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

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Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 17 And I'm Scott Galloway. Where are you? I'm in Ibiza.

Speaker 16 Abitha. Is that how you say it there?

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think that's how they say it. Abitha, it's actually, it's an interesting lesson in branding.
They've done a job, a great job of associating themselves with these.

Speaker 17 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

Speaker 17 really, anyways, it's nice. Nice here.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 I just think rich people. That's all I think when I think of Abiza.

Speaker 17 A lot of young people, actually.

Speaker 16 Naked rich people, actually, in pretty good shape. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Well, naked young people is why people come here, I think.

Speaker 17 I think rich people come to see naked young people, but

Speaker 17 that's just me.

Speaker 16 Ah, so the Scott summer vacation is beginning. I see.
It's happening.

Speaker 17 It's just getting going, Kara.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 17 Yeah, the not-so-secret CNN. What are you doing, by the way?

Speaker 16 Oh, I'm not telling you. Really? Okay.

Speaker 16 We're going to take your liver.

Speaker 17 Trust me, no one wants it.

Speaker 16 And replace it with another, with it, with a synthetic liver. I don't know, something.
It's going to be cool.

Speaker 17 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 tree. Oh, dear.

Speaker 14 Oh, my goodness. No.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 I'm surprisingly good looking in those outfits.

Speaker 17 I'll give you this. It was surprising.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Well,

Speaker 16 I'm telling you, I looked good. I looked good.
The children were surprised.

Speaker 17 What have you been up to?

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 17 God, I so win. I mean, that sounds great.
That sounds great. Yeah.

Speaker 17 I'm at a beat that with DJs and hot young naked people and you're doing Civil War reenactments and hanging out with your in-laws.

Speaker 16 No, not Civil War, Revolutionary War. Try to keep your wars together.
It was a tri-cornered hat that I was wearing.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 And of course, we will talk about other things like winners and losers through Trump's big beautiful bill.

Speaker 16 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 that.

Speaker 17 You predicted this.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Today, he's moved on in an FBI and DOJ review of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. This was the thing he...

Speaker 16 tweeted about when he started his fight with Trump, and 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.

Speaker 16 But the departments have reportedly concluded there was no Epstein client list, no evidence of blackmailing. That enhanced footage proves Epstein killed himself early Monday morning.

Speaker 16 Elon posted, so, um, and then what is Jelaine Maxwell in prison for? Stuff like this does not improve people's faith in government.

Speaker 16 Um, he also, uh, 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.

Speaker 16 And of course, uh, Dan Bongino and Cash Patel have made their careers saying Epstein was killed and now say he isn't.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 I thought it was just to kill himself.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Here's what Treasury Secretary Scott Besson had to say about it on Sunday to CNN's Dena Bash. And I will say ahead of it, he sounds like such a prig, but let's go.

Speaker 18 The principles of Doge were very popular. I think if you looked at the polling, Elon was not.

Speaker 18 So I believe that the boards of directors at his various companies wanted him to come back and run those companies, which he is better at than anyone.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 16 Josh, thanks, Mom. Just honestly, Scott Bush, it's none of this what he does.

Speaker 16 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 has great cars

Speaker 16 and that's the way it goes there in there.

Speaker 16 So tell me a little bit about this, Scott. How do you feel? It's just continuing.

Speaker 16 And actually, I think it can cause some real damage here, actually, but maybe you don't.

Speaker 17 Well, typically

Speaker 17 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...

Speaker 17 you know, they think the Ross Pro's independent movement wanted a flat tax and that had some substance to it.

Speaker 17 Andrew Yang's party that he tried to start, I thought had some substance to it. He's known for UBI.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 It didn't seem to to 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.

Speaker 17 So this thing doesn't, it's sort of dead on arrival in the sense that

Speaker 17 it doesn't have a reason for being.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 the system is essentially rigged for two. It's a first past the post winner-take-all elections.

Speaker 17 In some nations, they have sort of a parliamentary or representative or proportional representation like Germany, Sweden, and Israel.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So third party, all third parties do when they're successful, and I don't think this one will be, is they're spoilers.

Speaker 17 Bill Clinton should not have won the presidency, but Ross Paro took 18% of the vote, probably like 11 to 7

Speaker 17 from Bush-Clinton, respectively, and Clinton became president. The Jill Stein people would argue stole the presidency.
Ralph Nader people think is what handed

Speaker 17 W the presidency. So they can be spoilers,

Speaker 17 but this one has no reason for being. This one comes across as sour grapes.
Scott Besant

Speaker 17 comically pretending or trying to call on the board of directors to actually do something here is laughable.

Speaker 17 So I think this, like most third parties, will get, I think this will die a quick death, but we'll see.

Speaker 16 All right, 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?

Speaker 16 Given how close these elections are, 210 to whatever, it's always within two or three, right?

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Nobody's ever really talked about it like that. And if he gets those Congress people in and they are beholden to him or they agree with him, right?

Speaker 16 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 Cuban is like, this is a good idea.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 And so if they could do that, and they're the difference between

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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

Speaker 16 them from voting these things in and giving nobody the majority, really, essentially. Any thoughts on that?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 Correct. Yeah.

Speaker 17 So when you're worth $400 billion and you have a big media platform and you're bold and unafraid, as Musk is, you're absolutely right. He could.

Speaker 17 One thing, Peter Thiel could call Vice President Vance and say, I need you to promote a NASA that should be focused solely on

Speaker 17 going to Pluto. And he would say, yes, Mr.
Thiel.

Speaker 17 Peter Thiel is the puppet master behind J.D. Vance.
And Elon Musk, until recently, had a lot of control over Musk.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But so influence.

Speaker 16 Or just would vote one way or another. Like maybe

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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,

Speaker 16 you know, if he put enough money to it and the right person in some of these if you could target six seats like 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 it 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 a lot of shit for that, for saying interesting, by the way.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 The idea, Musk is absolutely has the ability and the firepower to get several people elected, which could end up being a swing vote.

Speaker 17 The problem is, and I've said this over and over, he's a drug addict and he's a narcissist.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So maybe he can get it, but then what? And then what? You think? I just don't.

Speaker 16 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?

Speaker 16 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

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Why are we continuing to double down on fossil fuels and not,

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 One is Joe Rogan suddenly is like, wait a minute, he's taking away hard. Like that gang goes with Elon.
That's a big gang, right? Like, kind of thing of people who have influence.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 It looks like it was written by Stephen Miller because it had some punctuation.

Speaker 16 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 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

Speaker 21 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.

Speaker 16 I'm sorry, CNN, but that you let him say things like that.

Speaker 17 It's a little dramatic.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 And they're all very, very worried about this.

Speaker 16 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?

Speaker 16 Because you were sort of, Kara, he was killed. You remember you were like on that?

Speaker 17 I feel i mean i'm i think it's old news really i know oh really i think they keep pulling the ghost out of epstein but there was a couple 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 i don't believe that he's that concerned me fine maybe he is he's on the record as not liking the deficit well he he was fine with it when 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.

Speaker 17 He seemed to be comfortable with these deficits.

Speaker 16 Yes, agree.

Speaker 17 And with everything he knew about, you know, Donald Trump and Epstein up until that point. But he is fueled right now, as far as I can tell, by rage and revenge.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 if he gets people elected who are against Trump, I'm all for it. Great.
The other thing is, and

Speaker 17 this is part of the problem with what Scott Jennings represents, is that America doesn't realize they're fighting the wrong enemy.

Speaker 17 And that is, and I think the left is just as guilty of this as the right,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 Absolutely.

Speaker 17 And people, and we've experienced this.

Speaker 16 We get it all the time.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 like, you don't understand the assignment. You're going to get Trump elected.
You're, you're anti-American. I mean, it's just like, no, I'm.

Speaker 16 Oh, I posted about Musk. They're like, we don't want him.
I'm like, you kind of do. Like, what do you talk? He's going to like crash all their bumper cars, people.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 But what's also clear from this is that the president is much more powerful and much more popular than Musk.

Speaker 17 And because it feels right now, he feels like, quite frankly, it feels like Musk is flailing a little bit and angry.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 That's something I don't, I'm fairly certain of. So, fine.
My enemy's enemy is my friend. So, welcome.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Like, 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 and do something better.

Speaker 16 And I agree on the censorious of the left being exhausting. That said, Scott Jennings wins the prize on his like,

Speaker 16 yes, Scott, I'm against Western civilization.

Speaker 17 Yeah, but Scott Jennings. No fish.
Scott Jennings is playing the same role as Megan McCain, as, God, I forget the, I forget the little guy on the all-in podcast.

Speaker 16 Jason Calicanus.

Speaker 17 They're supposed to be representative of the other side,

Speaker 17 but they equit themselves so poorly that they just cement and embolden and

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And then all of a sudden the five on the five, Jessica Tarlov speaks. I'm like, oh, she's kind of smart.
Maybe she has a point. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Typically, the way they do these shows is on the view, they have four very progressive talk.

Speaker 17 And then 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 uh 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.

Speaker 16 Yeah, yeah, it's true. You're the Scott I like.

Speaker 17 It's good to know.

Speaker 16 Good Scott. I call you good Scott.
Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 It's probably Oracle, Mark Indereessen, 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.

Speaker 16 I don't know if that's enough or what's enough, a U.S. version.

Speaker 16 I don't know what's going to happen. Do we care anymore, Scott? Do we? We do, but we don't.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 a new generation of nonprofit business and military leaders that basically think America sucks.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So the only thing that matters here is who owns it.

Speaker 16 Yeah. So who? What do you, I mean, I assume it's an Oracle Andreessen rich guy's thing, right? All his friends.

Speaker 17 I just wonder if that's going to happen. You think that you think it's going to happen?

Speaker 16 I don't know.

Speaker 16 I don't know how that he's going to. He's got a deal done.
I don't believe much of anything he's coming out of his mouth. So

Speaker 16 I just don't know. Yeah.
Again, why would China, what's he going to do? What's he going to do?

Speaker 17 Well, he he could technically, he could enforce the ban that's their law.

Speaker 16 But he hasn't enforced the law.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 He keeps blinking. So if they can come to some sort of accommodation that, again, gives him a perceptual victory.
Yeah, perceptual.

Speaker 17 But meanwhile, Beijing gets 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.

Speaker 16 Yeah, why would they? I just don't see what, unless they want something else. Maybe

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 like i do i do deals i'm a deal maker the odd 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 um 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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Speaker 16 Scott, we're back.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Some local officials are blaming the National Weather Service, claiming forecasts underestimated the severity of the rainfall.

Speaker 16 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

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Some crucial positions at local offices are currently unfilled, according to the New York Times. That particular story was quite disturbing, actually.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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 in darkness.
And so it was unexpected. People were sleeping.

Speaker 16 Worst possible time this could happen.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Why don't you talk a little bit about this?

Speaker 17 I don't think they will.

Speaker 17 When something like this happens, I think a lot about one of those books that kind of changed or,

Speaker 17 I don't know, gave me a seminal framework for how I evaluate decisions is Daniel Kahneman's work, specifically

Speaker 17 thinking fast and slow, I think it's called. And there's sort of, there's system one thinking, right? In that you have to have system one thinking to respond.
Something, an emergency happens,

Speaker 17 fight or flight, you need to respond immediately. You need to make very quick decisions.

Speaker 17 The problem is... And what we pay our elected officials for is that we're supposed to have slow thinking.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And the system one thinking immediately takes over. Media defaults to drama, quick narrative formation.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 Yeah, they love that one.

Speaker 17 The recent, you you know, availability bias, recent dramatic floods get disproportionate attention compared to ongoing prevention needs. Partisan reflexes activate.
We've seen that.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 the time pressure prevents real analysis. And that is

Speaker 17 these things demand immediate reactions, not careful evaluation.

Speaker 7 And the reality is we don't know.

Speaker 17 I mean,

Speaker 17 so for example, with the two weather services that are charged with a response and prevention and then communications, they are dramatically understaffed.

Speaker 17 They have been understaffed for a while, but we don't know.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So prevention gets no credit. Voters reward visible disaster response over invisible long-term infrastructure investments.

Speaker 16 Right. People in boats pulling people out of trees.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Must see TV is never like preventive medicine. The vax, the family planning clinic.
I mean, it just, that doesn't make for good drama.

Speaker 16 Let's create a show. Another plane landed safely, in other words, that that's not news.

Speaker 17 What I would encourage us and what I try and do is say, when people say, what do you think happened?

Speaker 17 I have no fucking idea. I know it rained a lot and a lot of good people

Speaker 17 have incurred a tragedy. Would a more thoughtful response to flood control and weather services investment have prevented this? We don't know yet.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And then let's make the requisite investments in infrastructure and personnel that are really fucking boring,

Speaker 17 such that we talk about this stuff less.

Speaker 16 I mean, you noted here, this New York Times report that I just referred to, you put this in your notes, the National Weather Service 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 I'm like, well, yeah, we should stop driving cars probably.

Speaker 16 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

Speaker 16 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 D.C., I get them.

Speaker 16 I ignore them, right?

Speaker 16 They go just ignore. You probably get a lot down in Florida, I would assume.
And they, they make your phone go whah, whah, whah.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 It seems incompetent and seems he might go there on Friday. He has to go there.
He really does.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 But I think you're right about thinking fast and slow, but it's inevitable. There'll be.
human interest stories here, sadly.

Speaker 17 Yeah, those alerts, you get the strangest alerts in Florida.

Speaker 17 I got an alert that two men men had broken into a pharmacy and stolen all the Viagra, and it said to be on the lookout for two hardened criminals.

Speaker 16 I couldn't resist. I can't believe you made that joke.
I couldn't resist. Anyway, anyway, I don't ever say thoughts and prayers, but I hate that.
Hearing about these kids,

Speaker 16 heartbreaking.

Speaker 17 I think that is such an excuse for a lack of action. I hate that.
You know what, folks?

Speaker 17 Thoughts and prayers aren't going to bring those kids back. They are not.
And they're not going to stop climate change. And

Speaker 17 they're not going going to help our infrastructure put in place the right warning system.

Speaker 16 What are we going to do? This should give us all a minute, definitely.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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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Speaker 16 Scott, we're back. While you were away, Donald Trump passed his big beautiful bill.
It's now law.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 A lot of people don't know what's in it, by the way, FYI, on top of that.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Some of the big winners from this bill include wealthy Americans, corporations, and defense contractors, also prison people, prison owners.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 I mean, what do you see?

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 So talk a little bit about your thoughts about where it's going.

Speaker 17 I've thought a lot about this bill.

Speaker 17 I think it cements the notion in Unfortunate Motion or notion that America has officially decided that it's comfortable with the bottom 90% of America being nutrition for the top 10%.

Speaker 17 That this isn't just weaponization by the government of rich people.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 14 million plus are going to lose their health care. And these are some of the most,

Speaker 17 you know, vulnerable people in the world, disabled kids, disabled seniors,

Speaker 17 and then I'm going to get a tax cut. And

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 So it's an enormous tax on future generations. It's a huge erosion.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And then as you get older, you realize a lot of your success isn't your fault. And I, I literally could go through, and I will, the pillars of my prosperity, and they're all under attack in this bill.

Speaker 17 When I was in fourth grade, when I was nine, I got, I didn't get free lunch, but I got assisted lunch.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Right. Think about how thoughtful that is.
And I've talked about this when I was 17. My mom became pregnant.

Speaker 17 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 got Pell Grants.

Speaker 17 Now they're talking about doing away. A third of the kids that receive Pell Grants now will have a reduction.
They'll be done away with. So I couldn't have graduated from college.

Speaker 17 And that, let's be clear.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Look at the companies I started. They were all based on the internet.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 will there be future internet? My first programmer that built my first website, a red envelope, Jawad Mohammed, an immigrant from Pakistan.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Immigrants literally built my companies. All of these things, literally all of these things are under attack.
And let me go very meta.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And what is fascism?

Speaker 17 The demonization of immigrants, a refusal to condemn violence against your opponents, and extreme nationalism. Does that sound familiar?

Speaker 16 Yep.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 You wouldn't. You absolutely wouldn't.

Speaker 17 I feel as if everything,

Speaker 17 every reason I get to live the life I live and, you know, the prosperity, the taxes I've paid, the kids,

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 They think people are lazy. You want Medicaid, you got to work, that kind of thing.
When they get free, like, I grew up pretty rich, Scott.

Speaker 16 And I remember a bunch of kids talking about a bunch of some of the lesser good kids that I went to school with, like, oh, they're lazy.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 His father was a stone cutter, came over from Italy, and he built up a business without very much education.

Speaker 16 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

Speaker 16 they are on third base and they feel like they've hit a home run. And they treat hardworking people.

Speaker 16 I don't know why the dime is just dropping for Joe Rogan. Oh, they're going after people that work really hard.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 You talked about this, like a couple billion dollars to help a Pell Grant versus $40 billion to jail people.

Speaker 16 There is no economic upside except for a small group of people in jailing hardworking Americans.

Speaker 16 Even if they came here, figuring out a way to keep them here and working hard would be the better use of that money.

Speaker 17 At the end of the day, the president is the ultimate capital allocator. And the amount of money we are spending on harassing people

Speaker 17 at Home Depots and at churches and at schools, doesn't it tell you something?

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And instead, we're funding what is effectively a modern day Gestapo with Wi-Fi. I mean,

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 All those people would have died.

Speaker 16 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 like this that 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 i

Speaker 16 you hang out with those people more than i do but i'm i've always been perplexed by their inability to understand how they got to where they got.

Speaker 16 Maybe they grew up rich and didn't know or something like that. I don't know.

Speaker 17 Most of my friends are suitably freaked out. And one, one stat, 6,500 people in Q1 of this year applied for UK passports from the U.S.
who are wealthy, and that's a record.

Speaker 17 And I think there's a lot of people who recognize that,

Speaker 17 again, a lot of their successes and I fault them, even going back to your parents or your grandfather, who was an immigrant.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 In addition, I have to face the risk of having my phone taken away and maybe being rounded up?

Speaker 17 I mean, right now, it's like,

Speaker 17 who wants to go to America right now?

Speaker 16 And the thing is, we're the best place for them to do that. It's not like Europe is full of innovation and entrepreneurship.
You know what I mean? Like, but maybe it will be. I think it's.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I was a 27-year-old out of business school with a shaved head, which meant in San Francisco, you could raise tens of millions of dollars for your startups. You can't do that in Poland.

Speaker 17 You can't even do that in Australia. Nope.

Speaker 17 And we've taken that for granted.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 And we didn't spend all our money on police.

Speaker 17 We funded universities to do incredible forward-leaning, crazy investments that might result in GPS. And all of those things are under attack.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 17 Now do Congress and Senate.

Speaker 24 That's a big problem.

Speaker 16 I agree. I think we should keep people, people have accused us of being ageists.
I don't care at this point. So is biology.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And he's like, dude, long-term effects are not effects for me any longer.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's a fair point. My grandmother, I tried to get her to eat broccoli when she was older.

Speaker 17 Like, what's the point? Have the ice cream, have pancakes.

Speaker 16 She literally ate donuts and drank black coffee. And I said, Can't you have a little broccoli? She goes, Is it going to help? And I said, It is not.
And she said, Therefore, I shall not eat it.

Speaker 16 She hated broccoli her whole life.

Speaker 16 It would have been good earlier. Let me just move on very quickly.
Trump still has more dealmaking, supposedly, to do the 90-day pause on the Liberation Day tariffs is coming to an end.

Speaker 16 He was supposed to do 90 deals in 90 days, have yet to materialize. Most of them are show pony deals.

Speaker 16 The White House will be sending letters to countries, apparently, detailing the new tariff rates, some as high as 70%.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Besett insisted August 1st is not a new deadline, even though it is Scott. Stop being,

Speaker 16 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?

Speaker 16 I think it's already happened.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 I think there's another small, and most of these things aren't even deals. They're frameworks to talk about it.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 All we will have done was 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.

Speaker 17 But this is all almost nobody has come to the table as far as I can tell.

Speaker 16 I agree. I mean, this is just ridiculous.
He's still taco. He's still taco.
Trump always chickens out.

Speaker 16 It's just been a lot of, he's a lot of hand waving, this fella he's it's ridiculous in this case he's just caused a lot of chaos and actually helped our helped our competitors constantly helped them anyway we'll see 90 days you got a few more days Trump there you go you got good luck good luck with your 90 my favorite thing is Carl Kintanilla from CNBC is a great he's getting very sassy he's a great follower and not also on 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.

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Speaker 24 Many of the best things we've learned have actually come through failures.

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Hosted by Sequoia Capital's Rolof Boto, Crucible Moments is back for a new season.

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Speaker 16 Scott, I see that you've put many notes here in your wins and fails. I'm going to let you go first.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I've had too much time on my hands. I've actually prepared.

Speaker 17 First off, the whole idea of a deal is not what the president is supposed to do. Right.

Speaker 17 The president is supposed to hire really talented people and then create systemic laws and treaties that impact everyone individually.

Speaker 17 Up until this president, you weren't supposed to target your political enemies or go after individual, promote or punish punish individuals or companies. That is the definition of an autocracy.

Speaker 17 And of course, he goes after the president of UVA for, because they had a disagreement over DEI.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 Just be clear, just be clear it up. It's the president of UVA, not the president of the United States.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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, you know, because he has basically a beef against me.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And so we started recruiting from Darden and UVA undergrad.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And one of the things I love about this institution, I think, has set the tone for its success.

Speaker 17 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?

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 He wanted it to be the pursuit of enlightenment, of intellectual enlightenment, as opposed to an orthodoxy or a religion.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 They have this student-run honor system since 1842 that creates graduates known for integrity across professions, institutionalizing the character democracy requires.

Speaker 17 They have produced multiple Supreme Court justices, national leaders across party lines, and not only that, a lot of leaders across both parties.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 Jefferson's belief that democracy depends on educated citizens, accessible excellence, honor and integrity, and merit-based opportunity rather than inherited privilege.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 I didn't get in.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 16 Wow. All right.
Should I do my win or shall I wait for your fail?

Speaker 17 You do your win.

Speaker 16 Well, I was just going to say Old Guard two

Speaker 16 with Charlize Theron.

Speaker 16 So I don't know what to say. I'm so.
Yo, VA, the great embody of her

Speaker 17 greatness.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Uma Thurman's great. It's it's obviously going to be, there's going to be a third, old guard three, because of the way they leave it.

Speaker 16 And I just loved it so much. And there's a whole

Speaker 16 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 so lesbian coded.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 It's done by Skydance. I don't always agree with the Ellisons, but thank you, David Ellison, for this one.

Speaker 16 And you can go with your loss. I have another one.

Speaker 17 I think you should do your fail.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 16 Old Guard 2.

Speaker 17 This is too much sea change.

Speaker 16 Yeah, yeah, UVA and American greatness and Jemerson's democratic vision made real.

Speaker 16 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 One with her. And I'm going to watch it again, Amanda.
I promise.

Speaker 16 I'm so sorry. I just watched it on the plane.
It was so delightful. I will watch it a second time.

Speaker 17 Yeah, the whole You Watched It Without Me thing is taken off. That usually happens about year five or six.
I'm glad you graduated to that.

Speaker 16 Yes, I know. Can I just say she just said, you're not investing in our relationship? She was copying you.
Oh, I love that.

Speaker 16 And I was 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 We had it eliminated in 2000. We had eliminated.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 It really puts so many people out of

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 I got checked and I pretty much am okay, but one of my vaccines was not

Speaker 16 current and I got that.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 So Robert Kennedy Jr., this measles outbreak is

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 Not a smart move by parents, but in this case, just awful. Fail, fail, fail.
Every fail in the book. Go ahead, Scott.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And this is absolutely out of the playbook. It's a surveillance state, light on law.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And 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.

Speaker 17 ICE overwhelmingly targets immigrants from specific racial and religious groups, backed by rhetoric that frames them as animals or invaders.

Speaker 17 This is about signaling who belongs and who doesn't, similar to what they were doing to Jews and other

Speaker 17 special interest group in Germany in the 30s. That's not law enforcement.
It's fascism.

Speaker 17 ICE is becoming increasingly unaccountable and untouchable, similar to the Gestapo.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 ICE makes people afraid to go to court, school, even church. And that's the whole point.
Fear keeps people quiet. Yep.

Speaker 16 Alligator, Alcatraz. What's wrong with them? That one is like so fucked up.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 And we're now funding ICE at five times what Nazi Germany spent on its secret police adjusted for $24.

Speaker 17 We're going to spend about $11 billion. Estimates are that the Gestapo required $2 billion in funding.
So

Speaker 17 we're doing so with less resistance and more bureaucracy. ICE is already operating with Gestapo-level scale in terms of headcount relative to its jurisdiction.
And it's not fighting World War II.

Speaker 17 It's deporting line cooks and Uber drivers.

Speaker 16 Also, their outfits suck.

Speaker 16 They have masks.

Speaker 16 Also, the masks.

Speaker 16 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 a brown shirt or a mask yeah it's like has a star wars resonance don't you think like a little 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 on on in that metaphor in a lot of ways.

Speaker 16 Go ahead.

Speaker 17 So fascism doesn't start with death camps. You don't just wake up to Auschwitz.
It starts with bureaucracy, badges, and silence.

Speaker 17 And if we don't challenge these tools now, they'll be used on all of us later. So

Speaker 17 this is, my loss is what is becoming an American Gestapo with mass and with bureaucratic language and five times the funding. And it has a number of striking resemblances.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 It was pro-immigrant, it was pro-gay, it had a thriving economy, and then it had economic shocks, too many young men without

Speaker 17 prospects, a strong man,

Speaker 17 and a level, basically a media that decided to demonize immigrants and it militarized and turned.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 17 God, I'm so serious today.

Speaker 16 I know you are.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 And surveillance, we should all be scared of a a surveillance economy. And Scott is 100% correct.
And

Speaker 16 Bulgar, too, yes, but this is much more important.

Speaker 16 Anyway, but you should watch it anyway, because we're all going to need.

Speaker 17 I'm more interested in

Speaker 17 lesbian Charlie Saron.

Speaker 16 The lesbians are going to save you.

Speaker 16 The lesbians are going to have to save you with our spears and kick-assness. Anyway, we want to hear from you.
Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 16 Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. And I just want to say, Scott, I like Sirius Scott just as much as I like penis, joke, Scott.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 30 Now, that wasn't true, but that was the narrative that they were out there saying.

Speaker 30 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?

Speaker 30 Can we get people in the room saying she actually did disagree?

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 17 Do you think that's a good idea? I'm curious what you think of that.

Speaker 16 I don't know. 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.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 16 I think Newsom has taken advantage of it.

Speaker 16 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 significantly, turn it around.

Speaker 16 Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot.
Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday.
Scott, read us out.

Speaker 5 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, Kevin Oliver, and Corinne Roth.

Speaker 31 Ernie and her taught engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms.
Severo, and Dan Shallan.

Speaker 22 Shock Kuros, Vox Media's Executive Producer of Podcast.

Speaker 31 Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 17 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media.

Speaker 7 You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 31 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, have a great rest of the week.

Speaker 17 It's good to see you again.

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