Elon’s Harem, Trump v. Harvard, and Zuckerberg on the Stand

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Speaker 1 TikTok has figured out I want to see an economist talking about interest rates or a woman talking about social issues that forgot to put her bra on.

Speaker 3 What about it was economists putting his bra on?

Speaker 1 That's good.

Speaker 3 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 1 So when I'm in New York every morning, a ritual for me is I make coffee and I order a quiche and blueberry muffin and a chai latte from Baltazar.

Speaker 1 And then I go and I have my morning ritual as in my sit-down. You know, I like to stay regular.

Speaker 1 And then the doorman will put the Balthazar delivery. in the elevator and I heard the elevator door open.
And if I don't get it, it goes all the way back down.

Speaker 1 And I'm always worried that someone's going to steal my chai latte from Baltazar. Okay.
And so I literally

Speaker 1 with all the grace and strength of a jungle cat, I leapt up from the basin. And at that moment, it dawned on me, I'm an astronaut.

Speaker 1 And in between the time

Speaker 1 between

Speaker 1 my flight between the basin and the ceramic,

Speaker 1 I realized we're all one part of the same species, Kara. We're all Katie Perry.

Speaker 1 Why can't we just love each other?

Speaker 1 And I recognized when I got back to Earth, everything had just changed for me, Kara. Yeah.
Everything had just changed.

Speaker 3 Yeah, did you kiss the ground or kiss the group?

Speaker 1 Can you get over how much shit these women are getting?

Speaker 3 Oh my God. But can I tell you, I'm sorry to say, deserved.

Speaker 3 I was trying to see the goodness in it.

Speaker 3 It's because they won't stop.

Speaker 3 defending themselves when something was just they should shish they and also let me say i know they did some stuff for women in stem but they're talking about themselves and not girls and women in tech especially when people are getting cut it's just the the, it's, they just need to stop talking.

Speaker 1 There's so much about this I love.

Speaker 1 My favorite moment was when they live broadcast that the people kind of, you know, there was the actual people at Blue Origin, you know, saying, you know, two minutes to launch.

Speaker 1 And someone said, and this is so exciting. When they're up there, Katie Perry is going to sing.
And right on cue, someone from Blue Origin goes, one minute warning.

Speaker 1 That was classic. That was just perfect.

Speaker 3 The memes are fantastic and they are funny. And I think they're hitting because they're true.

Speaker 3 Like the one about the best one, I think I posted and so did you was, you know, what happens when a bachelor party comes into a gay bar. This is the picture.

Speaker 1 It's like exactly.

Speaker 3 Like a straight lady's like whooping it up.

Speaker 1 I think we should start a conspiracy that the Katy Perry that came back is not the same Katy Perry that went up. Something is going on here.
No, they may have replaced her.

Speaker 1 But there's, there's actually, I have two sort of observations or two, a couple of things that struck me. The first is kind of trivial.
The other, I think, is more, I don't know, meaningful.

Speaker 1 If the magazine industry, did you see the cover of L? Yes, it was, yes. If the magazine industry wanted to just confirm that it's become totally irrelevant in conduct,

Speaker 1 they managed to do it.

Speaker 3 For people who don't know, L did a cover with them on it.

Speaker 1 And it's not just, it's not just hers. I mean, did you see the Vanity Fair cover of Tim Cook with his mixed reality headset on? Yes, that was.
They decided that that had something to do with.

Speaker 1 Anyways, and then that cover from L was literally like, we need the world to, we need to put a fine point on the fact that we as magazines are not only no longer relevant, but we're totally tone deaf.

Speaker 1 Anyways, that's my trivial observation.

Speaker 1 That's a deeper one.

Speaker 1 My more substantive observation that I'd like your thoughts on is that when we get to these levels of income inequality throughout history, they self-correct through war, famine, and oftentimes revolution, right?

Speaker 1 And when the guillotine shows up, It's okay.

Speaker 1 They come up with a crime and maybe this person committed the crime Maybe they didn't but they're essentially at at the end of the day, the crime is that the 1%

Speaker 1 have been just fucking the bottom 99% for way too long.

Speaker 3 Way too long. I was just going to say, I think it's really interesting how much it's stuck.
And especially what's really fun is people are having fun with it, one, which I think is funny.

Speaker 3 And I like that. But it's like very high-profile people.
Like they're, you know, just a lot of celebrities are like, what in the actual fuck is going on? Which is surprising.

Speaker 3 They usually keep quiet about each other. You know what I mean? I mean, they really do.
But a lot of people who don't are saying things. Some are doing really funny things.

Speaker 3 Like the woman who's in Hacks, who plays, she's amazing. She plays a manager.
I'm blanking on her name.

Speaker 3 She did this whole fake spaceflight. Everyone's really being creative, but

Speaker 3 it strikes at a chord of something that is, and especially, I think it is when they're saying it's sexist to say it's a ride. I think this is what Gail King said.
It's sexist to say it's a ride.

Speaker 3 When Alan Shepard did it, when she did that, Alan Shepard.

Speaker 3 That's who she was comparing it to.

Speaker 1 Someone who trained as an astronaut his whole life?

Speaker 3 Like, this was the 60s, Gail. This is, this was hard.
This was dangerous back then. And, and more dangerous, obviously.
It's always dangerous to go up in space. But

Speaker 3 the fact that they're pretending it's feminist when it's not feminist is anti-feminist, right? That's the thing is, is well, they look ridiculous.

Speaker 1 They make attaching it, it's it's vanity rebranded as feminism or adventure. But where I was headed was the following is that I think this can be reverse-engineered to income inequality.

Speaker 1 And that is my thesis around Black Lives Matter and the Me Too movement was that these were righteous moments inspired by real concerns over systemic racism, the murder of George Floyd, over the fact that women have just been taking on the wrong end of abuse and an unjust power dynamic at work.

Speaker 1 These are credible movements. But if you look at who they went after, They didn't go after sexism at small or medium-sized business.
They didn't go after racism across the middle class.

Speaker 1 They go after rich people.

Speaker 1 And I think this is part of that revolution. And that is people are just so sick of rich people trying to claim the little social status they don't have.

Speaker 1 And people are just fucking angry. If they had sent up,

Speaker 1 you know, six middle class teachers or whatever, people, it wouldn't have gotten any attention. But this is every revolution.
And I think we're quote unquote rounding up people.

Speaker 1 It just takes on a different complexion. We're rounding up people and sending them to El Salvador.

Speaker 1 This is a form of revolution, but it's little revolutions. And if you look at it,

Speaker 1 who people are going for, they're eating the rich because at the end of the day, they look at these people and they go, you know, this system

Speaker 1 has just become so perverted and slanted towards giving the top 0.1%.

Speaker 1 everything, including some sort of false sense of adventure or heroism.

Speaker 1 And people have just, people just had it. Again, I think this all can be reversed to income inequality.

Speaker 3 The rich need to stay quiet. That's what I feel like.
Like, shut up.

Speaker 1 Be rich and anonymous. Go to space on your own time.
Good for you.

Speaker 3 You know, it's really interesting because, you know, this White House correspondence dinner is happening next weekend.

Speaker 3 And one of our friends, I don't think I'm supposed to say who said it, but said, one of the problems with it is that the sort of prostrating before administrations thing has always been an issue.

Speaker 3 Like they go and they yuck it up with their sources kind of thing. And it has a real bad feel to to it.
Why not invite real journalists?

Speaker 3 If it's about the First Amendment, that dinner, instead of trying to like hustle to get a good celebrity at your table, like that's what the press does.

Speaker 3 It tries to outdo each other and celebrity gets. Get real journalists from across the country and,

Speaker 3 you know, from small towns and everywhere else doing things and celebrate them at the dinner. Like that's the kind of thing that.

Speaker 3 that the sort of the people that really do labor in very difficult circumstances aren't getting the attention when all these other people are like, just like performing in front of us and sort of sticking.

Speaker 3 So it is sort of a let one of the best lines would let them eat space, which

Speaker 1 I thought was great. That's good.
Let them eat space.

Speaker 3 And I was like, ugh. And I want you to stop defending it.
Just you realize I was awkward. We get it.
We should have given a bunch of money to women and girls.

Speaker 3 We should have talked about the inequities.

Speaker 3 And even there was the breakthrough awards that Silicon Valley does every year, another celebrity fest where the rich people give money to various and sundry scientists and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 Seth Rogan made a comment that was really true about rich people, and they cut it out of the feed. They cut it out of the feed.
Seth Rogan, who's so funny,

Speaker 3 that kind of stuff. Like you can't even, like, they can't even make fun of themselves.
It's really,

Speaker 3 it's a really weird time. Can I add something else?

Speaker 3 We're going to move on because we've got a lot to get to, including Trump versus Harvard, which I'm, I know, you see, you're wearing a Harvard shirt, Elon's harem, obviously, Zuck on the stand, and a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 3 But just briefly, what was super funny is that the disconnect is really real, and people are trying to figure out a way through it.

Speaker 3 And I went out to dinner last night. I took my mom out to dinner with a bunch of my friends, and we're coming out of the restaurant, and one of our pivot fans stopped us.
And

Speaker 3 one of her, she worked for Pat Murphy. And her boyfriend said, I work for Kristen Gillibrand.
And my mom was there in her wheelchair. And my mom's son goes,

Speaker 3 like that, right?

Speaker 3 Because it's Kristen children and the lady the woman goes oh you're the fox mother you're the fox mother you're lucky and it was so funny and tried to get so because so humor is a good way to do it i know it sounds crazy we were in hysterics and mom was even laughing because everyone was doing their little performative part but it was actually true and so the thing i do like about this whole space thing is humor.

Speaker 1 Like there's humor here,

Speaker 3 which is funny. Anyway, I just, that's the only part.
They need to like stand down or shut up. Stand down, laugh at themselves or shut up.
That's my feeling.

Speaker 3 Anyway, let's go first because a very important thing. President Trump has lashed out again at Fed chair Jerome Powell, saying Powell's termination cannot come fast enough.
The attack comes.

Speaker 3 A day after Powell warned that tariffs could create a challenging scenario for the central bank as it decides whether to control inflation or support economic growth.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's like the calmest thing. Challenging scenario is like a calm way of saying, you know,

Speaker 3 man the barricades. let's listen to what powell said exactly about the fed's independence too speaking at the economic club of chicago

Speaker 1 so our independence is a matter of law um congress has in our statute we're not removable except for cause we serve very long terms seemingly endless terms

Speaker 1 um so it's we're protected protected in the law so you know congress could change that law but there's i don't think there's any danger of that fed independence has pretty broad support across both political parties and in both sides of the Hill.

Speaker 1 So I think that's not a problem.

Speaker 3 Powell's term ends in May 2026. Oh, God, I'm so nervous about that.
So he keeps threatening to fire him, and he's done it at the FTC, which had a level of independence, and he just does it.

Speaker 3 Obviously, he's doing it with everything, like whether it's Carvard or we'll get to that in a second. Do you have much confidence in staying power?

Speaker 3 The Fed's independence in the Trump administration He's doing it at the Justice Department. Pam Bondi has lost ever loving fucking mind, by the way.

Speaker 3 Speaking of which, her appearances this week have been embarrassing.

Speaker 3 Can you talk a little bit about what happens here? Because

Speaker 3 he just runs through stop signs like no problem whatsoever.

Speaker 1 I have such a inability to predict. what's going to happen here.

Speaker 1 There's been so many things that have been disqualifying, what I thought were red lines that they've just blown through and people are sort of, I don't know, seem fairly numb to.

Speaker 1 But if you want to talk about a move that could take the market down five or 8,000 points, it's fire Chairman Powell.

Speaker 1 Because the separation of central banks from politics is one of the key stabilizing factors in the Western economy. Because what you have is a group of people who, leaders, elected leaders, who panic.

Speaker 1 And the reason they usually get voted out of office is going to almost always be reverse engineered to economic strain on the citizens.

Speaker 1 And a quick kind of fix or sugar high to get you out of trouble would just be be to flood the market or lower interest rates, which might be over the medium or the long term absolutely disastrous.

Speaker 1 So Western nations, I mean, I think every Western nation through central bank or their Fed chair or whatever it is, or I just interviewed Prime Minister Carney.

Speaker 1 He was the first non-Brit to be the head of the Bank of England. Yeah, he was.
He's the big British.

Speaker 1 They all, almost from all political persuasions, all agree that if we subject these people to political pressure,

Speaker 1 it could be disastrous for the economy because these people have to look at the data and make very important decisions about interest rates that affect currency, flows of capital.

Speaker 1 And the temptation to just put pressure on

Speaker 1 the Fed share and say, lower interest rates, I need a sugar high right now. I need the markets to go back up, whatever it is.
And then you might end up with crazy inflation or stagflation.

Speaker 1 So the independence,

Speaker 1 I think it's going to back down because just the same way he blinked last week when he saw the 10-year spike 50 basis points,

Speaker 1 I think someone will say, you do this,

Speaker 1 hold on tight when the market opens tomorrow at 9 a.m.

Speaker 1 So I don't even think it's, I think they've decided the courts will side with them. Who cares? We get a court order to turn around a plane.

Speaker 1 We get a court order to bring someone back and we want to claim we can bring Katy Perry back from space, but we can't bring a person we sent incorrectly to these El Salvadoran prisons.

Speaker 1 By the way, they brought people back initially. They brought back women and some Venezuelans.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 but I don't think, I think the thing that stops him from doing that.

Speaker 1 Right now, Chairman Powell is probably the most respected appointed, he's the most respected person in the Trump administration right now.

Speaker 3 If you could call him part of the administration accidentally, sure, but I mean, what is Powell's termination cannot come fast enough? Because

Speaker 3 his job terminates next May. So is he meaning that? What is what is the language here? Termination?

Speaker 1 I don't know. He's threatening to fire him.
I don't know what it is. I don't know.

Speaker 3 You don't make it. That's not a problem.
I mean, saying things like this, by the the way, are so dangerous. Just saying them, what he's doing is so ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Brand toxic uncertainty.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And like, I think that's exactly the term that's correct.
I think Powell is really just like, fuck you. Like, come at me, sir, essentially, the way he's talking.

Speaker 1 Chairman Powell is literally, he's going to leave. He's going to leave his tenure as someone who pulled us back from COVID, whose economic policies, the markets set new unprecedented highs.

Speaker 1 Some people would probably criticize that.

Speaker 3 A little too much partying.

Speaker 1 Well, or a little too much. I would say

Speaker 1 policies, although you could argue doesn't control this.

Speaker 1 The reason we're in such a crazy corner right now is because we as Americans, and this is true through Democratic and Republican administrations, are under the delusion that

Speaker 1 we can spend $7 trillion a year while taking in $5 trillion in tax receipts and that everything will be all right.

Speaker 1 And then we get backed into a corner where the whole world owns our debt, and they not only are reciprocating with a trade war, they're reciprocating with a capital war.

Speaker 1 And that is, they just go into the market and sell a disproportionate number of our treasury bills and the 10-year spikes, and all of a sudden we have an additional $175 billion in interest rate payments, which we weren't planning on making.

Speaker 1 I mean, we have put ourselves in such a vulnerable position because if you think of the U.S.

Speaker 1 as a household, we make $50,000 a year in tax receipts, we're spending $70,000, and we have credit card debt of $370,000.

Speaker 1 And the scary thing is the kids, despite not spending any of this money or really benefiting from it, are going to inherit those credit card bills. And everyone has power over us now.

Speaker 1 We no longer really own our home.

Speaker 1 So this is

Speaker 1 if you, anyways, back to Chairman Powell. He probably can't wait for his termination because guess what? He's going to go be chairman of like Bridgewater.
No, I know.

Speaker 3 I think he is. I think he's taking taking his, listening to him.
I think he's taking his job rather seriously. I think he thinks he's the bulwark against this lunatic.

Speaker 1 I agree. And

Speaker 1 he came out. He's one of the few people.
He's really the first kind of what I'll call leader to just in a thoughtful, methodical way, just stand up and say, okay.

Speaker 1 Just in case

Speaker 1 you didn't believe every point of light from every economist or anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass and is trying to contort themselves into figuring out some way to justify this, the interpretive dance taking place across podcasters and officials trying to support these tariffs is almost,

Speaker 1 it's literally hilarious. It's like modern art that doesn't make any fucking sense, right?

Speaker 3 I don't, for what? And for what?

Speaker 3 Because, you know, I was thinking as I was walking the other day, like what a lot, especially listening to that idiot Pam Bombi, was it's like, you know, if the Democrats win in two years, you're all super fucked.

Speaker 3 Like super fucked. You have to win in two years.

Speaker 3 And of course, they think they will through strong arming, but if they, what a risk they're taking because they're going to be investigated out the yingity yang, and deservedly so.

Speaker 3 Anyway, let's move on. Go, Jerome Powell.
We're on your side. We think you're behaving correctly.
Trump's feud with Harvard is escalating.

Speaker 3 The White House is asking the IRS to begin the process of revoking Harvard's tax exempt status.

Speaker 3 This is not an easy thing to do, by the way, but the IRS, because it's under the control of Donald Trump, is reportedly considering it.

Speaker 3 The move comes after Harvard declined Trump's demands to scrap DEI programs and overall hiring, teaching, and admissions. It made a ton of changes, by the way.
It has made a ton of changes

Speaker 3 that are probably laudable in many ways. Trump's initial response to Harvard's pushback was freezing more than $2 billion in federal funds for multi-year grants and contracts.

Speaker 3 Apparently, it wasn't enough.

Speaker 3 The Harvard president, Alan Garberg, condemned the Trump administration in an open letter earlier this week, writing, No government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

Speaker 3 What do you think? The Harvard fighting back here is really interesting. Let me give some statistics.

Speaker 3 Harvard is gearing up for this fight financially. They issued $750 million of taxable bonds last week to shore up liquidity.

Speaker 3 It does have a $53 billion endowment, but they're a restriction on how the money gets spent.

Speaker 3 I see you're wearing a Harvard t-shirt. I can't believe

Speaker 3 one of the jokes on threads was, I can't believe we like Harvard again. Like

Speaker 3 we're backing Harvard here, which is sort of the pinnacle of snooty elitism, I think, for most people in general.

Speaker 3 But at the same time, this is a real shot across, along with MIT, Princeton, Columbia, of course, caved. So it's a really interesting.

Speaker 3 situation happening here with these schools saying, no, fuck, we've done enough and showing their work.

Speaker 3 Now, today, for people who don't know, the Trump administration is trying to do this with no proof whatsoever, very similar to what they did

Speaker 3 with the migrants who they sent out of the country, with no proof on any, they don't give any proof to their allegations on almost anything they're doing no matter what across the spectrum and in this case they filed something without any proof that harvard did anything wrong um so there's there's several and of course they're herding funding of really important research that's going on scott yeah it took donald trump to get me to like harvard um yeah like that t-shirt is handsome where'd you get that um my assistant got it for me because i i don't know i just wanted a harvard t-shirt to wear around

Speaker 1 um i was strolling around in a canada t-shirt last week and it was the

Speaker 1 if you look at the darkest moment of the last hundred years, there were some key attributes of a move to fascism. One, they started demonizing people and rounding them up.

Speaker 1 And it takes on a different complexion. But let's be clear, we have demonized illegal immigrants, of which we have turned a blind eye to because it's very profitable.
And now we're rounding them up.

Speaker 1 We're taking them off the street and we're sending them to hellscapes.

Speaker 1 The other, one of the other key steps is you come for quote unquote, the academic institutions and the cultural elite and you demonize them. And that's what's going on here.
So this is,

Speaker 1 you know, I'm not a fan of these institutions. I've even suggested their tax-free status be revoked if they have an endowment over a billion dollars, not growing their freshman class faster.

Speaker 3 You're about making bigger, becoming bigger, not to tell them what to do or how to run a business.

Speaker 1 No, I don't care. They have the right to pick their curriculum.
They have the right to pick their faculty. They have the right to talk about what they want to talk about on campus.

Speaker 1 I think if you're going to have a law, and be clear, folks, this has about as much to do with anti-Semitism as evangelicals liking Israel. They just see these,

Speaker 1 the notion of anti-putting this under the banner of anti-Semitism, they're just using it as a vessel to go after an ideology and centers that typically

Speaker 1 traditionally and right now are not supportive of these types of policies.

Speaker 1 And there is, is it true that there's not enough intellectual diversity at these campuses? Sure.

Speaker 1 But when you start targeting individual universities and going after quote unquote, the cultural elite under the auspices of anti-Semitism, it's just, it's not, A, it's not true.

Speaker 1 And B, it's morally corrupt. But more, I'll just go to the economic argument.

Speaker 1 The funding of research at universities has been the greatest investment. in history.

Speaker 1 And that is, and I've said this before, that the most successful venture capitalists in history are middle-class taxpayers who give money to the government.

Speaker 1 And then the government funds research that private enterprise can't afford to make these types of taxes. Tuberculosis, for example.
Or

Speaker 1 a catalog listing all things on the internet for academic research.

Speaker 1 It ultimately ends up becoming a $2 trillion company called Google, or vaccines looking at how mRNA might be more effective than traditional vaccines, or diabetes medication.

Speaker 1 Most studies show, and then the vessel for this unbelievable investment are universities.

Speaker 1 Government funding of university research has proven to be one of the highest ROI public investments, with economic impact studies suggesting returns of get this care, somewhere between 20%

Speaker 1 at the low end, 20% and 60% annually on federal research dollars through job creation, new industries, and increased productivity.

Speaker 1 And agriculture, genetically modified crops, food safety technologies, and energy, solar panels technology, advanced battery companies.

Speaker 3 You have had your researchers going all week. This is fantastic.

Speaker 1 Natural gas racking, LED lighting, advanced materials, Moderna and BioNTech, hundreds of drugs, including Lyrica, Remosate, I think it's called. We did that.

Speaker 1 The HIV protease inhibitors, the cocktail drugs, came out of universities. Genentech was based on recombinant DNA technology from UCSF and Stanford, Google, smartphones, Cisco systems.

Speaker 1 I mean, these, this is the best. The U.S.
does actually a small number of things better than anyone, but we do them really, really well.

Speaker 3 And people think it's not enough because like they haven't been as involved in AI and it's been taken up by what happens is private enterprise takes the juicy bits and the parts that are harder, the universities used to do and they used to do it.

Speaker 1 And no one else would funds that sometimes end up being unbelievable. Lithium-ion

Speaker 1 batteries.

Speaker 3 You don't have to make this is fucking ridiculous. And here it is.
Why do you think Harvard decided, and fuck this shit, and Columbia didn't? Like, think about being inside these places.

Speaker 1 Columbia has literally has just this virus of a lack of leadership right now.

Speaker 1 I would argue that Columbia between the response, I mean,

Speaker 1 there were two campuses with protests. President Linda Mills just handled it much differently than the folks at Columbia.

Speaker 1 And I also think Columbia, quite frankly, for whatever reason, has been a flashpoint and has been, you know, unfortunately targeted, whatever whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1 But I do think the reason that Harvard decided to stand up, I think they have more leadership. I think

Speaker 1 they have more moral clarity. And quite frankly, it just really helps to have $54 billion endowment.

Speaker 1 It's just, this is, they can afford to do this.

Speaker 1 So, and it's also great. It's great for their brand.
Harvard probably, this is probably one of the better brand moves of 2025.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because they were sort of the like elite irritants and now they seem like freedom fighters.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and the the president of Harvard unable to condemn anti, you know, anti-Semitic speech is hate speech or whatever it is. You know,

Speaker 1 they've had their hits

Speaker 1 the last six months. This is absolutely them standing up and doing the right thing, even when it's hard.

Speaker 3 So we'll see if the IRS will, if the IRS does this, it takes years. This is going to go, by the way, everybody, again, it's going to go through lots of courts with the IRS.

Speaker 3 They're going to try to do this. It will be litigated.
And by that time, if Donald Trump is lost, the people who are doing this to Harvard, the IRS, are going to be fucked royally at some point

Speaker 3 if they make these moves. They think that Donald Trump's going to be in power forever.
And that may be.

Speaker 3 But if he's not, you're taking a rather large risk that you're not, all of you aren't going to jail at some point for these behaviors.

Speaker 1 What you're saying is so important. And I've been talking to a lot of Democrats.
I was on Governor Newsom's podcast yesterday.

Speaker 1 And I think one something that's missing from the Democratic Party, I don't believe that like this, we go, when they go low, we go high. I think that's just like trying to capture social status.

Speaker 1 I absolutely think we need to get in the mud. And I think there needs to be a Democrat who basically says, I'm running for president.
I'm going to win. And when I win, I am absolutely targeting.

Speaker 1 I'm going, I'm going to have the SEC look into all trading on April the 9th. I'm going to look at all illegal deportations.
I'm going to look at the unlawful seizure of constitutional power.

Speaker 1 It's going to be done to the letter of the law, but be clear. Be clear, folks.

Speaker 1 If you're breaking laws and you're under the impression you're no longer subject to the law, that might be true for the next

Speaker 1 44 months, but in 44 months, the law is coming back. The sheriff is coming back.

Speaker 3 In two years, if the Democrats win, this is just a lot of people.

Speaker 1 I like that even more. In 20 months.

Speaker 3 Let me say, it also doesn't help people. It doesn't bring the price of eggs down.
This is what we're doing, this tit for tat.

Speaker 3 And by the way, this tit for tat is going to be required, they have to go down. Um, and it's going to waste everybody's time what they're doing here.

Speaker 3 They're going to, they're going to do this, they're going to lose, and then they're going to jail. But the this,

Speaker 3 it's just such a waste of time and effort. And Harvard could be doing all kinds of really interesting things in research.
And

Speaker 3 anyway, this is

Speaker 3 it's the greatest brand change for Harvard. You're right.
I think that's really an important thing. And we'll see if Donald Trump could pull this off.

Speaker 3 Um, Just because he's going through stop signs right now doesn't mean he can keep doing it or there will not be consequences later.

Speaker 3 Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, new details about Elon's creepy harem and legions of babies.

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Speaker 3 Scott, we're back, and Elon Musk is trying to build an army of super babies with, quote, no romance, just sperm. It feels like you would have said something like this, Scott.

Speaker 3 That's from an explosive report in the Wall Street Journal about the tactics he used to recruit and manage his offspring and their mothers.

Speaker 3 This romantic hero has even used social platform X to recruit willing wombs. Here's what Jimmy Kimmel had to say about the latest revelations.

Speaker 1 It is believed that Elon has fathered at least 14 children, and based on this photograph, he may have given birth to them too. He's

Speaker 1 carrying a few around in his pouch like a kangaroo. Sources told the journal they believe there could be more mini musks out there, many, more mini-musks.
You've heard of alien versus predator.

Speaker 1 Elon might be both.

Speaker 3 So, another

Speaker 3 tidbit is from the journal's reporting. And by the way, I've spoken about this with so many reporters.

Speaker 3 I'm so glad that they're finally writing about this and not pretending it's just a silly, you know, an ex who's mad at him.

Speaker 3 This is really significantly weird stuff, and especially since he's in such a position of power.

Speaker 3 Musk believes population decline is a massive threat and wants to make enough babies to, quote, reach Legion level before the the apocalypse. And Musk urged former girlfriend Ashley St.

Speaker 3 Clair to, or I don't know what she is, I guess, girlfriend, to give birth via C-section because he believes that vaginal births limit brain size.

Speaker 3 You remember, I was arguing with him about this, given I had a C-section. Scott,

Speaker 3 where shall we go with this?

Speaker 3 Where should we start? I mean, I'm thrilled that reporters are actually doing these things around the drugs, around these weirdnesses around children.

Speaker 3 It is really demented in a way that's really around the bend. And it's fine if someone wants to have a lot of kids, but this is a whole theory.

Speaker 3 I think the one person in this story that didn't get enough shit is Jared Birchall, who works for him and is his facilitator.

Speaker 3 He's happens, they wrote about him being a Mormon and he's talking about him having such a stable family.

Speaker 3 Jared, if you're facilitating this, you don't get to hide behind your perfect family and your, you know, that you don't behave like this. You're just facilitating a rich person behaving badly and

Speaker 3 manipulating women who are having kids. I mean, everything sounds so pathetic.
And at the very,

Speaker 3 and then I'll let you go on, Scott, but the children are really what really concerns me here is that these kids are getting manipulated by Musk in terms of what they're going to pay the mothers and this and that.

Speaker 3 You don't need $15 million

Speaker 3 to raise a kid or anything else, but the ethical implications of all of this for all of you who are facilitating this for Musk are rather deep and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Speaker 1 Go ahead, Scott. Look, there's a kernel of truth here, just calling balls and strikes.
There was this fear

Speaker 1 or this moral panic around a population explosion that we were going to absorb, that our population was growing faster than the Earth's resources, and we was going to collapse under population.

Speaker 1 growth. What's actually happened is that bomb has detonated, but it's imploded.

Speaker 1 And that is Western nations, as they become wealthier and more educated, women decide having a lot of kids is a bad deal for them. And also men, and basically birth rates go down.

Speaker 1 And evidence has shown that as population has gone up, poverty has gone down.

Speaker 1 It ends up that if you put 10 new brains into society, you know, one is a problem, eight do just fine, and one might solve more problems than those 10 brains create.

Speaker 1 So population growth is actually really, it's a huge problem in Japan. In South Korea, supposedly like only three or four people will have grandkids right now with these birth rates.

Speaker 1 Now, you can solve it with thoughtful immigration policies and also restoring a tax code that doesn't rob from the young and give money to the old, such that young people, should they decide to have kids, which 60% did 40 years ago at the age of 30, now it's 27%.

Speaker 1 So we can solve for this problem. I do believe that his basic theory is rooted in something that's true, like having more kids.
Now, having said that, having said that,

Speaker 1 if you look at what I believe maybe next to income inequality is the biggest thing threatening the U.S., it's extremism led by a group of young men who feel are sequestering from society and becoming shitty citizens.

Speaker 1 They're not attaching to work. They're not attaching to school.
They're not attaching to relationships. They become prone to misogynistic content.

Speaker 1 They start blaming women and immigrants for their problems. They become less likely to believe in climate change.

Speaker 1 And if they don't have a relationship or work by the time they're 30, the levels of substance abuse and self-harm just go crazy. just go crazy.

Speaker 1 That is a huge, struggling young men in this country is a huge threat to our society.

Speaker 3 Wrote a book about it out in November.

Speaker 1 There you go.

Speaker 1 What now, if you were to reverse engineer it to the point of failure where a boy with a lot of potential comes off the tracks, you might say, well, their prefrontal cortex doesn't mature as quickly.

Speaker 1 Well, the education system is biased against them. They're twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior adjuster.
There's a lot of things.

Speaker 1 They've been told for 40 years that they're the oppressor and they're starting to believe it. They have big tech trying to sequester them from society with gambling and porn.

Speaker 1 They have a lot of things going against them. But the number one point of failure to be reverse engineered to

Speaker 1 is when they lose a male role model.

Speaker 1 The worst thing or one of the worst things you can do as a man, Or let me put it this way, the best thing you can do is to stay involved in your kid's life.

Speaker 1 He's not around.

Speaker 1 And what's interesting is that when you have a single-parent household, which he is creating, he's creating 14 single-parent households. He doesn't have 14 kids, he has 14 single-parent households.

Speaker 3 More kids than that, I think.

Speaker 1 And what's interesting is that the daughters in single-parent households have similar outcomes as dual-parent households.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying girls don't need their dad, but if you look at high school and college attendance and rates of self-harm, they're not materially different in single-parent households than dual.

Speaker 1 It is an an entirely different story for boys.

Speaker 1 And what it ends up is that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker. But him creating a series,

Speaker 1 a cadre of children that don't have their dad around, even if he sends checks. That is bad for society.

Speaker 3 But he also, Scott, two things. He uses checks as the control point, by the way.

Speaker 3 And secondly, it's, I, listen, there's a pronatalist movement going on obviously and he's part of this they're not he's talking about smarter people and and that reads to me white people essentially right i don't think he thinks all people are equal well it's almost as if you'd give a nazi salute right yes exactly who knows or that his dad started banging his stepdaughter i mean

Speaker 3 no his stepdaughter i think yeah correct um but here's the thing that it's about white people more white people that is or more people he considers smart, which is, I think, thought of that.

Speaker 1 Is he only procreating with other, with other white women? I guess that.

Speaker 3 He did try. He is someone he didn't know online named Tiffany Fong, I believe.
So she's Asian.

Speaker 3 But here's the thing. He thinks his genes are smart.
So who isn't smart where there are population increases? Brown people.

Speaker 3 That is what he is doing here. So I agree.
Listen, nobody believes in kids more than me.

Speaker 3 I'm not the Elon Musk of lesbian.

Speaker 1 But you're openly lesbian, Carl Swisha. You're openly lesbian.
At least you could be a closeted, at least you could drive your Subaru with blackout windows.

Speaker 3 Being so openly straight and masturbating at all times.

Speaker 1 At least you could hide that German shepherd.

Speaker 3 Anyway,

Speaker 3 nonetheless, he thinks there are smart people and dumb people, and all the smart people are not. You know, that's this has a racial element to it.
Let's be clear. Let me ask you this.

Speaker 1 Is it true that on all dates with lesbians, they hug for three hours, cry, and then decide never to see each other again? Is that true? No. Is that true? No.
You know what?

Speaker 3 Me and Mike, you're coming to Lesbians Who Tech this year, and we're going to

Speaker 3 do it again, and this year we're going to kill you and do a ritual sacrifice.

Speaker 1 I took my shirt off, and the whole audience is like,

Speaker 1 I made the right choice. Literally, every woman in the crowd is like, I did make the right choice.

Speaker 1 That was the second straight guy to ever be on the stage. First was Mark Benioff.

Speaker 3 Anyway, Elon, you are a sick puppy. I have to tell you, one sick puppy.
And I feel bad for these women. I feel bad for these kids.
And the story was terrific. The journal, that the journal's doing it

Speaker 3 is amazing. I have to say, I told oh, a half a dozen top reporters about this Ashley St.
Clair to like, this was really weird, what was happening. And nobody followed it.

Speaker 1 And the journal did a really good job.

Speaker 3 I have to say, I have to give them credit. It is not Purian.
It's, they, it's a really,

Speaker 3 along with their board coverage of how they party with him, along with his strange behaviors, I think the journal's is doing amazing journalism here, as is Kristen Grind of the New York Times, who was I think it's important, though, that we bring this back to me.

Speaker 1 Okay, all right.

Speaker 1 So I have more kids, likely

Speaker 1 substantially more kids, than Elon Musk. You know why? Oh, right.

Speaker 3 Cause you gave, we know this.

Speaker 3 We talked about this sperm donor.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I could get 40 bucks a shot because I was a quote unquote athlete at UCLA. Anyways, I got called back four times a week for a full year.
Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 And I couldn't figure it out because the two two guys I went with

Speaker 1 were the two guys I went with were literally blonde gods.

Speaker 1 They were water polar players and went to the Olympics. They were smarter than me.
These guys were specimens.

Speaker 3 Jewish. You've said this.

Speaker 1 That's right. And I said, why do I have the golden seed here? And they said,

Speaker 1 you have the two things.

Speaker 3 Did you just say golden seed? No,

Speaker 1 baby. My man gravy is like literally, it's like Nvidia chips.

Speaker 1 The reason why my sperm was literally an Aramez bag, I was the Hermes of sperm, was was two things what are the two things that people in west la parents want in their sperm tall jewish babies tall and jewish tall they had a peanut butter and chocolate sperm donation there are scott galloways all over can you imagine how many receding hairlines there has been i don't even want to know i don't even want to know i don't even want to know i don't even know thank god not my children anyway um here's some angry depress people they didn't test me for that all right that i you know i didn't pick someone because they're hit a history of depression in his family anyway here's an idea there's some hot new real estate about 120 light years from Earth where Elon could go.

Speaker 3 Researchers announced on Tuesday that they've discovered a massive planet known as K218B. I'm going to call it Galloway.
Thank you. Whose atmosphere suggests the possible presence of living organisms.

Speaker 3 It's really hot and wet. That's really pretty much what's happening.

Speaker 1 Don't say anything. Don't say anything.
I don't say anything.

Speaker 3 Anyway, just really quickly, NVIDIA says it will start producing AI supercomputers manufactured entirely in the U.S. The announcement comes conveniently after reports of upcoming tariffs.
We'll see.

Speaker 3 The company plans to produce $500 billion of infrastructure in the U.S. via manufacturing partnership over the next year.
They all say $500 billion.

Speaker 3 Apple did this. They commissioned over 1 million square feet of manufacturing space to build ships in Arizona.

Speaker 3 They're working with Foxconn and Taiwan's Wistron on additional plants in Texas, of course.

Speaker 3 And then Trump said all the necessary permits will be expedited and delivered. They're trying to appease Trump, or I'm sure he'll still screw them on tariffs.

Speaker 3 Jensen Wong said, made a a surprise visit to Beijing to meet with Chinese trade officials as far as NVIDIA is revealing on Wednesday it's taking a $5.5 billion hit thanks to new U.S.

Speaker 3 restrictions on the exports of its H-20 chips to China. The shares have been plunging.
Very quickly, thoughts on the planet or NVIDIA?

Speaker 1 Nothing other than that this all of this stuff announcing investment is performative, thinking he's an idiot.

Speaker 1 If we just repackage existing investments, he'll go for it and he'll potentially leave us alone. And the stocks are now trading based on the prediction markets of the mad king.

Speaker 1 I mean, this is just not the way to run an economy.

Speaker 3 They weren't going to do this before. And, you know, just this, you know, you can force manufacturing back in the U.S., but it will have a price later if it's not economic.

Speaker 3 That's just the way it goes, unfortunately. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 3 When we come back, we'll talk about Zuck taking the stand and how much he was willing to pay to get the antitrust case to go away.

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Speaker 3 Scott, we're back with more headlines. There's lots going on.

Speaker 3 Mark Zuckerberg has taken the witness stand for three days in Meta's antitrust trial this week over its acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Also, Sheryl Sandberg was also on the stand.

Speaker 3 If the FTC wins, Meta could be forced to sell off the app.

Speaker 3 Some highlights: Years before the FTC sued Meta under the Trump administration, Zuckerberg considered having Instagram be its own company to avoid antitrust issues.

Speaker 3 Meta tried to buy Snapchat for $6 billion, which actually, I think I broke that story at the time. He thinks it would have been bigger now if it accepted the offer.

Speaker 3 Zuckerberg had, of course, it then copied Snap everything Snapchat did.

Speaker 3 It's buyer Barry, really. And Barry was the choice that, unfortunately, Snapchat had to face.
Zuckerberg once had a crazy idea to wipe out all Facebook users' friends.

Speaker 3 To start again, the Meta CEO called TikTok the highest competitive threat for Facebook and Meta. If it were up to Zuckerberg, this trial never would have happened.

Speaker 3 He offered the FTC $450 million, which is laughable, later upping the amount to $1 billion, but the offer was well below the $30 billion the FTC wanted.

Speaker 3 This is under its current chair, Andrew Ferguson.

Speaker 3 You got to set there, Ferguson. Zuckerberg reportedly felt confident President Trump would back him.
Obviously, he didn't and allowed it to go forward.

Speaker 3 It's not the strongest cases that we've talked about and this idea of who its competitor is.

Speaker 3 In the then, it's a strong case. In the now, it's not as strong a case.

Speaker 3 And everybody has shifted from social media to entertainment in a lot of ways, social media with a stress on media, not on social.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 give me, is there this asking doesn't work. Give me one of your crazy ideas, Scott, here on this.

Speaker 1 trial. So there's different remedies.
One is a fine, which it looks like they're pursuing right now if they're found guilty of monopolistic behavior.

Speaker 3 And certain consent decrees also, along with the fine, by the way.

Speaker 1 Nine out of 10 people in the world outside of China are on a meta app.

Speaker 1 If not, I think it's either every day or every week. And they have 70% share of social media.
Now, that alone

Speaker 1 isn't illegal. What's illegal is if you're using that 7%, 70% share to deploy monopoly pricing that's bad for consumers.

Speaker 1 And I would argue, or engage in anti-competitive behavior.

Speaker 1 And if you look at the notes that have come out in Discovery, a big justification for acquiring Instagram is they said we need to neutralize a competitor.

Speaker 1 That right there, that statement, that's illegal. That you're not allowed to acquire a company to neutralize a competitor.
You're not allowed to do aqua kills.

Speaker 1 In addition, what I always like to appeal to people's greed glands on this. If they were forced as a remedy to spin Instagram, you know who wins here.

Speaker 3 And WhatsApp. And WhatsApp.

Speaker 1 And WhatsApp. You know who wins here? Shareholders.

Speaker 1 Because the company right now, it trades at a really healthy multiple of 7.7x times revenues Instagram on its own I think would trade at 15 to 20 times revenues Instagram just to give you you were at my birthday in Scotland Scotland is overrun

Speaker 1 because a bunch of Instagrammers went there and went crazy talking about Scotland two summers ago and at this and the same summer a bunch of Instagrammers were highlighting that a drink and Mikonos was now 30 bucks and Travel was off 30% last summer.

Speaker 1 Instagram now dictates global tourism patterns.

Speaker 3 You see it happen in Los Angeles and parts of your neighborhood. People take a picture in front of them.

Speaker 1 Oh, if we went to my window right now, we would see three or four Asian women with their Hermes bags on my cobblestone street taking pictures of one another. It is literally

Speaker 3 where they're all taking pictures.

Speaker 1 You talk about commerce. You talk about, I mean, that Instagram is an independent company.
Everyone would want to own that stock. So shareholders would do better.

Speaker 3 I would buy that stock.

Speaker 1 In addition, the competition here would lower rents. And specifically, I've argued that the rents that have gone up here are the biggest rent increase has been non-economic.

Speaker 1 Think about the rents that parents have had to pay because of the monopoly control of Meta.

Speaker 1 So the fact that they wouldn't compete and coordinate with core Facebook, the fact that WhatsApp would probably be the largest telco in the world, and rather than being a vessel for finding data for better targeting for the core platform, Facebook or Instagram, they would have to figure out a way just to be the largest telco and start charging money.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 if they announced they were breaking up these companies, I would buy MetaSock because I think that ultimately shareholders would win.

Speaker 1 More tax revenue, by the way, employees win because there's more companies trying to rent your labor.

Speaker 1 Employees win, tax revenue, shareholders win. The only person that doesn't win.
is the person who wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms, not just Westeros.

Speaker 1 But I've always thought

Speaker 1 the two best things you could do to oxygenate the global economy are if China and the U.S. kissed and made up.
We have IP, they have manufacturing enough already.

Speaker 1 Let's lower everyone's costs by getting along again. And obviously President Trump does not get that.

Speaker 1 And then the second biggest way to oxygenate and unleash the global economy would be to take Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Meta and go from four companies to 15.

Speaker 1 It would create, it would unleash so much competition and innovation.

Speaker 3 And innovation, new things, innovation, innovation. Like, that's the thing.
Like, everyone's like going on about Tesla. I'm like, their car sucks and it's not innovative.

Speaker 3 Did you see the Japanese stuff that's coming out? The EVs are so adorable and fantastic. I just keep thinking, why didn't any,

Speaker 3 why didn't Tesla do this? Like, why didn't they have the anyway? Well, that's it. Because he's having lesions of babies and taking ketamine, apparently, and running the government into the ground.

Speaker 3 But you're right. You're absolutely right.
We'll see what happens.

Speaker 3 People find this to be a very weak case, though, because the limits of who they're, it doesn't doesn't address what's happening now, which is intense competition in this, in the social media space.

Speaker 3 Again, as I said, emphasis on media.

Speaker 3 He's trying to get away from the social part of it, by the way, which is really interesting because people aren't doing what Facebook was originally intended for anymore.

Speaker 3 Now they're like consuming just like they did television. It's really, there has been a shift, don't you think?

Speaker 3 Don't you find you're using social media for consumption more than declaration or friendship now?

Speaker 1 I got to be honest, I'm addicted to both Instagram and to TikTok.

Speaker 3 But for consumption, you like looking at it, right?

Speaker 1 Well, honestly, it's now my news source. I get really good.

Speaker 1 TikTok has figured out I want to see an economist talking about interest rates or a woman talking about social issues that forgot to put her bra on. Those are the two.

Speaker 1 That's how my feed, that's how my feed.

Speaker 3 What about it was economist putting his bra on?

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 that's good. That's good.
His bra or

Speaker 1 chiropractors aggressively adjusting people.

Speaker 1 I love that. It's amazing.
Like, oh, my God, she has neck pain. Oh, my God.
What is he going to do? And then all of a sudden you hear celery. And she's like, I can walk again.
I can walk again.

Speaker 3 I love that. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 And I see great danes. They like, no,

Speaker 1 they have figured out I love great danes. I could watch great danes all day.
And my favorite.

Speaker 1 Also, have you seen the new ones where some chef will take like a $300 Chateau Brian and line up three dogs at a table and then show them the Chateau Brian.

Speaker 1 And then literally the chef will cook it in front of them and get in front of them and then slice it for them and create some amazing sauce and then just feed these three pit bulls this amazing sauce.

Speaker 3 Oh my god, that's end times.

Speaker 3 That's worse than killing.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's late state capitalism, but it sure is entertaining. Oh, wow.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 I watch it. I do on threads a thing called Food Porn, which I love, which is they just cook shit all over the place.
I love cooking videos. Anyway, we got to get back to the important things.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure where this

Speaker 3 case is going, but it sure has a lot of cool emails of them acting like assholes, all of them. Like, we're going to kill this company.
We're going to do this. This is exactly how they talk in reality.

Speaker 3 And it's just very entertaining to, but one of the things coming out of it is how much Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like his actual business, the social part of social media.

Speaker 3 That's been really interesting to me.

Speaker 1 There was a big announcement this week. I think the biggest story that people haven't been talking about

Speaker 1 is OpenAI deciding they might get into social.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we're going to talk about that next week.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk because we'll see.

Speaker 3 I think they're just tweaking.

Speaker 3 They love to tweak everyone. But yes, they could do that too.
Again, consumption, consumption of videos. That's where they're going to go.

Speaker 3 I mean, the creation and the creativity of people with this stuff.

Speaker 3 This is just in, by the way. A federal judge has ruled that Google did act illegally to maintain a monopoly in online advertising technology.

Speaker 3 The judge said in a ruling that Google had broken the law to build its dominance. No shit, Sherlock.

Speaker 3 The Justice Department and a group of states had sued Google, arguing that its monopoly in ad technology allowed the company to charge higher prices and take a bigger portion of the sale.

Speaker 3 Yes, because they're on both sides of the deal, everybody. Remember, a federal judge ruled in August, a separate federal judge, that the company had a monopoly in online search.

Speaker 3 He is now considering a request by the Justice Department to break the company up, spin parts off.

Speaker 3 Google's, this is a much stronger case, and it is so obvious the dominance of Google in both advertising and search and their behaviors around this. It's really interesting.

Speaker 3 And of course, Sundar was at the inauguration. It doesn't seem to be helping.
Now, a lot of these cases were started in the previous Trump administration. Again, I cannot underscore this.

Speaker 3 So, thoughts, thoughts on this one? This one's stronger and they've lost. They've clearly lost.
This will go on. They will appeal, but they've lost again, once again.

Speaker 1 Like I said, I just, I think everybody wins if these companies start to, I think their share price goes up. And I don't know what to say other than that.

Speaker 1 Although I was more cynical about antitrust under a Trump administration, and Jonathan Camp, or who knows a lot more about this than me, sent me straight and said, you're underestimating some of the people who are at justice in the FDC.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 The person who replaced him is very well. Gail, I think it's

Speaker 3 Slaughter or Slater,

Speaker 3 is very well respected. She's a J.D.
Vance person from the JD Vance side who has been very antitrust focused.

Speaker 3 Great respect for people, like in terms of they understand. Here's the thing, everybody, less competition, less innovation, higher prices, shittier products.

Speaker 3 That's the way it goes.

Speaker 3 And the fact that these companies, and by the way, the side effects of both these companies for their dominance in both social media and advertising and search, which is linked to, they're all linked to advertising, is the death of regular media.

Speaker 3 They have two of these two companies have run over.

Speaker 3 Now, look, media, old media has done a lot of things to kill itself, but this is not the hollowing out of the business model by these companies using these tactics has been been right in there to really hurt these companies.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 that's another

Speaker 3 deleterious effect of these things. Anyway, we'll be right back and we'll get to predictions.

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Speaker 3 Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. What's a prediction from you? Besides children of Scott all over Southern California, are you creating a legion of babies?

Speaker 1 Well, you know, you can, there's now a website. If you go to it, you can type in your name and say, this is the clinic I donated.
Yes, I know all about it. And they send you a

Speaker 1 certified mail. And if you sign it, an email goes out to all your biological children saying this is your biological father.
I would do it if you could gate it, and you can't.

Speaker 1 The problem is you don't know if it's.

Speaker 3 I'm absolutely going to do this now so I can meet all of Scott's children.

Speaker 1 Well, that's why I don't do 23andMe because people get figured out. But I don't know if I have two kids or 2,000 because it wasn't regulated back then.

Speaker 3 I bet you have like hundreds of kids. You remember the Vince Vaughan movie where he had...

Speaker 1 Yeah, I told you that my mom made me stop because

Speaker 1 she said, I put my, I'm not exaggerating. I paid for my junior year at UCLA doing this.

Speaker 1 And, and my mom said, you need to stop. And her rationale was, what if your son ends up marrying your daughter?

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. That's the typical fear thing, the fear thing.

Speaker 1 I know, but anyways,

Speaker 1 she had a real point. She's like, you're going to go up in LA and you're going to come and you're going to meet.
Anyways, but it's, it's a weird,

Speaker 1 it's a weird thought. I've thought about maybe like, I don't know, leaving him some money when I die or something like that.

Speaker 3 But anyways, I know I've used those sites because I've I saw other, how many other kids my sons are related to.

Speaker 1 Make for a fun party. Think about what an awesome party I would throw for 238-year-olds that all sort of look like me.
That would be a fun party, wouldn't it?

Speaker 3 I feel like I want to go find all your children

Speaker 1 and apologize and give them a little bit of a network documentary searching for Scott. Oh, let's start a podcast network.

Speaker 3 Yes, let's start a Vox media podcast.

Speaker 1 With just your children.

Speaker 1 Why is that? Oh my God, that's so fucked up. I know it's so fucked up.

Speaker 3 I love it. Let's hear a prediction.

Speaker 1 Anyway, sorry.

Speaker 3 I predict this would be disastrous. And then they could marry all of Elon Musk's kids.
Anyway, sorry. Prediction.

Speaker 1 I think my prediction is the following, Kara. I think the worm has turned.

Speaker 1 I think that my sense is that the things that have kept Republicans quiet because of their dear leader has more power in this cult where he can vote them out of office, the fear factor of saying, I'll weaponize the DOJ against my enemies.

Speaker 1 Donald Trump, I'm not comparing him to Hitler, but Hitler's biggest mistake that reshaped the world was he decided to open a second front in the war and he declared war on Russia.

Speaker 1 That is, we probably would have had to come to some sort of agreement with him where he got Europe and Britain got the empire or whatever.

Speaker 1 But that is what kind of lost the war was in addition to British brains, Russian blood, and American brawn, Russian blood,

Speaker 1 they sacrificed 20 million people and they were allies at the beginning of the war. Trump has decided to fight everyone all at once.

Speaker 1 He's not going after targeted tariffs

Speaker 1 against China or figuring out if there's certain tariffs

Speaker 1 on dairy that are not reciprocal or asymmetric. He's not saying to the EU,

Speaker 1 we need you to pay more for our NATO, but he's just declared war on everyone all at once. And it is literally the only

Speaker 1 we had to ally with dozens of countries to get Hussein out of Kuwait, but this guy's under the impression he can declare war on everyone.

Speaker 3 It does feel like declare war on everyone, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 Everyone, all at once, whether it's Harvard or Kajakistan. He's just declared war on everyone.

Speaker 1 And they're going to be very creative and strike back. They're just going to be very creative and strike back.
Anyways, I think the worm has turned.

Speaker 1 I think that so many public company CEOs wake up in the morning and say, hello, Mr.

Speaker 1 President, that think that someday they're going to be drafted because of their incredible leadership skills to run for president. Let me save you three classes at a business school on ethics,

Speaker 1 leadership, and sustainability. Ethics is like, think about what the right thing is.
Leadership is do the right thing even when it's really hard.

Speaker 1 And sustainability is doing the right thing when it's really hard. You might actually make money.
There, you don't need to take those three classes.

Speaker 1 You're about to see, I believe, some very high-profile business leaders and Republicans come out in the next week or two and say, this is just bad. And they're going to get a ton of attention.

Speaker 1 Not one, I don't, I can't think of a Fortune 500 CEO who has, who has spoken out. I can't think of a Republican who has really taken a stand here.

Speaker 1 And the person I am reminded of is a guy named Martin Niemüller. And he was essentially, he was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany in the 20s and early 30s.
He simply. He came for me, right?

Speaker 1 That guy? That's exactly right. Very well, well done.
He sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements.

Speaker 1 But after Hitler came to power in 33, Nie Müller became an outspoken critic of Hitler's interference in the Protestant church.

Speaker 1 He spent the last eight years of Nazi rule in prisons and concentration camps.

Speaker 1 And Niemüller is perhaps best remembered for his post-war statement, which begins, first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out.

Speaker 1 And his full quote is, first they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Speaker 1 Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Speaker 1 Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. I mean, that is really powerful.
And what I would argue, I have a lot of faith in America over the medium and the long term.

Speaker 1 We get it wrong in the short term a lot, but over the medium and long term, we demonstrate tremendous generosity and leadership.

Speaker 1 And I think we're at a point where people realizing that, okay, a guy with the wrong tattoo who gets basically rounded up, a university or the cultural elite that are targeted under bullshit narratives of anti-Semitism coming after

Speaker 1 weaponizing the DOJ against your political enemies, I think the school is about to rise up against the bullies.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Although, Scott, in the short term, like Chris Krebs had to leave his business, has to leave his company because he got targeted by Trump.

Speaker 1 Oh, fighting it. But there's been

Speaker 1 damage issues. There's been incalculable economic and moral damage here and loss of brand equity and a loss of moral authority.
I'm not in any way assuming this will repair everything.

Speaker 1 What I'm suggesting is the following. There is now, it is so obvious how damaging this is.
Republicans showing up to their town halls and literally getting just absolutely grabbed.

Speaker 3 The sea thing continues, although there's so much hostility towards her. It's really fascinating from some Democrats.

Speaker 1 But I think you're going to see in the next one or two weeks, a cadre of Fortune, 500 CEOs, Republicans stand up, business leaders stand up and say, okay, enough already.

Speaker 1 While you all claim he's playing 4D chess, at this point, we're worried he's going to start eating the pieces. This guy is making the stupidest decisions.
And the first person,

Speaker 1 I love Nike. I used to do a lot of work with Nike.

Speaker 1 I'm going to call, I don't know if it'll call me back, I'm going to call Elliot Hill, the CEO today.

Speaker 1 The biggest opportunity right now in the commercial consumer world is for the CEO to weaponize their creativity and their agency and to come out against this bullshit and say, this is anti-American.

Speaker 1 This is not part of our values. This is not what it means to be an American.
Someone, someone in the Fortune 500 is going to come out and say, this is bullshit. And guess what?

Speaker 1 The people who actually have the money to buy this shit are going to think, you know what? I like the swoosh again.

Speaker 3 I like your prediction. I hope it's true.

Speaker 1 They made Harvard. He's made Harvard likable.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And, you know, interesting, Josh Shapiro, who got attacked on Passover, his house, who's the governor of Pennsylvania, Trump has yet to call him, which is really an astonishing thing.
Of course,

Speaker 3 if there was a Tesla in the driveway, he certainly would call it terrorism.

Speaker 3 But of course, he's not going to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he wanted to label people throwing shit at Tesla's an act of domestic terrorism, also Pam Bonnie, but the governor of Pennsylvania,

Speaker 1 someone tries to burn his house down with him in it on during past, I mean,

Speaker 1 but but oh, we're just gonna keep that. We're just gonna ignore that, anyways.

Speaker 1 I like to think that all of a sudden a bunch of leaders in the Republican Party and in the business world are reaching down and fighting these spherical things called testicles. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Marco Rubio keeps making stupid arguments. They're trying to

Speaker 1 guy who's in El Salvador is M13 with no proof. People in the administration are,

Speaker 1 they've signed up for the Dara Leader Pack. They're in.
They're in the cult. They're like, okay,

Speaker 1 maybe I disagree with Jim Jones, but I came down to Guyana. I'm going to drink the Kool-Aid.
I'm talking about Fortune 500 CEOs, and I'm talking about even some Republican congresspeople.

Speaker 1 This has gotten so out of control. And they're going to do it out of greed.

Speaker 1 The first consumer brand that stands up and says, I am standing up to this, the first Republican that stands up and says, okay, come for me.

Speaker 1 This is insane, especially in a district where, like, in Kentucky, where Canada being more strategic, is like, no, let's just not do blanket tariffs. Let's go after red states.

Speaker 1 I mean, this, I do think, anyway, my long-winded way of saying, my prediction is the worm has turned and we're going to see people who supposedly were part of the cult, the Fortune 500, which has been visibly absent.

Speaker 1 They're going to remember that's going to

Speaker 1 this guy's quote, you know, first they came, first they came for the socialists, right? Okay. Be clear, folks, everyone could get this knock on the door.
And I do think the worm has turned.

Speaker 1 I think there is economic incentive now to come out against this shit. And you know who provided cloud cover for it? Chairman Powell.

Speaker 3 Yes, he does, but we'll see. We'll see.
From your mouth to all your legions of babies.

Speaker 1 You're cynical, you know, or you don't think you're cynical.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I think it'll take longer than you think.
It'll be more damaging. I think he will have damaged and wrecked people's lives and in the process.

Speaker 1 Oh, I think that's already happened.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think he's going to keep doing it. I think until

Speaker 3 the midterms, and if the Democrats win, he's in for a world of pain. for the rest of his life.
That's where I think it is. Anyway, that's a great prediction, Scott, by the way.

Speaker 3 And as I said, from your lips to your legions of babies' ears. Elsewhere in the Scott and Terry universe, Scott, you just had a big interview with Canada's new prime minister, Mark Carney.

Speaker 3 Very nice get. You chatted about a lot of things, including Canada's role in changing the world and whether the U.S.-Canada relationship can be fixed as trade tensions rise.

Speaker 3 Obviously, Scott is a particular friend of Canada, and they love us there.

Speaker 3 Let's listen to a clip.

Speaker 1 You know, from a Canadian perspective, we are willing to take the price to restructure our economy in a different direction. Like, it's been such a sense of,

Speaker 1 I mean, the word that's used is betrayal. So, you know, we signed a deal.
We've had this partnership. We observe it in good faith.
We set up businesses. We, you know, We know lots of Americans.

Speaker 1 We like Americans. We listen to American podcasts.
There's such a thing. And all of a sudden,

Speaker 1 we get these

Speaker 1 attacks, which is the way this is viewed, is, okay, so it's going to cost us for a period of time and we'll build out and build with others.

Speaker 3 What a nice voice he has.

Speaker 1 He's a very impressive guy.

Speaker 1 He was asked to be, again, the first non-Brit to head the Bank of England.

Speaker 1 I asked him, I thought the nicest part of the podcast, I asked him in a lightning round, I said, if you could could go back and speak to someone who's not with us anymore, who would it be and what would you say?

Speaker 1 And he'd paused and he said, my dad. And I would tell him I love him.
Oh, wow. It was really a nice.

Speaker 3 Oh, Scott, you probably weep, didn't you?

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Well, he got emotional, made me feel very emotional.

Speaker 3 Oh, very nice. He's an impressive.
And by the way, incredible turnaround in Canada for the liberals.

Speaker 3 Like this, this, this weird little conservative was going to win, and now he looks like he's going to lose. Pierre, puie voir, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 Trump is, is literally toxic for the entire world right now. The most elegant way to reduce everyone's prosperity.
But in terms of popularity, he's taken Claudia Schumbaum's popularity above 80%.

Speaker 1 Incredible. I mean, everyone is drowing against this guy.

Speaker 3 We'll see if he wins. We'll see.
But anyway, that looks like that's the case. It was a good interview, Scott.
I listened to it. It was terrific.
Okay, that's the show.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week.
Scott, read us out.

Speaker 1 Today's show is produced by Larry Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Inner Todd engineered this episode.
Jim Mackle edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Miss Averio, and Dan Shulan.

Speaker 1 Nishak Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

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