Liberation Day, Elon Exit Rumors, and Guest Co-Host Jon Lovett

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Speaker 15 Yeah, lesbians know what penises look like.

Speaker 16 We know what they look like.

Speaker 15 That's partly the way you figure out you're a lesbian.

Speaker 16 That's correct.

Speaker 16 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm the very nasty and openly lesbian, Kara Swisher. That's according to my number one fan, Megan Kelly.

Speaker 16 Scott is off today, but in his place, I brought in someone who Megan Kelly might also take issue with and obviously will, the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save America, and love it or leave it, John Lovett.

Speaker 16 Welcome, John.

Speaker 15 Hi, good to see you. Good.

Speaker 16 Did you see Megan trying to flirt with me online? Did you see that situation?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 15 You know,

Speaker 15 dipping your pigtails ink for sure.

Speaker 16 I mean, seriously, what is the deal? Did you understand I I like LGB, but not T?

Speaker 15 Oh, of course, of course. They're trying to divide the T off from the LGB.
That's what they've done.

Speaker 16 I don't think she knows what Q is or plus. Like, what is plus? What is Q?

Speaker 15 No, I don't think they know what the Q is. They certainly don't know what the IA is.
They're not into any of these letters, but they're mostly focused on trying to,

Speaker 15 they want the T off of the flag. And we have to keep the T on the flag.

Speaker 16 Yeah. I didn't make a response to the New York Post when they called me for one.
I felt that was the right way to go, didn't you think?

Speaker 15 It seems as though this is, is it just drumming up a misunderstanding from years ago to find a way to talk about you? Is that what this is?

Speaker 16 I called her a rage machine last week on the show because she is. She just yells at everybody.
And, you know, and she wasn't, she, I hate to say it, so talking about Elon Musk.

Speaker 16 They weren't exactly like this then. And so it's kind of a shock.
What happened is she had canceled on the show and we had back and forth and back and forth.

Speaker 16 And I think I wrote sort of to my, to the staff and her person, like, when are we going to do this thing? And then the person said, our sister died. And I, then I wrote, I'm really sorry.

Speaker 16 So the whole thing is, I didn't know, right? And then it was ridiculous. Of course, I'm sorry, her sister died.
It's just very strange. I think it was just an excuse to yell at me for a little while.

Speaker 15 But yeah, that's what it seems. That's what it seems like.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 16 She has a podcast network like you guys. Did you know that?

Speaker 15 I, well, the reason I know about it is because she called you a bitchy lesbian or whatever she said. That's how I, I mean, that's the whole purpose.

Speaker 15 That's this is that this is, there's like a, like, she, there's a cycle to this, right? Like, you know, she picks these fights. It generates a page six story.
It gets attention.

Speaker 16 Who do you beef with? Who beefs at you from the right?

Speaker 15 Well, John got in a fight with J.D. Vance on Twitter.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I saw that.

Speaker 15 Which is, it's just incredible that the vice president.

Speaker 16 Explain that for the people, what it was about.

Speaker 15 It was about the fact that the Trump administration is,

Speaker 15 I don't even want to call it deporting. It is kidnapping people and dispatching them to Gulag in El Salvador.
And we have increasing evidence that they're making mistakes as they do this.

Speaker 15 And now the administration is claiming once you've been sent to this mega prison in El Salvador, they don't have the ability to bring you back. So no mistakes.

Speaker 15 So there's no due process to catch mistakes in advance and no way to rectify mistakes once they've happened, which is obviously wrong, even if you are getting it right.

Speaker 15 But now we see that they are are getting it wrong. And Vance was defensive and dissembling and lying about what the record said about one example.
Right.

Speaker 16 That he was in M13 or whatever, that he was in.

Speaker 15 MS13.

Speaker 16 MS-13, excuse me. And then he wasn't, right? It was just like nonsense.

Speaker 15 Well, we have no idea.

Speaker 15 Other than there is no evidence for it, right?

Speaker 15 And the evidence, there's no, they have.

Speaker 15 Well, of course, there's certainly, yes,

Speaker 15 they have provided no evidence that this person was in MS-13. Vance claimed he was convicted.
As far as we could tell, this person has never been convicted in the U.S. of a crime, right? And

Speaker 15 the evidence he cited wasn't there.

Speaker 15 Similarly, we have this for other examples of people that seem to have been rounded up because they had tattoos

Speaker 15 that rubbed an ICE officer the wrong way, including a tattoo for autism awareness.

Speaker 16 Yeah. The guy, that was the gay barber.
Was that the gay barber?

Speaker 15 No, the gay barber had a crown that said mom and a crown that said dad.

Speaker 16 Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous.
It's just ridiculous. It's evil.
It's evil, all of it. Well, good for John.
Yeah. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today.

Speaker 16 This is really kind of a dark time at the same time. It's tons of material for us to talk about and tons of things to get up in arms about, about what's going on.

Speaker 16 And we've got a lot to get to today, including Trump giving the middle finger to the rest of the world via tariffs with these sweeping new tariffs, which seem ridiculous.

Speaker 16 And every economist on all sides is pretty perplexed about the whole thing. And plus, what's next for TikTok?

Speaker 16 But first, President Trump has reportedly told his inner circle that Elon Musk will be transitioning out of his administration in the coming weeks, according to Politico.

Speaker 16 The White House is denying the report with Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt calling it garbage in a post on X. Elon also waited on X saying it's fake news.

Speaker 16 We'll get to Elon's role in Wisconsin election in a bit, but the big picture of Elon is indeed beginning to step back. What do you think about the move and the timing?

Speaker 16 The 130-day tenure as special government employees due to end in late May, early June, whatever that is. It might be time for him to focus back on Tesla.

Speaker 16 The company shared its dramatic numbers this week, dramatically bad. Sales plunged 13% in the first three months of the year, the largest drop of deliveries in history.
Nobody wants it.

Speaker 16 Obviously, these protests are counting, but also the fact they don't have any innovative cars. What is, from your perspective, what's going on here with their communications?

Speaker 16 And then what happens when he's not in his orbit and stops the day-to-day government business that he's doing? And what will happen to Doge when that happens?

Speaker 16 In Scott's absence, just to finish it up, I'll note he predicted Elon's ex and the end of Doge just a few weeks ago. Let's listen.

Speaker 7 I think he's basically going to pull a Vivek and just slowly fade away out of, and I think Doge is going to die a quiet death because he has,

Speaker 9 it looks as if

Speaker 4 his power has been emasculated.

Speaker 1 And two, he's just losing so much money right now.

Speaker 16 So talk a little bit about this.

Speaker 16 What do you imagine is happening here?

Speaker 15 So, I think, first of all, we should dispense with the idea that this is because the 130-day window is up.

Speaker 15 Because, as we all know, Trump has nothing but respect for arcane rules governing when people can and cannot serve. So, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 15 I think it is probably too pat and too convenient for all of us that have found the way that Elon Musk has sort of rampaged through the government to be obviously disgraceful, but also politically unpalatable to say, ah, look, we'll talk about Wisconsin, but he's deeply unpopular.

Speaker 15 Doge is bringing negative attention to Trump. Trump put Elon out there as a shield.
He took all of these hits. And now, because he's unpopular, Trump's moving him aside.

Speaker 15 I don't think it's unreasonable for them to say this was always basically the plan that he was going to come for a few months, get this thing rolling, and then step back. That said,

Speaker 15 Elon Musk

Speaker 15 has drawn so much negative attention to what could have been a far more boring

Speaker 15 endeavor. That

Speaker 15 he has brought so much negative attention to the kinds of cuts that they might have wanted to make, but probably not with this much fanfare and probably without this much chaos.

Speaker 15 What is unclear is

Speaker 15 A,

Speaker 15 how much of this can go on without Elon as this singular, aggressive figure?

Speaker 15 And B, how much of what he's already done is so damaging that based and so complete that really they've gotten what they wanted to get out of Doge and now they just break everything, which is break everything,

Speaker 15 fire everybody.

Speaker 15 You know, I have a friend at the VA, and he was talking about how, yeah, you know, the surgeries are continuing, but a bunch of people lost their access to the computer system because they were fired and then unfired, but they haven't gotten it back.

Speaker 15 So they're not really able to work, right? Like a lot of the chaos, it leaves the headlines, but it's ongoing, right?

Speaker 15 These agencies have been hobbled in ways that we know about in a lot of ways that we don't know about.

Speaker 15 It doesn't surprise me that he'd be stepping back. And I also, you know, Trump can't possibly be enjoying how much blowback this is getting and how much is coming onto him.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I had talked about the idea of a heat shield that he does like, he wants to do these things and not get blamed. And it is interesting that Elon has such bad negatives.

Speaker 16 I think Harry Anton on CNN said he's political poison for anybody who's near him. And we'll talk about Wisconsin in a second.

Speaker 16 But, and he's much, but Trump has less negatives, even though he's his boss, presumable boss.

Speaker 16 So he does, heat shields are not the worst thing in the world, you know, someone, as you said, said, rampaging through the government.

Speaker 16 And I think one of the things I had said, you know, when these reports came out and when the Wisconsin thing happened, they were like, okay, that's it.

Speaker 16 I'm like, no, no, he's not, he doesn't care about a failure. He'll just keep, he'll make it not a failure.
He'll pretend it's not what he did here.

Speaker 16 And then he'll move on to his next disaster kind of mess. And he doesn't care.
I think the issue is making a nuisance of himself, making himself the center. And in Wisconsin, he was by himself, right?

Speaker 16 Trump

Speaker 16 wasn't physically present there the way he often is. And he wasn't there.
And so, with Elon as the center of attention wearing that cheese head, it was kind of like Dekakis and the tank.

Speaker 16 Remember when he had that picture or any of those unfortunate pictures

Speaker 16 or Ron DeSantis in the boots or things like that?

Speaker 16 But so let's talk about the Wisconsin election, where despite spending $25 million, Elon was unable to buy a state Supreme Court seat.

Speaker 16 You can buy a presidency for $200 million, but you cannot buy a state Supreme Court seat for

Speaker 16 a tenth of that.

Speaker 16 Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford handily beat her conservative opponent, Brad Schimmel, maintaining the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Speaker 16 She's replacing another justice who is a liberal justice.

Speaker 16 In terms of the other elections this week, Republicans did keep those House seats in Florida, replace Matt Gates and Mike Walls, through margins were significantly narrower than in the last election.

Speaker 16 The strategy of making Elon the enemy was effective in the Wisconsin race. I think he's just irritating.
And though he didn't help himself, as I said, with the cheese head hat,

Speaker 16 what is the playbook? Because he's not always going to be there to beat up on.

Speaker 16 And of course, on Sunday, he said the entire destiny of humanity hung on this race, but he later said, I expected to lose. There is a value to losing

Speaker 16 a piece for positional gain, which I'm calling downward-facing doge.

Speaker 16 What is happening here? Because I'm trying to sort of like, is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Like, I'm always quite wary, even when these people lose of how much they actually lose.

Speaker 15 Oh, it's, it's a very good thing that he lost. He got nothing for that money.
They lost the other statewide races as well.

Speaker 15 I was in Wisconsin in the run-up and

Speaker 15 I went knocking on doors. And obviously that's anecdotal, but we talked to, went to 150 doors and

Speaker 15 Elon had made himself the main character. It was what's on people's minds.

Speaker 15 One example, we were just walking down the street and someone in the neighborhood was like, well, what are you guys, what are you knocking on doors for?

Speaker 15 And we said, oh, we're trying to make sure everybody gets out to vote for Susan Crawford. And they said, can you believe what's going on with Elon? They're setting the Teslas on fire.

Speaker 15 He's spending 25 million or he's spending millions of dollars in the state. And I think it, again, like, I would love to say

Speaker 15 that, oh, Elon, this is proof that Elon Musk is political poison. I don't know that.

Speaker 15 I think what you can say is that in this environment, and this is very good news, no amount of money can overcome the political fundamentals.

Speaker 15 And Elon Musk is not a persuasive figure to the kinds of voters that Republicans need. And so the independence.

Speaker 16 The independence.

Speaker 16 I call him repellent. He's repellent to voters.

Speaker 15 He is. He's toxic.

Speaker 16 Why is that? Why is it? Obviously, rich guy, Rockets, this and that. What has happened here?

Speaker 15 Look, I think there's the obvious answer, which he has a terrible personality. And

Speaker 16 so we're getting to know him more, meaning,

Speaker 15 and

Speaker 15 he's abusing his wealth without respect for our democracy. And I don't mean even, you know, look, he puts out this announcement saying basically he's going to buy votes in Wisconsin.

Speaker 15 It faced a lot of blowback. He's accused of committing crimes.
He changes the language on it so that it's more legally permissible. So he's no longer giving you money for votes.

Speaker 15 He's giving you money for signing a petition, whatever it may be.

Speaker 15 But fundamentally, he's flying in to Wisconsin on a private jet to throw money down in front of the populace, like a grand vizier visiting the colonies.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 he is cutting in this chaotic and destructive way parts of the government.

Speaker 15 They may not be, they may be the parts where they view it as the weakest for Democrats to defend places like USAID,

Speaker 15 but they're also shuttering social security offices. They're coming after Medicaid.
It's a small, I don't believe most people are seeing this, but I do think it's important

Speaker 15 that this figure who has taken on this vast amount of power, basically bought his way into this role, does it with so little respect for the tens of millions of people that are skeptical of him or don't like him.

Speaker 15 That he that if he is if somebody is protesting him, they're Soros Soros-backed.

Speaker 15 Democrats oppose him only because they are evil and they want to send social security checks to undocumented immigrants.

Speaker 15 That when people are critical of Doge, he claims, oh, it is because they're not being specific. Have you noticed they don't offer any specifics?

Speaker 15 They offer,

Speaker 15 there's never been more valid, specific, clear, focused criticism.

Speaker 16 Meet David Fahrenhold. Meeting.

Speaker 15 Are you kidding me? You are cutting billions across or claiming to cut cut billions across this government.

Speaker 15 We are pointing to specific container ships holding specific amounts of food to get you to release it. So there's a total lack of respect for anyone who is not MAGA, right?

Speaker 16 That's one of his tricks, by the way. He does that in interviews all the time.
Show me a specific example. And then I have 10, and then he goes, show me a specific.
It's just, it's exhausting.

Speaker 15 Exhausting. And so, like, the, the, the,

Speaker 15 so, so he is, he is basically, he's not acting democratically in any way that a person would. You can imagine a version of

Speaker 15 this whole process unfolding where

Speaker 15 he says, you know what? I'm going to all these agencies. I'm going to listen to some of the people there.

Speaker 15 And I'm going to go to the heads of these various departments and I'm going to say, oh, you have three months, two months, three weeks to give me cuts.

Speaker 15 And these are the amount of cuts you have to give me. And if you don't give me this amount of cuts, I'm going to do it for you.

Speaker 15 And you can imagine him engaging with people on the actual substance of these criticisms. But he can't do that.
He has no aptitude or willingness to do that.

Speaker 15 And we don't know with Elon, when he goes in front of a crowd and says, this is a grand scheme to bring in immigrants to turn them into voters. We don't know if he believes that.

Speaker 15 or if he just believes that's an advantageous argument to make in front of the people for whom he has no respect.

Speaker 16 He burns PR people like you can't believe.

Speaker 16 And he had some good ones many years ago, right? But he obviously PR is critically important to him. He wants to be seen as the center of attention, you know, when he seems like a nuisance.

Speaker 16 And he thinks he pretends to be funny when the only person that's funny is his daughter, Vivian, right? Who's actually funny?

Speaker 15 I will just, can I just, I will say, though, I do think the most important, like just stepping back from his sort of

Speaker 15 repellent quality.

Speaker 16 Repellent, isn't that a good word?

Speaker 15 Very good word. Here's what I think we've learned, and I think this is what's most important, even if you don't for Democrats, yeah.

Speaker 15 For Democrats and Republicans, even if you can't totally figure, you can't tease the correlation from the causation,

Speaker 15 we learned that $25 million in Wisconsin did not change the outcome of these races

Speaker 15 and Crawford overperformed against other statewide races. And then we learned in Florida in these special House races that Democrats overperform by roughly whatever, 15 to 17 points.

Speaker 15 And what does that tell you? It tells you that there are a bunch of vulnerable Republicans that are,

Speaker 15 whose margins of victory were well below 15 points, who are looking at this and saying, hold on,

Speaker 15 I have a deeply controversial vote coming my way for reconciliation that involves tax cuts for the wealthy and Medicaid cuts.

Speaker 15 Elon's money cannot protect me from the general. So is it now

Speaker 15 the choice, do I side with Elon, prevent a primary, and hope his money protects me in the fall?

Speaker 15 Or do I side with my constituents, brace for a primary, get through it, and hope my voters reward me for not going along with the Trump agenda?

Speaker 15 Like that choice just got a lot harder for some of these Republicans. It is.

Speaker 16 And I think one of the things that I heard one Republican making is they don't have any game below Donald Trump because I think he's still popular with the people he's popular with, period.

Speaker 16 And I do, you know, I think that if he's not present,

Speaker 16 their bench gets real thin and really irritating. Like you've got got the charmless JD Vance, you've got the sad, soulful Marco Rubio, who looks like a loser.

Speaker 16 You've got like there's no game and then crazy Howard Luttnick, like, you know,

Speaker 16 he seems like crazy Eddie from the old days. And

Speaker 16 it just, it doesn't have, if Trump's not present, it's really hard like for them to do anything. And at some point, he's not going to be present.

Speaker 16 Interestingly, in contrast, New Jersey Senator Corey Booker invigorated Democrats this week with a 25-hour speech in the

Speaker 16 Congress against the Trump administration. Booker is now in the record books for the longest speech in Senate history, surpassing Strom Thurman's stand against Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Speaker 16 I have a serious question for you, but first, let's listen to Senator Booker explain how he managed not to go to the bathroom for the 25 hours.

Speaker 17 I talked to a lot of people. I copied some of the things we did for 15 hours.
So I fasted for days into it. I stopped drinking water a long time ago.
I think that had good and bad benefits.

Speaker 17 I definitely started cramping up from lack of water. So if some of you saw me really drink nothing, at the end, I was just trying to do something to stop my muscles from cramping.

Speaker 17 So there's just a lot of tactics I was using to try to make sure that I could stand for that long.

Speaker 16 So the impressive accomplishment of not peeing, but

Speaker 16 why do people like this? It got a huge following. Lots of people watched it.
I was sort of surprised by those numbers.

Speaker 16 It had a, you know, Mr. Smith goes to Washington quality to it.
But

Speaker 16 why do this? Because sometimes, I'll be honest, Booker does a lot of stunts that I'm I'm like, oh, a stunt. But this was a good stunt, I feel like, in some ways.

Speaker 16 And I don't mean to minimize it by saying stunt, but you know, it is what it is. He's trying to garner attention and get focus.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's a good stunt.

Speaker 15 I too was, I thought it was a good idea. I was glad he was doing it.
I'm glad to see when anybody is basically trying things to try to grab attention in this chaotic media. environment.

Speaker 15 I was also, but I was like blown away by the number of people watching it, the amount of clips that were circulating because of it. And it just speaks to the fact that there is a huge hunger

Speaker 15 among the majority of the country that does not support Donald Trump,

Speaker 15 that

Speaker 15 are looking for people who are going to fight, that just are going to respond to the moment, to the scale of what we're facing with a sense that this is a different time and we're going to need to treat this differently.

Speaker 15 And we can't just go along with business as usual. That you can't,

Speaker 15 you know, the plan can't be to vote for the continuing resolution and then go on your book tour. Like, that's just not the world we're living in.
This is a dangerous moment.

Speaker 15 And you want to see leaders that reflect that. And

Speaker 15 this is a, look,

Speaker 15 it is a stunt, right? Because ultimately it doesn't have any

Speaker 15 impact, but

Speaker 15 it does draw people's eye to what is happening in our political system. And he is doing something that required him to sacrifice and to go through like some, sounds like a fair amount of pain.

Speaker 15 And good for him for doing that. And I think a lot of people will see moments from it, see his passion in it, hear some of the different arguments he was making.

Speaker 15 I thought he did a great job talking about Social Security and Medicaid. And, you know, look, I think a lot of times, you know, Democrats are skittish

Speaker 15 about how to thread the needle because on the one hand,

Speaker 15 they

Speaker 15 view Trump as an existential threat to democracy.

Speaker 15 But on the other, they hear from the consultants and the polls and genuinely believe that where their best argument is day to day is on the ways Trump is going after Social Security, Medicaid, healthcare, the basics, the services and programs people rely on.

Speaker 15 And I thought he did a really great job of articulating both of those arguments,

Speaker 15 specifically around:

Speaker 15 look at all the chaos, look at all the destruction he's bringing into our democracy. What are we getting for it?

Speaker 16 Right. What are we getting? Does that raise his profile as a presidential candidate going forward? I mean, he's always been bandied about as that.

Speaker 15 I'm sure it does.

Speaker 15 I'm sure it does. Everybody,

Speaker 15 is it, is he running for president?

Speaker 15 Is there any senator that isn't in their minds in some way running for president? Yeah.

Speaker 16 It was interesting. When I was in Michigan, a lot of the students were asking me who was going to run.
It was sort of surprised. I'm like, oh, I don't know.

Speaker 16 Like, and then maybe go through the various and sundry people. It was interesting.
They certainly are interested

Speaker 16 in looking over the Democratic Party in that regard. He definitely raised his profile.

Speaker 15 I sort of, it's funny, like, even as you ask that, like,

Speaker 15 I'm such a political fiend. And for whatever reason, I have just no appetite for that right now.
Because it, first of all, because it feels so far away. And also,

Speaker 15 like,

Speaker 15 I don't really think there's much you can do to kind of handicap this race right now.

Speaker 15 Anybody who wants to be president has got to be somebody, and Corey Booker did this, great, has to be somewhere, someone out there in the fight showing that they understand the politics of this moment, that they have a passion and a rage in them to protect the country.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 that's sort of, that's what I'm looking for.

Speaker 15 My one sort of

Speaker 15 feeling about it is I am so not interested in the kinds of planning and maneuvers that are about like building a profile and carefully managing the rollout.

Speaker 15 That is from another era, and I'm just completely not interested in it.

Speaker 16 I'm not going to write the book, the this, the that,

Speaker 15 Harvard.

Speaker 16 No, it'll be interesting to see what works. Um, okay, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, it's Trump Against the World with these new tariffs.

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Speaker 16 John, we're back. We're recording on the day after Liberation Day.
Do you feel liberated?

Speaker 15 Do you feel liberated? Yeah, so this is liberated, this is sort of like boxing day for Liberation Day.

Speaker 16 President Trump unveiled his latest tariffs, the most expansive he had at the White House on Wednesday with the help of a giant poster board. He's imposing a 10% tariff on all U.S.

Speaker 16 trading partners as well as double-digit. He's calling them reciprocal tariffs.
They're not, just so you know,

Speaker 16 about the worst offenders. He seems to, nobody thinks these are good things.
And the math is like nuts. The EU will face 20% tariffs, Japan 24%,

Speaker 16 South Korea 26%, and China, additional 34%

Speaker 16 on top of existing tariffs of, I think, 20%. Russia conveniently didn't make the cut.

Speaker 16 Trump also is slapping tariffs on unexpected places like some uninhabited islands in the Antarctic where only penguins live. People are having a good time with that.

Speaker 16 The EU, China, and others are already planning retaliation.

Speaker 16 He's been very flip-floppy on tarot, sort of red-light-green mic, which caused chaos. And now he just dropped the bomb.
Like he really did essentially drop the mic.

Speaker 16 The markets opened just a little while ago. The SP dropped 3.4%.
The Dow fell 1,200 points, more than 2%. And NASDAQ is down 3.8%.
Big numbers.

Speaker 16 A number of sectors are getting hit, but in terms of tech specifically, things are looking rough right now for tech, particularly because they're so invested across the world.

Speaker 16 Apple's down over 9%, Amazon down 8%, Nvidia down 6%, Alphabet down 4%. U.S.

Speaker 16 tech companies are becoming collateral damaged when it comes to retaliation, getting hit with fines, restrictions, and new taxes by major markets worldwide.

Speaker 16 They also have obviously interconnected with so many different markets. What do you think of this rollout? Peter Navarro is back, my friend.
He's back and he's crazier than ever.

Speaker 15 Trump's building a wall, and we're all going to pay for it, is I think what's happening. Larry

Speaker 15 Larry Summers posted this and he's

Speaker 16 a famous economist. Former

Speaker 15 Treasury Secretary and somebody who is not hyperbolic saying that a crude estimate of Trump's tariffs puts the projected loss at $20 trillion or well over $200,000 per family of four.

Speaker 15 And then he walks through how he reaches that very conservative estimate of the damage.

Speaker 15 They're not reciprocal tariffs. People were baffled by the number.

Speaker 15 I'm not an economist, but people looking at this, they're sort of scratching their heads trying to figure out what this number is.

Speaker 15 And they realized that it's not based on the tariffs of these other countries.

Speaker 15 It's a crude calculation based on the trade deficit with these other countries and not the trade deficit on goods and services, but just the trade deficit on goods.

Speaker 15 Even the administration itself admitted that it was too hard to actually calculate for every country what the reciprocal tariffs would be. And so they came up with this ridiculous formula.

Speaker 15 The hope has to be that these fake numbers

Speaker 15 are just an opening bid in a negotiation.

Speaker 16 That he's trying to do it. Chris Murphy had that in his, I'm going to read from some of it.
Chris Murphy, who's been very vocal, just like Corey Booker, the senator.

Speaker 16 Those trying to understand these tariffs or economic policy are dangerously naive.

Speaker 16 The tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy, a means to comply loyalty with every business that will need to petition Trump for relief, which many people are.

Speaker 16 And what he was saying essentially is that this gives him power. And the reason he can is because he's taking control of spending and taxation into his own hands and rewarding loyalty and punishing

Speaker 16 dissent.

Speaker 16 Our own revolution was spurred by the king's use of heavy taxation on the colonies to punish our push push for self-governance. The king's message was simple: stop protesting and I'll stop taxing.

Speaker 16 Just what do you think is happening here? Besides, even Scott Desson looked like an idiot, and I don't feel like he is.

Speaker 15 I think Trump has believed since the 80s, the last time he formed any new ideas, that tariffs are good and that

Speaker 15 we have trade deficits because other countries are taking advantage of us.

Speaker 15 He has been pushing and pushing and pushing to do sweeping sweeping tariffs. He was stopped in the first term by cooler heads.

Speaker 15 Like, there's many ways in which what we're seeing with Trump is a kind of extreme, bizarro version of a normal pattern with first and second term presidents, which is in the first term, presidents work for the White House.

Speaker 15 In the second term, the White House works for the president. Presidents figure out where they can get more control.
They feel more confident in exercising the power. They feel like they belong there.

Speaker 15 They no longer feel like they're imposters. And so all the people that would have stopped Trump from doing this, they're gone, right?

Speaker 15 It's a different set of people, but he has more responsible people. I mean, I think they all look like fucking idiots today, but he has more responsible people on

Speaker 15 economics than he does, say, running around the FBI or HHS.

Speaker 15 But Trump wanted to do this and nobody could stop him. They put together this half-baked Kakamami plan involving ridiculous calculation to create these charts.

Speaker 15 Nobody is really crossing the T's and dotting the I's, which is why we're taxing penguins.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 the end result is this chaos. That said, I think the point that Chris Murphy is making is a really important one.

Speaker 15 He has a lot of grand language there.

Speaker 15 Trump knows.

Speaker 15 Trump likes using his power. He likes the way it feels to exercise power.
Congress has given way too much authority to the president on tariffs. He puts these tariffs in place.

Speaker 15 And all of a sudden, Republican House members are lobbying him.

Speaker 15 Businesses are lobbying him for relief. Countries are lobbying him for relief.
And even if you view it,

Speaker 15 even if you take the most generous version of it, right, which is not that he's doing this to destroy democracy, but doing this to create leverage, the question is, what does he do with it, right?

Speaker 15 And can he use these tariffs, say, on agriculture where or to provide relief for these tariffs on agriculture to to rally votes for uh a bill for example and so uh i do think this is about power i do think this is about control but i also think he genuinely believes that tariffs are good implications right now right at the beginning of this obviously the stock market's down obviously wall street's screaming so are farmers so are everybody screaming essentially i i think we just don't know the the

Speaker 15 It's interesting because we talked about this on Potsey of America on Monday. And look, there's a lot of like hyperbolic partisans talking about how the markets are crashing, the markets are crashing.

Speaker 15 And they weren't. They actually weren't.
They were down. They were, of course, down, but year over year, they were up.
And the question was why.

Speaker 15 And it seems like what we've learned today is nobody really believed it would be as bad as what they announced. And I still don't think we know.

Speaker 15 And what we have to watch unfold is: are we seeing the beginning of a truly disastrous long-term

Speaker 15 tariff policy?

Speaker 15 Or is this an extreme version of what we saw when he first put in place the Canada and Mexico tariffs, which is he talks the big game, but if he gets concessions in quotes or pushback or just fake concessions like a fentanyl czar or

Speaker 15 a press conference in which the Mexican president announces policies she had already put in place months earlier. Will he lower them? Right.
Like,

Speaker 15 what does he want to reduce these numbers?

Speaker 15 The hope has to be that because these figures are so ridiculous, right? Like he's calling them reciprocal tariffs. Like, how does Vietnam,

Speaker 15 they're being asked to reduce their tariffs that don't exist below, you know, this is about a trade deficit.

Speaker 16 No, and I think the one thing that's not being noticed is service tariffs, service issues, because that's tech companies. And we are in a not a deficit.
We're in quite the opposite.

Speaker 16 We have the advantage there by, I think, $300 billion.

Speaker 16 We're in a surplus in that regard. And

Speaker 16 now Europe is going to target the McKinseys of the world,

Speaker 16 the cloud business of whoever, Microsoft and whatever. And so we have a real vulnerability in the service, which is why you're seeing the tech companies get so whacked here.

Speaker 15 Well,

Speaker 15 look at just the Canada example, right?

Speaker 15 Trump rails against this, they're taking advantage of us, this, this trade deficit, this trade deficit.

Speaker 15 If you take away fossil fuels, if you don't look at oil and gas, we have a trade surplus with Canada. They're our biggest customer, right? This is supposed to be to help domestic manufacturing.

Speaker 15 Domestic manufacturers, a lot of their customers are around the world. They're going to take a huge hit because of this.

Speaker 15 The other big problem here is, even on Trump's own terms, the fact that nobody truly believes or can know whether these will be upheld consistently. How is anybody going to plan to build in America?

Speaker 15 How is that possible?

Speaker 16 Why would you build a factory?

Speaker 15 Why on earth would you build a factory when you know that, A, when you don't know that these tariffs are going to stay in place?

Speaker 15 And even if they do, you know that America is going to be isolated from the rest of the world.

Speaker 15 It's actually just another example of just the chaos and incompetence makes them fail even on their own terms, even though on their own terms, right?

Speaker 15 Doge is going to end up costing the the government money, right?

Speaker 15 Because of how ham-fistedly and stupidly they've done this, getting rid of the IGs, getting rid of the parts of the government that figure out what's effective and what's not, right?

Speaker 15 Firing the best and the brightest, the new and excited people that have just been hired, the people that were just promoted, the lawsuits that will inevitably come that will cost the government millions and millions and millions of dollars, billions of dollars.

Speaker 15 Who knows?

Speaker 15 Same here. Yeah,

Speaker 16 I think we know now how he bankrupted his casinos. I just feel like we have such insight into why his businesses are so shitty at the same time.

Speaker 16 I'm going to move on really quickly because one of the things, another podcaster, Joe Rogan, thinks the Trump administration's deportations are horrific because now, even the thing that he polls strongest on, which is immigration,

Speaker 16 some of he's starting to get pushback there.

Speaker 16 Let's listen.

Speaker 22 You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting like

Speaker 22 lassoed up and deported and sent to

Speaker 22 El Salvador prisons. This is kind of crazy that that could be possible.
That's horrific. And that's, again, that's bad for the cause.
Like, the cause is, let's get the gang members out.

Speaker 22 Everybody agrees. But let's not innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs.
And then, like, how long before that guy can get out?

Speaker 22 Can we figure out how to get him out?

Speaker 22 Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake?

Speaker 16 Sounding somewhat reasonable for Joe Rogan, although, you know, you watch the penny drop slowly with this guy.

Speaker 16 The administration has acknowledged it to port a man, for example, with protected status to El Salvador because of an administrative error and says they can't get him back.

Speaker 16 They can invade Greenland, but they can't get him back from people who are paying.

Speaker 16 Again, same thing, haphazard.

Speaker 16 People do not like the haphazard nature of a lot of these things, the tariffs,

Speaker 16 the rollout on things that he actually polls well on, immigration, for example.

Speaker 15 Yeah, look, I mean,

Speaker 15 it's,

Speaker 15 it's, forget the politics.

Speaker 15 What they're doing is despicable.

Speaker 16 It is despicable.

Speaker 15 It is despicable. It doesn't serve public safety.
It doesn't serve the goal of immigration, enforcement, border security.

Speaker 15 As Rogan points out, it doesn't serve their own agenda. It's just cruel.
It's just evil. And there's just not been enough.

Speaker 15 Like Rogan has had more moral clarity than a lot of Democrats on this who have scared themselves into believing that if they're talking about immigration, they're falling into a trap as if the American people cannot handle

Speaker 15 a

Speaker 15 position as simple as we believe in enforcing our immigration laws, but we have to have due process because government makes mistakes and everybody has rights. Right?

Speaker 15 Like that's not that complicated an argument.

Speaker 15 The other part of this, and

Speaker 15 Liberation Day is now kind of a, obviously we're glib about it, and they've mostly used it to mean tariffs, but they don't just mean tariffs, right?

Speaker 15 Stephen Miller has used it to refer to immigration as well.

Speaker 15 Do we believe that the administration is going to ramp down deportations? Do we believe the administration is going to maintain this level of deportations?

Speaker 15 They are building towards greater and greater deportations. Do we believe the number of mistakes will go down as they do this more? Of course not.
Of course not. And

Speaker 15 the judge, one of the judges that was looking at this

Speaker 15 said that the Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act in World War II because she points out

Speaker 15 You could accidentally sweep up somebody who's here legally, who's a citizen. They would have no ability to seek recourse.
They end up in a gulag in El Salvador, and now they can't get out.

Speaker 15 Now the government is claiming they don't have the ability to bring them home.

Speaker 16 It's just like a movie. I keep feeling like a Sylvester Stallone movie.

Speaker 16 It seems like I've seen these.

Speaker 16 You know, I'm an aficionado of all these kinds of movies where someone's in a prison for the wrong reason or they get swept up into something silly and then they're stuck.

Speaker 15 I mean, look, look, this, this example, right? Like

Speaker 15 they keep saying, oh, you know, we were deporting the most dangerous members of Trende Aragua. This, the, the, Andries, the, the gay hairdresser, uh, he was not

Speaker 15 being held when they, he, he came for an appointment, an asylum appointment. He thought he was going to be deported until he found himself in this nightmarish situation.

Speaker 15 He has not spoken to his family. He doesn't know that right now there are people angered and angry and fighting for him.
He is in a, he is in a nightmare. He is in a night.

Speaker 15 He's in a country that's not his own.

Speaker 16 Think about it.

Speaker 15 His head has been shaved. He's been there for weeks.

Speaker 15 There's no outside.

Speaker 15 It's torture. We're torturing these people.

Speaker 15 This is not a deportation. This is a kidnapping.
The government has kidnapped these people.

Speaker 16 And then meanwhile, Christine Noam poses in kind of like, you know, torture porn, essentially. Her outfits are

Speaker 16 strange and

Speaker 15 in her Rolex.

Speaker 16 Not just the Rolex, the outfits themselves, the super shiny shoes. I'm like, what are you doing? Modified Nazi? What's happening? What's the fashion?

Speaker 15 Think about the inhumanity

Speaker 15 that is required to stand in front of a group of people that are forced to be there to film this kind of, yeah, fascist porn.

Speaker 16 Are you surprised in anyone?

Speaker 15 I am surprised, actually.

Speaker 15 I'll admit to being, I'll be admitted to being, well, when I saw it, it was surprising. I couldn't believe that they were doing it.

Speaker 15 I believe there are a lot of people who who like it.

Speaker 15 I'm not surprised that there are a lot of people who liked it, but I am surprised by how quickly we've gotten this low to have the Secretary of Homeland Security basically making Viet Cong-style propaganda.

Speaker 15 Do you remember the movie Network? Of course I remember the movie.

Speaker 16 I mean, this reminds me of this. Like, this is, you know.

Speaker 15 Can you believe Network is 50 years old?

Speaker 16 It's completely pertinent. Everything on there, we've done.

Speaker 15 It's like unbelievable. It's unbelievable how good Network is.

Speaker 16 They're going to start broadcasting executions. That's what I see.
Like, you know, that kind of thing.

Speaker 16 You know, we talk, that's sort of a sci-fi trope, the idea of a national, you know, broadcast of executions. This was one step in that direction.
Absolutely.

Speaker 16 And, and it's, it's just the whole, the whole nine yards of it is, and they, they won't fix it because they're incompetent, also. They're incompetent and cruel, which makes a difference.

Speaker 15 Well, think about, think about the, yes, they are incompetent and cruel. And the most, the most dangerous force in

Speaker 15 any society is an incompetent, cruel bureaucracy a bureaucracy that doesn't know what it's doing and doesn't care who it hurts in history it is the most dangerous force and it starts it is start it starts with these unsavory gang members and and the next step is a wider roundup that gets that gets a bunch of people that that they'll point to as being awful human beings who were glad to get out of the country who how dare democrats try to protect while meanwhile as part of these uh sweep ups you end up with legal residents visa holders students, citizens, citizens who don't look like a Norman Rockwell painting, who have tattoos, have accents, maybe don't speak English as well as they would like, who look like the kind of immigrants they want to deport.

Speaker 16 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 15 That's where we're heading.

Speaker 15 And as they're doing that, as they're doing that, they're accusing people that do vandalism of being domestic terrorists.

Speaker 16 Right, exactly. Do you imagine that it's from, you have to think about it from a political point? Is there a good political point of view? Because people can

Speaker 16 feel it, right? People are like, wait a minute, that could happen to me. I think that's really what gets it.
Like, that seems strange.

Speaker 16 And people have that trope in their heads or people being unjustly grabbed and sent somewhere. It's a very familiar from movies and, you know, history and things like that.

Speaker 16 Do you think it's an effective tool for Democrats to push in on?

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 we have

Speaker 15 increasing evidence that Donald Trump

Speaker 15 maybe not only outperformed among recent immigrants, but maybe won recent immigrants. There are more and more stories of people who can't believe that their family members are being impacted by this.

Speaker 15 That's not the kind of immigrants I thought Trump would, not my wife, not my husband. I thought he was going to go against.

Speaker 16 The leopard ate your face kind of thing.

Speaker 15 Right, right.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 I hope people see that and feel that in the same way people voted for Trump

Speaker 15 and some of his positions on trade poll well and the run-up to an election, and then they watch tariffs unfold, and people hate it. They don't like it.

Speaker 15 They learn through the public debate and come to a new point of view, right? Public debates still do manage somehow, despite ourselves, to educate people about the substance of issues.

Speaker 15 My deeper hope is,

Speaker 15 you know, you see

Speaker 15 a lot of sort of hand-wringing coverage about how Trump's turning us into Russia and Trump's turning us into Hungary,

Speaker 15 but that we have an advantage, which is that America is still filled with Americans and that we are an individualistic, rambunctious, rebellious, freedom-loving group. And

Speaker 15 even after years of anti-immigration, propaganda and misinformation and caravans, Americans still largely are against draconian immigration policies. If you look at the polling, people want sensible

Speaker 15 that it depends on how you ask it. People still want those positions.

Speaker 15 People still obviously believe in due process and uh people believe in the constitution and so we just have to figure out we just have to make this real for people and i it is unfortunate that it does require playing defense and watching trump do these things and then using those as examples to make it real for people right right well i think it's the it could happen to you um

Speaker 16 absolutely absolutely you know that was a trope a friend of mine was in local news and i said well how do you like your marketing is so interesting like on everything and he goes oh it's the it could happen to you uh trope that they do in local news like no matter what it is killer bees it could happen to you mold it could happen to you and it was very effective of getting people to listen to things so that's why i thought it could happen to you and i think people then and that's what joe rogan was doing wait a minute i have tattoos just a second here um all right let's go on a quick break when we come back we'll talk about the latest and the bid for tick tock i know you're fascinated with tick tock john i am

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Speaker 16 John, we're back with more news. President Trump is reportedly reviewing proposals for TikTok this week.

Speaker 16 Obviously, the administration is said to be considering bids from Blackstone, Oracle, and Mark Andreessen. Amazon threw in a last-minute bid.
It actually makes sense.

Speaker 16 It's probably not a lot top contender, but Walmart was in the last go-round here. Oracle was too.

Speaker 16 The TikTok ban requires no more than 20% of TikTok or its parent companies owned by foreign adversary countries. So they're thinking about letting ByteDan stay in for 19%, apparently.

Speaker 16 I'd love to know, you use TikTok a lot, correct? You have, what, what's, well, I'd love to do a day in the life of your for you page, but

Speaker 16 what,

Speaker 16 what do you think is going to happen here?

Speaker 16 And there was an interesting story, which I think there's sort of a poll that's been cast over for TikTok on this, like where it's going, who's going to own it.

Speaker 16 A lot of people feel that if they don't get the algorithm, it's not going to be as good. As a product, it's lagged a little bit recently.

Speaker 16 Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it feels like it a little bit, that people aren't really, creators aren't putting their shoulders into it the same way. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Speaker 16 But how do you imagine it's going to happen here? I thought Elon might get a hold of it. Maybe not a good idea to give it to Elon right now.
Yeah. From a perceptible point of view.

Speaker 15 He seems busy.

Speaker 15 I haven't noticed any change in the actual use of the app.

Speaker 15 It is interesting.

Speaker 15 how much this has become Trump's decision, right?

Speaker 16 Like this,

Speaker 15 how far down the road we've come. We talk about how he wants to be the main decider on tariffs and wants people to come kind of kiss the ring.
That's what we're seeing here, right?

Speaker 15 This presumably should be Byte Dance's decision.

Speaker 16 Right. Well, China has to cooperate here now with these tariffs.
I'm not so sure they're feeling cooperative.

Speaker 15 But Trump isn't right. Well, that's, and that's that, that

Speaker 15 there was some hope, apparently, on the part of the Chinese that TikTok was a bit of leverage in

Speaker 15 the tariff fight, but that doesn't appear to have

Speaker 15 gotten them anything.

Speaker 15 I don't know what happens with TikTok. I was pretty upset about the way this all went down.

Speaker 16 The law itself.

Speaker 15 The law itself, because

Speaker 15 there was very little public debate or explanation about why TikTok was so dangerous.

Speaker 15 And a lot of the explanations were about the harm it does to people, but people didn't seem to mind if that harm was being done to Americans by Americans. Instagram is awful for young people.

Speaker 15 I think TikTok can be really awful for young people. So why is it a good thing if Americans do it to each other, but a bad thing if a foreign country does it to us?

Speaker 15 Why do our own billionaires

Speaker 15 running rampage through our minds? Why is that acceptable?

Speaker 15 And so I never thought they made the public case, which is why when all of a sudden they caught the car and TikTok was about to be banned, they did this ridiculous save TikTok.

Speaker 15 Thank you, President Trump bullshit, and it worked. So I really don't like the way this went down.

Speaker 15 The law itself.

Speaker 16 The law that it should. They didn't make the case.
Many people argue that.

Speaker 15 They didn't make the case at all. They They're just always a national security threat.
Excuse me? Excuse me? Like, my four you pages.

Speaker 16 Show me your homework. Show me your homework.

Speaker 15 My for you pages, you know, recipes and old clips of Conan.

Speaker 15 A lot of recipes. Got to make the viral Turkish pasta care.

Speaker 16 Really? Recipes and Conan O'Brien?

Speaker 15 Just, you know, among other things.

Speaker 15 Hot guys, hot guys doing new kinds of exercises. Oh, yeah.
Teaching me ways to lift weights.

Speaker 16 You know, that's Scott Galloway's favorite, too. Just to, you know.

Speaker 15 I think that there's a big overlap between

Speaker 15 fit middle-aged men

Speaker 15 and

Speaker 15 gay guys. Like that, there's a big overlap in what they're seeing, which are just handsome men rocking their delts.

Speaker 16 Rocking their delts. What do you imagine is online? I don't use TikTok that much, but what do you imagine?

Speaker 15 Oh, I think there'd be, hmm, I think we'd see,

Speaker 15 you know, lesbian talk and gay talk are so separate. They're so distinct.
They're such distinct universes.

Speaker 15 I don't know what we'd see with you, woodworking, clips of Brandy Carlisle, that kind of thing.

Speaker 16 No, you'll be surprised. ASMR.

Speaker 15 ASMR, ASMR. ASMR.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 cooking. I like watching people cook.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 16 I like watching people. I don't want to do recipes.
I just like watching people like, especially there's one on threads called Food Porn that I love. It's just like people, I don't.
I do.

Speaker 16 I'm a good cook, but I don't. I haven't in a long, I don't do it very often as much as I should.
But I like watching other people cook. That's weird.

Speaker 16 But I used to watch the Galloping Gourmet when I was a kid. I'm not going to go into a job.

Speaker 15 You remember him?

Speaker 16 And then he drank at the end, drank himself. Who's the gallop?

Speaker 15 I want to look up the galloping.

Speaker 16 The galloping gourmet who's a guy who seemed gay, but wasn't.

Speaker 15 Oh, the galloping gourmet. Look at that.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 16 He was like Julia Child, but funnier. I used to watch him cook all the time.
And then he'd always drink a bottle of wine by the end of it. And it was very amusing to an eight-year-old.

Speaker 15 When I was a kid, the food network launched. Yeah.
And everyone was like, that's got to be a joke. How can you fill a whole network with food food content? And the answer was, you can, and it's great.

Speaker 15 It was ahead of its time. But I used to watch the food network with my mom.

Speaker 16 I bet you liked Paula Dean. I bet you secretly liked Paula Dean.

Speaker 15 You know, I was at Jeffrey Weingarten. Remember Jeffrey Weingarten? Of course.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 I remember

Speaker 15 he said, my mother and I used to joke about this for years because he said,

Speaker 15 fava beans are very in right now.

Speaker 15 And that's just something we said to each other for years. Fava beans are very in right now.

Speaker 16 They are never in. They've never been in.
Anyway, what do you think the resolution is going to be? Make a a prediction.

Speaker 15 I think one of these deals is going to be the deal, and they're going to, it's going to basically look the same at the other side of it.

Speaker 15 And the user experience will roughly be the same, but there'll be this sort of change in ownership.

Speaker 16 It's a nothing burger. You know, it's owned by a lot of U.S.
people. U.S.
people own a lot of this thing. And then it's not going to be any more protect if there are problems with China.

Speaker 16 And I, unlike you, believe there are indeed abuses by the Chinese and they're a little different.

Speaker 15 I believe that. I believe that.
I agree.

Speaker 16 Mark Zuckerberg is dangerous, but I don't really want the Chinese government also up in our grill in this way because they have different goals besides just fucking us.

Speaker 16 They want to fuck us and beat us kind of thing. And but I think that they they're it's going to be more dangerous than ever in those regards from a national security point of view.

Speaker 16 And they won't solve the problem and then everyone will make money, the people that the same people you're complaining about. But we'll see.

Speaker 16 But I don't, I don't think Elon will be part of this, but maybe he will. Maybe he'll get him.
He's such a nuisance, he'll probably try to get in there.

Speaker 16 All right, John, one more quick break.

Speaker 16 When we come back, we'll be doing some predictions.

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Speaker 16 Okay, John, let's hear a prediction. Do you have a prediction for us?

Speaker 15 I do have a prediction.

Speaker 15 I'm actually re-upping a a prediction that I made before the election, but I want to make it here because I want it on the record, which is I said this last year, which is that if Donald Trump won, Eric Adams would end up in the cabinet.

Speaker 15 And I just want to lay that down once again, that I believe that that is the end result of

Speaker 16 this. Moral election.

Speaker 16 He just announced today he's going to be an independent.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 he's already started the suck-up process with Trump.

Speaker 16 What job will he get? I guess, who are they going to take out, Cash Patel?

Speaker 15 Well, I always saw, I thought he was always a, I thought he was a natural for Homeland Security.

Speaker 16 Oh, Christy Noam, hip-chicking Christy Noam.

Speaker 15 Uh, that's it. That's a natural fit for him, but I could see him at FBI too.
We'll see. We'll see.
Depends on what they sense how long Christy Noome lasts.

Speaker 16 Oh my God, they're all moving here. Speaking of moving here, I'll tell you what, I'm pretty pissed about.
Supposedly, Elon's leaving. I don't think he is.
I think he's such a nuisance.

Speaker 16 He's going to stay.

Speaker 16 Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg

Speaker 16 bought a $23 million mansion in D.C.

Speaker 16 So he's here too. I moved here, John, and they followed me here.
The stalkers that they are, they're all here.

Speaker 15 You got to get close to the king.

Speaker 16 And it's all the bad ones. The ones I liked are not here.
The bad ones are.

Speaker 15 If America is going to go from having a democracy to a court, you got to be near the court.

Speaker 16 That's true. I get it.
I get it. Honestly.
Although $23 million seems cheap for a house in

Speaker 16 one of the big ones. But

Speaker 16 he was supposedly lobbying Trump to avoid the antitrust trial. I'm not so sure that's going to work.

Speaker 16 Because ultimately, as dislikable dislikable as Elon has become, Mark Zekarich has always been dislikable.

Speaker 16 And I think he polls, you know, all those polls show they still don't like him at the White House.

Speaker 16 They still don't like him. But anyway, he's here.
I'm so excited to see him at brunch or over drinks of Caffey Milana.

Speaker 15 Do these guys, does he, do these people leave their, do they, do they, do they leave the compound?

Speaker 15 Are you going to see him at the restaurants?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 15 They just don't leave their houses, right?

Speaker 16 They're not going to leave their house. It's not going to do anything.
I mean, unless there's some MMA fighting or something happening, he'll not be going anywhere. But we'll see.

Speaker 16 I just don't want them here. I'd like them to leave.
You know, I already I'm not thrilled to be here, but here I am. And I actually live here.

Speaker 15 You're not thrilled to be there?

Speaker 16 I like it. I like it.

Speaker 15 I like it. Let's try LA.

Speaker 16 I love LA. I love California.
I cannot get my wife to move back to California.

Speaker 15 I love California. Oh, let me put me in.
Put me into this debate. Put me in.
All right.

Speaker 16 I shall. I shall.

Speaker 15 I really want to be part of that.

Speaker 16 I have this beautiful new studio you're seeing behind me. I like DC very much.
It's very lovely. And you've spent a lot of time here.

Speaker 16 But I really miss California so much. That's for you, right? Los Angeles.
Well, I love Los Angeles. It's so beautiful.

Speaker 16 Despite all the problems you've been having lately, it's still, I was just in San Francisco. It was gorgeous.
It's wonderful. So, anyway, I will not go on about that.

Speaker 16 John, one thing before we go, is there something you're watching or reading that you love lately? I mean, everyone's talking about White Lotus, obviously, or Severance. Is there anything else?

Speaker 15 I'll tell you, I've gone back to the beginning of Real Housewives of New York,

Speaker 15 and it is a joy. Look, when the world...

Speaker 16 When you're watching it?

Speaker 15 I'm starting from the, I never watched it before. So I'm going back to the very first season of Real Housewives of New York.

Speaker 15 I have been resistant, I think, from a kind of snootiness to Real Housewives for years. I've always said to myself, I don't like the reality shows.

Speaker 15 I like competitive reality shows, but I don't like the true bravo. Right.
And in hindsight, that was, I was hurting my own viewing. The real housewives are incredible.

Speaker 15 And I do believe it is hard to understand Trump, right? People call up, talk about him being a reality show because of The Apprentice, but that was a competitive show.

Speaker 15 You really need to understand real housewives. Now that I see it, it is a great way to understand how Trump operates and the way

Speaker 15 these women use conflict to draw attention to themselves.

Speaker 16 Oh, all right.

Speaker 15 You love it. It's a joy.

Speaker 16 That's interesting. It's a good joy.

Speaker 16 I'm going to give the recommendation Hacks is about to come back. And I love Bean Smart and Hannah Einbender.
Yeah, they're amazing.

Speaker 16 It looks hysterical and I think they're the best pair of like you speaking of of conflict, the two, the most, the most fantastic pair

Speaker 16 that I never expected. So I'm very excited for that to come back online.
Anyway, okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot.
Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Speaker 16 We'll be back next week with more and Scott will be back from his college tour.

Speaker 16 Just so you know, he hung out with my son in his frat yesterday and I can't wait to hear that story.

Speaker 16 But thank you so much, John. You can hear John on PodSafe America and Love It or Leave It every week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
They're wonderful podcasts. I will read us out.

Speaker 16 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andredot engineered this episode.
Jim MacIll edited this video. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Speaker 16 Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
You subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com pod.

Speaker 16 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. And John, thank you so much.

Speaker 15 Thank you.

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