replacements, kidney dialysis.

Speaker 3 They effectively, we are monetizing people's health, and so much of it is obesity related, especially the obesity-related healthcare costs. are one to one and a half trillion a year.

Speaker 3 So similar to what the equivalent of the FDA did in the UK, I think it's the UK Health Ministry, they said, if you are smoking, we'll send you for free an electronic electronic nicotine delivery service because while that is not good for you, it's much less bad for you than tobacco.

Speaker 3 I think over the medium and long term, if you really wanted to have an impact on healthcare costs, you would make GLP-1 drugs accessible to absolutely everybody.

Speaker 4 Correct. So, what did this company, which is the front forefront of it, do wrong?

Speaker 3 Well, the honest answer is: I don't know.

Speaker 3 I don't know if it's distribution or branding, but I would argue right now, it's a great value because this is, if not the market leader, one of the market leaders in what is an unbelievable business and category.

Speaker 3 And it's trading at a PE because it's been hammered because it's not performing well. Well, interesting.

Speaker 4 They did a deal with him and hers, right? And then they continued to sell the knockoffs. So then they got in a fight with him and hers, right? So him and hers was selling the knockoff.

Speaker 4 Then Novo Nordis did a deal with them. And then it fell apart because they were all the continued selling of the compounds, which need to be regulated, by the way,

Speaker 4 is really something that loophole really has, you know, these guys should have been riding off into the sunset because they kind of, but they don't because of these GLP1 knockoffs.

Speaker 4 It's fascinating that this is what got them, that they didn't anticipate this.

Speaker 3 The market has a tendency to overpunish and over-reward. And the momentum right now is against these guys.
So with their five-year average PE has been 33, it's been as high as 50.

Speaker 3 Today, it's going to open at 14.6.

Speaker 3 And when you think about the average S ⁇ P company trades at a PE of 26, to get the market leader, even though it is underperforming expectations in GLP1 at 14.6 times earnings, I actually think the stock is a buy right now, but there's no doubt about it.

Speaker 3 This is a national champion for Europe that is quote unquote faltering or not living up to the expectations. But I actually think the stock has been overpunished.

Speaker 3 And I have, of all the technologies of the last 10 years, the one I'm most excited about is GLP1.

Speaker 4 I think it's a game changer. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 In fact, in doing this secret documentary, one of the things that every doctor has said is I asked them what they think the most important developments to technology in pharmaceuticals, and they're always like mRNA vaccines.

Speaker 4 That's interesting.

Speaker 4 CRISPR, CRISPR, and GLP-1s. Everyone, they make,

Speaker 4 I don't know which one's more important. And they all mention GLP-1s on a range of things because it's just beginning.
We're beginning to understand it. I would agree with you.

Speaker 4 All right, we have to move on. One more quick break, but we'll be back for predictions.

Speaker 3 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.

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Speaker 4 Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. I have a very quick one, very quickly.
Kamala Harris announced this week she's not running for governor of California.

Speaker 4 She also revealed she's written a book about her campaign called 107 Days. I'm not so sure she's going to run for president.

Speaker 4 I didn't think, as I told you, I didn't think she was going to run for governor.

Speaker 4 I don't think she's going to run for president. I think she knows that she can't win and she has enough responsibility to understand that.
And

Speaker 4 so I predict she will also not run for president.

Speaker 3 Well, I'm good at running other people's lives.

Speaker 3 If I was the vice president, I would go be the chairman of a hedge fund, make a shit ton of money and just wait for the next Democratic administration and be a Supreme Court justice. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't think

Speaker 3 I don't think she needs the risk of potentially losing. I'm not sure she'd win governor.
And she just doesn't need that.

Speaker 4 She has to win by a lot if she wins, right? So if she even, if she wins and doesn't win by enough, she'll be, she'll be tart in that regard.

Speaker 3 And a lot of people describe California as ungovernable, that it's just that special interest groups are so entrenched.

Speaker 3 People say this is a, even, even Republican governors will say, I would not want that job, right? That it's a very difficult.

Speaker 3 I think I think it's the right move.

Speaker 4 I don't think she wanted to do it. I don't, I think she, as an executive, she didn't want, she didn't have the fire.
When I talked to her, you could tell like,

Speaker 4 it was like she's supposed to versus she wants to. So

Speaker 3 she's probably sick of running. I hope, I, I hope, yeah, I don't, I don't think she should.
And,

Speaker 3 and,

Speaker 3 you know, I thought she did a

Speaker 4 good try. She did.
She had a good try.

Speaker 3 Given the hand she was dealt, I think one of the greatest performances in history by any athlete or person, when I saw her walking into that debate with the president and the amount of pressure on her shoulders and the way she handled herself, I thought job.

Speaker 3 Great job. Yeah, she deserves a lot of credit for trying to run a U.S.-style race hamstrung by what was, you know, British election cycle.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
British election cycle time. I mean, she had what, 111 days or something to try to run.

Speaker 4 She had Biden hanging around.

Speaker 3 I hope she's happy. I don't, I don't know.

Speaker 4 I hope so, too. I think she's a, she's been a great public servant.
I just don't think she's going to remember. But she'll be,

Speaker 3 she's literally the first Supreme Court justice appointee of a Democratic presidency. She'll make

Speaker 3 a lot of work.

Speaker 4 That's a lot of work. Okay, what's your prediction very briefly?

Speaker 3 So each year I pick an IPO of the year, and that is an IPO I think it's going to do really well. Airbnb, last year it was Reddit.

Speaker 3 Today, I believe will be the IPO of the year. And I think that IPO is a company called Figma.
Figma. And it's a design company.
And I've been building these.

Speaker 3 My son's been trying to find a business and building these sites. And it is just so obvious that design is the salsa to the chip of all AI.

Speaker 3 And that is whenever AI returns anything, it just looks so, you know, anodyne,

Speaker 3 generic, just

Speaker 3 and if you look at designers,

Speaker 3 if you look at, for example, IBM used to hire one designer for every 70 programmers, now it's now it's one to 10. Design is a booming field and seems to be somewhat so far immune from AI.

Speaker 3 And Figma is essentially this kind of collaborative software company. It's for design.

Speaker 3 The thing that got me looking at it was my partner at PropG, Catherine Dillon, who is a professor of the visual arts at TISH, or professor of the arts, teaches a very popular course called Design Language.

Speaker 3 And the first thing she does for her students is she asks them to download Figma.

Speaker 3 And this company, so there's this thing called the rule of 40 in SAS, and that is you take your growth rate plus your profit margins.

Speaker 3 The rule of 40 for Figma, its profit margin is around 20% 20% and its growth issue was 44%, giving it a rule of 40 of 64, which puts it in the top five of SaaS companies.

Speaker 3 And just to give you a sense of how profitable and how economically efficient this company is, Uber spent $21 billion

Speaker 3 between 2009 and 2021. Figma has raised $750 million, but has $1.5 billion on its balance sheet, meaning that

Speaker 3 it has accreted $750 million. It works with between seven and eight of the 10 of every Fortune 2000 companies.
Adobe is sort of the Mercedes, a little bit overengineered,

Speaker 3 an amazing company. They have responded with competition with Adobe Express because Figma is known as being more collaborative.
But Figma is a little bit easier to use.

Speaker 3 Figma, I think, is more like Toyota. It's going out at 18 times revenues.
And the most interesting, I think, think about this is this was the IPO that wasn't supposed to happen.

Speaker 3 And this IPO, which I think will offer investors an opportunity to invest in a great company, more competition, corporations will be able to have better products for a lower price.

Speaker 4 It's great that Adobe didn't get it. I thought that was a great move by the government.

Speaker 3 That's exactly right. And we'll come back to that.

Speaker 4 $20 billion valuation right now.

Speaker 3 Also, from an employee standpoint, we're worried, you know, obviously about employees.

Speaker 3 When companies are acquired, generally speaking, within a year, 18% of the employees have left of the company that was acquired.

Speaker 3 When a company goes public, usually they hire, increase their hiring in year one of 23%.

Speaker 3 And the reason this company is going public is not because of our antitrust, not because of our regulation, but because of EU antitrust, which blocked this merger.

Speaker 3 So while we're sitting on our hands, letting companies concentrate power and become, create a less competitive market, the EU regulator said, no, this makes no sense to take the numbers one and two player and let them, let, you know, let the upstart.

Speaker 3 Figma is sort of to Adobe, what AI is to search. Adobe's still going to be an amazing business, but this is the new stuff.
These guys are kind of the new guys. And the EU blocked this.

Speaker 3 And as a result, Figma got a breakup fee of a billion dollars.

Speaker 4 It's just, it's still shy of the Adobe deal, but in terms of creating more billionaires, in terms of creating more economic value for people, this is the right way to go, as you're saying.

Speaker 3 Anyways, my prediction is the following. So as yesterday, I was literally calling everybody I could to try and get shares in this thing for the IPO.

Speaker 3 Typically, they want to build a book of somewhere between eight and 12 times demand. And the way it works is institutions call and say, I want a million shares.

Speaker 3 And they always vastly overestimate how much they want because any decent IPO,

Speaker 3 you're going to get cut back, right? You're going to get trimmed back. So you put in an overallocation.

Speaker 3 A really good IPO builds a book of eight to 12 times the request for the number of outstanding shares or the shares being issued. I found out yesterday that Figma was 40x oversubscribed.

Speaker 3 And if you look at the companies going out this year, not only have IPOs, there's been fewer of of them, but the companies that have performed well are what I call, it's not that they're not great companies, it's that they're fashionable, like Chime or Circle, like stable coin shit.

Speaker 3 This is, in my opinion, a real company that's a great company that's killing it, that has amazing economics, great products. We haven't had many of those, if any, this year.

Speaker 3 So anyways, my prediction is the following. Always dangerous to make predictions about stocks.
This is not financial advice, but this is what I have been trying to do.

Speaker 3 I have been trying my damnedest to try and find shares in this thing because I think the first trade today, I think this thing closes up monstrously today.

Speaker 3 And we're recording on a Thursday morning, but I think, yeah, Figma is what I'll call the first great company to go public in 2025.

Speaker 3 And I think it's going to be seen as one of the better IPOs of the year. I'm really excited about this company.
And also, it's a lesson on the importance of antitrust and regulation. Who wins here?

Speaker 3 More employment. Investors have an opportunity to invest in a Pure Play, amazing company.
Corporations, more competition, more tax revenue. And thank you, EU.

Speaker 3 They actually said, no, this is not a good idea. We would be better with two great companies, not one here.
And as a result, this company is now going public.

Speaker 3 It was supposed to be acquired two and a half years ago for $20 billion. It was going to be acquired for 50 times revenues, but now investors will get a chance to invest at about 18 times revenues.

Speaker 3 So this is just a win-win-win.

Speaker 4 Win-win-win. And I hope you got shares, Professor Go.
Anyway, thank you. That's an excellent prediction.
I love that one. We want to hear from you.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 4 Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe this week, this week on Prof D Conversation, Scott was with Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of the Ezra Klein Show. Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 7 What's not working is the Democratic Party being leaderless and rudderless.

Speaker 7 I'm not shocked that at the moment, if you ask people in a poll who they'd vote for, like they don't really know what to say, like which Democrat, what do they know about them?

Speaker 3 But the Democratic Party is in a pretty shattered place.

Speaker 7 And so one of the reasons the Democratic Party is very unpopular right now is Democrats do not like it.

Speaker 7 Now, those people are not going to vote Republican, but they are pissed off at the Democratic Party, which has to them been ineffectual, which has to them been unable to stop the worst of what Trump is doing, which has to them not come up with a message or come up with a set of leaders.

Speaker 3 Ezra's the kind of guy that wants to talk to you about his mushroom micro-dosing, but first asks if he can share his screen.

Speaker 4 That was a good interview. He's really smart.
He's really smart. I don't agree with him on everything, but he's really smart.

Speaker 4 Now, Scott, the time has come. The time has come.
You usually get testy by this time of year, but Scott-Free August is upon us.

Speaker 3 It is.

Speaker 4 It is upon us. I think you're like happier this year.
You usually get real testy and like

Speaker 3 I'm in a good place. I think it's Ezra klein every time i listen to ezra klein it's like listening to a meditation app describing the the collapse of democracy

Speaker 3 um but how much are you gonna miss me scott how much are you gonna miss me really a lot a little i don't miss anybody i miss people when i see them like i saw you come back you're always kidding to see me stopping i miss my boys those are the only people i've ever missed in my life okay you miss me what i do though are you this way i don't miss people and then i see them and i think oh i miss them it was like good to see them i miss when you're not there but we have some amazing co-hosts coming up, guest co-hosts.

Speaker 4 Mel Robbins, Let Them Lady, who's amazing. She has one of the top podcasts.
Anthony Scaramucci, who was a big hitter last year, is coming back. Rachel Maddow is coming and being replacing you, Scott.

Speaker 4 And I feel like, you know, things could happen.

Speaker 3 Rachel Maddow. Rachel Mattow and more.
Isn't it weird? People want to replace me, but they don't want to be on with me. Like our guest quality goes up so dramatically.

Speaker 4 When you're not there,

Speaker 3 people are like, yeah, I'm fine to replace him because I know I'll do better. It's a low bar, but no one wants to come on.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Secretary Clinton is going to be Jessica's co-host at Raging Monerates when I'm gone.

Speaker 4 Oh, that's great. Yeah, I know.
It's just amazing. Do you have any advice for these folks at all while you're away?

Speaker 3 Just a lot of lesbian jokes. Just

Speaker 3 that's that's my go-to. By the way, if you listen to Ezra Klein's podcast on one and a half speed,

Speaker 3 it's like listening to

Speaker 3 a normal person describe how to ruin a dinner party. Okay, all right.

Speaker 4 Any advice for co-hosts? Just lesbian jokes?

Speaker 3 A little nod to the dog and a totally profane,

Speaker 3 not that funny, but because it's profane and not that funny, it's a funny joke. It's just the left, all of these people,

Speaker 3 these people are somewhat left of the head of HR from the National Park Service.

Speaker 3 So our job on this podcast is to grab humor back for the progressives. So be inappropriate, show some humor.
We're all going to be dead soon.

Speaker 3 Whoever you offend will get over it. Let them own that emotion and just have some fun.
Have a great day.

Speaker 4 People will miss you. Anyway, I do.
I always miss you. I always wonder what you think of things.
So I'm excited for you to get back in September.

Speaker 3 I'm not. Here's the answer.
I'm not. Occasionally people make the mistake of going, what are you thinking? And I'm like, I'm not.
What am I thinking about?

Speaker 4 You know, like things happen. And like, we'll catch up when you get back and stuff like that.
And I will, I will, I will somehow come back. I'm going to stay at your apartment while you're away.

Speaker 4 Anyway,

Speaker 4 that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Speaker 4 I'll be back next week with a special co-host and they will do their best to replace Scott, but nobody can replace the irreplaceable Scott Galloway. Scott, read us out.

Speaker 3 Today's show is produced by Larry Naiman Zoyne Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Intertod Engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms. Averio, and Dan Shallon.

Speaker 3 Nishak Kura 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.

Speaker 3 You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 3 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a wonderful August and

Speaker 3 thanks for continuing to bring great work. And at some point, I trust you will take a long weekend or something.
Anyways, have a great August, everybody.

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Speaker 1 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com.
That's odoo.com.

Speaker 8 Nobody knows your customers better than your team, so give them the power to make standout content with Adobe Express.

Speaker 8 Brand kits make following design rules a breeze, and Adobe quality templates make it easy to create pro-looking flyers, social posts, presentations, and more.

Speaker 8 You don't have to be a designer to edit campaigns, resize ads, and translate content. Anyone can in a click.
And collaboration tools put feedback right where you need it.

Speaker 8 See how you can turn your team into a content machine with Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content. Learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business.

Speaker 3 What do walking 10,000 steps every day, eating five servings of fruits and veggies, and getting eight hours of sleep have in common? They're all healthy choices.

Speaker 3 But do all healthier choices really pay off? With prescription plans from CVS Caremark, they do.

Speaker 3 Their plan designs give your members more choice, which gives your members more ways to get on, stay on, and manage their meds.

Speaker 3 And that helps your business control your costs, because healthier members are better for business. Go to cmk.co slash access to learn more about helping your members stay adherent.

Speaker 3 That's cmk.co slash acc.