Texas Flooding, Trump's Tariff Threats, and Elon's Political Party

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I'd like some non-dickless wonders to say, no, we're just not going to vote for it.

And you guys go back to the drawing fucking board.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Where are you?

I'm in Abitha.

Abitha.

Is that how you say it there?

Yeah, I think that's how they say it.

Abitha, it's actually, it's an interesting lesson in branding.

They've done a great job of associating themselves with these.

Like Vegas has artists in residence.

They have DJs in residence.

And it's kind of known as this sort of party island that's also very sort of boho chic.

It's

really, anyways, it's nice.

Nice here.

Yeah.

I just think rich people.

That's all I think when I think of Abiza.

A lot of young people, actually.

Naked rich people, actually, in pretty good shape.

Yeah.

Well naked young people is why people come here I think.

I think rich people come to see naked young people but

that's just me.

So the Scott summer vacation is beginning.

I see.

It's happening.

It's just getting going Kara.

We did some taping at Scott Galloway's house, which was great.

And Scott and I are going to tape something together for my secret CNN show.

Yeah,

not so secret CNN.

What are you doing, by the way?

Oh, I'm not telling you.

Really?

Okay.

We're going to take your liver.

Trust me, no one wants it.

And replace it with another, with it, with a synthetic liver.

I don't know, something.

It's going to be cool.

It's like my liver would be like one of those TikToks where they duct tape it to a tree and then put a tap under it and it turns into a great fruit.

Oh, dear.

Oh, my goodness.

No.

No, it's going to be fun.

It's a long story.

I dressed up in colonial outfit this week and I can't explain why I did.

I was wearing a dry-cornered hat.

I'm surprisingly good looking in those outfits.

I'll give you this.

It was surprising.

Yeah.

Well,

I'm telling you, I looked good.

I looked at the children.

We're surprised.

What have you been up to?

Working on this thing for CNN and also family stuff.

Did a lot of kids' stuff.

I was in Boston with my in-laws who were great.

I visited some friends from high school, but mostly family stuff.

God, I so win.

I mean, that sounds great.

That sounds great.

Yeah.

I'm at a beat that with DJs and hot young naked people and you're doing Civil War reenactments reenactments and hanging out with your in-laws.

No, not Civil War, Revolutionary War.

Try to keep your wars together.

It was a tri-cornered hat that I was wearing.

Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, actually, in a very serious way, because over the weekend, other people had very tragic weekends, including the flooding in Texas.

And of course, we will talk about other things like winners and losers through Trump's big, beautiful bill.

But first, let's get to the latest fuel on the fire of the big beautiful fight between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, which is just getting worse, as we predicted, Scott Galloway.

You did not.

You predicted those.

I did.

I know him so well.

He couldn't stand the deficit.

I know him.

He's talked about it for years and had to listen to it.

So Elon is lashing out over the lack of findings now.

Today, he's moved on in an FBI and DOJ review of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

This was the thing he...

tweeted about when he started his fight with Trump, then he took it back and now he's back.

I knew it.

You know, he's got a hair up his ass about this and a bunch of other things.

But the departments have reportedly concluded there was no Epstein Epstein client list, no evidence of blackmailing that enhanced footage proves Epstein killed himself early Monday morning.

Elon posted so, and then what is Jelaine Maxwell in prison for?

Stuff like this does not improve people's faith in government.

He also, you know, Pam Bondi's gotten herself in a bit of a mess saying she had a list in front of her.

And then, of course, she said there is no list.

And of course, Dan Bongino and Cash Patel have made their careers saying Epstein was killed and now say he isn't.

Let's talk about the findings really quickly.

They do make Bondi look suspicious, even if you don't believe this.

And I know you had a different opinion about the Epstein thing than I did.

I thought it was just to kill himself.

But that's not all our girls are fighting about.

Trump is calling Elon, quote, off the rails following Musk's weekend announcement that he'll form a new political party, the America Party.

Musk has called Trump's big, beautiful bill, quote, a disgusting abomination and suggested targeting some key House and Senate seats in 2026.

It's actually somewhat canny.

If he gets enough of them, he can certainly cause a lot of trouble.

Tesla's shares are falling in pre-market trading on Monday for a lot of reasons, including results, but this is not helping.

Here's what Treasury Secretary Scott Besson had to say about it on Sunday to CNN's Denna Bash.

And I will say ahead of it, he sounds like such a prig, but let's go.

The principles of Doge were very popular.

I think if you looked at the polling, Elon was not.

So I believe that the boards of directors at at his various companies wanted him to come back and run those companies, which he is better at than anyone.

So I imagine that those board of directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities.

Josh, thanks, Mom.

Just honestly, Scott Bus, it's none of your business what he does.

But in any case, all the bickering has hurt his relationship with Beijing, too, because Tesla sales are falling off there, as we have discussed many times, because BYD has great great cars and

that's the way it goes there in there.

So tell me a little bit about this, Scott.

How do you feel?

It's just continuing.

And actually, I think it can cause some real damage here, actually, but maybe you don't.

Well, typically

any third party that gets any traction, it has a center of gravity, a reason for being.

The Green Party, it's pretty clear what they think.

The Rossbroughs independent movement wanted a flat tax and that had some substance to it.

Andrew Yang's party that he tried to start, I thought had some substance to it.

He's known for UBI.

The substance of Musk trying to start a party is the following, or the center of gravity is:

I'm disappointed I'm no longer the first friend.

You know,

his criticism that this guy is a pedophile and that this bill will add to the deficit and is irresponsible, he was down with all of that when he had input around who was going to be the next director, the CIA, or the IRS.

It didn't seem to bother bother him then.

But basically, since he's been kind of unceremoniously kicked out of the White House, he's decided we need a third party.

So this thing doesn't, it's sort of dead on arrival in the sense that

it doesn't have a reason for being.

And in addition, as a construct, the United States electoral system just isn't set up for a third party.

It's set up to block any third party.

We have,

the system is essentially rigged for two.

It's a first past the post winner-take-all elections.

In some nations, nations, they have sort of a parliamentary representative or proportional representation, like Germany, Sweden, and Israel.

They routinely see viable third, fourth, and fifth parties because seats are allocated based on vote share, not an all-or-nothing.

So when you have all or nothing, it's binary.

So

all third parties do when they're successful, and I don't think this one will be, is they're spoilers.

Bill Clinton should not have won the presidency, but Ross Paro took 18% of the vote, probably like 11 to to 7

from Bush-Clinton, respectively, and Clinton became president.

Jill Stein people would argue stole the presidency.

Ralph Nader people think is what handed

W the presidency.

So they can be spoilers,

but this one has no reason for being.

This one comes across as sour grapes.

Scott Besant

comically pretending or trying to call on the board of directors to actually do something here is laughable.

So I think this, like most third parties, will get, I think this will die a quick death, but we'll see.

All right.

Let me, let me put something out for you because one of the things that he's been talking about is knocking off a couple of seats, right?

Given how close these elections are, 210 to whatever, it's always within two or three, right?

What if he goes after two Senate seats and eight House seats and then suddenly has them, encourages and gets a certain number of people into place that could block everything, right?

There is that.

Nobody's ever really talked about it like that.

And if he gets those congresspeople in and they are beholden to him or they agree with him, right?

And people find it appealing, because I do think people don't find the Democrats or the Republicans.

There's a whole rhino group.

You know, Mark Cubin is like, this is a good idea.

And I think they all think of it as blocking these two parties.

And so instead of thinking it like, let's have a third party, let's have a third blocker is how I look at it.

And so if they could do that, and they're the difference between

how hard could it be to get six seats?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Like, I don't think it's impossible.

That's for sure.

But a lot of people who I'm surprised are sort of like, huh, interesting idea.

And I think that's what he's doing here.

And he's actually kind of said it in that regard is I can find a way to block, you know, them from voting these things in and giving nobody the majority, really, essentially.

Any thoughts on that?

Well, I think you're right, but we're talking about two different things.

One is I don't think a third party, a viable third party, is viable.

What you're talking about is influence.

And Elon Musk has already proven he can have massive influence.

There's a decent argument that he's the reason that Trump was elected.

Correct.

Yeah.

So when you're worth $400 million and you have a big media platform and you're bold and unafraid as Musk is, you're absolutely right.

He could one thing, Peter Thiel could call Vice President Vance and say, I need you to promote a NASA that should be focused solely on

going to Pluto.

And he would say, yes, Mr.

Thiel.

Peter Thiel is the puppet master behind J.D.

Vance.

And Elon Musk, until recently, had a lot of control over Musk.

But now that Trump is probably not running again and feels like, okay, I've used this guy.

I've squeezed all the juice I want from this lemon.

But Elon Musk with his platform and his money, unfortunately, because of Citizens United, could absolutely get enough people elected that owed him enough that they would have to take his call and vote one way or another.

But so influence.

Or just would vote one way or another.

Like maybe there's a, there's, there is this sort of group that is like, interestingly, Sam Altman was saying he's politically homeless, that feel politically homeless on both sides of the equation.

Now, that doesn't mean to say if they're centrist Democrats, they might not like them, or reasonable Republicans, they might.

There's this group that I think very much so if he got,

you know, if he put enough money to it and the right person in some of these, if you could target six seats, like a Mike Lawler, for example, that don't have to be beholden to the Trump people.

And once Trump's missing from the equation, less scared, you could see them just blocking legislation almost continually, like until they, until the groups compromise, which honestly is not such a bad thing, which is why I think, I haven't talked to Cuban about it, but that's my assumption that Cuban thinks is attractive.

He got a lot of of shit for that, for saying interesting, by the way.

If past elections are any proxy for what's going to happen in the midterms, we'll see Democrats retake control of the House, at which point it'll be very hard for them to get legislation through unless, to your point, they compromise.

The idea, Musk is absolutely has the ability and the firepower to get several people elected, which could end up being a swing vote.

The problem is, and I've said this over and over, he's a drug addict and he's a narcissist.

And I don't think he's especially concerned or has a lot of regard for the well-being of our deficit of the United States.

I think he just wants power.

So maybe he can get it, but then what?

And then what?

You think?

I just don't.

I do think this is something he has talked about.

The deficit thing has been on his mind for a long time.

That is certainly true.

And I've heard it from not just him, but other people like him, right?

This deficit, this overspending.

And you talk about it too.

I mean, it's vaguely appealing to not let them do this, right?

To deny them the ability to add on taxes or

or to take away from young people or people who marginalize people or not making the investments.

The problem is there's things he's right about.

Why are we continuing to double down on fossil fuels and not,

even if he's hurt about the EVs, directionally it's correct compared to fossil fuels.

So there's a lot of appeal to certain people.

I think there's two things that I think about.

One is Joe Rogan suddenly is like, wait a minute, he's taking away hard, like that gang goes with Elon.

That's a a big gang, right?

Like kind of thing of people who have influence.

So it creates a chaos, which is sort of where he lives.

The second thing is that the response from Republicans has been fascinating.

It's so over the top.

Trump himself, that you see that long word, it looks like it was written by Stephen Miller because it had some punctuation.

But it was sort of like over, like right in the middle of so many other crises for him to take the time to do like a the giant paragraph was was and full of like he's off the rails, he takes takes drugs like he's throwing everything at him which means he's worried because if he wasn't worried he'd ignore him presumably um and then secondly scott jennings on cnn you know we'll see where they go with it my humble advice to elon who i admire very much actually is that you may be dividing the forces of people who want to save western civilization to the benefit of the people who don't I work for CNN.

I'm sorry, CNN, but that you let him say things like that.

So dramatic.

Dramatic.

What a drama queen and what a terrible thing to say.

I'm sort of welcoming Musk to mow those people down.

Like, you know what I mean, in terms of causing them problem.

And they're all very, very worried about this.

So I just am paying attention to their response, which is off the charts because they understand the damage he could do, including around Epstein, even though, I mean, how are you feeling about the Epstein thing now that this was released?

Because you were sort of, Kara, he was killed.

You can remember you were like on that?

I feel, I mean, I think it's old news.

Really?

I don't.

Oh, really?

I think they keep pulling the ghost out of Epstein, but there was a couple of things there.

The first is, as progressives, what Elon's doing now is nothing but upside for us.

Distinct of the viability of a third party, distinct of what his motivations are.

Correct.

His primary motivation is that he hates Donald Trump and feels like he was treated poorly.

I don't believe that he's that concerned.

Fine.

Maybe he is.

He's on the record as not liking the deficit.

Well, he was fine with it when

he got to show up to the West Wing and hot topic outfits and talk about a brave new world.

And everyone was like, you're the co-president.

He seemed to be comfortable with these deficits.

Yes, I agree.

And with everything he knew about Donald Trump and Epstein up until that point.

But he is fueled right now, as far as I can tell, by rage and revenge.

And if he gets people elected who are against Trump, I'm all for it.

Great.

The other thing is, and

this is part of the problem with what Scott Jennings represents, is that America doesn't realize they're fighting the wrong enemy.

And that is, and I think the left is just as guilty of this as the right, is that you're asked to pick a team.

And if you ever want to hang out with the other team, you're treated as an apostate.

Absolutely.

And people...

And we've experienced this.

We get it all the time.

I still feel like kind of angry and bitter out of all these, all these people who, when we were talking about or expressing concerns about Biden,

like, you don't understand the assignment.

You're going to get Trump elected.

You're anti-American.

I mean, it's just like, no, I'm.

Oh, I posted about Musk.

They're like, we don't want him.

I'm like, you kind of do.

Like, what are you talking about?

He's going to like crash all their bumper cars, people.

There is nothing at this point, given the dynamics, there's nothing but upside for progressives and there's nothing but downside for the president.

But what's also clear from this is that the president is much more powerful and much more popular than Musk.

And because it feels right now, he feels like, quite frankly, it feels like Musk is flailing a little bit and angry.

We'll see what happens, but I'm here for it because he's not, Musk isn't going to use his power and his money to get people elected who will support the president's agenda right now.

That's something I don't, I'm fairly certain of.

So fine.

My enemy's enemy is my friend.

So welcome.

Yeah.

I don't mind some centrists in the middle just blocking things.

I don't like, you know, you see the Freedom Caucus, we're going to block it.

And then they never do.

Like they never do.

There's such a bunch of like dickless wonders.

Like, well, Chip Roy, I really can't take this.

Oh, yes, I voted for it.

Like, I'd like some non-dickless wonders to say no we're just not gonna vote for it and you guys go back to the drawing fucking board and do something better and I agree on the censorious of the left being exhausting that said Scott Jennings wins the prize on his like

yes Scott I'm against Western civilization yeah but Scott Jennings no fish Scott Jennings is playing the same role yeah as Megan McCain as God I forget the I forget the little guy on the all-in podcast.

Jason Calicanus.

They're supposed to be representative of the other side

but they equit themselves so poorly that they just cement and embolden and

polish the views of the rest of the people the only person that breaks that mold is jessica tarlov yeah and that is the four speak and it's like okay yeah the tickle my sensors and then all of a sudden the five on the five jessica tarlov speaks and like oh she's kind of smart maybe she has a point yeah typically the way they do these shows is that on the view they have four very progressive talk and then they they have whatever her name was, Dana Hasselback or whatever, like screech.

Yeah, it's Alyssa Farah now, but she's much more reasonable.

But go ahead.

But she's she's intelligent and impressive.

Yeah.

Typically, the model used to bring, have Sean Hannity, who's a compelling figure, and then have Sean Combs basically make his point.

Alan Combs.

It's Alan Combs.

Was it Alan Combs?

Excuse me.

And that's what, you know, that's this person's role.

That's Scott's role right now.

He, he's there to make a point that kind of sounds aggressive, weak, and weird.

And then the other Democrats just smack him down.

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

You're the Scott I like.

It's good to know.

Good Scott.

I call you good Scott.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.

It is certainly interesting, but at the same time, let's be clear, Musk's businesses are really suffering and could suffer even more, including Tesla, including Starlink, including all his businesses.

So he's not the, even if he's the world's richest man, he's also someone who is not without weakness in that regard.

And it's very leveraged against each other.

So we'll see.

Speaking of something we thought he might get a hold of, but he's obviously not now.

TikTok is reportedly developing a U.S.

version of the app ahead of the upcoming sale deadline.

President Trump has given the Chinese parent company Byte Dance until September 17th to sell the assets, although he's extended that several times illegally.

He says he's been talking, he'll be talking to China early this week about the sale and that he, quote, pretty much has a done deal.

It's probably Oracle, Mark, Andreessen, and some version of various of its rich owners.

The U.S.

version of TikTok would launch in the app store on September 5th, which I don't know what that means.

I don't know if that's enough or what's enough, a U.S.

version.

I don't know what's going to happen.

Do we care anymore, Scott?

Do we?

We do, but we don't.

Well, it's been so.

I mean, he liked it, then he didn't like it, then he liked it again.

And then he found out one of his biggest donors was a big investor there.

It all comes down to this, who owns it?

And whether it's a U.S.

version, that doesn't matter.

It's who owns it and who has control over the algorithm.

And I've now come to believe that China realizes they're playing with a much stronger hand than Trump and that this guy continues to blink and that whatever they do will be sort of window dressing as opposed to, again, who controls the algorithm and gets to decide what content to dial up to further create a new generation of nonprofit business and military leaders that basically think America sucks.

I think that's the free gift with purchase that TikTok is getting in addition to the $300 billion in enterprise value.

I don't think they're going to give that up.

I don't think they think they have to.

I think they can come up with some sort of accommodation that President Trump can claim credit for.

But meanwhile, Beijing will still control the algorithm.

So the only thing that matters here is who owns it.

Yeah.

So who?

What do you, I mean, I assume it's an Oracle Andreessen rich guy's thing, right?

All his friends.

I just wonder if that's going to happen.

You think that, you think it's going to happen?

I don't know.

I don't know how that he's going to, he's got a deal done.

I don't believe much of anything needs to come out of his mouth.

So

I just don't know.

Yeah, again, why would China, what's he going to do?

What's he going to do?

Well, he could technically, he could enforce the ban that's their law.

But he hasn't enforced the law.

He could enforce the law that's been passed by both, by all branches of government that he's decided not to enforce.

And then it effectively would be banned.

But here's the thing.

China doesn't care.

China has a private enterprise.

They run their companies for control, not for profits.

I believe Bait Dance is getting only about 20% of its revenue now from the U.S.

They're not afraid.

He keeps blinking.

So if they can come to some sort of accommodation that, again, gives him a perceptual victory.

Yeah, perceptual.

But meanwhile, Beijing gets, it has their hands on the algorithm, then I can see it happening.

I don't see Beijing at this point handing over TikTok to U.S.

interests.

Yeah, why would they?

I just don't see what, unless they want something else.

Maybe

I don't know.

Why would it be worth it in any way?

They're managing to ruin this app really in a lot of ways.

And eventually people won't use it just like they don't use anything else.

But certainly this idea, I've done a deal, like he likes to, why does he have to stick with that?

It's so kind of gross and old man-y.

Like, I do, I do deals.

I'm a deal maker, the author of the deal.

It's like, stop.

Like, we got it.

Like, because you don't really do good deals.

You do some good deals, some that you don't, but he has to always like flack it.

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

When we come back, the deadly flooding in Texas and questions raised about whether officials did enough to warn people.

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Scott, we're back.

At least 80 people, including 28 children, are confirmed dead after a catastrophic flood swept through central Texas, which is known as the flash flood corridor, I think, over the weekend.

Dozens are still missing, including 10 girls from a summer camp.

Rescue efforts are still ongoing as of this recording, and the finger pointing has already begun, obviously, right away.

Some local officials are blaming the National Weather Service, claiming forecasts underestimated the severity of the rainfall.

But meteorologists told Wired that NWS actually predicted the risk of flooding and sent warnings.

It just was in the middle of the night.

And they have these systems that they don't have sirens in this particular area.

People ignore them.

People ignore warnings, things like that.

There's also the Doge factor.

Hundreds of jobs at NWS were cut earlier this year.

Some crucial positions at local offices are currently unfilled, according to the New York Times.

That particular story was quite disturbing, actually.

And an NWS staffer told the Texas Tribune that the regional offices had adequate staffing and technology, saying this was us doing our jobs to the best of our abilities, which doesn't exactly make you feel confident.

Past few days, I'll also note, as this is a flood-prone area, it has happened in the past, back, I think, in the 1970s.

They've considered warning systems and they did not implement them because of the cost.

One local official said they were extravagant costs to put these sirens in, particularly.

Again, texting is hard in this area.

It has lower

cell phone coverage, for example.

People ignore it.

This also happened at the worst possible time.

And Scott, you put up a number of pictures of how quickly these floods go in during the day.

This was in the middle of the night or darkness.

And so it was unexpected.

People were sleeping.

Worst possible time this could happen.

And the stories are heartbreaking.

Is there any chance the Trump administration reevaluates some of those cuts?

They're definitely stuck in this cycle of they're to blame for what's happened.

Why don't you talk a little bit about this?

I don't think they will.

When something like this happens, I think a lot about one of those books that kind of changed or,

I don't know, gave me a seminal framework for how I evaluate decisions is Daniel Kahneman's work, specifically

thinking fast and slow, I think it's called.

And there's sort of, there's system one thinking, right?

And that you have to have system one thinking to respond.

Something, an emergency happens.

fight or flight, you need to respond immediately.

You need to make very quick decisions.

The problem is, and what we pay our elected officials for, is that we're supposed to have have slow thinking.

We're supposed to slow down and look at structural change and what are the things leading up to this crisis that potentially could have helped avoid it.

And the system one thinking immediately takes over.

Media defaults to drama, quick narrative formation.

They love heroic rescues.

Politicians use shortcuts.

They immediately want to fill a narrative or backfill a narrative to show, you know, Democrats want to say this is all about climate change.

This is all about the cuts.

And then Republicans go really fucking crazy and claim it's evidence of some sort of deep state conspiracy to control the weather.

Yeah, they love that one.

The recent, you know, availability bias, recent dramatic floods get disproportionate attention compared to ongoing prevention needs.

Partisan reflexes activate.

We've seen that.

And the whole point of a government and the whole point of being an adult is you're supposed to let your slow thinking take over and say, all right.

The time pressure prevents real analysis.

And that is, these things demand immediate reactions, not careful evaluation.

And the reality is we don't know.

I mean,

so for example, with the two weather services that are charged with a response and prevention and then communications, they are dramatically understaffed.

They have been understaffed for a while, but we don't know.

We don't have enough data yet to say with any certainty whether that understaffing or if they had been adequately staffed, if it would have resulted in a different outcome.

And the problem is, is that these jobs are what I call invisible until there's a disaster.

I always talk about jobs invisible until you fuck up.

And that is the TSA, lifeguards, vaccine research.

I mean, all of these jobs, the CDC, we don't know how many pandemics the CDC has stopped because the whole point of government is that you don't appreciate how boring their work is because they prevent.

We don't know how many terrorist cells have been busted up before they killed a bunch of people because they did this boring hard work that requires investment.

and meticulous systemic infrastructure investment.

And unfortunately, that doesn't make for good TV.

It doesn't make for heroics.

It doesn't make for speeches trying to demonstrate leadership and thoughts and prayers and people in FEMA jackets.

So prevention gets no credit.

Voters reward visible disaster response over invisible long-term infrastructure investments.

Right.

People in boats pulling people out of trees.

Which creates perverse political incentives.

It's the same as you want to watch a TV show called ER as opposed to preventive medicine.

That doesn't make for good evening drama.

Must C TV is never like preventive.

The vaccine, the family planning clinic.

I mean, it just, that doesn't make for good drama.

Let's create a show.

Another plane landed safely, in other words, that that's not news.

What I would encourage us and what I try and do is say, when people say, what do you think?

I have no fucking idea.

I know it rained a lot and a lot of good people have incurred a tragedy.

Would a more thoughtful response to flood control and weather services investment have prevented this?

We don't know yet.

Is it clear that we have more catastrophic weather events that are more extreme and more frequent?

Yes.

But was this a function of that?

We don't know.

Right, right.

And so the question is: well, let's lean on good people and scientists who are pursuing the truth.

Let's slow our thinking down.

And then let's make the requisite investments in infrastructure and personnel that are really fucking boring.

Yeah.

Such that we talk about this stuff less.

I mean, you noted here, this New York Times report that I just referred to, you put this in your notes, the National Weather Surface San Angelo office, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday's flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and meteorologist in charge.

To me, and a lot of it, you know, it was interesting because Christy Noam was then Texas.

People blamed the Trump administration.

They were saying it was because of ancient systems in the past.

And I was like, wasn't President Trump the president in the past?

Like, again, she's, she's so dumb.

It's just constant stupidity from her.

And it seems like that's, and of course, Trump pretended he couldn't hear it, right?

What?

I can't hear you, which doesn't do well for me not thinking he's an old man.

But I agree with you.

I think this is, we don't know what happened.

Although I will say two things that I thought were repulsive that happened.

One is all this conspiracy theories about weather control from people like.

That has not gotten a lot of purchase, but there was enough of it that it was ridiculous that people are controlling, no more weather controlling.

I'm like, well, yeah, we should stop driving cars probably.

Like, and if you want to talk, weather control, you know, I think the bigger things immediately saying, I think it is climate.

I mean, it's so clear these, these, right now there's flooding in North Carolina.

There's these weather situations have gotten worse and worse.

There's just no question about that.

More of them.

More of them.

And very tragic kind of thing.

One of the things that it seemed to me at the very basis was relying on a system of texting seems crazy to me, especially in a rural area, right?

Like that's how you warn people, especially if people aren't paying attention to their phones in the middle of the night.

And they, I don't know, whenever you get one of these warnings here in DC, I get them.

I ignore them, right?

They go just ignore.

You probably get a lot down in Florida, I would assume.

And they, they make your phone go wah, wah, wah.

And I pretty much ignore them.

If it was a siren, I would not ignore it, interestingly enough.

So it seems like they probably should have sirens here, especially when there's so many kids along that.

You know what I mean?

Like, that's one of the things I think will resonate is that in this this one camp it's it looks like a christian camp a lot of very high-level texas officials sent their kids there i think laura bush worked there as a counselor it seems like one of these institutions in that area of the country and the and the director died trying to save these girls i think there's nothing wrong with some of the human stories here scott because i think it gets people

going in that regard.

And I think the Trump administration is going to get dragged into this the way the Bush administration got dragged into Hurricane Katrina, if you remember, seems incompetent and seems he might go there on Friday.

He has to go there.

He really does.

And I know the presidents get in the way, but from a symbolic point of view, he's got to go there and he can't be throwing, you know, towels at them, like paper towels at them.

He's got to show concern as the president of the United States.

The president should always be there for these kind of terrible incidents.

So we'll see.

But I think you're right about thinking fast and slow, but it's inevitable.

There'll be human interest stories here, sadly yeah those alerts you get the strangest alerts in florida i got an alert that two men had broken into a pharmacy and stolen all the viagra and it said to be on the lookout for two hardened criminals

i could i can't believe you made that joke i could hear

anyway anyway

i don't ever say thoughts and prayers but i hate that hearing about these kids break heartbreaking i think that is such an excuse for a lack of action i hate that you know what folks

uh thoughts and prayers aren't going to bring those kids back.

They are not.

And they're not going to stop climate change.

And

they're not going to help our infrastructure put in place the right warning system.

What are we going to do?

This should give us all a minute, definitely.

And it's fine for people to cover it and everything else, but we really need to get to the heart of it, as Scott said, and put experts in charge that they really can prevent, you know.

can prevent these tragedies from being worse than they are.

And this one is particularly bad, I think.

Okay, let's go on a quick break.

We come back.

How the big, beautiful bill is going to change the country as we know it.

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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.

Scott, we're back.

While you were away, Donald Trump passed his big, beautiful bill.

It's now law.

The president signed the bill on his self-imposed deadline the 4th of July, calling it, quote, the single most popular bill ever signed, despite most polls saying otherwise.

A lot of people don't know what's in it, by the way, FYI, on top of that.

The final bill extends Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which were supposed to go at the end of this year, slashes Medicaid significantly, boosts immigration enforcement by a lot, and adds over $3 trillion to the deficit.

Some of the big winners from this bill include wealthy Americans, corporations, and defense contractors, also prison people, prison owners.

Some of the losers, low-income Americans, healthcare workers, clean energy companies, drastically, and Elon Musk, after the bill scrapped EV subsidies, also for anybody working in the EV industry.

Which get a $7,500 annual subsidy that is going away, which is a very good time to buy an EV now if you want to, by the way, before those go away.

Talk about what this bill means for the country.

I mean, what do you see?

You've talked about this a lot, but now that it's passed, what do you see is some of the stuff dropped out, including selling public lands and some other stuff, but some of the stuff absolutely stayed in there.

So talk a little bit about your thoughts about where it's going.

I've thought a lot about this bill.

I think it cements the notion in a fortune motion or notion that America has officially decided that it's comfortable with the bottom 90% of America being nutrition for the top 10%,

that this isn't just weaponization by the government of rich people.

It's Americans deciding that I'm comfortable with the transfer of wealth from the future to the past, from the poor to the rich, from the young to the old, because I think maybe someday I'll be there.

And also some of these images of how cruel and harsh it is get conflated with masculinity and leadership.

And I don't think you can just blame

Republicans and Trump.

I think America has decided in some ways that it's now the hunger games.

And I think it represents something deeper and more mendacious and ugly about America right now.

That there's because there really hasn't been a lot of pushback.

I think most people acknowledge that this is going to be good for rich people and it's going to be bad for poor people.

14 million plus are going to lose their health care.

And these are some of the most,

you know, vulnerable people in the world, disabled kids, disabled seniors.

And then I'm going to get a tax cut.

And

at the end of the day, that's what this is.

It's, you know, it's taking $800 billion out of Medicaid and it's dramatically reducing taxation such that and adding to the deficit.

So it's an enormous tax on future generations.

It's a huge erosion.

in the social safety net for poor people, such that the most productive, if you will, that's the nicest thing you could say, the most blessed, the most fortunate, the richest among us continue to aggregate more wealth.

And I'm, I'm, you know, if you give me a minute here, I'm on vacation and I think a lot about, you know, when I'm, when I have time to kind of slow down, when you're young, you think about, you credit your grit and your character for your success.

You think about the pillars that your blessings are built on and you have a tendency to go, well, it's my grit and my hard work and my talent.

And then as you get older, you realize a lot of your success isn't your fault.

And I literally could go through, and I will, the pillars of my prosperity, and they're all under under attack in this bill when i was in fourth grade when i was nine i got i didn't get free lunch but i got assisted lunch and the wonderful thing about assisted lunch in california was they didn't want kids to have stigma so they used to send coupons to my house and they were the same coupons the other kids used yeah right think about how thoughtful that is and i've talked about this when i was 17 my mom became pregnant if we'd lived in a conservative era in this era we wouldn't have been able to access family planning there's no way i could have gone to college when i got to college i I got Pell Grants.

Now they're talking about doing away.

A third of the kids that receive Pell Grants now will have a reduction.

Or they'll be done away with.

So I couldn't have graduated from college.

And that, let's be clear, that illuminated or detonated an upward spiral of incredible prosperity and tens of millions of dollars in taxes paid by yours truly and my companies from the generosity of California taxpayers and the visions of the University of California, the regents.

Look at the companies I started.

They were all based on the internet.

What if we hadn't had the capital to invest in things like DARPA because we had been making a trillion dollars a year in interest payments for our debt to prop up the rich?

We wouldn't,

will there be future internet?

My first programmer that built my first website, a red envelope, Jawad Mohammed, an immigrant from Pakistan, the chief merchant of red envelope company I started and took public, an immigrant from Vietnam, the woman who ran our CPG practice at L2, a Canadian immigrant.

Immigrants literally built my companies.

All of these things, literally all of these things are under attack.

And let me go very meta.

You know, I wouldn't be here if America hadn't pushed back on fascism in the late 30s.

My mother was a four-year-old Jew sleeping in bomb shelters in the London tube.

And we didn't decide to commit, convert all our factories to producing tanks instead of washing machines and to.

you know, have 400,000 homes have a gold star on the window because we were pushing back on anti-Semitism.

We were pushing back on fascism.

And what is fascism?

The demonization of immigrants, a refusal to condemn violence against your opponents, and extreme nationalism.

Does that sound familiar?

Yep.

So if we hadn't gagged on fascism in 39, I, you know, much less everything I talked about previous to this, I might not be here.

Nope, you wouldn't.

You absolutely wouldn't.

I feel as if everything,

every reason I get to live the life I live and,

you know, the prosperity, the taxes I've paid, the kids,

it really does feel like everything, all the ladders for many of us who are successful, the American experience, are being pulled up behind us.

It's very upsetting.

Well, the problem is a lot of people like you don't think that.

They think they did everything on their own, like, which is incredibly, the fact that you think about it is incredibly thoughtful because, I mean, it's the truth, for one, which is why it's correct, but many people in your group don't think that.

They think people are lazy.

You want Medicaid?

You got to work.

That kind of thing.

When they get free, like, I, I grew up pretty rich, Scott, and I remember a bunch of kids talking about a bunch of the, some of the lesser good kids that I went to school with, like, oh, they're lazy.

I'm like, how the, would you know where you would be if you didn't have all this support?

Like very, you're so dumb.

You're, you would be at the, you would sink to the bottom of this particular ocean.

And I used to think my grandfather was an immigrant from Italy.

His father was a stone cutter, came over from Italy, and he built up a business without very much education.

And I was allowed to do things because of his entrepreneurship and his father's entrepreneurship.

And, you know, it just is many, many people who are getting these breaks do not realize

they are on third base and they feel like they've hit a home run.

And they treat hardworking people.

I don't know why the dime is just dropping for Joe Rogan.

Oh, they're going after people that work really hard, construction sites, gardening, all these things that people come here to try to work their way up the American system, which has been very good for a lot of people.

And you're a perfect example of that.

To me, honestly, if I had to pick the most egregious thing is all the money going to ICE and jailing people.

Like that to me is terrifying.

You talked about this, like a couple billion dollars to help a Pell Grant versus $40 billion to jail people.

There is no economic upside except for a small group of people in jailing hardworking Americans.

Even if they came here, figuring out a way to keep them here and working hard would be the better use of that money.

At the end of the day, the president is the ultimate capital allocator.

And the amount of money we are spending on harassing people

at Home Depots and at churches and at schools, doesn't it tell you something

that this is where we're finding these people?

And instead of taking that, what will I think be now $12 or $11 or $12 million a year, you know who's taking your job?

The woman, you know, wiping grandma's ass and picking your crops and making sure that the restaurant bill isn't $30, it's $22, that's not who's taking your job.

AI is going to take your job.

Do you know what we could do in terms of vocational training, upskilling people to be more critical thinkers and more skilled and able to handle the new technologies and the new threats of future?

We could be doing so much better with this money to ensure our wages stay high, to ensure there are good jobs for people, to ensure that we have a safety net, we have great education, we have great infrastructure.

For God's sakes, we could take that money, build high-speed rail networks, we could build nuclear power plants to create an energy-efficient or independent future that would create great jobs.

And instead, we're funding what is effectively a modern-day Gestapo with Wi-Fi.

I mean,

this is just- You know what I'd like the money to be?

Why don't we take the money and give it to sirens along the flood corridor?

Why not?

Like, that's something useful.

All those people would have died.

All that incredible economic devastation, prevention.

Like, it's, it is, you know, your story is exactly correct.

And I wish more people like you spoke spoke like this in terms of, I don't understand why they don't.

Something happens when you get to be a certain wealth that you think you did it all yourself.

Like

you hang out with those people more than I do, but I've always been perplexed by their inability to understand how they got to where they got.

Maybe they grew up rich and didn't know or something like that.

I don't know.

Most of my friends are.

suitably freaked out.

And one stat, 6,500 people in Q1 of this year applied for UK passports passports from the U.S.

who are wealthy, and that's a record.

And I think there's a lot of people who recognize that,

again, a lot of their success isn't at fault.

I'm even going back to your parents or your grandfather, who was an immigrant.

How many immigrants, how many really talented, hungry people are going to think, you know what?

If I'm going to take a risk, Am I going to take a risk to go to America and face those risks?

In addition, I have to face the risk of having my phone taken away and maybe being rounded up.

I mean, right now, it's like,

who wants to go to America right now?

And the thing is, we're the best place for them to do that.

It's not like Europe is full of innovation and entrepreneurs.

You know what I mean?

Like, but maybe it will be.

I think it's.

I think there's a decent chance for the first time.

I mean, my biggest investment in 2026 is this.

British aerospace company called Vertical.

And in the last three months, we have seen a fairly serious uptick in investors interested in finding out more about the company because, quite frankly, for the first time, they're no longer defaulting to just investing in American companies.

That's going to impact, that's just going to make it much harder for american companies we have taken for granted just how deep the capital pool is i was a 27 year old out of business school with a shaved head which meant in in san francisco you could raise tens of millions of dollars for your startups you can't do that in poland you can't even do that in australia nope and we've taken that for granted and the reason why all of those people were willing to provide so much capital was because of things like rule of law and that we attracted the best and brightest from around the world and we didn't spend all our money on police police.

We funded universities to do incredible, forward-leaning, crazy investments that might result in GPS.

And all of those things are under attack.

Yeah, Trump is, you know, I'm thinking about his age all the time.

I'm like, he's old.

He doesn't give a fuck because he's not going to be here for the future, you know, for the real future.

Now do Congress and Senate.

That's a big problem.

I agree.

I think we should keep,

people have accused us of being ageists.

I don't care at this point.

So is biology.

Two-thirds of Congress is going to be dead in 25 years.

Are they really that worried about climate change?

No.

Are they really freaked out about the deficit?

Yeah.

Agree.

I mean, it's like my dad says, my dad takes all these drugs now.

And I'm like, and I once said to him, you know, you got to think about the long-term effects.

And he's like, dude, long-term effects are not effects for me any longer.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

My grandmother, I tried to get her to eat broccoli when she was older.

And I'm like, what's the point?

Have the ice cream, have pancakes.

She literally ate donuts and drank black coffee.

And I said, can't you have a little broccoli?

She goes, is it it going to help?

I said, it is not.

And she said, therefore, I shall not eat it.

She hated broccoli her whole life.

It would have been good earlier.

Let me just move on very quickly.

Trump still has more deal making, supposedly, to do.

The 90-day pause on the Liberation Day tariffs is coming to an end.

He was supposed to do 90 deals in 90 days, have yet to materialize.

Most of them are show pony deals.

The White House will be sending letters to countries, apparently, detailing the new tariff rates, some as high as 70%.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, the pissy one, shared a bit more on CNN over the weekend saying if countries don't make a deal by August 1st, they'll boomerang back to their April level tariffs.

Besant insisted August 1st is not a new deadline, even though it is Scott.

Stop being,

I'm curious what he wants now with Elon out of the way.

Anyway, by the way, Scott, just because Elon's an asshole doesn't mean you're not.

So what do you think is going to happen here?

I think it's already happened.

I think the majority of the world has said, hold my beer.

There's 150 nations and Vietnam has, the deal with Vietnam is real.

That's one.

I think there's another small, and most of these things aren't even deals.

They're frameworks to talk about it.

The whole world has basically stuck up the middle finger to us and is busy reestablishing or rerouting their supply chain around us.

These things have not worked.

They're going to look remarkably similar to the great tariff strategy of Gio Riamundo and other people and other like secretaries of commerce and trade who've actually done the work that we've had previously.

All we will have done was massively massively incented South Korea and Japan to start talking to China, for Latin America to start talking to Europe, and for people no longer to trust doing business with the U.S.

But this is all almost nobody has come to the table as far as I can tell.

I agree.

I mean, this is just ridiculous.

He's still taco.

He's still taco.

Trump always chickens out.

It's just been a lot of, he's a lot of hand waving, this fella.

He's ridiculous.

In this case, he's just caused a lot of chaos and actually helped our, helped our competitors constantly help them.

anyway we'll see 90 days you got a few more days strong there you go you got good luck good luck with your 90 my favorite thing is carl kintanilla from uh cnbc is great he's getting very sassy he's a great follow and not also on um all the other social he's like day 67 no deals like he's very sassy i love him anyway um one more quick break we'll be back for wins and fails

Scott, I see that you've put many notes here in your wins and fails.

I'm going to let you go first.

Yeah, I've had too much time on my hands.

I've actually prepared.

First off, the whole idea of a deal is not what the president is supposed to do.

The president is supposed to hire really talented people and then create systemic laws and treaties that impact everyone individually.

Up until this president, you weren't supposed to target your political enemies or go after individual, promote or punish individuals or companies.

That is the definition of an autocracy.

And of course, he goes after the president of UVA for because they had a disagreement over DEI.

And for a long time, I have been saying the DEI apparatus at universities should be disassembled, that it had outlived its usefulness and was now eating its tail.

Having said that, private universities or universities, public and private, continue to show just remarkable ROI, both on a societal, a cultural, and an economic level.

And of course, the president targeted UVA, and the president, being a good man, said, it's not worth, it's not, you know, this is not worth the fight.

This is not the beach I want to die on, and resigned.

And I just wanted to highlight what a gift UVA is, now an important institution.

Just be clear, just be clear it up.

It's the president of UVA, not the president of the United States.

Oh, I'm sorry, the president of UVA was who got in, basically the president, President Trump targeted this guy because he didn't like his DEI efforts.

And the president of UVA has decided to kind of jump on his sword and step down because he's like, I don't want the university to feel the wrath of the president who is willing to target individual institutions

because he has basically a beef against me.

He did the honorable thing.

A lot of people wanted him to stay and fight, but he said, it's not worth it.

I care more about the university than my personal reputation or ego.

He did, in my opinion, kind of the heroic thing here.

But my win is essentially when I was right out of graduate school, I started Profit.

And we immediately noticed that we had really good luck with these incredibly hardworking people who were also very nice and kind of easygoing.

And what did they have in common?

They went to UVA.

And so we started recruiting from Darden and UVA undergrad.

And generally, we found kids who went to UVA were essentially like the smartest kid in their public high school in the northeastern Virginia.

And this is an unbelievable institution.

And one of the things I love about this institution, I think, has set the tone for its success.

The University of Virginia was founded by one of our, by almost any account, one of our better presidents, Thomas Jefferson.

And what did Thomas Jefferson decide to have written on his tombstone?

That he was the founder of the University of Virginia.

He decided it was the first major academic institution that didn't have a chapel.

He wanted it to be the pursuit of enlightenment, of intellectual enlightenment, as opposed to an orthodoxy or a religion.

It's a UNESCO World Heritage site with debt-free graduation for low-income students, providing elite education that can serve as economic mobility, not just privilege.

It has this really fantastic, people I used to work with, used to reference it all the time, and that is their honor code and the legacy of their honor code.

They have this student-run honor system since 1842 that creates graduates known for integrity across professions, institutionalizing the character democracy requires.

They have produced multiple Supreme Court justices, national leaders across party lines, and not only that, a lot of leaders across both parties.

And then unbelievable excellence, consistently rated as one of the three top public universities in the nation at a reasonable cost.

And so, and UVA really does represent America at its best.

Jefferson's belief that democracy depends on educated citizens, accessible excellence, honor, and integrity, and merit-based opportunity rather than inherited privilege.

Anyways, this, I just thought it was an opportunity.

My win is the great University of Virginia at UVA.

I think it's an incredible institution that offers.

I didn't get in.

Karis Fisher didn't get in.

Three most beautiful campuses in the nation are one Pepperdine because it overlooks the coastal Pacific.

Duke, that's an incredible campus.

And UVA, that architecture and the law, I mean, that is, it's extraordinary.

Anyways, my win is this gift to America, the great institution that is UVA.

Wow.

All right.

Should I do my win or should I wait for your fail?

You do your win.

Well, I was just going to say, Old Guard 2

was Charlize Theron.

So I don't know what to say.

I'm so.

UVA, the great embody American.

Can I just say, Charlize Theron embodies lady greatness along with Uma Thurman.

And it's getting okay reviews.

Fuck you, people who don't like it.

It's so good.

Old Guard 1 was about this bunch of immortals, and Charlize Theron was the first one.

Total playing lesbian.

I love Charlize Theron when she does the lesbian thing, which she's done before.

So good.

So good.

The new one, she has a new, really gay haircut.

And it's so, the whole cast is fantastic.

It's kick-ass.

Uma Thurman's great.

It's obviously going to be, there's going to be a third, Old Guard 3, because of the way they leave it.

And I just loved it so much.

And there's a whole

lesbians who don't kiss in it that are really good.

I know they should have kissed, but I don't care because it was so, it doesn't matter.

It was was so lesbian-coated.

So I love the whole thing: lesbians with swords and spears, and et cetera.

I like the entire endeavor.

And women do dominate this particular, it's on Netflix, and I love it so very much.

And I just do.

It's done by Skydance.

I don't always agree with the Ellisons, but thank you, David Ellison, for this one.

And you can go with your loss.

I have another one.

I think you should do your favorite.

Okay.

Old Guard 2.

This is too much sea change.

Yeah, yeah, UVA and American greatness and Jemerson's democratic vision made real.

Watch Old Guard 2 and be happy.

Now, let me just tell you quietly, Amand is mad I watched it because I forgot I watched Old Guard 1 with her.

And I'm going to watch it again, Amand.

I promise.

I'm so sorry.

I just watched it on the plane.

It was so delightful.

I will watch it a second time.

Yeah, the whole You Watch It Without Me thing has taken off.

That usually happens about year five or six.

I'm glad you graduated to that.

Yes, I know.

Can I just say she just said, you're not investing in our relationship?

She was copying you.

I love that.

And I was like, like, I don't need Scott said back at me because I watched the fantastic lesbian show.

My win is my loss, my fail is, I'm going to read this right now, which is repulsive.

U.S.

measles cases reach a 33-year record high as outbreaks spread.

How can I put this delicately?

Fuck you, RFK Jr., you best friend of measles.

How dare you?

This was something we had completely on.

We had it eliminated in 2000.

We had eliminated.

I tell you, I find you completely responsible for this.

You're a murderer.

You're a murderer of children.

And people died very quickly in this flooding, but people are dying slowly.

It really puts so many people out of

in danger.

And you should get a measles booster if you need to.

You should check and get one.

It's a terrible disease for adults, particularly.

I got checked and I pretty much am okay, but one of my vaccines was not was not current and I got that.

Please check.

And it's very easy to go to a CVS or anywhere else or a Walgreens to get checked for that, especially if you're in a certain age group.

I think in the 60s, there was like some problem with one of the, it wasn't, it didn't last essentially.

It wasn't a problem with the vaccine itself.

It was it was the efficacy of it.

So Robert Kennedy Jr., this measles outbreak is, is on you and what you have done is reprehensible and heinous.

And I hope someday karma will reach you in the same way these poor people have, even if they didn't take vaccines.

Not a smart move by parents, but in this case, just awful.

Fail, fail, fail.

Every fail in the book.

Go ahead, Scott.

Agreed.

Well, you referenced my fail.

My fail is the recent expansion of ICE funding, which is less about border enforcement and more about building an ideological enforcement arm.

And people always get upset when I compare

America to Germany in the 30s or to Trump to Hitler.

And you don't have to be Hitler to take a page out of his playbook.

And this is absolutely out of the playbook.

It's a surveillance state, light on law.

The Gestapo is powerful not because of its size.

And I am equating ICE to the Gestapo.

Let's not dance around.

I am comparing the two organizations.

Agreed.

ICE has no warrants, no oversight.

ICE is increasingly mirroring the Gestapo, expanding digital surveillance, facial recognition, license plate tracking, all with minimal judicial review.

It's a civil agency essentially behaving as an intelligence unit.

It's the militarization of bureaucracy.

ICE was supposed to be about paperwork, visa overstays, customs violations.

And today they've got drones, tactical teams, armored vehicles.

We've essentially militarized a civil agency not to fight terrorists, but to raid meat packing plants and detain families.

And that's not, it's not national security.

It's pageantry and fear.

And this whole notion that Gestapo and the SS were famous for turning identity into a crime, and that is they targeted identity, not behavior.

ICE overwhelmingly targets immigrants from specific racial and religious groups, backed by rhetoric that frames them as animals or invaders.

This is about signaling who belongs and who doesn't, similar to what they were doing to Jews and other.

special interest group in Germany in the 30s.

That's not law enforcement.

It's fascism.

ICE is becoming increasingly unaccountable and untouchable, similar to the Gestapo.

ICE operates in legal gray zones, no consistent court oversight, limited transparency, whistleblowers report neglect, abuse, even forced sterilizations, and the agency keeps getting funded no matter the headlines.

Fear as policy.

This is total intimidation as government.

The most chilling parallel is fear between ICE and the Gestapo.

The Gestapo made you afraid to speak.

ICE makes people afraid to go to court, school, even church.

And that's the whole point.

Fear keeps people quiet.

Alligator Alcatraz, what's wrong with them?

That one is like so fucked up.

That's not incarceration or civics.

That's fear.

And it's also a step towards authoritarianism.

And even just on the logistical level, the size of the force, ICE in 2025.

ICE in 2025 will be 21,000 employees.

That's approximately 7,000 enforcement and removal operations officers.

The Gestapo at its peak in 1944 was 32,000 for an entire continent under Nazi occupation.

And we're now funding ICE at five times what Nazi Germany spent on its secret police adjusted for $24.

We're going to spend about $11 billion.

Estimates are that the Gestapo required $2 billion in funding.

So we're doing so with less resistance and more bureaucracy.

ICE is already operating with a Gestapo-level scale in terms of headcount relative to its jurisdiction.

And it's not fighting World War II.

It's deporting line cooks and Uber drivers.

Also, their outfits suck.

They're out, they have

also the masks.

They're wearing masks if they really believe in what they're doing.

The Nazis didn't have masks, they wore their outfits, but not yeah, they had their brown shirts.

What's worse?

A brown shit or a brown shirt or a mask?

Yeah, it's what has a Star Wars resonance, don't you think?

Like a little, you remember on Star Wars, the stormtroopers?

They had masks.

I think it has a Nazi reference.

No, I get that, but they were based on the Nazis.

But if you recall, the masks

in that metaphor in a lot of ways.

go ahead.

So fascism doesn't start with death camps.

You don't just wake up to Auschwitz.

It starts with bureaucracy, badges, and silence.

And if we don't challenge these tools now, they'll be used on all of us later.

So

this is my loss is what is becoming.

an American Gestapo with masks and with bureaucratic language and five times the funding.

And it has a number of striking resemblances.

Essentially, Trump now has his own private army under his control, and it's there for intimidation, it's there for fear mixed with pageantry.

And again, and I keep coming back to this, folks, if you believe that we cannot be that nation again, you don't know history.

Germany was the most

enlightened society in history.

It was pro-immigrant, it was pro-gay, it had a thriving economy, and then it had economic shocks, too many young men

without prospects, a strong man,

and a level, basically a media that decided to demonize immigrants, and it militarized and turned.

So, anyways, my fail is the increasing militarization of what is supposed to be a civic agency, and that is ICE, which has remarkable echoes of the Gestapo in late 30s and early 40s Germany.

God, I'm so serious today.

I know you are.

I may add that tech companies are working hand in glove with these things, getting there, they're at the trough of this particular trough, and they will be in general because they do not care, as I've said over and over again and they will be part of this and surveillance we should all be scared of a surveillance economy and scott is a hundred percent correct and bulgard too yes but this is much more important um anyway but you should watch it anyway because we're all going to need i'm more interested i'm more interested in lesbian charlie saron the lesbians are going to save you we're getting the lesbians are going to have to save you with our spears and and kick assness 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 855-51PIVOT.

And I just want to say, Scott, I like Sirius Scott just as much as I like penis, joke, Scott.

Anyway, elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, on the latest episode of On with Kara Swisher, I spoke with journalists Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dossi, and Tyler Pager about their new book on the 2024 election.

It's actually quite a really interesting book.

Let's listen to a clip of Tyler talking about how Kamala Harris didn't have enough distance from Joe Biden.

The way that they framed her as a vice president was in the room for all the big decisions, the last person to leave, and intimately involved in everything.

Now, that wasn't true, but that was the narrative that they were out there saying.

And so it then makes it harder to be like, actually, I disagreed with X, Y, and Z policy, because then she opens herself up to, okay, so why did you go along with it?

Why didn't you speak up?

Can we get people in the room saying she actually did disagree?

That's a really good point.

We'll see if she, she may be running for governor, so we'll see if she comes back and what happens.

Do you think that's a good idea?

I'm curious what you think of that.

I don't know.

I I think she should wait around and become a Supreme Court justice.

I agree.

I think they should put her up for a Supreme Court justice.

I don't know.

She could really drive Trump crazy.

At her best, she really drives Trump crazy.

And so in that regard, being governor of California gives you a nice place to do that.

I think Newsom has taken advantage of it.

So in that regard, yes, I think if Kamala at her best could be very good as a foil.

But if the Democrats take over, by the way, the first thing the Democrats should do if they get control of Congress is shut down that ICE funding rather rather significantly turn it around anyway that's the show 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 today's show is produced by lara namesoe marcus taylor griffin kevin oliver and corinne rough ernie and your tie engineered this episode thanks also to drew burrows miss several and dan shallan shock curos box media's executive producer podcast make sure to follow pivot on your favorite podcast platform thanks for listening to pivot from new york magazine and box media you can subscribe to to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

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

Cara, have a great rest of the week.

It's good to see you again.