MAGA's Epstein Civil War, SpaceX's xAI investment, and Trump's Rosie Threat

Transcript

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Speaker 18 Our occasional disagreements are why people show up. That and how sexy I am.

Speaker 26 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 18 And Donald Trump is definitely on that list, that abstain list.

Speaker 26 But are you?

Speaker 18 I think I'm one of the few people that's not. I feel.

Speaker 26 I know. I was surprised.

Speaker 18 It's first off. We have to start, we have to change.
Rosie O'Donnell should legally change her name to Rosie Epstein. Yeah.
I have never seen a lamer attempt to distract people from what is going on.

Speaker 18 And by the way, I would just want to acknowledge, I thought this was going to be old news and blowover. You were right on this.
Thank you.

Speaker 18 I was thinking about it. I was saying last night to a friend.

Speaker 18 I went, Last week, I was in Ibiza on the most perfect night at Calvin Harris. You know, I like the pop 40 DJs concert.

Speaker 18 I had taken X for the first time in 30 years. What? Oh, my God.
I like me so much on X, Kara. I really like that.
Did you think about me?

Speaker 26 Did you think about me?

Speaker 18 I'm trying to think.

Speaker 18 You were not friend of mine. I mean when I was on Molly.
And I'm like,

Speaker 18 music sounds amazing. It was a perfect night.
And people are coming up to me and telling me how much they love my work and how important my work is.

Speaker 18 And I'm like, you know, with my, my pupils will look like frying pans.

Speaker 18 And that was like one of the best nights I've had in such a long time.

Speaker 18 And I thought, would I rather have that again or just to be sitting back in my hot girl summer watching Republicans eat themselves alive over this? Yeah.

Speaker 18 I got to be honest. I am so here for this.
I think it's fucking amazing. I agree.

Speaker 26 Thank you for acknowledging that. I actually, Amanda had the same.

Speaker 26 You know, a lot of people thought it was distraction. And I'm like, no, no, this is at the heart of what he's, he has, and Amanda did make this point.
He has trained them into QAnon, right?

Speaker 26 He, they're going to regret the training into QAnon, which was useful when it was useful. But these people really truly believe this.
And I've spent a lot of time on these networks. So I know it.

Speaker 26 Like, you know, when you, when there's like, oh, it's no big deal. I'm like, no, no, this is like.
I don't know, in a religion, what's the center of it? It's at the center of this, of this thing.

Speaker 26 And the pedophile thing is particularly resonant with them. They absolutely believe Hillary Clinton had a basement.

Speaker 26 Some of them do. They absolutely believe that

Speaker 26 there's a cabal that killed Jeffrey Epstein, et cetera, et cetera. So

Speaker 26 it's one of the structures of his presidency in a weird way.

Speaker 18 You couldn't believe it.

Speaker 26 I don't believe it, but it's true.

Speaker 18 But it's just, it's so intellectually or morally inconsistent. It's like if that, if Jeffrey Epstein had invited a bunch of migrant workers to his island, we would have nuked it.

Speaker 18 But as long as it was just pedophiles and this notion that we're shocked that a man found liable of sexual abuse, which is rape, might be on a list of a powerful man inviting people down to an island with underage women.

Speaker 18 Like that's supposed to be a big shocker.

Speaker 26 Yeah. Well, actually, let's get to this state because it's really important.
We have other things we're going to talk about, like tariffs and how Elon is planning the lines between his businesses.

Speaker 26 Another thing I think I got right there. But just so you know, where Donald Trump is now, he's doing the wrong thing in dealing with this.
100%.

Speaker 26 When he put that thing out, I was like, no, no, no, no, sir.

Speaker 26 You have to be with them. Even if you're not with them, you have to be with them.
He says he doesn't like what's happening to his MAGA boys and gals.

Speaker 26 He's urging them not to waste time on Jeffrey Epstein. Keeps saying he's dead.

Speaker 26 He has been throwing his support. behind Pam Bondi in a true social post.
And also, he was at some

Speaker 26 soccer thing where everybody booed him and he clapped at her or he put his hand up, like his thumb up but this civil war let me just give people the idea is is really quite something and the many are demanding that bondie who they're calling blondie uh which is funny um be fired over this memo that found no evidence of a client list or if or epstein being murdered she's been very explicit about this the the epstein investigation led to the white house confrontation between bondie and fbi deputy director dan bongino who's been pretty vocal about Epstein cover-up claims and years he made his career he made his podcast career that was one of the structures of his podcast career.

Speaker 26 He didn't show up at work last Friday. There were rumors, of course, he was leaking all over the place, clearly, that he insists he, but the administration says he's still on the job.

Speaker 26 I suspect he'll fall into line because that's the kind of guy he is, but who knows? But one of the things that's interesting is the various factionalism. And I'll go through this very quickly.

Speaker 26 Fox News is calling this a ticking time blog. Megan Kelly, never not to weigh in on something grotesque, said over the weekend this could actually cost Trump the midterms.

Speaker 26 She's against Bondi, I guess. Bannon's against Bondi.

Speaker 26 I guess Elon's against Bondi. Charlie Kirk's against Bondi.
Laura Loomer.

Speaker 26 Anyway, it's really quite something. It's like a weird little civil war.

Speaker 26 Now, I think they're going to fall into line now because I think he's going to put the kibosh on it behind the scenes, but I don't know. What do you think? What do you imagine?

Speaker 18 Well, just around perception. I mean, first off, it doesn't even seem that they're that upset about pedophilia.
They're that upset about not pursuing a conspiracy theory.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 the thing that strikes me is that if someone had counseled him on how to appear to be more guilty, it would have been difficult.

Speaker 18 He immediately gets defensive and says,

Speaker 18 I can't believe you're not focusing on the tragedy of Texas or I'm thinking of canceling Rosie O'Donnell's citizens.

Speaker 18 He could not be acting more guilty.

Speaker 18 And whoever is coaching him is like, no, don't bring it up.

Speaker 18 He could have said, this is an important case and the FBI, it's up to the FBI

Speaker 18 how they want to handle this.

Speaker 26 Right. Except that he's made his career on it.
That is the thing. He was very much,

Speaker 26 which is almost suicidal because he's been photographed with him like 67 times. There's videos of him like dancing with his, you know, white man dancing together.

Speaker 26 He's clearly been down there. He's on the logs.

Speaker 26 Let me, the only thing I would say is I know a lot of people who went down there, by the way.

Speaker 26 And I've told you, I was invited to his house once and I declined because he's a sexual predator, which I told the PR person. I'm like, no, I'm not going to a sexual predator's house.
But

Speaker 26 one of the things that was interesting is a lot of people who went down there, I don't believe necessarily went for sex.

Speaker 26 I think it was interesting. He was an interesting guy.
It was kind of sexy, like to a lot of people.

Speaker 26 Giving a ton of money away. Even Bill Gates, I think he was bored.

Speaker 26 I don't know what happened with Bill Gates, but I'm just saying there was a lot of like, like, and a lot of, what was really interesting to me, and Melinda Gates talked about this thing.

Speaker 26 i was not happy with his affiliation someone i i think it was sergey brin his he and his wife went were invited down they went down and the minute they got the plane his wife and knew what was up and was like we're getting the out of here like kind of thing and so i i think i think a lot of people went for these things for curiosity sort of the same way they went to the uh the diddy parties i guess and some of the people went for full-on uh you know, uh, abuse of minors.

Speaker 26 That there's it's weird, but the fact that they didn't know the people who went that weren't necessarily doing that is grotesque, too, in a lot of ways.

Speaker 18 So it's always the cover-up, not the scandal.

Speaker 18 And he's handling this exactly incorrectly because all of a sudden he's created a massive cover-up of his own manufacturing and all of his just watching them eat their own tail of conspiracy theory when it comes home, you know, for you.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 18 let's just

Speaker 18 you have a situation. Okay, I'm in St.

Speaker 18 Bart's and a Microsoft billionaire invites me on their yacht and i go on the yacht a lot of hot people great party i go i have a good time i leave what if it ends up there were underage women on that boat did i do my due diligence it was like i went on this boat i won't even say who it is but it wasn't the top wasn't the founder of microsoft it was one of the founders I, yeah, but I didn't do diligence around the personal behavior of this guy or whether he had been convicted of anything or whether there were underage women on the boat.

Speaker 18 I just went because it sounded like a really good time. Now, if, if, and I think there were a lot of people, quite frankly, just caught up in the strafe here.

Speaker 18 There are a lot of people who should who deserve scrutiny and to have their reputation ruined or to have legal ramifications.

Speaker 18 But I think there were probably a shit ton of people, like, oh, it's a rich guy who throws great parties.

Speaker 18 And yeah, and he's, he wants to give me a ride to Boston on his plane. He gave a lot of people rides on his plane.
I can absolutely see how people get caught up.

Speaker 26 The only thing is, it was before he was convicted. There was a lot of rumors about it.
I knew them because he was a lot of tech events.

Speaker 26 And after

Speaker 26 you, I think you have less of an excuse.

Speaker 18 After when Florida convicted.

Speaker 26 Many people knew about that.

Speaker 18 But do you think every powerful person has an obligation to conduct a background check on everyone they spend time with?

Speaker 26 No, it's just, it's a world that I think people aren't familiar with. And I think you and I are a little bit.
I'm sort of more peripherally. You go to more of those abysses and things like that.

Speaker 26 But there is a, like, there is a, like, a world where they all sort of, you know, swan around, just like Jeff Bezos' wedding. There's a world.

Speaker 26 And one of the things about Epstein, like I was at a dinner he was at with 200 people and I got attacked by the anti-Epstein forces. Like you were part of that.
I'm like, literally,

Speaker 26 I never even met him. Like I was near him.
I guess there was a photo where I was vaguely adjacent to him, but I didn't talk to him or anything else.

Speaker 26 And it was, so it was really, some of that, that happened a lot. He was at like 10 things, as I recall.
I think that's where I was, where he was.

Speaker 26 But what was interesting is people that actually then took the next step after his conviction. I'm always like bad, very bad judgment on your part to do so.

Speaker 18 But if he had said, in my younger days, I loved to have a good time.

Speaker 18 I love to be at great parties. This guy seemed like, let's be honest, he was a guy who loved to have a good time.
He was giving money away. He invited me to his island.
I went. I had a great time.

Speaker 18 I didn't engage in pedophilia. I didn't have sex with underage minors, but I went.
It was a terrible error in judgment. And I apologize if he just said that.

Speaker 18 But the fact that he's trying so hard to create weapons of mass distraction gives people an understandable suspicion that he did more than just go to the fucking island.

Speaker 18 And that it's always the cover-up. It's not the scandal itself.

Speaker 26 Talk a little bit about the, I think his misjudging of the depth of this mania on the right over this issue.

Speaker 18 I didn't see it. Did you see this? I did not see this.

Speaker 26 I told you. I said, this is not a distraction.

Speaker 26 This is going to blow up because I've spent, I've, I've listened to these people and I've seen all the online stuff and they, they really are like rabid around this.

Speaker 26 Look at what happened to Roseanne Barr. Look at what happened to like, there's a lot of people who became insane over this topic, like a lot, like a ton.
And even the average person who isn't, right?

Speaker 26 I've noticed a lot of people putting up like, well, I wasn't into the Epstein conspiracies, but now I am. You know what I mean? Like regular people are now like, what was he doing there?

Speaker 26 And so he's dragging in reasonable people, I guess, who would mostly just say, ugh, this is just ridiculous. I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I don't,

Speaker 18 I find the whole thing a lesson in

Speaker 18 karma when you foment a conspiracy theory, you know, and then they came for me. This is the ultimate example of that, right?

Speaker 26 What do you think is going to happen next?

Speaker 18 Every time I think that Republicans are going to stand up for,

Speaker 18 you know, not not having Medicaid stripped away from the people who elected them, or that

Speaker 18 someone who's convicted by a jury of his peers, including Republicans on that, of all 34 counts, or whatever it is.

Speaker 18 I think this is the final straw, or I get hopeful that Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins actually pretend to care.

Speaker 18 I think you're right. I think they're all going to eventually fall in line.
I think they're all going to wring their hands.

Speaker 18 The only thing is, Pam Bondi, I'm curious, she might be the blood offering here.

Speaker 26 No, no, I think Dan Bongino is. I think he he can't give in to this.
He can't. Like he might, that's the thing, because he's so desperate for attention and love from these people.

Speaker 26 That's the only thing he could do is give Bondi up in that regard. By the way, she's terrible, but you know, like, is it like a list? We want to stack rank the idiots.

Speaker 26 I think what it shows is how quickly this is all going to devolve when Donald Trump is out of the picture. I think they, I think this is their, I think this, we are seeing their ass right now.

Speaker 18 And when you say devolve, what do you mean?

Speaker 26 Meaning they don't, none of them, they're so different. Like there was always a problem of the left and the center in Dem politics.
There is that, right?

Speaker 26 There's the centrist people there who thinks the left is too left. There's the left who thinks the centrists don't understand that, you know, someone like Mundomney is the future.

Speaker 26 That is normal, right? That is a normal political party, like the Tea Party and the more institutionalists in the former Republican Party. But this group,

Speaker 26 they are so on opposite sides of everything and not just opposite sides, opposite people who are on the same side on one thing are on opposite sides on the other stuff.

Speaker 26 And so the fracturing of this Republican Party that Trump has built, once he is gone in some fashion, is going to be spectacular. Because you think J.D.
fucking Vance is going to hold this together?

Speaker 26 You think Don Jr.?

Speaker 26 You know, no, none of these people have the power of Trump to hold this stuff together. And even he is showing signs of not being able to, whether it's age or misjudgment or something like that.

Speaker 26 But I just think it's going to be a spectacular. You're seeing the signs of what's going to happen next.
I mean, I think you are.

Speaker 26 Anyway, speaking of a mess, Tariff Palooza is continuing. He's saying the U.S.
will impose very severe tariffs on Russia if there's no peace deal with Ukraine in the next 50 days.

Speaker 26 I'm sure Putin is quaking in his boots.

Speaker 26 He's also threatened to hit EU and Mexico, two of America's largest trading partners, with 30% tariffs starting August 1st, and Canada also back in the crosshairs.

Speaker 26 In a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump said Canadian goods would face 35% tariffs starting next month. Trump cited concerns about fentanyl coming across the border again as a justification.

Speaker 26 The ones from Brazil were because he didn't like a case against Bolsonaro.

Speaker 26 Talk a little bit about the Russian plan. I mean, this just keeps going.

Speaker 26 And the markets have not gotten yippy as before.

Speaker 26 Some people, including Jamie Dimon and others, think it's a problem that the markets aren't paying attention to this.

Speaker 26 So thoughts?

Speaker 18 I think literally the market, like I said, the market just continues to yawn.

Speaker 18 None of these things have come through. EOS backs down.
The market seems to be rerooting around it.

Speaker 18 The companies that are driving the NASDAQ and the S ⁇ P are essentially global companies now that don't appear to be subject to this tariffs, right?

Speaker 18 AI and Meta and Microsoft to a certain extent so far.

Speaker 26 Well, except for copper. The 50% tariff on copper, which including defense, electricity, and tech, U.S.
imports over 40% of its copper. And switching to domestic supplies could take up to a decade.

Speaker 26 Industry groups are warning they could slow AI data center growth. They have an event tomorrow in Pennsylvania, $70 billion investment.

Speaker 18 And then Peter Thiel calls J.D. Vance and says, you're about to shut down.

Speaker 18 AI. And the moment there's a whiff that this is going to threaten AI and the seven stocks that are responsible for 38% of the S ⁇ P check down 20%

Speaker 18 and there's panic buying.

Speaker 18 He listens to the markets, and he listens to a small group of people, including Jamie Dimon, I think. And I think he's just going to back down.

Speaker 18 I think he's playing poker with a weak hand and keeps hoping the other folks around the table are going to fold.

Speaker 18 And I mean, just in terms of what's nonsensical, Canada, arguably our closest ally, largest undefended border in the world, housing is a real issue in America.

Speaker 18 Young people are really angry because the percentage of first-time homebuyers is at an all-time low.

Speaker 18 The entrants have are paying for the price of the incumbents weaponizing zoning such that they can increase or decrease the supply of new houses. And you want to talk about taking inflation up.

Speaker 18 What are the two primary inputs for a new house or two of them? Canadian lumber and Mexican drywall gypsum.

Speaker 18 You want to make things worse? You want to start talking about panic buying before the tariffs that creates inflation. The first uptick in an inflation number here,

Speaker 18 I just they have to fold. And what happens if inflation really starts to spike? And Chairman Powell, who has his own ego, says, you know what? We're contemplating raising interest rates.

Speaker 26 Well, Trump has the crosshairs on him, too, but he can only crosshair so many people.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but he doesn't care.

Speaker 18 He's in there at least for the short. I just think the markets, the adult in the room in the cabinet is not a DUI hire.

Speaker 18 to head the defense secretary.

Speaker 18 It's not an acolyte to basically pervert pervert our justice system, our Attorney General. The adult in the room here is the bond market, the ten-year and to a lesser extent, the equity markets.

Speaker 18 And they will absolutely respond. If these tariffs actually become a reality,

Speaker 18 you're going to see the markets.

Speaker 18 I mean, my co-host at Profit Markets said what's interesting is that when these things clearly weren't going to happen, the markets kind of freaked out.

Speaker 18 And now the markets have gotten used to them and aren't freaking out.

Speaker 18 And he wonders that, okay, maybe Trump is so angry he's not being taken seriously that he'll actually go through with a couple of these things.

Speaker 18 But what is so insane and so stupid about these threats is the following. And that is trade agreements take 18 months minimum just to hammer out.

Speaker 26 Not 90 and 90 days? What?

Speaker 18 And then they take four years to implement because just the logistics of trying to track this stuff and figuring out the regulatory bodies that will do it and the payments.

Speaker 18 And the notion that he just sets this goal. And this is why business people shouldn't be president.
He just, he just doesn't understand how government works.

Speaker 26 He's also playing, he played at being a businessman. I'm sorry.
Just like, it's, he was a laughable businessman.

Speaker 18 I agree. And the thing he doesn't, the thing, the overarching construct or philosophy that he doesn't understand about global trade and geopolitics is that the most, in my opinion,

Speaker 18 The most visionary move in geopolitical history was when after defeating an army that had put people in concentration camps, had murdered our soldiers, violated Geneva Conventions, that was the Japanese, had brutalized tens of millions of people across Europe, we defeated them.

Speaker 18 And what did we decide to do? We decided to borrow a shit ton of money and rebuild their nations, recognizing that if we could create prosperity overseas, it would be of massive benefit domestically.

Speaker 18 That was the most visionary thing, I believe, ever done geopolitically. And what that set off was a recognition that global trade and prosperity are not a zero-sum game.
It's not a win-lose game.

Speaker 18 That when Vietnam does really well, they not only export those Nikes, they start importing them and buying them.

Speaker 26 You know, it was interesting. There was a story.

Speaker 26 One, everyone's writing the story, which we've talked about for months now, which is that suddenly all these other partners are getting together across Europe with China, Europe with, we talked about this early, but they are suddenly running back.

Speaker 26 The second thing is a lot of the people here who are here legally are sending all their money back to their countries now and not spending it here, which is interesting. Before

Speaker 26 the outflow of capital from immigrants here who are here legally is huge, is like gained because they don't feel that this is the place to

Speaker 26 put down roots or, you know, or the long term. And I have to tell you, I've heard from so many

Speaker 26 people about nervousness of leaving, a lot of students, leaving this country and maybe not wanting to stay. Like before they would have, U.S.

Speaker 26 would have been the place they would have stayed and brought their incredible talents. Now they're like, I think I'm going back.

Speaker 26 I think I'm going back kind of thing, which I never heard from these people before, these kind of people.

Speaker 18 The analogy I use is that what if one NBA team got the number one, they got the number one through number one million draft picks.

Speaker 18 Every other team, their first pick for their team was the millionth and first draft pick. We get the top million.
We get the top people around the world. We get the most elite of the elite.

Speaker 18 What do the smartest people in Scotland all have in common? They left. And the majority that left came to America.
And

Speaker 18 World War II,

Speaker 18 the most elite scientists, including the guy who figured out relativity, decided to come to America because they didn't like the environment in Europe that was emerging.

Speaker 18 And now we have thousands of scientists applying for intellectual asylum in France.

Speaker 26 I mean, literally, I want to go RFK. Scientists can get on the plane.
They get on the plane. That's right.

Speaker 18 And who did, what did these European scientists who saw an emergence, an emerging fascism and inhospitable environment, what did they bring to the U.S.? They brought our ability to land on the moon.

Speaker 18 They brought,

Speaker 18 and not Nazis, but people who fled the Nazi regime, they brought chemotherapy. They brought quantum computing.
Oh, and by the way, they brought the bomb, folks.

Speaker 18 And had the bomb, had the scientists who understood how to split the atom stayed in,

Speaker 18 stayed in Vienna or in Austria, I mean, the war could have ended much differently.

Speaker 18 And instead, what we've decided, let's take the most elite human capital in the world and let's encourage them to go back, go abroad. Anyway, it is

Speaker 18 ridiculous. It's again, the biggest own goals of the last 20 years have been the unnecessary invasion of Iraq and Brexit.
This could be bigger economically than all of those things.

Speaker 26 I would agree, but the problem, the only problem is he is still in our innards ripping everything out. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 26 When we come back, Google makes a major AI deal, and SpaceX invests in XAI.

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Speaker 26 Scott, we're back. The AI talent war is escalating still.
Google just hired the CEO and co-founder of Windsurf, an AI coding startup along with several of the company's employees.

Speaker 26 Under the $2.4 billion deal, Google also gets some non-exclusive licenses, some of WinSurf's technology. The startup will still operate independently without those key employees.

Speaker 26 The move comes after a $3 billion deal between WinSurf and OpenAI fell apart. WinSurf's founders are reportedly wary of sharing Intel with Microsoft.

Speaker 26 It's the latest setback for OpenAI, which has been losing talent to rivals like Meta in recent weeks. First of all, this seems getting to be a little insane.
The second thing is

Speaker 26 it feels like everyone's running, you know, trying to get to the borders. Like, pick someone, get all the people they can and pick up the land grab in terms of people.

Speaker 26 And they're also doing non-deal deals where they're trying to be cute with the government. We're not buying this company.
We're just buying everything that matters and gutting them.

Speaker 26 Related, SpaceX will reportedly invest $2 billion in XAI, and that's not all. Elon Musk says that Tesla shareholders will vote on whether to invest in XAI.
Let's listen to what I said.

Speaker 26 about this back in April.

Speaker 26 It looks like he's not interested in making cars anymore or he's making other things. He wants to shift Tesla.
And I think they're going to merge XAI

Speaker 26 X and this together in a big

Speaker 18 alliance.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 26 So now SpaceX too. Like this is, he's being, he's making a turduck in here.
He said in a post on X that he does not support a merger of Tesla and XAI, but who knows what he's saying.

Speaker 26 By the way, he also said that Grok will be available in Tesla vehicles after the launch of Grok for users who discovered the model seems to refer to Musk's opinion also through news articles and exposts when answering questions.

Speaker 26 So it's mostly Musk stuff that they're borrowing from the LLMs.

Speaker 26 Anyway,

Speaker 26 talk a little bit about this.

Speaker 18 Well, the more interesting one, I think, is these aqua hires, and that is some VCs have become... It's become so difficult to find alpha or the outsized returns because so many VC firms

Speaker 18 have raised a ton of money.

Speaker 18 There's just more capital now chasing fewer good deals that some of them have gone really downstream and are actually incubating and starting companies themselves and then spinning them out.

Speaker 18 You know, that was kind of what essentially Sam Altman's

Speaker 18 Y Combinator was doing.

Speaker 18 And I think what you're going to see is a lot of, if I were a venture capital, a young venture capital partner, I'd be calling, I would try and find 12 really bright AI researchers and a couple managers

Speaker 18 at various companies and say, get together. I'm your first 50 million in.
Find, determine a very small slice of the AI world to focus on.

Speaker 18 And if we can build 12, 20, 50, 100 really talented AI people, and the focus on your research is important, but it's not profound.

Speaker 18 But essentially, what's happening here is that if you're an HR manager or recruiter and you can pull together a couple dozen really well-respected AI executives who can show an ability to work together and build shit.

Speaker 18 The marketplace is so frothy and there's so much cheap stock that within 12 to 36 months, someone might show up and pay a billion dollars for those 24 professors.

Speaker 26 To rent you, to rent you.

Speaker 18 Yeah, or figure out a way not to raise the antennae of the DOJ or FTC and do some sort of crazy license that gives you money.

Speaker 18 But it's got to be a great time to be an AI researcher with any credibility anywhere.

Speaker 18 If you are a really talented, young partner to VC, you identify 300 talented AI engineers, researchers, executives, product managers. You call them and say, come start a company.
You got 50 million.

Speaker 18 Within 24 months, we're going to be aqua hired at $1 to $3 billion.

Speaker 18 Because these companies, I'm not even sure that the technology, no one talks about the technology or the company or the brand or the customers they have.

Speaker 18 They're just the war on talent here and the cheap capital chasing this talent has created alpha, if you will.

Speaker 26 So

Speaker 26 do you think it's going to get past the government? Not for too long. I don't know.

Speaker 18 Under this administration, yeah.

Speaker 26 Although inflection certainly did. Remember, Microsoft got that one.

Speaker 18 But the FTC and the DOJ are mostly now about what bothering media companies.

Speaker 18 Who and what is giving money or bother to or bothering Trump.

Speaker 26 Or woke media companies. That seems to be their focus.

Speaker 18 I think these things, these guys have been so savvy at weaponizing government and giving money to the right people

Speaker 18 that I would imagine an Aqua hire,

Speaker 18 I was part of an Aqua kill.

Speaker 26 Really? They bought you and killed you?

Speaker 18 Yeah, it's really, I always feel like I have a pretty good instinct for business. And when my company, L2, was acquired,

Speaker 18 I couldn't figure out what they were doing. I gave them a list of the most valuable people at the company.
Pretty much all of them left.

Speaker 18 Every decision they made, it was like that episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza decides to do everything entirely the opposite. Everything they did was entirely the opposite.

Speaker 18 I'm not exaggerating. I did a call weekly with my quote unquote boss, which was hilarious, a group of people dramatically less talented than me that just showed up and talked big thoughts.

Speaker 26 Wouldn't you like to get that time back?

Speaker 18 And they literally told me, don't do anything. Don't do anything.
We don't want you doing anything.

Speaker 18 And I left. I hated it so much.
I left several million dollars on the table. And my partner used to say to me, I used to say, I can't handle this.
I got to get out of here.

Speaker 18 And she'd say, how much money do you get if you just go in for five more mornings? And I would do the math and she'd go, so you don't want to just go in for five more mornings? Oh, right. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And she would do that to me every week. Anyways, finally, I said, I'm out of here.

Speaker 26 There's a point where you can't anymore. I have had that job.
I was like, no, I can't.

Speaker 18 I would say things like, I think there's an interesting opportunity to go after Latin American CPG companies and I want to hire two people and start doing research there.

Speaker 18 And they're like, well, hold off on that. I mean,

Speaker 18 and I now have come to the conclusion that we were threatening them. And they thought, we'll take a competitor off the market.
We'll milk them for their cash flow.

Speaker 18 We won't make any new investments in the company.

Speaker 26 And this guy doesn't have a good idea in his head.

Speaker 18 And then a potential competitor is gone. And this company, as I look back on it, has acquired a bunch of companies in verticals that were threatening their mothership.

Speaker 26 That's no way to create a company, by the way.

Speaker 18 That's not. This company's done.
This company, to their credit, this company's done really well from a shareholder story. Oh, really? Okay.
All right.

Speaker 26 Well, I still think it's non-creative and awful not using Scott Galloway's God-given talent. That's right.

Speaker 18 That's right. That's right.
Sell more shit. The internet.
Sell more shit on the internet. Facebook's evil.
Sell more shit.

Speaker 26 What do you think of my correct prediction, once again, about this doing more of the integrating with this company with all its stuff?

Speaker 26 Even if he says they're not merging, they're kind of, it's kind of the same thing, right?

Speaker 26 It doesn't really matter if they merge or not because they're interwoven in such a way that they're impossible to pull apart.

Speaker 18 Well, first off, so everyone says Twitter is not worth $33 billion. Not really.
He got his other company to invest at a mark on that company to give it a $33 billion cap.

Speaker 18 He's essentially figuring out that, okay,

Speaker 18 I've got some really amazing assets and I've got some shitty assets and I'm going to conglomerate to prop up my shitty assets, which are overvalued, specifically Tesla and a little bit Twitter.

Speaker 18 And he is a visionary.

Speaker 18 He wants to bring all these things together with AI at the heart, with Twitter providing all of the data set, with, I don't know, SpaceX and satellites giving better guidance and autonomous driving capability and his Tesla cars gathering more information and turn it into just kind of one big AI-driven company with distribution around cars, rockets, satellites, media.

Speaker 18 I mean, you can see this becoming kind of like star net, right? And he is a visionary. Having said this, and this is

Speaker 18 unrelated, but I think important. If I were the FTC, Skynet.
If I were the FTC of the DOJ,

Speaker 18 in my view, the most dangerous monopoly in the world right now is SpaceX. 60% of low-Earth orbit satellites are owned by one company.

Speaker 18 That is not acceptable.

Speaker 18 This is one private company who is run by someone who is reportedly a drug addict and it turns off and on battlefield technology that might shape the future of Europe and democracy.

Speaker 18 Okay, it's bad that Meta has too much control over the ad market.

Speaker 18 SpaceX is the most dangerous monopoly in the world right now. And they have, do you realize 87% of space launches weren't from America? They weren't from NASA.
They were from one company, SpaceX.

Speaker 18 That is an enormous security risk.

Speaker 26 Well, speaking of that, of course, he's getting protected by people.

Speaker 26 Texas Governor Greg Abbott doesn't want to reveal his and his staff's communication with Elon Musk and his representatives from these companies.

Speaker 26 ProPublica's Texas newsroom requested the emails and Abbott's public information correct argued they should not be released in part because they include, quote intimate and embarrassing information.

Speaker 26 I want to, I mean, how much more embarrassing can this guy be in public? I don't know. He's sort of speaking of showing your ass all the time.
This is what he does.

Speaker 26 Interestingly, you know, he constantly is making a mess. So it'll be interesting to see who

Speaker 26 steps forward. It's certainly not going to be Greg Abbott, who's such a toad, but

Speaker 26 who could make that happen? Like make that obviously other companies or

Speaker 18 you mean the breakup of SpaceX?

Speaker 26 Not the breakup of SpaceX, but like the competit, that the government has more leverage on them.

Speaker 26 I mean, obviously more competitors would be one way, but certainly not people like Greg Abbott will protect him.

Speaker 18 Well, no, the DOJ, an FTC, and an attorney general, they'll do their fucking jobs. They're focused on the long-term

Speaker 18 long-term well-being, material and economic well-being of American citizens. But what I took from...

Speaker 18 the Epstein thing and what you just said about Governor Greg Abbott's reticence to let go, I believe that pretty much almost every piece of information, unless it's just scurrilous, intimate information on someone's private life that's for nothing but clicks.

Speaker 26 Why were they talking about that?

Speaker 18 What this all comes down to is I believe that the basic, the this fidelity, this passion, this irreverence for anonymity, I think has become dangerous.

Speaker 18 And what do, and you brought this up, what do stormtroopers, the KKK, and ICE have in common or people on campus not allowing Jews into certain parts of UCLA public spaces?

Speaker 18 They're all wearing fucking masks.

Speaker 18 And what I see online is this ridiculous fidelity to anonymity has resulted in troll farms that are tearing society apart or letting people behave in a way they would never behave in person.

Speaker 26 But now they're doing it in person. I mean, those ICE people should not have to, I'm sorry if their jobs are hard.
They picked a job. This is the life they've chosen.

Speaker 18 What has been the most accretive positive thing among law enforcement America? I would argue that it is the following. Body cams.

Speaker 18 If you're a cop and you run up against somebody who's mentally ill and treating you like shit, I can't imagine how tempting it is to just punch them in the fucking face and put cuffs on them.

Speaker 18 I can empathize with that. But because they have a body cam on them and their badge number and their identification on their vest, they behave in a manner that is incredibly honorable.

Speaker 18 and shows fidelity to the law.

Speaker 26 And some of them still don't, even despite the body cams.

Speaker 18 I think our men and and women in blue are, given the situations they are thrust into every day, remarkable and show a lot more patience than your average citizen. That was a reversal in anonymity.

Speaker 18 They not only don't have masks, it's like if you're a cop and you're going to use the full, you're going to use the full weight of the federal government and laws where you can deploy lethal power and incarceration against citizens, then we need to know exactly who the fuck you are and record it in 4D color.

Speaker 18 And when you let people put on masks, you're going the opposite way.

Speaker 18 There's going to be a decline in civility and fidelity to the law because you just get this rah-rah speech that the president said it's okay.

Speaker 18 Go in there. And if there's a 13-year-old screaming, no, my mother is a citizen, or you might not put your head, you might not put your knee on the head.

Speaker 18 of a woman working at Home Depot because people can actually see your face, that's a good thing. And

Speaker 18 I have argued for this. I don't believe, I believe social media and these platforms should force identification.
You could still have accounts that are anonymous.

Speaker 18 If there's a person who needs an account to talk about women's rights and wherever the Gulf, you could figure out pretty easily: is this person using an anonymous account because they're in real danger?

Speaker 18 Are they doing it just under just to tear at the fabric of society or let people engage in depraved behavior?

Speaker 18 But anonymity, in my opinion, is one of the most in our fidelity and our miss our miss our conflating the First Amendment with anonymity is one of the most damaging things in our society.

Speaker 18 It goes back to the Epstein list. Let it out.

Speaker 26 Let it out. Scott and Carroll, release the Epstein list.
We are with Roseanne Barr on this one.

Speaker 18 At the same time, Democrats have to put away this bullshit purity test on everything. People are human.

Speaker 18 And if someone ended up on a plane going to an island, a party, and there's no evidence that they engaged in anything, then it's like, okay, forgive them. Yeah, they had poor judgment.

Speaker 18 They didn't, but release, for God's sakes, release the list. And governor grab act, everything that happens at a level of governor or senate.

Speaker 26 What do you think is embarrassing? What do you think's in there? What's intimate and embarrassing?

Speaker 18 They're probably saying, give me money and I'll make sure.

Speaker 26 That's more than embarrassing. They're saying intimate and I'm just, it was a weird choice of words, right? Intimate and embarrassing.

Speaker 18 The Nixon tapes.

Speaker 26 Broad size?

Speaker 18 The Nixon tapes eventually got released.

Speaker 26 Everything should get released. I agree.

Speaker 18 People should be be able. You said something I always thought was really powerful.
People should be able to have secrets. And that is, if it's just people's private lives,

Speaker 18 okay, I don't think people have a right to publish everything. I do believe in privacy.
I do believe that people should be able to have secrets.

Speaker 18 But when it comes to national security, government regulation, conversations among our elected representatives, I believe that for defense reasons, you can say it needs to be sealed for a certain amount of time.

Speaker 18 But eventually, be clear, folks, it's all going to come out. And what's going to happen to their behavior? It's going to improve.

Speaker 26 Well, you know, it's interesting. I'm seeing online a lot of people when these ICE people go in now, sort of normal people, they were bothering a janitor.

Speaker 26 And all these doctors and nurses were like, get the fuck out of here or show your face.

Speaker 26 Like this guy was, and they're like, you're, and the cop, which was not getting beaten up in any way, because the video showed it, was like, you're assaulting an officer.

Speaker 26 And she's like, I am not, I am not doing that. Take off your mask.
Like, you're seeing a lot of people personally offended by it. And it's not the American way to hide your face.

Speaker 18 I think that's been really inspiring.

Speaker 26 You know what? In the Superman movie, the bad guys are hiding their fucking faces all the time. And not Superman, because he's a very handsome man.
All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 26 And we come back, Elon Musk and Don Lemon go to court. Don Lemon.

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Speaker 26 Scott, we're back with more news. This is just a quick thing.
Don Lemon's lawsuit against Elon Musk and X over the cancellation of their partnership will go to trial.

Speaker 26 Musk's team had tried to convince a judge to strike the complaint. San Francisco judge ruled that Lemon credibly alleged Musk had committed fraud by false promise.
He'll probably win.

Speaker 26 Elon still won't pay him. As a reminder, Lemon filed the suit after X canceled his partnership a few hours after he taped a contentious interview with Musk.

Speaker 26 I don't know if Don will win this one, but it's good that he gets to go forward. We'll see some interesting emails with Linda Yaccarino and stuff.
I hope he gets his money.

Speaker 26 Hope they all at X, there's a whole bunch of people from Twitter who haven't gotten their money. They all should get their fucking money, Elon.
Give them their money.

Speaker 26 You know, even if you don't like them, give them their money. So we'll see.
He probably won't.

Speaker 18 I love Don Lemon. I like the fact that he, I think, got fired from CNN and got fired from Twitter.
And I think he's one of these people that's doing really good work.

Speaker 18 If you follow him on his Lemon Drops podcast, what I appreciate about Don, I also appreciate about Megan, even though I don't agree with their politics, it's clear they work really fucking hard. And

Speaker 18 I like, I really appreciate people who've achieved a certain level of celebrity status and probably economic security and just show up and work really hard. And I like, I think he's fearless.

Speaker 18 I'm a a huge fan of these new niche media companies. I just, I like them.
I'm rooting for them. And so I hope this is what happened.
He's going to take them to court.

Speaker 18 My guess is the Musk's attorneys are going to go. We'll fight and intimidate and try to embarrass him, but legally we don't have a leg to stand on.

Speaker 18 And when they realize he's not backing down, they'll settle with him.

Speaker 18 And I hope he gets a big check because it was embarrassing for him to accept a job, ask real questions, and then be fired unceremoniously.

Speaker 18 And he should, he's entitled to whatever severance he's legally entitled to.

Speaker 26 Yes, yes. He should have never signed it, but that's another issue.

Speaker 26 I agree with you about the niche media companies, but there's a very big difference between what Don Lemon is doing and what Megan Keller.

Speaker 26 I get that she works hard, but she works hard insulting women, screaming about things. I just, if that's the way you want to make your business, it's fine, but it's grotesque.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 26 And a lot of these companies, some of them are amazing, and some of them are just a bunch of hacks. And they both will benefit.

Speaker 18 Well, okay, I'll use others, whether it's puck or the information or what they're trying to do at the the Daily Beast

Speaker 18 or Axios or

Speaker 18 even if you don't agree with them the way they equip themselves.

Speaker 18 I'm here for these little niche media companies running the Daily Wire. I hate their shit, but I totally respect what they've built.
See,

Speaker 26 I have a thinner, I have a much bigger review. It's got to be well done.

Speaker 26 I like the bulwark. I don't agree with a lot of stuff they do, but they actually do journalism.
The ones that don't are heinous. I'm sorry.
They're just hacks.

Speaker 26 And I don't like hacks doing well, even if they're exciting and innovative in some way.

Speaker 18 Okay, now do traditional media.

Speaker 26 I would agree. Same thing.
Same thing. I have the same filter for those.
I agree. I agree.
Anyway,

Speaker 26 I had this interesting argument with Alex because he was insulting CNN or something like that. And I said, you know, the reporters of CNN are great.
And you don't have to like the night stuff.

Speaker 26 And you need to distinguish between them. And he said, I can't.
And we had a great discussion about it. And I would agree with him.

Speaker 26 If it tends too much towards the screamy and not the amazing reporters, I have a problem with it too.

Speaker 26 All the stations, not the problems.

Speaker 18 The problem is it's the screamy stuff that makes all the money carry.

Speaker 26 I get it. That's why I don't like the small ones that do it or the big ones or they're shitty reporters or they have, you know,

Speaker 26 disingenuous work. I just don't like it no matter what.

Speaker 26 Anyway, tech, speaking of someone who's disingenuous, tech investor and Trump advisor Mark Andreessen said universities will pay the price for promoting diversity and alleged discrimination against Trump supporters.

Speaker 26 Andreessen made statements and messages sent to a group chat with White House officials and tech leaders. He's always doing this.

Speaker 26 He's such a, if you've ever gotten text from Mark Andreessen, he's so high-handed, it's kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 26 The investor said he views Stanford and MIT as mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation. He's got to fucking be kidding me.

Speaker 26 The messages discuss the counterattack against universities and called for National Science Foundation to receive the bureaucratic death penalty.

Speaker 26 They never keep these group chats confidential, and I suspect Andreessen doesn't care.

Speaker 26 I like them out because you see what an arrogant asshole he is. But, you know, again, as usual, they say things very firmly as if things don't have nuance.

Speaker 26 Parts of MIT and Stanford and lots of universities, including conservative ones, can be, can have a lot of problems, and parts of them are great. And again, the same thing.

Speaker 26 He can't distinguish between that and has decided to say things like,

Speaker 26 they will pay the price, they will die a death. All this, like, there's so much like drama with these, these men.

Speaker 18 I, I, I actually agree a lot with what Mark said.

Speaker 18 I don't. But that's clear.
And in our occasional disagreements, why people show up. That and how sexy I am.

Speaker 26 Can I, before you begin explaining why?

Speaker 26 No, when you have a point, I think you do it from a place of real thinking about it. I think he does it because he's an unpleasant piece of shit.

Speaker 18 And so they backfill into an ultra-conservative point where they just want to tech literally. Correct.
I think you actually.

Speaker 18 You want to cash subsidies and then not pay taxes is where it all comes from.

Speaker 26 He gets break break after break after break, and then he pretends nobody else.

Speaker 18 Yes, exactly. Go ahead.
So, look, 60 years ago, 12 black people at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale combined. That was a problem.
We needed race-based affirmative action.

Speaker 18 The DEI apparatus has become so large and so, in my opinion, unuseful, and it creates more problems now than it solves.

Speaker 18 52% of gay men go to college, 34% of straight men. Harvard's freshman class is 60% non-white, but 70% of those non-whites come from upper-income homes.

Speaker 18 The academic gap between black and white was double what it was from rich and poor 60 years ago. It is now flipped.

Speaker 18 So what we need is affirmative action based on the primary arbiter of your success moving forward, and that is how wealthy or not wealthy your household is.

Speaker 18 We still have an economic apartheid because of our checkered history in this nation where black and Latino households only have 20,000 in wealth. and whites 150,000.

Speaker 18 But quite frankly, there has been too much privilege crammed into the small number of non-whites who are rich. Tyler Perry's kids shouldn't have a better chance of getting into college.

Speaker 18 Having said that, my industry is guilty of artificially constraining supply such that we can raise prices faster than inflation,

Speaker 18 which is total bullshit. We should be letting in more kids.
And we have let in a preponderance of international kids relative to domestic kids. He was right on that.
Not for diversity.

Speaker 18 That's lying, but because they pay full freight. And we love kids from Honduras or from Italy who pay the full tuition, the full sticker.
So we're not inviting them for diversity or for DEI.

Speaker 37 And it has come at the cost.

Speaker 18 The cartel, the artificial scarcity, the LVMHing, the rejectionists, exclusionary culture trying to be a hedge fund for LVMH as opposed to a public servant has crowded out a lot of unremarkable,

Speaker 18 good American kids who might have remarkable futures. He has a point.

Speaker 18 but the culprit, he positions it as if it's, as if it's, if, as if it's non-whites who are the problem or advancing the rights of non-whites or women. That's not the problem.
The problem is a system

Speaker 18 that has basically said we're going to reject too many kids. We're going to sit on the GDP of Costa Rica and only have 1,500 kids.

Speaker 18 Or what do you know, Harvard, and create some Vaseline over the limbs that letting in the Taiwanese daughter of a private equity billionaire is somehow diversity. It isn't.

Speaker 18 International students are outstanding. We love having them.

Speaker 18 Giving kids with adversity in their background, maybe it's a kid from the inner city, maybe it's a kid who struggled with his sexual identity, maybe it's a kid going through transition, fine.

Speaker 18 But how we solve the problem and how we come together is the following.

Speaker 18 Every university in this nation that has over a billion dollars in endowment should grow its freshman class faster than population growth or lose its tax-free status. Here's what we need.

Speaker 18 We need to let in more international students, more trans kids, more gay kids, more white kids from red states. We need more kids.
You know where you don't have this argument?

Speaker 18 It's community colleges, because if you just show up and pay the fucking tuition, you're in. So we don't have all this agata and all this problem.

Speaker 18 So instead of arguing about who gets in and who doesn't and creating unnecessary agata in between special interest groups, which is totally unnecessary, we just need to let in more kids.

Speaker 18 UCLA, 74% admissions rate. When I applied, I was unremarkable.
Now it's 9%.

Speaker 18 We need to just let in more kids such that people like Mark Andreessen can't cloud a very real issue or use that as cloud cover for what is this thinly veiled.

Speaker 18 ultra conservative viewpoints that quite frankly come across as a little bit bigoted and hateful against special interest groups who needed a leg up for a long time.

Speaker 26 I'm going to insert myself. He's a grievance person.
Everything is a grievance and it all relates to his unhappiness at growing up or whatever happened with his family or whatever.

Speaker 26 Everything always is a grievance with this guy. And let me tell you, it was from the start when I started covering him.
He was always aggrieved by someone or something.

Speaker 26 And it was always someone else's fault. Always.
This has been literally when he was selling Netscape stock, it was Netscape's fault. When he was doing this, it was Microsoft's fault.

Speaker 26 It was, this guy can never find fault with himself. One.

Speaker 18 But if he wants to solve the problem, it's pretty easy. He went to an amazing university, the University of Illinois at Illinois.

Speaker 18 By the way, public universities will educate two-thirds of our kids, and a lot of them, including the University of Illinois, are doing their level best to live up to their mission, and that is to let in not only just amazing, frequently remarkable kids, but just good kids that might end up being frequently remarkable.

Speaker 18 If he wanted to change things, and I walk the walk here, I do this, he should be giving a shit ton of money to the University of Illinois under the condition of the following, let in more kids.

Speaker 18 And guess what will happen, Mark? More Republican white kids from Kentucky will get admissions.

Speaker 26 Yes, he will not do this. So, one of the things when he goes,

Speaker 26 the tell is mainly political lobbying operations for fighting American innovation. Shut the fuck up.
It's the same thing that he does all the time with all his arguments.

Speaker 26 He's frequently wrong, but never in doubt. And it's exhausting with this guy.
All right. I'm just saying, I think you make a good faith argument about the DEI bureaucracy,

Speaker 26 but the solution of these guys is to kill rather than try to figure out what the best way of getting the most kids in. They do not care about what you care about.

Speaker 26 They would never give the money to create that vocational thing. They would never go for, they are not solutions based ever.
They are teardown-based and they really don't like people.

Speaker 26 I mean, ultimately, they don't like people. And by the way, if you saw Mark Adrees with a poor person, I'd be shocked, like that he, like, he, he just doesn't.
Like, they don't care.

Speaker 26 And I think you do. So that's why I allow it from you and not from them, even if you agree.

Speaker 18 Thanks for your grace.

Speaker 26 But you are. You have good faith.
You have good, there's a difference between disagreement under good faith and disagreement because you're a giant fucking asshole who needs therapy about his parents.

Speaker 18 I got a little of that.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I know that. I know that.

Speaker 18 I did Molly at Calvin Harris. Mark, come with me.

Speaker 26 I can't believe you would wait to do Molly with Kara Swisher. I would never do it with you anyway, because we'd hug and then things, weird things would happen.
Okay, Scott, one more quick break.

Speaker 26 We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Speaker 26 Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. I shall go first.
You go first. I saw two movies, one with Mr.
Louis Swisher on,

Speaker 26 we saw F1. I thought it was a solidly good movie.
Brad Pitt looks fantastic.

Speaker 26 There's a young guy in it. I'm blanking on his name who plays the young driver.
He's amazing. The whole thing is delightful.
And you know exactly how it's going to end.

Speaker 26 You don't, there's not a stitch of.

Speaker 18 I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume he wins a race.

Speaker 26 He wins a race, right? But he,

Speaker 26 you know, he's, he, he tries to let the kid win, but he wins. And of course, and then, you know, he's like, it's like a Clint Eastwood movie.
This thing you've seen 109,000 times.

Speaker 26 That said, I learned a lot about cars and about tires. I like a lot about tires.
There was a one sexy lady technologist in it who I love, who is his love interest.

Speaker 26 And was, I wanted to go to F1 after it. I have to say, I was like, I would like to go to F1.
This was really interesting. And the whole, there's a little technology in there.
Fantastic movie.

Speaker 26 Superman, also a great movie. I have to say I liked F1 better, but I can see why everybody, Superman is goofy, funny.
It is so not woke. It's just goofy.

Speaker 26 Superman has always been an immigrant. It's always been a tone of this, the series.
He comes from another planet. There's always this thing of him being from Krypton.

Speaker 26 I thought the guy who played him was delightful. I thought Rachel Brosnahan was fantastic.
She was in Marvel's Mrs. Mazel.
I thought the whole cast was great. It was so fucking goofy.

Speaker 26 It was like there were jokes all over the place. And there was one character, this guy who plays Mr.
Terrific, another person I've never seen. So funny.

Speaker 26 Whoever did this has an amazingly good sense of humor. And I think they brought it right where it belongs.
I thought, I like Henri Cavill, but too brooding.

Speaker 26 All the Supermans before Chris Reeve, who I thought was wonderful, too brooding. Now it's really fun.
And I see why it's getting, it's what everyone wants. It's a fucking relief to go to that movie.

Speaker 26 And there's a dog in it, too. And then Supergirl shows up and she's like a badass partier.
And it's just fun, fun, fun, fun. So that's my win.
My fail is Trump attacking Rosie O'Donnell.

Speaker 26 And I thought Rosie Open.

Speaker 18 Oh, Rosie Epstein.

Speaker 26 Rosie Epstein.

Speaker 18 Rosie called her Rosie Open.

Speaker 26 She called her a threat to humanity.

Speaker 26 She moved to Ireland, by the way. I thought O'Donna's reply was so fantastic.
She did it a bunch of places, but she called him King Joffrey with a tangerine spray. And I loved that.

Speaker 26 And I called her Oleana Terrell.

Speaker 18 I thought AOC had the tweet of the week and it reads, wow, who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein files?

Speaker 26 Yeah, exactly. That was really good, too.
I love these women that like slap the fucking shit out of this guy. But what if, like, what is he doing? Rosie, he's, he.

Speaker 18 Like, I don't know what his deal is.

Speaker 26 Rosie O'Donnell, he's obsessed with her.

Speaker 18 This has been going on for a long time. He's obsessed with getting people to look away from the possible implications of pedophilia.

Speaker 26 No, it goes back. You remember thinking of Megan Kelly when she used to do her job.

Speaker 18 I'm going to do it this. Well, his

Speaker 18 Epstein. That's all I have to say.
Epstein.

Speaker 26 Anyway,

Speaker 26 fail, Trump, victory, Rosie. Okay, your turn.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 18 I'll excuse my win and my fail for a personal indulgence here. As you know, my father passed away last week.

Speaker 18 I wanted to talk a little bit about him and a couple of the takeaways over the past few days.

Speaker 18 My father was born out of wedlock in 1930 in Sydney to a woman who was a domestic helper, a nanny for the McVicker family, a rich family in Australia.

Speaker 18 And one of their daughters was childless, which was a crime back then. And they said, we'll adopt your baby.
And they gave her some money and she agreed.

Speaker 18 And then she had the baby, changed her mind and basically convinced her boyfriend, my grandfather, to meet her at the docks. And they immigrated back to Scotland.

Speaker 18 My dad was raised in Depression era, Scotland. He says his first memory was during the Kleidsmank, I think it was called raid, where the Luftwaffe bombed some docks and some factories.

Speaker 18 And he was very, he felt a real sense of patriotism. He was 15 when the war ended, but he said when, I love this image, he said when he was 10.

Speaker 18 Him and his buddies in service to their nation, anyone with an accent in their neighborhood, they would follow around and take notes on them and then report them to the authorities.

Speaker 18 Like if someone had an Italian accent, they assumed they were a spy and they would follow them around. I love that story.

Speaker 18 Anyways, he, at the age of 17, lied about his age, wanted to join the RAF, and he was told he was too tall to be a pilot. So he joined the Navy.

Speaker 18 And within 48 hours of joining the Navy and saying he could swim well, he was jumping out of a helicopter practicing pilot rescue in a freezing North Atlantic, trying to put a 150-pound dummy back in a basket, sent his money home to his mother so he could save to come to America, got home after serving honorably in the Royal Navy for two years and found out that his mom had spent all the money on whiskey and cigarettes, which kind of scarred my father and has always had a really unhealthy relationship with money, but

Speaker 18 basically made the best decision I've ever made, and that is he took a huge risk and came to America where he met my mom, his second wife,

Speaker 18 and

Speaker 18 had

Speaker 18 I was born to his second wife, my sister, who's been an enormous source of love and reward reward for me for a long time by his third marriage,

Speaker 18 he really did live kind of the American dream.

Speaker 18 One of my favorite stories was when he first got to San Diego, he interviewed to be a salesman at a candle manufacturer, and the HR person said, How long have you been here? And he said, Two weeks.

Speaker 18 And she said, You got to wait here. And she brought in her boss and said, We have to hire this guy.
He's only been here two weeks and he's already learned to speak the language.

Speaker 18 And my dad,

Speaker 18 my dad, you know, had a pretty nice life. But the reality care is my father wasn't a very high character person.

Speaker 18 He had four marriages, four divorces, left his last wife when she had late-stage Parkinson's, wasn't as kind as he could have been to me and my mom or to my sister.

Speaker 18 And that created a lot of tumult in my life. And that gets to

Speaker 18 some of the learnings.

Speaker 18 The first learning is having gone through this, first off, a lot of people, I've gotten about six or 700 text messages and emails from you and other people who have been very supportive and nice.

Speaker 18 And I just want to say thank you. It does help.
But also, just to be grateful, I've been sort of overwhelmed by gratitude, even though maybe it wasn't purposeful.

Speaker 18 Again, the best thing that happened to me was being born in America. My dad took that risk, such that I could be born in America.
I have broad shoulders. I'm tall.
I have a good voice.

Speaker 18 And I have made an exceptional living communicating. And all of those things I inherited from my father.
And there's no reason not to be, uh, not to be grateful for those things.

Speaker 18 And that helps a lot just to, just to focus on the good stuff. And then

Speaker 18 about the advice I would have for anybody that I learned with my relationship, which was tumultuous at times with my father, is the following. And that is,

Speaker 18 about 20 years ago, I decided, look,

Speaker 18 I used to go back and forth. I had very conflicted relationship with my father because he wasn't very good to me as a kid.

Speaker 18 And so I would get angry at him as an adult and think, I don't want to be a very good son. And then I recognize, and it's been an enormous unlock in my life.

Speaker 18 Just imagine the son you want to be or the partner you want to be, the girlfriend you want to be, the employer you want to be, the boss you want to be, and hold yourself to that standard and stop keeping score.

Speaker 18 And it was such an enormous unlock for me.

Speaker 18 I've had such a wonderful relationship with him for the last 20 years, just trying to be a generous and loving son and not think about whether or not I was in the debit or the surplus category.

Speaker 18 And I've approached, that's just been such an enormous unlock for me in the rest of my life, thinking about what kind of partner do I want to be, what kind of friend do I want to be, and living to that standard, not keeping score.

Speaker 18 And that started with my decision to try and be a loving, generous son, regardless of

Speaker 18 what had happened in our relationship previously. Anyways, I'm writing this book on masculinity and I digress to these three pillars of masculinity of being a protector, a provider, and a procreator.

Speaker 18 You know, my dad did protect his country. He took huge sacrifices and put himself in personal risk to try and do the right thing and serve his country.

Speaker 18 He did provide for two families, and obviously he was a procreator. He had two kids and

Speaker 18 four grandkids. But it's also a cautionary tale.
He never was really able to speak, to think about others in a very generous way.

Speaker 18 So even when my sister and I were thinking about whether or not we should have a service,

Speaker 18 we decided not to because the reality is, the sad truth is, nobody would show up. He didn't have any friends.
He didn't really have anybody other than his daughter and his son who care about him.

Speaker 18 And so, it really is a cautionary tale. But, my dad did serve his country.
He was, he did, he did his best. He checked the primary box, I think, around being a father.

Speaker 18 And that is, he was much better to me and his daughter than his father was to him.

Speaker 18 Anyways, 95, lived a very rich life. And

Speaker 18 his son and his daughter will miss him terribly.

Speaker 26 No, Scott, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 18 Almost made it through.

Speaker 26 It's okay. Scott, this is your best quality.
Don't think it's not. Let me just say the best, I know your sister just a little bit.
She's wonderful.

Speaker 26 But the best thing he did was give us you.

Speaker 18 That's nice. Thank you.

Speaker 26 Anyway, now you have me crying.

Speaker 18 Scott,

Speaker 26 you have to go through this walkie at some point.

Speaker 18 There you go. Oh, you have a party.

Speaker 18 Four wives, four divorces when you were in 70s, California with a strong John, a Glaswegian accent. You could not only think with your dick, you could listen to it.
God,

Speaker 18 he had a nice time. Yeah.

Speaker 26 And you, and then his son last week was in Ibiza having molly.

Speaker 18 Win, win.

Speaker 26 Win, win. Win.
No, I'm serious, Scott. You were a journey, and I really appreciate that about you.
And I think you took a lot of lessons from your dad. You had a tough time.

Speaker 26 And it sounds like your mom was the real uh strong person for you but um uh it's still it's you're you're from where you're from right yeah and that's right makes you the person you are anyway i really appreciate that and uh um whatever you need all of us are here

Speaker 26 including all your listeners and me too um 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 scott i can't believe you made me cry um elsewhere in the kara and Scott universe this week and on with Kara Swisher, I spoke with astrophysicist and author of the new book, More Everything Forever, Adam Becker.

Speaker 26 Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 18 I think that a lot of what's happened in this country over the last,

Speaker 18 at this point, 10 years,

Speaker 18 has shown like the kinds of risks that we as a society take by having billionaires, by allowing that kind of concentration of wealth. It erodes the democratic fabric of the country.

Speaker 18 And at this point, our democracy is in mortal danger and may already be lost.

Speaker 26 That was a particular, it's a great book.

Speaker 26 It's about the idea of more, everything, forever, which is a lot of sort of these tech people think, when in fact, it's more everything forever for themselves. Anyway, it's a great book.

Speaker 26 He's really interesting. He sort of knocks away all the myths around living on Mars, et cetera, all their dreams that are not good for most of humanity, but it's good for them.
Okay, that's the show.

Speaker 26 Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday.
Scott, read us out.

Speaker 18 Today's show was produced by Larry Naman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Durta engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Muse Sibero, and Dan Shalan.

Speaker 18 Nishak Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 18 You can subscribe to the magazine n1bag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.
Thanks to everyone for all your warm wishes.

Speaker 18 It helps a great deal.

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Speaker 6 ODU is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 38 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

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MAGA's Epstein Civil War, SpaceX's xAI investment, and Trump's Rosie Threat

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