LA Protests, Trump's Authoritarian Playbook, and Warner Bros. Discovery Split

Transcript

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Speaker 6 What do I think? I think if this were any gayer, it'd be a Bravo reality show sponsored by Grindr.

Speaker 20 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 6 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 20 Scott, we've got a lot to get to today, including the Trump-Elon breakup getting uglier, plus another breakup making headlines. Warner Brothers Discovery is splitting up.

Speaker 20 First, let's talk about what's happening on the ground in California.

Speaker 20 Governor Gavin Newsom says California will sue the Trump administration, challenging the president's recent order to federalize National Guard forces amid protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.

Speaker 20 Newsom already asked the White House to rescind its deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to LA, accusing Trump of manufacturing chaos and violence.

Speaker 20 Trump made the order over the the weekend invoking a rarely used federal law. Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth created more of a problem.

Speaker 20 He also got in the mix by suggesting active duty Marines could be sent in. Newsom called these comments deranged behavior.
I would tend to agree.

Speaker 20 We're going to be talking to someone about what's happening who is on the ground there right now. Let's start with that

Speaker 20 is a New York Times reporter, Livia Albeck-Ripka.

Speaker 20 Livia, welcome. Thanks for coming on.
I know you're busy. We're recording this on Monday morning.
You've been on the ground in LA reporting over the last few days. How are things looking right now?

Speaker 21 Well, yesterday when we left downtown Los Angeles, the police and other authorities appeared to have largely dispersed the crowds.

Speaker 21 I haven't been out yet this morning, so I can't say what's happening right now on the ground.

Speaker 21 But yesterday was a chaotic day.

Speaker 20 So talk about what by chaos.

Speaker 20 Now, President Trump described Los Angeles as invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals, that's a quote, and said, quote, violent and insurrectious mobs are swarming.

Speaker 20 Now, I know a lot of people in Los Angeles, they say that's poppycock to me. I've gotten dozens and dozens of people who live there.
I am not there, but does that align with what you're seeing?

Speaker 20 What are people getting right and wrong about what's happening?

Speaker 21 I can't really speak to what people are getting wrong about the protests, but I can tell you what I saw with my own eyes yesterday on the ground.

Speaker 21 I arrived at the detention center in downtown Los Los Angeles. It was fairly quiet.
Then one person with the sign showed up.

Speaker 21 One person holding a Mexican flag arrived and that slowly a crowd began to grow.

Speaker 21 There was one protester calling the other, imploring the other protesters to remain peaceful. And then at one point, tear gas and projectiles were fired into the crowd.
I did not see

Speaker 21 what instigated that.

Speaker 21 I too was trying to protect myself.

Speaker 21 So I can't speak to exactly what happened in that moment.

Speaker 21 But then after that, you know, as the day wore on, the crowd grew and grew.

Speaker 21 There was another protest happening up at City Hall. That protest kind of converged with the one

Speaker 21 that was going on at the detention center. So at that point, there were thousands of people.
The protesters eventually went down onto the Highway 101,

Speaker 21 took over the highway for some time. Traffic was stopped.

Speaker 21 And there were a lot of people there. So eventually the authorities dispersed the crowd.
And

Speaker 21 that's what I saw at the end of the night by the time we had gone home yesterday.

Speaker 20 From what you can tell, what do the protesters, when you speak to them, want? What are they looking to do?

Speaker 21 Several people I spoke to yesterday said that they had been watching events unfold.

Speaker 21 on TV, on the news, on social media over the last several days, and that they had reached a personal breaking point where they felt they could no longer sit at home.

Speaker 21 One man I spoke to, his mother had immigrated from Columbia and he's a

Speaker 21 physics professor who lives an hour and a half away and he said, you know what, I've got to get on the train. I'm going to Los Angeles today.

Speaker 21 And that was the story of several people who I spoke to that they just felt that this was the only way they could have their voice heard

Speaker 21 and take a stand against what's going on.

Speaker 20 So people like a physics professor, just regular people who are not criminals.

Speaker 21 A mum and her teenage son who, although she had safety concerns in bringing him to the protest, also felt that it was really important that her son understand

Speaker 21 the power of individuals and community when they come together.

Speaker 21 So that was her story.

Speaker 21 There are other people who aren't personally affected by this, but also are coming out in great numbers to protest the deportations and to protest the actions of the current administration.

Speaker 6 What's your sense for sort of the vibe right now? Do you get the sense the temperature is going up or going down?

Speaker 21 I think it's hard to say with protests when you're there in the moment and it is intense and chaotic. It's unclear what is going to unfold the next day.
And

Speaker 21 that's why we do our jobs.

Speaker 20 All right, great.

Speaker 20 Livia, thank you so much.

Speaker 6 Thank you, Livia.

Speaker 20 Thank you so much, too.

Speaker 20 So obviously, Livia is a reporter, so she can't characterize what's going on, but I think it's a shit show that Trump is creating on purpose, as many people do,

Speaker 20 and that he's creating tension in order to pick a fight, essentially. This is what he's trying to do.
So, they can

Speaker 20 and creating immigration actions that are things that would cause a vote and would cause people to protest, and then trying to egg them on into worse activities.

Speaker 20 So, let's talk a little bit more about that. I've called this a complete overreach by a desperate despot.
Your thoughts?

Speaker 6 Well, I've been called hysterical for

Speaker 6 a while now, comparing or drawing similarities between America right now and 30s Germany. And you don't have to be Hitler to borrow methods and worst practices from his playbook.

Speaker 6 And that is, when tanks roll through cities, it doesn't feel like strength. It feels like a funeral for civil society.

Speaker 6 Germany in the 30s didn't collapse overnight. It slid into tyranny by normalizing soldiers where citizens used to stand.

Speaker 6 You know, early Nazi propaganda decided, and we're doing the same thing, we have real problems overseas. You know, there are still Russian, you know, Russia is still invading Europe.

Speaker 6 There's real significant issues around China, Pakistan, and India

Speaker 6 could eventually digress to a nuclear conflict. Iran is trying to spin up reactors.
But if you look at,

Speaker 6 and again, I think think I just, this has so many echoes of 30s Germany, early Nazi propaganda emphasized that Germany's problems were due to internal saboteurs, communists, Jews, immigrants.

Speaker 6 And that today, if you look at this rhetoric, they're blaming immigrants, academics, protesters, journalists. It mirrors kind of the same

Speaker 6 playbook here.

Speaker 6 And when you have a government who turns its military force inward against journalists, migrants, or citizens who believe and are exercising the right to protest in a civil, peaceful manner, and justice, you're not defending democracy.

Speaker 6 You're rehearsing for something much darker. So it's not the protests themselves.
It's not what's going on. This is another step towards normalizing

Speaker 6 an attempt to rebrand

Speaker 6 militarization as patriotism.

Speaker 20 Right. So do you think it's working?

Speaker 20 Just for people who know, historian Ruth Bingiat wrote on threads, fascists want to provoke violence so they can justify crackdowns and get some good footage to distort the state propaganda outlets for state propaganda outlists like Fox News, et cetera.

Speaker 20 And the media is ill-prepared to push back in

Speaker 20 saying this is what it is.

Speaker 20 We just talked to that reporter. She can't say much, right? But it's obviously you bring troops in and you create all kinds of people.
There's rubberneckers, the people that show up.

Speaker 20 If you recall what happened around the church near the White House when people were protesting, Trump created chaos in order to say it was chaotic, which is some, which is sort of like fascism 101, essentially.

Speaker 20 How do you assess how California is dealing with this? Obviously, Gavin Newsom has suddenly found his backbone and is pushing back.

Speaker 20 He said, come on and arrest me, because they were making threats to arrest Tom Holman, who is literally, it looks like the drunkle, is running the show over there.

Speaker 20 But he said, arrest me then,

Speaker 20 but stand down. This obviously has to go to the Supreme Court

Speaker 20 in some fashion, which is problematic in and of itself. But

Speaker 20 when the state governors are asking them not to do this and to have it under control or say they have it under control,

Speaker 20 how do you assess what's going on with California itself?

Speaker 6 I actually think this is, I think this Governor Newsom comes out of this a winner, most likely, because I think what it's doing is it's sort of setting up the next presidential election between Trump's

Speaker 6 appointee, J.D. Vance and Governor Newsom.
And I think so far, Governor Newsom has tried to stay forceful yet dignified.

Speaker 6 I thought he was smart to say, you know, he's, he's not trying to whip people into a frenzy or he's trying to dial it down. And he's basically taking on Tom Holman and saying, arrest me.

Speaker 6 I think he's handling this.

Speaker 6 He's handling this quite well. So I don't, you know, it's,

Speaker 6 it feels like literally, Kara, the way the analogy I would use, I was trying to think of an analogy. It feels like you're trying to fix a smoke alarm with a flamethrower.

Speaker 6 And they're just looking for a reason. They're trying to provoke someone into shooting someone in uniform such that they can have an overreaction.
And

Speaker 6 in 1992, I came home from graduate school and I found armed National Guard on my corner. I lived in this very peaceful neighborhood in Westwood.

Speaker 6 And on the corners, there were two what looked like boys, high school boys, in fatigues with, you know, M15s or assault rifles. And that, that doesn't feel like safety.

Speaker 6 It feels like a breakdown in society. It makes you lose faith in your government and it forces you to choose a side.
And it's just very,

Speaker 6 it's just very strange. And then just more broadly, when I think about the role that the presidents or past presidents have played,

Speaker 6 and when I think about the role of someone who's powerful and really well respected,

Speaker 6 the biggest compliment you can ever receive is someone who asks you to play peacemaker and to de-escalate a situation, right? That's when you know you've made it in business is when people,

Speaker 6 you know, I'm patting myself on the back, but a lot of times I serve as a buffer or someone to mediate disputes between a board and its CEO. And I'm really, I'm really, that feels really good.

Speaker 6 That makes me feel important and it makes me feel like I finally have some business maturity. When

Speaker 6 typically the president of the United States is deployed all over the world to help bring warring parties back from the brink of war and to settle things and de-escalate.

Speaker 6 And so, when you have a president who appears to be just manufacturing and escalating, what could ultimately be, I mean, I want to be clear, I'm a bit of a catastrophist here.

Speaker 6 I think this is one piece of the chessboard to what is a civil war.

Speaker 6 And that is when you have a government cosplaying authoritarianism that seems to have missed the last or the first half of the last century and what happened in the

Speaker 6 in um in europe i mean this is how this is how it ends i don't think america ends with a bang i think it ends with a thump and some i imagine the next a next move all right newsom says we're sick of sending 80 billion dollars to the federal government that you can deploy to red states that then you use to demonize us so we're not paying our federal taxes and then or texas say governor newsom is elected president texas says we're not certifying the election we don't we don't honor your federal elections and then before you have know it california becomes a tech economy doing trade with asia texas in the south become an oil and gas economy the east coast becomes a services financial services economy doing business with europe the midwest a manufacturing economy with strong relationships with canada they maybe develop their own currencies.

Speaker 6 Governor Newsom tried to weaponize volunteers to create his own army. This is what they did in the the Weimar government.

Speaker 6 And before you know it, we're like the European Union, but a disunion of states. So I think this is another step to America breaking up.

Speaker 20 That's the plot of Hunger Games, but go ahead. Oh, really?

Speaker 6 I literally didn't. I didn't.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 I was like, huh, wait a minute. Who's Jennifer Lawrence? That's me.

Speaker 6 It's funny.

Speaker 6 I never saw the full series of Hunger Games.

Speaker 6 Although I'm a big Donald Sutherland fan, I'm not a huge Jennifer Lawrence fan. But anyways,

Speaker 6 that's what they break into districts. That's the story of of hunger.

Speaker 20 Well, they break into districts and then the districts try, then the center tries to hold them. And

Speaker 20 it's a version of it.

Speaker 6 My point is, people think that the end of America would be some huge civil war. I think it could happen much more quietly than that.

Speaker 6 And that is, this is what's being set up.

Speaker 6 There's going to be a number of states, I believe, who are going to economically sequester and or refuse to honor the next results of the presidential election.

Speaker 6 I think that is what is being set up here.

Speaker 20 I have a different thought. I think all these people are going to jail eventually.

Speaker 20 When you say all these people, the people that are creating this fake war, the fake war people, you know, wag the dog. They're trying to wag the dog.

Speaker 20 So Tom Holman and Holman, I think they're going to be under investigation the rest of their lives.

Speaker 6 But he'll get a full pardon from the pro. I'm not saying I disagree with you, but let's play this out.
All these people will get full pardons at the end of the Trump tenure.

Speaker 6 But you think that that could be pierced?

Speaker 20 I think it can be pierced. I think there'll be a true.
I think the further they go. The issue is they're so incompetent.
They're so like obviously incompetent in a lot of ways.

Speaker 20 You don't have to be competent, by the way, to create chaos and create destruction.

Speaker 20 They're quite good at that, too. But someone like Christy Noam, Tom Holman,

Speaker 20 you know, Marco Rubio has been dragged into here and has ruined his reputation forever, I suspect. I think they're all in a world of trouble the minute Donald Trump is out of the picture.

Speaker 20 And that you can't, people, I don't think citizens put up with this. I don't.
I don't. I absolutely do not.
I think I'm seeing more people getting more activated in good ways than ever before.

Speaker 20 And so, you know, it doesn't take much to crack down on people, but this is a big country and it's very hard to control.

Speaker 20 And the more they try to control, the more they try to do this kind of nonsense, the more people see through it. Absolutely.

Speaker 20 Oddly enough, a lot of my relatives who are Trump people are like, this is fucked up. And it's not the leftists they're saying are fucked up, which is usually their way to go.

Speaker 20 It's more, more, he's crazy. This is nuts.
This is ridiculous, you know? So we'll see. We'll see if other people buy into this.

Speaker 20 But I do think he exhausts his base and regular people begin to take back control of this.

Speaker 20 You know, it's just.

Speaker 20 He can try. He can try.
That's what he's doing. He's trying desperate.
He's a desperate. That's why I called him the complete overreach of a desperate despot.

Speaker 20 Every move he's making lately, to me, is both despotic, incompetent, and also insecure in a lot of ways.

Speaker 6 But what you just outlined is my vision of how you would restore and heal America.

Speaker 6 That you'd have moral clarity and have the effectively like a Nuremberg trial, where you said, okay, you knew this was a lie. You purposely tried to create violence in Mayhem.

Speaker 6 You purposely tried to overrun our elections. You purposely committed fraud.
You purposely leveraged. our international sway to enrich your children.

Speaker 6 I love the idea of a stream of perp walks and moral clarity around this stuff, that America's laws have a long memory. I love that.
That's a fantasy of mine. I dream of that at night.

Speaker 6 My fear, Kara, is that there's actually a lot of people who like what's going on right now.

Speaker 20 I would push back. Hitler was real popular until he wasn't, wasn't he? Real popular.

Speaker 6 Oh, he was popular up until the end, Kara. That's right.

Speaker 20 That's correct. And he still is in a lot of ways, oddly enough.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but he was never tried. He killed himself because he knew the Red Army was circling.

Speaker 20 Of course. I'm a long view person.
I think there's going to be a lot of damage in the interim. I think your scenario is is perfectly possible.
Absolutely. No question.

Speaker 20 But in my scenario, every single person who's behaved like Trump

Speaker 20 ends up badly. I would say badly.
Whether it's Mussolini, Saddam Hussein,

Speaker 20 Gaddafi, the Ceaușescus, it just always ends with the same story, which is,

Speaker 20 you know, the people around these people.

Speaker 6 All these people were executed or killed. Well, I know.

Speaker 20 That's what, I mean, I think our country is slightly different. I think we allow, like we let Nixon go off to, you know, we tend to be more forgiving in that regard.
But it's the same version.

Speaker 20 It's a metaphorical version of that.

Speaker 20 And I will see. I think he's,

Speaker 20 look, he's an old man. So we'll see how long he lasts, right?

Speaker 20 But

Speaker 20 the, and this is just, as you say, biology is undefeated.

Speaker 20 I mean,

Speaker 20 all joking aside, he did the same trip Biden did the other day, if you saw it, the same exact trip that Biden did

Speaker 20 going going on the stairs. So I was just like, well, you people, you hold on because he's, he's what, hold on to Trump because he's all you got to these people.
That's my feeling.

Speaker 6 So but to your point,

Speaker 6 I like to move to what Democrats should be doing. I don't understand

Speaker 6 why a Democrat hasn't forcefully, we're so, we're so obsessed with grabbing social virtue and taking the higher road.

Speaker 6 I don't understand why a Democrat hasn't announced her president and said, and on the order, I'm passing a constitution, I'm getting congressional approval to arrest people who have engaged in fraud, to arrest people who have engaged in trading off our country's geopolitical power for personal enrichment.

Speaker 6 I'm arresting people who have fomented violence while using the military while knowing that these

Speaker 6 actions were un-American, unconstitutional, and not needed. And here is the exact legislation I'm going to propose that will pierce any pardon.

Speaker 6 Why has no one stood up and said, hi, I'm a Democrat and I have actual fucking testicles? What would they be saying? This would be the mother of all. Lock her up.

Speaker 6 Can you imagine what they would be threatening?

Speaker 20 What's really interesting is

Speaker 20 that Kamala Harris warned about troops in the streets. So did Hillary Clinton.
Everything Hillary Clinton warned about, he did exactly. So I'm going to listen to the women in this case.

Speaker 20 She also, Kamala Harris talked about this. You can make fun of her all you want, but she had this one cold of what he was, his movement.
And she's not the only one who said he would do this.

Speaker 20 But she was probably the most outspoken. There was a great story in The Atlantic this week by a friend of mine, Mark Liebitz, about Obama's sort of chill pill kind of attitude.

Speaker 20 I do not know where this man is. Like, I'm sorry.
There is not a strong Democrat yet who has emerged. And it could be someone who announces for president.
You're right. That's a great way to do it.

Speaker 20 But the only person with the

Speaker 20 and people are like, why doesn't George Bush Jr. do it? He doesn't have the same gravitas that President Obama has.

Speaker 20 Stand up and not just when he feels like it, not just when he wants to make some announcement and then he goes off and plays basketball with celebrities, which is what he's been doing, honestly.

Speaker 20 But someone like that, they're very, I was trying to think who could do this and create a nationwide problem for Trump. And it is only Obama.
It is only Obama who can do it.

Speaker 6 I think it could be a new voice. The problem is,

Speaker 6 I agree with you. I'd love to see Obama do it.
But the office of president, there is a generally accepted principle that former presidents do not get involved in politics and come out swinging.

Speaker 20 Not this guy. No.
This guy doesn't deserve that.

Speaker 6 I get it. I understand it.
And I'm not saying I don't disagree with it.

Speaker 6 The better opportunity is for someone to emerge with a new vision for America who's a Democrat and just comes right out and says, I think there are crimes that have been committed here.

Speaker 6 I'm not going to threaten my political opponents with incarceration, but I am going to uphold the Constitution. And my belief is that there have been several criminal acts committed here.

Speaker 6 And I'm going to hold this. And I'm going to, and by the way, if some Democrats have continued to engage in insider trading, I'm going to hold them accountable.

Speaker 6 I mean, somebody needs to stand up and say, I am running to defend the Constitution.

Speaker 6 And on day one, I am going to demonstrate and put on full display what the Constitution actually, if we don't restore incentives to the downside as well as the upside, then it's kind of game over and no one's running on it.

Speaker 6 No one stood up and said, I'm ready. This is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 20 I'm not sure who has. You can't name, I can't name someone.

Speaker 6 I think it's someone TBD. I think it's probably a Democratic governor who we don't even know yet because at this time.

Speaker 20 We know who they are.

Speaker 6 Well, yeah, but we didn't, okay, they weren't household names. Clinton and Obama were not, nobody knew who they were in this part of the election cycle.

Speaker 6 This is a huge white space and opportunity for a Democrat.

Speaker 20 All right. I see.
I see that. I think right now, Barack Obama has got to stand the fuck up and

Speaker 20 stop playing basketball and hanging out.

Speaker 6 I'd like to see it, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Speaker 20 He's got to stop.

Speaker 6 He did the whole If This Were Me. Can you imagine if I did that? But I think, quite frankly, he has such a nice life and he's so focused on maintaining his brand equity.

Speaker 6 I don't think he wants to take the risk. I agree with you.
I think he should. I don't think he will.

Speaker 20 I don't think he will because

Speaker 20 I think he's the only one who could and he should do it. And it's his duty as an American citizen.

Speaker 6 What about Bill Clinton if you're going to pull it?

Speaker 20 I think a lot of the exes have a lot of baggage compared to President Obama. I think a lot of them do.
I think Bill Clinton, I know it sounds dumb, but he's older and his voice is bad.

Speaker 20 There's only one who's looking good and in fighting shape is President Obama.

Speaker 20 George Bush does not have the same, I mean, all of them together, great, but President Obama is the one that needs to stand up.

Speaker 6 And I got so str like, I pushed that article and they were like, what about george bush what why should he come out why should he come out uh against this i'm like because because they've ruined his legacy because they've like because it's the right thing to do and he's the only one honestly i can't think of anyone else in public in public life it's a huge white space for uh someone who wants to be i mean i've i've and you receive these calls too i've received calls from six people who are excited to come on the pod which is their way of saying i'm running for president and what i say to their pr people is like well tell them to tell him to start actually running for fucking president then

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 come up with actual sober plans and talk about bold solutions, attach real money and numbers to it, talk about what we actually need to do. And also,

Speaker 6 I mean, they were saying he was

Speaker 6 President Trump, and it was effective. I'm not being indignant.
It was infected. He was saying, chanting, lock her up around Hillary Clinton's emails.

Speaker 6 And we as Democrats are like, no, we've got to take the high road.

Speaker 20 Well, Well, that's what I'm saying. Let's stop standing on ceremony.
I mean, I don't know. I think Obama, get off your tail.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but

Speaker 6 I think it should be a stepstone to this person being elected.

Speaker 20 I guess.

Speaker 20 I think he's the only one.

Speaker 6 I think it's a big opportunity for somebody.

Speaker 20 We'll see.

Speaker 20 Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back, how Trump is threatening Elon, even though Elon has acquiesced, it looks like.

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Speaker 20 Scott, we're back with the latest fallout from the Elon Trump breakup. Trump says his relationship with Elon Musk is over and threatening serious consequences if Elon funds the Democratic candidates.

Speaker 20 Trump is pushing everyone around. Trump has been busy talking to reporters and working the phones over the last few days, calling Elon disrespectful, a big-time drug addict.

Speaker 20 He's also selling that new Tesla, apparently. There's been talk about a possible truce, of course.
Political reported there was a call with representatives for both men on Friday.

Speaker 20 I think that was just David Sachs calling Donald Trump up. Elon, for his part, has deleted several of his tweets from last week, including the one tying Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 20 And on Sunday, he appeared to be kissing the ring, retweeting posts from Trump and J.D. Dance about the LA protests.

Speaker 20 I've been actually, unfortunately, going on Twitter and watching what he's up to. And he seems to be, first he was focused a lot on SpaceX and things like that.
And now

Speaker 20 he's sort of retweeting a lot of support for Donald Trump again. So I think he's probably trying to get in there.
He doesn't want to,

Speaker 20 he realizes he's in a deleveraged position and he's decided not to go rogue. People have actually calmed him down.

Speaker 20 I don't think it's going to last for him.

Speaker 20 But a lot of people are trying to get Elon to back off and acquiesce. So, and I think largely a lot of it is because his businesses will be at risk.

Speaker 20 Tesla Sat recovered a bit at the end of the week, although the company is still facing some pain of Trump spending bill passes.

Speaker 20 In terms of SpaceX, Elon appears to have changed his mind on decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft. That was so ridiculous.

Speaker 20 But NASA and the Pentagon officials are urging SpaceX competitors to quickly develop rockets and spacecraft, according to the Washington Post.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 we're just learning now that some Trump officials had some concerns about the Starlink getting installed at the White House earlier this year, which we brought up many times.

Speaker 20 A lot of Tesla's getting downgraded all over the place. And obviously, people in MAGA world have to choose sides.

Speaker 20 Though new polling by YouGov suggests that Republicans are not conflicted with their loyalties, ask who they would choose between Trump and Musk.

Speaker 20 Seven in ten Republicans said Trump, although three, that's interesting. Same thing with J.D.
Vance, who was pushed forward by, who got his job through Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, essentially.

Speaker 20 He's always going to be loyal to the president. He hopes Elon eventually comes back in the fold.

Speaker 20 David Sachs, of course, because he's an unctuous toady, has been privately encouraging Musk to call the president, try to mend the relationship.

Speaker 20 Now, Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is making trouble. He's urged Trump to deport Elon and seize control of SpaceX.

Speaker 20 Bannon also provided details with Elon's Oval Office fight with Treasury Secretary Scott Besson to the Washington Post, revealing how the fight got physical. But apparently there was a ramming.

Speaker 20 Elon rammed his shoulder into Besson's rib cage like a rugby player and Besson hit him back.

Speaker 20 Musk has called him a liar. And we haven't heard anything from Stephen Miller's wife, Katie, recently left Doge

Speaker 20 in the White House to work for Elon, though Elon had to rebuke his AI chat bot, Grock, after falsely claimed a tweet where Elon Brad about taking Katie Miller from her husband was real.

Speaker 20 Grock believes it was, and Elon said it wasn't.

Speaker 20 As I said, Elon called a band and a liar.

Speaker 20 So what do you think?

Speaker 20 How do you look at this?

Speaker 6 What do I think? I think if this ran a gayer, it'd be a Bravo reality show sponsored by Grinder. I just, I mean, for God, can you imagine two bigger bitches than this? I mean

Speaker 6 it's just like

Speaker 6 if i had two 12-year-olds behaving this way let me get this and i just love how

Speaker 6 okay trump or must thinks he's illuminating to the world that trump was guilty of a sex crime on an island and then and then trump threatening to deport him no not trump bannon bannon suggested it oh is that i thought trump said he would he had it had come to his attention that he was

Speaker 6 he was here illegally.

Speaker 20 Oh, he might have said so. I don't know if he said that.
Fannin's the one who mentioned that one.

Speaker 6 Musk basically puts out a tweet that basically intimates he's fucking Stephen Miller's wife.

Speaker 20 Well, he says he didn't. He said it was a false tweet.
Let's just keep it. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 I bet. Grock doesn't think it was.
I bet.

Speaker 20 He says Grock is wrong. I'm with Grock.

Speaker 6 Anyways, look, I don't.

Speaker 6 Again, this is all just

Speaker 6 such a distraction. And to be clear, Trump, Musk has no problem with the bill.
He knew what was in the bill.

Speaker 6 He's part of the architecture here. He's part of this notion that it's exploding the deficit bothers him as he tries to cut 40 or 50% of the IRS.

Speaker 6 This is what happened at Bormai Reid. He wanted to get involved in China relations.
He wanted

Speaker 20 to be co-president.

Speaker 6 Yeah. No, he wanted to be an unelected president.
And Trump said, no. Scott Besant said, I'm not letting you pick these people.

Speaker 6 They got got into a fight. He got punched in the face, it looks like.
And now he's decided that all of a sudden he doesn't like the tax bill. And

Speaker 6 Trump is hitting back. The problem is it's a huge distraction from

Speaker 6 more important issues here.

Speaker 6 Musk has more to lose because the government could,

Speaker 6 Trump is not above absolutely weaponizing the government and threatening specific punishment for his companies, whether it's tariffs, taxes,

Speaker 6 rescinding EV taxes, canceling all contracts with SpaceX. But we've said it was dangerous.

Speaker 20 Bringing back the SEC, bringing back, he could do all manner of things.

Speaker 6 Or what he's done to other citizens. He's been sending other citizens to concentration camps.
And people get triggered when I say the word.

Speaker 6 The definition of a concentration camp is an incarceration facility that is purposely put outside of your own country such that the people you send there are no longer protected by the laws and norms of their home country.

Speaker 6 So these are concentration camps. They fit the definition.

Speaker 6 Are they exterminating people there? No, not that we know of, but these fit the definition of concentration camps. And

Speaker 6 if you can send people that it ends up have not committed a crime, right?

Speaker 6 Why could he theoretically not send you, me, or Elon Musk?

Speaker 6 And that's the problem with all of this is that we have decided a pillar of our justice system is we err on the side, we have made a decision to give people really wonderful rights.

Speaker 6 We have erred on the side of occasionally someone who deserves to go to jail doesn't rather than accidentally lock up a gay hairdresser who's done nothing wrong and at Hellscape and El Salvador.

Speaker 6 We've decided to err the other way. And this guy has decided to go the other way.
and err on the side of people who are innocents. Anyways, my point is he can,

Speaker 6 you you know,

Speaker 6 must to his credit, I mean, you know, Honey Badger don't care. He's under the impression I'm more powerful.
And to his credit, he's true. He's right.

Speaker 6 He did get, you know, you could make a very solid argument that he, in fact, did get Trump elected.

Speaker 6 So, but again, I worry, I worry it's not, it's again, a distraction from what I think is the bigger issue here.

Speaker 20 Which is the grab for power. Absolutely.
What's interesting is I'm just looking at Elon's tweets now. He's absolutely backing Trump on this,

Speaker 20 on the, on what's happening. And he's putting, and he's, at the same time, he's putting out, they're like, he just,

Speaker 20 if Elon Musk hadn't bought Twitter, none of us would know what's going on in LA right now.

Speaker 20 And so he's just retweeting everything anti-immigrant. He's back to that.
And,

Speaker 20 you know, having, he, he, he goes, if you talk to someone who gets all their information from legacy media, they're living in a different world. They're getting it from your podcast or news from X.

Speaker 20 We're living in an alt. So he's his fake reality, he's pretending.
He's using it to pump X, which is doing rather well, you know, because of this, because of his war with Trump.

Speaker 20 So he's just, he's back, he's back into the fold. And, you know, my only thing is he's going on a bender again, Scott.
He'll go on another bender, which is what I think happened with Trump here.

Speaker 20 But

Speaker 20 he's not going to get back. Trump is not letting him back in.
Apparently, he's quite hurt that Elon and he aren't friends anymore.

Speaker 20 But I don't think Trump will let him in only if he is completely prostrate on the ground.

Speaker 6 All I think Trump wants to do is just get him to neutral. I don't think Trump's going to let him back in.
He's like, this guy, this guy is dangerous, uncontrollable, very powerful.

Speaker 6 I think he's just going to want to come to some sort of detente with the guy.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 6 But he's not going to let him near the West Lawn again. I mean, he's not.
There's no way. I will say this, though.

Speaker 6 I think Musk is just such a terrible role model and a weird person, but I would 100%, because I have heard indirectly from Elon Musk, I would 100% accept an invitation to do a weekend in Vegas with him.

Speaker 6 I can't imagine anyone better to roll with in Vegas.

Speaker 6 48 hours, I'm in.

Speaker 20 Him and Katie Miller. That'll be great.

Speaker 6 I also want, I'd like to roll with Laura Loomer. And if we can dig up the spirit of David Kerading, who was caught strangling himself in a Thai hotel,

Speaker 6 I'm down. That would be a pretty good weekend.
Who would be the fifth? Maybe George Michael. I think he liked the bar.

Speaker 20 Did he? I mean, did he? Right.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm not abusive abusive like that, though.

Speaker 20 Um, anyways, the second brother guy, all right, George Michael. He's he'd be a lot of fun, anyway.
Um,

Speaker 20 one thing, though, Doge has collected two wins from the Supreme Court.

Speaker 20 First, the court granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration to allow members of the Doge to access Social Security Administration data.

Speaker 20 Second, SCOTUS ruled the Doge doesn't have to turn over internal records to a government watchdog group. For now, now the three liberal members dissented from both rulings.

Speaker 20 You know, I think Doge is over. I think they're leaving.
There's people that are going to stay embedded,

Speaker 20 and different cabinet members will do what they want and use the Doge people there. But, you know, they've cut the head off of this thing.

Speaker 20 And the Doge father, whenever he calls himself the Doge father, it's ridiculous. This cosplaying is so stupid.
It was interesting.

Speaker 20 My favorite part was Bill Gates reportedly visit the White House on Friday to argue for reversing Doge cuts. Just moving on in there.
And

Speaker 20 they will, all those different tech people will do whatever they're in Bill Gates's case, he's trying to reverse USAID thing. So good for Bill for going.
Good job, Bill. That's what I say.

Speaker 20 Go right in there. And it shows showing how he was the original Doge father, really, a lot of Godfather in a lot of ways.

Speaker 20 But I think pretty much Doge is over and they will.

Speaker 20 The cabinet members will do whatever they want. But Russell Vogt still remains in charge and trying to push through the idea of dismantling government.
And that certainly isn't going to stop.

Speaker 6 Doge. I think it's, yeah, you're right.
It's over. It's, I'm really curious what the state of the tax bill is.

Speaker 6 I'd love to be in those Senate hearings right now around if this thing has any, you know, any chance of getting through or if this is all posturing from Rand Paul and the few Republican senators who claim to

Speaker 6 claim to care. And if you,

Speaker 6 if you upload, get this, if you upload the tax bill into Chat GPT and ask it to summarize it, it says it's an authoritarianism wrapped in bureaucratic language.

Speaker 6 It doesn't even talk about the tax end of it. It talks about things like essentially

Speaker 6 they no longer can be, these senior officials can no longer be found in contempt of court.

Speaker 6 It transfers massive, so if they get congressional subpoenas to come testify on an alleged crime, they can ignore them.

Speaker 6 It massively transfers power from agencies where it's

Speaker 6 full-time government officials. officials to a massive transfer of power from them to appointed officials.

Speaker 20 activizes it. It moves everything to the executive.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it moves everything upward towards appointees and the executive. It's really, it's so funny that ChatGPT focused on the authoritarianism as opposed to the economics of this tax bill.

Speaker 6 And it also said what was interesting, one of the points it came back with was this is a really elegant, legally deft piece of legislation. Russell vote.

Speaker 20 Russell vote is the one you need not focus on Elon, that fucking clown. Russell Vote is the one that's trying to dismantle and give power to the executive.
That's the whole goal goal here.

Speaker 20 I think they'll regret it when Democrats come into power if they give these powers.

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 that's a really interesting point. And again,

Speaker 6 again, I would love to see, you know, I would love to see a senator soon to be Governor Bennett

Speaker 6 basically put out a list.

Speaker 6 There's so many things a Democrat could be doing right now.

Speaker 20 I need your friend Bennett to get up there, start doing it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the senators. You know, actually, based on that,

Speaker 6 I am going to reach out to him this afternoon. But why wouldn't someone who's interested in running for president put out a list of executive orders they're going to do on day one? Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 These are the executive orders I have planned.

Speaker 20 Yeah, right. Anyway.
All right. Let's go on a quick break.
And when we come back, Warner Brothers Discovery is splitting in two, as we said it would.

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Speaker 20 Scott, we're back. Warner Brothers Discovery will split into two public companies.

Speaker 20 Streaming and studios will be one company, including movie properties and HBO Max, and the other company will be the Global Networks company, including CNN, TNT Sports and Discovery.

Speaker 20 CEO David Zaslov will lead streaming and studios, and the company's current CFO, Gunnar, I think his name is, will become the CEO of Global Networks Business.

Speaker 20 The split is expected to be complete by the middle of next year. Shares of Warner Brothers Discovery are up over 7% at the time of the taping, although they've been really down.

Speaker 20 Scott, we discussed that possibility last month and you got this partly right, but this is something we've talked about for a while, that this was going to a la versant, which is the Comcast runoff.

Speaker 20 And we both have talked about this extensively, but

Speaker 20 let's listen to what we just said recently.

Speaker 6 I think I know what's going to happen here. The company is going to go good bank, bad bank.

Speaker 6 It's going to be HBO and Warner Brothers, the theater business, the characters, the IP, which will feed into HBO. HBO is the brand.

Speaker 6 It'll have another component, a subset, HBO Max or something that's all the other shit. And then they will spin all the TV and the cable assets into, they'll either consolidate or be part of a

Speaker 6 consolidation with Comcast. And that is, they're just, these are still highly profitable businesses, but they're shrinking.
So that means consolidation and cost cutting.

Speaker 20 Right, which is exactly, it's almost exactly what happened at Comcast here,

Speaker 20 which is about to almost be completed, I think, and therefore possibly a merger acquisition or the opposite, they merge in some way.

Speaker 20 The company has not yet announced that we'll split Warner Brothers Discovery's huge debt, 37 billion, although it's cheap debt, but it's still debt nonetheless.

Speaker 20 But it will take out a $17 billion short-term loan ahead of the split to bring down that.

Speaker 20 How should they divvy up the data?

Speaker 20 I mean, again, a bunch of small little boats, little media boats. I was on a panel with Anderson Cooper over there after they showed good night and good luck.

Speaker 20 And Anderson was asking me, you know, are there going to be this big thing? I'm like, no, everything's getting split up. And like, that's at least, you can't have these big entities anymore

Speaker 20 that are spending enormous amounts of money and don't make any sense anymore from an audience point of view.

Speaker 20 So how do you look at this? And how should they divvy up the debt? I think that's probably the most important thing here.

Speaker 6 Well, this was absolutely the smart thing to do because

Speaker 6 the market wants a consistent story. And the story around legacy cable assets are that they're still hugely profitable, but they're declining businesses.

Speaker 6 And really, the business strategy, and it can be a very effective strategy for creating shareholder value, is to go acquire other struggling cable assets and cut costs faster than the business declines.

Speaker 6 So these things usually don't decline as quickly as people think.

Speaker 20 No, it's like AOL dial-up.

Speaker 6 Well, that's right.

Speaker 6 Or so, if they're if the business is declining six to eight percent a year, as long as you can go roll it up with Comedy Central and you know, name name, name your TV Bravo or whatever it is, as long as you can consolidate the back end and cut costs faster than 8% a year, that is accretive to the bottom line.

Speaker 6 And that's a decent trading stock. And then you have the other thing that requires capital to grow because HBO and Warner are still technically growth assets.
So you have to have a consistent story.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 these stories don't work. So it makes sense.

Speaker 6 The argument they're having right now,

Speaker 6 and I knew this before it happened, David Zaslov gets the cool shift. He gets to be on the cool side.
He gets gets Warner Brothers and HBO. And the CFO, who is always the bad cop.

Speaker 20 Who actually is considered a very good executive, but go ahead. I'm sure.

Speaker 6 But his job is to consolidate and cut costs and go on an M ⁇ A.

Speaker 20 He's very good at cost cutting. That's what he's known for.

Speaker 6 And to call Brian Roberts and say, all right,

Speaker 6 how do we put these two things together? And the argument they're having right now. And consultants are in there and they're all posturing is how much debt

Speaker 6 is the bad bank going to have to take with them? Because they're the more profitable one in the short term. But they're all looking at, I think they have a total of about 33 billion in debt.

Speaker 6 And they're all saying, okay,

Speaker 6 who has to take mom, right? Who has to, it's a divorce and we're taking care of our parents and their real liability. Who gets our dad's a real liability living upstairs?

Speaker 6 Who has to take dad? Right. It's like in the fight between Musk and Trump, who gets custody of J.D.
Vance? Who has to take them, right?

Speaker 20 So who does?

Speaker 6 Well, they'll come to some accommodation.

Speaker 6 It won't be, it won't one won't get all all the debt they'll split it but it's just a question of what the split is why should the money-making one take it at all because they have the ability to service the debt right okay and and what they want to do is make sure they don't these these companies still have i mean their existing shareholders are going to get shares in both and also if you saddle if you saddle the the bad bank the cable tv news news company let's call it the cable division with too much debt it creates a poison pill where no one can acquire it or merge merge with it.

Speaker 6 So they're doing a delicate dance here to try. And as you, you know,

Speaker 6 so this reverse engineers, it's all very incestuous. David Zaslov was the highest paid CEO in media or old media.
He made $53 million. 52%, I believe, of shareholders said,

Speaker 6 we don't approve your compensation while the stock has gone down 66% because his compensation was tied to paying down debt. And he has done that.

Speaker 6 He and the CFO have paid down the debt, I think, from like 50 or 55 billion to 33.

Speaker 6 But they've got to figure out a way to figure out who's going to take who and how much of this 33 billion in debt. But this is a smart move.
We knew this was coming.

Speaker 6 There's going to be massive consolidation.

Speaker 20 Let's talk about what's next.

Speaker 20 So, Versent's coming out. That'll be its own thing, and they'll split off from NBC.

Speaker 20 It's exactly the same thing here. So, what happens?

Speaker 20 Does

Speaker 20 people buy Paramount pick up one of these things? Does ABC pick it up, which has its own troubles with Terry Moran doing doing that stupid post that he did about Stephen Miller?

Speaker 20 100% accurate, but he's a beat reporter. He never should have done that.

Speaker 20 What do you see? Where does it go next? Because we all knew this was coming. So it's not like.

Speaker 20 You know what's interesting? I have said this publicly several times over at CNN. And they're like, all the anchor, all the different people there are like, do you think they're going to split?

Speaker 20 I'm like, yeah, like, that's what they're doing right now. They're figuring out how to do it, you know?

Speaker 20 But where does it go next, I think, is really,

Speaker 20 I assume they merge with, either they merge with a Versent kind of thing, or they get bought by a rich guy like David Ellison and that gang over there or a hedge fund, right? I mean, where does it go?

Speaker 20 So

Speaker 6 the ecosystem is getting, it's getting late, very early. And that is these are declining assets and every deal they've struck, the deals get worse as time goes on.

Speaker 6 And I don't know if it's legal, but if it is, I would imagine the Roberts family, the people who control Comcast, are basically advising on how to structure the Warner deal such that they can almost immediately merge with the bad bank of the Warner assets and start consolidating the back end.

Speaker 6 There's no reason why CBS and CNN can't share a lot of the same. The CBS newsroom can't be mostly the CNN newsroom and vice versa.

Speaker 20 Doesn't that create the same thing they're in now with

Speaker 20 mixing Paramount with them? Is it just richer people? Because it's the same. It just puts, instead of Warner Brothers, it's Paramount.

Speaker 6 Well, no, what I'm suggesting is, is just that we don't need all these newsrooms. Newsrooms are really expensive.

Speaker 6 You might have different front-facing brands with different distinct audiences and advertiser relationships, but you'll say, okay, CBS Newsroom and CNN newsroom, they're each a thousand people.

Speaker 6 Combined, they're going to be 1,200 people. And we're going to rebrand it.
And we have our front-end anchors.

Speaker 6 We have, I don't know, I forget it's Gail Keynes, CBS, I forget, and Anderson Cooper over here.

Speaker 6 But a lot of the back end and the office space and the studios and the benefits and the HR manager and the CFOs and the tech people and the, you know, it's all going to be, they've got to massively consolidate the back end.

Speaker 20 But why would Paramount grab it?

Speaker 6 Because again, if you're-I don't know if it would be Paramount. I was just using an example.
Paramount.

Speaker 20 So merge NBC with CNN.

Speaker 6 I think the most, the most, the cleanest one right now, the most obvious is Comcast's assets and Warner. But because Paramount,

Speaker 6 Jesus Christ, she is being backed into a corner. There is a non-zero probability right now

Speaker 6 the national amusements slash paramount declares bankruptcy in the next 12 months.

Speaker 20 Well, it's owned by, it's going to be owned by a wealthy group of people. It's outlawed.

Speaker 6 But they, yeah, but here's the thing, Kara.

Speaker 6 The FTC will not approve this until Trump gets his pound of flesh from his ridiculous 60 minutes lawsuit, of which Sherry is under huge pressure not to bend a knee.

Speaker 6 If she doesn't bend a knee, the FTC will not approve this transaction.

Speaker 6 And she has somewhere between, based on what I've read, somewhere between a quarter of a billion and half a billion dollars in debts coming due from loans from David Ellison's father and money she owes investment banks.

Speaker 6 And if she can't pay that debt, they can bump her into a restructuring at which point all the suitors go, you're weak. We're not paying you this.
We're paying you less.

Speaker 6 So she's in a really weird spot right now so she's got some health problems too and she has and she's battling thyroid cancer so

Speaker 6 the this ecosystem this is going to be a very interesting 12 or 24 months yeah it'll be interesting where it all ends up what's your likelihood i would assume maybe the warner brothers assets and the comcast assets get yeah brought together right that's 100 so it's cnn nbc and that's why i was saying brian roberts and his team and they're very smart is probably in conversations if it's legal i'm trying to think if they're allowed to do that.

Speaker 6 If it's to say, this is how, this is what the combined company

Speaker 6 would look like and how we make this as seamless as possible post

Speaker 20 post to spend. It would make sense for those guys, the Versent group, they'd be stronger.
They'd have more options. They could cut costs better.

Speaker 20 You know, they'd have the MSNBC more, you know, more obviously like Fox News. Like, I'm not calling them Fox News.

Speaker 6 But why do MSNBC and CNN need independent newsrooms? I mean, this is heresy.

Speaker 20 Actually, the NBC newsroom is going with the other, with the other gang.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 20 So the newsroom itself is actually the actual news gatherers.

Speaker 6 But what you said,

Speaker 6 I don't think it's going to happen, that it might be a hedge fund. Because here's the thing, the numbers, even at these discounted numbers, they still don't make financial sense.

Speaker 6 And what's telling is that the three people surrounding the Paramount sale, obviously Sherry Redstone, Edgar Bronfman was in there for a while, and then David Ellison.

Speaker 6 What do all three of these people have in common?

Speaker 6 They're rich kids. Because guess what? Anyone who didn't make their own, anyone who made their own money and understands how to make money and understands how to read, who took accounting and

Speaker 6 makes money, doesn't spend daddy's money, isn't getting fucking near these things.

Speaker 6 Because these guys, David Zaslov and David Ellison, are willing to overpay with other people's money so they can go to the Academy Awards. And hedge funds aren't allowed to do that.

Speaker 6 I I mean, a friend of mine co-founded Anchorage and his co-founder bought Lionsgate. And I remember saying, there's cheaper ways to go to the Academy Awards.

Speaker 6 And he ended up getting bailed out by Amazon and actually making money. But these are, there's no accident that the players here are all rich kids.

Speaker 20 Yeah, it's interesting. We'll see what happens, but I'm sure there'll definitely be a consolidation here, a very obvious consolidation.
It's a question of which way it happens.

Speaker 20 And the thing is, they get outsized attention given how small they are compared to other businesses. I keep saying that.
I'm like, you know, you're little. You know, you're little.

Speaker 20 You're not who you used to be.

Speaker 20 By the way, that was a really fun thing for them showing off good night and good luck on the network. I thought that was just a lovely thing to do.

Speaker 20 All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Speaker 20 okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. I guess I'll go first.
There were a lot of options for me for the win. D.C.
Public Schools will enforce a cell phone ban starting next year.

Speaker 20 My kids are in D.C. Public Schools.
I'm very happy about that.

Speaker 20 Also, the Tonys were amazing, were amazing, were really fun. I love Cynthia Arrivo.
She provided a really good show.

Speaker 20 And even though that's a small business, too, in a lot of ways, I thought they did a great, it was really fun and entertaining, which is what they should be.

Speaker 20 And minimum of lecturing, it was just really good performance, especially bringing back the Hamilton group together to sing. It was super fun.

Speaker 20 But I think my win of the week is you seeing you in a satin boxing robe, Scott.

Speaker 20 I have to say, first of all, I sent it to Alex. He's like, Scott's in good shape for

Speaker 20 a man of his age, essentially.

Speaker 20 That looked really fun. You looked adorable.
What a cute thing.

Speaker 20 You were, you were, but your shirt off was the best part with the drag queens i loved this scott galloway who's yelling at biers morgan who's wearing a box i like this sky i like what i've made here this man that i've affected in some way but tell me explain to me how that went very briefly a good friend of mine pablo doritas does this thing called the final rumble where two people pretend to be boxers they answer questions they each answer them and then the crowd decides who wins the round at the end of the bout, you get a belt on based on who wins.

Speaker 6 So the last one was Anthony Scaramucci versus Kevin o'leeary and this one was me and a really impressive young man named Shermichael singleton who i just thought was lovely and i hope that i hope there's more conservatives like him yeah i mean let's be honest i'm in detroit i go up against a 34 year old black republican the odds were he was going to win

Speaker 20 but he didn't you won um yeah well i you know daddy daddy did you win you had the belt I had the belt

Speaker 6 um but it was a ton of fun i really enjoyed it and the the the thing I'm so excited about is like, I said to Pablo, I said, okay, but I get to announce my entrance, you know, when boxers come out.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah, of course. Mr.
Michaels was really good.

Speaker 6 He did a drum line from an all-black,

Speaker 6 I think, college or high school in Detroit. It was really cool.
And I went through no small effort.

Speaker 20 He was wearing a suit, it looked like he looked like he was wearing a suit. Yeah.

Speaker 20 No mistake.

Speaker 6 I found five. He's a handsome man, by the way.
He is a handsome man. He's a good-looking kid.
And I found five drag queens.

Speaker 6 And it was, that was the best part of it.

Speaker 20 That's why you won. That is

Speaker 20 entirely why you won. Well, you worked, you worked out extra.
Like, I got to say, you look, I've seen you somewhat naked. You look, you look like you're in much better shape.

Speaker 20 You did some work there to get to that. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 Working out four times a week for four years. Must be the testosterone.
Anyways, testosterone, excuse me.

Speaker 20 The drag queens were.

Speaker 6 That was, that was, that was the best, but that was a lot of fun. Thanks for the kind words.
I really did.

Speaker 20 You did. And you won.

Speaker 6 I did win. Yes, I did win.

Speaker 20 That to me, it should have been a fail, but Scott, it was a win. I appreciate that.
And my fail, obviously, Trump's ridiculous behavior, but I'm going to do a tech one.

Speaker 20 Bill Atkinson, who was Apple computer designer and created software that enabled the visual approach of Elisa and Macintosh computers, died of pancreatic cancer. Here's an unsung hero of Apple.

Speaker 20 There's several of them,

Speaker 20 including people who are living like Susan Kerr and others. But Bill Atkinson was a critical, critical.
The way we compute today is because of inventions from people like him.

Speaker 20 And what a really important inventor,

Speaker 20 lovely guy,

Speaker 20 and just one of these people you don't, you know, you hear about some of them like Johnny Ive and others, but Bill Atkinson was just a really critical person to the development, early development of

Speaker 20 computer design and everything. Just, as I said, a lovely person.
And

Speaker 20 sadly, he had pancreatic cancer.

Speaker 20 But that was my fail. But people should look him up, read about him.
He's an important figure.

Speaker 20 And you will have never heard of him, but he was critically important. What about you, Scott, besides your nudity drag queen thing?

Speaker 6 My win is just to call balls and strikes, there is one component of the GOP tax bill that I do like, and that is they've threatened to raise taxes on endowments.

Speaker 6 So they're talking about increasing the tax on the profits of endowments from a little over 1% to upwards of 21%, which would be obviously a substantial increase in taxes, almost like what regular people pay in taxes.

Speaker 20 Aimed at Harvard, I assume.

Speaker 6 Well, let's be honest, it's a war on education for the wrong reasons, but that doesn't mean it can't have positive outcomes. And that is, I've been saying this for a while.

Speaker 6 And the bill does say unless they spend more than 5% of their endowments, they need to stop hoarding wealth. And I believe American universities largely set the tone for

Speaker 6 big components of America and this rejectionist bullshit culture where we're hoarding money instead of spending it on financial aid.

Speaker 6 We're expanding the size of freshman classes such that these institutions can sit on endowments the size of the Costa Rican GDP. Meanwhile, they decide to only let in 500 people.

Speaker 6 That means you're no longer a public servant.

Speaker 20 So you want them to spend that money so they don't get taxed.

Speaker 6 And because of the threat in this bill of these taxes on their endowments going from 1.5% to potentially 23%, they are proposing a solution where they would spend at least 5% each year of their endowments on things like financial aid, new facilities, the local economy, or expanding freshman seats.

Speaker 6 And that is exactly what they should be doing. There is no reason these elite universities, I mean, I've said this before,

Speaker 6 if higher education were a pharmaceutical, it's a pill that makes you less likely to be obese, more likely to get married, more likely to stay married,

Speaker 6 more likely to be civically involved, less likely to kill yourself, less likely to be obese. And that pill is called higher ed.

Speaker 6 So why would we hoard that pill and make it so expensive when we have the ability to distribute that pill to vastly more of the American public? So I'm hoping that

Speaker 6 one benefit, even if this bill doesn't go through, which I hope it doesn't, is universities are responding and saying, okay, we get it. We should probably,

Speaker 6 if we have $6 million per student, maybe we should spend money on financial aid and maybe letting in a few more students.

Speaker 6 We have to stop this culture of hoarding amongst the most fortunate and blessed. So that's my win.

Speaker 20 The wrong reasons, but the right thing.

Speaker 6 That's right. I think an outcome of this might be that universities realize once you get above a certain point, your job is to spend the money and add value, not to hoard wealth.

Speaker 6 And I think that's a lesson for Americans.

Speaker 6 I decided seven years ago I was going to spend everything above a certain amount or give it away. Hoarding wealth is really a virus in America, and it infects people and it affects institutions.

Speaker 6 Anyway,

Speaker 6 my fail is... So Harvey Milk, many people, some people might not know him.
I know you know him. But essentially, Harvey Milk, who was a U.S.

Speaker 6 supervisor, one of the first openly gay people to be elected in San Francisco, to be elected anywhere, one of the first openly gay officials to be elected.

Speaker 6 He was also, most people don't know this, he was in

Speaker 6 he served during the Korean War on a submarine rescue ship and later as a diving instructor. And his military review records

Speaker 6 use the word outstanding, and he was promoted to officer. And then in 1955, his superiors learned that he was gay, and they gave him a choice.

Speaker 6 They said, either resign and forfeit your military benefits with something called other than honor. And so he had to give up his military benefits or face court-martial.
So he resigned.

Speaker 6 And then he went on to be,

Speaker 6 what's the term?

Speaker 20 Supervisor. He was in my district in the

Speaker 6 between that. I forget what the term is.
Anyways,

Speaker 6 he was one of the, he became supervisor. He was supervisor and he was murdered alongside the mayor, Moscone, by a fellow supervisor.

Speaker 6 I think it was 2017, they said he served honorably, maybe a way of compensating and also a way of recognizing and giving a nod to what is probably 5%, if not more, of our nation's armed services consists of gay people, given that somewhere between 5% and 8% of the U.S.

Speaker 6 population identifies as gay. They played such a huge role.
Wouldn't it be nice to give this guy his overdue recognition and name a ship?

Speaker 6 And they named this, basically this oil tanker that's not an especially important ship, the USNS Harvey Milk. Secretary Hagseth,

Speaker 6 the first week of Pride Week, commands issues an order to rename this ship and saying that this is in line with restoring what they call a warrior mentality, a warrior culture.

Speaker 6 It is just such an affront to the gay community. It is so deeply bigoted.
It is so unnecessary. It is so cruel.
It is just so fucking weird and even distinct of the moral argument.

Speaker 6 What does that say to gay people who want to be in the armed services?

Speaker 6 And folks, just so you know, the straight people showing up, or the straight men and the gay men, I imagine, two-thirds of them or 70% of them can't get through the initial screening because they either are obese or mentally unfit.

Speaker 6 So you want to take an additional 5% of the population and say, you're not welcome here.

Speaker 6 And distinct to the moral argument, I can pretty much prove to anyone that gay people are no better or no worse than defending our shores and killing bad people. And so you're making us less safe.

Speaker 6 When you decide to inhibit the pool of people to defend our country, you are making us less safe.

Speaker 6 So that's not only like weird and straight up bigoted against a guy who served his country honorably and was unjustifiably discharged, right? A small nod to him, a small nod to the gay community.

Speaker 6 Oh, no, we can't let that stand.

Speaker 6 And it makes us weaker. It makes us, what is the message we're sending to good, young, gay men and women who want to serve their country? I know you experienced a little bit of this.

Speaker 20 I wanted to be in the military, Scott, and I wasn't because I didn't want to lie.

Speaker 6 And you refused to go along with Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Yeah.
That makes us weaker.

Speaker 20 Yeah, my dad was in the Navy.

Speaker 6 My dad was in the Navy. When we shrink the pool of potentially great, great human capital, it makes us weaker.
So my fail is this bigoted, weak, and weird renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk.

Speaker 6 This was a really important man that gave people a lot of comfort, made it probably a lot easier for people to represent their community in a transparent way in leadership positions.

Speaker 6 And there's something just very, and by the way, I don't, I didn't like it when Civil War general statues were torn down. I think it's part of history.

Speaker 6 If the community decides they want to tear it down, fine. But I thought we got way too fucking woke and started tearing down

Speaker 20 a different way.

Speaker 6 There were people in London who wanted to tear down statues of Churchill.

Speaker 20 What do you call it when it's the right doing this? Is it woke or is it just drunk in the case of Pete Hugs?

Speaker 6 Well, this is just straight up bigotry. This is just straight up homophobia and bigotry.
But all of these things

Speaker 6 make us less strong.

Speaker 20 It does. It does.
Thank you, Scott. Harvey Milk was a great leader in San Francisco and was killed by

Speaker 20 the Hobbit in City Hall.

Speaker 6 Which, by the way, gave rise to Diane Feinstein, a supervisor who became mayor, Diane Feinstein, who went on to be a very important senator.

Speaker 20 Just a great, he, to this day, there's a place near my house, like a block from my house, where they have the original, his, he had a, he had a photo photography store in the Castro, and that you can go visit it.

Speaker 20 It's, there's a plaque to him, and, uh, and he, where he did his business. He was a business person, too, by the way, in this, in the city, a very successful business person.

Speaker 20 He had a photography store. Anyway, thank you, Scott.
God, Scott, what is happening? What is that? We're switching roles here. It's really interesting.

Speaker 20 I'll start telling penis jokes and everything else.

Speaker 6 I'm moving to San Francisco.

Speaker 20 You are. You're going to move to my house.
Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 20 Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 8-5551-PIVOT. A reminder, we have another live call-in show coming up.

Speaker 20 Call or email us and let us know what you'd like to ask us and make it spicy. We like spicy elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe.

Speaker 20 This week on On with Kara Swisher, I spoke to NPR CEO Catherine Marr. Let's listen to a clip of her discussing NPR's lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Speaker 66 My concern is that this makes this feel as though we are in some way in an adversarial posture to the administration,

Speaker 66 which is not the intent.

Speaker 19 Well, that's what a lawsuit is, right?

Speaker 66 Well, it is, but it's an adversarial posture in response to an adversarial action. And that adversarial action is one that we believe to be unconstitutional.

Speaker 66 So, I mean, mean, if anything, I would say it's our patriotic responsibility to defend the First Amendment as a media organization.

Speaker 20 She was really impressive. She's from tech.
She ran Wikimedia. She's terrific and really it's a great interview.

Speaker 20 Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Vivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out.

Speaker 6 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoy Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Inner Todd entered into this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms. Severo, and Dan Shalon.

Speaker 6 Nashak Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 6 You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.
This isn't law and order, it's fascism foreplay.

Speaker 6 You don't need troops in the streets. You need leaders with spines and policies that don't read like rejected plot lines from the man in the high castle.

Speaker 6 What's going on here has nothing to do with patriotism, has everything to do with authoritarianism.

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LA Protests, Trump's Authoritarian Playbook, and Warner Bros. Discovery Split

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