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

Transcript

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Speaker 17 My thoughts are that you've never heard a heterosexual woman use the term bearing wall.

Speaker 17 I was with a group of women last night that use terms like fractal laser, brow lift, cagles, but no, I've never heard a straight woman use the term bearing wall.

Speaker 18 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 17 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 18 Scott, I'm in San Francisco, my beloved San Francisco today.

Speaker 17 Oh, really? Why are you there?

Speaker 18 More filming. I ate cell-created salmon yesterday.

Speaker 17 Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that,

Speaker 17 well, good for you. And what does that supposedly do for you?

Speaker 18 Well, it's just the idea of 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.

Speaker 18 How do we feed the world in a healthy way to make them live longer?

Speaker 17 We give poor people more money.

Speaker 18 That's correct. That's the other way to do it.
But there's not enough.

Speaker 17 There's my virtue signaling to me.

Speaker 18 Anyway, it's got it.

Speaker 17 Where are you right now? I'm in Chicago. I'm at the Soho House, Chicago.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 18 You're like one fantastic hotel after the next.

Speaker 17 Yeah, the Soho House is always just a decent plan B. My son is coming, my 14-year-old, once a year I try and take a...

Speaker 17 trip with them just solo and i tell them they can go wherever i want and he picked chong choi i guess some city in China that's supposed to be something out of a video game.

Speaker 17 And I said, okay, I can't do that.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And then we're going, of course, to the McDonald's Museum, or as I like to call it, the Museum of Colorectal Cancer.

Speaker 18 It's actually cool.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 18 May I make some suggestions?

Speaker 18 One thing I would suggest, I know this sounds crazy, but he would love it. There's an architectural tour on the river.

Speaker 17 I did it a month ago with my older son. It's great.

Speaker 17 We're going to do bikes instead along the river.

Speaker 18 That's great. And of course, get yourself a wiener.

Speaker 17 I've got one. Her name's Karen.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
You meant a.

Speaker 18 a Chicago dog. Yeah, you can go to, there's lots of places.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 I didn't know you, I didn't realize you knew so much about Chicago.

Speaker 18 I love Chicago. I love Chicago.
It's one of my favorite places. And Louis had a summer program there, cooking.
There's a cooking school there.

Speaker 18 And so I went and got, I've spent a lot of time in Chicago. I have a lot of friends.

Speaker 17 And oh, I'm being interviewed by David Pogue today.

Speaker 17 Oh, somewhere talking about how do we reinvigorate the tech scene in Chicago, which I've given a lot of thought to because I take my speaking engagements very seriously.

Speaker 18 Are you hanging out with the Obamas?

Speaker 17 The Obamas live here?

Speaker 18 Yeah. 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.

Speaker 18 Anyway, that's great. Where are you going next? Where's your next situation?

Speaker 17 I go to Manhattan on Saturday.

Speaker 18 And then you see me.

Speaker 17 Oh,

Speaker 17 oh, yeah. And I'm excited about it.
What are we putting in?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 18 No, it's hard to do.

Speaker 17 I'm going to have thick black hair and start doing better on the SAT.

Speaker 17 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 lighter right now.

Speaker 17 I am translucent. Oh, are you? What do you mean?

Speaker 17 No, I have never seen an auditorium full of more 60-year-old men and 58-year-old women trying to keep them on the porch by doing pilates 11 times a day god it's literally

Speaker 17 my dad festival is it the festival is it the aspen might as well be like 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

Speaker 18 yeah it's really it's so true is that the festival did you go to the festival we were supposed to do it together and i declined

Speaker 17 i want to go every it's like there's there's a few things i want to do every year and they always come at weird times I never end up doing them.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I want to camp with a chef and tons of Russian hookers, and those exist.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 comes at a weird time.

Speaker 18 And then you don't. And Aspen Festival, too.
They wanted us to do live pivot there. And someday we'll do it.

Speaker 17 Well, you always say, no, I'm not going. Why would I go there?

Speaker 17 Why would I do that? I'm going to be dead soon. Why would I do that?

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Scott, I always am like, oh, sure, because I love spending time with Scott and Scott's always like, why should I do that?

Speaker 18 Are they going to bring me something, a large pile of money, or whatever it happens to be, whatever you want.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 It's easy for you to travel. When I travel, it means lower back pain, and I bang my head on an overhead.
I can't sleep.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 18 You need to put some aloe on in Lululemon.

Speaker 17 That's what needs to happen. Yeah, that's all.
I need athleisure.

Speaker 18 Yeah, those people have a good life, I guess, if that's the life you want to have. Anyway.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 17 I know. But

Speaker 17 I totally don't envy them, though.

Speaker 18 I have to say, I don't.

Speaker 17 Oh, really?

Speaker 17 I wouldn't. I think they've got it figured out, Kara.

Speaker 17 I don't want to be that person. I don't want anybody.
Oh, really?

Speaker 18 Yeah. No, it just seems empty.

Speaker 17 Yeah, but as far as empty, meaningless experiences go, it's pretty good.

Speaker 18 That's true. That's true.
It's better than a lot of empty experiences.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I'm going to do it at Midway. I'm going to do it at Midway just to bring the whole brand down.

Speaker 17 Bank Off will say, okay, if you'd had

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Not a really big surprise, but Trump was reportedly informed by A.G.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Another Epstein news, the federal judge in Florida denied a DOJ request to release the grand jury transcripts.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Mike Johnson did this on purpose, so they didn't have to keep voting on the Epstein situation.

Speaker 17 Nothing to see here. Go ahead.
Nothing to see here.

Speaker 18 Let's close down the store. The committee has subpoenaed Epstein associate Jelaine Maxwell.

Speaker 18 Of course, it's another very performative thing with the number two person at the Justice Department is taking his time to go talk to her probably today.

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 another bearing wall of the MAGA movement around President Obama. But let's first talk about where things stand with Trump and Epstein.

Speaker 18 Is there anything that he can do to stop the drip, drip at this point? Is it an opportunity for Democrats? And

Speaker 18 we'll go through, if you want to go to the distractions first, distractions is one way, but what else? And then we'll get to the distractions.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I think it's already underway.

Speaker 18 It makes it worse, though, right? Correct? Doesn't that make it even...

Speaker 17 more

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I mean, think about it. That just dawned on the Attorney General's office that maybe they should go speak to her.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 make it believable, like he was there, but he never engaged in anything like that.

Speaker 17 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 it get worse? I don't know. His base seems to want,

Speaker 17 I can't,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 What do you think is going on here?

Speaker 18 I think he's not going away.

Speaker 18 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, is enamored with, which is that there was a Russian hoax to stop, you know, that the election was stolen.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 You said last week we tracked his attempts to distract the public and media from Epstein.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Threatening to block a deal for the Washington Commander's new stadium if the team doesn't go back to the old name. I'm not even sure he can do that.
Another nothing burger.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 They're also proposing to rename the Kennedy Center's Opera House after Melania Trump. I don't even understand that.

Speaker 18 But the one that seems to be the big one is Trump accusing 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.

Speaker 18 Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week that it's time to go after people calling out Obama, Biden, Comey, and others.

Speaker 18 He cited declassified materials recently released by Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, which seemed to fall apart on initial scrutiny.

Speaker 18 Gabbard says the documents detail a years-long coup by Obama's intelligence officials against Trump. Obama is finally pushing back.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 My thoughts are that you've never heard a heterosexual woman use the term bearing wall.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 bearing wall. I mean, could you be a bigger lesbian? I'm in San Francisco, and every metaphor is a construction term.
Bearing wall.

Speaker 18 Well, you got my point, didn't you? Did I make my point?

Speaker 17 No, it makes sense. It's

Speaker 17 why you are who you are.

Speaker 17 Lean into it. Lean into it.
You like you.

Speaker 18 Foundation.

Speaker 17 Foundation. I think Obama, I would have thought Obama was nearly bulletproof.
Again, these distractions are becoming so, they're so ridiculous.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I would have thought that Obama at this point, these types of allegations would only, I don't know, hurt, undermine his credibility.

Speaker 17 I think on this stuff,

Speaker 17 you just get it more than I do. You think this is going to work or you think that it's going going to be in the short-term effect? I don't know.

Speaker 18 I do think it's the right one if you're looking for a distraction. That's all I'm saying.
It's, it's the right distraction because I don't think anyone cares about JFK anymore.

Speaker 18 I don't, I think some people do. I don't think anyone cares about MLK.

Speaker 18 I don't think anyone cares about Melania Trump or

Speaker 18 the commanders.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 What does animate these people is the rigging of the 2016 election?

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 They like to let Trump off the hook, that's for sure.

Speaker 17 So, yeah, it's, I mean, I'm waiting for what the next distraction. At some point, he's going to release a sex tape of him and Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 18 Ew.

Speaker 17 Say my name, Chuck. Oh, say my name.

Speaker 18 Now in my head.

Speaker 17 Teeing up. Hold number four.

Speaker 17 Five heads. Bearing wall.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Look, this is no, okay.

Speaker 17 These guys are cut from the same cloth. My Tesla earnings are fucked, so I'm going to launch a diner.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So the Obama thing, AI came back and said, accuse Obama of being involved in the Russia hoax.

Speaker 17 This is all brought to you by AI. And every day it's the same thing.
Look over here.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 They're just not letting it go.

Speaker 18 On this, on the Epstein, because it is also part and parcel of the same conspiracy theories. I just interviewed Dhoni from CNN and Julie K.
Brown, who actually broke the original Epstein.

Speaker 17 She's the Miami reporter.

Speaker 18 Miami reporter who did that.

Speaker 17 And one of the things that she's the hero in all of those. She is.

Speaker 18 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, Dhoni from CNN is amazing. He covers conspiracy theories.
He's like,

Speaker 18 he couldn't tell which one will work, but these two are intertwined, this idea of a deep state, right?

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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 there's all kinds of that idea.

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 The stuff she's putting out is so easily provably wrong that it creates strength. I do think it's to

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 18 But I don't think it does any,

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 But he's going to now be on his back foot on this stuff. Because how do you push, you know,

Speaker 18 when did you stop beating your wife, sir, kind of thing?

Speaker 17 Yeah, force him to deny it. But just the only thing, the only wrinkle I would add or nuance is that.

Speaker 17 I think the fix is already in.

Speaker 17 I think someone has already communicated to Jalene 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.

Speaker 17 And at the end of his term, at Trump's term, when he pardons Jillian Maxwell, which is what 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.

Speaker 17 That, generally speaking, means you're going to die soon. I think biology is going to take care of Donald Trump.

Speaker 17 I said the most dangerous person in the world was Peter Thiel. But anyways,

Speaker 17 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 Jelene Maxwell and this is outrageous.

Speaker 17 What the fuck is he going to care? Why would he care?

Speaker 18 Yep, that's an excellent point.

Speaker 17 The fix is already in. He's got away with it.
Why have they all of a sudden figured out it'd be a good idea to talk to Jelene Maxwell?

Speaker 18 Well, one is because she committed perjury, I believe, and she also has not really.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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 went, you know, the Bonnie and Clyde pedophiles, essentially.

Speaker 18 And she was just as culpable. And so I think letting her off will.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 All he cares about is getting off this topic right now.

Speaker 18 That's it. What would be a strong distraction? Any ideas?

Speaker 17 Oh, gosh, I have no idea.

Speaker 17 I mean, I did not see we can't change the name to the Washington Commanders coming. I didn't see.

Speaker 17 I mean, the most ridiculous trade deal, by the way,

Speaker 17 the trade deal with Japan is

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But you're right.

Speaker 17 If he comes up with three or four new accusations each day on the Obamas,

Speaker 18 Clinton doesn't can't really beat that horse anymore, right? The Clinton mission.

Speaker 17 Hillary emails. I don't, I think even they're not.

Speaker 18 I think Obama's a much better target for him in that regard. 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.

Speaker 18 We come back. Elon's warning after Tesla's disappointing earnings.

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Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 that's gone right through the crown.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Revenue for Alphabet's cloud computing business increased 32%. That was impressive.

Speaker 18 Finally, I had a many year-ago discussion with Sundar Pichai 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.

Speaker 18 They're all pushed by, obviously, AI and stuff. For GM, the auto company said its profits fell by more than a third in the second quarter due to tariffs costing the company company over a billion.

Speaker 18 And as Scott pointed out,

Speaker 18 that it's going to get hit further with this Japanese deal. Scott, any thoughts on any of these?

Speaker 17 Well, you cover the, I mean, Tesla's earnings, again,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 going to crash.

Speaker 18 And it feels like a merger of some sort.

Speaker 17 Or say XAI or I'm announcing a diner or we're not a car company. We're doing robots.

Speaker 17 The fact that he opened this diner just days before these earnings came out is, again, no accident. I'm not exaggerating.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 renewable.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 late night TV turned out the lights. And also, I think this is the year where we kind of officially cede anything resembling leadership, the automotive industry.

Speaker 17 I think the automotive industry now in the U.S.

Speaker 17 is on a kind of the green mile death march. And what do you have?

Speaker 17 You have our national champion, Tesla, which was worth more than the rest of the automobile industry combined, starting to throw up.

Speaker 17 And they released the worst product, car product of the year, the Cybertruck.

Speaker 17 They're grasping at Stras right now, saying, We're AI, we're this.

Speaker 17 So that is a huge blow to the American automobile industry because Tesla was the national champion.

Speaker 17 And then the traditional player, General Motors, just announced that their earnings were taken down by a billion dollars because of tariffs. And then you have Japanese car companies.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 18 $26.

Speaker 17 $2 billion. Right.

Speaker 17 What is it?

Speaker 17 A few Japanese billionaires buy escalates. That's it.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 You have more pressure from amazing manufacturers, specifically Japanese manufacturers. You have our national champion going into the shitter.

Speaker 17 And you have our old guard, General Motors, announcing that these tariffs are really hurting them.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And what happened in the market when these tariffs, this Japanese big beautiful deal, was announced yesterday? Toyota was up 16 or 17%.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 What about Alphabet?

Speaker 17 Staggering. And I'm talking to my own book here.
Every year I make a big tech stock pick, and it's based on valuation.

Speaker 17 And, okay, the existential threat, you know, quote unquote, search is being undermined by AI.

Speaker 17 Search revenue, search revenue grew 12%.

Speaker 17 there's search this company that this quote-unquote technology that's supposedly being disrupted by AI it grew double digits YouTube up 13%

Speaker 17 cloud up 32% they have five different businesses as you've heard

Speaker 17 independent independent companies and they have search uh 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 In addition, this company trades at, I think the average S ⁇ P company trades at a PE multiple of 26.

Speaker 17 So Google, which is growing faster than the S ⁇ P, much faster and has these incredible, incredible leadership, is cheaper than the average S ⁇ P company. And pick your average S ⁇ P company.

Speaker 17 I always say it's Dow Chemical or or PNG. Great companies.
Call them the average. Would you rather have Autonomous and YouTube than, you know,

Speaker 17 hide? I mean, this company relative, the existential threat or the overhang of the existential threat of AI has been vastly exaggerated at Alphabet.

Speaker 17 And then if you look at the IP they have and the investments they're making and they announced, they announced massive

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So what do you have? You have unbelievable businesses that continue to grow. You have

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 18 I would agree. One of the things

Speaker 18 everyone focuses so much on Mark Zuckerberg overpaying for talent.

Speaker 17 I would look at Google.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 Are you talking about Sunder or Mark?

Speaker 18 Sundar is quietly, he has a lot of businesses to pull levers on, as you note.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 Look,

Speaker 17 Sender is,

Speaker 17 I've been thinking a lot about, they asked me at this thing last night, who should run for president or who would like to see his president.

Speaker 17 And I said, I think competence, we're entering an age where competence and the amount of press you get are inversely correlated.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 I just a competent,

Speaker 17 you know, good governance is really fucking boring and doesn't get headlines.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And Sundar Prachai is that kind of CEO. He's not, he's not out there like Musk or

Speaker 17 even, yeah.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I don't need to virtue signal and talk about not working with this company.

Speaker 17 You know, these guys aren't, these guys aren't jonesing for the camera every fucking day or in your face every day. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Yeah. I was like, shut the fuck up.
And you don't, you see Asundar not doing that. You see Asacha not doing that.
I mean, they give interviews, but it's very typical, right?

Speaker 18 It's the typical, rather than the sort of jazz hands performative stuff.

Speaker 17 Do you remember during COVID when we did those series of specials, special webinars or podcasts, and Cinder came on? Yeah. I think his kid was coming in the room.

Speaker 17 He kept looking over and like waving people off. Right.
His kid or his comms person saying,

Speaker 17 get off of the Bering Wall, bitch. She's going to make us look back.

Speaker 18 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 Bering Wall, I swear to God. 100%.
You know, you are.

Speaker 18 You've said it so much, you're like, oh, that was good.

Speaker 17 They love. They're up.
And they're like, oh,

Speaker 17 why won't the Democrats listen to you? And I'm like, well, hello. What's your name?

Speaker 17 I think we have the same dermatologist. Let's go to San Ambrose.

Speaker 17 Would you like to take a hike with me tomorrow?

Speaker 18 No, no one wants to take a hike with you.

Speaker 18 And you don't hike. I can't imagine you hiking, but okay.

Speaker 17 I'm young and good looking for Aspen. Most of the guys there are literally like too much time in the sun.

Speaker 17 You made a lot of money, but you didn't spend enough on Sunblock. Those guys.

Speaker 18 Anyway, speaking of which, Elon's XAI is working to raise up to $12 billion in debt for a massive supply of NVIDIA chips to help train and power Grog.

Speaker 18 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 fucking play.

Speaker 18 First of all, Musk doesn't partner with anybody like OpenAI

Speaker 18 and the others, Anthropic.

Speaker 18 Secondly, they're losing $13 billion.

Speaker 18 It's like crazy how much money this thing is losing and almost no revenues.

Speaker 18 And they're raising the money.

Speaker 18 And by the way, speaking of which is money-making thing over at SpaceX, SpaceX, paperwork sent to investors discussing a tender offer included an interesting risk factor that Elon Musk may return to politics.

Speaker 17 This feels like.

Speaker 17 I love that. I hope so.
He's running on the hot topic ticket.

Speaker 18 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

Speaker 18 around the, around

Speaker 18 everything he's doing. And then he over at SpaceX, which we would assume would be his

Speaker 18 seat, corn,

Speaker 18 his bearing wall, so to speak.

Speaker 18 He's really

Speaker 18 kicking it in the foundations in a lot of ways with this political stuff.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 there's a myth, and I hate it when usually venture capitalists or entrepreneurs say this. They get on stage and someone reverences their wealth or money or their stock price.

Speaker 17 And they 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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 made or lost.

Speaker 17 You need to be financially literate.

Speaker 17 And this guy understands the relationship 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And he looks at it and goes, this is a $50 billion company pretending to be a trillion dollar market cap company.

Speaker 18 He He knows it.

Speaker 17 The only thing he can do to possibly keep that trillion-dollar balloon from bursting is two words. First is A, second is I.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So he doesn't care what it costs. And $13 billion,

Speaker 17 Tesla, Tesla was down, what, 7%? Tesla lost $70 billion yesterday after their earnings. So $13 billion, he can't spend money fast enough.

Speaker 17 If someone comes in and says, you know, I think this will give us 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.

Speaker 17 Greenlight it. Greenlight 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.

Speaker 17 I mean,

Speaker 17 all he's thinking about is how do I keep Tesla?

Speaker 17 in the limelight. And the only thing he can do, again, is the AI Botox brow lift fractal laser here.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I know. The thing is with SpaceX, I think Trump can still do damage to it.

Speaker 18 There's 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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

Speaker 17 good luck. I don't know if it's the galaxy.
What number? The number is fine.

Speaker 18 $13 billion in losses.

Speaker 17 Like, wow.

Speaker 18 Well, he just isn't. He's playing all, you know, the sort of this game that he's playing is really high level in a way that's, I would never do.
It's terrifying. But this is him.

Speaker 18 This is the way he is. And

Speaker 18 he's going to go down in flames or

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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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Speaker 18 Scott, we're back with more news. Trump says he's removing the red tape around AI.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 That's just stupid, but a little meat for his base. 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.

Speaker 40 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.

Speaker 40 I'm supposed to pay somebody. And, you know, we appreciate that, but you just can't do it because it's not doable.

Speaker 18 Okay, this is amazing. I thought that was amazing.
I thought the whole thing was kind of ridiculous, hand-wavy stuff.

Speaker 18 And it was sort of basic basics of like, yes, we could have less circulation, but it essentially was Silicon Valley getting back its money for spending on Trump. That's what it looked like.

Speaker 18 And then he also went off and 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.

Speaker 18 David Sachs was sort of the leader of that. He's on the all-in podcast.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 But essentially his minions,

Speaker 18 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

Speaker 18 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?

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 We've all got to bind together and license it for more money because

Speaker 17 basically with YouTube, I can go see the best two minutes of Colbert and I don't have to endure 22 minutes of advertising through the hour. So they're basically, and they let them do it.

Speaker 17 And the time to stop it would have been 10 or 15 years ago.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 The problem is, is that journalism is weakening. An industry that employs more people is weakening.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 And they claim that you couldn't do this. Well, actually, the music industry has figured out a way to do it.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And every year they send a check to a royalty or an artist group that then says, Okay, Madonna, here's your check for $685,000 from the radio stations in the Southeast.

Speaker 17 So they could have figured out, in my opinion, this is him

Speaker 17 now, 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.

Speaker 17 Or, I mean, it's just a transfer of wealth to Silicon Valley by saying, okay, AI needs to run,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So that is a real argument.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So there is sort of an economic argument or an innovator's argument that this is good for AI.

Speaker 17 Let our thoroughbreds run. But we've been to this movie before, folks.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 18 Well, the problem is, I don't think he's necessarily going to, he's just saying this, whether it's

Speaker 18 everything he says, like, I'm going to date the commanders out. He's not.
He's not. And

Speaker 18 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

Speaker 18 to get consent of individuals for using their content and data and developing AI. This is not going to copyright law is quite robust in that regard.

Speaker 18 And so, just because Trump says it's not so, first of all, he's as dumb as a box of hammers.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 It was just a show. It was

Speaker 18 such a nothing burger of an everything.

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 wrote President Trump's executive order on AI threatens to defund states like California with strong laws against AI generated. child porn.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 There's lots and lots and lots of people that still have some juice.

Speaker 18 And we'll see if they can do that. They also are showing some signs of weakness.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 The companies 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.

Speaker 18 It would probably cost tens of millions of dollars, maybe 50.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 I was sort of like, well, I wasn't invited, but I'm kind of glad I wasn't.

Speaker 18 And it just looked like a payoff to me.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 It essentially gave Trump an ability to,

Speaker 18 the government an ability to meddle in

Speaker 18 emissions. And so I just love your thought on that,

Speaker 18 because

Speaker 18 I know

Speaker 18 you talk about the overuse of DEI programs, et cetera. This seems like

Speaker 18 a first,

Speaker 18 the first, the founding fathers did not like, were not worried about woke. They were were worried about this.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 If you want to appoint Supreme Court justices that overturn a race-based affirmative action, which has happened, I get it.

Speaker 17 You may agree or not agree with that decision, but it's meant to be a thoughtful, slow, grinding process that affects every university.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 It's not how it's so, it's socialism and then it's kind of thought control at the places that are supposed to have the most freedom of thought.

Speaker 17 That is why they are so successful is that we provide this ridiculous thing called tenure, which is very expensive.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And so, when government starts coming in and telling the admissions department,

Speaker 17 look, I do think that if you are going to provide billions of dollars in assistance and federally backed student loans, you do have some input.

Speaker 17 But that input should be systemic across all universities.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 You're a hedge fund offering courses.

Speaker 17 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%.

Speaker 17 What do you end up with? College in the 80s, where the admissions rates are double what they are now.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And then everyone is subject to these laws, not going after Columbia because they pissed you off.

Speaker 18 Let me tell you, with the Epstein things, they're not interested in the victims. They're not.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's not why they're there.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 And that will fix the problem anyway, probably.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 And they will never see another, I don't give them money anyway, so they'll never, ever see money from me.

Speaker 18 They're an embarrassment to their long and storied history, but it's an embarrassment for Columbia.

Speaker 18 And I hope Harvard and others, as much pressure as they're under, don't fall prey to this kind of balance because it's not, it doesn't make these universities better to let more white people in.

Speaker 18 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

Speaker 18 AI and having a really robust AI system. They just want to get what's.
what's good for them.

Speaker 17 So their instincts in some ways are correct. It's again, the execution is wrong.

Speaker 18 60 years ago, the government's business.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But the problem is 70% of those non-whites come from upper-income households.

Speaker 17 Most Republicans and all Democrats, 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.

Speaker 17 The question is, and all the argument is over, over, is who qualifies for the hand up? And Tyler Perry and Trevor Noah's kids should not get a hand up.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And a lot of good kids have been pushed out by foreign students and by, quite frankly, wealthy, wealthy non-whites. And they've said, okay, fine,

Speaker 17 we need to reconfigure affirmative action as the University of California did. And they made made it an adversity index.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 okay, you know, Tyler Perry's kids, sorry, you have the same advantages as a rich white kid.

Speaker 18 Except, Scott, they never address the white kid, rich kids, right? They never like go, oh, wait a minute.

Speaker 17 Like, it's always like, oh, you're talking about doing away with legacies.

Speaker 18 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 tell a university

Speaker 18 what to say, how to operate.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 But otherwise, help poor kids get into colleges and help figure out a way to get colleges to open up more.

Speaker 18 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 the economic rung.

Speaker 18 That is a brilliant idea.

Speaker 17 And there are models out there.

Speaker 17 UW-Madison, University of North Carolina, which prioritizes in-state applicants,

Speaker 18 some of these California.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And here's the truth of it. The top 1%,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Dad is already super well-connected. It's the bottom 90 that need college the most.
And anyway,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 18 They've cut Pell Grants, Scott. They don't care.

Speaker 17 I'm just saying. No, I agree.
What I'm saying, though, is that the federal government

Speaker 17 should have, and nothing's for free, input into the policies, but it should be, and the word we always use is systemic.

Speaker 17 It should apply to everybody, not one-offs based on where Barron did or did not get into college. Right.
I agree with you.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 It's just they need to keep their dirty little hands out of

Speaker 18 the market.

Speaker 17 It gets complicated fast, Kara, because universities have taken in $14 billion

Speaker 17 from international, from other governments.

Speaker 17 Four of the $14 billion has come from a nation with 300,000 people, Qatar. And what do you know?

Speaker 17 We have all of these Middle East studies departments who, quite frankly, aren't teaching that Israel has a right to exist. So it does get pretty gray pretty fast.

Speaker 17 I think it's a complicated issue, but universities have been.

Speaker 18 The government should not be deciding this. I'm sorry.
It's this First Amendment.

Speaker 18 Look,

Speaker 18 I'm not loving guitar doing it. I didn't take money.

Speaker 17 Well,

Speaker 17 they shouldn't be allowed to give money is what the Wow.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Instead, they give out handouts to the very wealthy AI people and, you know, just take from anyone else. Anyway, it's a long thing.

Speaker 18 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

Speaker 18 all right we have to take a quick break and we'll be back for predictions

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Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 What do you predict they were talking about?

Speaker 17 I predict Trump wants in on the bachelor party. I don't.

Speaker 17 Didn't that already happen? Did it? I didn't hear about that. I would have been so close to that.

Speaker 18 Marriage, bachelor party? Lauren's not putting up with that.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 my prediction, I already made my prediction, the fix is in, someone has communicated to Jelene 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 end of his administration.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And all evidence from Jelene Maxwell will show that the president, while was a friend and showed errors in judgment, was not involved in any illicit or illegal activity.

Speaker 17 And then, on the eve before Trump

Speaker 17 takes off and J.D. Vance is elected president,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 He is the only one pushing back right now. I believe if I had to bet on anyone, he would be the president.

Speaker 17 But, anyways, whoever, 30 days before the president, the next president is inaugurated, she will be pardoned.

Speaker 18 Uh-huh. Okay.
Well, we'll see. Just so you know, two things.
Jillian Maxwell's is a liar. She faced two perjury charges stemming from these accusations.
She lied under oath around Epstein.

Speaker 18 They dropped those things because

Speaker 18 she also had sex trafficking conviction she received in December of 2021. So let me just say she's a sex trafficker.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 We need a special counsel with Matt Gates. I mean, are we in a simulation here? Literally, are we in a simulation here?

Speaker 18 I just seem like Jillene Maxwell is a terrible person and should die in prison.

Speaker 18 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 is doing.

Speaker 18 He's trying to cover up a sex trafficking scandal

Speaker 18 where his name is involved. And so

Speaker 18 everybody uh all this stuff whether you're going to get trump or not get trump just remember all these possibly a hundred hundreds of women they think were sexually abused here and that that is lost in this entire thing even 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 these these they're women now they're older they they're not here they they have been traumatized and and and Trump is further traumatizing them with this fucking circus.

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 you know, syphilitic. These are syphilitic men.
Anyway, your prediction that she's going to be that this is going to happen.

Speaker 17 The fix is in. She's going to be pardoned 30 to 60 days before the end of his term.

Speaker 18 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.
It won't come to the end of the minute.

Speaker 17 Well,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Yeah, what the fuck do you care, pardon her? The fix is in. The fix is in.

Speaker 18 All I just say is remember the girls of all of it. Release the empathy tiles is fine, but remember the girls.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 This is exactly what they are not supposed to do. They're supposed to be

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 You want to punish, you want a progressive,

Speaker 17 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, criminal prosecution structure that says the more senior and powerful, the more damage you're doing, the more we try to find

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I think this one is so obvious.

Speaker 18 I know that. But

Speaker 18 again, I want to stress to Pam Bondi, these are hundreds of

Speaker 18 girls and you have

Speaker 18 a horrible, shameful person to do this. And this is the woman who sexually abused them.
Absolutely. 100% has been convicted of that.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 The time for honoring yourself is at an end.

Speaker 18 You know, remember when he's the guy's, he's getting all the attention and the emperor's all pissed. And he, then the emperor tries to, you know, tell him about his

Speaker 18 wife and child being killed in a terrible way, including rave in this thing. And he turns around.
Instead of hitting him, he goes, the time for honoring yourself It's at an end.

Speaker 18 It will soon be at an end.

Speaker 17 Such a great line.

Speaker 18 That's what I feel about these people.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I don't. I don't.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Attorney General Bondi's ethics and morals around the president are sometimes a little bit patchy. Patchy.
Patchy.

Speaker 17 You're at the time. The time for honoring yourself.

Speaker 18 He's a heinous term again, is what she is.

Speaker 18 And I'll blame the men just as much, but when a woman does this, even worse. These are girls, Pam.
Girls, okay?

Speaker 18 Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about 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 18 Elsewhere in the Cara and Scott universe, this week on Prof G conversations that we talked about earlier this week, Scott spoke with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the 49th governor of Michigan.

Speaker 18 Let's listen to a clip of Big Gretsch with Scott.

Speaker 18 Well, 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.

Speaker 42 You know, I have an important role.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 So you like that interview, Scott?

Speaker 17 Yeah,

Speaker 17 every time I get to know

Speaker 17 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 show.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 She's just one of those people that within a minute, you think, this is a competent, decent decent woman. And

Speaker 17 also, Michigan has a lot to be proud of.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 My downside was she's infected with the same rhetorical flourish and avoidance of hard policies.

Speaker 17 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, says, we're going to lower Medicare eligibility by two years every year in socialized medicine.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 There is such an opportunity now for someone to come out with big fucking

Speaker 17 bold fucking

Speaker 17 Social Security back to 72 and we're means testing it. Sorry, folks.
It's time to be the grown-up in the room.

Speaker 17 An alternative minimum tax on corporations who are paying their lowest taxes since 1939 of Scott Galloway for president.

Speaker 17 There's 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 We are highly luxist.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 They're not going to nominate anyone under 5'11 because they realize America is so goddamn looksist and sexist still.

Speaker 17 So I don't, I think.

Speaker 18 No Scott Galloway for president. I'm just

Speaker 17 pointing it up. You fit all that criteria.
The problem is I wouldn't enjoy it and I wouldn't be very good at it.

Speaker 17 You're in my job, Kara, is to bring attention and oxygen to fantastic Democrats and help them get elected. Anyways,

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 she's hugely popular in a swing state. She is.

Speaker 18 She's still very popular despite everything.

Speaker 18 Let me just say,

Speaker 18 I think you're right about all those things, unfortunately.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 whatever you think, Mundami, and 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.

Speaker 18 He's saying something.

Speaker 18 But they were kind of interesting.

Speaker 17 Some of them were good, some of them were bad.

Speaker 18 And he's good at social media, and he's handsome, and he's well-spoken. Like, to me,

Speaker 18 get away from whether you'll same thing with Abby Spamberger, by the way. Great speaker, great looking, great, great communicator, saying things of real meaning.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 Scott, you should run for office. I can be your vice president.
I'll be fine, dude. I'd really run the show.

Speaker 17 So as we do here, we will build a giant bearing wall.

Speaker 18 We will build. I like that.
We'll build a bearing wall for America.

Speaker 17 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. That is your go-to metaphor.

Speaker 18 I'm going to build one right here in San Francisco. And then I'm going to have a kombucha.
I hate kombucha.

Speaker 17 You want to hear the most offensive thing I said at the Aspen Ideas?

Speaker 18 I'm sure I'll get a text.

Speaker 17 There was some, I was joking about masturbation and I said, I've found the ultimate birth control. And I notice I get lotion.
I have this lotion that I put on myself.

Speaker 17 And if I put it on for more than two minutes, I don't need to have sex.

Speaker 17 And there was this awkward silence. And then a bunch of women in Aloe who like me laugh and go, and then looked around to say, can I laugh? And it would be like, I'm laughing.
You just can't tell.

Speaker 17 I've had so much poison injected into my face.

Speaker 18 Oh, Mike, Scott.

Speaker 17 Scott. Oh, my God.
There you go.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 Hunting Wives?

Speaker 18 Hunting Wives with Malin Ackerman

Speaker 18 and others.

Speaker 18 Malin Ackerman and Brittany Snow. It's based on a book set in Texas.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 17 Exactly. You need to watch.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 20 Scott, read us out. There you go.

Speaker 17 Today's show is produced by Larry Names, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Intertod engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Severa, and Dan Shallan.

Speaker 17 Nishak Kara is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Speaker 28 Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 17 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Baring Wall.

Speaker 18 Lara, do not take that stuff out. Do you hear me?

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

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