Epstein Saga Continues, Trump Launches Distractions, and Cuomo Relaunches Campaign

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You see it a lot or not?

See what?

What are we worried about?

Root Canal.

I just had Root Canal this morning.

Jesus.

I know.

Oh, man.

My mouth is not moving.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher, and I just had Root Canal, so I have a lot of mouth issues, Scott.

I might drool during the show.

Let's be honest, that's a distraction from the Epstein files, and I'm not falling for it, Kara.

I'm not falling for it.

There's cane, sugar, and duh, and Coke.

I'm not falling for it.

It's true.

God, I have the worst teeth, Scott.

Do you have good teeth?

I have terrible teeth.

My head just told me.

God, I have.

I didn't go to the dentist till I was nine, at which point I had eight cavities, and then I fainted in the um in the waiting room so no I don't have good I don't we have the Galloways are not blessed with good teeth I had braces in graduate school I was very self-conscious of my teeth I have veneers I have spent this the GDP of a small nation so my so my teeth can just look reasonable yeah I just got a crown I had an implant recently they found another cavity while they were fixing this one today so I so both sides of my mouth have like you know when they put the stuff in they don't even put me to sleep which I would prefer.

Uh, I have a great doctor, Dr.

Schwartz.

Um, and but I got to tell you, he moves so fast.

I was like, I have pivot to do, and he goes, You know, you'll, you'll drool.

And I said, I get it, it's fine.

We got to bring the people their information.

It's an uncomfortable topic, but I'm a fan of women getting implants.

It's important that you feel good about yourself.

And I, I find that they actually may not look real, but they taste real.

They do not, they do not look good.

Anyway, uh, so thank you, Dr.

Schwartz, for doing it so fast.

Dr.

Schwartz, the dentist, Dr.

Schwartz, the dentist, He's my dentist.

We're meeting for Whitefish later.

I don't even know if he's Jewish.

Anyway.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

I do.

Spoiler.

I'm sorry.

A dentist in D.C.

named Dr.

Schwartz.

All right.

No, no, he's a bachelor.

I don't know for sure.

Okay.

Yeah, no, he's judged people based on that.

He's the legislative aide to Mike Johnson.

Yeah.

Okay.

Listen to me.

Listen to me.

Scott, even though I'm incredibly unattractive right now and possibly drooling, I don't even know if I am.

Do you know who's eyeing us from across the room?

Who's that?

None other than New York Times.

Emily Rodokowski.

No, Michael Barbaro.

Oh, we love Michael.

I know.

This is the daily.

Apparently he's got a thing for us.

Here's what he said when asked which podcast or creator he would like most to collaborate with.

Let's listen to the dulcet tones of Michael Barbaro.

Is it Barbaro?

I don't know.

The king and queen of Pivot, Kara Swisher, and Scott Galloway.

I just think those two have an extraordinary chemistry and a tremendous amount of wisdom.

And so I want to work with them.

And implants.

What does that mean?

He wants to work with us.

Work what?

Oh, my God.

So, first off, I don't listen to a lot of podcasts.

I listen to daily.

I absolutely adore it.

It's like listening to Chamomile T explain the Fed raid hike.

Oh, yeah.

It's delicious.

I get the sense that guy, I don't know, Michael.

I get the sense he's so woke that he records from like

underneath a weighted blanket in between panic attacks wondering if his cat's milk is ethically sourced i can't even imagine how woke that dude is oh he's a really nice guy he's a nice guy you know what you know what the daily is seriously like i i love it now listen to it it's like having a your like smarter friend whisper in your ear it's worse than you think

will i stroke you and sometimes

most of the time it's amazing sometimes though it's literally like it took 23 minutes to give you the same vibe as a really good slack emoji.

It's like that took 23 minutes.

I know, I know, but he's like, stop insulting him.

He likes us.

He's more handsome than us.

He'd be the, he'd be the best podcast out there.

I know.

And I know it's number one.

Apparently, we are.

Let's just.

It's number one.

No, it shifts back and forth with Joe Rogan and different things.

Huh.

I love how he does that.

And he pauses it.

And they know, you know, they pause it.

They're like, okay, put in a huh right now.

Yeah, that's it.

That's it.

I like when he goes, this is the daily.

I spent one dinner with him completely using his voice, talking to him.

Oh, there's a video of him.

He's dreamy.

He wasn't.

He's dreamy.

They're all dreamy now over there at the New York Times.

They're doing a lot of video and a lot of like Vaselines happening.

Oh, no, trust me.

Unless they've cleared out the building, I've spent some time there.

I know.

But if you look to the video between him and Ezra Klein, it's like, let us in your polycule.

I mean, come on.

We're not good looking enough for there.

There.

No.

No.

No.

No, we're not.

I mean,

we stack above Russ Dewhat or whoever wants that guy.

Let's go, let's take him to dinner and invite over like a kombucha somalier.

That guy's got to be so woke.

Well, he wants us, so that's all that matters to us.

It's good to be wanted.

Thank you, Michael.

Thank you, Michael.

We're very

objectified.

If he could speak more specifically to our physical attributes outside of your implants, I would appreciate it.

I have very broad shoulders.

I look better.

Michael, just so you know, I'm 60 years old, but naked.

I look 59 and 78.

It's you big, you big, tall drink of lemonade.

True fact, Michael, I've never seen Scott naked.

Actually, I've seen the top half of you naked.

I have.

You've seen me naked a lot.

No, I haven't seen the bottom half, and I hope never to.

Let me just say, it's on my list of things never to do.

Nickname of the fraternity.

Don't ask me.

Don't ask me.

I know.

The tripod.

You've told me.

The tripod.

Tripod, stop it.

Stop it.

I don't want to talk about it.

We're never going to do a nickname.

You're literally good right now.

You're still on the nitrous.

No, I'm not on nitrous.

They didn't give me nitrous.

I love nitrous.

Oh, what's the point?

You have got to start living your life.

I go to the dentist.

I have, by the way, I have terrible dental hygiene.

I brush my teeth twice a day and I'm like, I walk in there and they love this and I say, I have terrible dental hygiene.

You're going to give me a bunch of shit in a lecture, none of which I'm going to listen to or use.

I get my teeth cleaned every three months.

And it's always like a hot Brazilian woman who's a single mother.

I get really fucked up on the nitrous.

They They don't give me nitrous.

I start getting emotional.

And by the end of my teeth cleaning, I'm holding her hand.

Yeah.

And

writing a memo to the dentist about what an amazing professional she is.

You know, all the people who work at dental things that I've had experiences are great.

All the clean, the people who clean.

Anyway, we'll stop with the dentist stuff, but nonetheless, I don't do nitrous.

I got those shots.

I still feel like I'm spitting.

In any case, let's talk about it.

It doesn't matter.

I have trays right now.

Do you have trays?

I have Invisalign.

Every time I go.

I I did use Invisalign.

Yes, I'm serious.

I am paying for my dentist's house in Aspen.

He lives in Aspen.

He's never at his dentist.

He's like this, he's like this dentist to the stars, Jonathan Levine.

And every time I walk in there, they're like, uh-oh, we found something.

You need some antibiotic crypto treatment that's going to cost $11,000.

And I'm like, well, it's my teeth.

I got to spend it.

Yeah, you got you.

I can see you going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're like, they see you coming.

Oh,

all the doctors see you coming.

100%.

Just say.

Anyway, we have a lot to get to today.

Let's get besides Michael.

We, anytime, Michael, call us.

We're really easy.

We're totally easy.

Trump lashes out at his base over the Epstein files.

This is going on.

And Grock goes to Washington.

But first, look, President Trump and Jerome is trying to, speaking of a distraction, this is something that's been ongoing.

He's been, he said it's highly unlikely he'll fire Fed chair Jerome Powell.

Let's just be clear.

He's not allowed to.

It is highly unlikely unless he comes up with some scheme, despite reports that he was considering it, even showing a draft termination letter to a group of House Republicans to get their buy-in, I guess.

After those reports rattled markets on Wednesday, I mean, the Dow dropped like a, like a, just like a lot, like a lot.

And Trump said in an Oval Office presser, we're not planning on doing anything, at which point the markets bounce back.

Trump also said he was surprised that Powell was appointed, apparently forgetting he was the one who did that back in 2017 and quite effusively.

Literally, all these, it's so interesting.

He just, he's the one who appointed him.

He's pretending he didn't, he was like, I don't know who appointed him.

And there he was.

Trump has been slamming Powell for months for not cutting interest rates, calling him a major loser and a stubborn mule.

He's now targeting the Fed's $2.5 billion renovation project, suggesting there might be fraud at play, which could be grounds for Powell's ouster.

It's ridiculous.

Everybody, the bankers are being public about it.

The Wall Street Journal is being very explicit.

And Powell himself has been pretty vocal about Fed independence, which means serving at his full term, which is up next year.

It's not that long.

Let's listen to what he said to the Economic Club of Chicago back in April.

Our independence is a matter of law.

Congress has, in our statute, we're not removable except for cause.

We serve very long terms, seemingly endless terms.

So we're protected in the law.

So, you know, Congress could change that law, but I don't think there's any danger of that.

Fed independence has pretty broad support across both political parties and in both sides of the hill.

So I think that's not a problem.

Yeah, Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs CEO, David Solomon, other the bank CEOs were touting Fed independence.

Even Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besson confirmed to Bloomberg that the formal process of finding Powell's successor has begun, but he didn't say that Powell should come out.

He didn't name any candidates.

Reports suggest that Kevin Hassett, director of National Economic Council, is a top contender.

Kevin Warf, former Fed governor, is also in the mix, as is Besant himself.

So

what is happening here?

And then which of these do you think he will name?

I think I know exactly what's going on here.

Well, it's as if we're at the Nuremberg trials, and one of the people on trial starts playing the kazoo, hoping that we'll all forget why we're there.

It's a magician sawing his assistant in half and then yells out out Benghazi, hoping that people will look away.

This is what is going on at the White House right now.

It's his comms team and

Claude or ChatGPT saying, what can I do every day?

What can I announce every day that will capture the media's attention such that they look away from the Epstein files?

Look at how he, look at how he, this has nothing to do with it.

He's been at this for a while.

Like, Scott, he has.

He's been at House before Destiny, but go ahead.

He waves a letter talking about the firing, waves a letter, thinking that everyone from Vox Media, podcasters, to the New York Times to CNBC will go, Chairman Powell, he's threatening to fire him.

And then the next day he goes, oh, no, I was just kidding.

This was all a giant roost.

The day before, it was 85% tariffs on Canada.

The day before that, it was revoking the citizenship of a talk show host because he doesn't like her.

And tomorrow, Kara, it's going to be something else.

He is in a room.

Coca-Cola didn't turn out to be true.

Yeah, it tainted.

That's the only one I liked.

He is in a room.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

We have a new trade agreement to change the sugar cane or the sugar.

Make it Mexican Coke.

Make it Mexican Coke.

Every day, his comms team, and this is all he cares about right now, is saying, putting into ChatGPT, what will the media go for in order to ensure that the story?

of Epstein is pushed out of the news cycle.

He had no intention of doing this before the market's reaction.

He has no legal authority whatsoever to start revoking citizenship for no real reason.

And tomorrow, it'll be something else.

It's going to be illegal.

This is.

Make a guess of what it is.

Give me one.

With your sitting in there, what would you tell him to do?

I think he's going to announce like a 700% tariff on

SUVs or something.

I mean, it's just getting, it's getting so ridiculous and weird and crazy.

What's amazing to me was that the market responded, that it's still, the market's still taking this guy seriously.

everybody wasn't for a minute now it was like oh every 24 hours first off he and uh are you know are the wealthiest man in the world are such attention whores they are addicted to attention that a heroin addict will shoot up heroin going this is a bad idea I've got my kids for the weekend and my in-laws are coming over this is probably not a good idea to shoot up but they can't help it they're so addicted these guys are so addicted to attention that they'd rather get attention for something that makes them look stupid than not be in the news news cycle.

And he now has a very valid reason because

I'm not -

the one conspiracy I've always held on to.

Okay, we're gonna get to Epstein in a minute, but go ahead, keep going.

This is what's going on, Kira.

Okay.

This has nothing to do with the chairman.

But he will stay there.

There's no way he's pulling him out.

Look, okay, so let's go to the substance of the issue.

The majority of nations that have grown their economy faster than the rest of the world have one thing in common.

One, they are in fact democracies.

China is an exception, but the majority of the economic growth around the world has come from nations that decide that they're going to democratically elect their leaders.

They have great universities.

They're usually blessed with natural resources.

They have the wisdom to engage in alliances such as they can trade.

They bring women into the workforce.

I mean, there's just a few things.

They have civil rights.

There's a few things that are the underpinnings of economic growth.

And one of those things is an independent Fed, because here's the bottom line.

If you let the government decide what to do with respect to our economic policies and our fiscal policies, you end up with George Washington to George Bush $8 trillion in deficits.

And then you end up, since George W.

Bush, with another $30 trillion in deficits.

The reason why every fiat currency in history, and it'll happen to the dollar, ends up being worthless, is that the political pressure to increase short-term prosperity by printing money or lowering interest rates is greater than these elected leaders' fidelity to the long-term interests of the country.

And so, when we let politicians who have two and four and six-year cycles make these decisions, we end up making short-term bad decisions that hurt the country in the long term.

So, the best practice, one of the key best practices across almost every G20 country is they say it's there's too much temptation for the leader to want to get reelected and give a short-term sugar high and lower interest rates.

And

I taught macroeconomics in graduate school, and they will be teaching in graduate school for years this period where Jerome Powell managed to take inflation from 9% to 2%

without triggering a recession.

That's like literally like sticking the landing.

All right.

Well, but that said, the impact of Trump's policies over the last few months is starting to show up in the economy.

New data out this week is inflation ticking up in June.

Prices also rose in categories affected by tariffs, like toys, furniture, and appliances.

The job market is starting to show some cracks where there are indicators that consumers are reining in spending.

Still, the economy is holding up better than expected.

Economists now see less risk of a recession than they did three months ago, as you noted, according to a Wall Street Journal survey.

Is there another shoe to drop?

Banks are riding the volatility.

Goldman Sachs just posted the best ever quarter for stock trading and several their banks beat earnings expectations.

And at the same time, Trump is threatening new sanctions on Russia.

You know, another economic, probably

maybe not so much for our economy.

If there's no peace deal with Ukraine in the next 50 days, he says he'll launch a secondary tariff, slapping 100% on countries that continue doing business with Russia.

That would mean countries like India, China, Turkey face heavy tariffs for buying Russian oil, a move that could trigger a global spike in energy prices.

I doubt, I'm not sure if Putin cares, but talk about these

circumstances.

Where are we with the economy from your perspective?

The real question on everyone's mind right now, or the most important question we should be asking ourselves, is that at this moment, Kara, is Michael Barbaro touching himself?

He's back.

He's back.

The answer is yes.

The answer is always yes.

But go ahead.

Well, look, the economic data that came out,

I looked at it and I thought, okay, this is the ultimate anger pillow for the far left and the far right.

There's some indication that certain items, especially the ones subject to tariff, had a greater increase in inflation.

But at the same time, catastrophists like me are disappointed because the reality is inflation, I think, at 2.7 or 2.8 just isn't that big a deal.

And the economy has been more resilient than people who are kind of in the back of their...

minds looking for some Schadenfreude of the economy collapsing and blaming it on Trump.

Yeah, it needs to collapse next summer, everybody.

But go ahead.

The headline, and I haven't seen the headline.

The headlines from Fox will be economy resilient.

The headline from CNN will be inflation rising.

This is, there's something in here for everyone.

There's a little bit of data showing that the tariff-sensitive goods services went down.

They're not subject to tariffs.

Some of the industries subject to tariffs

have shown a little bit of a spike in price.

But the reality is we're not going to probably see the effects of this or not until the fall because it takes a while for it to

snake through the economy.

The Russia thing,

when I immediately knew that the war was not going to end, was when I saw Chiron yesterday saying that Trump has demanded that Putin end the war in 50 days.

That is just so fucking stupid.

You really think the Russian people have endured over a million deaths and or casualties, and you think that he's going to scare when the president says it needs to end within 50 days?

The interesting thing, though, I mean, Russia's economy does, you want to talk about an economy that appears to be cracking.

The rubles shot up.

It's now back to being worth less than a cent, and it did recover a little bit.

But this war is really, I mean, I believe they lost, what did they lose?

17 or 18,000 people in Afghanistan.

They backed out.

They've lost a million people here.

And it feels as if the economy is really starting to show tracks there.

And I've said this for a long time.

I think that both Biden and Trump to a lesser extent, but they both deserve credits.

The greatest investment in terms of ROI in the last 20 years for America has been the $50 or $60 billion a year or about, I don't know, 8% of our military budget that we have given in weapons that is sort of a stimulus to red states and weapons manufacturers in the U.S.

There's no way Syria would have gone.

There's no way we would have been able to take out Iran's air defenses.

It has sent a message to China to be very careful.

be very careful invading a motivated, technically literate Taiwan.

This has been, NATO is coming together.

Europe has been inspired to increase its defense spending.

This has been the best investment Americans could have made.

And all by, by the way, we did this without putting a single boot on the ground.

And you watch what we're going to see in terms of technical innovation around drone technology.

So I think this is,

there are never good wars, but there are less bad wars.

The war, the support of Ukraine and the incredibly brave people there is the least bad war in a while.

Yeah.

Although the devastation, obviously, is.

horrific.

I think they'll come bouncing back like that will be the place to be in 10 years.

Ukraine, keep it.

Yeah.

full of technologists, full of, I just, they are, they are a very innovative

country in terms of they were before.

And now I think more than ever, they're very technically oriented.

So I think you'll see a piling of Silicon Valley people in there.

Similar to Latvia, Estonia, all those countries, but Ukraine will be a really, I think, a centerpiece of that when this war is over.

Yeah, we'll see.

When we get back after a quick break, we'll talk about the drama that's not going away anytime soon.

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Scott, we're back with more news.

The Epstein mess continues.

Since we last spoke, House Speaker Mike Johnson has broken with Trump and is calling for the administration to release the Epstein files.

That said, he voted against doing a debate about whether to release them or not, which is interesting.

But Republican Representative Thomas Massey, who's a real thorn

in Trump's ass of Kentucky, is attempting to force a vote on the House directing the DOJ to release the files.

The measure has been co-sponsored by at least five other Republicans.

Interestingly, almost three minutes of footage is wiped from the video released by the DOJ of Epstein's cell door, according to the forensic experts working with Wired.

Maureen Comey, the federal Manhattan federal prosecutor who worked on the Epstein case, has been fired.

Yes, she is the daughter of James Comey.

She also worked on the Diddy case.

Meanwhile, President Trump has called the story Democratic bullshit and pretty boring stuff, labeling those who are invested in as weaklings and stupid.

The Democrat stuff isn't working very well.

Because one incredible thing is Bill O'Reilly was going on about how this was the Biden administration doing all this.

And the anchor was like, this was all under the Trump administration.

He died under the Trump administration.

He was prosecuted under the Trump administration.

And all of a sudden, Riley went, oh, like speaking of old man, he got it completely wrong.

Anyway, it's not a Democratic thing.

This was all done under Bill Barr and everyone else.

So any change in opinion on whether Republicans will be pushing him?

Because as I predicted, Laura Ingram, many others sort of tamped it down.

Looks like Dan Bungino is not going anywhere.

I said they were all going to

bow down.

That said, I don't know if they'll bow down for too long.

So any, and obviously Elon is not bowing down at all.

He is tweeting up a storm about this.

And he made a very good point that essentially deny everything,

make other allegations and try to make it go away.

And he said, it's not going to work this time.

And he's pushing on it really hard and probably changing the algorithms of X to push a lot of this stuff because it's good for X.

I hate to say it, but he's certainly not backing down and neither are many others.

Any thoughts?

Alex Jones is not at all, but I'm not sure he matters as much.

This is a rare, he's an incredible communicator kind of going.

I think the learning is that when everyone is zigging, there's always a huge opportunity to zag.

When everybody is following one strategy or one investment thesis, then it creates enormous alpha and upside to go the other way.

And

Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, pointed this out, and I thought it was so remarkably insightful: that basically every politician in the world says something along the following: I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

I mean, what does 80% of America say that?

If you want to describe their politics and they don't want to assign themselves to a party, they go, socially liberal, fiscally conservative.

Actually, that's not true, but go ahead.

It's the opposite.

Most in the middle,

they're more socially conservative, and they want more Medicaid.

That's where I was headed: Trump decided, no, the opportunity is to be fiscally liberal.

Keynesian, socialist,

irresponsible fiscal policy.

Shower money on everyone, increase the size of government, run up deficits.

This is like if the Democrats all of a sudden said, oh, we are in charge and we can just continue printing money.

And all of a sudden, the Democrats are now the adults in the room going, oh, my God, this has gotten out of control.

He's also, he zags around communication.

American politics got so politically correct and starched.

And there were so many lies and telling people what they wanted to hear and couching everything in

passive aggressive behavior.

And he just came out and said, oh, she's fat or he's an idiot.

And America, quite frankly, just loved it.

They absolutely loved it.

Where he is really,

this is such a rare misstep for him because if he had just taken the approach of, say, his taxes, he was never going to release his taxes.

But he lied.

He lied and said, oh, of course I'm going to release them.

And then, and then wink, wink to behind the scenes, don't ever fucking release my taxes.

If he had done that here, eventually this would have gone away.

But he became so defensive and obviously guilty.

He looks guilty.

It looks like when I walk in and my dog, my dog Leia, my great dane, has gotten into the trash, I know it.

She's sulking around like, uh-oh, won't make eye contact, putting her hindquarters on the back.

Yeah, that look.

Yeah, the dog look.

He looks like this times 10.

He has fanned these flames unbelievably and handled it so poorly.

He could not, I think I said this on Monday.

If someone had said to him, if he had said, tell me, give me the body language, the statements, and the complexion of someone who is clearly guilty of something and freaked out about it, that is how he has behaved.

So, what should he do?

Say, again, as I said, should he just say he's going to release them and then not release them or agree with his people and say it's terrible, nothing can be done about it?

I mean, in this case, he does have the power to release it.

So, it's really hard to say, yeah, I agree, we should release it and then not release it because he's the one who promised it in the election.

He's the one who talked about it incessantly.

He's the one who trained his followers to be conspiracy theorists, right?

And these people are committed,

more committed to the conspiracy than they are to him at this point.

It's just just so weird about this misstatement about what it says about our politics.

And that is, first off, what do you know?

The first bipartisan action or the first demonstration of bipartisanship in this fucked up electoral body is over a conspiracy.

That's what it took to bring Democrats and some Republicans together.

It was a conspiracy.

And what's weird about it is I get the sense that they're not,

the people who are so outraged about this, they're not outraged that they want to know if these people are guilty of raping children.

They want to know if their conspiracy is valid.

It's not, it's just so strange.

And

also.

What I don't get is a following and why I believe, wow, there may be a there,

is that if he had just done what any number, I mean, at some point this island looked like a little bit like what you would imagine Davos would look like, except with bathrobes and ankle monitors.

I mean, these

this gathering, there were so many people there that are really powerful.

And the majority of them have said, yeah, I fucked up.

I thought it was going to be a good time and a good party and everybody else, you know, was going.

Yeah.

You talked about that.

Keep in mind, Kara, this is a country that has forgiven him after he was found liable for sexual abuse.

And so many accusations on top of that.

And he's worried about, and he thinks this is worse yeah so how could it be worse yeah who'd have thought that someone who had

what are your thoughts here i think i i'm fascinated how interested i am now and understanding i think there's a huge opportunity here for uh fraud that he will that they will release certain things because he keeps saying he she can release the credible things right and so i think there's there was a joke i thought jordan klepper did a great job uh talking about that they're going to try to fake things like fake conversations and things like that.

There's a huge opportunity for manipulating this information if it does get released.

So be dubious of some of it and creating kind of a mess.

So you don't know what's what.

There's a huge opportunity for really hurting people that are not guilty who just stupidly went to his island.

At the same time,

a lot of it probably is, it's probably worse than you think, right?

What this guy has on these people, because he was operating for decades, by the way, Jeffrey Epstein.

It wasn't a short time.

And people kept going after he was convicted and in a sweetheart deal.

All the people in Florida were involved in the sweetheart deal, including one of Trump's former cabinet members and ended up having to leave because of it.

I think Trump is

acting guilty because he is guilty.

And the question is, what is he guilty of, right?

What exactly is he guilty of?

And what proof is there?

Why hasn't the proof come out till now?

You know, you'd think this stuff would come out.

And it's kind of interesting that it hasn't.

That's another thing.

The other thing is he, he keeps saying if credible evidence, like, what is that?

What does he say?

Everything he says, I pay attention to.

I think it's a big, giant mess.

And

if I were him, I'd let it all out

and let the chips fall where they may and make it confusing for everybody,

make it a bigger, hot mess than it is.

I think it's not going to go away.

The Maureen Comey thing, why would you do that?

Why would you file the prosecutor of Jelaine Maxwell?

Is he preparing to pardon her?

And I think, let me just say, I think Elon has a very good point.

What is she doing in jail?

He's calling it a hoax, the whole thing.

Why is Jelene Maxwell in jail if it's a hoax?

I'd like to know.

Well, and again, if the election was stolen in 2020, how many people have been arrested?

Zero.

Anyway,

so again,

what is Maureen Comey's firing?

Again, start playing the kazoo.

Do you think it was an accident that he fired her yesterday?

No, I just think what's interesting is a firing of federal prosecutor and a tape gap.

That reminds me of someone, Nixon.

I feel like just MAGA has given us license to talk about our favorite conspiracy.

Do you remember the Godfather?

I don't think he was murdered.

I think this is what happened.

You know how in Godfather 2, the Robert Duvall character visits that guy in

witness protection or imprisoned who's going to testify against Michael Corleon?

And Robert Duvall, the concierge, comes to him and says, hey, you know, in ancient Rome, they used to kill themselves and then their families would be taken care of?

He basically says to him, if you kill yourself, we'll take care of your family.

I think something along the lines of

All right, if you want to kill yourself, we'll figure out a way such that no one gets in the way.

Something went on here.

This is just two cameras, two guards, and through just a series of very, very unlikely events, he was able to do this.

This is, I mean, this really is the stuff of

conspiracy theory.

It's just sort of like you read about this, and there's no less than probably a dozen or two dozen people.

If someone came to that person and said, oh, by the way, if somehow $10 million ends up in a Swiss banking account, this guy's going to end up dead.

I think there's a lot of people who are on that island who would probably nod.

So this is, and again i come back to the same thing first off the comey thing was another one of his attempts at distraction hoping that the media would pick up on it if i had a guess he slept with someone underage and they there's proof yeah that's called that's called rape that's right

exactly that's right

that's what i'm saying that i i think that well that's what everyone's guess is that's his assumption that's it wasn't it wasn't that he it wasn't that he had mushroom chocolates on the island and watched the sunset i mean that it's not it this is he is really worried here.

And you think, well, maybe he's worried about his friends.

He doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone else.

What about a special counsel?

Did you see Lauren Bovart's suggestion?

Matt Gates.

Hire a special counsel, but how special will that counsel be?

I know Matt Gates was her suggestion.

She's such a bubblehead, man.

She's such a bubblehead.

I don't know what that.

Yeah, I don't think you hire.

Although he'd know how to find it.

He'd know.

Yeah, look, appointing Matt Gates to the special counsel is like trying to defuse a bomb by strapping it to your ex-wife.

I mean, that just,

I thought that was funny.

This is okay.

You're not really trying to solve the problem here.

You're trying to, you're trying to kill two birds with one stone.

This would be so bad.

Oh my God.

Can you imagine?

And of course, he gets sucked up into it because, of course, it'll start talking about his problems,

similar problems.

Wait, we're going to have a special counsel, like a special counsel who was accused and investigated.

And I think he was cleared, to be fair, of the crime he'd be investigating.

Who knows?

What's the next thing?

Just very quickly and we'll move on.

Well, I know what the next thing is.

Something fucking outrageous and stupid that we all go over here.

So we're not talking about Epstein.

I don't think anyone's going over here.

I know, but well, okay.

But I was working out with my son yesterday and the Chiron and CNBC and CNN all talking about Chairman Powell.

He's not going anywhere.

Nothing is different about Chairman Powell's job than it was 48 hours ago, except it's crowded out, more and more reporting about Epstein.

Epstein's not going anywhere is what I meant.

Epstein's not going anywhere until the files are released.

That is it.

That's what you think.

Do you think this is going to, there's no, there's no.

I mean, the Fox News is, you know, interesting.

The other day, they were counting Fox News and it mentioned Epstein four times because Trump said something and Biden 52 times.

It was crazy.

They're trying very hard.

A lot of conservative media is very nervous about what to do here because they love the the conspiracy theory, but they don't love that it's linked to Trump so closely now.

So it's going to be hard for them to figure out, although the Wall Street Journal certainly has been aggressive in covering it, but still not heavily, not as heavily as it should be.

They sort of give it glancing attention.

So it'll be hard for all these conservative media things, but I think it's going nowhere until they release the files.

And then that will take up all the time.

And now Trump's whole administration is Epstein.

That's it.

That's all it is for until the midterms, I think.

I don't think it's going away like his other.

Most of his stuff moves on.

This is not moving on.

But we'll see.

We'll see.

And another news, Defense Department is going to start using Elon Musk's favorite chatbot, Grok, which is interesting because Elon's really attacking Trump.

XAI announced this week that it secured a $200 million contract with DOD to develop and implement AI tools for the agency.

Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI were awarded similar contracts.

XAI is also rolling out Grok for Government, a suite of products that can be customized for specific uses across science and healthcare and other sectors.

And I suppose it can go into Hitler mode if it needs to.

And that's not all.

The latest Grok update includes companions for super Grok subscribers, an anime girl, and a panda.

They're already doing all sorts of problematic things.

I'm not going into it.

What happens, we'll see when it gets into the government.

I don't think they're capable of making a commercial product or product for government, but so far they haven't been able to.

Your thoughts?

Any quick thoughts?

Well,

initially, in order to try and quell concerns about AI and stave off any possible regulation, they all had, literally all of them, whether it was Lama or Anthropic or ChatGPT, all had language

that essentially said that they would never use their models for military warfare or nuclear industries.

They have all

recently changed that language or gotten rid of it because there's money here and big money.

So all of this, I mean, all of them were like, this is dangerous.

We realize it's dangerous.

We will never use it for military applications.

And they're like, oh, there's a, there's a check here.

Get rid of that launch.

I'm going to do the Michael Barga.

So what you're saying is, what you're saying is, Scott, that they're greedy fucks.

Yeah.

So what you're saying is, even though he claims to be a heterosexual, if you have a dreamy salt and pepper beard, he'd go there.

He'd go there.

Anyways,

poor Michael Beabron.

The last thing anyone's going to do now is compliment us.

Literally the last thing.

Anyway, he is exquisite.

No good deed goes unpunished, Michael.

Exquisite, Michael.

We think you're exquisite.

But I have, but also, I personally, I really

endorse and in favor, in favor of this intersection, which for some reason we have avoided between our nation's most innovative companies and our military industrial complex.

I think other nations are trying to figure out.

I mean, one of the learnings we're going to take away, I think, from the war we were talking about, the war in Ukraine, is the following.

That just stating you're going to increase your military budget by $100, $120 billion, that's again, drunk uncle practicing his karate in front of everybody thinking it's impressive.

Karate.

Karate.

The lesson you can take away from the war in Ukraine can come down to one word, asymmetric.

And that is there have been $300 drones that have been taking out $3 million million TU-144 tanks or whatever they're called.

We should be massively investing in asymmetric warfare, things like drones, things, AI, predictive technologies, because the reality is

the kinetic era is over.

And that is thinking if you have more tanks, you're automatically going to win the war.

That used to be true.

Wars used to be a function of brute force.

It's no longer the case.

And I think companies like Andorel,

Palantir,

which I have been critical of.

The reality is,

at the end of the day, we should have our brightest working hand in glove and stop all the fucking

bitch, stupid like walkouts at these companies saying we're not going to work with the defense industry.

No, we can do that.

They can leave.

They can leave.

People do what they want.

And they should be in quite,

oh, come on.

We're going to walk out over lunch.

That'll show up.

Well, no, no, they have to walk.

If they don't want to do it, they should leave.

And they have every

I love what you say.

You don't like Chick-fil-A?

don't eat a chick-fil-a but don't walk out over lunch and think that somehow that's going to make any difference and the and and a lot of these i don't i i've said this a lot i sound very i don't know what the term is republican here i think a lot of americans take for granted just how many people out there would like to kill us and take our shit away and that we need the most robust fighting force in history and you invest in your opportunities not your problems the most successful organization in a modern world is the u.s military so we should continue to invest in it but we should continue to invest in it smartly and i I do think these companies can bring a lot of value to the Defense Department.

The one thing I like,

like everybody got some.

Like, I think there should be a lot of competition with the defense.

They have an opportunity here not to have one.

Like, they have a problem with Starlink and with SpaceX, with the space stuff, putting up satellites.

If you have all the companies here, that's great.

One thing that's a problem is that ChatGPT is taking, I don't know if you've seen the recent stats.

Still, ChatGPT is huge.

The others are progressively smaller.

Microsoft doesn't even show up and Grok doesn't show up at all.

Yeah, it's running away with it.

It's running away with it.

That's even though they're losing all kinds of researchers.

That said, I think it's good to have competition in the sector if we're going to do this.

Did you get the anime girl at all?

I didn't.

Nobody's using Grok.

No one's using it.

Very few people are using Grok.

Anyway.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It's look at the numbers.

It's like crazy

how far down the chart they are.

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

When we come back, we'll talk about Andrew Cuomo taking on Zoran Mamdani again.

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Scott, we're back with more news.

Are you registered in New York?

Oh, no, you're Florida, Florida.

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will officially run as an internet.

Let's just make sure the New York State Comptroller heard that.

I'm a Florida resident.

Yes, you are.

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will officially run as an independent in the NYC mayoral race after being defeated very handily by Zoran Mamdani in the Democratic primary.

I mean, he beat him like a rug.

Cuomo posted a campaign video on X, which has under 6,000 likes.

It's really sad.

The reply from Mamdani with a link to donate to his campaign has over 181,000 likes.

It was well done.

The former governor plans to ask all candidates other than Mamdani to pledge to drop out of the race in mid-September if they aren't in the lead, including himself, I guess.

And current mayor Eric Adams, who will also run as independent, said Cuomo asked him to drop out of the race, which he called the highest level of arrogance.

I would agree with Eric Adams.

I don't agree with him on anything.

Meanwhile, Mamdani has been making the rounds, meeting with business leaders and visiting D.C.

to meet with Democratic leaders.

He had a pretty cool reception from a lot of them

because

he just did.

He's tried a little bit to assuage their worries.

A lot of people are looking at Bill de Blasio's policies and Momdani's, and Bill de Blasio is left of Momdani, which is interesting, according to a lot of stuff I've read.

But Cuomo, oh, is so non-vibrant.

He looks like an old man.

He looks weird.

People are making memes out of

him walking around with his face and stuff like that, which are very funny.

And he's getting,

this is, I know he's shook up his whole campaign, but I don't see him making any ground here.

Any thoughts?

Well, it reminds me of when in 2016, people said that only Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could make each other viable.

I feel as if Governor Cuomo, who I like more than most people, I think it's easy to be critical of him.

I get it.

But I actually think he's a decent man would be a decent elect.

I think he'd be a good placeholder.

I think he'd be competent.

I would have voted probably for Cuomo.

Some of Mom Dami, as I said this, I'm not a New York resident.

I also think that people totally freaking out about his international policy is

he needs to make sure the subways run on time.

I think some of his policies are absolutely asinine.

But having said that, I, like you, I think I got swept up in this fever of young people taking charge and pushing back on the establishment.

And he's

a viable, I think it's going to be a rough summer for Mom Dame.

He has done something very smart in the last week, and that is he is pivoting towards the center.

He has agreed not to use or applaud the term globalize the infitada, which is deeply offensive.

You said infitada.

Intifada?

Yeah, thank you.

Only only Cuomo and Eric Adams could make a guy who wrote a rap song

praising the funders of Hamas a viable candidate.

And also what this really is a lesson in

and this kind of, and I'm sort of here for it, is young people pushing back.

And also he put on a master class in how to run a campaign for a new age.

It is going to be a rough summer for him because

I think these guys with their money and also I think New Yorkers are really going to start digging into some of these policies.

And basically, you know,

people are going to get smart when they start pushing back on him.

They're going to start saying, okay, these quote unquote state-sponsored grocery stores are nothing but state-sponsored breadlines.

He's going to have a rush.

But there's only going to be like three of them, Scott.

That's like over.

Maybe so.

They could take advantage.

There's only going to be like three or four of them.

So it's fine to like try to get better.

If he pivoted and said, you know, what I really want to do is get better food into these neighborhoods and let's figure out an interesting and good way to do it.

And he could do that.

He could pivot that in a second.

And he should.

He will.

He should.

And he will.

Second thing, a lot of the other stuff, he just has to be more explicit what he means by rent freezes so i think he has an opportunity actually to clarify himself in a really good way and in a very powerful way so well if he's smart he'll pivot to the middle and he's sort of doing just the middle clarify himself okay here's what i want to do let's

back away from ridiculously fucking stupid positions no but he was thinking but he wasn't specific and when you start to actually hear the specifics they're not quite as nutty as you think they are as you think they are which you which i did well he's backpedaling the rent freezes rent freezes don't work no but it is a rent freeze on a certain number of things anyway nonetheless he has an an opportunity to define himself, and he's got to do that.

That's the key thing: he's got to define him, not let them do it, because they'll do it in this ham-handed way that makes him look like an idiot.

Secondly, well, look,

you think he's, you think, I'm just going to ask you a question.

You think he's going to have no problem that he's going to run away with it?

No, I think he's going to have, he's going to, he has an opportunity to keep the narrative going for himself, or they're going to do it for him.

And so he needs, that's all I'm saying.

And it's an opportunity.

And it's an opportunity to clarify.

And so anything that seems weak, the things that bug you, that drive you crazy, he should start to clarify for those voters.

Secondly, is an opportunity to reach out to voters of color, poor voters of color, and really go into those neighborhoods and start talking.

That's where Cuomo is strong.

He absolutely is.

So he can start doing that.

The third thing is that the...

The rich people of New York have lost their fucking ever-loving minds about this.

They, you know, calling him a mark.

I'm like, calm the fuck down.

you've worked with all kinds like the stuff they've tolerated on trump give me you you have no credibility you people you're you're just no credit you look like rich people running for the hills and that is that to me has astonished me like can get ken langone like just all of them like calm down like you might have to work with this guy so let's figure out a way to work with him right rather than like kneecap him almost constantly i don't know if he's going to run away with it i can tell you if Cuomo doesn't do something, because he really looks, go look at his physical.

He used to be a big, vibrant man.

He's, it looks like he's lost weight.

I don't know how, but he looks like he's lost a substantive amount of weight.

He looks non-vibrant.

He looks old.

He looks very awkward in regular settings with people.

I think he's like he's all the energy that Cuomo did bring to the table, and he absolutely did, he's lost.

And so is Adams the other choice?

I think, I think he and Adams are going to eat each other up and Mom Donnie's going to win.

I don't see how he can't win unless he makes a big, giant mistake.

And if he clarifies himself and becomes more palatable to more people, and it doesn't have to be the rich people because they're never going to like him, I think he's got a great chance.

I think like Cuomo is a flawed candidate.

I think for 67, I think he looks great.

I think he looks really robust.

There's a lot of flaws there.

Those flaws are dwarfed by a guy who cut a backroom deal with an unpopular president to let ICE into his

tree.

Adams, the only prediction I'm willing to make here is that it's not going to be Eric Adams.

So, but, and also,

to a certain extent,

you know, everyone's focusing on

the moment that Momdami, in my opinion, won, at least the primary, was when on the debate stage, they asked them what is the first place you would visit.

And they all got out their virtue signaling and self-importance and said, well, I'd go to Israel.

Dude, you're the

make sure the trash is picked up.

And he said, and

this was the moment for him.

He said, I go to Brooklyn.

I go to

Harlem.

I'm about improving the city.

And these folks in operational roles, you know, when you're the governor of South Dakota,

do you really need?

To go to Israel.

Yeah,

you're basically saying, I'm going to take taxpayer money.

And instead of doing my fucking job, I'm going to pretend I'm bigger.

I'm going to pretend that I should be president.

No one gives a shit what you think about

the war in Ukraine or Gaza.

You're here to run the city and make sure we have good schools, that people are safe.

And instead,

and he ran right through that.

That was brilliant on his part.

And it also more than just...

That's why I think he's going to do a good job here, but go ahead.

Well, and what it says is it might be a turning point.

The most exciting thing about his win, and I would not have voted for him, but the most exciting thing about his win was within seven days of him winning, 4,000 young Democrats filled out paperwork to run for office across the nation.

And that's what we need.

We need more young people who think, if this guy can do it, so can I.

I am so sick of the old pulling the future forward on my credit card.

I have had it.

And so I'm like we've both said, we're a little bit caught up in this fever and what it says about democratic politics.

And they should absolutely take some notes from his playbook around how he weaponized new media and also focused on affordability and represents, you know, a new generation.

Anyways, TED Talk over.

Yeah, let me say one final thing.

One of the things that drives me crazy is there was an Arizona race where an influencer didn't win, thought that you might.

She got.

pretty far against

an equally progressive candidate who was taking over her father's seat.

And they're like, it's a sign

of trouble for Mondami.

No, it isn't.

If you're genuine in your area, if you're Abby Spanberger and you want to be more conservative and centrist in Virginia, work for Virginia, that'll work.

If you're in Ohio and you're more centrist, that'll work.

If you're AOC and you're who you are, that'll work.

What you have to be is genuine and interested in where you are.

It doesn't speak to the bigger Democratic Party.

That said, they will use, if he wins, the Republicans will try to make Mandani into a demon.

I think it's going to be very hard to do so.

They tried really hard to do that with Nancy Pelosi.

It didn't work.

It worked for Hillary Clinton.

He is so charming, it'll be very hard to demonize him.

And I think making these people more than they are is probably a bad idea.

Everyone should be who they are in the area they're in.

That's my only thought.

Have you interviewed him?

I'm going to.

I'm going to.

Yeah, I just, I was saying, Kara Swisher and this guy are like,

I think that'll be

he should do it.

It totally fits.

I was deciding, should I interview Cuomo?

I was talking about this with Amanda.

Oh, yeah, I would.

It'd be an interesting interview.

Yes, it would be.

You're getting your ass handed to you.

What is your thought here?

What are your plans?

What's your plan?

Yeah.

You come across as tired in

the past.

How are you going to come back to your life?

And your social media is cringe.

Do you need some help?

Anyway, blink your eyes three times if you do.

I think the whole world is, well, not the whole world, but those of us who are who are

the side piece of Michael Barbaro are hoping that you interview both, especially Momdami, but also Cuomo.

I'd love to see you interview both of us.

I'm going to ask him.

I'm going to ask him.

Anyway, the House has advanced three crypto bills.

We're moving on.

And a defense measure, after setting a record for the longest vote in the history of the chamber, GOB holdouts agreed after being promised a future vote to ban the Federal Reserve from mission

digital currencies.

The Genius Act, which would regulate stable coins, is on track to hit Trump's desk this week and could mark Congress's first ever major crypto legislation.

We'll see.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $118,000 after hitting a high of $120,000 at the start of the week.

Very quickly on crypto, and also, I just want to note, they're also voting to cut funding for NPR and PBS, which is heinous on their part.

They managed to get that through so far in this rescissions package.

Thoughts on either of those things?

things?

Well, look, PBS NPR, I grew up with them.

I think they do enormous service.

And there's just certain people who won't get straight down the middle news anymore with these funding cuts.

I am a little bit, I have a little bit of a Republican twinge on this and that is their public funding has become such a political football that I wonder if at some point they're better off without the public funding and just leaning on listeners such as myself who get register enormous value to support it.

It just feels like it's been such a political football for so so long.

That means people in rural areas will never have any news that is not tinged.

I think, look,

that's a fair point, and I touched on that at the beginning of my comments.

It's going to be 1.1 billion, couple percent.

It'll hurt them, though.

I would love to see an NPR and a PBS be really well funded by private individuals such that the Republicans could stop using it as a punching bag at every human.

For years.

Yes, that's correct.

So let me commit.

based on what you said, I'm going to give some money to NPR and PBS and public radio because I think they do an amazing job.

And corporate badges.

Public broadcasting is what you want to give to.

Go ahead.

Corporation of

CPB.

But here's what was interesting is a survey came out and they asked people what media entities are the most trusted for trying to be moderate.

And what was interesting is the two that came up as the most trustworthy in the middle were formerly companies formerly known as having a conservative and or progressive bent.

And the two were the Wall Street Journal and

I think it was PBS.

Was it PBS or NPR?

I think it was PBS.

But what's interesting is that quality journalism does break through, even if you have a political bent or a reputation for a political bent.

Because the Wall Street Journal was always known as conservative, but they said they limited their conservative viewpoint to the opinion section.

They did.

They do.

And I worked there.

You know, I worked there.

I know you did.

Amazing journalists.

It's a testament, quite frankly, you got to give it to Rupert Murdoch.

I agree.

He left you.

He has done an amazing job stewarding that publication.

Yes.

And then

in our business,

I've said for a long time, I think we should every time we do a podcast, send a royalty check to Joe Rogan, who blew the medium open.

NPR's podcasts, they're the original gangsters saying that audio quality, it matters.

Production quality, they do such a good job.

When you listen to their stuff, it is so tight and so well produced.

And I'm a fan.

I'm going to Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

I think one of the things that you have to note is that they have, what drives me crazy is this idea that Elmo is woke or they're just saying be nice.

They're not like they do.

They go on and on, these right-wingers.

And remember, you know, Tinky Winky was gay or whatever.

And that, because he had a purse.

And the thing that drives me crazy is the same thing with Superman.

Like, they're like, Superman's woke.

And then it's, of course, it's the most successful movie of this summer.

Secondly, if you go back to old Superman things and you read it out loud, they would call that woke.

It's like everyone, Superman says, this is from the 40s, be nice to everyone, regardless of their religion or their race.

This has been a Superman thing forever.

It's just these people using these iconic things like Elmo and Superman

as a cudgel is really.

is so lame.

They're so lame.

Be nice is a real, is not a woke thing.

It's a nice thing to to teach kids and i love everything that npr and pbs does and please watch ken burns american revolution coming up and then set and we'll send you a tote bag if you give me 25 i don't know elmo folks elmo is conservative if you listen actually listen to elmo he talks like a dictator or a linkedin influencer on mushrooms all right crypto really quick two seconds and then we'll get to your point i think the space needs regulation there's just no getting around it by the way i bought my first i'm for the first time and i'm i'm a coiner i bought i bought indirectly through a Bitcoin treasury company.

I bought Bitcoin.

Finally.

Just for diversification, and I'm just so sick of missing out on all this.

What they've done, Bitcoin is just, it's a remarkable phenomenon.

There's no getting around it.

And I don't understand the nuances of the regulation, but this category needed some sort of clarity around

regulation.

The Genius Act.

The Genius Act sets rules for stable coin users, such as, I think it requires one-to-one backing with treasuries, monthly reports, redemption rights, anti-money laundering compliance.

Those are good things.

That'll be good for the space.

Many of them already do this.

I think Circle and Paxas already do this, and it will bring some clarity to the unregulated players.

Then there's something actually called the Clarity Act, and it formalizes the regulating bodies, which I think is a good idea.

Bitcoin and Ethereum will go to the CFDC or ICO tokens will go to the SEC.

Stable coins will have shared oversight.

And then there's the Anti-CBDC Act.

This is the one I really don't understand.

And

as far as I can tell, that act is to make sure that the Federal Reserve cannot

create a digital currency that they're worried that threatens the dollar's reserve currency status.

And they frame it as defense of privacy, preventing the government from spying on how you spend money, but it's essentially a play towards

my understanding is it's a nod towards the anti-surveillance crowd, but it's also the government probably doesn't want, wants to ensure that the dollar's reserve currency is not threatened.

So

to their credit, I think they're trying to bring some clarity to the space such that it maintains its momentum.

Yeah, David Sachs got what he wanted in this one.

He shepherded this one through.

Anyway, we'll see where it goes.

And we should be watching that.

Absolutely, what's happening there.

It's interesting that you invested.

All right.

One more quick break.

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, 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, before you get to Projectes, I just want to say, I had been approached by so many people about your incredibly touching tribute to your dad.

And I just want to say, again, it was really wonderful.

And I think our listeners really, I've been hugged more this week than ever before.

People, without, without asking, people are like, I need to hug you.

I was like, okay,

on your behalf.

So I just think you really, one of the strengths that you have is you show your emotions.

And it's really important to a lot of, not just men, but women seeing you do that, I have to say.

And so it's been unusual this week to get so many responses.

So there you have it.

Thanks for saying that.

I predict you're going to get even more woke.

You know,

I love what you describe me as a San Francisco lesbian.

By the way, I am in San Francisco.

I'm in San Francisco.

What are you doing there?

I'm coming there next week.

What are you doing?

Where are you?

I know that hotel.

What hotel are you in?

I'm at the Four Seasons.

I'm

visiting my sister.

I'm going to have lunch with her today.

And I'm also going to say hi to your sister.

She's at the house.

I will.

She's fantastic.

Yeah.

So I was, as you know, I'm in Colorado.

So I took the opportunity to come out and

just

have lunch with my sister.

Oh, lovely.

Anyway, let's hear your prediction then.

Besides the fact that you, me, and Michael will be in a cuddle puddle soon.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Smack her ass, Michael.

Smack her ass like she keeps pretending, she keeps correcting me.

Poor Michael.

God, Michael.

What's his relationship?

Is he married?

What's he married?

He's married?

The three of us.

The three of us will have a couple of spicy margaritas and explore.

How serious is that relationship?

We're going to have a sex tape and then we're going to send it to Meredith, his boss.

He'd probably get a raise at the New York Times.

Come on.

That's a good one.

If Camomile Teal tried to explain the Fed rate hike, that's the daily.

I love that.

Oh, I'm sorry.

My prediction.

You know, I asked him to be a co-host during Scott Free August.

I hope that's a good idea.

And what did he say?

He'd be perfect.

He wants to do it.

He's got to ask the Times for permission.

Meredith, if you can't do it, you're getting in the way of Arthrupple, which is discriminatory.

And I mean,

Meredith, stop giving in to your heteronormative, patriarchal management views around what daily, the podcast hosts should do.

Oh, that's so funny.

Okay.

Love Meredith.

Anyway.

Love Meredith.

Okay.

So my prediction is pretty straightforward.

Before this podcast even airs tomorrow, there's going to be another incendiary look over here, batshit crazy, hollow, threat, promise.

I'm raising, I'm putting a 200% tariff on Mayana Marie's

rare earth minerals.

I am firing.

I have decided I'm going to imprison Alec Baldwin.

And

there's going to be something.

He should release the files on Aria.

No.

That would work.

This is my prediction.

We'd need a conspiracy with a conspiracy.

He's not focused.

He's not doing anything.

The majority of his time right now and efforts are not being spent on increasing the material or psychological well-being of Americans.

No, they're not.

It's on.

They're in a room with AI going, what can he do or announce tomorrow?

It doesn't matter if it's stupid.

Doesn't matter if he has any.

any intention of actually following through that will keep the news off of one word, Epstein, every day for the next seven days, Kara.

And we should track this and read them out.

Okay.

All right.

There's going to be something stupid, incendiary, which has absolutely no chance of ever becoming reality in an attempt.

And the media will fall for it.

They'll go, Jesus Christ, what is he thinking?

And they'll start talking about that rather than what he doesn't want everyone to talk about.

And that is he is freaked out for some reason about the release of the Epstein phone.

He thinks it's going to to go away.

He does.

Internally, they're saying they think it's going to go away.

I don't think it is.

Sorry, Trump.

You better address it.

That's all he's got to do.

He's got to address it.

Do you have any predictions?

I think he is going to probably have to release these things and then we'll have to worry about the fraud involved in it.

I think he has to release them.

I don't think he has a choice here.

I don't think he can.

He is very good at pushing things off.

I think he absolutely is going to have to release these things.

And I don't think it's going to be like his taxes or anything else.

He's not getting away with this one.

I think Elon is correct about that.

It's not going to work this time.

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 CARE and Scott universe, this week on ProfG Conversation, Scott spoke with Greg Lukianoff, a free speech advocate, First Amendment attorney, and president of FHIR, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Let's listen to a clip.

Well, in terms of First Amendment law, anonymous speech is protected,

but I don't think that's sufficient enough of an answer.

And I think I tend to think of the justification for anonymity as like a seesaw.

That especially if we lived in a free and enlightened society in which people welcomed dissent and welcomed disagreement, and there was no imaginable idea that you'd be punished for it, then the justification for anonymity would kind of ring hollow to people.

Yeah, I like that.

You talk about that issue a lot, Scott.

It's an important one.

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.

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

Ernie Intertod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Miasidera, and Dan Shallan.

Nishak Kura is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

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

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

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

Michael, call us.