OpenAI Abandons For-Profit Plans, Disney and Uber Earnings, and Meta’s “Creepy” AI

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Scott is speechless, which is excellent.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I get a call from this iconic media company that is doing, or a reporter there, and I won't say which company, that is doing a profile on kara swisher you've had one there and her first uh question was what qualities make kara such an amazing leader and i'm like oh this is going to be rough this is i literally i'm not exaggerating kara i went and made myself a drink i'm like okay

okay this is how it's gonna go this is how it's gonna go And it was literally like getting in a colonoscopy without anesthetic.

I just sat there and said, okay, it's going to be over over soon.

It's going to be over soon.

Did you embarrass me?

My instructions to you were to embarrass me in some fashion.

Well, here's the thing, when you do these things, what you realize is it's entirely up to them.

They could twist your words anyway.

Yeah.

And they could use,

you know, one or two things I said to support some narrative that was negative.

But I definitely got the feeling it was going to, it's going to be a giant puff piece.

No, it's not.

No, I have a very complex, you know, go find somebody.

Oh, I'm not saying you deserve a puppy.

I gave them recommendations of people who don't like me.

I'm like, they're going to give you an off-the-record piece on me, so you might as well just call them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I do the same thing, but I just make sure they're assholes.

I'm a big believer in what FDR said, and that is, please judge me by my enemies.

I love giving out the names of some people who hate me.

I'm like, here's who's going to say something to me nice on the record, not nice off the record.

Here's someone who's going to, you know, I gave them a range of people.

I think it's focused on me helping people get away from old media.

I think that's my impression.

Yeah, they wanted to talk about the people you've nurtured and all that stuff.

There are quite a lot.

There are quite a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Including you, Scott Galloway.

Yes, that's right.

Although I was never really in media.

I was.

No, you weren't.

Look, I always say the same thing.

I'm like, the most rewarding thing about our relationship is that it is very purposeful and nice to resuscitate someone's flagging career.

And that has been very nice for me.

I saw that you were struggling.

And I thought, okay, if Tina Fey can do this for Alec Baldwin, there's no reason that Scott Galloway can't do it for Kara Swisher.

I know.

Thank you so much.

I just, I'm in so much in your debt.

I was struggling.

I do have to say, often a lot of people are like, I really helped you.

I'm like, success has many fathers and failure is an orphan.

I remember working at Levi Strauss and Company in the 90s, and this is the weakest flex in the world, but the fastest zero to billion apparel brand at that point.

And then the fastest one after that was Old Navy.

But before that, the fastest one, what apparel brand?

It's literally the lamest apparel brand in history, but it was the fastest zero to a billion apparel brand.

And it was owned by Levi-Strauss and Company.

It wasn't Levi's.

You know what it was?

What?

Jordash?

No, it was like screaming to the world, don't have sex with me.

It was, do you remember Dockers?

I love Dockers.

Oh, God, don't say that.

Jesus, stop.

Please make her stop.

They had extra power.

The thing is, I can totally see that.

I can totally see you in Dockers.

Oh, my God.

They were very comfortable.

Oh, my God.

I literally have the same clothes since high school.

Anyone who believes being gay is anything to do with nurture, it is so nature.

You were literally born in Dockers, weren't you?

I was.

I love Dockers.

Dockers in a, I'm not even going to try and describe the kind of lesbian fashion or lashes.

I had extra pockets.

That's all I remember.

Anyways, I love those.

Back to me.

I would walk around.

Levi Strauss and Gammy was my biggest consulting client or prophet for like two years in the 90s.

And everybody, everybody would introduce themselves as the founder of Dockers because it had been so successful.

There would be like nine people who were the, not the co-founder, but the founder of Dockers.

Everybody decided that they had started this idea.

And it, it, it's so interesting.

It basically took advantage of this huge trend.

And that was casual work Friday was the stay-at-home to work from home trend in the 90s.

And men had no fucking idea how to dress for it.

And Docker said, just trust us.

I use them as fan.

You know, we went to this party last night for Keith McNally.

He has a Manetta tavern here.

What a great restaurant, by the way.

And he's lovely, let me just say.

And he's written this astonishing.

It's the best book party I've been to because it was not about the book.

It was, but they read from the book.

Richard E.

Grant read sections from it and everything else.

And it was great food.

They said it was dinner adjacent, and then it was bigger than any dinner I've ever eaten.

And he's, you know, I don't know if you noticed he had a stroke.

We chatted about it quite a bit.

He has much more issues around speaking and his one of his sides of his body but just a beautiful book that he's written and they had music and food and everything else really fun but i wore like such sloppy clothes and i said amanda's like oh i should dress up a little bit i said don't matter what you do i will be more underdressed and she goes oh okay and felt better

i show up in like almost pajamas to parties now Yeah, you can get away with that, though.

It's sort of your brain.

I know.

I can't.

I don't know what to stop every once in a while, no.

Not really.

Not really.

I'm going to get my dockers and find them and wear them with you on something we do.

I think, literally, I think that we should officially, I think if Vogue ever decides we've just fucking had it with this Met Gale bullshit and they want to jump to Shark, they should invite us.

They should absolutely invite us.

We would literally put an end to that whole thing.

We would put an end to it.

Oh, my God.

Anna Winter.

Anna Winter, if you're listening, if you need a reason to retire.

You know what?

I'm going to somehow get that message to her that she should invite us.

Maybe they'll do a tech one and then we'll show up as like a, we'll dress like Elon or something.

Back to me.

So in the 90s when I started Red Envelope, and because I had a shaved head, I was white, had outdoor plumbing and a pretty good gab, I could raise tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to my crazy commerce startups.

And I'd raise so much fucking money for Red Envelope.

And we'd all, you know, I was the brand guy.

So I thought, oh, we got to build a brand.

So my college roommate, David Carey, who was the head of magazines, I think at Condonast,

he'd always been just a lovely guy.

We were friends.

But I used to fly to New York because I wanted to hang out in New York and spend overspend on Vanity Fair and

Vogue magazine, these ads for red envelope.

And literally the weapon was the coolest place on the planet was the Vogue cafeteria.

Did you ever eat there?

Oh, it's oh, yeah.

It was beautiful.

And it was all these ridiculously beautiful women and hot gay men.

And then Cy Newhouse and Anna Winter would be sitting in the corner.

And you'd walk in.

I remember thinking, I got to move to New York.

Yeah.

And I would buy these $120,000 a page ads.

I don't even know if they worked or not, but I just wanted to go to lunch with my friend David Kerry.

I probably spent seven or eight million bucks of other people's money just trying to get a lot of money.

And then you got to eat in the cafeteria.

Well, that's nice.

That's a good thing.

I have a common ass cafeteria.

Well, we've got a lot to get to today, so we got to move on, including Meta's creepy new AI app, Pete Hagseth, and Tulsi Gabbard's continuing sloppiness around digital privacy and protection of their stuff and Disney's latest earnings.

But first, tensions between India and Pakistan are escalating after India launched military strikes against targets in Pakistan this week in retaliation for a deadly attack in Kashmir.

This conflict is happening at a pivotal economic moment.

India is doing trade deals with the U.S.

and the U.K., and Pakistan is emerging from a years-long financial crisis.

You've also got China recently allied with Pakistan, recently Kong passed Pakistan an ironclad friend and an all-weather strategic cooperative partner.

For his part, President Trump has offered to help to defuse things, saying, if I can do anything to help, I'll be there.

Of course, the Trumps themselves are doing some deal with Pakistan too, a personal deal.

So there's that thrown in there.

Both countries are nuclear powers.

In fact, I interviewed Christiane Amanpour, so I'm going to channel whatever she says in my comments and pretend they're mine yesterday.

She had a lot to, you know, it was an interesting interview, but this is sort of the day's conflict.

Any thoughts?

Well, yeah, whenever there's a border skirmish with nuclear powers, you you have to take it very seriously.

And on a much less substantive level, India is a big trading partner with us on the economy.

You could see oil prices and gold prices skyrocket with that kind of instability.

But when two nuclear powers who border each other start, you know, arguing, it's very scary.

And it can all be sort of reverse engineered to, of course, the West, specifically the UK, dividing up India into Pakistan in a very sloppy way that's created all sorts of religious and regional tensions and fights over over Kashmir.

And

China will probably, or China is a very strong ally.

They describe themselves as an iron cloud friend of Pakistan.

India has very strong relationships with Japan and Israel and the UAE.

I just hope the adults show up and

defuse the tensions because typically these types of crazy conflicts are real exogenous shocks.

It's not the shit you're worried about.

that gets you.

It's the shit you're not thinking about.

Well, you know, Christian was saying that it requires really good diplomacy and she's worried about the trump administration because the u.s has always been a key person here and he said into a vacuum something always flows and so that would be china and you know there are these complications of the trump's personal financial interests um in in the countries uh and it just makes a big mess of it and she was worried there wasn't someone who could like they'll send in that idiot steve witcoff or someone like that to deal with it rather than someone more competent and if stephen miller becomes the national security advisor i mean seriously so over his skis

and doesn't like brown people, from what I can tell.

And so it's a real problem if you don't have the U.S.

in real fighting shape among these people to sort of shut the whole thing down.

And, you know, it's another one of these conflicts.

The next one will be possibly Taiwan.

And so there's going to be one conflict after the next as China starts to really flex its power, especially as its economy is suffering because of the tariffs.

It'll It wants to expand elsewhere, I think.

Anyway, we're not experts on this, but I wouldn't recommend listening to it.

Scott interviews lots of foreign experts, and I just did Christian, and so listen to them.

But still traveling

for the stock market, for the economies, and for stability in general with all the different conflicts around the world.

I thought he was going to be the settle-it president, but I guess not.

Open AI will abandon plans to place its AI business under control of a for-profit entity.

Instead, it will transform its for-profit subsidiary into a public benefit corporation controlled by the nonprofit parent, which I think was, they were considering a lot of things.

The decision was made after talking to civic leaders and AGs of California and Delaware, who would need to sign off on the plan.

Obviously, they didn't like what was, you know, the possibilities.

Sam Altman, CEO Sam Altman, said the changes will still allow the company to access $30 billion investment from SoftBank.

As a reminder, Elon Musk has been attempting to block the company's restructuring.

His lawyer says the announcement changes nothing, which means he didn't really care about the nonprofit part if this is what they're doing.

Obviously, he wants his vague because that's what Elon Musk wants.

I talked to

Sam and Brett Taylor about it.

And I think, you know, I was like, this is a...

a back walk.

They were like, no, because we were considering lots of things.

Then we got feedback and we made the decision and said that the Musk thing had nothing to do with it.

And it was evidenced by the fact that Musk didn't pull the lawsuit after they did this.

And they felt like they still had enough ability to, you know, to raise money.

I think their issues, they've got to raise money and at the same time, reward people.

And then they have a lot of people feeling they should stay true to their original roots, which was a mission-driven company.

So

probably will be a good thing for them to get this in their rearview mirror and then move on.

But I don't know if you have any thoughts.

So

I'd love to speak to Pri-Perar or someone who's closer to the issue, but my general take on First Blush is the following.

And that is, Elon Musk has absolutely catalyzed this.

And that is, just as there's law fare, I think this is what I would refer to as nomenclature fare.

And that is,

a judge, the attorney general essentially told OpenAI that their proposed transition doesn't fit the strict criteria for transition from a non-profit to a for-profit.

And so effectively what they've done is by saying, oh, no, just kidding, we're one of these ridiculous private benefit corporations that a bunch of VCs could virtue signal and say, I still want on the money, but I want to pretend I'm actually helping humanity.

I think it's the most ridiculous corporate classification in history.

They go back and say, no, we're a not-for-profit, but they're lifting the cap on when the for-profit is entitled to the profits of above $100 billion, which I think only three companies have ever achieved.

So, this effectively, from a mechanical situation or the complexion of the company, the operations or the shareholder governance has absolutely no impact.

But I think somewhat inoculates them from the kind of

the white meat of Musk's accusations in his case.

I think the lawyers came back and said, okay, fine.

Tell Musk and his lawyers, oh, just kidding, you win.

We're still a nonprofit, but it's not going to change anything we do practically.

No, let me tell you something.

They said the for-profit corporation board and the non-profit board will be the same people, right?

And so, you know, it's usually this nonprofit has hegemony over the for-profit corporation now, but it's the same board.

It's the same.

Nothing changes here except OpenAI's lawyers can say, oh, we are a not-for-profit.

He has no case.

That's how I read it.

Yeah, except he didn't pull the case because he wants the

city.

He didn't do it to help anybody at all, helped himself to help himself or slow them down.

That's what he did it for.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah, so we'll see.

I think it'll give them, everyone else will back off and he will just continue because he thinks he's owed more.

I think that's really at the heart of his case is he thinks he created it and funded it and deserves more money from it.

When in fact, he walked away.

He walked away.

Yeah, seller's remorse.

One of the biggest mistakes ever in terms of just pure wealth is he said, I'm out of here.

And he said, he signed away the company, ironclad documents.

He's out.

Which he did with Twitter member.

He was going to buy it.

And then he pretended.

My house in San Francisco is next to where Mark Zuckerberg moved.

And I bought it for $760,000.

And 24 months later, when I moved to New York so I could spend more time in the the Continents cafeteria, I sold it for $950,000.

I thought it was the fucking greatest real estate investor in history.

Kara, it is worth substantially more now.

It is.

I live in that neighborhood.

Okay.

It's worth substantially more.

This is absolutely no different in terms of legal veracity than if I went back and said, I want my house back.

I want my house back.

I want the money.

My house is back.

I want my house back.

You owe me.

It's gone up.

I know I signed legal documents transferring ownership of this asset and private property laws are pretty detailed.

But I've decided because I fucked up selling it that I want it back, or at least I want some money.

He threw it fucking Tizzy and lost money.

And they're pulling way ahead.

I mean, the chat GPT is really, the numbers are really quite startling in terms of the usage.

They're obviously spending money too.

This is really, but it feels like they're really pulling ahead in that regard.

And they're going to get, they're going to get their, one of the things, someone was like, why is it so chaotic?

I'm like, you were not around for Google and then they were fine.

You know what I mean?

Like, I think they're probably on a Google trajectory and not a Netscape trajectory.

But Google was a fucking chaos monkey of a shithouse for a long, long time

before they settled in and

went.

Anyway, before we move on, we're going to be listening to some predictions from listeners today, just so you know.

We asked listeners to give them predictions because I'm trying to replace you quietly.

So let's listen to the first one now because we're already on the topic.

Hey, Karen, Scott, Matt Maher here from M7.

And my prediction is on the AI arms race and which model will win in the long run.

It's not going to be GPT, even if it's the superior product, not Gemini, not clawed, it will be Meta's Llama.

It's the only model that is truly open source, which means it will be the technical layer of infrastructure developers and vibe coders can build upon.

And oh yeah, they can flip a switch and connect your entire social graph through the decades of data they've collected on you.

So open source plus social is, as Scott would say, the peanut butter and chocolate of AI models.

That's a good argument.

He's right.

I mean,

when I interviewed AMD's CEO, Lisa Su, she was sort of, everyone's sort of leaning into the open source model.

They definitely are the second competitor.

I think that's what OpenAI thinks.

I think they think it's Gemini themselves and Lama.

And Lama would be number two.

Scott?

Yeah.

So my

view is that Meta is the AI company actually of 2025.

They're the second largest purchaser of NVIDIA GPUs, just behind Microsoft.

So they have the most processing power other than Microsoft.

In addition, what is underappreciated is Reddit, which is an amazing amazing company and the fifth or sixth most traffic site in America, generates 1.3 trillion tokens of data.

And that's really the, you know, that's the, you could argue that's the rare resource area.

It doesn't matter how much refining capability you have if you don't have the fossil fuel to put into it or the coal to put into the furnace.

And so Reddit has 1.3 trillion tokens of data.

And just to give you a sense for just how much data Meta produces, they have 183 trillion tokens of data.

And I think they made the move.

And unfortunately,

Mark Zuckerberg is as brilliant as he is sociopathic.

And I think he decided, okay,

the train has left the station around a for-consumer subscription model.

So what we're going to do is we're going to make this open source and we're going to use this the same way we use WhatsApp as a bodyback for data to feed our other paid platforms.

I think that Meta and Llama, and if you look at Llama, Lama is really frightening because it has, because it's open source and has absolutely, as far as I can tell, no guardrails.

If you go to Llama and say, how to kill your husband slowly, it literally goes, well, what kitchen supplies do you have?

How often is he in the house?

I mean, it's

people.

I get it.

It's got no guardrails.

And it'll start helping you do whatever it is you would like to do.

Sounds about right.

And he'll get massive traffic.

I think he'll make it free.

And then he'll use all of that data such that I get served ads for, you know, for you know, hemorrhoid cream at the exact right moment.

I think Meta, I mean, four out of five people who aren't in China are on a meta platform once a week.

He has more data.

He's making huge visionary investments with the capital he has.

He made the pivot from the metaverse quite smartly.

I think this guy's right.

And I think Meta is the AI company at 25.

We like the thing, Matt.

I see your point.

I'm just saying right now, OpenAI is in the lead, but you're right.

They've got a lot of throughput.

I suspect that OpenAI will get sold as one of them at some point, or maybe not now, that they're a non-profit.

Well, just on a meta level, though,

a

meta-meta level.

I now believe that similar to

jet transportation technology or the personal computer, I'm not convinced that any one company is going to be able to sequester trillions of dollars in shareholder value.

I think the big winners.

are going to be open source and the general public.

I do think that AI is going to make everyone more productive or mostly.

Electricity, you're saying.

100%.

Electricity, yeah.

That was a great one, Matt.

Thank you.

That's really smart.

And the fact that you're using Scott's phrases now is she's not that nice.

She interrupts me all the time.

Just saying I said that.

I said that.

Okay.

I know you did.

And, Matt, we appreciate it.

As we tape on Thursday, President Trump is set to announce a framework of a trade deal with the UK.

Teasing the announcement on the truth social Trump called many other deals will follow.

And speaking of our allies, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sat down for a meeting with President Trump at the White House this week.

Trump was, of course, asked about Canada becoming the 51st state again.

Let's listen.

Yeah, please.

Mr.

President,

Mr.

Prime Minister, I'd like to get your response to this too.

But Mr.

President, you had said that Canada should become the 51st state.

No, no.

Well, I still believe that.

But, you know, it takes two to tango, right?

But no, I do.

I mean, I believe it would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens.

You get free military, you get tremendous medical cares and other things.

Medical cares.

You get tremendous medical care in Canada.

Canadians are dying for our medical care system so they can be more obese, depressed, and anxious and pay more.

And pay twice, twice as much for their health care.

And pay eight times what anyone else plays for pharmaceuticals.

They don't have any cares about medical.

Anyway, when Trump was asked about whether Carney could say anything to lift the tariffs on Canada, he said no.

The president also told the room that Canada is a very special place to him and that he loves the country.

Speaking of tariffs,

this is an interesting thing.

Internal documents obtained by the Washington Post show that the State Department pushed nations to clear hurdles for Starlink, huh?

Leading to some to believe there would be a tariff relief for following through.

Totally by the books, as always, total grift.

So I'm going to just note some things.

Matt Stoller, who's

sort of a person who deals with a lot of stuff like this, noted that this U.K.

is hoping to get reduction on 25% tariffs the U.S.

is levying, but the baseline 10% tariff will remain in place, officials say, in return, Britain is offering concessions on a digital tax it levies on big U.S.

companies, big U.S.

tech companies.

And so Stoller noted, so these trade deals are just cuts and tariffs in return for Google and Meta.

Explain how this is an attempt at manufacturing renaissance by demanding consumer sacrifice.

So let's go from there.

First, the British thing, then Canadian, and I love Mark Carney.

He's such a hunk.

And the Starlink thing is exactly as I expected.

Total pay-per-floor.

Go ahead.

I thought the more insightful and educational clip was how Mark Carney handled the question.

And I think anyone who's in communications or anyone who handles does speech writing or generally just wants a lesson in how you push back forcefully, but in the most dignified way.

And you don't antagonize a very sensitive person who's entirely about ego and not about stakeholder value, i.e.

the president.

Mark Carney's comments were just such a masterclass in terms of tone of what he said.

And he said, well, you know, because he gave him an opening.

Trump said, well, I think of it as a real estate deal.

And you look at the big, beautiful nation of Canada.

Let's also play this other clip, which demonstrates the elegant way, forcefully yet dignified way, that Mark Carney dealt with Trump and his ridiculous comments.

And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months,

it's not for sale, won't be for sale ever.

But the opportunity is in the partnership and

what we can build together.

And we have done that in the past.

And I thought that was such an insightful way to frame it.

And he said, and the owners, the owners have told me that this piece of real estate is not for sale.

And that is such an elegant and non-combative way of saying, go fuck yourself.

And then, of course, Trump goes, never say never.

Like, so that's, he did a great job.

I thought Carney was quite a spectacular.

He seemed erudite and approachable at the same time.

So go to the the tariffs because i do think this is like they're all like really not tariff deals this seems like a bunch of shakedowns all over the world including the starling thing which is exactly what i expected and remains horrifying this is a kleptocracy is you you figure out a way to ascertain or usurp or attain power and then you use that power to make a small group of people very rich who have proximity to you who then give you a vig and everybody else gets less wealthy.

And that is what is happening across the entire country as we have an individual that is acting like a mob boss who monetizes the United States and the White House.

And this is exactly that.

This is, he has proximity to big tech firms.

He wants, A, he thinks of them as iconic.

They give him a lot of money.

He calls them and they take their

tariff pricing down.

He calls them and they say, oh, we're now in the business of quote-unquote free moderation.

And we call Trump a badass and we give a million dollars to his inauguration.

And, okay, so we're going to give them a lead over every other tech or media firm in exchange such that we can call it victory.

And small and medium-sized media firms are shit out of luck.

It's like, okay, they don't get this special advantage.

They don't get this relief.

And he can claim victory by, and this.

The Starlink thing is literally like, okay, this guy put a quarter of a billion dollars into my campaign.

And so I'm going to force countries.

I'm going to, I mean,

Buffett said it.

Little countries, too.

These types of trade wars are a form where tariffs are a form of warfare.

So the U.S.

is threatening war.

In exchange, you have to give sweetheart deals, non-competitive advantage to the companies owned by the guy that gave me a quarter of a billion dollars to my campaign.

He's literally, and who does that hurt?

It hurts everyone.

We're paying unfair taxes, unfair prices.

In the small and medium-sized businesses in this country who create two-thirds of our jobs and don't have lobbyists and can't get on the lunch calendar of the president and can't donate to his campaign or aren't going to, they lose.

Essentially,

look at the biggest kleptocracies in the world, whether Poland was emerging into a kleptocracy, Russia has been a kleptocracy for a long time.

There are some of the wealthiest people over the last 30 years have been

generated in Russia.

Meanwhile, there's potholes in Moscow.

Senator Warren summarized it perfectly, and that is she said, okay, they're getting rich.

You're losing your health care.

That perfectly describes what happens in a kleptocracy.

And this is a kleptocracy.

If they were to say, fine, no tariffs across,

you have to drop your tariffs on all of our media or all of our tech companies and have a systemic law, that's fine.

But when the president starts picking winners and losers, effectively everyone loses.

Yeah, because he loves to be like, I make a deal, I make a deal, but it's always in the interest.

The Starling think was amazing.

Maybe it's the best one, but these countries shouldn't have be forced into if you only take our, you know, if you take our salami, you know, you'll, you'll get what you want.

You won't be like beat up kind of thing.

And that's what it feels feels like everything.

And of course, it's Starlink.

And when there's other choices that they could make with European satellite, whatever it matters, that may be their choice in the end, but they don't get the choice of the choice.

And it's, it's, what the worst thing is, it's a lot of small countries, right?

A lot of small African countries.

It's not just one.

The post noted.

It was noted that it was like Vietnam was in there.

I forget the Congo may have been in there.

But and these are not all the ones on the list.

So this is a policy of the government to sell Starlink.

Now, our government does go around and sell our companies, you know, for decades, you know, used Lockheed, use Boeing, whatever.

But nothing this explicit with someone so close to the president, right?

In terms of like, let me get you a deal and giving them unfair advantage.

Our trade representatives or our head of our commerce secretary will take a group of iconic American companies, but they will also take a representative for small businesses.

And they will say, okay, we're here with Boeing, Procter Gamble, Estee Lauder, Northface, and trade representatives for small and medium-sized businesses and manufacturers.

And we're here and we go to China and we try and cut a deal and we speak with one voice and talk about

great American companies.

But they don't go over and say, oh, by the way,

Exxon gave me a shit ton of money.

I need you to build an Exxon field here.

Then everyone in oil and gas but Exxon loses.

And what happens is companies start allocating more and more money to the kleptocrat, which their consumers pay for.

And the companies, it creates just an incentive system that's just a downward spiral.

And it's a similar incentive system right now, unfortunately, because of Citizens United around companies allocating more and more capital to lobby.

It's a waste of money.

Lobbying is 100%.

And then the Trump boys go around the world doing either, you were on Anderson Cooper, or I think it was last night.

The crypto stuff, the real estate stuff, they're building a big building in Saudi Arabia, one all over the Mideast, and just getting, like, they're just coming with like a bag of money.

Like, they feel like mob people, like, here, put the money in the bag, and then we'll do whatever you want.

Anyway, it's, it's grotesque, it really is.

Anyway, Scott, and these trade deals, let's watch, let's take them apart very carefully.

But most of them are going to be in this genre, giving a favor to someone and not bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.

That was never the goal.

That was a giant lie they were telling.

And people did these sort of virtue signalings of things they were already investing in to pretend that they were bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.

So, regular workers are probably not going to benefit very much, as they didn't in the first Trump administration.

We made all those promises, none of which came to fruition about manufacturing facilities.

Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegg says password fails.

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Scott, we're back.

Kelsey Gabbard, the director of national intelligence,

that's working hard, that word right there, those two words, reportedly has a history of not following best practices when it comes to cybersecurity.

Gabbard used the same easily cracked password across multiple accounts.

I'm surprised it wasn't one, two, three, four.

For years, according to Wired, the password showed up in multiple data breaches and was linked to her Gmail Dropbox and LinkedIn accounts.

And it was apparently some nickname she had and some strange group she belonged to.

During the time the breaches occurred, Gabbard was serving in Congress and sitting on the intelligence-related committees with access to sensitive national security information.

Then again.

not hold my beer, a lot of beers.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegg says also had passwords exposed in multiple data breaches, including the one that was reused across personal email accounts, according to the New York Times.

I mean, this is like worse than my mother, these these two.

And we also learned that he used Signal, Pete Hegsets, even more for Pentagon business, engaging at least a dozen separate chats, the Wall Street Journal reported.

I mean, I've never seen more promiscuous people when it comes to bad data practices.

And talk about your concerns about this.

It doesn't like these people do not know how to keep classified information safe,

and even their own personal information at the same time.

Well, you know what happens when Pete Hegseth takes Viagra.

What?

He grows taller, Kara.

He grows taller.

Look,

when we send our young, our daughters and our sons to serve in uniform, they leave their families for months at a time.

They forego economic opportunity and they put themselves in harm's way and oftentimes come back severely traumatized because

they face such intense and incredibly stressful situations.

And in exchange for that, we have unprecedented ability to deliver violence all over the world that has created prosperity and security for Americans for 250 years.

And the reason why the U.S.

military is the most impressive organization in the history of the West is because from top to bottom, people take it very seriously.

And that is they appreciate even if you're anti-war, anti-military, if you're in a position to help and protect our men in uniform, you do it.

And you don't do anything,

you know, you don't do anything to threaten their safety.

And this is especially true.

It is very hard to maintain morale.

If anyone within the organization, whether it's the CIA case officers on the ground feeding them bad information, whether it's the person repairing your plane, trusting they're literally sweating all night that there's not going to be a mechanical failure.

And the idea that the Defense Secretary is being reckless with classified information and putting them in harm's, potentially in harm's way, and you may not even know how this manifests.

Let's, you know, who should comment on this?

Let's use, let's get Pete Hexeth's words on this.

In 2016, he said the following when referencing Hillary Clinton storing confidential information on an email server.

How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence, of their recklessness in handling information?

And he then went on to say,

the people we rely on to do dangerous and difficult things for us rely on one thing from us, that we will not reveal their identity, that we will not be reckless with the dangerous things that they're doing for us.

That's the national security implications of a private server that's unsecured.

I mean, this guy, he literally defines hypocrisy.

And

then he went on to say, if at the very top there's no accountability, then there's two tiers of justice, said Hagseth.

Yeah, yeah, Pete, Secretary Hagseth, there appears to be two tiers of justice here.

And this is,

you know, these,

the people in the military have one thing in common.

They all,

the most patriotic people in America are our veterans.

And anyone who has kids knows why.

When you make this type of investment and sacrifice in something, you become invested in its success.

And that's one of the reasons I think we need mandatory national service.

This guy does not appear to be invested in our success by virtue of the fact he's just so fucking reckless.

And then all the planes falling off of aircraft.

I've never heard of this.

Like, what in the world is happening?

All this sloppiness.

They'll blame it on Bernie Sanders.

They'll blame it on someone.

I've never heard of playing.

Like, when's the last time that was a story?

And now it's like a double story.

Like, these people are sloppy in every single aspect of their lives.

Anyway, whatever.

There'll be more of it and we'll find out.

I mean, I'm sure our rivals are just loving it.

And they're really come this, this kid named this ROTC kid who couldn't go to college unless it had been for ROTC, Martin Ortiz,

my fraternity brother.

This guy was so irresponsible,

so reckless, so crazy, right?

I mean, we were literally, you know, we didn't shy away from crazy behavior in the fraternity.

Everyone was scared of this guy.

He would come to my apartment because he lived far away from his base and he would sleep in our room on the floor and he would wake up at 3.45 in the fucking morning after drinking all night so he could be a half an hour early at his base.

Because he knew

when it came to his military service, there was no margin of error.

Period.

No margin of error.

And this is a guy who

couldn't get a D in in basic English and couldn't figure out a way to rally himself to write a paper or whatever.

But when it came to the commitment to the armed services, the culture they have created is you have to be near perfect.

Yep.

And Pete Hag Seth is not.

Anyway, whatever.

It's going to be a constant disappointment until they dump this guy.

And he'll probably get dumped because he dumps planes off of aircraft carriers that cost $60 million each, the money that we're supposed to be saving.

Anyway, the Gates Foundation is marking its 25th anniversary with a major announcement that will officially wind down operations and close its doors permanently in 2045, decades earlier than originally planned.

In the meantime, Bill Gates has committed over $200 billion in aid over the next 20 years, astonishing number, with a focus on ending preventable deaths, eradicating infectious diseases, and lifting millions out of poverty.

The announcement comes as the U.S.

foreign and foreign aid faces growing political pressures.

They're cutting it everywhere.

Trump administration is.

Gates has been really, has got to hair up his ass about this for sure, because in an interview, the New York Times, Gates pulled no punches about recent cuts in U.S.

aid, putting the onus on Elon Musk, saying

he put it in the wood chipper because

he didn't go to a party that weekend.

Gates went on to say, the world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children i was like he's been a little bit more um like trump positive just because he wanted to sort of get the aid back in some way but now he's like fuck it like i don't care this is what's going on here so uh the fact that the the one of the other world's richest men is spending 200 billion dollars of his money in stuff that the u.s government should be doing um and the fact that he's calling on elon i thought it was good for gates good for gates because i i was worried he was sort of modulating himself in a way that I know he doesn't think.

So what do you think about this?

There's a popular saying that a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.

And Elon Musk is cutting down these trees.

And America has been planting trees, the shade of which we will never ever sit under.

George Bush, with, I think it was Pep Fara, he saved tens of millions of people by making a huge investment and rallying really competent people to try and distribute

cocktail, AIDS cocktail drugs to people in Africa.

That had no impact on me other than it was nice that we had the ability to do it and we used our scale and our strength and our expertise and our science and our universities to do that.

Elon Musk is doing the opposite.

He's cutting down the trees, the shade of which he will never sit under, because his attitude is, if it's not providing me with shade, I don't give a fuck.

And I'll call it, I'll say that I'm saving money for the government.

You ought to go to Mars.

Mars is what we really need to do.

So we

need humanity.

There are certain investments where if you make a small amount of investment, and $75 billion is not a lot when you look at the world's issues, you can allocate that capital to places of such need that a little bit of money has enormous ROI.

Well, this is 200 billion, Scott.

for Gates.

No, I'm talking about USAID, $75 billion.

My point is, I think Gates, who's one of the most brilliant people and also, I think later in life, as you would hope from a man, really developed a great deal of empathy.

He thought, okay, what could I do with my quarter of a trillion dollars in wealth?

I could create other great companies.

I could build the biggest VC firm in the world.

I could decide who gets to be president or who doesn't.

And he said, at the margin of the Efficient Frontier, I can save tens of millions of lives because one small pill that

staves off or prevents a case of malaria is not that expensive in certain regions of the world.

Or netting or whatever.

He was doing all kinds of different things.

Toilets.

He spent a bunch of money on toilets.

He's like, it's not romantic, but if I can bring safe, potable water and sanitation to certain regions, I will literally save millions of children who otherwise would have died of dysentery.

He's a complex guy and not always, listen, he was a very difficult person.

I was there when he was younger and kind of a jerk.

He was a jerk.

And all kinds of stuff he's done that is not great in lots of ways.

At the same time, the transformation of this person into this kind of philanthropy is really something to see.

And the fact that, listen, it's not, it's no small risk for him to call out Musk, who has been, by the way, attacking him relentlessly with fake stuff around vaccines.

Musk was one,

and Twitter has been the purveyor of this nonsense that Gates is putting chips inside of people's heads, all kinds of like through the vaccine.

And

the fact that this, Musk, all he does is make trouble for this guy and insult him and

create all kinds of dangerous misinformation about him.

And then I'm glad he did this.

I'm glad he said it because it's what he thinks.

Just real quick,

one of the most wonderful things about America as a society is we have created a complexion or a gestalt in our society where typically as you become more powerful, there's an onus and an environment that encourages you to evolve, to become kinder.

Bill Gates has become kinder.

I think guys like Mark Benioff and Brian Chesky and even, you know, I interviewed Melinda French Gates.

You can tell as they've gotten more powerful, they really take it very seriously that I need to evolve as a person.

I need to become kinder.

The worst thing that can happen in a society is where you create a gestalt that, okay, once I become president or once I become the wealthiest man in the world, I digress.

I become an even bigger asshole.

I become even more damaging to the world.

And it's not an, I got to think quite frankly, and this is more of a philosophical philosophical question.

What is it about our society where we are evolving this new species of man in the United States, where as they become more powerful, even the robber barons who were not nice people, once they achieved a certain level of power, they did flip the switch and think, how can I build big projects and big universities that would help society?

And these guys are not thinking that way.

Only someone had a book coming out in November that discussed what kind of men we should be.

Go on.

It's more a discussion of what kind of man you shouldn't be.

It's a sort you're telling it.

Anyway, we've got to go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about Disney and Uber's latest earnings.

But good for you, Bill Gates.

Good for you.

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Scott, we're back.

Disney is out with its latest earnings.

I'd love to hear what you think about this.

The company reported $23 billion in revenue, up 7% from a year ago, and $3.2 billion in net income.

A big turnaround from the net loss of $20 million last year.

These numbers were fueled by higher streaming profit.

That seems to be doing well.

Good bet by Bob Iger.

Domestic theme parks and home video sales of Moana 2.

I can tell you, I've watched it 109,000 times.

And speaking of theme parks, Disney has also announced plans for a new park in Abu Dhabi.

That makes sense.

Its seventh theme park resort.

I thought they had one there.

I don't know why.

Disney is often seen as a bellwether for consumer confidence.

These numbers tell you consumers aren't too worried, or is it just another Calm voice from earnings report?

I'm going to add in Uber's earnings too.

The company reported $11.5 billion in revenue up 14% year over year.

Not a huge company, but a good solid revenue, but slightly below Wall Street's expectations.

Total bookings grew 14% to $42 billion.

That's the amount.

And then they have to take out blah, blah, blah.

They have to pay drivers, et cetera.

Uber has also just announced a joint venture with Chinese self-driving car company Pony AI to roll out robo-taxis in Middle Eastern markets.

It looks like Uber is becoming the partner for all these things like Waymo and what Pony AI is doing around the world.

So I'd love to hear

what you think about it.

And then we have another listener prediction around earnings.

But first, Disney and then Uber.

Well, Uber just sort of barely missed expectations.

I would argue they met expectations.

And what's interesting about Uber is their relationship with all the, they're striking up with all these different autonomous driving companies.

It feels like there's an old Hemingway line.

How did you go bankrupt?

Gradually, then suddenly is the answer.

It feels like the autonomous wars have been slow.

And now it feels like it's about, we're on the eve of war among autonomous, whether it's Uber doing deals, Waymo, at some point Muscle enter.

It feels like autonomous.

Waymo and Uber have a deal.

Like, because they're the reservation system.

Like, that's the front end.

I've always thought Uber was the reservation system for someone.

And they don't cost to the consumer, and you're used to just booking a car on them.

But

that's what I took away from the Uber earnings, but I didn't think they were that interesting.

Really, the more interesting one was the surprise of the upside from Disney, and that is their stock popped 10%.

It's at after really touching kind of 10-year lows, revenue up 7%.

The Disney Plus

not only raised prices, but grew their subscriber base, which a lot of us weren't expecting.

Hulu added over 1 million subscribers.

But the real story here is that I think strategically they're remaining very smart because what are they doing?

They're leaning into their core advantage and point of differentiation, and that's it's Parks business.

Parks was mentioned five times more in this earnings call than the prior quarters call because they realized that Netflix isn't opening a park.

Alpha Meta can, it takes 10 years, 20 years maybe to build a park like this.

Comcast is their competitor.

Their cruise line is killing it.

And they also realized, quite frankly, they're probably always going to be a distant two or three, maybe, if they're lucky in streaming, but they can be number one and command unfair margins in their parks unit.

And their parks unit is just killing it.

And to Bob Iger's credit,

this was the strongest earnings call Disney has had in a long time.

And that is, okay, the streaming is no longer a sinkhole of capital.

And we are, we, our parks business, which is truly differentiated and singular, is killing it.

So good, good for them.

Yeah, I think he's, and then we'll see who he takes over.

But he's, you know, he's a pro.

This man is a pro.

Okay, Scott, while we're on the topic of earnings, let's hear from another prediction from a listener.

This one about the economy.

Let's play it.

By the way, our listeners are so smart.

Hi, Kara and Scott.

This is Rich, an American living in Germany since 2016.

My prediction is that the U.S.

falls into a recession, possibly even worse than 2008.

On the consumer side, tariffs push prices even higher after years of inflation, crushing demands.

Businesses cut jobs even more than they are already due to tariffs and AI.

Then on the credit side, investors demand higher yields after we voluntarily drive our economy off a cliff.

Unlike 2008, though, the Fed can't just cut rates in a stagflationary environment.

We're stuck in a vicious cycle, or Teufelskreis, as Karen knows.

Teufelskreis.

Scott, this is, this is, you know, most people can't tell if we're going to run into this recessionary environment.

It certainly feels like that's what we're being set up for unless he does something.

I mean, this is

self-inflicted, of course.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well,

there's sort of the known unknowns and then the unknown unknowns.

And it's usually the unknown unknowns that get you.

But in terms of the known unknowns, the fulcrum here about whether we probably go into a recession or we're stagflation is this nonsense around tariffs and what happens.

If anything resembling the proposed tariffs actually sticks, you're going to see an increase in inflation, an increase in interest rates, and a decline in the economy.

The word for that that most young people don't know is stagflation.

And when you have stagflation, when the economy is shrinking, even as interest rates go up, which is the worst of, that's, you know, that's nitro and glycerin for an economy, you have to sacrifice jobs and massively increase interest rates because basically typically what the Fed says is we will opt for lower or higher unemployment versus higher inflation.

That's the real danger.

In my opinion, if we go into recession,

that's something that's supposed to happen every seven years.

It brings down prices.

Quite frankly, it gives young people over the medium term a little bit of an opportunity to buy into assets at a lower price.

I don't think recession is the worst thing that could happen to us.

If you look at the Fed's notes or Chairman Powell's notes yesterday, he essentially said, We're in a bit of a vibe session.

And Kyla Scanlon, who I love, this young woman who does a ton of great work on economics,

essentially, consumer confidence is at a low since COVID.

The uncertainty index is at a high since the 80s.

But if you look at the underlying data, if you look at employment, if you look at retail sales, if you look at spending, quite frankly, the economy still looks pretty strong right now.

And so he kept interest rates flat.

So this is all about in the short term, unless, you know, if look, if there's a nuclear detonation on the Indian-Pakistani border, all bets are off, right?

But in terms of where we are economically right now, the fulcrum or the arbiter will be just how fucking insane, how down crazy road we travel with

these tariffs.

So we'll see.

But the thing I'm most scared of is not a recession.

I actually think that recessions, I think we're due for not an extended recession.

Housing prices and stock prices need to come down such that people like you and me care maybe transfer a little bit of our wealth and create some opportunity for younger people who want to buy their own homes and buy their own stocks.

I don't think that'd be the worst thing in the world.

What would be nearly the worst thing for the economy would be a spike in interest rates as the economy goes down.

And the thing, what's so interesting is any economist under the age of 50 doesn't even know the word stagflation.

They don't even think it can happen.

It can happen.

It happened in the 70s.

It's like a horror movie stagflation.

I feel like Bessett's got the upper hand here, Bessett and Rubio, over the crazies, I think, I suspect, a little bit more.

It's the 10-year.

It's the bond.

If the bond market starts spiking, they all freak out.

They all all freak out you're right but i'm saying with the terror with having to do with trump's crazy he seems a little more willing to deal besides himself self-deal um in any case um we'll see we'll see great great thank you so much rich that was really great um Very quickly, the new meta AI app is creepy, according to a detailed account in the Washington Post.

Speaking of these AI stuff that were meta probably will dominate in many ways, the app assure is personalized AI and delivers via personal information from Facebook and Instagram and memory files where details about users are kept.

Jeffrey Fowler, who wrote the post, the article, found his memory file contained interests like natural fertility techniques, divorce, and payday loans.

Also feeds conversations back about Meta's AI training system without an option to opt out.

I like, I know you're saying they're going to dominate.

There is the thing I worry about, you always say, oh, I loaded this up, I loaded that up.

And I'm always like, I'm not loading my stuff up, you know, and you can pay a little more to Chat GPT so they don't train on your data and they allegedly protect it.

I would not load up like what I ate for lunch yesterday to Meta.

I have to say, I mean, except for Instagram and threads, which I use largely for marketing,

I got to say, I'm not loading a damn thing up to this person because of the way it was used and the lack of any guardrails.

I would never use their AI app.

I don't know how you feel about it, but you're very, you're much more promiscuous in loading up your information.

So yeah, my attitude is violate my privacy as long as I can see that my QX60 is one minute away.

I could just get high, I could just eat edibles and order Ubers and watch how close my car is.

I find it fucking fascinating.

Why is he making a right turn on Broome?

Doesn't he know where he's going?

I find that shit fascinating.

And occasionally, I have a moment, I'm like, how do they know?

Like, I, you know, how do they know I have prostatitis?

How are they knowing?

I mean, I find this shit fascinating.

Mine is food porn, like people making food, tool tips,

like little hacks, hardware hacks, and Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible Dockers, which is coming out May 23rd.

And I'm going by myself.

Just so everybody knows, do not speak to me on May 23rd.

I'm going to see the final reckoning, and I'm going to probably see it twice.

But go ahead, Scott.

So what do you think about

this app?

Are you going to use it?

You probably will.

Look, I am, I do a talk.

I was just in Hamburg, Germany, and I do a talk on that

everyone wanted to know, had

questions really around two topics in the Q ⁇ A.

What the fuck is going on in America?

And they want to know about AI.

And I've said,

I'm an AI optimist for the most part.

I don't think it's going to turn on us.

I don't see any reason why AI can't be used to create defensive measures against offensive measures.

I don't think it's ever going to become sentient.

I think in the short run, it'll destroy jobs, but like every other technology, it'll create, in my opinion, more jobs than it destroys over the medium and the long term.

The biggest threat of AI is that it's going to speedball loneliness.

And that is, I'm frustrated.

I can't, I don't have friends.

I can't figure out the social pecking order.

I am really upset.

I don't have a girlfriend.

So I have this incredible AI girlfriend that's a mix of porn.

And maybe I even have an AI robot slash sex doll.

And I never develop the skills or take the risk to establish a romantic relationship.

And this is the fear.

This is what young men have fighting against them is they have the deepest pocketed, most talented people in the world trying to convince them they can have a reasonable reasonable facsimile of life with no human contact.

You need the community.

So you're not concerned with loading yourself, which is my question.

Well, okay, it's too late for me.

And not only that, quite frankly, I have economic security and people who love me unconditionally.

So I'm there.

I'm at the promised land.

What I'm worried about is young men who are struggling to find a connection to school, to work, or to other people and get a reasonable facsimile of that DOPA hit that you get from a relationship from Reddit, Discord, porn, Robin Hood.

Oh, I'm I'm not gambling, I'm investing.

And they spend all of their time in their basement, never going through the hardship of trying to make relationships work.

Let me say, we have to move on, but Scott, every Scott will be everybody's friend, next friend.

Just so you know, Scott is everybody's friend.

I'm very unfriendly, but Scott will be everybody's friend.

Okay,

I'm not using that app.

That's all I'm saying.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions, including one more listener prediction.

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Hey, this is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, a show about the biggest ideas in tech and media and how those things collide.

And today we're talking about AI, which is promising and maybe terrifying.

And if you happen to be in a very select group of engineers that Mark Zuckerberg wants to hire, It's incredibly lucrative.

Which is why I had the New York Times Mike Isaac explain what's going on with the great AI pay race.

I'm talking to executives across the industry who are pissed off at Mark Zuckerberg because he has up the entire market for this stuff, right?

And like, this is something that's painful for Open AI, I think, because they can't shell out a quarter of a billion dollars for one dude.

That's this week on channels, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Scott, we're back.

We're going to do a prediction now, Scott.

I'm going to do a very brief one.

They're giving out Golden Globes for Best Podcast next year.

I think we need to win, even though we're not in the top 20.

You have to be in the top 25 to be in it.

We have to get to the top 55.

The top 25 most listened?

Yes, apparently.

Some

dumb crisis.

There are crazy right-wingers that are in the top 25.

I know that.

Exactly.

So we need to, we need to log in.

What about the top 25 revenue?

Because the thing is, the people who listen to those people don't have any money unless they're like looking for dental implants or like trucker hats.

What about the top 25 in terms of revenue?

So we need to kiss up to the Golden Globe people, all those foreign presidents.

Let's threaten to tariff them.

Let's threaten to tariff award ceremonies.

We want to come.

We are so much fun at a party.

We would have such a, we would be so good at a Golden Globe.

We will drink, we will cause problems, et cetera, et cetera.

So much is doing a lot of work there, but okay.

You fell asleep on the couch.

Everyone's wondering who the nine-year-old boy who is asleep on the couch, and everyone's like, who's the guy just at the bar who won't leave?

That's correct.

And as I said, I will be at Michigan Impossible.

One thing I will, I'm going to do a quick prediction.

I was talking to the people at Aurora, which is the self-driving truck.

Everyone's focused on self-driving cars, but these driverless runs of trucks, they're now going on every day between Dallas and Houston.

I just think that's something that isn't focused in on.

They hauled pastries.

The first driver was hauled transported pastries.

This is an area nobody's paying attention to.

I think that is the real money is that kind of stuff, because that's where it's going to be, that's where we really do need these

driverless things going on.

And I'm excited by the driverless cars in cities.

I am personally, but I think that's where the big money is going to be.

That's where you should be focusing in on if you're interested in the sector.

All right, Scott, make a prediction.

This first hundred days of the Trump administration, mostly using the vehicle of the Trump coin, will go down in history as the greatest grift in the history of our economy in terms of the amount of money stolen and the size of it over the shortest period.

Just some data here.

So, Trump-affiliated entities have made at least $300 million.

This is distinct to the value of his stake in Trump coin and trading fees.

The Trump family's net worth has increased by $3 billion or $1 billion a month since

he took office.

Just some timeline, the Trump coin launched on a Friday night under cover of dark.

with all the news about the inauguration.

By 3 a.m.

on Sunday, it was valued at more than 70 billion.

And there were a small number of coins, a small small number of investors who made large investments on a Friday.

Maybe they got a tip or something.

They made tens, if not hundreds of millions.

And then over the course of the next couple of weeks, about 800,000 smaller investors lost billions.

So that's the Melania coin one?

The Melania coin, two dozen traders made almost $100 million the weekend it came out, right?

So one person invested 64 seconds before the project was publicly announced.

Within 24 hours had made 40 million but since then Melania has lost 96 percent of its value sure has and this market manipulation this what would technically be called insider trading by the sec will never know because on april 8th trump's deputy attorney general ordered the doj's crypto fraud investigation arm to disband the next day the The next day, on April 9th, the same day that Treasury Secretary Scott Besant affirmed that it was Main Street's turn to get wealthy, Trump posted on Truth Social, this is a great time to buy Donald Trump media at 9.37 a.m.

Between 1 and 1.10 p.m.

There was a huge increase in bullish zero-day

S ⁇ P 500 call options.

And then just eight minutes later,

Trump announced a 90-day pause on all of his tariffs and the market soared almost 10%, one of the biggest one-day gains in history.

So someone knew what was going on.

Of course they do.

He calls them.

That's called insider trading.

The market gained $4 trillion while Trump Media closed up 23%.

Trump's 53% ownership stake in the company increased his net worth by $415 million.

On April 23rd, Trump announced that the top holders of the Trump coin would win an exclusive dinner with him and the coin surge over 60%.

A small group of investors have generated massive returns.

Just 58 wallets made more than 10 million apiece, totaling approximately 1.1 billion in gains.

Meanwhile, 800,000 wallets of mostly smaller holders have lost money on their Trump coin.

And this isn't just a vessel for corruption.

It's an open invitation for foreign manipulations.

Three-quarters of the token value held among the top 220 wallets are believed to be held by foreign owners.

So if he's hosting a dinner

for his Trump pack and it costs a million and a half dollars, and say you're hungry and you want to get rid of these tariffs, don't you pay someone, have someone a proxy go, spend the million and a half bucks and go, oh, just FYI, let the president know as a gift to him, we're going to buy $50 million in Trump coin this week, which will increase the value somewhere between half a billion and a billion, which means he'll get somewhere between $400 and $800 million.

And we're really hoping he's kind to us around the tariffs.

I agree.

I've been talking to a lot of investigative reporters right now.

And by the way, a lot of techies are keeping

tabs of this stuff.

I have to say,

in a couple of years, there's going to be a massive investigation.

He'll probably be not too old to put him in jail for it.

But boy, is this a grift.

You're absolutely right.

Well, it gets worse.

Now the kids run on it.

World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm run by Trump's sons, Eric and Dant Jr.

60% of it is owned by Trump-affiliated entity, and they are entitled to 75% of its revenue.

It's raised more than a half a billion dollars from investors who purchased the World Liberty Financial Governance token.

And now it's being leveraged to facilitate pardons for criminals.

Justin's son, a crypto billionaire, was under SEC investigation for securities fraud under the Biden administration.

After investing $75 million in World Liberty Financial, guess what, Kara?

The SEC dismissed his case.

That's correct.

This is a crash.

It is really, this is the story.

I keep telling reporters, and you've talked about it quite a lot.

This is the story,

the absolute kleptocracy, and it's in plain sight.

Absolutely.

But this is what fucking infuriates me.

I'm a real politic guy.

I don't mind a little bit of corruption as long as it's good for all Americans.

I don't mind a little bit of strong arming.

But here's the problem or the tragedy.

If Trump brought half the competence, expertise, and elegance to governance as he does to grifting, the country would be in a much better place.

He's good at criming.

This is what we have.

This will be my last statement here.

Okay.

We have a mob family running the country.

That's the bad news.

The worst thing, the worst thing is that Michael Corleone is managing the crime and Fredo is managing the government.

It's like, for God's sakes.

That's a good analogy.

You are so good at stealing.

Can you bring some of that elegance, that timing, that expertise to the government, to actual government?

Fredo is in charge of our fucking military right now, and Michael Corleone is in charge of the Trump coin.

So I forgive everything if you take the people managing your grift and put them in charge of our military and

this is just, I get it, but they're not even smart.

I don't even think they're smart.

I think they're stupid and they're just putting their bag out and saying, put money in here.

Mobsters are notoriously stupid.

They just are just muscle.

And that's what's happening here.

Anyways, the prediction is the biggest grift in history is happening as we sit here right now.

In five years, 10 years, when this all comes out and it will, this will be the greatest grift in an economy over a shorter period of time that has ever taken place.

Actually, this will make Putin blush.

Yep, absolutely.

Okay, Scott, you've made your prediction.

Now it's time to hear one last one from a listener.

This one is super serious, so please try to focus, okay?

Let's play it.

Okay.

Hi, this is Mike from Oakland, California.

And I think my prediction is if Scott isn't already shaving his balls, he's going to start doing that because I think there's nothing more depressing than gray ball hair.

And that's really my prediction.

Okay.

I am speechless.

Excellent.

I occasionally clip my whole body so I can feel like a jungle cat and then I put lotion all over my body and I just love me.

Yeah, I'm not a big, I'm not a big manscaper.

I like Big Ed and the Twins to have a little bit of a beard.

Yeah, I got to say, it's a big business.

It's a big business.

No, it all has.

They have good names.

They all have such good names, all those manscaping things.

They have really funny brand names.

Anyway, I am not going to say how I know this, but I do.

My junk looks like an aging anteater.

It just looks sad.

It just looks sad.

Well, I don't know what to say.

Scott is speechless, which is excellent.

Thank you, Mike.

No, I'm not.

I'm not.

I think clipping is good.

Keep it clean for the ladies, Scott.

Keep it clean for the ladies.

This is what I tell my sons.

Keep it clean for the ladies.

My wife came in, or actually

came in on me while I was manscaping once, and she asked me what I was doing.

Apparently, meal prep was not the right answer.

Okay.

Keep it clean for the ladies.

That's my advice to all men, ladies and men.

Let me be clear.

We want to hear from you.

Send us your question about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551-Pivot elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe this week.

This week on Prof G Conversations, Scott spoke with Ann Applebaum, one of my favorites, Pula Surprise winning historian.

She's so good.

And she's so good.

And staff grader at the Atlantic.

Let's listen to a clip.

Donald Trump is somebody who's constantly

seeking to shape reality to his own benefit, and he feels no need to be accurate.

And so anybody who does, anyone who cares about telling the truth, or who cares about making policy based on reality and not on this fiction that that Trump promotes is uncomfortable.

And that means that all the people around him are either they're simply manipulable and they're willing to just do whatever he says or they're people who have made a big, a kind of moral sacrifice, you know, who are doing something they know to be wrong.

Hello, Marco Mubio.

Anne is terrific.

And that's, I can see why you're in the grift mode right now because she talks about this a lot.

She's an expert on this.

I love her.

I love her.

I love when, I love when, unfortunately, I'm like, it's, it's terrible.

She's having a moment.

It's like if someone writes about famine, I hope they don't have a moment, but she is having a moment.

She is.

She's great and well worth reading.

Okay, that's the show.

Thanks for listening to Pivot.

Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

We'll be back next week.

Scott, read us out.

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

Ernie Ratod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Siberio, and Dan Shallon.

Yeshua Kirwa 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.

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

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

What economic theory opposes manscaping?

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