Epstein Distractions, Columbia’s Big Check, and Tesla Underwhelms

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My thoughts are that you've never heard a heterosexual woman use the term bearing wall.

I was with a group of women last night that used terms like fractal laser, brow lift, cagles, but no, I've never heard a straight woman use the term bearing wall.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Scott, I'm in San Francisco, my beloved San Francisco today.

Oh, really?

Why are you there?

More filming.

I ate cell-created salmon yesterday.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's that.

Well, good for you.

And what does that supposedly do for you?

Well, it's just the idea that we have to have healthier foods, and they're trying to do all kinds of really interesting lab experiments on how to create food.

How do we feed the world in a healthy way to make them live longer?

We give poor people more money.

That's correct.

That's the other way to do it.

But there's not enough.

There's my virtue signaling kicking in.

Anyway, it's got to be.

Where are you right now?

I'm in Chicago.

I'm at the Soho House, Chicago.

Oh, wow.

You're like at one fantastic hotel after the next.

Yeah, the Soho House is always just a decent plan B.

My son is coming, my 14-year-old, you know, once a year I try and take a...

trip with them just solo and I tell them they can go wherever they want and he picked Chongchoi I guess some city in China that's supposed to be something out of a video game.

And I said, okay, I can't do that.

And then he said, Chicago.

He's never been to Chicago.

So we have a great 14-year-old day tomorrow.

Tonight we're going to Gibson's, which is supposed to be the best steakhouse in the world.

Tomorrow we're going to, for breakfast, to have the, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the deepest dish pizza in the world for breakfast.

And then we're going, of course, to the McDonald's Museum, or as I like to call it, the Museum of Colorectal Cancer.

It's actually cool.

It's actually cool.

I'm sure.

And then we do what every 14-year-old must do in every city.

We're going to the tallest building to look at the rest of the city, going to the observation deck.

May I make some suggestions?

One thing I would suggest, I know this sounds crazy, but he would love it.

There's an architectural tour on the river.

I did it a month ago with my older son.

It's great.

We're going to do bikes instead along the river.

That's great.

And of course, get yourself a wiener.

I've got one.

Her name's Karen.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

You meant a

Chicago dog.

Yeah, you can go to, there's lots of places.

Obviously, the famous one is Wiener Circle, which we almost went to, but there's a bunch of them right, probably where you're staying right there.

I didn't know you, I didn't realize you knew so much about Chicago.

I love Chicago.

I love Chicago.

It's one of my favorite places.

And Louie had a summer program there, a cooking.

There's a cooking school there.

And so I went and got, I've spent a lot of time in Chicago.

I have a lot of friends.

And oh, I'm being interviewed by David Pogue today

somewhere talking about how do we reinvigorate the tech scene in Chicago.

Oh, which I've given a lot of thought to because I take my speaking engagements very seriously.

Are you hanging out with the Obamas?

The Obamas live here?

No, I don't think they do.

They're from there.

Sometimes they do.

I think they're there.

Sometimes he's in the middle of stuff.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

Anyway, that's great.

Where are you going next?

Where's your next situation?

I go to Manhattan on Saturday.

And then you see me.

Oh,

oh, yeah.

And I'm excited about it.

What are we putting in?

We're doing it.

Aren't we like injecting the cells of some small Indian boy from a remote village thinking it'll make us younger again?

Yes, that's hard.

No, it's hard to do.

I'm going to have thick black hair and start doing better on the SAT.

That is so racist in so many ways.

It's terrible, but it's awful.

It's just awful.

I spoke at the Aspen Institute yesterday.

Speaking of like, I could not be any wider right now.

Where did I go?

I am translucent.

Oh, are you?

What do you mean?

No, I have never seen an auditorium full of more 60-year-old men and 58-year-old women trying trying to keep them on the porch by doing Pilates 11 times a day.

God, it's literally

the festival.

Is it the five?

Aspen might as well be sponsored by Aloe and Lululemon.

And it's like, do any of these women wear anything but athleisure?

Oh my God, you totally nailed it.

Yeah, it's really

true.

Is that the festival?

Did you go to the festival?

We were supposed to do it together, and I declined.

I want to go every year.

It's like there's a few things I want to do every year, and they always come in weird times.

I never never end up doing them.

The Aspen Festival, for some reason, comes at a weird time.

It's the end of the kids' school year.

Every year I plan to go to Burning Man.

My criteria are very simple.

I want to camp with a chef and tons of Russian hookers, and those exist.

But it comes at a weird time because that's the beginning of the kids' school year.

And the other one is every year I plan to go to the Milken Institute, and it

comes at a weird time.

Oh, and then you don't.

And Aspen Festival, too.

They wanted us to do live pivot there.

And someday we'll do it.

Well, you always say, no, I'm not going.

Why would I go there?

Why would I I do that?

I'm going to be dead soon.

Why would I do that?

We get asked, just for people to know, we get asked a whole lot by people to come to do a live pivot in different places.

Scott, I always am like, oh, sure, because I love spending time with Scott.

And Scott's always like, why should I do that?

Are they going to bring me something, a large pile of money or whatever it happens to be, whatever you want.

You know, okay, hold on.

It's not because you want to spend time with me.

It's because you have no sense of the finite nature of life and health.

And you're like a carry-on bag.

It's easy for you to travel.

When I travel, it means lower back pain and i i bang my head on an overhead i can't sleep i end up taking xanax and up till four in the morning thinking about the series of bad decisions that led me to a place where nobody loves me that's how i start thinking you need to put some aloe on in lululemon that's what needs to happen yeah that's i need athleisure yeah those people have a good life i guess if that's the life you want to have anyway oh my god i know but i don't

i totally don't envy them though i have to say i don't oh really

i wouldn't i think they've got it figured out

I don't want to be a good person.

I don't want anybody to do that.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

No, it just seems empty.

Yeah, but as far as empty, meaningless experiences go, it's pretty good.

That's true.

That's true.

It's better than a lot of empty experiences.

It's like sex with strange women.

It's like a series of empty, meaningless experiences that are pretty good as far as empty, meaning, meaningless experiences go.

I'm Chicago.

I need to find a men's room and get in trouble and start a scandal here.

I have a wide stance.

I have a wad stance.

But you know what?

I'm not even going to get head from some stranger at O'Hare.

I'm going to do it at Midway.

I'm going to do it at Midway just to bring the whole brand down.

Bankoff will say, okay, if you'd had

performed illicit acts at O'Hare, I would have gotten it.

But Midway, that's a bridge too far.

That's a bridge too far.

My life and Wayne in Midway last year.

We've got a lot to get to today, including Trump's AI action plan and Tesla and Alphabet's earnings.

But first, Elon Musk was right.

Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.

Not a really big surprise, but Trump was reportedly informed by A.G.

Pam Bondi back in May that his name appears multiple times in the files, probably quite a lot, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Bondi says nothing warranted further investigation or prosecution.

Another Epstein news.

The federal judge in Florida denied a DOJ request to release the grand jury transcripts.

Of course, the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena the DOJ for Epstein files hours before the House adjourned for early for its summer recess.

Mike Johnson did this on purpose, so they didn't have to keep voting on the Epstein situation.

Nothing to see here.

Go ahead.

Nothing to see here.

Let's close down the store.

The committee has subpoenaed Epstein associate Jelaine Maxwell.

Of course, it's another, you know, very performative thing with the number two person at the Justice Department is taking his time to go talk to her probably today.

We're going to get to Trump's latest distraction maneuvers in a minute, which got talked about.

And boy, did he land a big one,

another bearing wall of the MAGA movement around President Obama.

But let's first talk about where things stand with Trump and Epstein.

Is there anything that he can do to stop the drip, drip at this point?

Is it an opportunity for Democrats?

And

we'll go through the, if you want to go to those distractions first, distractions is one way, but what else?

And then we'll get to the distractions.

I think it's already underway.

I think somebody has communicated to Delaney Maxwell in prison that if she exonerates the president, she'll get a pardon by the end of his term.

I think it's already underway.

It makes it worse, though, right?

Correct?

Doesn't that make it even more?

I don't know.

I think his base, I think if she quote unquote, I mean, think about how ridiculous this is.

All of a sudden, they've decided they might want to speak to Jelaine Maxwell.

I mean, think about it.

That just dawned on the Attorney General's office that maybe they should go speak to her.

So it's been, in my opinion, just logic has said, okay, if you provide us with information or credible information or just basically say he had, he was there, but

make it believable, like he was there, but he never engaged in anything like that.

Before the end of the term, wink, wink, you're going to be back in Long Island or wherever she's from.

I just don't.

And will it get worse?

I don't know.

His base seems to want,

I can't,

I don't feel as if I really understand his base at all.

And I've been more wrong on this than right, and you've been more right on this than wrong.

So I'll throw it back to you.

What do you think is going on here?

I think he's not going away.

I think he'll, he's, he's sort of, I think the Obama thing, which we'll talk about in a second, is the smart one, because if there's two things this group is enamored with, which is that there was a Russian hoax to stop, you know, that the election was stolen.

But I'm not sure which one is a bigger bearing wall for this group, the Epstein stuff or this.

And they're intertwined in the idea of a deep state.

So it's hard to know if this one will work, and especially when it's being led by such an idiot like Chelsea Gabbard.

Let's talk about these distractions.

You said last week we tracked his attempts to distract the public and media from Epstein.

Let's go into what he's been up to, most of which is pointless and doesn't work, taking credit for Stephen Colbert's cancellation and sending a warning to the view.

I think that's a nothing burger.

Threatening to block a deal for the Washington Commanders' new stadium if the team doesn't go back to their old name.

I'm not even sure he can do that.

Another nothing burger.

Releasing over 230,000 pages of files related to MLK's assassination again.

I think that came and went.

Visiting the Federal Reserve, another came and went.

They're also proposing to rename the Kennedy Center's Opera House after Melania Trump.

I don't even understand that.

But the one that seems to be the big one is Trump accusing former President Barack Obama of committing treason, claiming he rigged the 2016 election, which is also, as I said, a bearing wall of the MAGA movement's conspiracy theories.

Trump told reporters in the Obal office this week that it's time to go after people calling out Obama, Biden, Comey, and others.

He cited declassified materials recently released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which seemed to fall apart on initial scrutiny.

Gabbard says the documents detail a years-long coup by Obama's intelligence officials against Trump.

Obama is finally pushing back.

I actually talked to

people with him, and I was like, are you finally going to say something?

Because I told you he was coming here.

His spokesman described Trump's comments as bizarre allegations and called this a ridiculous and weak attempt at distraction.

I think it's not a weak attempt.

I think it's actually a strong attempt at distraction and probably the only one that has any legs.

Your thoughts, Scott?

You were 100% right about all these distractions, of course.

My thoughts are that you've never heard a heterosexual woman use the term bearing wall.

I was with a group of women last night that used terms like fractal laser, brow lift, cagles.

But no, I've never heard a straight woman use the term

bearing wall.

I mean, could you be a bigger lesbian?

I'm in San Francisco, and every metaphor is a construction term.

Bearing wall.

Well, you got my point, didn't you?

Did I make my point?

No, it makes sense.

It's

why you are who you are.

Lean into it.

Lean into it.

You like you.

Foundation.

Foundation.

I think Obama, I would have thought Obama was nearly bulletproof.

Again, these distractions are becoming so, they're so ridiculous.

And yet every day I turn on CNBC or CNN or Fox, and they're just going for it.

They're like, wherever he takes us, we'll take the bait.

I would have thought that Obama at this point, these types of allegations would only, I don't know, hurt, undermine his credibility.

I think on this stuff,

you just get it more than I do.

You think this is going to work or you think that it's going to be in the short-term effect?

I don't know.

I do think it's the right one if you're looking for a distraction.

That's all I'm saying.

It's the right distraction because I don't think anyone cares about JFK anymore.

I think some people do.

I don't think anyone cares about MLK.

I don't think anyone cares about Melania Trump or

the commanders.

He's not going to follow through.

And I don't think his fights with Rosie O'Donnell or The View or whatever matter.

I don't think this animates these people.

What does animate these people is the rigging of the 2016 election?

This does satisfy them, it scratches their itch.

And I don't know if it scratches their itch more than Epstein.

That's the thing that I don't, I'm not sure which one animates them more.

They like to let Trump off the hook, that's for sure.

So, yeah, it's, I mean, I'm waiting for what the next distraction at some point is going to release a sex tape of him and Charlie Kirk.

Ew,

say my name, Chuck.

Oh, say my name.

He's now in my head.

Teeing up.

Hole number four.

Five heads.

Bearing wall.

I don't got a lot going on today.

I don't have a lot of insight, so I'm going very dirty.

I don't know.

Look, this is no, okay.

These guys are kept in the same cloth.

My Tesla earnings are fucked, so I'm going to launch a diner.

I mean, the art of distraction here, as Don Draper once told a client, if you don't like what's being said, change the conversation.

And this is the mother of all that.

Every day, and I've said this before, I think there are three or four, they have great communications people in a room with AI saying with this massive prompt around something that's that doesn't, the maximum amount of distraction to the minimum amount of damage to Trump and maximum amount of damage to his enemies.

So the Obama thing, AI came back and said, accuse Obama of being involved in the Russia hoax.

This is all brought to you by AI.

And every day it's the same thing.

Look over here.

This is the term I use is we're at the Nuremberg trials and someone on trial whips out the kazoo hoping that everyone forgets why exactly we're there and what they did.

And it's not working.

I feel as if these things are creating a lot of noise, but maybe they are a bit of a distraction, but it feels like everyone is, you know, that the general public, including Republicans, it's like a dog on a soup bone.

They're just not letting it go.

On this, on the Epstein, because it is also part and parcel of the same conspiracy theories.

i just interviewed uh uh doni from cnn and julie kay brown who actually broke the original epstein uh she's the miami reporter miami reporter who did that and one of the things that she's the hero in all of those she is she is and she's been banging away at this for years and one of the things she did say though is that things i mean doni from cnn is amazing he covers conspiracy theories he's like he he couldn't tell which one will work but this these two are intertwined this idea of a deep state right that's at the heart of both of these conspiracy theories essentially is that there's a deep state there's a cabal there's a group there's always a cabal it has you know in the epstein case which i hadn't thought of it had vague anti-semitic attacks because epstein was jewish and um there's all kinds of that idea israel is in there and different things like that i think trump has to be very careful about what he does around julaine maxwell right because if he lets her off or if there's any hint that he's letting her off he looks like he's been taken in the other thing he's got to watch out for is that he's relying on Tulsi Gabbard, who's such a sloppy, terrible national intelligence head.

The stuff she's putting out is so easily provably wrong that it creates strength.

I do think it's to the press should take whatever they're saying seriously and look into it no matter what, right?

Okay, let's show us the stuff.

We're going to do the reporting.

And then likely overturn it, right?

But I don't think it does any,

even if it's coming from a clown like Tulsi Gabbard, it's not something the press shouldn't say, okay, you're saying this, let's go through it.

Just like they did with the drawing,

et cetera.

It's like, okay, you say you don't draw, you draw, right?

That kind of stuff.

Just do reporting on all this stuff.

I do think Epstein has longer legs than anything, even this stolen election stuff.

I think they are just, it has so many elements of what works in a conspiracy theory.

I don't know about Obama.

You're right.

I thought he was untouchable.

I thought he should have said something way before this and weakened Trump long ago, as you know.

But he's going to now be on his back foot on this stuff.

Because how do you push, you know, when did you, when did you stop beating your wife, sir, kind of thing.

Yeah, force him to deny it.

But just the only thing, the only wrinkle I would add or nuance is that.

I think the fix is already in.

I think someone has already communicated to Jelaine Maxwell that if she says she's going to have to give testimony and it's going to be on the record.

And if by chance the truth comes out that the president was a friend but was not involved in any of this, that who knows what might happen by the end of your term, wink, wink.

And at the end of his term, at Trump's term, when he pardons Jillian Maxwell, which I think is going to happen after she gives, after she lies and says he was not involved in anything, he's an obese octogenarian who has no love in his life.

That, generally speaking, means you're going to die soon.

I think biology is going to take care of Donald Trump.

I said the most dangerous person in the world was Peter Thiel.

But anyways,

I don't think he cares.

I think the fix is already in.

And what are they going to do to the guy when he's 83 and they're like, oh my God, he's pardoned Jelaine Maxwell and this is outrageous.

What the fuck is he going to care?

Why would he care?

Yep, that's an excellent point.

The fix is already in.

He's got

why have they all of a sudden figured out it'd be a good idea to talk to Jelaine Maxwell?

One is because she committed perjury, I believe, and she also has not really.

I mean, one of the things that Julie was pointing out, and I think quite correctly, is Julianne Maxwell is as culpable as Epstein in this.

She was an equal predator to him, though, you know, he had the dramatic death, but she was part and parcel to this pair that, you know, the Bonnie and Clyde and pedophiles, essentially.

And she was just as culpable.

And so I think letting her off will

is a little stronger than that, because she's not like some bystander.

She has not cooperated.

She has not said things.

She's been found to lie.

I think letting her off will stick to Trump in a way that maybe is not.

I don't think he cares.

I think you're right.

If you're 83 and about to die and all you got is maybe seven more rounds of golf, what the fuck do you care what sticks to you or what doesn't?

All he cares about is getting off this topic right now.

That's it.

What would be a strong distraction?

Any ideas?

Oh, gosh, I have no idea.

I mean, I did not see we can't change the name to the Washington Commanders coming.

I didn't see.

I mean, the most ridiculous trade deal, by the way, the trade deal with Japan is

we've absolutely ceded advantage to Japanese automakers.

On the announcement of this new quote-unquote big framework, Japanese automakers soared 12 to 18 percent.

They're desperate to just do anything.

I think it'll mostly his biggest weapon right now, because it gets a lot of attention, is something around Powell, something around tariffs.

But you're right.

If he comes up with three or four new accusations each day

the Obamas,

um, yeah, because Clinton doesn't can't really beat that horse anymore, right?

The Clinton mission.

The Hillary emails, I don't, I think even they are.

I think Hillary's, I think Obama's a much better target for him in that regard.

Uh, we'll see if it works, though, because Obama's got his own skills.

Let's just say, anyway, okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

We come back, Elon's warning after Tesla's disappointing earnings.

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Scott, we're back with more news.

Time for a quick roundup of earnings.

First up, Tesla.

Elon Musk said Tesla could, quote, probably have a few rough quarters, unquote, you think, Elon.

After the company's latest earnings, the Musk company reported a 16% year-over-year decline in automotive revenue, which is hard because it's an automotive company.

Adjusted net income fell 23% to $1.4 billion.

It makes Twitter look like a great business.

Sales of Model Y and Model 3 fell 12%, and Cybertruck sales fell 52%.

I mean, that's gone right through the crown.

I'll just mention the others.

Alphabet's overall revenue grew 14% year over year, but the company increased its capital expenditures forecast by $10 billion, citing demand for its cloud products.

Revenue for Alphabet's cloud computing business increased 32%.

That was impressive.

Finally, I had a many year ago discussion with Sundar Pachai about why they're not in the cloud computing business as much as they were.

a long time ago.

And they seem to be right there.

They're all pushed by, obviously, AI and stuff.

For For GM, the auto company said his profits fell by more than a third in the second quarter due to tariffs costing the company over a billion.

And as Scott pointed out,

that it's going to get hit further with this Japanese deal.

Scott, any thoughts on any of these?

Well, you covered the, I mean, Tesla's earnings, again,

no automobile company in the world trades at a PE of $180 and has a trillion-dollar market cap.

And at the same time, their revenues are declining faster than any automobile company in the world.

And Musk knows those two do not stay in unison for very long.

At some point, he either has to massively reignite growth or the stock is going to crash.

And it feels like the merger of some sort.

Or say XAI or announcing a diner or we're not a car company.

We're doing robots.

The fact that he opened this diner just days before these earnings came out is, again, no accident.

I'm not exaggerating.

48 hours ago when it came out, I said to Ed Elson on Property Markets, I said, that means he's about to puke on the earnings call and he's trying to get everyone to look away.

Their revenues are down 12%.

The bright spot was their services or their supercharging station.

But this thing's trading at a trillion dollar valuation and

it's declining faster than renewal.

I mean, there's no car company in the world that's posting these numbers this bad.

On a more meta level, I think what's happened here, I think 2025 will be the year that

late night TV turned out the lights.

And also, I think this is the year where we kind of officially seed anything resembling leadership, the automotive industry.

I think the automotive industry industry now in the U.S.

is on a kind of the green mile death march.

And what do you have?

You have our national champion, Tesla, which was worth more than the rest of the automobile industry combined, starting to throw up.

And they released the worst product, car product of the year, the Cybertruck.

They're grasping at Strasbourg right now, saying we're AI, we're this.

So that is a huge blow to the American automobile industry because Tesla was the national champion.

And then the traditional player, General Motors, just announced that their earnings were taken down by a billion billion dollars because of tariffs.

And then you have Japanese car companies.

I love that Trump announces it's a big victory that they won't charge any tariffs on our cars going into Japan.

Okay, let's just talk about what a give that is.

We buy about $54 billion of the Japanese cars in the U.S.

Do you know how many, do you know the dollar volume of cars the Japanese buy from US?

$26.

$2 billion.

Right.

What is it?

A few Japanese billionaires buy escalates.

That's it.

We don't sell.

The Japanese want nothing to do with our cars.

This trade agreement is going to keep flat or lower the tariffs coming to the U.S.

So what do you have?

You have more pressure from amazing manufacturers, specifically Japanese manufacturers.

You have our national champion going into the shitter.

And you have our old guard, General Motors, announcing that these tariffs are really hurting them.

And then if you want validation of just how bad this deal is for America, the ultimate neutral arbiter that absorbs millions of points of lights and is not politicized, it's totally focused on fear and greed as the markets.

And what happened in the market when these tariffs, this Japanese big, beautiful deal, was announced yesterday?

Toyota was up 16 or 17 percent.

Right, right, as usual.

And he's made it worse.

He's made it worse.

If he's talking about protecting manufacturing here, he's decided not to protect them, actually, making it worse for them.

What about Alphabet?

Staggering.

And I'm talking my own book here.

Every year I make a big tech stock pick, and it's based on valuation.

And okay, the existential threat, you know, quote unquote, search is being undermined by AI.

Search revenue, search revenue grew 12%.

This quote-unquote technology that's supposedly being disrupted by AI, it grew double digits.

YouTube up 13%,

cloud up 32%.

They have five different businesses

that could be

independent companies.

And they have search, an unbelievable display ad network, YouTube, subscriptions, and seven products that have over 2 billion users: search, maps, Gmail, Android, Chrome, Play Store, and YouTube.

And now their new growth vehicle is Waymo, which is by far the most dominant autonomous player with more than 100 million total miles logged on on public roads.

In addition, this company trades at, I think the average S P company trades at a PE multiple of 26.

So Google, which is growing faster than the S P, much faster and has these incredible, incredible leadership, is cheaper than the average SP company.

And pick your average S P company.

I always say it's Dow Chemical or PNG.

Great companies.

Call them the average.

Would you rather have autonomous and YouTube than

hide?

I mean, this company relative, the existential threat or the overhang of the existential threat of AI has been vastly exaggerated at Alphabet.

And then if you look at the IP they have and the investments they're making, and

they announced massive capex here that, you know, they're just going to, they're going to, they're like, we're going to get there just on money.

They've announced that they're increasing their capex up to 85 billion from 75.

Microsoft is at 80.

Meta is between 64 and 72.

And Amazon is up to 100 billion.

But if you want to talk about CapEx going into AI, you know, a lot of Amazon CapEx goes into boring shit, like, you know, like distribution centers and planes and things.

So what do you have?

You have unbelievable businesses that continue to grow.

You have

probably some of the deepest IP around AI.

You have a cloud business growing 33% a year and a company that's trading at a lower multiple than the S ⁇ P.

So I'm very bullish.

I would agree.

One of the things

everyone focuses so much on Mark Zuckerberg overpaying for talent.

I would look at Google.

I think he's going to maybe blow the money in that regard in terms of catching up.

He thinks he can do it by this brute force.

research, essentially.

Are you talking about Sunder or Mark Zero?

Sundar is quietly, he has a lot of businesses to pull levers on, as you note.

And I think they have a better story than the sort of flashy jazz hands version that Meta is doing, which is stealing talent all over the place.

Look,

Cinder is,

I've been thinking a lot about, they asked me at this thing last night, who should run for president or who he's actually as president.

And I said, I think competence, we're entering an age where competence and the amount of press you get are inversely correlated.

And that is, I think one of the most accretive actions for the quality of life of Americans would be a president like Michael Bennett, who lacks the charisma to be in your face and in the news cycle every day.

I think I spend easily an hour a day thinking about or having Trump rent free in my brain.

And I hate to admit it, but just a competent, you know, good governance is really fucking boring and doesn't get headlines.

And really competent leaders don't feel a need to be attention merchants and want you to have time to focus on your kids and your relationships and making money.

And Sundar Prachai is that kind of CEO.

He's not out there like musk or

even.

Yeah.

They're just like, I'm just going to do the boring shit that moves the needle.

I don't need press.

I don't need to be in your face every day.

I don't need to virtue signal and talk about not working with this company.

You know, these guys aren't, these guys aren't jonesing for the camera every fucking day or in your face every day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was like, shut the fuck up.

And you don't, you see a Sundar not doing that.

You see Asacha not doing that.

I mean, they give interviews, but it's very typical, right?

It's the typical, rather than the sort of jazz hands performative stuff.

Do you remember during COVID when we did those series of specials, special webinars or podcasts, and Sundar came on?

Yeah.

I think his kid was coming in the room.

He kept looking over and like waving people off.

Kid or his comms person saying,

get off of the Bering Wall, bitch.

She's going to make us look back.

You're going to use, let me just tell you, maybe prediction, your next appearance in Aspen with the ladies of Aloe, you'll use the word bearing wall, I swear to God.

100%.

You know, you you are.

You've said it so much, you're like, oh, that was good.

They love their app, and they're like, oh, why won't the Democrats listen to you?

And I'm like, well, hello, what's your name?

I think we have the same dermatologist.

Let's go to San Ambrose.

Would you like to take a hike with me tomorrow?

No, no one wants to take a hike with you.

And you don't hike.

I can't imagine you hiking, but okay.

I'm young and good looking for Aspen.

Most of the guys there are literally like too much time in the sun.

You made a lot of money, but you didn't spend enough on Sunblock.

Those guys.

Anyway, speaking of which, Elon's XAI is working to raise up to twelve billion dollars in debt for a massive supply of nvidia chips to help train and power grog valor equity partners whose founder has close ties to musk has been working with lenders secure capital to lease the chips for the company this is a big play first of all musk doesn't partner with anybody like open ai and the and uh and and uh and the others anthropic uh secondly they're losing 13 billion dollars It's like crazy how much money this thing is losing and almost no revenues.

And they're raising the money.

And by the way, speaking of which is money-making thing over at SpaceX, paperwork sent to investors discussing a tender offer included an interesting risk factor that Elon Musk may return to politics.

This feels like.

I love that.

I hope so.

He's running on the hot topic ticket.

I know, but one of the things is this is a lot.

The $13 billion he's raising 12.

I mean, it's always good to bet on Elon, but I was like, this guy's a high wire act of all high wire acts here

around the, around

everything he's doing.

And then over at SpaceX, which we would assume would be his, his seat corn,

his bearing wall, so to speak.

He's really

kicking it in the foundations in a lot of ways with this political stuff.

I don't know.

I don't think he has any choice.

If you look at it, the guy's a brilliant guy.

And the reason he's the wealthiest person, there's a myth, and I hate it when usually venture capitalists or entrepreneurs say this.

They get on stage and someone references their wealth or money or the stock price.

And I say, you know, I never really thought about money.

I just wanted to build something great.

These guys would fuck their sister for a nickel.

These guys are obsessed, obsessed with money.

And let me be clear, if you want to have a lot of money, you need to be thinking about it all the time.

Roger Federer thinks about tennis a lot.

You know, these, you have to be,

and I, I, I think young people, I love it when they talk about stocks.

I try to be very open and transparent about my investments and how much money I've I've made or lost.

You need to be financially literate.

And this guy understands the relationship between the means of production, revenues, profits, and also in an era of perception, where essentially the multiple you get on whatever revenues you have is purely a function of the perception of you as an innovator.

And this is where he has between SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter, he has about $1.4 trillion in value.

The lion's share of that is $1 trillion in value from Tesla.

And he looks at it and goes, This is a $50 billion company pretending to be a trillion-dollar market cap company.

He knows it.

The only thing he can do to possibly keep that trillion-dollar balloon from bursting is two words.

First is A, second is I.

So he is doing anything he can to try and figure out a way to establish the perception of AI leadership and wrap it around all of this shit.

So he is not afraid to spend.

He has the only way this, his empire, stays worth $1.4 trillion and he maintains his status as the wealthiest man in the world is to figure out a way for Tesla to get some perception or to get wrapped in an AI glove.

So he doesn't care what it costs.

And $13 billion,

Tesla, Tesla was down, what, 7%?

Tesla lost 70 billion yesterday after their earnings.

So 13 billion, he can't spend money fast enough.

If someone comes in and says, you know, I think this will give us a a slight little bit of little AI juju, but it's going to cost a billion dollars and I have no idea if it's going to work, green light it, green light it.

He has to get the AI veneer over this $1.35 trillion enterprise that is worth SpaceX, I believe, is worth $350 billion.

Tesla, 50, Twitter, 10.

I mean,

all he's thinking about is how do I keep Tesla in the limelight?

And the only thing he can do, again, is the AI Botox brow lift fractal laser here.

Yeah, I know.

The thing is, with SpaceX, I think Trump can still do damage to it.

Even though they said we can't live without it, I think they're trying to figure out a way to live without it, right?

Now they're on that path.

And so that's even, you know, and especially as he, if he returns into U.S.

politics, and it will be loudly, by the way, so we'll take focus off of it.

And that'll be a problem.

And by the way, Peter Thiel is back spending money on politics, which he said he was getting out of quietly, right?

Speaking of quiet competence,

that's what he's doing,

where nothing is at risk.

But I don't think Musk can resist himself.

I think he's just the most high wire act I've ever seen.

And in some ways, it's, I don't want to use the term admirable, but it's like, when I saw that number, I was like, Jesus, this guy's.

Good luck.

I don't know if it's Lee Gallagher.

What number?

The number is

$13 billion in losses.

Like, wow.

Well, he just isn't, he's playing all, you know, the sort of this game that he's he's playing is really high level in a way that's, I would never do.

It's terrifying, but this is him.

This is the way he is.

And this, he's, he's going to go down in flames or

probably he'll go down in flames, but ultimately, it's really quite astonishing to watch it.

And I think you're right, the valuations are way off of what they actually will be.

And at some point, they'll come down to earth.

All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

We come back.

Trump says he's removing the red tape around AI.

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Scott, we're back with more news.

Trump says he's removing the red tape around AI.

The president spoke about his AI action plan, signed three executive orders at a summit hosted by the All-In podcast in Washington this week.

I wonder why they didn't invite us.

The orders aim to fast-track permitting for data centers, which, okay, promote American technology abroad, okay, and ban ideologically based AI systems from federal contracting.

That's just stupid, but a little little meat for space.

One other thing Trump thinks is holding AI back, copyright law, incredibly.

So he's kicked one industry in the nuts.

So let's listen to a clip.

You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for.

Gee, I read a book.

I'm supposed to pay somebody.

And, you know, we appreciate that, but you just can't do it because it's not doable.

Okay, this is amazing.

I thought that was amazing.

I thought the whole thing was kind of ridiculous, hand-wavy stuff.

And it was sort of basic basics of like, yes, we could have less regulation, but it essentially was Silicon Valley getting back its money for spending on Trump.

That's what it looked like.

And then he also went off, scripted a number.

He talked about trans athletes.

He talked about tariffs.

He talked about everything, but it looked like Silicon Valley was getting its bit.

David Sachs was sort of the leader of that.

He's on the all-in podcast.

But it's that to me, it was sort of a nothing burger.

I think a lot of people didn't pay attention to it.

It was very showy.

But essentially, his minions,

his minions in tech getting the payback for what they've gotten.

I don't think there was anything here, except for the copyright law, which was like showed an astonishing lack of

knowledge about the real problem here.

So he's sort of giving the green light for tech to do what it did before.

What are your thoughts?

I see this as nothing but a kind of a long-term transfer of wealth from Los Angeles and New York to Silicon Valley.

And that is, if, if late night TV could go back in time, they would have partnered with every other high-end TV show and said, we can't have YouTube crawl.

We've all got to bind together and license it for more money because they're taking basically

With YouTube, I can go see the best two minutes of Colbert and I don't have to endure 22 minutes of of advertising through the hour.

So they're basically, and they let them do it.

And the time to stop it would have been 10 or 15 years ago.

And effectively, what they're saying here is they're going back in time and saying, okay, these are, they're opting for Facebook's right or Google's right to crawl IP,

slice it, dice it, and to a certain extent, probably make more shareholder value than the traditional media companies have been able to do.

The problem is, is that journalism is weakening, an industry that employs more people is weakening.

So it's disruption, but it's also, all right, what is the incentive to do good work and create original IP and do investigative journalism if the asset-like companies that don't have to hire people or hire gaffers or sound people can just come in and crawl our data.

And they claim that you couldn't do this.

Well, actually, the music industry has figured out a way to do it.

Every radio station in America can crawl any song and then play it, but they pay a small fee, like probably a quarter of a cent.

And every year they send a check to a royalty or an an artist group that then says, okay, Madonna, here's your check for $685,000 from the radio stations in the Southeast.

So they could have figured out, in my opinion, this is him,

this is payback for Silicon Valley who said, We want to continue to crawl and molest other people's data that they've spent money on, that they've risked their lives sometimes going into hotspots to cover reporting.

Or, I mean, it's just a transfer of wealth to Silicon Valley by saying, okay, AI needs to run, you know, needs to run flat out with no friction, not have to pay anybody else, crawl books, crawl music, and we get to do it.

And the argument you would make is that part of America's leadership from a market capitalization standpoint, innovation standpoint, is that we err on the side of a lack of regulation.

So that is a real argument.

And also you could argue, okay, so we're stealing a dollar from the garage of Warner Brothers, but we can take that dollar we're stealing and turn it into seven, whereas they turn it into 50 cents.

So there is sort of an economic argument or an innovator's argument that this is good for AI.

Let our thoroughbreds run.

But we've been to this movie before, folks.

Just keep in mind, don't let your kids go into original IP or art or the creative because now AI can just crawl it and doesn't have to pay you back.

Yeah.

Well, the problem is I don't think he's necessarily going to, he's just saying this, whether it's

everything he says, like, I'm going to date the commanders out.

He's not.

He's not.

And,

for example, on Monday, Josh Hawley and from Missouri and Senator Blumenthal, Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut, Democrat, Republican Democrat, unveiled legislation that would require AI companies to get consent of individuals for using their content and data and developing AIs.

This is not going to, copyright law is quite robust in that regard.

And so just because Trump says it's not so, first of all, he's as dumb as a box of hammers.

But they also did, by the way, they didn't mention deep fakes in this thing, which is supposed to be their big thing.

They didn't mention like so many things were out of this thing.

It was just a show.

It was

such a nothing burger of an everything.

And one of the things that, you know, especially around, and I have to say, Governor Newsom, who has on point social media these days,

wrote President Trump's executive order on AI threatens to defund states like California with strong laws against AI generated.

child porn.

Some might say that's an interesting priority, particularly in light of his close ties with Jeffrey Epstein.

I thought that was quite good, his picture of him with Jeffrey Epstein.

So I don't know if this is going to be such an easy thing.

I know that the tech companies would like to get out of this, but I don't think they are.

I don't think in this case, copyright is quite strong.

I think there's a lot of supporters of that, even if not just, you know, media.

I think it's movies.

There's lots and lots and lots of people that still have some juice.

And we'll see if they can do that.

They also are showing some signs of weakness.

SoftBank and OpenAI's $500 million Stargate project intended to boost USAID is facing setbacks over disagreements about key terms of the deal, including where to build data centers.

The company's pledged to immediately invest $100 billion in the project in January, but the only plan right now is to build a small data center by the end of the year.

It's pretty pathetic, actually.

It probably costs tens of millions of dollars, maybe 50.

Like, just because Trump says it, like a lot of things, doesn't mean it's happening.

And this AI thing was incredibly weak sauce, I thought.

I was sort of like, well, I wasn't invited, but I'm kind of glad I wasn't.

And it just looked like a payoff to me.

The one that I thought was more disturbing was Columbia University agreeing to pay a $200 million fine to resolve the Trump administration's investigation into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws and all kinds of stuff around DEI.

It essentially gave Trump an ability to,

the government an ability to meddle in

emissions.

And so I just love your thought on that.

Because

I know

you talk about the overuse of DEI programs, et cetera.

This seems like a a first,

the first, the founding fathers did not like, were not worried about woke.

They were worried about this.

This is what they actually, I mean, it's annoying, but it's different than what is happening here, which is a clear violation of the government meddling in private enterprise.

But go ahead.

Well, we've never had a president that's more socialist.

He demands a golden share to control a steel company.

He's doing one-off deals with companies.

And now he's decided if you want to appoint Supreme Court justices that overturn a race-based affirmative action, which has happened, I get it.

You may agree or not agree with that decision, but it's meant to be a thoughtful, slow, grinding process that affects every university.

But when you show up and start threatening, using the full weight of the DOJ and government to go after individual universities and then just make these vague statements that you want to have input into less politically correct admissions, that's just not how you run a government.

It's not how

it's socialism and then it's kind of thought control at the places that are supposed to have the most freedom of thought.

That is why they are so successful.

Is that we provide this ridiculous thing called tenure, which is very expensive.

And occasionally, someone says something so stupid they'd be fired anywhere else, and we can't fire them because the whole idea is we built universities outside of the city center so people could say crazy shit like, Well, maybe the world isn't flat and not risk being burnt at the stake.

And so, when government starts coming in and telling the admissions department,

look, I do think that if you are going to provide billions of dollars in assistance and federally backed student loans, loans, you do have some input, but that input should be systemic across all universities.

I do believe that if you are not growing your freshman class faster than population growth and you have an endowment over a billion dollars, you should lose your tax-free status because you're no longer a public servant.

You're a hedge fund offering courses.

And then I like the Carrot idea.

Offer, instead of student debt relief, offer a capital investment if they, one, keep their tuition flat for 10 years and two, increase their enrollments by 3%, what do you end up with?

College in the 80s, where the admissions rates are double what they are now and on an inflation-adjusted basis, tuition comes down by a third and then force them to have non-four-year degrees in things like nursing and specialty construction.

So I am very much up for the federal government providing both sticks and carrots to reformat higher education such that it returns to its original mission.

of increasing the likelihood that middle-class, unremarkable kids have a shot.

I'm all about reform.

And quite frankly, I'm all about showing up and saying, oh, we're not asking.

But the way you do that is by passing laws.

And then everyone is subject to these laws, not going after Columbia because they pissed you off.

Let me tell you, with the Epstein things, they're not interested in the victims.

They're not.

That's not why they're there.

That's not why they're there.

And you know why?

Trump is not at these universities to make them better.

If they made a mistake around not protecting Jewish students, fine them for that.

Like, and tell them they have to fix something.

That's a very easy fix, right?

And this, but this is something very different.

The government should not be telling universities

what to say.

Just period, period, period, period.

And again, this, I think you're exactly right.

It should be based on finances versus race, maybe.

And that will fix the problem anyway, probably.

But it should certainly,

this is such an overreach.

It's crazy.

And the Columbia, I went to Columbia, by the way, for graduate school.

And

they will never see another, I don't give them money anyway.

So they'll they'll never ever see money from me.

They're an embarrassment to their long and storied history, but it's an embarrassment for Columbia.

And I hope Harvard and others, as much pressure as they're under, don't fall prey to this kind of nonsense because it's not, it doesn't make these universities better to let more white people in.

It just doesn't.

It just, it's not, it's not, it doesn't solve the problem that we have here.

But they don't care.

They don't care about the victims in Epstein.

They don't care about

AI and having a really robust AI system.

They just want to get what's good for them.

Their instincts, in some ways, are correct.

It's again, the execution is wrong.

60 years ago, the government's business.

60 years ago, 12 black people at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale combined.

That was a problem, race-based affirmative action.

Now, 60% of Harvard's freshman class identifies as non-white.

But the problem is 70% of those non-whites come from upper-income households.

Most Republicans and all

Democrats agree that there are some people who face such incredible headwinds through no fault of their own that if the government gives them a hand up, okay, we're down with that.

The question is, and all the argument is over, is who qualifies for the hand up?

And Tyler Perry and Trevor Noah's kids should not get a hand up.

There has been, quite frankly, and this triggers people, too much advantage shoved into the kids.

of non-white parents.

Those are the ones getting the most advantage right now.

And a lot of good kids have been pushed out by foreign students and by, quite frankly,

wealthy non-whites.

And they've said, okay,

fine.

We need to reconfigure affirmative action as the University of California did.

And they made it an adversity index.

But this says to the white community who's poor and from single parents, you got the same shot.

We're going to lift you up.

And at the same time says, okay.

Okay, you know, Tyler Perry's kids, sorry.

You have the same advantages as a rich white kid.

Except, Scott, they never address the white kid, rich kids, right?

They never like go, oh, wait a minute.

Like, it's always like, oh, I'm talking about doing away with legacies.

Yes, that's what I mean.

Do away with legacies.

But again, this is not the government's job.

I'm sorry.

It's just they should not tell a university

what to say, how to operate.

The one thing is if they didn't protect students, Jewish students, whoever the students that were attacked on campus, that's something the government might want to get involved in.

But otherwise, help poor kids get into colleges and help figure out a way to get colleges to open up more.

As you said, instead of being a private hedge fund that happens to give classes, figure out a way to get more people educated, especially at the lower levels of the economic rung.

That is a brilliant idea.

And there are models out there.

UW-Madison, University of North Carolina, which prioritizes in-state applicants.

Some of these universities.

The University of California, they are doing their level best to let in as many kids as possible such that they can go deeper and deeper into the barrel.

Because here's the bottom line.

No individual or institution can be the arbiter of predicting greatness when a kid is 17 or 18.

You just don't know.

The key is, and by the way, the kids getting in right now, if you come from a 1% income earning household, you're 77 times more likely to gain admissions to an elite university.

And here's the truth of it.

The top 1%,

they need college the least.

They already show up well educated.

They already have contacts.

They've already gone to camps.

They've already gotten really good socialization.

Dad is already super well-connected.

It's the bottom 90 that need college the most.

And anyway,

the one place we do disagree here is I do believe if you're going to back, you're going to federally back student loans, you're going to offer Pell Grants, you're going to offer tax-free status.

They've cut Pell Grants, Scott.

They don't care.

I'm just saying.

Okay, I agree.

What I'm saying, though, is that the federal government should have, should have, and nothing's for free, input into the policies, but it should be, and the word we always use is systemic.

It should apply to everybody, not one-offs based on where Barron did or did not get into college.

Right.

No, I agree with you.

That's not the argument I'm making is the government should not tell colleges what to teach.

Colleges can decide and then the market will decide of what they do.

It's just, they need to keep their dirty little hands out of this.

It gets complicated fast, Cara, because universities have taken in $14 billion from international, from other governments.

Four of the $14 billion has come from a nation with 300,000 people, Qatar.

And what do you know?

We have all of these Middle East studies departments who, quite frankly, aren't aren't teaching that Israel has a right to exist.

So it does get pretty gray pretty fast.

I think it's a complicated issue, but universities have been.

The government should not be deciding this.

I'm sorry.

It's this First Amendment.

Look,

I'm not loving Qatar doing it.

I didn't take money.

Well,

they shouldn't be allowed to give money, is what the Wow.

Maybe so.

That's a great solution.

Great.

That's great.

That's a good idea.

But here's the deal.

Our government should be funding these educational institutions more, and they don't.

Instead, they give out handouts to the very wealthy AI people and, you know, just take from anyone else.

Anyway, it's a long getting thing.

I just feel like Columbia, you should be embarrassed by yourselves by what you've done here.

You've created a really bad precedent, and I hope the others don't follow.

All right, we have to take a quick break and we'll be back for predictions.

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Hey, this is Peter Kafka.

I'm the host of Channels, a show about the biggest ideas of tech and media and how those things collide.

And today we're talking about AI, which is promising and maybe terrifying.

And if you happen to be in a very select group of engineers that Mark Zuckerberg wants to hire, it's incredibly lucrative.

Which is why I had the New York Times Mike Isaac explain what's going on with the great AI pay race.

I'm talking to executives across the industry who are pissed off at Mark Zuckerberg because he has dumped the entire market for this stuff, right?

And like, this is something that's painful for OpenAI, AI, I think, because they can't shell out a quarter of a billion dollars for one dude.

That's this week on channels, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

I just want to, there's one that I could throw out at you.

President Trump met with Jeff Bezos at the White House last week in a meeting that lasted over an hour.

What do you predict they were talking about?

I predict Trump wants in on the bachelor party.

I don't.

Didn't that already happen?

Did it?

I didn't hear about that.

I would have been

a second marriage bachelor party.

Lauren's not putting up with that.

Oh, yeah.

It's called a midlife crisis.

It's called a second marriage and daddy getting together with his friends every six weeks.

Anyways,

my prediction, I already made my prediction.

The fix is in.

Someone has communicated to Jelaine Maxwell that if she were to provide state evidence or testimony that in any way reflects well on the president, that the president has a habit of pardoning people towards the the end of his administration.

And there's nothing like jail to convince you to lie and do whatever you need to do to get out of jail.

I think the fix is in.

What we're going to have is something resembling a, it'll be a kangaroo court where they took testimony, pretend to take it seriously, pretend they're pursuing the truth.

And all evidence from Jelaine Maxwell will show that the president, while was a friend and showed errors in judgment, was not involved in any illicit or illegal activity.

And then on the eve before Trump

takes off and J.D.

Vance is elected president or in my opinion, if I were to bet on anyone right now, and I might do this on Polymarket, is someone you mentioned earlier, people vastly underestimate Governor Newsom.

He is the only one pushing back right now.

I believe if I had to bet on anyone, he would be the president.

But anyways, whoever 30 days before the president, the next president is inaugurated, she will be pardoned.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Well, we'll see.

Just so you know, two things.

Jillie Maxwell is a liar.

She faced two perjury charges stemming from these accusations.

She lied under oath around Epstein.

They dropped those things because

she also had sex trafficking conviction she received in December of 2021.

So let me just say she's a sex trafficker.

So think about that, people, that he's going to let off a sex, a convicted sex trafficker who is probably just as equally culpable in what happened.

We need a special counsel with Matt Gates.

Are we in a simulation here?

Literally, are we in a simulation here?

I just am like, Jillian Maxwell is a terrible person and should die in prison.

And again, the focus is off the people it should be on, which is these young women who are terrified now because the president is trying to cover this up.

And that's what the president's doing.

He's trying to cover up a sex trafficking scandal

where his name is involved.

And so

everybody, all this stuff, whether you're going to get Trump or not get Trump, just remember all these possibly

hundreds of women, they think, were sexually abused here.

And that is lost in this entire thing.

Even worse, hundreds of girls.

Girls, exactly.

People have correctly corrected me and said, these are not underage women.

They're girls.

They're girls.

And that is what we should be focusing on.

And we never have.

And

they're women now.

They're older.

They're not here.

They have been traumatized.

And Trump is further traumatizing them with this fucking circus.

And that's what we need to focus in on.

That's my, and we won't.

My prediction is we won't because we don't value the lives of young women as much as we do as rich, old,

you know, syphilitic.

These are syphilitic men.

Anyway, your prediction that she's going to be that this is going to happen.

The fix is in.

She's going to be pardoned 30 to 60 days before the end of his term.

Well, everybody, she's a liar and a sex trafficker.

So take it that for the thing.

Anyway, okay.

All right, but it won't come till the end, you're saying won't come to the end of the day.

Well,

I think that he'll create some distance to try and lower the volume of the outrage.

The fix was in, and this woman basically came out and lied and took the heat down.

Yeah, what the fuck do you care, pardon her?

The fix is in.

The fix is in.

All I just say is remember the girls of all of it.

Release the empathy tiles is fine, but remember the girls.

A real attorney general has a group of people who are doing nothing but trying to convince people to narc and impugn more powerful people.

They work their way up the chain.

This is the first Department of Justice that an attorney general who is trying to figure out a way to get people to flip and exonerate people more senior than them.

This is exactly what they are not supposed to do.

They're supposed to be

truth to power, the law affects everyone means that quite frankly, you work your way up the food chain.

Oh, you're a small-time dealer.

This is how we're going to give you one year in prison and not 10.

You're going to help us find the kingpin here and put him in prison.

They realize that there's a the key to law enforcement is that the more senior, more powerful, more mendacious you get in criminal activity, the bigger, the more important it is that that person get put away.

You want to punish, you want a progressive,

just as we're supposed to have a progressive tax structure, which is part of our culture, we're supposed to have a progressive

criminal prosecution structure that says the more senior and powerful, the more damage you're doing, the more we try to find

the truth on you.

And

this is entirely the opposite.

That's, let's give her a pardon if she lowers the heat on the most powerful person in the world.

I think this one is so obvious.

It's like, I know that, but

again, I want to stress to Pam Bondi, these are hundreds of

girls and you have

a horrible, shameful person to do this.

And this is the woman who sexually abused them.

Absolutely.

100% has been convicted of that.

You're a,

you know, there, I'm going to do a lesbian thing and quote Gladiator, because it's my favorite movie.

The time for honoring yourself is at an end.

I'm just disgusting.

The time for honoring yourself is at an end.

You know, remember when he's the guy's, he's getting all the attention and the emperor's all pissed.

And then the emperor tries to, you know, tell him about his

wife and child being killed in a terrible way, including rape in this thing.

And he turns around, instead of hitting him, he goes, the time for honoring yourself is at an end.

It will soon be at an end.

It's such a great line.

That's what I feel about these people.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't.

I'm going to go out of limb here and say, Attorney General Bondi's ethics and morals around the president are sometimes a little bit patchy.

Patchy.

Patchy.

You're a terrible time.

It's a time for honoring yourself.

He's a heinous term again, is what she is.

And I'll blame the men just as much, but when a woman does this, even worse.

These are girls, Pam.

Girls.

Okay.

Anyway, we want to hear from you.

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

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

Elsewhere in the Cara and Scott universe, this week on Profke Conversations that we talked about earlier this week, Scott spoke with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the 49th governor of Michigan.

Let's listen to a clip of Big Gretsch with Scott.

I'm going to say something that's going to be really depressing, and that is we're five months in to a 48-month term.

As a governor, I have a role.

You know, I have an important role.

How do we band together and show Americans what Democratic leaders do.

It's by delivering in our states.

It's by fighting the federal government when they're impacting our states.

But we are not the counterpoint to the executive branch and the federal government.

That's Congress.

That's their whole job is to be that counterpoint.

So you like that interview, Scott?

Yeah,

every time I get to know

some of these individuals on both sides of the aisle, I'm really impressed and heartened.

And I think, Governor, I think I said this last year.

Governor, I do this, no mercy.

No, every presidential candidate is calling one or both of us.

And we will interview between now and then, I think, any viable candidate, at least on the Democratic side.

And I do this no mercy, no malice review of the interview.

And to the upside, she reeks of integrity and character.

There's just, she's just one of those people that within a minute, you think, this is a competent, decent woman.

And

also, Michigan has a lot to be proud of.

It's not an easy environment to have a manufacturing-based economy.

She's managed to maintain economic growth, even if it's not stellar.

The quality of life of Michigan, meaning affordability relative to salaries, is some of the best in the nation.

She has a lot to run on.

My downside was she's infected with the same rhetorical flourish and avoidance of hard policies.

The Democrat that's going to race to the head of the polls is going to be someone who comes out with crazy bold solutions and says, we're going to lower Medicare eligibility by two years every year and socialize medicine.

We are going to have an alternative minimum tax of 40%.

We're going to do away with the exemption on real estate, on trusts.

There is such an opportunity now for someone to come out with big fucking money.

Bold, fucking.

We're moving Social Security back to 72 and we're means testing it.

Sorry, folks.

It's time to be the grown-up in the room.

An alternative minimum tax on corporations who are paying their lowest taxes since 1939 of 40%.

Galloway for president.

But there's such a huge opportunity.

And she wants to talk about.

you know, in very big, bold, flowery speech, Americans.

And I'm like, okay, folks, Obama, you're not going to out-Obama Obama.

We need someone who has real policies.

And also, and this is not the way the world should be.

It's the way the world is.

Democrats are going to elect and nominate a straight white male over six feet.

We are highly luxist.

They are not going to, for the third time, nominate a woman, no fucking way.

They're not going to nominate a gay man because they're worried about blacks in South Carolina.

They're not going to nominate anyone under 5'11 because they realize America is so goddamn looksist and sexist still.

So I don't, I think...

No, Scott Galloway for president.

I'm just

pointing it out.

You did all that criteria.

The problem is I wouldn't enjoy it and I wouldn't be very good at it.

You're in my job, Kara, is to bring attention and oxygen to fantastic Democrats and help them get elected.

Anyway,

she, I think, is on everyone's short list for VP because she is, she's, she would be, she's just a great foot soldier.

And she also, she has, she's hugely popular in a swing state.

She is.

She's very, she's still very popular despite everything.

Let me just say,

I think you're right about all those things, unfortunately.

But the, but

whatever you think, Mandalam, there's lots of attacks on him recently.

I think the reason he broke through was big ideas, whether you think they're right or not.

They were big, interesting ideas.

He's saying something.

But they were kind of interesting.

Some of them were good.

Some of them were bad.

And he's good at social media and he's handsome and he's well-spoken.

Like, to me, like,

get away from whether you same thing with Abby Spamberger, by the way.

Great speaker, great-looking, great, um, great communicator, saying things of real meaning.

Like, what are you going to do for the people of Virginia?

Or what are you going to do for the people of Blank?

And what are you going to do for the people of the United States?

You're 100% right.

Scott, you should run for office.

I can be your vice president.

I'll be fine, dude.

I really run the show.

So, as we do here, we will build a giant barren wall.

We will build.

I like that.

We'll build a bearing wall for America.

Oh, my God.

You could not be more lesbian.

Oh, my God.

Bearing wall.

I'm going to go build one right now here in San Francisco.

I'm going to build one right here in San Francisco.

And then I'm going to have a kombucha.

I hate kombucha.

Do you want to hear the most offensive thing I said at the Aspen ideas?

I'm sure I'll get a text.

I was joking about masturbation, and I said, I've found the ultimate birth control.

And I get lotion.

I have this lotion that I put on myself.

And if I put it on for more than two minutes, I I don't need to have sex.

And there was this awkward silence.

And then a bunch of women in Aloe who like me immediately laughed and go, and then looked around to say, Can I laugh?

And it would be like, I'm laughing.

You just can't tell.

I've had so much poison injected into my face.

Oh, Mike, Scott, Scott.

Oh, my God.

There you go.

You know what you need to do?

This is the thing you need to do.

Let me just give another recommendation.

Go watch Hunting Wives.

It's a lesbian.

Hunting Wives?

Hunting Wives with Malin Ackerman

and others.

Malin Ackerman, Brittany Snow.

It's based on a book set in Texas.

It's about a bunch of sort of rich East Texas ladies, and you think it's going to be all about shopping and drinking, but it turns out to be a lesbian drama and like, and a murder mystery.

And it is so good because Malin Ackerman and Brittany Snow are really hot and they have sex all day.

But everyone's made, all the women are making out in it.

I'll see it twice.

Exactly.

You need to watch.

You're going to thank me next week.

Okay, that's the show.

Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We'll be back next week.

Scott, read us out.

There you go.

Today's show is produced by Larry Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver.

Ernie Intertod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to DuBurros, Mi Severo, and Dan Shallan.

Nashak Carra is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

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

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

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

Daring Wall.

Lara, do not take that stuff out.

Do you hear me?