Biden's Cancer Diagnosis, U.S. Credit Downgrade, and Trump Bullies Walmart

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 2 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

Speaker 1 Introducing Odo.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 6 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

Speaker 8 CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 2 And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 13 That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

Speaker 7 So why not you?

Speaker 17 Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 18 Support for this show comes from Upwork. If you're overextended and understaffed, Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top quality freelancers fast.

Speaker 18 You can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in marketing, design, AI, and more, ready to jump in and take work off your plate.

Speaker 18 Upwork Business Plus sources vets and shortlists proven experts so you can stop doing it all and delegate with confidence.

Speaker 18 Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you get $500 in credit. Go to upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025.

Speaker 18 Again, that's upwork.com slash S-A-V-E, scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 18 Support for this show comes from Upwork. If you're overextended and understaffed, Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top-quality freelancers fast.

Speaker 18 You can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in marketing, design, AI, and more, ready to jump in and take work off your plate.

Speaker 18 Upwork Business Plus sources vets and shortlists proven experts so you can stop doing it all and delegate with confidence.

Speaker 18 Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you get $500 in credit. Go to upwork.com/slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025.

Speaker 18 Again, that's upwork.com slash S-A-V-E, scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 20 I'm so glad to be doing more years with you. I love our show.
I love our team. And I mostly love you, Scott Gallery.

Speaker 19 I appreciate you saying that. I reciprocate all of those good emotions.
Kara, thank you.

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

Speaker 19 So I'm an adolescent. When I wake up in the morning, I immediately grab my phone.
And the first thing I do this morning is I open the New York Times app. And what do I see?

Speaker 19 I see this big, colorful picture of a seven-year-old boy on a climbing wall.

Speaker 19 And I look at it. And granted, I'm a little, you know, misty-eyed, the edibles, just trying to, you know, no coffee, pre-coffee, post-edibles.

Speaker 19 And I'm like, I recognize that climbing wall. Uh-huh.
And then I look and I'm like, that's my climbing wall. That's your climbing wall.
In my place in Soho.

Speaker 19 And that's my seven-year-old, specifically my co-host. That's my seven-year-old boy, specifically my co-host.

Speaker 19 And then the next, I didn't even read the article. I went down to the next picture.
The next picture is you looking very professional in my studio. That's correct.

Speaker 19 Like, are you going to start banging my wife? Are you literally assuming my identity?

Speaker 19 Seriously. What's going on here?

Speaker 20 Well, someone was blibbity-blabbity with the New York Times or someone because all this news got out. So they moved the story forward.
I was supposed to have a picture taken in my studio here.

Speaker 20 And I said, oh, we were doing it at Scott's.

Speaker 20 Because that's where I was last week. And so it turned out well.
It meshed with the headlines.

Speaker 19 Can you say puff piece?

Speaker 19 What was the title?

Speaker 20 Climbing. Future climbing.

Speaker 19 No, the title. I'm sorry.
The title of the article was Kara Swisher Scales Her Empire Even More. I mean, it was like, oh my god it's gonna be that they they literally like

Speaker 19 scales scales her reach even more

Speaker 20 wow I like your quote though I like they call this a screwball comedy I like that that was nice you're feral apparently you're feral the most feral that was kind of rough I know you're but it's true though it's accurate feral feral you're like ah you know you're I'm sort of calm and I'm like oh like oh yeah you're just very chill

Speaker 19 yeah

Speaker 19 That's right. You're just mushroom chocolates come to life.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 20 I did like your quote about making me a billionaire. I really appreciate that.
That was an interesting insight

Speaker 20 of our copacetic relationship. You don't like that I text you at all times? I had no idea.
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 19 Most of the time, it's fine. Yeah, most of the time.

Speaker 19 Most of the time, I just ignore it. The pivot text thing, like, if I see pivot come up, I'm like, pivot team, I'm like, don't read it.

Speaker 20 I do sometimes text you directly.

Speaker 19 I guess it's all these, all these stories about the latest, the latest in Wokestan.

Speaker 20 No, it's not. No, it's not

Speaker 20 too. No, it's not.
It's so untrue. Anyway, thank you.
It was a very nice article. And the photographer was amazing.

Speaker 20 Her last assignment, I think, was doing the West Village Girls for New York Magazine. And then she did that beautiful Bill Burr picture.
She's known for

Speaker 19 her blue framing.

Speaker 19 I thought it looked like an ad for lesbian garanimals.

Speaker 19 Thank you. It's just like, and

Speaker 19 the new garanimals section for.

Speaker 19 the young lady in your life that's decided she

Speaker 19 likes Joan Baez or I don't know, or Katie

Speaker 19 Melissa Etheridge. Melissa Etheridge.
It's like, okay.

Speaker 19 Dockers and a colorful. Dockers.

Speaker 20 I was wearing Jordans.

Speaker 19 What are you talking about? Tommy Bahamas and Dockers. That's how that's what you should request to be buried in.
Seriously. I have no idea.
And the hearse needs to be a Subaru or some lame Eevee.

Speaker 19 I'm already planning. I'm already planning.
How many lesbian tropes are you going to pull out of your your little hat?

Speaker 19 They're so good, though.

Speaker 20 They're not good. It's called a Lesbaroo, first of all.

Speaker 19 A Lesbarou. That's it.

Speaker 20 A U-Haul. You forgot the U-Haul one.
There's so many you're missing. You have to get to.
Anyway, it was a nice piece. And more to the point, thank you again for letting me stay at your beautiful home.

Speaker 20 I had a great time. And Louis really appreciated.
They have driven across country, the two boys, and they're stopping. at all kinds of places, which are very funny.

Speaker 20 And it was really helpful for our family. I really appreciate it.
And thank you for letting me use your climbing wall to become even more egotistical.

Speaker 20 I really appreciate that, to climb to further heights.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Yeah,

Speaker 19 that was

Speaker 19 a good article. You must be happy with it.

Speaker 20 Yeah, it was good. It was good.
It was nice. It was very nice.
And I like the way it had news of our, we're staying at Vox. That's really what the news is, correct?

Speaker 20 And that's a really, we're happy that deal is done, aren't we?

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 19 But most importantly, my girlfriend said that if our podcast

Speaker 19 hits

Speaker 19 next year's wepi, that we'll try anal. So please don't vote.
Her strap-on is huge and it really scares me, Carol. Really scared.
That's how you would.

Speaker 19 I've been looking up lesbian jokes and I couldn't find any, but I thought that one was pretty funny.

Speaker 20 We're going to move you on today because we've got a lot to get to today. Anyway, we'll be here for four more years, everybody.
So just remember, at least this podcast. Who knows what's going on?

Speaker 19 I loved it. Clearly, everyone was going on background, correcting each other about the deal, trying to make each other look better or worse.
Yeah.

Speaker 20 Yeah. It's a good deal.
It's a good deal. And it's a good deal for everybody.

Speaker 19 Well, you know what I said? I said, I told you when we were talking about how to do this deal. I'm like, you got to start thinking like a billionaire and like the people you cover.

Speaker 20 Yeah, you did.

Speaker 19 You did. And we have gotten to a good place.

Speaker 20 We are very happy to stay here. We do like working with Vox, but we did talk to some interesting people.

Speaker 20 It was an interesting, it's an interesting insight into the podcast universe and where things are going. And you have to be creative and try different things.

Speaker 20 We do really, we did a lot of things that are are really interesting in the deal. And hopefully it will yield us both many, many,

Speaker 20 many, many more riches to come and good shows mostly, because I think our fans tend to like us. Hopefully we'll get even bigger.
And then I'll have another piece in four years.

Speaker 20 I don't know where I'll be in your apartment. Maybe I'll own your apartment at that point.

Speaker 19 We'll see about that. Yeah, yeah.
It's all yours. Well, you kind of own it now.

Speaker 19 It's like having a friend. You don't want to own a boat.
You want a friend with a boat. That's kind of where you are right now.

Speaker 20 I love that. Well, you can stay at any of my homes.
I'm not sure.

Speaker 19 I wonder if you've been there more days this year than I have.

Speaker 20 I think I have. I think I actually have.

Speaker 19 If you're. Anyways, congratulations on the article.

Speaker 20 Thank you. Thank you.
I'm excited for your FT pink bitch or salmon bitch article. You have to send it to me when it comes out.
Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today.

Speaker 20 There's a lot going on, including Trump bullying Walmart and Apple, how ridiculous, and Meta delaying the release of its new AI model.

Speaker 20 But first, President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. Biden and his family are reviewing treatment options with doctors.

Speaker 20 A statement from his office notes, the cancer appears to be hormone sensitive, which allows for effective management.

Speaker 20 Messages of support have come in from across the political spectrum, including President Trump, though Don Jr.

Speaker 20 and other MAGA adjacent folks are already spreading theories about cover-ups and conspiracies.

Speaker 20 All this as a new book and audio recordings are raising questions about his mental fitness over the last few years.

Speaker 20 Any reaction to this news, except sort of sad.

Speaker 19 Why don't you go first on this one, Carol?

Speaker 20 I'm sad for him. I don't feel like, you know, there's been a lot of people like, you should talk more about this Biden book.
Look, it's in the rearview mirror. He obviously shouldn't have run.

Speaker 20 Scott in particular, and then I jumped on the same wagon as him, thought he should have stepped down much earlier. We talked about it a lot.
We got a lot of attacks for saying that.

Speaker 20 I don't want to say we were right. We just felt we needed, it wasn't so much that he, it was that he was older, but that we needed a fresh start and someone who was up to the task of the presidency.

Speaker 20 And by the way, we said the same thing about Donald Trump. He's too old.
He's just simply too old and is not headed in the right direction mentally or physically. So

Speaker 20 I feel, but I do feel badly. This guy has devoted himself to service.
I think on the whole, he will be judged well by history. I think he's done a lot of

Speaker 20 important things

Speaker 20 as an interesting evolution. I think the last couple of years of his life have not gone well for him.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 this is bad news. As for Don Jr.
and other MAGA people doing this, this, go fuck yourselves. It's really grotesque.

Speaker 20 He wasn't hiding cancer. He may have had it.
Maybe he didn't get checked. I don't know.

Speaker 20 But given that the MAGA people are already

Speaker 20 pushing the Epstein suicide conspiracy theories, and now Dan Vongino, who did that, one of the people who did it, is now saying it was suicide.

Speaker 20 It's just these people, all they want to do is spread theories to create. a mess.
And it's sad that they're doing it on and the fact that this guy probably is in a little more.

Speaker 20 It's probably not a very good prognosis for Joe Biden would be my guess. I'm not a doctor, but it sounds like it.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 I mean, I had a bunch of thoughts about it. My first thought was, how did the president of the United States,

Speaker 19 I get scanned all the time now. And it was shocking to me that

Speaker 19 his first kind of quote-unquote diagnosis we know of had a gleason test of nine. I mean, and it spread to his bones.

Speaker 19 Typically, I would have thought that he'd be getting scans all the time and getting PSA tests all the time.

Speaker 19 And that I was shocked that it went so that kind of the first, what sounds like the first recognition of it was that it was this advanced.

Speaker 19 So he's already seven years past the life expectancy of the average American man.

Speaker 19 He's had a wonderful life of service. It's a tragedy for him and his family, not nearly the tragedy that he has endured, losing children.
But, you know, he's, he's had an incredible life. And,

Speaker 19 you know, best wishes to him. But it does bring up some really big issues.
And

Speaker 19 what, first off, the cover-up. Yeah, it was a cover-up.
And guess what?

Speaker 19 Anyone with aging parents, we all are co-conspirators in this cover-up because your parents, their brain shrinks and they don't realize they think it's insane that you take their driver's license from them.

Speaker 19 Were you kidding? I beat Trump. I'm pushing back on Russia.
I passed the Infrastructure Act. Of course, I can be president for another four years.

Speaker 19 I mean, that was a less crazy statement than a lot of the shit my dad said at 70. I mean, you're going through the same thing.

Speaker 19 So, and not only that, the people around you have tremendous goodwill and affection for you, and they get co-opted into believing,

Speaker 19 oh, maybe he can go another four years. So there wasn't anything sinister here.
There's what happens a lot. And for me, this all goes to the same point.

Speaker 20 Very good point, Scott.

Speaker 19 And that is, we need age limits, folks. Biology is undefeated.
It's absolutely undefeated, no matter how, no matter how.

Speaker 19 I was the first to come out of the closet as an ageist and say this guy was too old. And Bill Maher called me an ageist.
And I said, I am an ageist.

Speaker 20 I'll tell you that. You did get it.

Speaker 19 You know who I was also an ageist? Biology. Biology always wins.

Speaker 19 And the reality is this would have put the nation in a real pickle because you would have had a president who probably wouldn't have handed over the mantle, say he'd been re-elected, who probably wouldn't have handed over the mantle to Vice President Harris because quite frankly, Joe Biden is a wonderful man.

Speaker 19 He's also a narcissist and would have made the country's leadership less robust. We need,

Speaker 19 we have made a decision that 34-year-olds don't have the experience, the cognitive abilities, the reasoning, and the judgment to be president. A 74-year-old probably doesn't.
Now,

Speaker 19 I'm sure there's a 100-year-old that will do the marathon and does the New York Times crossword puzzle every day. We need age limits at the upper limit.

Speaker 20 What's your age limit again?

Speaker 19 I forgot. I would probably say 75, 70 or 75.

Speaker 20 Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of places are 65. Like the New York Times editor is 65, right? There's, there's like, I would say

Speaker 20 70.

Speaker 19 Well, and this is the thing. It's not only, there's so many benefits to this.
One, we're about to, the Trump administration is about to pass through a ridiculous, a ridiculous tax bill.

Speaker 19 And all the goodies go to old people. Why?

Speaker 19 Because our Congress is a cross between the Golden Girls and the land of the Walking Dead.

Speaker 19 So they keep voting themselves more money and great young people who understand technology and have a tendency to think more about climate change and the deficit because they're going to be around for 50 years.

Speaker 19 Do you realize in 30 years, SEP, three-quarters of Congress is going to be dead? So this creates a lack of vested interest in forward-leaning future investments. In addition,

Speaker 19 you end up with a situation where I see this happen at universities where tenured faculty won't go away, creating a lack of opportunity.

Speaker 20 We've been talking about this for a while, about the 10-year system.

Speaker 19 And not only that,

Speaker 19 it's the kindest thing to do because, and I'm bragging here, but I'm typically, I'm oftentimes on the board. People go, he's the asshole.
Let him have the hard conversations.

Speaker 19 I've had two conversations with CEOs who were aging to say, it's time for you to step down. I've also had conversations with other directors who step down from the CEO of their company.

Speaker 19 And the only thing they have is that fucking board directorship, where they show up for free dinner every three months and speak big thoughts.

Speaker 19 And they love saying, I'm on the board of this public company. And here's the thing that's wonderful about term limits and age limits: you can send people off and say, You've been amazing.

Speaker 19 Here's your gold watch. Right.

Speaker 20 And then it's not the excuse, but you do, there is a sense of like people want to hold on. I was at

Speaker 20 one of these like clubs on the Upper East Side, and it was full of those guys. And I kept thinking, they just can't let go.
They can't, you know what I mean? Like, it was interesting.

Speaker 19 You see why? I had one of these conversations, not with a CEO, but with a director. and he was like, He said, I remember he was very gracious about it.
He said, I know this was a hard conversation.

Speaker 19 He goes, And you know what he said? He said, You know what? At the end of the day, he's like, It's time for me to go home and die. And that's how people see this: wait, you want to send me home?

Speaker 20 This is all I have to do. Yeah, they know it.
You know, that's the issue with my mom, too. She knows, right? They know this is it.

Speaker 20 This is the, if they have to stop, it may, or they stop getting decision-making power or power or whatever.

Speaker 20 In Biden's case, it's just tragic because it puts a I want to get it back to Biden, but it puts an the ending of this is not good. It's not a good thing.

Speaker 20 And especially when you have crazy fucking MAGA people, they were going on about Jill Biden not knowing about, she's not a medical doctor, people. She's his wife, really.
And so

Speaker 19 she does call herself doctor. That was a mistake.
She does call herself doctor.

Speaker 20 She has a doctorate, whatever. In any case.

Speaker 20 This has not ended well. And this is how it often happens.

Speaker 20 People don't end well. Can you make me a promise? Can we end well?

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 19 to be clear, I mean, I'm not obsessed with death, but I'm looking,

Speaker 19 I think a lot about it. I have set aside money.

Speaker 19 I know where I want to die. I know the drugs.
I know the people. I have set up, I want to watch Apple.
I want to live my life again. I've thought about the Apple reels.
I've thought about the music.

Speaker 19 And I want to, like that great Mexican artist, Frida, Frida Kayla. Frida said, I want my death to be glorious and I don't want to come back.

Speaker 19 I want to, I'm, I purposely, and also I've decided at a certain age, I'm done.

Speaker 19 I'm off of social media and I'm not going, I'm just going to enjoy relationships and do just fun shit because you know what?

Speaker 19 You have to, you have an obligation at some point to make room for other people

Speaker 19 to say, okay,

Speaker 19 it's, it's time to give a fresh voices an opportunity here. It's time to create some room at the top of the pyramid.
There are so many

Speaker 19 outstanding young people.

Speaker 20 I feel the same way, except I'm not going out like you. I'm just going to let nature take its course with Garrison.

Speaker 20 But I'll be there for you if you want that.

Speaker 19 I appreciate that.

Speaker 20 Yeah, I'll do an interpretive dance in front of you just before you die.

Speaker 19 You have to start climbing on my climbing wall.

Speaker 20 Anyway, we have to move on. This is getting dark.
But anyway, not today, by the way. Let me just say Mission Impossible is coming next week.

Speaker 19 I'm so excited. Speaking of aging, speaking of aging.
I like Action Heroes who are 63.

Speaker 20 You know what? He looks good. I don't really care.
It's supposed to be a great movie.

Speaker 19 He does look good.

Speaker 20 All right. Speaking of something that's not doing so well, Moody's has officially downgraded the U.S.
credit rating. You wrote me right away about this, stripping the country of its last AAA rating

Speaker 19 of the three major agencies.

Speaker 20 Moody's blamed the downgrade on successive administrations and Congress failing to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs.

Speaker 20 The credit downgrade comes as Republicans try to pass Trump's big, beautiful bill. I wish she would not call it that.

Speaker 20 A sweeping tax and spending package estimated to increase the deficit by about $4 trillion.

Speaker 20 The bill cleared the House budget committee late Sunday night after initially getting blocked by some GOP deficit hawks. They never hold on, these hawks.
It sucks.

Speaker 20 In terms of the market reaction, as I'm just recording, stocks are down and the 30-year Treasury yield just hit its highest level in a year and a half. You texted me.

Speaker 20 This is big when the Moody's news broke.

Speaker 20 Explain to people why this downgrade is more than a symbolic move.

Speaker 20 Scott Besant was all over

Speaker 20 the TVs on the weekend calling it, calling dismissed Moody's, calling it a lagging indicator on Meet the Press. He also said it's no big deal that consumers have to pay tariff money.

Speaker 20 Of course, he admitted they will have to, and it won't be China that's paying.

Speaker 20 And by the way, there's a new acronym for people ditching American investments, which you've talked about a lot, Abusa, anywhere but the USA. So talk a little bit about this because

Speaker 20 you do not respond to a lot of stuff when we text you or I text you. This one, you did.

Speaker 19 Everything just got a little bit more expensive for every every American.

Speaker 19 We were talking about corporate boards and companies.

Speaker 19 We spend a lot of time assessing the marketplace and trying to figure out when we go out and borrow money for growth, how we ensure we get the highest rating possible from these agencies whose job is to do the diligence that most investors don't have the time to do.

Speaker 19 And then based on the rating they give you, saying, what is the likelihood of default? What is the likelihood of the risk that this entity won't be able to pay back the money?

Speaker 19 And based on the rating, it's the interest rate you have to pay to people in order for them to take the risk and loan you money.

Speaker 19 And if you get a good rating and you say, you know what, let's not borrow as much money, let's borrow less such that our multiple, our debt to call it EBITDA ratio is a little bit lower.

Speaker 19 And we get a better credit rating and we can borrow money at a lower cost, meaning that the interest on that debt is not as big.

Speaker 19 So we can make more investments in forward-leaning growth-related investments.

Speaker 19 And oftentimes, if you get to a point where you keep borrowing more and more money and then start borrowing money to pay the debt, which we are doing now, it causes a downward spiral where at some point you begin to look like a Donald Trump enterprise where he's done the following.

Speaker 19 I'll borrow money from anyone who's stupid enough to loan me money from my casino. And if it works out and all the projections hit, I can pay it back and make a lot of money.

Speaker 19 And if it doesn't work out, I'll just declare default. Okay, declaring default in the United States would be really bad for all of us.
I mean, people, I can't even imagine what might happen.

Speaker 19 You might see ATM stop working.

Speaker 19 And so essentially what has happened here is the third and final agency of the big three has said, our ability to pay back our debt based on the reckless fiscal policy, our reckless spending and inability to raise taxes or raise revenues means that we are now a larger risk than we were.

Speaker 19 just last year.

Speaker 19 And as a result, every American is going to have to pay more on their student loans, their credit cards, on their mortgages, and companies will likely have to pay more, meaning we will have less money to invest and grow.

Speaker 19 This is a big deal.

Speaker 20 Along with the tariffs, which Besson was admitting, finally.

Speaker 19 But the deficits here, they're talking about adding $4.5 trillion to the deficits. And again, see above, catering to old people in America.
They're not cutting Social Security.

Speaker 19 They're not cutting Medicare for old people because even old rich people like their Medicare. They're cutting Medicaid.
Supposedly about 8 million people are going to lose their Medicaid.

Speaker 19 So young people

Speaker 19 will have a sicker populace.

Speaker 19 They're cutting snap payments, which by the way, show a 2% to 7% return on investment as little kids don't grow up to have diabetes, need hip replacements, and kidney dialysis. So let's cut.

Speaker 19 It's as if we're literally in a movie here. And America is Nicholas Cage and leaving Las Vegas.
And he's thought, I'm just so fucking rapidly addicted to alcohol.

Speaker 19 As American, old people are too addicted to spending above their means that I'm just going to ignore the future and I'm just going to drink myself to death because all of my debts and all of my relationships don't matter because I'm going to be dead soon.

Speaker 19 This is literally how we're behaving in the United States right now because we are borrowing, according to this tax plan, $5 trillion

Speaker 19 from our kids. And

Speaker 19 the chickens won't come to roost while we're still alive.

Speaker 19 But they will come to roost and our kids are going to have to pay this shit back.

Speaker 20 Right. Or do it, pay it forward again, which is what happens.
And at some point, it does spin out of control.

Speaker 20 The fact that with people to understand, Donald Trump is the one that has increased the deficit more than any other president in the history of the presidency.

Speaker 19 George Washington to George Bush, $7 trillion. Donald Trump, $8 trillion.
And by the way,

Speaker 19 Biden continued it with $5 trillion. And now everyone, it's like that number, I think of negative 40.
Negative 40 is where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet.

Speaker 19 That is a really inhospitable, bad environment. And whenever the far left and the far right meet, that means it's an inhospitable, bad idea.

Speaker 19 The far left and the far right meet on anti-vaccine craziness. They meet on anti-Semitism, and they meet on reckless spending and tax cuts such that we can explode the deficit.
This is negative 40.

Speaker 20 Why don't these GOP deficit hocs ever stick? I mean, seriously, they never stick. I'm like, waiting.
Chip Roy, get yourself a fucking backbone.

Speaker 20 You say it out loud and you say, I'm not going to do this.

Speaker 20 And then every you get Mike Johnson, I don't know what he's doing to you, but it's like, like you're the only people that can stop this and you won't. So really what you're saying is crap.

Speaker 19 I mean, I hate the moral argument I'm going to make. It's so cruel because no, they're not talking about,

Speaker 19 I could sort of at least theoretically get on board with the following. We have to make really painful cuts.
I would make them around Social Security.

Speaker 19 I'd make them probably around some of our military spending.

Speaker 19 You know, I'm sympathetic to the argument of we are fiscally fiscally irresponsible, we are robbing from future generations, so we have to make really ugly, painful cuts.

Speaker 19 It's terrible, but it sucks to be an adult. But we're going to match every dollar cut, one-to-one or two-to-one, with an increase in revenues by increasing the taxes on corporations.

Speaker 19 We're going to have an alternative minimum tax on anyone saying, making more than $1 million.

Speaker 19 I could hold my nose and get on board with that. But all these quote-unquote fiscal hawks aren't saying we need to talk about the other side of the ledger and raise revenues.

Speaker 19 What they're saying is these Medicare cuts, I'm sorry, these Medicaid cuts don't go deep enough.

Speaker 19 And I mean, this shit is really scary for some people. And it's not only immoral, it's

Speaker 19 uneconomic.

Speaker 20 Economically stupid.

Speaker 20 If you appeal to the degree, you're going to have a sick, fat,

Speaker 20 struggling, angry population under you who can't earn and have no economic opportunities. You know where that's going to go.
Anyway, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 20 When we come back, Trump gets pissy with Walmart and Apple.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 21 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 23 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 25 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

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

Speaker 8 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 29 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 11 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 26 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 5 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 33 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 13 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 17 Try Odo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 18 Support for this show comes from upwork. So you started a business, but you didn't expect to become the head of everything.
Now you're doing marketing, customer service, and IT with no support staff.

Speaker 18 At some point, doing it all becomes the reason nothing gets done. Stop doing everything.

Speaker 18 Instead of spending weeks sorting through random resumes, Upwork Business Plus sends a curated shortlist of expert talent to your inbox in hours.

Speaker 18 These are trusted, top-rated freelancers vetted for skills and reliability.

Speaker 18 And with Upwork Business Plus, you can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in marketing, design, AI, and more, all ready to jump in and take work off your plate.

Speaker 18 Upwork Business Plus can take the hassle out of hiring and the pressure off your team.

Speaker 18 That way you can can stop doing everything and instead focus on scaling while the pros at Upwork can handle the rest. Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you get $500 in credit.

Speaker 18 Go to upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025. Again, that's upwork.com slash S-A-V-E.

Speaker 18 Scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 21 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 23 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 25 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 26 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

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

Speaker 8 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 29 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 11 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 26 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 5 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 33 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 13 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 17 Try Odoo for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 20 Scott, we're back. President Trump spent the weekend bullying Walmart after the company's CEO said some of the prices could rise within weeks because of the tariffs, obviously.

Speaker 20 In a post on True Social, Trump told Walmart to eat the tariffs and warmed, I'll be watching and so will your customers.

Speaker 20 Scott Besson said that he's spoken with Walmart's CEO and that the company will absorb some of the tariffs and some may get passed on to consumers.

Speaker 20 About one-third of Walmart's products come from outside the U.S., with a large share coming from China and Mexico. And it's not just Walmart.
Trump's taking aim at Apple, too.

Speaker 20 He says that he had a little problem with CEO Tim Cook after hearing the company plans to ramp up iPhone production in India.

Speaker 20 Apple's trying to cut its reliance on China and aiming to make most of the iPhones sold in the U.S. at factories in India by the end of 2026.
Apple announced that $500 billion investment in the U.S.

Speaker 20 back in February, but apparently that's not enough for Trump. Let's listen to Trump recount his conversation with Tim Cook.

Speaker 34 I said, Tim, look, we've treated you really good. We put up with all the plants that you built in China for years.

Speaker 34 Now you got to build us. We're not interested in you building in India.
India can take care of themselves. They're doing very well.

Speaker 20 So two things, very meddlesome with the companies in terms of how they should price it and putting reality, tariffs cost money and they're going to pass them on to consumers.

Speaker 20 What is this I'll be watching strategy and telling people where to build and thoughts?

Speaker 19 Well, we've talked about this before. We've seen a separation between church and state or that separation begin to erode.
And

Speaker 19 just as important from an economic standpoint is the separation between business and state. And that is

Speaker 19 Obama shouldn't have been picking winners.

Speaker 19 I agree with that.

Speaker 19 And he shouldn't be deciding based on his blood sugar level or who he likes or doesn't like.

Speaker 19 He shouldn't be singling out companies because that is a form of corruption because everyone lines up to just kiss his ass.

Speaker 19 And not only that, he's a terrible business person. Do you realize that since the iPhone was launched, Apple has trained over 28 million Chinese workers on high-tech manufacturing?

Speaker 19 And also they make about 500 bucks a month, at least an entry-level

Speaker 19 assembler in China. We're not bringing those jobs back to the U.S.

Speaker 19 They've also invested about they invest about $55 billion a year into the Chinese economy, which you could argue was the wrong investment or stupid.

Speaker 19 I mean, they've made these extraordinary investments.

Speaker 19 And if you were to bring back, which you feasibly just can't do it, but let's just say for shits and giggles, we brought back manufacturing of the iPhone to the U.S., that's a $3,500 iPhone.

Speaker 20 Yeah. Well, you said

Speaker 20 there's a statistic it would need to spend $30 billion over three years to move just 10% of its supply chain to the U.S., according to to one estimate.

Speaker 20 And you had noted that the tariff was going to help India. Like, I just, it's not going to happen.
It's just simply not going to happen. But talk more about this.
I'll be watching.

Speaker 20 Does it, does it, does it, at some point, do they not, they just ignore him or what?

Speaker 19 I would be, I would bet. I think Tim Cook is very savvy if he says.

Speaker 20 Also, Walmart.

Speaker 19 I'd love you to hear about Walmart. I think what they say is we're going, you know, the president is right.
We need to build more manufacturing in the U.S.

Speaker 19 We're announcing and just say, okay, the supply chain here is the most complex supply chain in history. We're going to start to build stuff that I knew what it's like to get zoning and NIMBY.

Speaker 19 It's going to take a year, da, da, da, and just wait till he's about until he's out of office because to bring the supply chain of to produce Apple at 50%

Speaker 19 of the capacity they would need in the U.S.

Speaker 19 I mean, A, it would probably crush their market by 50, their market share by 50 or 60 points and probably take the most held held stock in the world down 40 or 60 percent within a year if they ever really said they were going to try and do that people people can't afford a 30 i mean

Speaker 19 the market for a thousand dollar iphone is probably five or eight x what the market is for a thirty five hundred dollar iphone i used to be like

Speaker 19 that that's a lot of money and then they well all the stories would be oh you just that's a huge gift to the korean company samsung so that's just not going to happen so what i bet they do is a couple press releases about how we're, he's right, we're going to invest more in American manufacturing.

Speaker 19 You know, if, if

Speaker 19 the real opportunity here, I think going to solutions, in my view, is to kiss and make up with China and to convince them to use some of their manufacturing prowess to build factories in the U.S., similar to the way Japanese automobile companies have built Japanese car brand plants in the U.S.

Speaker 19 But even then, it would have to be super high in manufacturing because to justify the cost of our labor.

Speaker 19 Anyways,

Speaker 19 this is a distraction.

Speaker 19 Walmart gets about, I think about a third of its products

Speaker 20 from China

Speaker 19 and Mexico. Are imported.

Speaker 19 They will just, and Walmart, if he wants to take on Walmart and Apple, I think that is,

Speaker 19 you know, that's crazy. And then this ridiculous notion that Scott Bassina is saying, well, Walmart is going to eat the tariffs.

Speaker 19 Walmart operates, Walmart's whole value proposition is is it passes on cost savings to the consumer.

Speaker 19 They operate at a business of scale with very low margins, but it's got more scale than any company in the world. I think it's the biggest top-line company in the world.

Speaker 19 So the notion that they can absorb these costs and not pass them on to consumers,

Speaker 19 it's just not, I mean, okay, say they decided to do that for the benefit of consumers. That takes their earnings down, which takes their share price down, which means

Speaker 19 the wealth of American households go down, which means they make fewer investments, fewer hires, less money for bonuses. I mean, okay, that's a cost.
You might argue, well, that hurts shareholders.

Speaker 19 Fine, you can make that argument. But folks, they've got a business to run, and they will figure out a way to optimize their margins.
Correct. And it'll be- He is living in a different era.

Speaker 20 He's a shitty business person.

Speaker 19 He doesn't understand economics. He is.

Speaker 20 And he's living in an era that doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 20 Anyway, we have to move on. It's just ridiculous.
He shouldn't be meddling, putting his fat fingers, fat shorts fingers in people's corporate decision making.

Speaker 20 Meta is delaying the release of its Behemoth, its largest Lama 4 AI model. Behemoth was originally scheduled to be released in April, but the company is now aiming for fall.

Speaker 20 You know,

Speaker 20 this is something that seemed expected, that these AI models would run into

Speaker 20 problems as they move forward.

Speaker 20 Another problem Meta is facing, though, is fraud. According to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Meta is the leader in the pack when it comes to internet scams.

Speaker 20 The tech giant claimed nearly half of all reported scams on Zelle between 2023 and 24.

Speaker 20 Regulators in the UK and Australia found that 70% of the new advertisers on the platform are promoting scams or low-quality products. Of course, they'll take their business.

Speaker 20 However, employees have reported a reluctance to limit advertisers reporting allowing up to 32 automated strikes for financial fraud before banning accounts. I mean, seriously, seriously.

Speaker 20 And meanwhile, over at places like Microsoft, they're laying off 3% of its staff, over 40% of layoffs were in engineering.

Speaker 20 The cuts come after Satch and Nadella announced up to 30% of the company's code is now written by AI.

Speaker 20 He himself is now listening to podcasts by AI, and they synopsize them, so he doesn't have to listen to the whole thing,

Speaker 20 which was a weird little fact that was in one of the stories. So what's going on here?

Speaker 20 Let's talk first about the difficulties that AI is running into and then the difficulties that tech companies are running into.

Speaker 19 It's so I'm involved in a company called Section, which is upskilling AI for the enterprise, right? Trying to help companies figure out how to leverage AI.

Speaker 19 And the CEO of the company, my friend Greg Shove,

Speaker 19 my whole rap has always been that AI is not going to take your job. Someone who understands AI is going to take your job.
And he said, well, some of that's true, but AI is in fact taking jobs.

Speaker 19 And there's been a real

Speaker 19 kind of gag from a lot of employees.

Speaker 19 They're very suspicious of AI at the enterprise. Like, okay, are you asking me to cooperate in my own execution here?

Speaker 19 Um,

Speaker 19 this will be great for Microsoft's bottom line. I mean, you know, that is, that is absolutely the nitro and glycerin of an explosion in earnings is when you can reduce, you know, these costs.

Speaker 19 And they claim that it's more about efficiency and not, not cost cutting. On a personal level, I've been, I don't want to call myself a, not a victim, but I started getting text messages of a video

Speaker 19 and a few people say that I didn't know that. Well, should I do this? And I click on it, and it's a video that was running on Instagram.
And it was me saying,

Speaker 19 I'm each week at my three best stock tips. Right now on the

Speaker 19 WhatsApp, I have a WhatsApp group. Thanks, God.
And it was, and it was, it looked pretty good on a phone. On a computer, you could tell it was AI, but it looked pretty good.

Speaker 19 And people were sending sending it to me saying, Are you aware of this? Should I do this?

Speaker 19 So someone, a scammer, had figured out a way to create an AI representation of me trying to get both people into spending money to join a WhatsApp group where I would make quote-unquote stock picks.

Speaker 19 We complained vociferously, early and often to Meta.

Speaker 19 You can still find it, Kara. Yep.
They don't care. It's like, oh, people are clicking on it.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 So these scams are,

Speaker 19 and what I don't get is

Speaker 19 they could absolutely use AI themselves to figure out this shit and take shit down.

Speaker 20 Yeah, they want more advertisers. You remember when Amazon was doing books of mine that weren't MOOCs of mine? It's the same thing.
I mean, but these companies don't want to fix this stuff.

Speaker 20 Otherwise, they would clean it up. Like it was, they want more advertisers.
They leave.

Speaker 20 It's the consistent.

Speaker 20 record of this company to screw consumers before themselves, like before fixing the problem or taking the costs that it would take to do this because they they just want to I mean can you imagine that many knocks before you get thrown off like do you need that many knocks before 32 automated strikes before for financial fraud before banning accounts like it's just why isn't it two or five or why don't we investigate after five and then dump after 10 or something it just is it's it's a company that doesn't care about that because um

Speaker 20 they're just you know and these companies will cut let me just say software engineers, they will cut you tomorrow. If the minute they can have AI write this code, they are in love with it.

Speaker 20 They're in love with the savings, as Scott said, and they will do it because that's what they do. They are very good at becoming more efficient.
And of course, people are hardly their concern.

Speaker 20 That's always been my impression.

Speaker 19 Yeah, and to be fair, I think that's what they should do, but they should use technology to become more efficient and reinvest the capital in higher growth areas.

Speaker 19 The thing that struck me, just talking about the difference between new media, meta, and old media, the New York Times,

Speaker 19 there's clear AI financial fraud, trying to misrepresent people and scam people. Doesn't get taken down.

Speaker 19 Do you know how many times that reporter from the New York Times doing the story on you called me to fact check shit?

Speaker 19 Right. Yeah.
Oh my God. Where did you get that? You told us this number.
Where'd you get it? And I'd have to walk him through the math and go, okay, are you sure? Yeah.

Speaker 19 And then you call me back and say, but define the term profits and top.

Speaker 19 The guy spent

Speaker 19 three or four days going line by line such that he could look anyone in the face and say, what we wrote here was as close to the truth and as accurate as we could be. And then you have meta

Speaker 19 putting out AI representations.

Speaker 20 That is a really good point. He called yesterday, or two days ago, yesterday, he had like, can I call these 19 people to check something that didn't even make it in the story?

Speaker 20 Some of them, you know, that got caught later. You're right.

Speaker 19 That's a, Scott, once again you're insightful and ambushing you're just you're just feeling affectionate because i let you use my climbing wall i love your climbing whose idea was that take a picture of me on the climbing wall yeah i look good on the climbing wall be a damp it was a good idea you look like irve vilichez like summiting everest for a fundraiser

Speaker 19 in your studio anyway we're moving on tyrion lannister going up a master and who was the hero of that series he's the he's the protagonist although i did like jamie i did like jamie he loved his sister but he also loved brianna tarth he evolved from a horrible man to a good man his community was good very complex but the short guy was the hero of that entire thing anyway scott uh let's go on a quick break when we come back uh novo nordisc pushes out its ceo this is a topic i'm eager to hear talk to you about i so should have married a wildling

Speaker 7 support for the show comes from sax 5th avenue sacks 5th avenue makes it it easy to holiday your way.

Speaker 7 Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit, Saks is where you can find everything from a stunning David Yerman bracelet for her or a sleek pair of faragama loafers to wear to a fancy holiday dinner.

Speaker 7 And if you don't know where to start, Saks.com is customized to your personal style so you can save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays.

Speaker 7 Make shopping fun and easy this season and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 21 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 23 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 25 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

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

Speaker 8 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 29 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 11 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 26 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 5 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 33 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters: running your business.

Speaker 13 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 17 Try Odoo for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 35 Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new. Show me all the things PDFs can do.
Do your work with ease and speed. PDF spaces is all you need.
Do hours of research in an instant.

Speaker 35 With key insights from an AI assistant. Pick a template with a click.
Now your Prezo looks super slick. Close that deal, yeah, you won.
Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Speaker 35 Now you can do that, do that with Acrobat. Now you can do that, do that with the all-new Acrobat.
It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe

Speaker 20 Scott, we're back. Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk has pushed out as CEO as it loses ground in the anti-obesity drug market.

Speaker 20 Lars Jorgensen, who has run the company for eight years, will step down following the stock price dives and impatience from the nonprofit that controls the company.

Speaker 20 In recent years, the company has struggled with supply shortages in the production of Wogovi and the steep competition from Eli Lillies, Mongero, and ZepBound, to say nothing of the knockoffs that are happening, which they're trying to rein in, but they're not being as successful.

Speaker 20 They're trying. Novo Nordisk shares have fallen over 50% since 2024 and had a huge upsurge when this became popular.

Speaker 20 And while on the topic, Weight Watchers filed for bankruptcy, which was another prediction win for you, Scott, by the way.

Speaker 20 Talk about what's happening here because, you know, we had talked about these industries going to the moon. It's sort of like NVIDIA going to the moon because of people interested in it.

Speaker 20 But it turns out, even if you have a successful thing, you have to keep in competition once the competition shows. Same thing, see Tesla, see all these things.

Speaker 19 Yeah, but this was Aspa at the Motor and basically said that Nova Nordisk is a good company, but it's not an exceptionally innovative company.

Speaker 19 And they kind of slipped and fell on a diabetes drug that also had use across GOP1 obesity. But

Speaker 19 it wasn't kind of this great innovation. And they wrote it up.
And your job, when you're blessed with that sort of extraordinary luck and additional capital, is to create moats.

Speaker 19 And that either through distribution or branding or a preference at the the doctor level. And then in the U.S., I forget what it's called,

Speaker 19 a bunch of drugs were given clearance sort of off label because of the shortages.

Speaker 19 And I imagine the board has just said, look, you had a moment to really take advantage of what is probably a once-in-a-career lifetime moment.

Speaker 19 and create some barriers of brand equity or lock up distribution to maintain. And my guess is their margins are just getting hammered by all of these competitors.

Speaker 19 I honestly, quite frankly, I think his loss is probably the world's gain, meaning that there's competition and they're not able to sustain their kind of usterous margins.

Speaker 19 I think one of the biggest unlocks for healthcare would be if GLP1 drugs went down to 10 bucks a month instead of $1,000 a month. Because this is, if you look at,

Speaker 19 you know, if you look at the delta between $6,500 a year per capita health spend and $13,000, a lot of it is insurance,

Speaker 19 a lot of it is complexity of billing, and a lot of it is obesity. And so I'd love to see,

Speaker 19 I was happy to see this, quite frankly, because I don't want to see if Nova Nordisk had gone, it's been cut in half.

Speaker 19 But if it had quadrupled in the last year, that just would have meant probably additional penetration, but also that they were able to figure out ways to monopolize a market where they were charging people $1,000 a month.

Speaker 20 Yeah. So what about the Weight Watchers one? This is a prediction you made.
Obviously, they were trying to get into this market. They have been with a CEO.
I've interviewed her.

Speaker 20 They were trying to shift. They've been trying to, they keep shifting.
I have had so many interviews with so many CEOs of Weight Watchers, and the shifting has been really hard.

Speaker 20 And I think at hard is their business model doesn't work anymore in the new environment. But they tried to go to these drugs and they tried this and they tried that.
They tried to call WW.

Speaker 20 They tried to do a different thing all the time. Why did you predict that? And what do you think of what's happened?

Speaker 19 At the end of 23, and I heard from all of these companies, I said, you do not want to be an investor in alcohol stocks, in the food industrial complex around sugary, shitty food, or in weight loss that doesn't involve GLP-1.

Speaker 19 And I had logos, including the logos of Weight Watchers. And I'm like, I don't, I, I typically make stock bets going long.

Speaker 19 And in November of 23, I made a huge, my big recommendation was to go short all of these companies.

Speaker 19 My technology at the year of 2024 wasn't AI. I said that in 23.
It was GLP-1. I think it's more revolutionary than AI, quite frankly.

Speaker 19 And while everyone's focused on AI, they're not looking at what America's economy is run on is addiction. And this is the biggest thing.

Speaker 19 This is scaffolding on our primitive instincts that haven't been updated to industrial production. And Weight Watchers was just, quite frankly, shitty technology,

Speaker 19 you know, that just shouldn't be in business. I love this.
This is capitalism at work.

Speaker 20 So what do you, what do you, where is this going to go? This is something you've talked, you talked about this very early. Where do you imagine these bits?

Speaker 20 It's just more competition, just the way EVs are doing that.

Speaker 20 And lots of people are, you know, at the same time, EV is still a very very rocky business and people aren't, the uptake is still not there for consumers.

Speaker 20 It's growing, but not in the way people thought it would.

Speaker 19 This has such extraordinary potential. You know, who's the winner here?

Speaker 19 Well, I don't.

Speaker 19 So this is what I'm hoping.

Speaker 19 I'm hoping there's a lot of companies that make billions, but I'm hoping there aren't that many that make hundreds of billions because one of the biggest detriments to society is that there aren't more industries like the airline industry or jet manufacturing or or PCs, where no small number of companies are able to develop monopoly power through regulatory capture.

Speaker 19 And the cost to get from Paris to New York is only $400, which is an incredible unlock for the economy and for consumers.

Speaker 19 And I think an incredible unlock for the health of the world and ultimately lower taxation because we end up paying for obesity in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, or depression.

Speaker 19 Do you realize that people who are good looking on average make 8% more per year in compensation?

Speaker 20 Yes, I do.

Speaker 19 And you get nine, right? And especially if they can climb. As you read in the New York Times.
Especially if they can climb. That she scales her empire even bigger.

Speaker 19 And you know what?

Speaker 19 Overweight people, the industrial food complex decided it would be politically correct to tell people they're not finding diabetes, they're finding their truth, and that it's okay to be obese.

Speaker 19 Do you need empathy for them? Yeah.

Speaker 19 But also recognize they're more likely to be depressed and get laid off and have trouble finding a mate. And so I would love to see, you want to talk about an onlock?

Speaker 19 Get people to money such that they can work out, get people to money such that they can eat good food.

Speaker 19 And if they start spilling over from being overweight to obesity, immediately get them affordable GLP-1 drugs.

Speaker 19 In 2023, the neighborhood with the greatest concentration of GLP-1 use was also the neighborhood that's the thinnest in the nation. And that's the Upper East Side.

Speaker 19 Kind of ladies of lunch looking to lose the last 10. Now, good news is the latest data shows that the state of Kentucky leads the nation in GLP-1 use now.

Speaker 19 But if you shove GLP-1 drugs into red states and rural areas where people, because they don't have enough money, have to adjust their calories to fast.

Speaker 20 They start calling themselves they, them then, but go ahead.

Speaker 19 What would happen? Well, no,

Speaker 19 it would be a huge unlock. So, this is,

Speaker 19 I just hope, I really hope that we see a world where GLP-1 drugs, where there's just massive, bloody, ugly, full-body contact competition that brings the cost of these things way, way down.

Speaker 20 That would be great. Good point.
All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

Speaker 19 Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We resolve queries fast.
We work 24-7 and we're helpful, knowledgeable, and empathetic.

Speaker 18 We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve.

Speaker 19 Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI. No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration.
Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

Speaker 19 Sometimes the difference between success and failure comes down to one chance encounter or following a counterintuitive instinct. or ignoring conventional wisdom to make a bold decision.

Speaker 19 Like when the founders at Palo Alto Networks wanted to redefine cybersecurity for the modern age. Everybody thought we were crazy.
Nobody would use the cloud for cybersecurity.

Speaker 19 Or when mobile gaming giant Supercell could only rewrite the rules of the industry after failure in the company's formative stages.

Speaker 19 Many of the best things we've learned have actually come through failures. These are all examples of Crucible Moments.
Turning points in a company's journey that made them what they are today.

Speaker 19 Hosted by Sequoia Capital's Rolof Boto, Crucible Moments is back for a new season with stories from Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Supercell, and more. Subscribe to season 3 of Crucible Moments.

Speaker 19 New episodes are out now and you can catch up on seasons 1 and 2 at cruciblemoments.com on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Crucible Moments today.

Speaker 19 Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Speaker 19 Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one.

Speaker 19 You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today.

Speaker 20 Okay, Scott, let's do wins and fails. I shall start today.
Unless you want to.

Speaker 19 Would you want to start? Go ahead?

Speaker 20 All right. So, the fail is so obviously Amazon announcing that we'll work with Humane, the AI company launched by Mohamed bin Salman, to build an AI zone in Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 20 For people that know, a lot of the Arab states are trying very hard to become the data center. There's all kinds of privacy issues, et cetera, but they're trying really hard to do that.

Speaker 20 The only issue with something like Amazon is that in 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a writer for the Bezos-owned Washington Post, was killed and dismembered with the approval of the Saudi crown prince.

Speaker 19 I just

Speaker 20 like, this guy doesn't have any, like, he was just appearing at his funeral saying how terrible it was. And then two years later, or whatever, hey, no problem.
And it's fine for other people.

Speaker 20 I guess they're all going to show up there for this guy.

Speaker 20 But it just was particularly vexing if you're a Washington Post person.

Speaker 20 And I know you don't feel bad for the Washington Post people, but dismembering and vivisecting a columnist is not something you should do business with.

Speaker 20 I would say President Trump attacking Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and now apparently Beyonce,

Speaker 20 Oprah, he wants to sue them all and investigate them for singing for Kamala Harris is stupid, but I don't really care. It's just ridiculousness.

Speaker 20 And for my win, well, obviously, it's going to be Tom Cruise for this week, for this movie, for Final Reckoning. I'm going to go by myself.
I'll probably see it multiple times.

Speaker 20 I don't care what you think of me, but

Speaker 20 that is what I am. That is, I am so excited about it.
It's a win that it's here and that Kara can finally be happy because I've been waiting for it for a while. I love Mission Impossibles.

Speaker 19 I love them, love them, love them.

Speaker 20 So that's it.

Speaker 19 Nice.

Speaker 19 So

Speaker 19 my win is

Speaker 19 experts. And specifically, I'm obsessed.
with this woman.

Speaker 19 I hate to admit, I'm getting so much reward out of Instagram, Reels, and TikTok. And I found this wonderful doctor who has a PhD in nutrition named, and I apologize if I got her name wrong, Dr.

Speaker 19 Jessica Knurik, I think is how you say her name.

Speaker 19 And I was one of these people that really fell into this notion that kind of the government had always chosen the least expensive option and was spraying our crops with just terrible pesticides and that the food supply had been infected in America.

Speaker 19 And then I fell further into the trap because food does rot much quicker, much more quickly here in the UK. And I thought, okay, that means they're not being sprayed with pesticides.

Speaker 19 And then into that void slipped a lot of quacks pushing supplements saying, okay, you can find this chemical that they're spraying on this stuff at Home Depot, and that's why you should buy my supplement.

Speaker 19 Or this basic thing, you can't trust exports, you can't trust the CDC, you can't trust the NIH.

Speaker 19 And they were using this as a vehicle to create distrust amongst institutions and also for them, that's quote-unquote, life hacker wellness experts, to sell their shit, despite the fact they have absolutely no credentials.

Speaker 19 And this woman has basically,

Speaker 19 she is so good and science-based and basically debunks all of this bullshit. And she acknowledges where they have some valid points and where they don't.
And I just think she's fantastic. Cool.

Speaker 19 I'd love to watch her.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 she talks about, she goes into public policies that actually

Speaker 19 work.

Speaker 19 You know, expert-led campaigns at the CDC and the World Health Organization are actually, you know, they're responsible for multiple public health victories.

Speaker 19 The World Health Organization reports an 8% decrease in tobacco usage globally since 2000. The CDC's push for measles vaccinations has presented 57 million deaths worldwide since just 2000.

Speaker 19 And, you know, her view, I'm so in line with her. If politicians want to create...

Speaker 19 policy that is more effective and more trusted by the American public, they should step aside and let scientists and health professionals

Speaker 19 lead the charge. And I love, she has a constant theme, which I have parroted, and that is if these folks were really serious about health, they would address income inequality.
That's correct.

Speaker 19 And so anyways, I'm fascinated. And I just love, I love when someone is making experts cool again, because she's an expert, and she's so good and so facts-based and so reasoned.

Speaker 19 I'm going to try and get her. Actually, I'm going to try and get her on the pod.

Speaker 19 And then what is my... What is my loss here, Kara? Oh, thanks, RFK Jr.
Vaccine misinformation is back in full throttle.

Speaker 19 Clips of Trump's pick for Surgeon General, Casey Means, discussing the link between autism and vaccines have surfaced.

Speaker 19 In addition, her claims of leaving medical residency because of disillusionment with the medical system, again, that you can't trust the deep state.

Speaker 19 Well, someone did some research and found out that's total bullshit. She left because she couldn't handle the stress.

Speaker 19 She just couldn't. And by the way, I've dated someone who was in her residency and I saw how kind of out of control.
I do think it's too stressful.

Speaker 19 jeff swisher well it's sort of it there's a certain amount of what i call hazing involved she used to have to do 36 hour straight shifts and i'm like on your 35th hour you're probably not giving very good medical care but there's a certain abused children syndrome but that's that's a different talk show

Speaker 19 but our our new our old surgeon general vivek murti is exactly who you would want

Speaker 19 talking about loneliness, talking about the impact and isolation of young men, really thinking thoughtfully about health issues.

Speaker 19 And here we have a vaccine denier who claims she left the medical profession because of, quote unquote, the deep state and she became disillusioned. No, own up, stand on your own two feet.

Speaker 19 You couldn't hack it.

Speaker 19 And this is who we have, an anti-vaccine, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who couldn't hack her residency and is now, you know, is now

Speaker 19 jumped on this anti-vaccine train, which will create tremendous

Speaker 19 an increase in death, disease, and disability.

Speaker 19 Vaccinations, according to the World Health Organization, who of course people don't want to listen to because they actually do science, it's estimated that essential vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives.

Speaker 19 During the same period, vaccination has reduced infant deaths by get this 40%.

Speaker 19 Before any vaccine is introduced in a country, the vaccine developed in a laboratory undergoes rigorous and stringent testing through multiple phases of clinical trials.

Speaker 19 Health authorities carefully evaluate the the results of these trials to help ensure that the vaccine meets the highest safety and efficacy standards before being considered suitable for use. RFK Jr.

Speaker 19 is out there lying. These things are very safe, like any medicine.

Speaker 19 Sure,

Speaker 19 there's a risk in terms of side effects. They are so dwarfed by the benefits, it's almost like not even worth reporting.

Speaker 19 And they're usually very minor and in short duration, such as a sore arm or mild fever, and more serious side effects are possible, but extremely,

Speaker 19 extremely rare.

Speaker 20 It's amazing how they benefit from conspiracy theories. I don't know how they live with themselves in that regard, but they do.

Speaker 19 And just a cherry on the top of fails, if this tax bill passes, it'll be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history.

Speaker 19 We have decided to borrow $5 trillion from our kids, use it so we can go to Cabo and pay for our new Lexus. And then when we die, they have to pay it back.

Speaker 19 This is just stupid and immoral. This tax bill, the largest,

Speaker 19 according to several studies, it will be the largest transfer of wealth from poor to rich, which is Latin from young to old, because everyone calls me an ageist.

Speaker 19 I'm like, okay, folks, who do you think the rich are? What is the average age of shareholders who own more than $2 or $3 million in shares right now?

Speaker 19 They're usually in their 60s or 70s, but this will be the largest transfer of wealth. I uploaded my taxes into the LLMs, my W-1s, and said, well, how will the Trump tax impact me?

Speaker 19 And I uploaded it to three LLMs and one of them of the LLMs came back with the first two words were, good news.

Speaker 19 So the top 5% are getting a tax cut. The bottom 95 are getting a tax increase, all at the expense of future generations.

Speaker 20 Yep. 100%.
Very good, Scott. Nice.
Well done. I like that.

Speaker 19 Well, I'm trying to scale my business.

Speaker 20 You're trying to scale my business. Scale up to further heights.
Maybe if you got on that climbing wall every now and then. Oh, God.

Speaker 19 I thought there was going to be a picture of you in my bathtub using my salts.

Speaker 20 Oh, that could be interesting.

Speaker 19 Like putting on my deodorant. I didn't know.
Like, what's next? Hitting my kids.

Speaker 20 I have to say

Speaker 20 your concierge likes me better, I think.

Speaker 19 I think they like you better.

Speaker 20 Yeah, because we bring liveliness to it. We'd be fun.

Speaker 19 We're fun. Who likes you better?

Speaker 20 Your concierge.

Speaker 19 They like me better. The door people? The doormen? Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Teasy. I get money.
They like you. They like money.
They like you.

Speaker 19 They like you.

Speaker 20 Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about your business tech or whatever's on your mind.
Go to nymag.com/slash pivot, submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Speaker 20 Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on On with Kara Swisher, I talked to Barry Diller about his new memoir, Let's Listen to a Clip.

Speaker 19 People haven't read this book, the people who

Speaker 19 read the excerpt of it, but nobody's read the damn thing.

Speaker 19 And the amazing thing is the only thing that has been written is my relationship with a woman,

Speaker 19 from which somehow they extract he's come out of the closet.

Speaker 19 And to me, I think if I've come out of the closet, it's the most brightly lit room with a glass door. I mean, who, who, who?

Speaker 19 It's absurd.

Speaker 19 Did you enjoy your interview? I know you're a big fan. I love him.

Speaker 20 He's very funny. He's one of the most

Speaker 20 forthright of the moguls. And he is who he is.
Like, people have a lot of complaints about Barry Diller, but I got to tell you, he's absolutely like, I am the least interested in the gay part.

Speaker 20 Like, I knew it. Everyone knew it kind of thing.
But I thought this book is fantastic.

Speaker 20 It's a really gripping story about his family, which was very, there's a lot of incredible dysfunction there, but also his ideas around business and creating media. And I think he's been

Speaker 20 one of the more entrepreneurial members of that class, of the old mogul class. And so I enjoyed it.
He's just a gas. He's really a gas.

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

Speaker 6 Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver.

Speaker 19 Ernie Intertode introduced this episode.

Speaker 10 Thanks also to Jew Burroughs, Miss Vera, and Dan Shallan. Nasha Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 19 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 10 You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 8 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Speaker 19 You know we'll be back. Why? Because someone's scaling her empire.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 21 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 23 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 25 This is where Odo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

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

Speaker 8 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 29 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 11 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 26 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 5 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 33 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 13 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 17 Try Odo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 19 What do walking 10,000 steps every day, eating five servings of fruits and veggies, and getting eight hours of sleep have in common? They're all healthy choices.

Speaker 19 But do all healthier choices really pay off? With prescription plans from CVS Caremark, they do.

Speaker 19 Their plan designs give your members more choice, which gives your members more ways to get on, stay on, and manage their meds.

Speaker 19 And that helps your business control your costs because healthier members are better for business. Go to cmk.co/slash access to learn more about helping your members stay adherent.

Speaker 19 That's cmk.co/access.

Speaker 35 Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new. Show me all the things PDFs can do.
Do your work with ease and speed. PDF spaces is all you need.
Do hours of research in an instant.

Speaker 35 With key insights from an AI assistant. Pick a template with a click.
Now your prezzo looks super slick. Close that deal, yeah, you won.
Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Speaker 35 Now you can do that, do that, with Acrobat. Now you can do that, do that with the all-new Acrobat.
It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio.