Ghislaine's DOJ Interview, Cracker Barrel's Logo Change, and Guest Co-Host Tim Miller

Transcript

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Speaker 21 You and I would go to a Liberace show. I love Liberace.
So I also like Don Ho. I'm in that zone.

Speaker 21 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher, and welcome back to

Speaker 22 Scott Free August.

Speaker 21 I never get tired of that. It's the final week of Scott Free August, though.
He is coming back soon.

Speaker 21 He's been texting me lately, so we know he's getting a little jumpy on his vacation and his expensive house, wherever it happens to be. But I have yet another amazing co-host.

Speaker 21 This has been an astonishing month. Tim Miller, welcome to Pivot.

Speaker 22 Hey, Kara. I've just been kind of warming up some takes about narcissism and the crisis of young men and sialis and stuff to help people, you know, kind of transition back into Scott September.

Speaker 22 Okay, go for it. Do you have anything?

Speaker 22 Yeah, well, no, I just, I think it's important to encourage, or to encourage older men to use science and encourage younger men to get out there in the world and find women to sleep with or men, whatever, because we don't, you know, we don't want incels.

Speaker 22 And I think it leads to other problems. in society.
And I think Scott's really, really good on this point.

Speaker 21 Yeah. Okay.
Good. Well, thank you.
You be you. That's the whole point of this

Speaker 21 endeavor. And you are a certain personality.
You are also the host of the Bulwark podcast, where you do a great job and former GOP strategist. I cannot believe that at this point.

Speaker 22 Anyway, welcome. It's been a decade.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 21 Yeah. So talk about your podcast a little bit and what's the most interesting conversation you've had on there.

Speaker 22 Oh, boy, ever or recently? Recently.

Speaker 22 You know, look,

Speaker 22 the podcast, it's a daily podcast. There's a bit of a grind.
So I feel this obligation to like be on the news and get in the news while at the same time,

Speaker 22 if it's fucking Trump is awful porn every day, you know, I'm going to kill myself. And I think that the listeners will too.
And so, you have to kind of have a balance between that. So, I don't know.

Speaker 22 I mean, like, for example, on the Trump porn one, I loved my John Lovett conversation recently because I made him cry. I think he's, I think mine's the only podcast he's cried on.

Speaker 22 So, if people want to really get in touch with their feelings, he seems like a crier to me. Yeah, I know exactly.

Speaker 22 So, if people want to get in touch with their feelings, you can listen to two gay men who hide our feelings underneath sarcasm, try to expand. I had your boy J.
Cal on a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 22 I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 22 Just because

Speaker 22 it's

Speaker 22 a gag. It's a gag.
Okay, go ahead. Look, I don't know if you feel this way.
It's hard.

Speaker 22 I really want to, in the second Trump term, like have people on who are less radicalized against him than me just to kind of hash it out. It's important to hear the other perspectives.

Speaker 22 The problem is most Trump supporters are full of shit. And so it's hard.
And I don't want anybody on the podcast that's full of shit. I know you guys disappear.

Speaker 22 I want only people on who are going to say what they really think. And so

Speaker 22 I can't have somebody on who like will say one thing on the podcast in the green room and be like, you know, he really, he really has gone too far on this thing. You know, that doesn't work.

Speaker 22 And so Jay Coach.

Speaker 21 Well, if they do, just for people who don't know, they'll come up to you in a green room and be like, I agree with you. And you're like, you fucking asshole.
Like, that's when I truly hate them.

Speaker 21 Jason's an, this is Jason Callakanis, right?

Speaker 22 Yeah, Jason Callicanis, all-in-podcast. He at least will say what he disagrees with Trump, which he, which I think he's at least telling the truth to me.
You don't know. Well,

Speaker 21 he's an interesting. I've known him for 30, 40 years now.

Speaker 21 He was a media person. He ran a bunch of tech stuff.

Speaker 21 And, you know, he's kind of a

Speaker 21 jazz hands kind of fella. Like that, I don't know how else to put it.
He's really loathsome to Scott for reasons I undetermined, probably jealousy. We used to be friends, I would say.

Speaker 21 I stayed at his house and stuff like that. And

Speaker 21 his need to suck up to power is really quite distasteful to me. And, you know, he's sort of like the clown to Elon or whatever that group of people he's on the podcast with all in.

Speaker 21 I feel bad because he thought he was very clever and actually one of the early media entrepreneurs and a really enthusiastic person.

Speaker 21 But, you know, one of the things that I always had a problem in our relationship was that he was, he couldn't do hard things.

Speaker 21 Like he was a very big proponent of Travis Kalanik until everybody turned on Travis Kalanik. And then he was against Travis Kalanis.
and then when he came back he was for it.

Speaker 21 I'm like, do you have any lasting values of anything?

Speaker 22 But that's what bothers me is that well I thought that was an interesting it's interesting you say that because one of the interesting things about the interview was like

Speaker 22 because that's his nature he was totally candid about the fact like one of the things that I try to get to I'd be interested in your thoughts on this is like why did all of these billionaires become putty in Trump's hands.

Speaker 22 Like I get that in some

Speaker 22 cases they want access. It's about power.
It's about money. If Trump's going to act like an authoritarian, they need to do it.
But like in other cases, they didn't really need to.

Speaker 22 And they did it anyway. And why? And he's just blunt about the fact that like Trump

Speaker 22 responds to their phone calls. Biden never did.
Their feelings, their little fifies were hurt that Elon wasn't invited to some summit.

Speaker 22 And like, and so I thought that was like interesting just how blunt he was about that. That like sucking up to power was like the reason why these guys do it.
Like basically, that's it.

Speaker 22 That's no deeper than that.

Speaker 21 Which he is very good at, let me just say. And again, I like Jason because I feel bad.
We don't speak now and because he won't speak to me because they're mad at me.

Speaker 21 And I'm like, don't you have any fucking balls, Jason? You know, we had a pretty good relationship.

Speaker 21 And he won't because he's like, cause it's sort of like the court jester in a lot of ways to those people. I think, you know, he doesn't have as much money as they do.

Speaker 21 He has a lot of money, but not like them. Like, and so I think he's often wanted to monetize that podcast better than they do.

Speaker 21 And it's, it's degenerated into, he used to run a bunch of other startup events that I really liked, actually. I thought they were very clever.
They were sort of, again, jazz hands a lot.

Speaker 21 But I just feel like he had, he just has made a trade that I don't love. And I wish you would call me because I'm like, it's fine to argue, Jason.
But now even he's gotten hurt.

Speaker 21 Like, you said something going to hurt me. I'm like, oh, fuck you.
Like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 22 Like, Tara, Jason. Now I feel bad that I mentioned that.
You put me on the spot about recent recent interviews.

Speaker 22 I'm like, well, I mentioned the Jason when I was like, I should have mentioned like somebody who's who would have, you know, not traded.

Speaker 21 No, but he's really smart and insightful. And you know what I'd love? I'd love him to be Truman fucking compotee and write a book when it's all over, turning on all of them.

Speaker 21 I would love that because I bet he has some really good insights.

Speaker 22 Anybody who's turned on Shamaf, I'm for. So I saw that's another one.

Speaker 22 But I should have mentioned Eugene Carroll. That was one of my, that was my favorite interview recently because I was worried you never, I didn't actually know her.
I'd never met her.

Speaker 21 She is such a salty bitch, isn't she?

Speaker 22 Oh my God. The podcast started with her listing all the people that she had had sex with because she included that in her book.
It's the best list I've ever heard. I forget what it is.

Speaker 22 It's like six people, but they're all famous.

Speaker 22 Yeah, they are. Yeah.

Speaker 21 She's a salty bitch, as they say, like, you know, kind of thing.

Speaker 21 What?

Speaker 21 You do it daily? That's crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 22 Daily. Well, now you revealed yourself as not a daily listener, which is fine.
My feelings aren't hurt. It's a lot of material.

Speaker 21 I listen. You know where I listen to it? I listen to it on social media.
Like, I listen to pieces and pieces. Yeah, I agree.
I definitely listen to it every day because

Speaker 22 I go through my feeds. Yeah, that's how people consume stuff now.
Yeah, no, it's every day. I think it's important.
Like, look, it's important for people to be in a rhythm. You guys have a rhythm.

Speaker 21 One of the things that people are with media is you've got to be promiscuous in a way that, you know, and in their ear and in their head, because,

Speaker 21 and in genuine ways, it's a very different than a TV appearance, which you're also on, um, because it's you, like, this is my take, and they get to trust you.

Speaker 21 And that's the critical part of having a daily relationship. Um, one thing you said I want to poke on, this Trump porn, Trump porn stuff, talk about that, like that idea.

Speaker 21 You don't want to just be endlessly reacting to this.

Speaker 22 Yeah, it's tough.

Speaker 21 I made it. Long dong silver.
Yeah,

Speaker 22 short don't silver. My, um, my, my pledge to myself after he won was like, I'm only going to get mad about what I'm mad about.

Speaker 22 And there's going to be a lot to be mad about, you know, but I'm not going to, like, if he does something that is like, you know, that I know I could do a little bit on, that would be fake or fun.

Speaker 22 I just, I'm not going to do that because like, A, life's too short. B, it kind of helps him, I think, frankly.
Um, you know, because oftentimes those topics are things that he wants to be out there.

Speaker 22 And I just don't think it does listen, like people that are tuning in any service, you know, to do that. So

Speaker 22 that's what I think. It's hard.
Like, look,

Speaker 22 there's, there's so many indignities every day. And so there's sometimes an obligation to bring up stuff that I feel like that's not getting enough attention that's in the news, right?

Speaker 22 But if it just becomes, you know, one day it's like, oh, well, Trump did this thing that's horrible. The next thing he did this other thing is horrible.

Speaker 22 The next thing he did this other thing is horrible. And there's no, the frequency does, isn't any different, right?

Speaker 22 If it's the same frequency the whole time, then you know, everybody, you become numb to it. And so you get acclimated.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I just, I think it's important for everybody.

Speaker 22 And I don't even really mean this in a political sense, like it's important politically. I do think it's important for the Democrats to figure out ways to keep people from becoming numb to it.

Speaker 22 But I just mean in like a, now that I've, now that I'm a former Republican, I've switched sides, I can use lib terms like this now. I mean it like in a self-care way.

Speaker 22 Like don't become numb to this and just have it be like, oh, every day I just wake up and I get my fix of how awful it is.

Speaker 22 It's like, no, it's like, no, today this thing is actually really fucking bad and we should be really mad about it and focused on it in a way that's different.

Speaker 21 I think the problem is Trump is oxygen, right? At this moment, he's everywhere. There's nothing.
Climate change, you could do a thing. Vaccines, you could do a thing, like all kinds of things.

Speaker 21 And it's hard when you're talking about other things not to. be aware of it because it's like nothing matters except this.
And that's what he's done really effectively.

Speaker 21 But let's see what you get really mad about. We've got a lot to get through today, including what Jelene Maxwell is saying about Trump.
All good things. What a surprise.
And Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 21 And MAGA is melting down over the stupid Cracker Barrel logo. But I do think that's a much more interesting story than just the logo, which is interesting.

Speaker 21 But first, President Trump is threatening to send National Guard troops to Chicago, New York, and Baltimore as part of his effort to crack down on crime.

Speaker 21 Pentagon has been planning a military deployment in Chicago for weeks now, according to the Washington Post. Illinois Governor J.B.

Speaker 21 Pritzker is accusing Trump of trying to, quote, manufacture a crisis. While over in Maryland, Governor Wes Moore set Trump off after inviting him to walk the streets of Baltimore.

Speaker 21 He offered a golf cart, by the way. Meanwhile, guard troops are now carrying weapons on the streets of D.C.
A Pete Hegseth directive makes me feel more unsafe as a D.C. resident.

Speaker 21 A CNN analysis of government data found a moderate drop in reported crime in D.C. during the first week of Trump's takeover, a far larger surge in the arrest of immigrants.

Speaker 21 Bill Maher has been talking about a slow-moving coup for a while now. In his latest episode, he laid out how Trump's recent actions suggest a coup may already be underway.

Speaker 21 It's a little long, but let's listen.

Speaker 23 First, create a masked police force. Get people used to looking at that.
Normalize snatching people off the street. Get them used to that.
Normalize seeing

Speaker 23 the National Guard and the military on the street. Then start talking about crime in the capital, which is basically, you know, has always been a fairly crime-ridden city.

Speaker 23 This is our nation's capital where elections are decided.

Speaker 23 And then have, because the crime is so bad, have other states start sending their troops, not just the National Guard there in D.C., but now at least six other states are sending their troops, which then Trump can then federalize.

Speaker 23 So you're having many states' troops on the ground there, and now they're under federal control. So you have in the capital a sort of permanent police presence.

Speaker 21 So let's talk about this. I live here.
I just took my daughter to the first day of public school today.

Speaker 21 The images couldn't be different. It's a very,

Speaker 21 it's not a crime-ridden city. It's actually crime has been improving, as Democrats have been pointing out.
There's crime in every city. There's a lot of crime in Houston, for example.

Speaker 21 There's a lot of crime in Alabama in the cities and wherever. It doesn't matter.
Cities are like this. The second thing is this idea of people on the streets with guns.

Speaker 21 But there haven't been a lot of protests. And it's not because people think this is a good thing.
I know this. I've talked to lots and lots of people.

Speaker 21 There's been a real

Speaker 21 icing of the workforce around ICE, people not coming to work. I just talked to someone who works, does some yard work for me.
They can't come because of ICE.

Speaker 21 because they're worried, their workers are worried, shut down at restaurants, et cetera. Talk a little bit about this because, you know, and then the threats to go to Chicago,

Speaker 21 to Baltimore, to

Speaker 21 New York, obviously, if Zoran Mandani wins, for example.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 22 I like that Bill Maher. I don't, you know, I was, I felt like he was kind of lecturing people about, or he was mad that people were mad at him for going to visit Trump earlier.

Speaker 22 And it's like, this is why. He's like consolidating power.
And it's important to just be clear about what it is, what he's trying to do.

Speaker 22 And to me, like the thing about this that makes me the most upset is this combination of this kind of like military, state military theater, like with the actual, you know, massed thugs hassling people that are here, sometimes illegally, sometimes not.

Speaker 22 You know, and they've, they went and they tear gas that guy and like banged through his window in California, who is a U.S. citizen, uh, George Redis.

Speaker 22 And so, we'll kind of, you know, he's now gonna be able to sue, but like, this is what they're doing, right? Like, it is, they're acting with impunity.

Speaker 22 And the imagery of it like feels very un-American. And it's just, it's wrong.
It's like not, it feels like it's in a banana republic.

Speaker 22 It's like, what we have, we've got these new trucks now with Daddy Trump's name on it.

Speaker 22 And, you know, like people are walking through the streets in the military uniforms and and and then they're jumping out of unmarked cars with masks like that's not how things should

Speaker 22 you know that's not what this country should be about people should be outraged and and and pushing back on it and i think that to bill's point like there's like this slow burn element of it about like getting people used to it um that i think is really is is really alarming so i you know we'll we'll kind of see how this stuff continues on chicago and and and maryland or

Speaker 22 and what else they decided to do, New York, maybe Baltimore, Chicago.

Speaker 22 But

Speaker 22 he's not being subtle about it. And it's important, I think, at each lever.
That's why I was happy to see what Wes Moore was doing this weekend to

Speaker 22 stop and say, this is no. We're going to push back on this now,

Speaker 22 because otherwise it just becomes a creep where he is able to do more and more.

Speaker 21 These cities have an ability to do it, although LA had mixed ability to do it. Now, D.C.
is a unique entity because it's also a federal center and they don't have states' rights. There's no voting.

Speaker 21 Our representative happens to be out of it, actually, so you're not hearing from her. It's a unique situation here.
In the other states, it's going to be harder to try this, to try these numbers.

Speaker 21 But how do you,

Speaker 22 why aren't there more crackdowns?

Speaker 21 And especially these visual images of either people, you know, being taken off the street, like on Moped and things like that, or everyone has a story here.

Speaker 21 People are not,

Speaker 21 I don't quite know what to do, right? What do you do? You go yell at these people?

Speaker 21 Okay, that doesn't really have an effect.

Speaker 21 What is the response beside in cities? I could see them pushing back on Trump,

Speaker 21 but not DC.

Speaker 22 Yeah, no, I look, and A, the response from Democratic leaders is that they have to say no and not we're going to work with you on this, right? Like, and that was, I mean, you know, Bowser did that.

Speaker 22 Again, the D.C. thing is a little bit different.
It's a little bit complicated. But when you get to these other cities, you know, say no, and they have to have showdowns over states' rights.

Speaker 22 I mean, like, this was like J.D. Vance was on the shows over the weekend where he was talking about how this question of the Red State National Guards coming to D.C.

Speaker 22 and how he's like, well, this is our system. We have states' rights.
If the Republican governors want to send us troops to suck up to Trump, then like, oh, well, we'll just do that.

Speaker 22 But that's not how it works. And there's another blue states and even.
purple states that have Democratic governors, right? You notice Philly isn't on the list.

Speaker 22 Josh Shapiro is there, Department of Christian Whitmer.

Speaker 22 Eventually, you know, you get a showdown in these places.

Speaker 22 But I think that's important. I think it's important.

Speaker 22 I think that the protesting is important in itself. It's important for people to call their leaders.
Look,

Speaker 22 I think a lot of people feel like, oh, the pushback has been limp. And I get that.
I feel that way as well. There are things I wish people were doing more of.

Speaker 22 But a part of that, I think, is because people feel like the pushback is hopeless, not. with is not with point because Trump has total power in DC and he's total power of Congress.

Speaker 22 But I point to this the immigration thing in El Salvador as like a prime example of like how like pushing back on legal, political, and action in the streets grounds can slow them down.

Speaker 22 I mean like their initial plan was to send lots of people to that El Salvador prison, but they initially sent the three planes. There was immediately pushback, political, legal, people in the streets.

Speaker 22 And, you know, the courts slowed them down. And what ended up happening, like about a couple weeks ago now,

Speaker 22 the Venezuelans that they had sent there got sent back to Venezuela. No more planes have gone to El Salvador.
No more people have been sent there.

Speaker 22 And like that is an example of resisting the administration that isn't maybe that satisfactory because it's not like a white lady.

Speaker 22 It's going to try everything. Yeah, but it's slowed them down on that vertical.
They got to do this. You got to do the same thing across all these other

Speaker 21 slowdown, the idea of slowdown. You've heard about the white ladies putting Mexican flags on their cars to get ICE to stop.

Speaker 22 I've not seen that. I like that.

Speaker 21 People are making fun of us. Like, why? It's wasting their time.
And then the white ladies can chat away with them for the longest time. And like, that's six hours.

Speaker 21 Like, I could talk to an ICE person for six hours and be difficult, but not arrestably difficult. You know what I mean? Like, kind of, why are you doing this? What's happening? What's your name?

Speaker 21 How are you doing? Like, irritating in the way only white ladies can do it.

Speaker 21 You should irritate the local politicians.

Speaker 22 Look, and my thing, like, so here in Louisiana, I live in New Orleans now. And so, they sent 135 National Guard troops to D.C.
to guard the Shake Shack or whatever. And I'm like, this is ridiculous.

Speaker 22 Like, even Republicans in Louisiana should be calling their legislators

Speaker 22 and the governor and annoying them about this saying, like, these are people with lives.

Speaker 22 Like, these are 135 people that have real jobs, that have families, they're back to school, like they've been sent away from their kids to fucking sit outside the Georgetown Cupcake.

Speaker 22 Like, this is it's ridiculous, it's preposterous, and like, and

Speaker 22 shining light on how ridiculous it is is an important and waste of money.

Speaker 21 Yeah, is there any pluses for the Trump administration doing this?

Speaker 21 Like, crime is bad because people do out from outside cities all think crime is like the whole San Francisco narrative was so bullshit. There was problems,

Speaker 21 They're starting to really fix them. The city is very vibrant now.
It's just the cycle, right? The COVID cycle, the people moving out, et cetera, et cetera. And the more,

Speaker 21 but, you know, they're aiming at homeless people, which is really interesting here in D.C. and elsewhere, as if that's really the actual problem.

Speaker 22 I think it helps.

Speaker 22 I think that

Speaker 22 there are people, like Matt Aglesias expresses this view that it's like bad for Democrats anytime to be talking about crime and immigration because of crime and immigration are in the news.

Speaker 22 That's good for Trump because those are issues that are good for Trump. And I take that point, right?

Speaker 22 Like I think that you have to be clear-eyed about how the fact that there is a, you know, political benefit to what they're doing. They're good at picking enemies.

Speaker 22 You know, Kilmargreo-Garcia is not that particularly sympathetic as a person, right? Like John Bolton, this in particular, is sympathetic as a person in different ways.

Speaker 22 But I think that finding the most extreme examples and winning the fight

Speaker 22 on those grounds is better than ignoring it if you're a Democrat and moving on. And I mean, this happened in the first term on child separation.

Speaker 22 Like his numbers tanked on it and they had to backtrack on it. That was a worthwhile immigration fight.
Is fighting over like border security worthwhile? Like, no, probably not.

Speaker 22 Like similarly on crime, like is pushing back on some of what they're doing on crime and cleaning up cities. It's not my cup of tea.
Is pushing back on it worthwhile? Maybe not politically speaking.

Speaker 22 Activists or individuals can. But the Democrats should push back on masked guys jumping out of unmarked cars and tackling DoorDash drivers.
Nobody's for that.

Speaker 22 And, you know, I was listening over the weekend. Do you know Tim Dylan? He's like a comedian, mad comedian.
And Joe Rogan, though. Yeah, I was listening to Tim Dylan's show over the weekend.

Speaker 22 And he's like, if you're a libertarian-minded Republican guy, don't tread on me Republican guy.

Speaker 22 You can win those guys over with this. Like, he's looking at this.
He's going, what Trump is doing is everything Alex Jones warned about is what he was saying. It's like, you know,

Speaker 22 we're giving Palantir our information. We've got masks, you know, we're militarizing the streets.
We've got massed cops, you know, going after people without due process.

Speaker 22 Like, this is a big government security state. You know, if framed correctly, I think Democrats could use it right.

Speaker 21 Yeah, as you know, every accusation is a confession with these people. So the Trump administration, let's move on to another thing they're grappling with.

Speaker 21 The Trump administration has released transcripts and audio from the DOJ's recent interview with Jelaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associates and convicted sexual

Speaker 21 sex offender. In an interview, Maxwell, who is seeking a pardon, praised Donald Trump.
What a surprise, and also downplayed his involvement in Epstein's activities. What a surprise.

Speaker 21 Let's listen to what this heinous bitch said.

Speaker 24 I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody.

Speaker 24 In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.

Speaker 21 So said the pedophile. Maxwell also denied the existence of a client list and dismissed a number of Epstein's theories and allegations.
She was also rather kind to Epstein. He can rot in hell.

Speaker 21 She did, however, say she doesn't believe Epstein died by suicide in prison. Honestly, why are we listening to that? I'm sorry.
She's a heinous bitch. Why are we listening to her?

Speaker 21 Will it appease the MAGA folks? And what do you make of the timing?

Speaker 21 The DOJ also gave Congress thousands of Epstein documents, though Democrats are pointing out the majority of these documents were already public. They're trying to sort of

Speaker 21 slow roll the thing. A posthumous end quote, unsparing memoir by Epstein accuser Virginia Guffray, who died by suicide in April is coming out in in this fall.

Speaker 21 And also some of the victims are now and fucking had it with this, again, HB, Hey, Miss Bitch.

Speaker 22 No need to apologize for saying, hey, Miss Bitch. We can say that again now.

Speaker 22 Was that what I heard after the election, that those words are allowed again?

Speaker 21 Yeah, okay, good. I can say whatever I want about her.
So anyway,

Speaker 21 you know, I'm hoping Elizabeth Holmes like smacks her a little bit. And I said they're in the same.
prison, I guess.

Speaker 21 Talk a little bit about this and where it's going. I still think it's got a lot of legs, this story.
I don't know. I feel like it does.

Speaker 22 I um I do laugh at her having hearing her call Trump he was a gentleman in every respect. Like even Trump's friends don't think he's a gentleman.

Speaker 22 Like even Trump wouldn't describe himself as a gentleman. I don't think right.
It's just it's so you know fucking preposterous.

Speaker 22 No, she's all and she's awful. It's like important to just say that like, and she was involved in the sex crimes.
Like I've seen some of these reports.

Speaker 22 Like she was there in the room when it was actually happening. So I couldn't.
She wasn't participating in it. Yeah.
And she was bullying, intimidating these women.

Speaker 22 They were just, they were in a quasi-sex slavery with him, essentially, where she was saying, oh,

Speaker 22 you're not going to get, you know, there would be financial pressure she'd put over them or access or threats.

Speaker 22 So, and she is as bad as they get and to and a liar and totally unreliable in all these cases. Her only effort here is to get a pardon.
I don't, I don't think anything really comes out of this.

Speaker 22 Um, I think it's um it's maybe should be used against Trump politically, the fact that she's been sent to a club fed as the only sex offender in the entire prison system in such a nice prison with Elizabeth Holmes.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 22 so I think there's maybe some political juice there, not a ton, but there's something. I think that to me, the potential story here is that

Speaker 22 there is an actual traditional cover-up, right? Like a lot of Trump's other

Speaker 22 behavior is like very is sui generis. Like it's just Trump.
Like he's doing stuff that hasn't really happened before. It's different.
People like his crypto scheme. It's like, what?

Speaker 22 You You know, like, there's not, there's not a history of this type of scandal, you know, for folks to like, you know,

Speaker 22 connect to. That's not the case here.
Like, this is just a straight cover-up that many other politicians have done. Like, they have a list of all the times Trump has mentioned in these files.

Speaker 22 They've admitted it. They said there's a Microsoft share file with the FBI agents that went through and marked his name.

Speaker 22 So this exists somewhere, you know, a file of where Trump is in there, and they don't want to release it. And they're not going to.
They're going to cover it up to protect the boss.

Speaker 22 Like, that's just a straight cover-up story. And I think that I asked Hakeem Jeffries about this when he was on the pod the other week.

Speaker 22 And I was like, so will you have a special committee on this if you get back into the leadership?

Speaker 22 And he kind of said yes. Like, he wouldn't commit to exactly to a special committee, but he said, we will and be investigating this.

Speaker 22 And I think they can now then just do a, again, a straight old school cover-up investigation.

Speaker 22 They can subpoena the FBI agents that were involved in this, you know, what the D, what Bondi did, what she briefed Trump on,

Speaker 22 and who knows where that could lead, right? And so, you know, the example I always use of this is all those Benghazi oversight hearings.

Speaker 22 In this weird, convoluted way, the Benghazi hearing led to the Hillary email server, you know? And

Speaker 22 so you don't exactly know what will come from oversight.

Speaker 22 And so I think if the Democrats are willing to actually do it, if they will first, if they win in the midterms, and then if they're actually to do it, like this is a story that we'll be talking about in August of 2027.

Speaker 21 Yeah, they're trying to push it down and they didn't push down very easily. I don't think this, this guy continues to resurface Epstein.
He's like corpse that wouldn't be buried, essentially.

Speaker 21 You know, and he keeps showing up in some fashion.

Speaker 21 I think the Jelaine Maxwell, I know a lot of them are saying Trump is clean, like Jim Jordan, who's good at defending pedophiles and covering up for them,

Speaker 21 you know, would say he's not clean by any stretch of the imagination, like at all, because this lady says it, not so.

Speaker 21 I just, one photograph, one, another accuser, that's all it's going to take to really revive this. Cause it really does animate the right in ways that it didn't animate the left, by the way.

Speaker 21 It doesn't animate liberals, this story.

Speaker 22 Yeah. And I think that was because the right got animated by it.

Speaker 22 The pretense was kind of like this concerned about child sex trafficking. And there are some, obviously there are people on the right who are genuinely concerned about child predation.

Speaker 22 And but I think that why it sort of like, you know, tickled their,

Speaker 22 you know, the lizard part of their brain was the death side. It was like the conspiracy side of it.

Speaker 22 It's like, oh, was there a deep state effort to protect whoever, the Clintons, you know, you name it, like whoever.

Speaker 22 And it was, and that like plot side of it is what like elevated the story from what would have been a very like serious, no doubt, like real story with like real victims and all that, to something that like had this life of its own on the right.

Speaker 22 And I think that like for that same reason now, like there's a, there's a, not really a conspiracy, but a cover-up that I think will animate the left that kind of gets lopped on to the more straightforward story about what they were doing to these young girls.

Speaker 21 Right. That's a really good point.
That will be the thing. This, this, you know,

Speaker 21 there are attempts at slow rolling and they still fight among each other with Laura Loomer still calling Pam Bondi blondie, et cetera.

Speaker 21 I suspect this is still going to keep going with this guy. Okay, Tim, let's go on a quick break.
We come back. Trump makes a deal with Intel.

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Speaker 21 Tim, we're back. The U.S.
government is taking a 10% stake in Intel, with Trump calling it a, quote, great deal for America and a great deal for Intel.

Speaker 21 Under the agreement, $8.9 billion in unpaid CHIP Act grants will be converted into equity, making the government Intel's largest shareholder, but without board seats or governance rights.

Speaker 21 It's a turnaround from a few weeks ago when Trump was calling for Intel's CEO to resign over ties to China.

Speaker 21 Intel's move also comes on the heels of NVIDIA and AMD agreeing to hand over 15% of their China chip sale revenues to the government. Not clear whether they should be selling chips to China.

Speaker 21 There's also that, quote, golden share in U.S. steel.

Speaker 21 Senator Rand Paul called the Intel deal a step towards socialism. I, oddly enough, agreed with Senator Rand Paul.
Industrial policy is not my favorite thing.

Speaker 21 Even the Washington Post and also the Wall Street Journal, but the Washington Post editorial board came out against this saying the United States should not be trying to beat China by becoming China.

Speaker 21 You know, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders wish they could have this much control over companies, right?

Speaker 22 And Mark Cuban. Bernie endorsed this, actually.

Speaker 21 Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 21 And Mark Cuban said it's just a wealth tax in a different way, right? They're taking money.

Speaker 21 As part of it, I'm like, I thought the government should have not done the giveaways to car companies or banks.

Speaker 21 I thought they should have taken a piece of Tesla and then sold it back and made money on it for the U.S.

Speaker 21 There's nothing wrong with it, but industrial policy in general is always a bad idea in a capitalist and vibrant economy.

Speaker 21 Thoughts about this and how it shakes out?

Speaker 22 I'm curious to your thoughts on the tech side.

Speaker 22 I'll just give, because this is like also a little bit outside my wheelhouse, but my political, and obviously there is the cheap but true political observation of the MAGA socialism. Like, it's okay.

Speaker 22 If Trump doesn't, we're going to panic about the five city-run grocery stores in New York. But

Speaker 22 we're going to let the government take over a 10% stake in a major company. You know, so there's like the obvious hypocrisy on its face there.

Speaker 22 And, you know, it's kind of funny, I think, back to my like heyday as a Republican when like one of like back like 10, 15 years ago, there was this big controversy on the right over the XM bank, like a federal bank providing loans.

Speaker 22 And I, how that was, oh, government picking winners and losers and crony capitalism. Like here we are, like literally taking a stake in the company now.
So I mean, I think that is the outrageous.

Speaker 22 The thing that worries me about it more than the actual, than like the substance of what's happening with Intel is like

Speaker 22 it is another lever for him to use power to bully

Speaker 22 kind of who knows, right? Other people, right? And so whether that be Intel customers, competitors, right now, like, so it's like, well, we aren't going to take a stake.

Speaker 22 We're not going to take a, we're not, or excuse me, we're not going to have a governing responsibility in the company. But the government now still has an interest in this doing well.
And Trump does.

Speaker 22 Trump has an emotional interest. He's posting about how the stock's up and how that's good.
And I decided that it's good.

Speaker 22 And so, like, the downstream effects of that is something that is not like all the way to China, but has some of that flavor where like the government can start to intimidate certain other companies and decide which are the national winners, right?

Speaker 21 Like, but except you don't want the government in your business, essentially.

Speaker 21 And one of the issues is Intel's been suffering for years and years, lack of innovation, bad management, et cetera, you know, for a very long time.

Speaker 21 Very, it used to be the dominant chip maker and then just got, got, just fell by the wayside. So there is an argument made for like helping U.S.

Speaker 21 companies in the chip area, largely for national security.

Speaker 22 So it was the chips act that was going to be.

Speaker 21 Yes, exactly. But the issue is it's not going to make them more innovative by having the government investment.
It's just going to prop them up. Right.

Speaker 21 And the problems with Intel run a lot deeper that maybe they should go out of business. Maybe they should restructure.
Maybe they should, we shouldn't have the government deciding to keep them on

Speaker 21 life support, right? And it's not life support, but it's just been, it's been sucking for many CEOs for a long time. And so, you know, the natural thing is let it die.

Speaker 21 And then something else comes up. The problem is we are chip manufacturers are weaker and they're stronger in Taiwan and China and elsewhere.

Speaker 21 And so just the fact that governments make choices like this, they shouldn't. What they should do is provide research money for all kinds of things.

Speaker 21 They should provide encouragement and innovative grants to help people start businesses

Speaker 21 of all kinds. Those are fine by

Speaker 22 manufacturing money, right? Like we want to make sure that they have loan guarantees to build plants.

Speaker 22 So, you know, if like there's a reason interest rates are high right now, so like it's it's in the national interest that we're building chip plants. The companies don't want to do take the risks.

Speaker 22 The government backstops that it's not like my ideal free market system, but that's like a defensible thing for

Speaker 22 this particular market.

Speaker 22 But it's just a hop skip and jump to other markets right like let's own this let's own that well they said a kevin hassett is on cnbc this morning saying now we might start to take chips and stakes in other companies companies and again this is the thing where this is the bullying part this is the authoritarian part where it's like oh if you're another company that took money from the chips act or from the ira

Speaker 22 Maybe those were good decisions, maybe they're bad decisions. I think that there was probably a bunch of wasted money in both of those bills, by the way.

Speaker 22 But like the companies then at that point that made that decision should not now be worried that, oh, I can't do anything, say anything that might upset trump i can't go on tv and have the you know grandpa watching his stories see that i'm critical of some policy or else they might try to take over a stake in the company yeah it's very uh meddlesome in a way that's not anti-capitalist i can see them in their room i can see this especially that dumbass um howard luttnick like not we should have gotten a piece of tesla we should have gotten a piece of this but they're bad business no howard luttnick is not a bad business person trump is arguably are you sure he's not a bad business person he seems very stupid he said he Listen, he was sort of the discount guy on Wall Street.

Speaker 21 When you talk to Wall Street people, they're like, he built a big business, but what an idiot. I think that's usually what you, but it was like a business nobody wanted.

Speaker 21 They were like, oh, that guy's business. Like, sort of like Crazy Eddie.
Like, remember Crazy Eddie a long time ago?

Speaker 21 You know, of course it went bankrupt, that business.

Speaker 22 I think people don't love Howard Luttnick on Wall Street.

Speaker 21 They don't have much respect for him. That said, Trump has, he actually has built a business that has lasted.
And Trump is, of course,

Speaker 21 run.

Speaker 21 this is the idea of real estate dealers, the real estate people running the government. Like, ah, what can I get? What can I get? Like, what's the big? And so it feels mobstery.

Speaker 21 It feels like, you know, corrupt. It feels

Speaker 21 meddlesome. And it creates, you know, the fact that Tim Cook has to give a gold statue to Trump is a bad thing.
Even if he's doing it for shareholders, it means we live in a banana republic.

Speaker 21 That's what it means. And so it's never good.
Yeah.

Speaker 22 And the whole thing is I laugh at like how those guys are all like,

Speaker 22 and I shared some of the critiques of woke identity politics in big, you know, in corporate America. But it was funny that it was like Cook kind of gave him.
like a woke right statue.

Speaker 22 Like he felt it felt important for him to say in the presentation is like, this was made by a, yeah, you guys would say by a MAGA Republican veteran.

Speaker 22 And you can imagine the inverse where Tim Cook comes into Kamala and it's like, here's a statue made by an indigenous bisexual.

Speaker 22 Like we felt like we needed to do that. Like, they felt like he had to do the whole identity right politics stuff, too.
The whole thing was very gross.

Speaker 21 Unnatural acts.

Speaker 21 They're letting people who should be running their companies do unnatural acts. And it is bad for shareholders in the end.

Speaker 21 It's not, even if they're doing it to help shareholders so we don't get a bigger tariff, it's an unnatural act, Tim. Stop doing unnatural acts.

Speaker 22 Can I ask you one

Speaker 22 nationalization thing? Because, you know, I'm a passionate capitalist. But

Speaker 22 there's one moment, there's been one issue kind of in this realm that has tickled my socialist pickle, which was the idea that maybe we need to nationalize SpaceX.

Speaker 22 Is that sort of related to this? That's like a kind of a different conversation where that is in the national security interests. No?

Speaker 21 Yeah, maybe for some, they should be working hand in glove. I mean, I think the issue is NASA sort of got out of control in terms of bureaucratic and not innovative.

Speaker 21 The only thing is when you're a government agency, you can't make mistakes the way SpaceX can. And the minute you nationalize it, it can't blow up rockets.

Speaker 21 And as much as it seems like a failure to blow up rockets, the way you get to places or get to better innovation is by taking risks.

Speaker 21 And if you're a government agency, you cannot take risks by the definition of a government agency. So I see that they have to be working very closely with this is the kind of close relationships.

Speaker 22 It's not really a free market, though. You can't have unlimited companies in space.
It's kind of like how NBA team ownership is not a real free market.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 21 Yeah. I just don't.
I feel like they have brought the cost down because

Speaker 21 they're not a government.

Speaker 22 There's no interest in a government.

Speaker 21 There's no interest in the government to making things cheaper. Yeah.

Speaker 22 Crazy, Elon, having that much control over the policy. He does.

Speaker 21 That's one of the worries. Of course, I suspect that's what they're worried about is you got, it's like a bond villain essentially running critical infrastructure.
Same thing with chips.

Speaker 21 We have to have a real chip policy, and this ain't it.

Speaker 21 Speaking of something that seems troubling, FBI agents raided the home and office of former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton on Friday.

Speaker 21 The Trump critic is a subject of national security investigation and search of classified records. Vice President J.D.

Speaker 21 Vance says the raid definitely doesn't have anything to do with Bolton's criticism of Trump, which means it does. It rather stems from a quote broad concern about

Speaker 21 Ambassador Bolton. You know, the Wall Street Journal's against this.
Everyone's against this. Like doing, you know, I think what they're doing is what they thought was done to them.

Speaker 21 So if they didn't like it done to them, why are they doing it to others?

Speaker 21 Very retribution, revenge. She just threatened Chris Christie, I think, today or yesterday.

Speaker 22 Yeah, starting to jail Chris Christie, too. Yeah, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, it's kind of cracked me up since they've been very Trump friendly.

Speaker 22 They talked about how one of the concerns of him coming back was that he'd run Vendettas. And they wrote, quote, it's turning out to be worse than we imagined.
It's like, no, you don't say.

Speaker 22 Not me, actually. It's going quite bright, just about exactly how we told you it was going to go.

Speaker 22 Not any worse.

Speaker 22 The Bolton thing, I just think it's important to say this because it's obviously preposterous that this is not a political attack. But if you just replace John Bolton with like

Speaker 22 Mark Meadows or Corey, imagine it was somebody from the Trump first term that wrote a book that who is still in good graces with Trump.

Speaker 22 And the accusation is that there were classified materials in that book that was written five years ago. There's no imaginable world in which the FBI is raiding the home of a Trump 1.0.

Speaker 22 cabinet member who is still an ally, right? Like you just nobody could imagine it.

Speaker 22 If there were a legitimate concern that he had some classified materials they shouldn't have, like there's a a process for this sort of thing fbi calls doj's lawyers call their lawyers you set up a meeting right like all you know so this is this was purely to either hassle or intimidate just like prosecutorial overreach right that's just the thing that trump complained about and it does i think it brings up what trump did like again like you did it this is yes well the trump the trump example is it's important to just explain the difference it's like in the mar-a-lago raid which

Speaker 22 i i would listen to the idea that that maybe that could have been handled in a less aggressive way, but like it's a it's not comparable to the Bolton situation. Like the Mar-a-Lago raid,

Speaker 22 the archivist or whatever, like, you know, said that Trump brought some materials that

Speaker 22 are the property of the United States, he shouldn't have. You know, they asked for a meeting.
denied, then they provided a list of what the materials were. Trump lied and said that it wasn't there.

Speaker 22 They tried to move some of the materials to a different place. So Trump was obstructing the effort to do this in the good faith way that this is generally done.

Speaker 22 And that's why the raid happened. That was not the case with John Bolton.

Speaker 22 They just showed up at his house, I think, because the statute of limitations, I suspect, is running out on the stuff from the first term, which would be five years now.

Speaker 22 And they did so just to intimidate him. Panvondi puts out a tweet about it.
I don't have it in front of me, but something like, our national security, you know, comes first.

Speaker 22 It's like, nobody thinks that America's security was a threat because of whatever John Bolton has in his house.

Speaker 22 And, you know, and I think that it ties kind of the Intel thing. Like the thing that worries me about everything is eventually.

Speaker 22 And it ties to the Bill Maher thing at the top. Like slowly but surely, people just decide it's not worth the hassle, right?

Speaker 22 Like you get into authoritarianism not through violent coup necessarily, but by slow burn towards everyone deciding, you know, I'm going to go bring him a trophy to keep him happy.

Speaker 22 I'm not going to say anything wrong because I don't want the FBI to come after me. And, you know, eventually you consolidate power.

Speaker 22 And that's closer to like what you've seen in Hungary and other places. Yeah.

Speaker 21 Well-known centers of innovation. Yeah.

Speaker 22 Hungary. Exactly.
Turkey. The economy is really, really thriving in Hungary.

Speaker 22 We want the turkey model for our country.

Speaker 21 The turkey model. Anyway, we'll see what happens with this.
I suspect it'll peter out.

Speaker 21 They have such little follow-through, but they do cause damage. What they do, they're like toddlers.
They come in, cause damage, and a little follow-through.

Speaker 21 All right, Tim, let's go on a quick break. We come back, Cracker Barrel makes an enemy of the right.

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Speaker 21 Kim, we're back with more news. Please make sure you're seated for this next emotional topic, Cracker Barrels logo change.

Speaker 21 The chain has removed the barrel and the man from its logo, and conservatives are horrified. Change is hard, conservatives.

Speaker 21 Cracker Barrel stock was down 12% in the last five days at the time of taping. Like, I haven't been in a Cracker bro because they're so anti-gay, right? That's what I remember.

Speaker 22 No, they did a, obviously you don't remember their effort to appeal to you, Karen, a couple years ago. They, they did a rainbow rocking chair outs during Pride Month a couple of years ago.

Speaker 21 Whatever. You know, this is fucking ridiculous.
This is like, it's just a logo change and the old man seems like old. Like for they want young people to come.

Speaker 21 That's my presumption is they've got too many fucking old people in the place and they need a new, they need a new demo.

Speaker 21 It makes sense from, again, meddling in the business like if they want to get rid of the old man they should get rid of the old man and the fact that they're all horrified like they're so they're so censorious the right when they accuse others of being censorious and you know they'll either live or die by the stock going down and maybe they'll put the man back or whatever but it's just i i don't

Speaker 22 i've got to take a contrary video on this one are you ready to fight over cracker barrel yeah the logo the new logo is off when's the last time you went oh it's an ugly logo correct it's an ugly yeah yeah i've been i've been in years.

Speaker 22 We'd every once in a while, go, I think on the drive from DC to the beach, there's a cracker barrel somewhere. But that was many years ago now.
So I haven't been in a while.

Speaker 22 So I don't actually have any personal stake or care about this, but I do, just as an objective observer of the world, the new logo is awful.

Speaker 22 The picture that they put out of the new inside of the cracker barrel, which is more minimalist or whatever, is also awful.

Speaker 22 And it is part of a broader corporate trend where every logo has to be minimalist now, and every store needs to have clean lines. And we get, we need, we, we need diversity of views.

Speaker 22 You need diversity of experiences. Like the human spirit, you know, yearns for different types of, you know, we don't all want Scandinavian clean lines.
Some places call for

Speaker 21 them. They probably realize most of their clients are about to die.

Speaker 22 You think new people are going to come in, though, because they want to make it look more like Applebee's?

Speaker 22 I don't think the millennials I know are like, I'm excited now that we're, you know, they're changing it from the old man, old southern view to a more of a modern Applebee's aesthetic.

Speaker 21 I think at some point you have to change. It's like, it's, but again, this is again, it's up to the company if they want to do this, and they'll either live or die by it, right? That's my whole thing.

Speaker 21 I agree with that. I suspect they're looking at the numbers and they're like, all the old people, we don't have any young.
They probably know exactly who's coming into their restaurants.

Speaker 21 And young people are not coming into the Cracker Barrel. They're just not.
And, you know, the name itself would probably be changed, Cracker Barrel. Like, what is a Cracker Barrel?

Speaker 22 Honky Barrel. Honky Barrel.

Speaker 21 You know, I kind of like what they're doing at Hooters. They're going, no, you'd be doing a Hooters.

Speaker 22 I know nothing.

Speaker 21 They're going back to cheesy and booby and like wings. I'm vaguely offended by Hooters.
I don't care.

Speaker 21 Like, if people want to go to those stupid places and they pay those people enough, I don't know what to say. I think it's gross.

Speaker 21 But whatever, people, if you want to go to, you know, that you want to, by the way, all the Hooters waitresses, in my experience, have been fan fucking tastic people.

Speaker 21 And they know the whole fucking deal with the guys leering their breasts, which is like they're toddlers looking at them.

Speaker 22 But

Speaker 22 there's a great story of a gay guy.

Speaker 21 Who was it, who talked about going to Hooters.

Speaker 22 His Twitter name was Peter Twinkledge.

Speaker 22 Yeah,

Speaker 21 great story of going to going to Hooters and the Hooter waitress helping this guy out. And she knew he was gay, right?

Speaker 21 The father didn't, of course, the father did because that's why he dragged his poor sorry ass there.

Speaker 21 Um, but you know, I kind of like that they're going back to it because I thought they're like just be hooters, just be hooters.

Speaker 21 And if they do a nice job of it and the wings are good, I'm fine with it. I just think this is a company much like, oh, there's probably a bunch of them facing real secular change in their usage.

Speaker 21 So they must have studied this. And the people that are being noisy are all the old folk.

Speaker 22 I guess. I don't.
Sometimes, you know, you can overstudy stuff. It's like, I feel this way about political ads, or it's like, you know,

Speaker 22 I'll be in a meeting where people, you know, where a super PAC will be like, we decided to do this ad because we tested it.

Speaker 22 And I'm like, most of these tests are so dumb. It's people that are like playing video games or something.
And then they show the ad during the commercial break.

Speaker 22 And then you have to say whether you like it or not. And it's like people don't know themselves.

Speaker 22 We're trusting this. They're just trying to get through the ad.

Speaker 22 Like a lot of these corporate testing things is a lot of hooey-fooey. Can I just, can I give you one admission since you've admitted the Hooters?

Speaker 22 You know, come clean on your support for original Hooters. The Cracker Barrel thing for me is tied to the new Oval Office design.

Speaker 22 And I like the new Oval Office design just like I like the old Cracker Barrel because I think more is more.

Speaker 22 I don't know. This whole like minimalist wasp northeastern

Speaker 22 pro-Hooters, pro, pro-Liberace, Oval Office, pro-original cracker barrel. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 21 Oh, well, he's not pro-Liberace. Come on.

Speaker 22 Well, the Oval Office has a Liberace aesthetic now. I thought it does.
Which I love.

Speaker 21 But it's okay with.

Speaker 21 I don't. I think I didn't like it.
When I saw the comparison, I was like, look how awful. I'm like, the first one was kind of dull.

Speaker 22 It's like the Biden one. Yeah.
Drab, right?

Speaker 21 And you know, I like a like, listen, Showgirls is about to have its 50th anniversary or whatever, and I'm up for anything like that. I like excess, it's too much over here.

Speaker 21 Now, there's way too much fucking gold, like gold is best. If you ever saw that Apple thing, um, so I think it's too much.

Speaker 21 I, there's a, there's a, there, there should be pomp and circumstance, but there's way too much of that.

Speaker 22 It's a little oude and couse, it's a little much. It wouldn't be my preferred aesthetic, but it is definitely an upgrade when you look at the comparisons.
The gray skin.

Speaker 21 What else would you put in there? What would your oval office look like?

Speaker 22 That's not really in the cards, I don't think.

Speaker 22 I don't know. Yeah, I mean, kind of like the birdcage.
I don't know.

Speaker 22 I don't know. Like gay.

Speaker 22 Yeah, well, gay. Yeah.
It'd combine all of my conflicting interests. You know, we might have a Reagan portrait, but also a lot of gay stuff that live in conflict together.
Maybe just Nancy.

Speaker 21 You know who I'd design it? You know, Ken Falk? He's a San Francisco designer.

Speaker 22 I hope you love Ken Falk.

Speaker 21 Yeah, everything he does is just a little loosh, but I love it. Like, you know, it's just a little bit too much velvet and stuff like that.
There's an occasional dead animal animal on the wall.

Speaker 21 I kind of love it. I love kind of, it looks

Speaker 21 I also like the Nancy Myers aesthetic. That is kind of a nice one.
Do you know, you know, the director? Those houses that Dying Keaton always lives in. Those are nice.
Maybe dumb.

Speaker 22 They're a little dumb. No, that's not really for me.
I'm not doing that.

Speaker 22 That might be triggered. It might be this little suburban.
I'm kind of triggered by my suburban upbringing. I don't want anything like the 90s suburban, like Tuscan aesthetic.

Speaker 22 Anything like that is that I have a natural physical revulsion to. Yeah.

Speaker 21 I think I would do more funny funny stuff, more color. I like a lot of color.

Speaker 21 Anyway, I think they should have kept the barrel, gotten rid of the old man.

Speaker 21 The barrel needs to be there, and there should be crackers.

Speaker 21 All right, last thing. Elon Musk's ex has reached a tentative agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by former Twitter employees who say they are owed $500 million in severance.

Speaker 21 Musk fired around 6,000 employees after acquiring Twitter, and of course he didn't pay them.

Speaker 21 In other Musk news, he also asked Mark Zuckerberg to help him finance a $97 billion takeover of OpenAI in early 2025, according to court filings in a case between Musk and OpenAI.

Speaker 21 Obviously, it didn't happen. Thank God.
But Mark sees it coming.

Speaker 22 Thank God, I guess.

Speaker 22 Isn't this kind of like an Iran-Iraq war situation? Who are you rooting for in Altman? Right, yeah, the bullets. Zuckerberg.

Speaker 21 The bullets is what Scott always says. You're rooting for the bullets.

Speaker 21 You know, I know a little bit about this payment, and I'll just say really briefly, I've met with a lot of the people who they owe money to. And look, if you want to fire people, Elon, that's fine.

Speaker 21 That's your business. But pay them what they're owed.
That's it.

Speaker 21 It's just, it makes you like an asshole not to pay them their severance, even if you don't like what they did before. That was the agreement they were taking over.
As to his open AI things, just stop.

Speaker 21 You know, Sam Altman is not interested in you. So stop bothering that company.

Speaker 21 You, you walked yourself out of there like an idiot when you were there from the beginning because you of your ego and your need for control. You don't have it.

Speaker 21 Just try to make a good company on your own. That's my feeling.

Speaker 22 I don't have any thoughts on the floor filings.

Speaker 22 so i agree with everything you said um while we're admitting to bad opinions that we have about aesthetics i also kind of like the the zuckerberg fuckboy rebrand i think that that's been good for him so i support that is he a fuckboy kind of i mean the gold chain and the and the and the what are they the kids kind of the lettuce hair yeah

Speaker 22 okay would you go out with him do you think he's attractive Not really for well, not really for me.

Speaker 22 No, I don't think so.

Speaker 22 I guess I had to pick between him and I probably originally would have said Sam Altman. I don't know.

Speaker 22 Sam's recent interviews are pretty creepy. He's starting to move into the uncanny valley for me a little bit.

Speaker 21 Oh, interesting. How so?

Speaker 22 Tell me, explain. I don't know.
I just, like,

Speaker 22 I get him in my TikTok a lot. I guess kind of how you're consuming me.
Like, he does all these podcast interviews where he's talking about what we want for the future of Open AI.

Speaker 22 Like, did you see a Steo Vaughan interview? And he's

Speaker 22 his projections about what is coming,

Speaker 22 you know, and how

Speaker 22 people are just going to have to get used to a world where they're like robot humans walking around on the street everywhere and where like a lot of people's real friends are

Speaker 21 computer friends and where he's I just the whole thing is getting a little creepy for me and he seems to kind of be leaning into that like that he and I think I just think I'm misaligned with him for what I would like to see an AI future look like just one man's opinion for one what's an important man's opinion kind of yeah but there's been open AIs have come and gone like i don't mean to be rude but like remember yahoo was huge and then it wasn't like these things and they are definitely in a more precarious position they're either netscape or they're google right that said google didn't run the show on everything eventually and even they struggled at various times i feel like look he wants to he he's sort of styling himself like steve jobs so he's trying to say important controversial things and so nobody is steve jobs but everyone's trying to grab that mantle and there will be not another one like that and so that's what you're hearing.

Speaker 22 What's your alarm level and all that stuff on these, on these guys, these egomaniacs deciding what our future is going to look like?

Speaker 21 We've already seen what happened.

Speaker 21 So we're going to see this. I think the government in this case needs to be much more involved with guidance, guardrails, and regulations, as you know.

Speaker 21 I don't like a small group of people. not diverse in any way, making decisions for the rest of us.
That's all. Just like I didn't like, you know, as much as I like Train Daddy on the Gilded Age,

Speaker 21 they decided where the roads went. They decided where the things went.
And our whole country has to live in the reality they create. And I'm not so pleased with that either.

Speaker 21 Although I like Drain Daddy quite a bit, oddly enough.

Speaker 22 I don't have any takes on Train Daddy, but I'll learn about it.

Speaker 21 You need to watch The Gilded Age because all the gays love Drain Daddy, just so you know. He's really great.

Speaker 21 Speaking of which, it cracks me up with Gavin Newson every time that Jesse Waters calls him daddy. He's like, I'm not interested.

Speaker 21 His use of like gay taunts is so, I, I'm not, everyone's like, aren't you offended? I'm like, no, I love them. I don't know about how you feel.
I like a gay taunt.

Speaker 22 I like a gay taunt too.

Speaker 22 The only time I get offended on this thing is sometimes I feel like, and maybe it's just because as a gay former Republican, I get a lot of incoming on this.

Speaker 22 Sometimes I feel like the liberals in my life are like way too excited to make like gay slurs about Lindsey Graham and like the MAGA gays. And I, and I like a little, a little joke about Lady G.

Speaker 22 I'm fine with that. But sometimes it's like the tone where like, I kind of feel like you're just, you've just been very, you've just had this pent-up desire to make homophobic jokes.

Speaker 22 And now you feel like you can because Lindsey Graham is the target. And, and, and, and it comes out a little too enthusiastic for my taste, I guess.

Speaker 21 I would agree. I'm a hundred percent on your time.
I'm talking about more like when they actively go out of their way to, like, to, to slap back at it. But I agree with you.

Speaker 21 I just, look, whatever journey Lindsey Graham is on, it's his journey. It is hypocritical, obviously.
but when has that not happened?

Speaker 21 You remember during the Reagan administration, there was crawling with.

Speaker 21 They were crawling with gays and they were doing anti-gay things. But the stakes were, you know, with AIDS were so massive at the time.
It seemed like they are massive now, too.

Speaker 21 Their attacks on gay marriage right now are really quite disturbing.

Speaker 22 Are you worried about that? I don't know. I keep telling people I think that the trans,

Speaker 22 I am acutely worried if I'm transgender, if I'm a migrant. And I think those are very acute crises right now, and we should really focus on them.

Speaker 22 The gay marriage thing, I kind of, I just would be, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know.

Speaker 21 I think that there are people that are

Speaker 21 very intent on still angry about gay marriage. And they are, they, they just sit there and they seethe and they work and they work and they work to overturn it.
That's right.

Speaker 22 I think it's a losing fight for them. The abortion thing, I think a lot on the left thought the abortion thing would be a losing fight for them and

Speaker 22 they and they compare the two issues and they kind of conflate them. And I just I think for a variety of reasons, like gay marriage is like a 70% issue in the country.

Speaker 22 And I think it would be a pretty big

Speaker 21 drug control.

Speaker 21 I think there is a group of dedicated anti-gay people that have never, I've always thought they've never gone away.

Speaker 22 And everyone's like, now we won.

Speaker 21 I'm like, have we? You know, I think you should be vigilant with these people. I think they would very much like to do a lot of things to women and gay people that are really disturbing.

Speaker 21 And so, and set them back. And they articulate it now.
And you see it even the things Vance pushes.

Speaker 22 It's noteworthy the change in how unbridled they are now. Like they feel totally now unshackled to say their real feelings about gay people.

Speaker 22 Like there was a period of time where I think people were like, oh, this is OB backlash against me or this isn't. And you're not seeing that anymore.
And I think that's revealing.

Speaker 22 In some way, I think it's bad. I worry about it for younger.
LGBT people.

Speaker 22 But I also, in some ways, I think it's nice for it to be revealing that we can see the score a little bit.

Speaker 21 See, I've always thought they were like this. I never thought they were friendly to us for a minute.
And by the way, they they are committed to overturning marriage, some of those people.

Speaker 21 And guess what? We're committed not to. So that's the part that I think you'll see how that's going to go trying to take my marriage away from me.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 21 Like, I think the money is going to be a little bit more.

Speaker 22 Come and take it.

Speaker 21 Okay, Tim, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Speaker 21 Okay, Tim, let's hear some wins and fails. I will go first.

Speaker 21 I think

Speaker 21 it's sort of a fail. This Trump's cankle thing.
I know people are like,

Speaker 21 it's really odd. I have to say, Alex Jones is concerned about Trump's health.
He warned last week at the current trajectory, Trump is going to have some sort of collapse within the next 12 months.

Speaker 21 Thank you, Dr. Jones.
You terrible heinous, speaking of heinous bitches. Trump's hands are also looking questionable with all those odd smears of makeup.
He had a weird walking thing.

Speaker 21 The age is, as I have said, the cognitive decline and the age decline is real. And he, let me tell you, he's a lively old man.
That's for sure. Like he's the guy

Speaker 21 in the nursing home that's just real lively, but still going to keel over at any moment. It could keel over at any moment.

Speaker 21 I think that's, I think they, I'm not sure why they aren't controlling this,

Speaker 21 especially with the makeup and everything else largely because he's probably very vain and everything else but he's he's obviously aged rather significantly in so many ways and i think it's taking its toll on him um it feels like he's rotting it feels like when voldemort was starting to rot like when he wasn't getting enough dead people that were his core

Speaker 22 we can't see his real face is something that's true now like the leader will not show us what he really looks like because um it's you know he's he's so fragile now he he looks like he was on onozempic but now he looks fat again.

Speaker 21 I'm like, hmm, something's going on with his health. I think, I don't think that's a win or a fail.
I just feel like.

Speaker 22 Just wanted to mention it.

Speaker 21 I just want to mention it because I think people are like, oh, let's not mention it. I'm like, no, no, he looks.

Speaker 21 If we're going to, like, we should have mentioned more things about Biden, and Scott and I did and gotten a lot of crap. This, he looks, there's something going on.

Speaker 22 The cankles are noteworthy. And if the cancers are as wide as Alex Jones's neck, you know that there's something concerning there.

Speaker 21 Remember when they attacked Hillary Clinton's cankles? I'm just saying. I don't recall it.

Speaker 22 Good for the gander.

Speaker 21 It's good for the gander. No, it wasn't you.
It's good for the goose.

Speaker 21 And my

Speaker 21 win is the fantastic. Once again, we have the new version of Wicked coming, and it's only in three months.
And I think their social media campaign is fantastic. And they've done a great job.

Speaker 21 I love John Chu.

Speaker 21 He's going to be here in D.C. next couple next week.
I'm going to see him, hopefully.

Speaker 21 I just, I'm very excited about

Speaker 21 that movie. And I just, I'm not going to hide it.
I love it. And I love the actors in it.
And I think they're doing doing a spectacular marketing job on it.

Speaker 21 And I just love to watch people use social media in a really positive way, and I like that. And it gives me pleasure.
Your win and fail? All right.

Speaker 22 Well, I wasn't planning this one, but we're doing, you know, musical shout-outs. I should win for, I have to give my Oasis guys a win.
I mean, they reunited. Nobody said they could do it.

Speaker 22 They're coming to America now this week. They'll be back.
Nobody ever thought they'd do it.

Speaker 21 Explain why this is a big deal.

Speaker 22 It was the brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher. They're brothers.
They were very

Speaker 22 C word in the British sense. I still won't won't say that in your presence, Kara, but like kind of Englishmen who drank a lot and fought together.

Speaker 22 And obviously, folks will know Wonder Wall or Champagne Supernova, some of their famous songs. And so they've been broken up for 16 years.

Speaker 22 They spent most of the decade and a half shit talking each other in the press. And the idea was like they never would get back together.
They're back together.

Speaker 22 I went to one of their shows in Manchester and their union shows. And now

Speaker 22 are they good? Are they singing? It was biblical. It was unbelievable.
It was amazing. He sounds amazing.
I think he must have quit smoking or got a vocal coach. Because

Speaker 22 sometimes you'll go to see the aging rock stars. I hate to, I went to see Pearl Jam at Jazz Fest.
And it's like,

Speaker 22 you know, you can just tell sometimes, you know.

Speaker 21 The last Madonna concert. That's how I feel.

Speaker 22 That's right. Yeah.
So,

Speaker 22 not the case with Liam. He sounds amazing.
They sound amazing. Everyone was so excited because people who are into ASIS are really into it.
Like the crowd around me knew every word. It was wonderful.

Speaker 22 So that was a win. Good.

Speaker 22 The one that I planned on doing was I was going to, it was on a more serious level. I was going to give Putin a win in their little summit in Alaska.
Go for it. No, I don't really have much to add.

Speaker 22 It's just obvious now. When it had happened, there was like, yeah, I think even some people were like, well, maybe Trump will get, you know, like maybe this thing will finally start to,

Speaker 22 you know,

Speaker 22 recede and Putin will, you know, get some deal out of it. Trump will, you know, give him some crypto or, you know, some parts of Ukraine.

Speaker 22 And Trump, and obviously at this point, he was just totally used by Putin in a way that's like really embarrassing at this point, like the red carpet rollout. My fail is to like the,

Speaker 22 as somebody who prefers the centrist Democrats, shout out to my girl, Jerusalem Dempster, started the argument, a new kind of center-left

Speaker 22 Democratic outlet. Like, I, but just my advice to them is like their, their treatment of Zoron is so bad.
It's such a fail. I do not understand what they're doing.

Speaker 22 They're limiting their own power in the future of the party. People are like very excited about Zoron.
I've got issues with some of his policies.

Speaker 22 I had him on the pod and we argued about a couple of various things. And so you don't have to full-throatedly say you endorse everything, but there's so much enthusiasm for him.

Speaker 22 And you're going to get overthrown.

Speaker 22 If you're Hakeem or Chuck Schumer or any of these guys that aren't, like people are going to get pissed and overthrow you if you do not at least listen when I would.

Speaker 21 The scavenger hunt was brilliant. Again, he's very canny in a really interesting community.
Pilma's like, I went and I met a dozen people. Like, that was cool.
Like, he really is appealing. I agree.

Speaker 21 I went out to dinner. I think I said this was the senator.
I'm not going to say who it is. Who was like belly aching about him?

Speaker 21 I'm like, why don't you go watch what he's fucking doing before you did it?

Speaker 22 You also have no other choice. Who are you going to back? Eric Adams? Like, what, you know,

Speaker 22 Andrew Kwan, like a sex pest to resign in disgrace, who's already gotten beaten by your own voters?

Speaker 22 Yeah, the whole thing is really frustrating.

Speaker 21 Voters said this, and therefore, let's go with the vote. If young people, you complain and complain and complain about young people's engagement, their engage, you complain about that.

Speaker 21 Like, they really are a bunch of wimpuses. And they could say, I don't agree with him on this, but I kind of think he's cool.
That kind of thing.

Speaker 22 Or he's doing this thing well. Or I'm happy.
Or how about even simply, I'm happy to endorse him just because the other options are so awful. That's okay.

Speaker 22 Like there are a lot of options besides, you know, just doing the hemming and hawing. And

Speaker 21 one well-known person we both know

Speaker 21 was saying, well, I wasn't asked to endorse. Why are people giving me a hard time for not endorsing? I'm like, you don't need to be asked.
Just say what a cool, interesting politician he is.

Speaker 21 We don't agree on everything, but pretty pretty fucking cool. Anyway, we want to hear from you.
Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 21 Go to nymag.com slash pivot, submit a question for the show, or call 85551-Pivot.

Speaker 21 Elsewhere this week, on On with Kara Swisher, I talked with graphic novelist Allison Bechdell and editorial cartoonist Ann Telness. Let's listen to a clip of Anne explaining how she draws Trump.

Speaker 39 My readers are the ones that always point out to me because I never notice I'm changing every time. They're like, okay, he's starting to look like a big mouth bass now.

Speaker 39 And I'm like, okay, I can go with that. Or, you know, they say he's a pig.
And I'm like, well, I like pigs. Don't tell me that.
You know.

Speaker 39 So, you know, like I said, it's just really, I try to find out. I'm trying to show you what I think the insides of that person is more than the outsides.

Speaker 21 Is there one particular body part that you think is besides the tie?

Speaker 22 Little hands. Tiny.
Tiny hands.

Speaker 22 They were great.

Speaker 21 It's really, you don't pay enough. Cartoonists are doing God's work at this point.

Speaker 21 And Anne had left the Washington Post. Allison, of course, is such a talented cartoonist.
She has a new book called Spent.

Speaker 21 Really interesting conversation about the visualization of our politics that goes way back in our history, Thomas Nast and her block and others.

Speaker 21 Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back on Friday.

Speaker 21 Tim, thank you so much.

Speaker 21 You are also doing God's work.

Speaker 18 I really appreciate it.

Speaker 22 You're always

Speaker 22 here. It was such a pleasure.

Speaker 21 Interesting and canny. And I like that you have different takes.
And I like that you like the gold oval office. That's what you'll be remembered for.

Speaker 21 You and I would go to a Liberace show. I love Liberace.

Speaker 21 I also like Don Ho. I'm in that zone.
All right. I'll read us out.
Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode.

Speaker 21 Jim Mackle edited this video. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher.
Nishat Kerr is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 21 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 21 We'll be back later this week for our last breakdown of all things tech and business. Before Scott Free August ends, we've got a very big name, a very person who

Speaker 21 calls himself the most handsome governor in the country. We'll see what that means.
You'll find out. Thanks, Tim.

Speaker 22 Thanks, Karen.

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