Pivot

Elon's Empire Struggles, Trump's Crypto Summit, and IPO Slump

March 11, 2025 1h 7m Episode 599
Kara and Scott are live at SXSW — taking shots and dancing around like Elon (okay, that's just Scott). They discuss how Elon's business empire is struggling, and how much money DOGE is really saving. Then, Trump's crypto summit, and his plan to create a Bitcoin reserve. Plus, as the IPO slump continues, will any major company go public this year? Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Recorded on March 9th at SXSW in Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Do you think we'll ever have sex? Do you think we'll ever have sex?

The two of us?

Yeah, just curious.

I'm down as long as I don't have to be there. Hi, everyone.
This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
This is a live broadcast. As we said, we were going to do it here.
We're very excited. We always have a great time at South by Southwest.
Southwest how is your South by Southwest Scott? I love it here oh you want to say hi I'm Scott Galloway go ahead I'm Scott Galloway okay by the way 9 a.m. on Sunday of daylight what the fuck are you thinking? I know I know it's like a dog whistle for Mormons or people with no life yes it's true's true.
Literally, this is a negative Ford licking indicator of your social option.

What the fuck are you doing here?

I have to be here. Why do they schedule us at 10?

That's what I was thinking.

Is like Doge in charge of this shit?

What is going on?

Oh, but they have you and Senator Warren at the prime time at 4 p.m.

Billionaires should not exist.

Up next, Mark Cuban.

Sorry, go ahead. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah.
Tax the rich. Somehow I became worth $11 million serving in Congress.
And now it's her house. She has a house.
Oh, yeah. It's her house.
It is. That's right.
No, she's 8 million. She's 8 million.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's not rich by these people's standards. Okay.

Yeah. All right.

Okay.

She doesn't trade stocks.

Anyway, how is your South by Southwest?

I love it here.

I like the food.

I like the people.

What does a Texan German car enthusiast say?

What?

Audi.

It's Sunday morning.

It's Sunday morning.

Have you been partying?

You want something dirtier?

Yeah, go ahead.

I come down here because my urologist is down here.

Oh, here we go.

And you get to my age, you get a drip.

It takes a good, I don't know, three weeks to pee now.

And so I go into my urologist, and he's like,

did you have sex recently?

And I said, yeah, about five days ago. And he said, does she live near here? And I live near here and i said yeah he's like well you may want to get back i think you're coming good morning good morning and yes they do serve bloody mary's at 7 30 at the proper hotel vegetables god i am jet lagged i am jet lagged coming back from australia Australia.
Are you interviewing Peter Atia, Dr. Peter Atia? I am aware of him.
Well, Peter Atia and Andrew Huberman were like the poster children for... Yeah, I'm aware of them.
You know, big handsome guys who like work out all the time. Yeah.
They've declared more on alcohol. Yeah.
I'm taking alcohol back. Yeah.
Young people need to drink more. That is, what is the bigger issue? The alcohol your liver can absolutely handle when you're between the ages of 18 and 40 or the fact that none of you are having sex and making connections.
Drink more for God's sakes. I think they're doing a lot more weed is what's happening.
There's a lot more weed. Well, I wouldn't know about that.
What do you mean by weed care? I'm just saying, that's my impression from my children. Yeah, they're doing drugs.
But the thing I don't like about those drugs is I don't think they're as social. Yeah.
Right. You drink alcohol, and you just become more attractive to you, which gives you the confidence to go up to someone who likely does not find you attractive, and maybe over time, and I'm being somewhat serious here, gives you a chance to demonstrate excellence.
Do you want to know the scariest stat I have seen? We're totally going off script here. I'm so jet-lagged.
I'm fine with it. Go ahead.
She came in from Australia. I did.
Anyways, more than half, 51%, 51% of 18 to 24-year-old males have never asked a woman out in person. Think about just how tragic that is, that these young men are not developing the skills to much less potentially meet a romantic partner, have kids, which I think is the whole shooting match.
Not that you can't be happy without that, but I think everyone should have the option. And then they're not developing social skills.
And we don't like to talk about this, but your ability to open and establish contact and connection with someone. All right, question.
How many women are asking men out? Just curious. Oh, isn't that nice? Oh, it's nice.
I'm just curious. Why can't that happen? Here's the bottom line.
We talk a big game, but somewhere between 70 and 80% of women. What does that mean? Between 70 and 80% of women still say they want the man to initiate contact.
So they still expect, I mean, think about it. Young men, quite frankly, are getting a lot of mixed messages, in my view.
And it's making them asocial. And then we have the most talented companies in the world who sponsor this conference trying to convince them they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm.
Here, trust me on this. Trust me.
Go out, drink more, make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. I'm not sure you're right on the statistics, honestly.
But you should do that. Everybody should ask each other out.
My sons are both asked out by the girls they are now seeing their girlfriends. Yeah, but your sons are handsome.
Yeah, okay. The rest of us have to take our shot.
The rest of us have to do something like this. Do you know what I think you need? Oh, God.
Here he goes again. Do you believe in love at first sight? No.
No. Or should I walk by? Show your abs.
How about breakfast? Oh, God. Do you know what I'm thinking right now? I'm reconsidering the possibility of doing another four-year deal with Scott Calloway, but I've just re-reconsidered it.
You'll be 78. I'll be 36.
Do you think? By the way, by the way, for men, 50 is the new 30, and for women, 40 is the new 90. Oh, my God.
I'm not. Oh, my God.
I should have slept in and watched church chat. All right.
You know what? We're going to end up together in like. You'll be wheeling me around.
Yes, I'll be wheeling you around. Looking over the wheelchair.
Yes. And then I'll keel over and you'll be sitting there, like, by yourself.
No one's going to want to talk to you. Anyway, speaking of shots, we're going to do shots here like we promised.
I don't do shots. Really? Yeah, I don't do shots.
What do you mean you don't do shots? I don't do shots. Why? It's like that propaganda.
You literally just told them to drink and now you don't do shots? We'll put sugary shit on top of it in a lime and pretend like you're sophisticated. You're going to do a shot today.
Literally, this is me at the storehouse last night. The loveliest people come up to me and they're like, thank you for your work on store.
Just get me off. Fucking Makers and Ginger.
I don't want to talk about anything. You're doing a shot because it says don't mess with Texas.
All right. We're going to fuck with Texas today.
All right. Anyway, as I was saying, we're doing our thing.
We've got a lot to get to today. We're taking questions from the live audience, of which are going to be most of the show.
But we want to talk about a couple of things. Following the news that Trump is reigning in Elon Musk, neither of us believe this, and Doge.
Let's talk about how Elon's actual business they're doing as he dabbles in government. SpaceX's largest Starship exploded this past week during a test flight.
That's the second time it's happened. He does blow up a lot of rockets.
Tesla's sales and stock price are down and the company is at risk of bleeding cash. Is this business mishaps happening because of his role in government or in spite of it? How do you look at these? And then Starlink, which may or may not go public, we'll talk about that in a minute, has seen competition from China, from Jeff Bezos, from all kinds of stuff.
What's happening here? Well, I think it's a tale of two cities here. And that is Tesla is crashing in the sense that, I mean, you've heard.
So I'm doing breakfast with the Nike people tomorrow. Nike went political with their embrace of Colin Kaepernick.
But they did the math. And that is two-thirds of Nike sales are outside of the U.S.
And no one outside of the U.S. thinks the U.S.
has got race relations right. Two-thirds of their revenue and probably 70 or 80% of their profits come from people under the age of 30.
They also have a huge customer base in non-whites. So essentially the people who burned their Nikes after they endorsed Nike, that was probably their their first pair of Nikes and that is they knew that their core audience would probably feel very good about that move as smart as that was Musk's political forays or adventures are that stupid because 75 percent of Republicans say they would never buy EV he He's gone very red pill.
In California, his biggest market EV sales for Tesla are down dramatically. And even after this crash in sales in Europe, if you look at the company, it's lost about a third of its value in February.
It's lost all of its kind of Trump bump gains. If you look at it from a valuation perspective, Apple only grew 2% last year, but it trades at a 38 times earnings multiple.
Amazon grew 10%, 38 times PE. NVIDIA grew about 114%, and it has a PE multiple of 40.
Tesla grew 1%. Tesla's flat, and it has a price earnings multiple of 144.
So Tesla is still, even after

shedding a third of its value, is the most overvalued company in tech, maybe with the exception of Palantir. And the sales are just not, it's crashing.
His political calculus as relates to tesla was just irrational now to be fair space fair, SpaceX and the value proposition of SpaceX is that rockets blow up. And that is they can take risks that NASA and the government can't.
And 99% of their launches are successful. They're responsible for about 78% of the launches right now.
the Falcon Heavy Rocket can get shit into the air, into orbit for $1,500 a kilogram. The next best is a Russian company called Angora that can do it at three times the cost.
So their ability to take those sorts of risks and put shit into space for a third of the price of the second best per kilogram launch vehicle, I think SpaceX is going to be worth more than Tesla in 2025. But taking your eye off the ball, because there are now competitors, there's going to be increasing amounts of competitors.
Will the same thing happen? Is this political collocation a good one for him? Because they may use Starlink at the FAA. They may use, but they were buying cyber trucks for some reason for the State Department.
I think more than trying to increase revenues, it's trying to clear out obstacles. So there are 11 federal agencies that have 32 investigations currently underway for different Musk companies.
And a lot of those inspectors and people seem to be getting the ax. So I don't think his foray into government is about trying to increase revenues.
I think it's about trying to clear out the inspectors and financial regulation. But it doesn't look like the calculus is very smart here.
Like David Sachs getting involved in crypto and then getting Trump to have dinner with the guy from Ripple who probably promised him money. And then all of a sudden deciding to include Ripple in the strategic Bitcoin reserve.
By the way, there's nothing fucking strategic about that.

And then all of a sudden Ripple rips. That's smart political kleptocracy corruption,

but at least that's smart. His political forays so far, I don't think are paying off for him.

You don't think so. What will happen then to Tesla from your perspective? Just a downward

slide. I mean, they have to obviously update the cars.
They're talking about self-driving

Thank you. You don't think so.
What will happen then to Tesla from your perspective? Just a downward slide. I mean, they have to obviously update the cars.
They're talking about self-driving, full self-driving. They're talking about robo-taxis, which already are in effect here with Waymo for years, actually.
Yeah, but you said it. We know it's just light years ahead of them.
And if Tesla starts trading like a regular automobile company in terms of price to earnings, it would be at 14 bucks a share.

It's just impossible to rationalize a valuation. I still think it's a really good car.
I can't help it. I got a Tesla on my Uber app.
I cancel or I let them wait outside. I know that's wrong.
But it is a good car. It's a great company.
it should trade at a multiple of 50 to 100% more than the other car companies, meaning it's a $25 or $30 stock. So where's the benefit for him in this kleptocracy you speak of? That's the correct question.
I don't know, fame, narcissism, go red pill, clear out inspectors. To me, the calculus is not smart here.

Tesla has basically become a brand that means, has some very negative brand associations.

I think that too.

I think people who are buying it are repulsed by it, are actually repulsed by it and are not.

But you see all these stories.

And actually, you're seeing violence at Tesla facilities.

Not just there, but at charging stations. The cars are getting defaced.
I think people are embarrassed to have them. I mean, the Uber thing is simple.
I actually won't take a Tesla Uber. I just don't like the cars actually myself.
I find them, it feels like I'm sitting in the inside of an egg. I know it sounds dumb, but if you're in there, it feels sterile.
And I don't, if I'm going to pay more for a car, an Uber, I want a nice, comfortable car. But that's besides the point.
I think it's just a brand destruction is what's happening. And he doesn't seem to mind because I think he's bored with his other businesses.
And this is interesting to him, what he's doing. But the pushback is real from the thing.
Do you think that the case with him and Marco Rubio? There was a very funny SNL skit last night on that. Do you think the pushback is actually real? People keep predicting he and Trump finally.
So 92% of Trump's advisors were fired. So there's a 90%.
It's like being second lieutenant in Vietnam. You're probably not going to last very long.
That was ugly. Yeah, it's dark.
92% of those advisors in the first administration were fired, more than all the advisors that were fired in the previous three administrations. He's very good at creating human heat shields.
If, in fact, he has told his cabinet they're now in charge and he's an advisor, it means he's done. He does not have the complexion to go to, you know, Senator Rubio, excuse me, Secretary Rubio.
And also, these individuals have no incentives to trim their departments. They have very difficult jobs and their departments.
All of this is a fine, a giant fucking distraction. So far, according to The Wall Street Journal, Doge has saved $2.6 billion.
If you wanted to 6x Doge, just cut off all subsidies to Tesla, which have been $15 billion. This is a giant misdirect.
This is a giant misdirect to get you and mostly young people to look away. Oh, Doge.
Oh, he's crazy. He's firing people.
All these sad stories about federal employees being let go. They're actually real.
They are actually getting fired. I get it.
And people in the private sector are fired every day. But they want you to look over here such that you don't look at the tax plan that is going to add $800 billion to the deficit.
So this is the conspiracy that is elegant and that people aren't looking at. Talk about DEI being a helicopter crash.
Talk about Doge. Talk about inflamed people by saying stupid laws like male versus female.
That's how they're spending their time? Because look over here, not at the fact that the point 1% who will say under the breath, yeah, I don't want to go to his inauguration, but my accountant tells me I'm going to get another $11 million this year. This is a conspiracy between the 0.1% and an administration that wants you to look over here and ignore the fact that we're about to levy the greatest increase in taxes in history called a deficit.
Anyone under the age of 40 in here at some point is either going to have to pay that back or the forward-leaning investments we've been able to make in the past in technology and space and education are going to get crowded out by the interest on this debt, which is now greater than our military. So we need to reframe this discussion and say, America is about to incur the greatest tax increase in history on young people that's deferred called the deficit.
Don't look at that. Look at that.
They just fired three people to the National Forestry Service. Who the fuck cares? I know it's sad.
I know it's bad. Well, no, Scott, I think it is actually a hollowing out, not just of the regulators of Elon, although I think that's very clear that that's, I mean, they're definitely- But what is the percentage, the actual numbers? It's a very small amount.
He's not saving any money. I mean, the whole thing is kind of a thing.
It's a misdirect. It is a misdirect.
And at the same time, they were going to pass this tax law anyway. They were not going to not pass this tax law.
And I do think the Democrats, as we talked about last week, focusing in on Elon, is good politically because he's disliked from poll after poll. The polls are very clear.
So I'm not so sure it's the smartest idea to have this, this misdirect is different than DEI crashed planes versus something else. I do think it's at the heart of, of what Trump's doing.
And I think he's antagonizing a lot of his base. And by that, I mean, people in Washington for no good reason when he could get these things passed no matter what.
I think there's a large percentage of moderates that feel like breaking some eggs and laying off people in the public sector. First off, if this were an audit, the net results of the audit so far is there's dramatically less inefficiency, fraud, and waste than we thought in government.
They're just, if you look at their quote-unquote wall of receipts, they don't be, they haven't been able, it appears, to actually find any fraud or waste. Right, that's exactly right.
We saved $8 billion.

Oh no, it's actually $8 million

and the money's already been spent.

And then numbers two, three, and four

that they supposedly saved money on weren't real.

If this is an audit,

the government is getting an outstanding

clean bill of health around fraud and waste.

But having said that,

I do think moderates kind of like the idea,

and every administration has done some form of this, just not so weird. They do.
There's always that sentence like, of course, we're all for government reform. If you notice, they always do that.
But these departments, Senator Rubio isn't going to agree to cuts. If he's actually in charge now, he's got a tough job.
He's not going to say, yeah, you snort, do a few rails of ketamine and then come in here and tell me what ambassadors or what people we should lay off.

He's not going to say that.

He does look like his soul has come out of his body.

If he has to report into him now, it means Doge is over, in my view.

Yeah, we'll see.

It'll take a while to get him out.

Elon is a bit like mold.

So let's talk about how Elon is influencing the business world by moving his Texas here to Texas.

He's not the first to do it. Now Chevron, KFC, and Meta are talking about putting their HQs here.
The governor of Delaware, where most Fortune 500 companies are incorporated, is now scrambling to keep companies there. You and I have talked about that.
I mean, do people, is this a, you have talked about being a good thing because Texas is more business friendly versus other places.

I assume other states will try to do the same thing.

Wyoming, I know, is doing that.

Nevada.

There's certain states that are doing that.

Do you think Delaware is over as a place to do business?

No, Delaware is traditionally seen as very corporate friendly, especially.

Then they're efficient around their chancery core and the way they decide. So i don't think you can be for competition and ask big tech to break up and not support competition among states i think the thing that's going to incent california to get its shit together is a lot of people are leaving for texas because they do the three greatest arbitrages available i think in economic history are one the arbitrage from fossil fuels to things that build everything from this to, you know, the tennis shoes you have probably have petroleum in them.
Second is to find young, ambitious people who will work as hard or harder because they don't have dogs and kids and will be 80 or 90 percent as good as the person who's been with your company 20 years. But because they're naive and can live in a 300 square foot apartment, you'll have to pay them 30 or 40% as much.
The most successful companies in the world participate in the arbitrage of young people who don't know any better, right? Those are your most valuable employees is the overeducated, really hardworking 25 year old that you pay 80 grand instead of 250 grand to the 40 year old who has kids. The other big arbitrage right now economically in the United States is state arbitrage.
And that is people who basically say, okay, and I did this in 2010. I got my son was denied.
He's doing great now because he was speech-deleted when he was four from seven out of seven schools that wanted to charge us $58,000 a year for him to play with blocks. We moved to Florida and the school there, a lovely little school, was $12,000.
So the geographic arbitrage that's taking place across America where people are moving to lower cost, higher quality of living states like Texas and Florida is a great thing. So companies coming here, I think, is a good thing.
I think it's important. What's weird is Meta, Chevron, and KFC.
So carbon, teen depression, and diabetes.

Would you move to Texas?

It's a little hot.

I would.

Florida hasn't worked out as well.

The whole Miami Tech thing is sort of a bust right now.

Yeah, it's a good quality of life, though.

It's a really nice quality of life.

I understand, but that didn't take off.

I can see living here.

Don't you think you can live there?

This seems pretty nice.

No.

No?

No.

Austin?

They don't like the gays.

Thank you. I can see living here.
Don't you think you can live there? This seems pretty nice.

No.

No?

No.

Austin?

They don't like the gays.

Austin doesn't like gay people?

Is that fair? Well, maybe Austin does, but it's...

I know that.

I'm aware of that.

I'm aware.

But let me say, I worry about my family a lot, like in different certain states.

Whether...

I love Austin.

I love this area.

But you have a state government that's hostile to my family. So it's really hard when I'm making—Florida, forget it.
And I'm even worried in D.C. My kid's in a D.C.
public school. And, you know, she brought home—they did like a little diversity moment where they were just—it was coloring in—a coloring thing.
And I thought, oh, wow, one of these fucking senators from some state who has no values that I have are going to try to mess with my kids' education. I think about it all the time.
And then I'm like, right. I don't walk in your shoes, so I take your word for it.
Yeah. You have to be thinking really hard about where you want to raise your kids and where they're going to attack your family.
I mean, I think about it. I didn't think I'd have to think about it again in my life, except now I do.
So again, I don't have your lived experience. Right.
But the tax is fantastic. Well, I know.
I can hire extra security. As a Florida resident.
Yeah. I think a lot of Florida citizens are horrified by some of the laws that have been passed around restricting a woman's right.
There's just no doubt about it. That's rattling.
But just on the ground, I live in Delray Beach. It feels like a pretty progressive community that's very open and welcoming.
I get it. But anytime a state can talk with me, I'm very aware of it.
And it's one of the reasons I love California and stuff. But I get it.
I get it. There's definitely a cost-benefit analysis.
But I just find I'd rather be in states that support my family. That's all.
So you think a lot of states will move here? You do? You do think they'll move? Oh, there'll definitely be companies that incorporate here and move here. Oracle is here.
I think that's a great thing. I think competition, intrastate competition is really important.
Yeah. I think it's good for the economy.

You guys are building like crazy here.

What in the hell is going on?

I've never seen such,

like every time I come back here,

I think there can't be

another building here in Austin

and then there's another

fucking building.

Yeah.

It's getting a little much,

I'll be honest with you.

All right.

Let's go on a quick break.

When we come back,

we'll have more for you.

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Okay, Scott, we're back.

On Friday, President Trump held the first ever crypto summit at the White House.

Such a pro, right?

What an elegant segue.

How did she pull it off?

Oh, my God.

What are you doing here on a Sunday morning?

Can I just tell you?

There is no way you could do what I do. See? The crowd agrees.
On a lot of levels. Let me just say, if you understood what's happening here, you're the pretty one.
Incredibly. You're the pretty one who just sits there and says things.
I'm sorry, Keira, what did you say? Yeah, I'm the pretty one. Do you think we'll ever have sex? That's what I get.
Do you think we'll ever have sex? do you think we'll ever have sex do you think we'll ever have sex the two of us yeah just curious I'm down as long I'm down as long as I don't have to be there okay that would be so weird oh god you don't know what it takes to get me going now, Kara. Yeah.
It's a Pam Greer film,

eight ball of cocaine and a cattle prod up my ass,

and then it's go time.

It's go time for a good 90 seconds.

Oh, I was just thinking about that.

And then when I climax, I scream out,

Surrender Dorothy!

Or my favorite from Wicked.

I'm melting.

How did we get here? Get us out of this. No, I'm just kidding.
Get us out of this now. You probably cry.
I've never thought about having sex, just so you know. Yeah, which is why you brought it up.
Yeah, I'm just... Yeah.
It just seems like the inevitable end of our relationship. Oh, God.
You know, suddenly we'll look at each... It's like a movie, like a Hallmark movie.
I just ate! Okay, all right. Okay, now we're back.
Okay, President Trump held the first ever crypto summit at the White House. Crypto experts, lawmakers, administration officials gathered as Trump declared a war on crypto is over.
A day earlier, Trump signed an executive order creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve and separate digital assets stockpile. The reserve will be established with Bitcoin that has been seized from federal law enforcement.
I don't know how much that is. During Trump's second term, the SEC had already closed several investigations into cryptocurrency firms.
Sam Bankman-Fried, if you saw him on Tucker Carlson the other day, he's hoping to get in on that forgiveness. The disgraced FTX founders reportedly been campaigning for a pardon from President Trump.
I bet he gets it. What do you think of the reserve? And will you be thinking about more crypto investments now that this is happening? You and I have been sort of in and out on whether crypto is good.
I ultimately think it's probably more some of it's OK, some of it isn't. Some of the people in crypto find this disturbing, the way they're doing this, in the way they found the Biden administration to be too difficult in terms of rolling things out.
So this is essentially just pure pay for play. And Republicans would argue that, OK, we're just more transparent about it.
But the crypto community gave $285 million to the Trump campaign. And what do you know, he's decided to have a quote unquote strategic Bitcoin reserve.
It makes absolutely no sense. You have a strategic petroleum reserve, and it is strategic because if there's a war or our supply chain of fossil fuels gets cut off, we don't want our economy to come to a halt if we need to build tanks or just keep the economy open.
So we have a strategic reserve

What's gonna happen if we run out of Bitcoin? Like how is that a defense threat? So there's nothing strategic about it. What it is is the following you give me 285 million dollars

So I'm gonna increase the deficit

I mean when we seize assets when the FBI seizes assets

They immediately sell them because they don't want to be in the business of owning boats or Bitcoin or whatever

That's not their job. They're not hedge fund managers

If you have a nation that's creating more revenue than you're spending, then you have a sovereign fund that tries to find alpha. Which they're also trying to do, a sovereign fund.
He's talked about that. Why? We don't need a sovereign.
We need higher taxes and lower spending. We don't have any additional money because then you're saying the government is better at allocating investment capital than the investment community.
And by the way, all this is, again, another increase in a deficit to transfer wealth to his 0.1 percenters such that you can own a little bit of Bitcoin. Here's a crazy idea.
Go buy your own fucking Bitcoin. I mean, it just this makes no sense whatsoever.
This is pure. You gave me $285 million.
So I'm going to come up with a bunch of jazz hands around why we should have a strategic reserve. And by the way, there's a negative implication.
Bitcoin is terrible for the United States strategically because the biggest, baddest carrier strike force in our arsenal is an invisible one called the U.S. dollar.
And when we put sanctions on a country, it has teeth because we can stop them from trading in dollars, which makes it very hard for them to do business globally. So if you're going to create another global reserve currency, all you are doing is attacking our aircraft carrier squadron called the dollar.
So this is not only kleptocracy and pay for play and make no sense. It's actually damaging to the underlying strength of America because it's diminishing the dollar.
Because a lot of people felt the Biden administration had been hostile, especially Gary Gensler, who you and I both talked to. That they had been hostile to the development of it, trying to overregulate it.
I do understand why their inclination is to regulate it because it's currency. It does affect other parts of the economy.
It's a legit, it's Bitcoin is establishing. First off, I don't think you can talk about Bitcoin in the same breath as the other ones.
Bitcoin has established itself as a credible store of value because the genius of Bitcoin is they've created this algorithm or this methodology where you have to constantly throw numbers to unlock or mine Bitcoin. And people now believe, the market now believes that they're going to stop minting at 21 million.
So Bitcoin is increasing less fast than gold reserves, than we're printing US dollars. So the market says this is a legitimate store of value.
That is an asset class. What's to stop anyone at Doja or Ripple or ETH from massively increasing the supply? It's supposed to be one of three things.
It's supposed to be a payment mechanism. No one's using this shit for payments.
It's supposed to have utility. You could argue ETH and some of them, maybe they make payments, maybe other stable coins go on their technology.
But for the most part, there's no real utility here, folks. It's not like dentists use Bitcoin to fill your cavities.
There's no real utility. What it could be is a store of value.
And one of them, in my view, has created a store of value, and that is a legitimate store of value, and that's Bitcoin. Other than that, it's pure speculation, which is fun.

But the notion that we're going to get involved,

you're about to see in 36 months,

you're going to see a raft of stories about crypto scans that happen between now and the next 36 months.

Because you could make an argument that it was being overregulated

or there was a lack of regulation, which created insecurity.

I think Brian Armstrong will fairly say, just tell us what the rules are and we'll comply but they couldn't get any clarity so you could argue there was an under-regulation but there was opaque regulation but now it's the wild west you're going to see so many buy bitcoin right now i'm a no-coiner i was on the board of a company calledger, which was a crypto hardware wallet because I wanted to learn more. But I generally don't invest in things I don't understand.
And I speak, I'll go down and I'll have lunch with Michael Saylor whenever I'm in Miami. And within about 10 minutes of hearing him, he's brilliant, I start thinking, put everything into Bitcoin.
This guy's just so much fucking smarter than me, put everything into Bitcoin. And then by the leave lunch i'm like i have no fucking idea what bitcoin is i don't i don't i don't understand it i just don't get it so i'm a no-coiner do you own any i i do but i can't find it you can't find it yeah that's right you told me that yeah i bought it at the beginning people know this story i bought it beginning.
I was writing a story about Wenceslas Casares, who started Zappo. And I bought 10 or 50 Bitcoin.
I don't know. But it was like 50 bucks each.
And it must have been 10 because they spent $500. I've been using that to our advantage.
That story's out there. That Kara has like $50 million in Bitcoin in a drawer somewhere.
It's not in a drawer. I don't know where it is.
It's probably at Lucky's House. But whenever I'm with Bankoff, we're in the midst of negotiating.
Yeah, go get my mother. Do something.
We're in the midst of negotiating a new four-year deal with Vox, and I'm just malicious and Machiavellian. Last night, I'm like, oh, hey, Jim.
He's like, what are you doing? I'm going to the Spotify party. They want to talk to us.
And also, I heard Kara found her crypto. From Spotify.
Anyway. By the way, Netflix is getting into podcasting.
Just saying. Just saying.
Oh, God. So no Bitcoin for us.
All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break, and we'll be back with our next big story. Today Explained here with Eric Levitt, senior correspondent at Vox.com to talk about the 2024 election.
That can't be right. Eric, I thought we were done with that.
I feel like I'm Pacino in three. Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
Why are we talking about the 2024 election again? The reason why we're still looking back is that it takes a while after an election to get all of the most high quality data on what exactly happened. So the full picture is starting to just come into view now.
And you wrote a piece about the full picture for Vox recently, and it did bonkers business on the Internet. What did it say? What struck a chord? Yeah, so this was my interview with David Shore of Blue Rose Research.
He's one of the biggest sort of democratic data gurus in the party. And basically, the big picture headline takeaways are on today explained, you'll have to go listen to them there.
Find the show wherever you listen to shows, bro. All right, Scott, we're back with our next big story.
You won't take a shot. I have liquor for you.
That's why she makes the big bucks. I do.
I make the big bucks. We're back with our next big story.
Let's talk very quickly about IPOs. I want to get to questions from the audience.
I want you to be brief here. I know it's difficult for you.
2025 was expected to be a big year for IPOs, thanks to Trump and his pro-business anti-regulation administration. But with tariff whiplash, regulatory changes, inflation concerns out there, we're not seeing an IPO just yet.
Although StubHub and Discord are reportedly getting ready to dip their toes in the waters. Some other long rumored is Xi'an OpenAI and SpaceX.
What is the, is it good time to go public? It doesn't seem like there have been any. Xi'an, for example, is facing some headwinds with Trump ending the de minimis loophole that allows them to ship cheap goods from China to the U.S.
without paying taxes and import duties. Where is the IPO market, briefly? It's kind of the walking dead.
In 2021, there were 1,000 IPOs that raised $280 billion. Last year, there were 150 IPOs that raised $30 billion.
I mean, the IPO market is just literally dead. It hasn't been this bad for this long in a long time.
And we keep hoping something is going to set the starting gun for it again. And I thought it was going to, I got this wrong.
I thought Reddit was going to ignite the market. And it hasn't.
The IPO market is still really dormant it's just very um cold terrible and will it come back with any of these some of these are promising companies obviously you would think but i mean is this a cyclical thing or is it structural because it used to be you couldn't get these types of valuations unless you tapped into deep institutional capital. But now that institutional capital is moving into the private markets.
And when open AI can raise money to $300 billion market cap, which creates a greater value than 90% of public companies, and you have opportunities or access to liquidity, secondary markets. Anthropoc was $60 billion? Is that right? Something that's somewhere maybe higher.
$40 to $ 60? But the point is, do we need the public markets? The problem is, is that yet again, we are sequestering the majority of the upside of our prosperity to the private markets that consist mostly of 0.1 percenters and institutional investors. The people who got to invest in Google, you know, retail investors, have done exceptionally well.
Same as Apple. The problem is institutional money figured out, why are we giving away these gains to the retail market? We can capture them privately and offer employees liquidity and have less regulation.
So unfortunately, right now, the retail markets have become the last stop when you can't find private investors to take your valuation up. And most of the margin, most of the juice gets squeezed out.
So yet again, the IPO market is another indication of the fact that we're cramming all the prosperity into a small number of institutions. There's also the lack of interest in being public.
Because of regulation. It's not the thing you want anymore because of regulation, because of public-facing things.
I've met a lot of these companies who may go private. Do you ever see one of the very big companies going private? That is an excellent point.
If you look at some of the fallen angels and you look at the amount of money, capital sitting on the sidelines in private equity, it's over $4 trillion of capital waiting to be deployed. I think we're going to see, I did my prediction stack yesterday, I think we're going to see the biggest take private in history this year.
And it'll be, in my opinion, my three favorite targets are Intel, which is arguably the worst managed company in tech over the last 20 years. It's, I mean, it's one thing when your stock goes into the shitter when your company's in structural decline, right? Warner Brothers Discovery, they can claim we're facing headwinds.
Intel has literally been in the best business in the world for the last 30 years, and they have been one of the worst performing stocks. Someone might step up.
I think it's got

a $70 or $80 billion. Someone might step up and go there.
The two others I like are Boeing,

and the third is Target. Big, big, outstanding brands, decent management, great businesses,

and the opportunity to get them. They're fallen angels.
They're on sale right now,

and there's so much money. I think there could be a club deal to take them.
They're fallen angels. They're on sale right now.

And there's so much money.

I think there could be a club deal to take one of those companies private.

Those are the three.

Would you be part of that, one of those?

I don't think so.

Yeah.

No, I don't.

Yeah, that's interesting.

All right.

Get ready to ask questions.

Taylor, bring out the liquor, please.

Thank you.

Scott, you're going to have a shot.

You promised.

Thank you. You can do a little one.
You can do it. This is Taylor, everybody.
Taylor Grimman, who is amazing. She's one of our...
Go ahead. Taylor is from Texas.
Where are you from, Taylor? Porteranzas. Porteranzas.
Yeah. Oh, my God.
Hello. Anyway, she's amazing.
We have an amazing... By the way, take a moment.
All our staffs and all our podcasts are amazing. Ish.
Ish. No, they're great.
They have to put up with Scott, obviously. Thank you, Taylor.
Okay, give him the big one. I'll take the little Texas boot.
I'll do that one, the boot. Give him the boot.
Okay, give him the boot. Give him the boot.
You're trying to get me drunk. Yes, I'm not.
Yes, because I want to have my way with you. Okay.
There there it is again thanks all right okay um let us begin with audience questions everybody cut line up here please stand up and ask questions of us start walking you can ask anything you want anything all right introduce yourself though yes please yes please All right. Hello, I'm Malcolm.
Okay, start here. My question is, how do you guys go about avoiding audience capture and making sure you're not just going over the same points over and over again because it's what your audiences come to expect from you? Meaning, I don't even know what that means.
So, like, certain people like Joe Rogan and other podcasters have kind of gotten into a silo where they only talk about a certain topic because that's what their audience comes to expect from them. Yeah.
How do you guys avoid that? It's actually hard. We think about it a lot, especially because we have other podcasts and we're doing other things.
But one of the things that I think is important is actual narrative in stories. And I think one of the things that's attractive about our podcast is you follow us over time, right? And I noticed when we talk to our fans, when they come up to us, they like the story about us, about our relationship, not just, you know, and they like the whole story.
And I think as we follow things and we learn and sort of start to analyze, it's not a bad thing necessary. Obviously, sometimes we worry about the Elon-ness of it, like at this point.
We get it, but I got to tell you, we're growing. Like it's hard to, it's like Trump.
You're sort of like stuck in a situation. He really is consequential.
And so you can't ignore him. But we definitely think about how to be fresh and not repetitive.
And that's hard because you have to come up with new insights all the time. Scott? Yeah, I do think, and we've talked about, I think we talk about politics too much.
And I think a lot of people came in expecting us to talk about tech and business. And oftentimes, sometimes justifiably, but we are both passionate about politics and we both feel very invested and we get triggered by some of this stuff.
But if we were purely about what I'd call purity of editorial and trying to be as appealing to as large a group as possible, which oftentimes involves not alienating 49% of the U.S., we would talk probably less about politics. But I don't think we can resist.
But it's hard now because they're really fucking in Washington, these assholes. I mean, it's really, I always joke.
Case in point. Yeah, it's hard not to, they're there.
And, you know, David Sachs is deciding on this idiotic crypto reserve. You've got, like, they're all wandering.
I live in Washington now. I moved.
And then there they are, like the top day. And I'm like, fuck.
How did they get there? Half the nation is right or center right.'m center left she's crazy fucking left no i'm not you are so much leftier than i am these days but go ahead you think yeah yeah really you've become somewhat of a san francisco lesbian if i had to be honest you have gone rather left you're more i'm more expecting the trump people right here let's get through as many as we can go ahead um. My name is Tatum.
This is about trade schools. And Scott, it's kind of for you, but my family owns cosmetology schools and hair and skin.
So, Cara, you're certainly able to answer this question. Okay.
Thank you. No shade, Scott.
You've talked a lot about the diminishing ROI on traditional four-year college degrees and the need for more practical, high-earning career paths. Given the rising costs of college and labor shortages in skilled trade, what systematic changes, whether in policy, culture, or corporate investment, do you think are necessary to reposition trade schools as a first-choice pathway rather than a fallback option? That's a great question.
I'll start very quickly. I think it's critically important.
They do it in Europe all the time. And it's without the shame of it.
There's something in this country

thinking that college is a better option. It's just stuck in the minds of parents, I think,

in a lot of ways. I have a son who I would love to be a chef, for example, and go to school.
I

don't think... He happened to like college, and it went really well.
He's graduating this year,

my oldest son. But I do think...
I thought a lot about like if he wanted to do other things. For my other son, college was critical because he's going to be in fusion energy and he needs to be trained and stuff.
But it's definitely getting this, for some reason there's a stink on the idea of it in this country. And I don't know why, because these are great professions.
They're very difficult. They're AI proof in many ways, right? And I don't know why there is a sense that that's not the way to go in this country.
It's true. I'm a hairdresser, but went to college first.
And saying one or the other is a totally different reaction from people. Yeah.
We don't have an apprentice culture. And if you look at, there's so many factors that have led to young men struggling, falling further faster than any other court in America.
And part of it is like, what happened to Otto, Wood, and Metal Shop? Two-thirds of males just aren't cut out for a liberal arts education. They don't have the discipline.
They don't have the demeanor to get through college. That's just not what they want.
And unfortunately, a lot of those jobs are passed to the middle class, have been outsourced or nor are longer existed. I didn't like Biden's bailout plan of student loans.
I just thought that was creating more moral hazard and people were going to borrow more money from an isolated pantsuit with an NYU logo always saying, your education investments in yourself will always pay off. And then they get out with a philosophy major and they have $130,000 in debt.
So I didn't like the bailout. What they could have done and should do is the following.
If they were to take $100 billion and take the 100 biggest of our public universities, which are the best in the world, and said, I will give you $1 billion over the next 10 years if you do three things. One, you have to expand your enrollments greater than population growth.
Two, you have to cut your tuition 2% a year, which would result in 10 years a doubling in the number of freshman seats at half the cost. Take it back to the 80s when I applied to UCLA and the admissions rate was 76%.
And the cost for all seven years of undergrad and grad for me at UCLA and Berkeley was $7,000. I am here because of the generosity of the California taxpayers.

And the third thing they need to do is at least 20% of their certificates need to be

non-traditional, non-four-year degrees, nursing, specialty construction, installation of HVAC.

These jobs, we need these people.

And there's this obnoxious self-aggrandizement.

I have given a lot of my money to UCLA and Berkeley for what's called continuing education

because they couldn't call it vocational programs because me and my colleagues are such fucking

snobs.

We need, think about how little the college degree has not innovated.

There's amazing jobs.

I was on a plane with this woman who's the IV whisperer. She works at a hospital and she can find any vein.
That's her whole thing. When they can't find a vein on somebody, they call her and she makes $180,000 working three a year, working three 12-hour shifts.
That's a fucking amazing job. And she needed two years of training.
Universities need to innovate and they need to recognize we're not there to make ourselves feel important to this bullshit rejections culture, but to train people to have the economic security for them and their families. One, you have to grow your population, your freshman class faster than population growth.
You have to cut costs 2% a year with inflation in 10 years to cut it in half and at least 20% of your certificates or have to be some sort of vocational programming. That's how we take our universities to the next level and create more- It's also a good message for Democrats, for example, to- Big ideas.
And also reignite, give younger people, quite frankly, mostly men, more past on-ramps to the middle class. I'm not saying you wouldn't see women, but the program I'm involved in, 70% of the people who show up who aren't cut out for college are men.
So many avenues have been shut off, traditional means to economic security for men who are not quite frank that they're just not cut out as well for college. They're less mature.
They're less disciplined. There's now more women in college.
It's 60-40 globally now. And by the way, we should do nothing to get in the way of that.
What I'm suggesting is let's not forget the people who are never going to go to college. They're just not cut out.
Remember that guy in high school? They were everywhere. They were just not going to go to college, but they could fix a fucking car.
They were really good with their hands. And instead, we got rid of those classes and put in computer science and got rid of civics, and we end up with fucking Mark Zuckerberg.
Bring back Metal Shop. That's how it happened.
All right, I'm going to cut you off. We're going to try it again.
Thank you for the question. Yeah, good.
My name is Moritz. I'm from Germany.
I'm a big fan of the show. Where in Germany? From where? From Cologne.
Oh, cool. Most beautiful cathedral and the best beer in all of Europe.
Yes, there are people who would argue with that, but probably you're right. Yeah.
So you talked about that on the show recently, how Elon Musk interfered with the German election and tried to bring down our democracy as well. And my question is, are we going to see more of that? And what's the end game here? And as you often put it, Scott, Scott what's the effective response probably and also if I'm saying I love you to my wife who's at home is that going on the show yes yes it just did it just did I love you Anna I'll answer maybe I just was in Australia and they're terrified of Elon Musk coming over there and doing something like or Trump getting paying attention to them especially on, especially around their online safety bill that they passed.
And they're worried about, they're absolutely worried about him funding. They have a less active right-wing group there, but they're worried about him funding that group.
He's going to do it all over the world. I don't see him stopping.
I think this is his, he thinks, I don't think it was particularly effective in Germany as much as the amount of, I think it was a negative effect with, especially with the most charmless person in politics. They doubled their results.
They did, but it was already on the way. They thought it would be more.
They thought they'd really goose it, but J.D. Vance is the most charmless politician in existence right now.
And I think that, you know, when they said Hillary Clinton was likable enough, when Obama said he's not likable enough. That's why I don't think he's the next president or whatever.
But I think that he will continue to do so. Scott, briefly.
I'm not as worried about foreign nations as I'm about the U.S. I don't think we want to come to grips with the fact that democracy and rights are now purely a function of wealth.
The R is almost one. It's almost perfectly correlated.
And if shit gets real and there's some sort of economic shock and they start rounding up people, which we have done, by the way, in the past, right? Japanese families who are good citizens, who had kids fighting in the European theater, were rounded up in this country. So we like to believe we're above that.
We are not. But the thing is, I have the money to shove a bunch of Bitcoin up my ass and peace out to Dubai.
You're going to have to stick around and deal with this bullshit. I don't know where I'm going with this.
I know. Anyways.
All right, quickly. Oh, I know where I am.
All right. Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, basically, in my view, probably swung the election.
It's always like 48, 48 in the two or 4%. And then it's a small number of counties in a small number of states, $285 million.
Very smart, weaponized a platform. And what do you know? I'm more worried about the US because the thing about Germany and the UK is they're like money in politics? Let corporations and individuals spend as much as, are you fucking crazy? They're like, we're not gonna do that.
The whole point of democracy is the demo. And democracy, we want checks and balances of a populist voting, not a small number of very wealthy people.
So in the UK, they start to finish election in six months and it's much more difficult, I think, to weaponize an election with just sheer brute force of money. I'm more hopeful.
I think European nations and other nations have decided that money can't pervert their politics to the same extent in the U.S. I think he's given a new playbook beyond, you know, other rich people who have done it in the past.
But I think he's given a new playbook to a lot more people. And that is where he's been innovative.
And unfortunately, all right, quickly, let's try to get through as many as we can. Hey, I'm Charlie from Vancouver, Canada.
Go Canada. Scott, the last time I asked you a question, you actually asked me a question of what it was like to live in an apartment above a meth lab in Canada.
Okay. What would your advice be to Canadians today, given everything going on between our two countries? I think you're doing it just right.
I think your country seems reunited. I can't believe Doug Ford is attractive as a candidate right now.
I think you're all pushing back in a really terrific way. Three quarters of Americans see Canada as an ally, or only one third of Canada see America as an ally now.
You want to talk about the most immoral and stupid decision, turning an unbelievable ally and friend into an enemy. The largest undefended border in the world is the U.S.-Canadian border.
What does that tell you about us? They don't even know why we're trying to fuck with their economy. They're like, why are you doing this to this? We know it's going to raise costs for all of us, reduce our prosperity, shrink the economy.
Why are you doing this? And the answer is fentanyl. The amount of fentanyl that's come over the U.S.-Canadian border could be stuck in a backpack.
They think it's less than one percent they don't even know why we're doing this shit and here's the thing about canada followed us into world war one we're ahead of us in world war ii went over to year of the european theater and started training pilots into kosovo helped us fight the taliban i love the question and i said this yesterday um about a woman that weren't is friends Buffett. That was very powerful.
A Holocaust

survivor. She said, my definition of friend is I asked myself, would this person hide me? And you really think about that.
It's a very intense, puncturing question about what it means to be a real friend. You know who's a real friend to America? Canada.
In the Iran hostage crisis, the embassy there hid six Americans and at immense personal risk, got them out of Iran. And then they stuck around.
If they had been caught, they could have been hanged from cranes. Canada hid us.
Thank you. Okay.
I think you are handling it very well.

We're handling it.

Okay, here.

Short answer, Scott Galloway.

Well, that'll be tough because I'm going to ask something that pertains specifically to Scott. I'm Charles from Austin.
Scott, I admire the work that you do related to championing young men. And I do wonder perhaps if, are there any similar efforts out there related to trying

to really challenge older men when it comes to this idea of leadership? Where are we? So many of the problems that we have, it seems to me, could be better addressed if we had true leadership. And I don't mean from a left and right political point of view, but honestly, more from a just truly leading and being in a position where at our core we know what's right and wrong and having that overvalue or perhaps step above just those baseline what makes me more money concerns.
Do you want to? I think the problem is older men. One time my son said, and I think this is a common thing, is we should send old men to war rather than young men, and maybe they'll stop.
Like, you know, he was making what seems to be a pretty obvious point. I think we really have a problem with the people above them, and it affects younger men, as anyone who has a young man as a son or relative or something like that knows.
But I do think getting people to change at a higher level is much more difficult, as anyone knows, like when you're dealing with someone like that. It would be great, but I don't think they change.
I think they get worse and more stuck in their ways. I don't know, very briefly, because I want to get to risk.
People my age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. People under the age of 40 in this room are 24% less wealthy.
Every major economic policy, whether it's capital gains deduction or mortgage interest rate deduction, is nothing but a transfer of wealth from the young to the old, right? Who owns homes and stocks? People our age. Who rents and makes their money through current income salary? Young people.
Until we have a series of class traders, older rich people who say enough is enough, if we don't reinvest in youth, what's the point of any of this? For the first time in the nation's history, and I think all of our problems can reverse engineer to one data point, for the first time in our history, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents was at 30. And that's even worse than a 50-year-old not doing well, because when your kid's not doing well, when your daughter's not doing well, it brings down the whole house.
You just feel bad about America. So let me now list corporations and corporate leaders.
There's a lot of amazing leaders. Let me now list every guy my age in corporate America who is really taking a stand for America and the values

that made them rich. All right.
We'll land on that one. I'm going to do one thing.
I'm going to bring up a woman because we've had all men ask questions. So, sorry.
First woman right there. Go ahead.
Yeah. I don't really care what gender you are.
There's more than two genders. Well, Scott, I just, my name's Leah.
I'm from Austin. I grew up in Houston.
I've lived in in this city off and on since the early 80s.

So you think you've seen some shit.

Yeah. My name's Leah.
I'm from Austin. I grew up in Houston.
I've lived in this city off and on since the early 80s. So you think you've seen some shit.
I've seen some shit. And also, I just want to let you know, Scott, you are on my list of future ex-husbands.
Okay. I feel you, babe.
Anyway. Why don't you show your stomach? Like, as if that's the most attractive part.
Well, he works harder at it than I do. I guess.
So my question, I got a million questions. All right, one quick question.
So I want to make it quick. You and Ed talked about how this is Brexit 2.0.
This is what we're going through in this country right now. This election we just had is kind of a Brexit 2.0.
Like we made a decision or somebody, I didn't make the decision, but somebody did. So how do we vocalize this? How do we get active with people and really have them understand that we have shot ourselves in the foot.
They think it's a good thing.

So Brexit, probably the greatest self-inflicted unforced errors are entering to Southeast Asia, going into Iraq, and in Europe, Brexit. I live in London.
It's like, how can we figure out a way to make everything more expensive and reduce our salaries? And they managed to do it elegantly with Brexit. This is worse than Brexit because it's essentially, it's not only morally corrupt and taking away rights for the first time in a history of a democracy, but it's essentially tearing up amazing 80-year-long alliances with the world's biggest economy such that we can blow a murderous autocrat.
This is economically stupid. It's morally corrupt.
So what can we do? One, try and not have the indignance I have, the emotional reaction, because I think it just tickles the censors of the right. Show up with facts.
Focus, pick your punches on the one or two things. I'm focused on Ukraine and the deficit.
And quite frankly, we just need to get very activated and send a strong signal in the midterms in 26 and start working on 28. So I don't know what else to do other than to say, let's be focused.
Let's not be emotional. Let's bring data and let's focus on the midterms in 28.
The Democrats need a project 2029. Yeah.
A really serious one. And get ready to put it in place.
All right. Sorry, we only have time for one more question sorry right here make it sorry thank you so much uh david from boston i'm confessed i'm a reasonably satisfied seven-year tesla owner um that's all right it's a good car it's we don't think it's not a good car it's a decent car uh but at what point there's no way that musk is attending to tesla right in a timely way as CEO.
How long before the board, of which he is no longer chairman, starts to push back on him being absent? Won't happen? Never. They've made so much money.
They've made so much money. And he's picked them.
He's handpicked them. They've made so much money.
Robin Denholm, the chairman, just sold a hundred and some million dollars. And also, just to be fair to him, he's clearly got a talent at finding good people so i don't i don't think it's i don't think he's been focused on tesla for a while i he doesn't we have a bias against elon musk i don't know if you've noticed but he's he's clearly good at attracting and retaining very talented people because these are i would argue these are well-run companies and but but his board is not a board of directors.
They're not representing, they're representing Elon. And quite frankly, he's been right.
He's created a ton of shareholder value. So if you've made 150 million bucks, are you really going to dress him down for tweeting or calling someone a pedophile? You're like, no, I got 150 million reasons to ignore this shit.
Yeah, there's some really good Wall Street Journal reporting on this, on not just the money they've made as a board. It's really quite unprecedented.
Like, this is not a board of directors that has any independence in the way you think about a board. And most boards are not, by the way, but this one is particularly in the tank for Elon.
And they've done well because of it. So the shareholder that they're most interested in is Elon Musk, and that's it.
And the company has suffered because of it. And when it goes, you know, we'll see it goes down.
But if he has a great car that comes out or suddenly robotexies work, that would be great. I just don't see it at this point going forward.
I had a Tesla. I had a great car.
He started calling me names on Twitter, so I sold it. And right

before I sold it, I took a giant dump in the passenger seat. Back to you, Kara.

It's like an episode of White Lotus.

Thank you.

Who's in White Lotus?

He is. I just wanted to mention...

Voice cameo. Face for radio.
Yeah. Should I be insulted when they call you and say, we want you in White Lotus? And they go, but just your voice.
Yeah. Just your voice.
Well, it's really about you. White Lotus is about people like you, just so you know.
Hot? No. I am.
Let's be honest. Irritating fucking rich people.
I am so Sidney Sweeney. Seriously.
Seriously. You're more Steve Zahn, I think.
Anyway. The guy that showed his nutsack? That's correct.
And he's not going to do that right here for you people right now. Big Ed and the Twins.
No, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that.
Anyway, I'm sorry. We can't answer any more questions because we've got another podcast coming up.
That's all we have. Thank you for listening on your favorite podcast, on your favorite podcast platform.
And for watching us on YouTube. We're killing it on YouTube.
This is for some reason. I don't know why.
We'll be back Friday with more Pivot. Scott, please read us out.
Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Nertod engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Mia Silverio, Dan Shulon, and Drew Burrows. Nishat Kroos, Vox Media's executive producer.
Thank you. savings.
It's great to be here in the great state of Texas. It's great to be here by South By, and we really do appreciate you coming up and being supportive and just generally just so

lovely. Thank you so much for making time for us today.
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