Tim Walz, X vs. Advertisers, and Global Markets Bounce Back

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from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
We have a mostly Scott free August this month. He'll be around for the Democratic National Convention.

But here to help us out in the co-host chair today is Noel King, who hosts Fox daily news podcast, Today Explained. I don't know where Scott is.
Welcome, Noelle. Scott is in Aspen.

It's so good to be here.

Anyway, I'm thrilled to have you here. I've wanted to have you on a lot.
Just tell me, what's going on at Today Explained? What's happening over there? We're getting ready to go to the DNC.

I understand you will also be there. Yes, I'm dragging Scott around.
You're going to be inside the convention center, right? Yes, I am. Yes.

Okay, we did not get our act together in time, so we will be running around the streets, but it just means means we got all our angles covered.

Yeah, we're also going to do, I'm going to make Scott do a series of ridiculous things. I may take him up to Wiener Circle, things like that, you know, and we're going to tape stuff.
Good. Good.

He's going to love it. Yeah, it's going to be good.
And we're going to do a live podcast from CNN's Grill, actually, The Grill. Nice.
Yeah, so it should be really fun.

It seems exciting. It's going to be, we're going to talk a lot about the Dancy in a minute and where it's going, but it seems like it's going to be fun, correct?

It wasn't going to be fun. I mean, that's the thing.
It was sort of like, okay, look, it's a big news event. We should go.
And then everything changed.

And now all of a sudden, everybody's really excited. Yeah.

We were going to talk about a lot where it's going to go, but I was looking at some of the stuff this morning around the tour that Kamala Harris is on with Tim Waltz.

And we'll talk about that specifically in a second.

But it seems like they're grabbing every single Trump thing from Trump, like

the rallies, the visuals, right? Even some of the, like, I guess you could say some of the insults even, you know, they're milder, but they're real. Jokes about J.D.

Vance and the couch, like that's not something that Biden would have done. And yeah, they're really going for it.
They're going for it. Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about today.

And it's mostly going to be politics, but also a bunch of other things. There's a lot going on in business and everything else.

Elon Musk is up to hijinks as always. And I don't expect to be an expert.
It's just shitty. That's all he's doing.

More shitty things from Elon Musk. So we're going to talk about Governor Tim Waltz, who was selected this week and the campaign trail with Big Dad Energy.
That's how they're

putting it. I think it's probably accurate.
And again, X's antitrust lawsuit against advertisers.

He's also wrangling with Britain because he keeps putting up fake things on his own feed, including just now, he put up

just, he's causing riots essentially now.

But let's talk about global markets evening out after tumbling over fears of a recession. You know, Scott had said this to calm down.
It's just a temporary thing.

And at the time of the taping, the Dow and the SP are up 1% after new labor market data eases fears. There was fears over employment and everything else.

The Nikkei 225 index rose 10.2% one day after having its worst drop since 1987. It was just a weird little freak out.
And then it's back, essentially, which is what Scott said was going to happen.

Yeah, I was with Scott on this one. So I covered economics for years and I did a show where we had to do the numbers.
This is marketplace, right? And it's,

of course, you have to say do the numbers too, correct? You have to say do the numbers. And there's music.
Can you do that? Can you just say it like Kai Razell? Let's do the numbers. Good.
Okay.

Thank you. Oh, God.
What if Kai is listening? Is Kai, forgive me? I love you. He does listen.
He does.

Okay. Hey, Kai.
But the thing you see when you do that job, and you know, this has stayed with me 10 years later, is the markets do go up and down. They go up and down.

I keep CNBC up on my computer all day. I look at it once an hour.
I like to watch it, right? Because it reminds me that they go up and down.

And they had gone so far up that there was, in fact, a long way to fall. But this week has looked like stabilization, right? Yep.
We haven't clawed back all the gains, but we're stabilizing.

We got good jobless claims numbers. And

as expected, the markets tick back up. Yeah.
So

what do you think it was about? Just was this little, you know, my grandfather wasn't much into the stock market, which also Tim Waltz is in, apparently. We'll talk about that in a minute.

But one of the things he said, I said, I was like, how do you know what to invest? And he said, well, it goes up and it goes down. That's always

right. That was his entire piece of advice.
Was he alive during the Depression? He was. Yeah.
Okay. And he still wrapped his head around it goes up.

Because you hear stories about people who are alive during the depression, they can't get near the markets, right? They're permanently shattered. And then, you know,

I was a youngish person during the great financial crisis, the big crash, 2007, 2008. I don't know, it always eventually goes back up.
Yeah.

And it's gonna, it's gonna this time as well. But, you know, people like to use the word recession.
People like a little bit of panic. And that's what Donald Trump would like.

That's he's sort of, he jumped on it. He'd call it the Kamala crash.
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.
I mean, people vote on the economy.

For all of the stuff that we talk about, like the dad vibe and the weird and like JD Vance on the couch, people vote on the economy, right? Do I have a job? Is my financial future?

Does it feel secure? Can I afford eggs when I go to the grocery store? This, at the end of the day, is what people vote on. Although the stock stock market is not owned.

Another point that Scott makes all the time is stock market, it doesn't reflect reality because most people aren't in the stock market. It's mostly rich people, essentially.
Totally true.

And that's why the Fed, you know, to their credit, doesn't come out and say, okay, the stock market's crashed.

We're going to lower interest rates. They're like, stock market, not the economy.
We're going to wait, I think, until September.

expecting a little rate cut. And maybe now people are saying maybe a bigger rate cut than we did expect.

Yeah, Scott was saying not to do a rate cut now because it looks panicky.

That's the thing. You do not want to panic people.
Yeah, exactly. We're going to have a tiny little happy Elon Musk story before we get to all the bad ones because there's so many.

But NASA's considering tapping SpaceX to help get two astronauts back to Earth.

The two were originally planned to be in space for eight days when they headed to the International Space Station in early June, and they're still there because of technical difficulties with Boeing, actually, I believe it is.

NASA said it is now considering using SpaceX help to get the crew down in February.

You know, it really does show how vulnerable we are to

just

a few companies. Like, if one doesn't work, we have to rely on the other.
And obviously, SpaceX has been more reliable than other agencies. Boeing said it can get them down safely.

I guess NASA doesn't think so.

So they may tap SpaceX, which has been way far ahead of other companies in this area. What would you do if you're stuck in space like this? I wouldn't take a Tesla back.

Take a Xanhex and have that be the end of it.

I would stay there, I guess. I don't know.
Maybe there's some physical reason or like you're not a you're not a claustrophobe or a panicker? I would never go to space. Okay, fair.

I mean, I'm one of those people. Everyone's like, can't you wait to go to the moon? I'm like, I can wait like forever, like until I'm dead.

I don't, I, I don't, do you have an, I mean, if there's going to be, at some point, going to the moon will be like going to like California or whatever.

Uh, no, Elon said to me when he did an interview, he goes, I want to die on Mars, just not on landing, which was a cute. That's when he was funny.
That's when he was actually funny. That was funny.

And good luck with that. I mean, like, it's possible.
You could imagine it. Yeah, good luck.
Anyway, you sent us a new feature in Grub Street, by the way.

A few years back, a woman in Parma, Ohio, I guess, Parma, Ohio, it's like a Pam, Ohio, okay, got frustrated that Chipotle had taken too long to make her order. I remember this story.

She threw a burrito bowl at a young woman behind the counter, and the judge sentenced her to work at the fast food place instead of going to prison for 90 days. I'd love you to chat about about it.

Let me give you a stat from the article.

A study of 46 cases that result in unusual punishments like Haynes's, this is this woman's name, showed that half of said offenders ended up back in court compared to a local average of 27%.

So maybe they got madder or something. Tell us about this story.
Yeah, I read this twice. I cried both times.
I don't know why. Maybe I'm going through something, but for whatever reason, I

all right. So the woman goes in, she's furious, she does a really stupid thing.
Right. What was she mad about? Was there not enough rice? What? That was part of it, though.

She had been waiting for like 20 minutes. She decided to just order on the app so she could get her food faster.
So she orders on the app and then her food still doesn't come.

And she sees other people who've ordered on the app going in front of her. And she marches up to the counter.
It's like, give me my burrito bowl with chicken, rice, sour cream. This is important.

And cheese. So it's kind of a bland burrito bowl, right?

So they make the bowl. The young woman gives her the bowl and she says, no, this sucks.
I don't want this. Make it again.
So they make it again. And upon seeing.
What sucked about it?

Well, that's the, I mean, the author of this really tries to dive into what was wrong with it.

And they're like, there wasn't much color in there, but she hadn't ordered any ingredients other than like bland gray and white ingredients.

And so like, there's a picture of it, and it does look. Can I stop? This is a white woman, right? This is, unfortunately.
Okay.

This is unfortunately a white woman. I don't see any other kind of woman doing this, but go ahead.
So the burrito bowl doesn't look nice in a picture, but it was in fact what the woman had ordered.

But frustrated, you know, by the events of the day, she went and she was like yelling, screaming. This is online.
People can Google it. And she just threw the burrito bowl.
So they took the video.

Oh, yeah. There were people like looking back and forth.
She throws the burrito bowl in this young woman's face, screams, and then she exits the chipotle.

And people are kind of standing in her way, like, hey, you can't do that. That was so wrong.

Her name is on the receipt, the woman woman who threw it so of course the police do show up at her house and they tell her this was fascinating they're like you should have not gone to this chipotle it's a mess there's one in the other town you should go there also we have to arrest you so she gets brought before the judge and the judge is like considering do i sentence her to 90 days in prison or do i stunt and the judge decides that a better punishment is to sentence her to work in a fast food restaurant herself.

Which one? Chipotle? Well, that's the thing. He said, you can work wherever you want, but you have to apply.
You have to get the job honestly. And she did.

And when she applied at various places, she told them, like, listen, there is a woman in a video assaulting a fast food worker. It is, in fact, me.
I would like to work here. A judge says I have to.

So she didn't apply at any Chipotle's. She got turned down by seven or so places, and then a Burger King hired her.
She ends up, this is kind of the part where I started tearing up.

She ends up doing such a good job that they're like, we would like you to stay. And she says, yes, I will stay.
And then she says, What did she do before this?

Well, okay, so look, this is why I love this article. Parma

is a working-class town that is kind of hard up and everybody is struggling financially.

And this woman, who has, I think, three children, she's doing deliveries, like delivery driving with her husband. He drives the car.
She delivers the packages.

She's getting up at three in the morning. She tells the reporter it's like a fucking marathon every day.
There's a lot of couples that do that, actually. There's a lot of couples that do that.

And then on top of that, the kids. And then here's where I sympathize.
The night that this all happened,

one of her kids wanted Starbucks for dinner. One of her kids wanted Chipotle.
One of her kids wanted, or her husband wanted Wing Stop, and her son wanted something else. It was like that.

So this woman is stressed out enough. And then the entire family is like, mom, go and get our orders.

Sorry, the camera can see that I just gave the finger, but like, no.

This is where I appreciate being a childless pug lady. But, but, so she's in, she's in enormous, under an enormous amount of stress and she's irritated.

And she does a thing that you should never do, but also

you can conceive of yourself getting frustrated enough. Maybe?

I have four kids now. Okay, fair enough.

I don't have any kids, so I'm just assuming that, like, it's they all wanted something, they all want something different all the time, but I don't give it to them.

But, um, okay, so she has a tough life. Go ahead.
So, she, she does a great job. She does a great job.
She stays at the Burger King. She does end up spending two nights in prison.
She gets out.

She quits the Burger King. The flip side of this, oh, and the article kind of notes: she never really admits that she did anything wrong.

She will say, I shouldn't have done that, but on the other hand. That's the, that's the famous but.
The famous but. And then there's this young woman, 25 years old, who got hit with the burrito bowl.

And her life has gotten, her life got pretty messy. She's all over the internet getting hit in the face with a bunch of sour cream.
She says that she's kind of in shock. She's kind of traumatized.

Chipotle tells her they're going to send a security guard. They're going to,

they were going to help her out with something, whether it was therapy or a little extra money. And then she tells the reporter that they never did that.

This woman, by the way, this young woman had been like on an upward trajectory. She had started in other fast food.
Chipotle paid more. She was on a management track.

So she goes back to other fast food places, not making as much money.

And then she kind of throws her hands up at the end of the day and gets a job, I believe, as a nurse's assistant in like a nursing home, like taking care of elderly people.

And I don't know, why did I cry? It's just a story about how hard it is to be alive these days, honestly.

Also, it's about like, look at these people are just struggling to make it and they're attacking each other. You know what I mean? Like,

that's what it is. It's sort of like,

it's like this idea that we're not people. It's about taking, it's about I'm mad and therefore I will take it out on you and stuff like that.

I try really hard because I have a real problem with road rage. Actually,

my kids,

they know my words now. Like I go, go, go, go, like all that.
Like my kids think this is hysterical.

They go, and I was saying things about people in the car and I stopped because they were repeating me. And I was like, oh, I really, really need to, this is not that big a friggin deal.

Nobody wants to have their worst, shittiest moment put on the internet. Nobody.

And then I think further, nobody wants the rest of the world to like draw a larger lesson from their worst shittiest moment. That really sucks.
Yeah, and it's entertainment.

It's entertainment for people. It's absolutely entertainment.
Anyway, the story is written by Reeves Is It Widemann and just really,

please read it. Please read it.
It'll make you cry. Twice.

It made Noel cry. Twice.

Okay, let's get to our first big story.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her newly announced running mate, Tim Walz, are on the battleground blitz visiting swing states around the country this week. It seems very exciting.

Walls was announced as VP candidate on Tuesday. A bit of a surprise day.
I think everyone thought Shapiro had it in the bag.

And at his debut rally in Philadelphia, he opened up about his background, his vision for the future, and had some real zingers for his opponents. Let's listen to what he said about Donald Trump.

And make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump.

That's not even counting the crimes he committed.

He also had a crack about J.D. Vance.
Take a listen. And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy.

That is, if he's willing to get off the couch and show up.

You see what I did there?

So, Noel, do you believe he actually did that? I was a little surprised. I was surprised, too.

We are being told to kind kind of look out for dad energy.

Right, yeah. And big dad energy.
Big dad energy. Right.
I googled big dad. Anyway, don't Google Big Dad Energy.

Why? What did you just have to say? It's like daddy. No, I don't like that.
I don't know what the daddy thing is, but it makes me uncomfortable. Oh, it's porn.
Porn. It goes right to porn.
It's okay.

Yeah.

So, all right. So we're told to look out for big dad energy.
The couch joke lands as kind of a dad joke, but also a real jab.

Walls was a surprise.

I, you know, I'm not in the game of prediction, but I really did think it was going to be Shapiro. As did many.
As did many. Walls seems to have broken out.
I mean, this is the story.

He broke out by going on TV and saying Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are weird people.

And Kamala Harris apparently really likes this line of attack and furthermore, apparently really likes Tim Walls. Yeah.
Yeah, it seemed like a vibe thing more than anything, right?

Because if she was doing the math, she probably would have picked Shapiro.

I was, I had actually on the show said she's going to pick Walls, largely because she knows Shapiro appears to me like the guy that wants her job.

Like, you know, I know it sounds dumb, but we've all worked with those people. Like, and you think they're highly competent.
He's very beloved in Pennsylvania.

Let me tell you, I have Trumpy relatives and they love Shapiro. They think he's doing a great job.
I think they're very, you know, they're very into his total competence, right?

And they, that's what most people want, not, not necessarily. They don't dislike him because he's a a Democrat kind of thing.

But I thought he's kind of a frontrunner, not a vice president. That's, that's my feeling.
And I think she sensed that, right? Or perhaps not. Yes.

I don't know either one of them personally, but this man is hugely ambitious.

And then there is sort of, I think for the Democrats, like the very real question of will people, will the progressive wing of the party go after him about Israel?

And they had to have been thinking about that because they have had to be thinking about that, you know, since October. Sure.
Protests.

It's sort of been quieter, so they didn't want that to come back. Although he's been a critic of Netanyahu.
I mean,

I see why they would worry about that.

When you think about this guy, so they didn't pick that guy, and I thought the lines of attack that the Republicans had, like they don't like Jewish people, was ridiculous because then Chuck Schumer was like, well, news to me.

So it's kind of a silly line of attack. But they're trying everything, right?

Let's talk about what they're doing with this guy. Now, I didn't think he would do that joke, and I suspect he's never never doing it again.

I think the count that he just gets one, which I think is probably okay. I do kind of like that they don't, you know, there was the Michelle Obama when they go low, we go high.

It's like when they go low, we go lower.

Yes, we've decided lower is working for us. But it was interesting because I watched her face after when he was doing it, and she barely cracked a smile.

She was trying to be like, oh, did you do that? But she knew he was going to do it. It's a cheap shot.
I mean, listen, the J.D.

Vance couch thing, I would not wish on my worst enemy, and it did not happen. It did not happen.

It is embarrassing for him because it won't go away.

Because he's creepy. He's got a creepy vibe, but go ahead.
I'm obsessed with him. I am frankly obsessed with him.
Yeah. Yeah.
We'll talk about him in a second. We'll talk.

But Walt, these things on Walt's Hanning, they're trying now the military, which is bizarre.

They're trying to say that he didn't go, didn't ship out and decided to run instead. They found some people who are critical of that, who were in his unit.

They're trying that.

It's really hard because he doesn't have stocks. He doesn't have like China.
They're trying China. Is there,

do you see anything that's problematic?

You know, the military thing is interesting because it is one of Donald Trump's campaign advisors, Chris LaCivita, who was present and, in fact, I think orchestrated Swiftboat against John Kerry.

So are they trying to Swiftboat Tim Walls and will it work? It's worth asking. I don't actually know.

They're pointing to him saying at one point in a speech, something along the lines of it's an anti-gun speech or like a pro-gun control speech.

And it's something along the lines of the weapons of war that I carried in war, weapons that I carried in war. And they're saying, well, the guy never went to war.
Right, but he served.

He's shot guns. Exactly.
He served for a very long time, 24 years, I think. If people are looking for a bad faith argument against anyone, then that's a decent,

if you're like, I don't want to like that guy. Give me a reason to not like him.
Okay, I could see that working on some people.

I did note today that the Times quoted some men who served with him who are like, this is nonsense.

We should stop, we should just like stop, people who serve should just stop attacking each other generally. And then one guy they quoted, I like this, was like, I'm a friend of his.

This is ridiculous and we should stop it. He served honorably.
Also, I don't like his politics and I'm going to vote for Trump. And I thought that that was cool.

It's like, okay, we contain multitudes. Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting. And I think J.D.
Vance is the wrong person. I mean, he did serve, but he was in PR, right?

Like, it wasn't like, you know, it just is like, it opened. And then Captain Bonespurs is the real problem.
Yeah, it just is a very strange, it is a very strange thing. J.D.

Vance is, he served honorably, but he's not a war hero. So.

I don't know. It's a strange thing.
I don't think they've got much on this guy. That's the thing.
They don't got much. He doesn't have money.
He doesn't have, you know,

there's not corruption to go for it. Interesting, the journal did a compare between Vance and him.
And Vance owns crypto. He's a multi-millionaire.
He owns a number of homes.

And this guy has, doesn't own a home. He's got a pension and not very much of anything.
You know what I mean? It's a man of the people.

My editor pointed out yesterday when the story dropped that he doesn't own any stocks. And we're like, how is he going to retire?

I mean, this is like, this is something I think, I love thinking about retirement. And I'm like freaking out for him.
And then, of course, someone points out, well, he will have a pension.

Totally fair, but like my mom has a pension. I don't know.
There's just something like, he'll write a book. Now he'll be rich.

You know, he'll write a book yes and he'll be rich he'll write books but if you're looking for that kind of like

he's a normal guy i mean again it depends on how you conceive of normal i'm the generation that will not have a pension that like looks at my mom's generation is like damn you guys really like you guys really nailed that one um

There is something normal about this man having a pension. He's very likable.
There's a whole memes going on online about like, you know,

around the Jewish thing.

They're like, he may not be Jewish, but he would come to your home, find the Afikomen, and then hide it again so the kids can find, like they keep, they're all these like, isn't he a nice guy kind of things

all over? Like he'd come and fix your, you know, fix your house. If you had a coffee, he'd put fixed vapor rub on you.
You know, this guy would mow your lawn.

If you broke your leg, he'd mow your lawn, and J.D. Vance would turn you into the HOA for having it on thing.
You know, that kind of thing.

They're trying to do the, and I think the comparison is bad for Vance because Vance seems creepy.

Have you met him? Yes, I knew him when he was in tech. Will you tell me everything? Please, just share it.
Please share. I will.
We'll get to him in a minute.

But just so you know, the Harris campaign in Osama's Aida raised $36 million in 24 hours since Wallace became vice presidential candidate so that people like him. I think people don't know about him.

That's the strength. And then who's going to define him? I suspect he's going to define himself because

he's so voluble. He's so interesting.
He's so funny. You know, he's got, and he's got, you know, the whole thing, I'm a liberal.
Okay, I want to give kids lunch. Call me a monster.

Like, he takes those things and turns them. them around really effectively.
He really owns it proudly. Yeah.

One of the things, he won't be able to deliver a state like Josh Shapiro or Mark Kelly or Roy Cooper might have done, but there's a possibility of shoring up this blue wall state, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.

One of the things that's interesting, he reminds me of a male Gretchen Whitmer, right? Like they're the same.

There's the same kind of people.

So we'll see.

But he's the one, again, that did this whole weird messaging going for Democrats.

There's some of the social media posts I mentioned. I know Tim Walls could teach me how to drive stick shift without making me cry once.
Tim Walls is outside cleaning my grill.

Tim Walls is a dad the entire generation wish they had instead of the one they lost to Fox News. I like that one because my mother is like that.
That is deep. Yeah, it is.

I actually, I saw some of, I think I saw the one, it was on TikTok and the woman looked like she was going to cry.

And I lost my father to heart disease, not Fox News, but like there is that, there is that like, oh, daddy kind of thing. And

it seems that other women who did lose their dads to Fox News, I didn't think about that as a cohort of people, but it seems to be a cohort of people. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Welcome.
It's me.

I have a mother who is a Fox News aficionado who is really toxic. I don't know what else to say.
It's and lost, feels lost, and stuff like that.

Do you guys have it out, or do you just, it's better not to talk about it? Ugh, not anymore. It's just like all of us are just, we just let her go on.

You know, it's just, it's literally like a cult member. I don't know what else to say.
I've written stories about it. It's just pointless.
It's pointless. She's 90, so whatever.

Good luck on your journey to wherever you're going kind of thing.

It's sad to say that, but it's true.

Republicans are, again,

are attacking Waltz as left and radical. And again, we're going to get to J.D.

Metz in a second, but he was getting criticized for how he handled the 2020 protests in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd.

Now, of course, there's, of course, audio of Trump praising how he handled them. You were in Minneapolis in 2020 covering those protests.
What is your sense?

And again, Trump praised him for how he handled things.

I think there's a fair bit of revisionism going on here, but I did a deep dive on this last night because I was genuinely curious. I landed in Minneapolis the day the National Guard came in.

So I was running around the city talking to shop owners who'd been boarded up, people who'd been burned out, people who were scared. And what I remember, I went through my memory.

I said, did anybody talk about the governor and not having the National Guard there? And here's what my memory is telling me.

My memory is telling me the people I was interviewing on the ground were more concerned that the presence of the authorities, the National Guard, Guard, would further inflame the situation and that it would be better if things were allowed to just kind of naturally die down.

Now, again, this is business owners. This is business owners, right? And this is also people,

vigils for George Floyd, people who were genuinely angry. But again, my

memory of that time, and I went and I listened back to my stories, people were just so angry with Derek Chauvin. They were so angry about that video.

They were so angry at that point, at that moment, very broadly with the Minneapolis Police Department, because a lot of people had a story.

A lot of people had a story of one time I was driving and they X, Y, and Z. So I didn't hear anything about the governor.

What I do remember, though, is I do remember the mayor, this young guy, Jacob Fry, kind of being held out. Like, does he know what the heck he's doing?

And over the ensuing weeks and months, he really pushed back and says, I did know what I was doing. I asked for the National Guard and the governor didn't send them.

And now the debate is, it seems like there is, there are some emails, the Minneapolis Tribune, Star Tribune, has some emails where Fry does ask for the National Guard.

Walls does not immediately send them in saying

the mayor needs a plan. If you're going to send in the guard, you got to have a plan for where you're going to post them.
Which seems reasonable, right? Seems reasonable. Again, you know,

if you're the mayor and you're thinking the National Guard is the thing that's going to get us out of this, you are ticked off.

And low, these many years later, you're probably still thinking about it. So I will tell you what I think, though.

Having having to revisit those stories made me think about something really hard nobody wants to go back to that nobody not a single american and going after walls by reminding us of what happened in minneapolis is it's a choice it's a strategy it also reminds me who was the commander in chief at the time who was tweeting when the looting starts the shooting starts who was you know it was such a crazy time and everybody in a position of authority

is in some ways, I really truly believe, compromised by the absolute craziness of the time. The person who was president was Donald Trump.
You have to think that'll come up. I don't know.

Yeah, I think it was interesting is that they, um, he wants to go backwards, this idea of going backwards.

Um, Donald Trump keeps wanting to do this, and I suspect his staff does not want him to do this, go backwards, because he's doing a backwards facing.

And I think one of the things that's Kamala Harris is strong on we don't, we don't want to go back like there's two there's two lines that they're using both walls and her is mind your own damn business and we don't want to go back and so i think you're right i think there's probably a like oh god everybody made a mistake then right that kind of thing whether it's covet or everything

yeah yeah i i i

i don't know i mean i i try to put myself in the minds of people i know who are voting for donald trump I try really hard all the time because I want to be fair about everything.

And I think, do they want to go back? Like, I, again, I don't remember anybody liking that time.

That summer and what followed was crazy making. Right, exactly.
But thinking of going forward, Project 2025 is still making news.

The publication of the book written by the president of the group behind Project 2025, featuring a forward by J.D. Vance, has been delayed until after the elections, as if we didn't notice.

Though Donald Trump continues to disavow any connection to the right-wing blueprint, his daughter-in-law and RNC chair Lara Trump said thus again, anyone who pushes Project 2025 knows it's a hoax.

Of course, he was on a plane with the head of Project 2025. You dug into Project 2025 on today, Explained This Week.
Talk about what you found out.

And Trump is also pushing a kind of wacky theory on True Social that Biden will crash the DNC convention and take back the nomination. Here's your time to talk about J.D.

Vance and his creepitude, et cetera. Creepitude.
Or compellingness. No, I'm going to get myself in so much trouble.
So we've done two episodes about Project 2025.

The first one was like, what is this thing? What's in it?

Conservative blueprint, a lot of ideas for bringing the country into a different place, Gilead, but like a lot of just conservative policy ideas.

And then the second part of it is a kind of database from which the Trump administration can hire people who will be loyal to the Trump administration.

The news this week is that the man who was the director of Project 2025, Paul Danz, is stepping down, leaving his job. And so this led to a lot of questions about does this mean Project 2025 is dead?

Donald Trump has disavowed this thing. Paul Danz is out of a job.
He's saying for completely normal reasons I'm stepping aside. The time has come.
Does it mean that Project 2025 is over?

The answer we got from Shelby Talcott, a great reporter at Semaphore, was

probably not. And here's why.
Project 2025 is 900 pages of policy ideas. It exists.
Paul Dance can go away and that book still exists. The question is, is Donald Trump going to use that book?

And we'll call it something else. Right.
That's the thing. That's Project 2025.
It sounds like a, it sounds like a science fiction movie.

I mean, you read it, it is a science fiction movie, but tracking women's fertility every month. My God.

I can't even do that. How are they going to do that?

But so I don't know. It's

the policy ideas exist. Donald Trump may use them or he may not use them, but I think the problem is,

and you know, I say this delicately, Donald Trump has a history of not telling the truth. So he disavows this thing.
Does that mean he's really disavowed it? Why should a rational person believe that?

I don't believe him. I think he's lying.
I think they're all lying. I mean, of course, he was on,

they're keeping pictures of him on planes with them, saying it's great. J.D.
Vance is doing the forward. Get into Vance because Vance is much more linked with these people.

Trump, I don't even think, knows, right?

I'm being fair here to Trump. I think he just doesn't know stuff, although I think he'd be happy to do whatever works, right? He'll shift and do whatever is best.

And yeah, and I think Heritage knows that he doesn't really know. They're like the first time around, he was disorganized, left to his own devices, he'll be disorganized again.

Let's organize it for him, right? But Vance is quite involved with these people. J.D.

Vance seems to me to be a true believer in this idea that progress, such as liberals conceive of it, has gotten America nowhere except a bunch of childless women with cats and whatnot.

Yeah, this is Peter Thiel's influence. Yeah.
Well, I for Kara, I've been obsessed with these new right guys for a couple of years now.

We covered them in the summer of 2022, and I remember airing those stories. And I remember people saying, oh, yeah, but,

you know, I have a friend at the time.

He's a big Trump guy, big MAGA guy. And I sent him these stories.
I said, this is what makes me uncomfortable, right?

About the Republican Party right now. This is two summers ago.
And he wrote back and he said, but that's not what Donald Trump wants. And those guys will never get near power.

And when Blake Masters, who is a member of this cohort, lost in Arizona, he wrote to me, he said, look, these guys lose. Then comes J.D.
Vance, one heartbeat away from the presidency.

And I believe that J.D. Vance is a true new right believer.
Progress has gotten us nowhere. The country is in decline.
Everything is crap. We need strong families.
Strong white. heterosexual families.

But that's the thing. If you could just be inclusive, if you could just say we need strong families, period.
It doesn't really matter what they look like. Right.
There's an argument. I mean, who's?

I don't have children, but if you say. I do, I think I believe in strong families.
I don't believe it for everybody.

It's just what that's the issue is the idea of, and I do, this is why I think Kamla Harris talking about mind your own damn business is what is the government doing in our business?

Like that kind of thing. Yes, yes.
And what is the government doing in our business is supposed to be the Republican Party. That is supposed to be what we expect from them.

And

now

the shift is that Project 2025, page 588, I read it myself, it's talking about tracking women's monthly fertility. That's what J.D.
Vance said. Are you serious?

How does anyone put their name to something like this?

But I don't know. I guess there's a, I have a,

J.D. Vance's vision of decline, of America in decline, is somewhat compelling to me because I spend a lot of time on the road doing stories.

I've spent a lot of time on the road in the last decade doing stories about. places that are really badly in decline.
There's, there's, that's just it.

And I can see how, if you say it has not worked, like neoliberalism, a word I love, has not worked. Free markets have not worked.
Reagan, Clinton, NAFTA screwed us all. We need to get it back.

I truly do find that compelling. And I think J.D.
Vance and the Republicans articulate it well. Sure.
Yeah, I think the only thing is it didn't work then either for most people.

It just worked for a small group of people. It wasn't as if that was the answer either, because it left out enormous amounts of people and stuff.
And I do think there is a power.

You know, you either have Obama's hope or you have Donald Trump's American carnage. They both work.
Anyway, what is the creepiest thing you find about J.D. Vance

to end?

Following her around with the plane? I wanted J.D. Vance's quota day calendar.
I think the most interesting thing about J.D. Vance was this series of emails that he exchanged with a classmate at Yale.

And in one of those emails, he said, I hate the police.

And

I thought to myself, I don't know why anyone with any thoughts of the future would put that in writing. I just don't understand that.
Because he probably thought it.

You know, I've been at events with him and at one dinner, I thought, oh my God, I wouldn't say that. I'm a liberal, but that's too liberal.
I literally thought that's too liberal. Yes.

It wasn't quite America's Hitler, which is what he called a thing, but I was like, well, that's really dark and too,

I remember thinking he's too liberal. It's just not thought through.

It is this sweeping statement that just does not reflect well on him. Well, it was, it was apocalyptic, but in a very liberal way.

Like, it's this is, you know, by the way, when you get very anything, you come around to the other side. You're just the same, you have the same kind of things.
Anyway, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about X's lawsuit against advertisers and take a listener-mail question about the future of the TikTok ban. Remember that?

Support for this show comes from S.C. Johnson.
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All right, Cara, we're back with our second big story. So we're talking about one of your favorite people and his latest lawsuit.

X filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers. So that group has a brand safety initiative.

And this lawsuit alleges that the brand safety initiative and big companies that are members, CBS, Unilever, big guys here, conspired to illegally boycott X and deprive it of millions of dollars.

Now, remind us, Kara, for those of us who have forgotten, why did advertisers flee X? Well, it's easy. He told them not to advertise on his site.
He told them to go fuck themselves.

He told them he's going to let, you know, he's creating this lovely Nazi porn bar, as I like to call it.

It's an astonishing lawsuit. And of course, it was introduced by, you know,

if you want to continue with Nazis, the Eva Braun of this situation, Linda Yaccarino, who

just did this weird hostage-like video where she, she's such a scold as a person. Anyway, it was introduced, this idea that the idea is that advertisers are plotting against them.

They're conspiracy-minded people. And she has a situation where she's the purported, I call her CEO in name only, Sino.

She thinks that people have to advertise on their site, even if they don't like what they're doing doing on their site. And it's so anti-capitalist.
It's so ridiculous. This whole case,

this guy went out of his way to tell advertisers to go fuck themselves a number, not just once, but a dozen times, essentially.

And now he doesn't like what he's reaping, which is that he took away safety. He took away, he re-platformed all these terrible people.

And of course, he's doing it in the name of free speech, but then he cuts the speech of people he doesn't like. By the way, he's apparently suppressing Kamala Harris's stuff

right now on the site. He closed down the dudes for Kamala Harris for a second.

You know, he just, this is just endless bullshit by these people, but it's very base. If advertisers don't want to advertise on your shitty platform, they shouldn't be made to.

And even if they get together and say, isn't it a shitty platform? It doesn't mean it's illegal. It's just, God, this is a shitty platform.

And Linda Yakerina, who worked for NBC, would have understood this rather easily.

I don't want to advertise where it's unsafe, where I'm going to suddenly be next to Andrew Tate or whoever it happens to be. It's just, this is just fucking nonsense.
It's just,

he posted also, of course, because he's such a conspiracy-minded person. We tried peace for two years, now it's war.
Well, if that was peace, I can't wait for the war because what is this reference?

I'm actually really curious about this. Has he done outreach to advertisers? Like, what, what is no, every time he does it, he shows up.

Like, this was, you know, at this deal book summit last year, he told advertisers to fuck off, including specifically Disney, specifically Bob Iger.

You know, he essentially said, fuck you, Bob.

And I don't know why they would advertise. It's like, it's not illegal not to advertise, especially after you've made it a joke that you want to do this.

And a former FTC policy director told Rolling Stone that lost it's a hideous joke, and Elon is engaging a fantasy world of antitrust.

You know, we just had a really important antitrust decision around Google, but this isn't antitrust in any way. But what do you so very curious about this? Let's get inside his head for a second.

It doesn't seem like antitrust. It is still a lawsuit.

Does he think, does Elon think there is an antitrust wave to be ridden here that perhaps a judge will find this sympathetic? What is he trying to do when it seems like?

They have court-shopped, right?

They're putting it in this court where this other lawsuit is going on against, I think it's Media Matters, where they just were reporting that it's more unsafe than ever on Twitter, which anyone who uses it, I don't use it anymore because it's unsafe.

And

so,

you know, he has another lawsuit where this judge has been rolling a little bit in his favor, allowing discovery to happen before it's even determined.

It's a case, which is expensive to media matters. We'll probably put it out of business.
He sued OpenAI, and then he unsued them, and now he's suing them again.

He sued another group that Roberta Kaplan, actually, who did the Eugene Carroll case,

was dismissed. You know,

this is his love language, his lawsuits, right? Like, is he winning anything tangible? No. No, but this judge is predisposed toward him.

They judge shopped, essentially, where they're putting this thing. And so he's just, it doesn't matter.
Like, this is a tactic that Peter Thiel uses. Like, let's just sue them.

And so they, you know, it's expensive. It's ridiculous.
It's, they may, maybe they'll give in.

Guess who does this? Donald Trump. Let's not pay them.
Let them sue us. And then maybe we'll pay less.
And I think this is his tactic.

And, you know, one of the things that's important here is years ago when someone was talking about a lawsuit, and I called them and they said, they think they're going to shame you.

And the guy goes, well, I'm shameless, so that's going to be a problem. And this guy is shameless, that's all.

You know, they've been trying to do this idea around with representatives like Jim Jordan around advertising that these, that it, that they're anti-conservative bias.

And again, this, this, this, this is a Texas judge, I think it is, who's doing this.

So that's what they're trying to do is

judge shop and put it in a place where at least it doesn't go away. So that's where it is.
Can we, just briefly, you know Lindy Acarino? You've met her. Oh, yeah, I've spent a lot of time with her.

I have hundreds, I have dozens of emails from her. She used to bring me to NBC events to moderate stuff.
Did she? Yes. The video in which Lindy Acarino announces this lawsuit is deeply strange, right?

She's wall-eyed, she looks nervous, she's using big, expressive hand gestures.

What are we to make of this? Why does she look, if she's fully on board, maybe she's not, why does it look like a hostage video? Like, what's going on? She's a CEO.

Look, she's just a terrible, she's a terrible, terrible

communicator. She was a head of advertising at NBC, but they didn't want to make her CEO at NBC.
There was, she thought she should be

when one of the, you know, one of the various and sundry people left, she thought she should be CEO. They had no interest in her as CEO.

And then she went out and tried to get this job at Twitter, which I actually broke the news of, which is interesting.

But,

you know, she styles herself as a CEO, and she's decided, I guess she took CEO classes and decided tough lady thing. You know, it's just pathetic because there's so few women CEOs.
She's so bad at it.

It's embarrassing. This is what I wrote on Threads.
The truth is, Linda is a tiresome scold of an executive with an alleged rep for yelling at minions, according to numerous sources at X.

She's a, that's what a lot of people tell me. She certainly threw a loud fit at one of my events, and I talked about that.

But she's, I call her an epic corporate laughing stock and a vaguely depressing lackey. I think she's all in for Elon.

She's a conservative, which is great, but she's one of those conservatives, right? Like, cannot entertain anybody that thinks he's a jerk, right? Or anything like that.

And so she's unrealistic and ambitious. And,

you know, and so she's going to, she goes along with him. She's closed the San Francisco office.

She lost, you know, a number of people who worked for her a long time have left or have been fired by her. And she's all in with Elon.
So she's not a hostage in any way.

I was teasing when I said it looks like a hostage video. It's not.
But it does. I mean, like, yes, you were joking.
You know her. To me, somebody who doesn't know her, it actually does.
Yeah.

It does look like that. I hope someday, you know,

I can't say I liked her a lot because she's sort of this tough ad lady. I call her an ad lady from Queens, which annoys her, which I think I'll do again.

I suspect 10 years from she'll call me and say, that was so bad. I'm so sorry.
Like, you know, maybe, but maybe not.

You know, I think she really believes in this guy, you know, and she's getting a bill of goods. And this is her big moment.
She's getting paid. She's hoping to get paid a lot.
I'll tell you something.

She's going to, it's going to end up the same place everyone who works for him ends up, which is in a lawsuit with them, right? Or some fight.

Did you see what Elon is doing in the UK? That's dangerous. That's actually dangerous.
He's also doing it here with a lot of like, he has PACs here that are doing things that are being investigated.

No, he's got his little fingers in everything, including saving people at the space station. This guy is a dangerous character.

And what he's doing in Britain, where he's been criticizing the prime minister, the new prime minister,

following this terrible stabbing attack, but he's been pushing misinformation about who did it. And

he's putting out... you know, he just had to take one down today, but what he did, he posted civil war is inevitable.
He's creating all kinds of misinformation.

And so, and he's platformed a lot of these people who are organizing all these violent protests. They seem to be stemming the tide because regular people came out and said, that's enough, right?

Essentially. Last night, there was a worry that it was going to explode again, and then it didn't.
We did a story on this.

We got an email from the Guardian reporter, and she had told us, you know, she hangs up the phone, I'm on my way out, way out to the protests. And she said, it didn't happen.
So

bless, yeah. Right, it didn't.
I mean, these things tend to, they do tend to burn themselves themselves up, but these are dangerous people who, who thrive on violence, right?

And so, you know, he's, I, I, I, I can't believe I'm saying this, but he's like trying to be Rupert Murdoch, except Rupert Murdoch is controlled about how he decimates society. You know what I mean?

Like, he's like a violent,

I mean,

the pushing of violence, saying Sybil Rustin is inevitable, putting out incorrect memes, platforming people who are lying, creating all kinds of fake videos. It's very dangerous.

And you could, it's just a little taste of what he was going to do here in this country if he has the ability. He's already putting out Kamal Harris as a communist and, you know, all kinds of stuff.

I mean, he's a dangerous person. How much influence? All right, I was thinking about this.
We did the story.

We learned that a lot of the young men in the UK that are out in the streets are kind of like angry about immigration, loosely affiliated, maybe far right, maybe just kind of pissed off. And

likes a fight. What I wonder is,

what is the moment when Elon Musk and this crap loses credibility with them? All right, hear me out. Civil war is inevitable.
Civil war doesn't happen.

Do we wake up then and say, oh, that guy was wrong. That guy's repeatedly wrong.
I don't believe him anymore. Welcome to this person he's interviewing on Monday, Donald Trump.
No, we don't. Right? No.

Like, you know, it's interesting. A friend of mine was working on a story about

sexual harassment things around someone, and they were asking if, you know, if people at the company were concerned about it. And I said, can I try to get something through to you? They don't care.

They don't care. Like, nobody, the people who are for Trump do not care that he's racist.
They do not care he's misogynist. They don't care.

And that, I think, is something you have to get your head around. The same thing with Elon, these people who follow him.
He's accountable to no me. He's the richest person in the world.

And this is something UK's technology minister said. He's accountable to no one.
And he controls very,

in this case, both of them could control very important things, right?

And so,

you know, no, I think people who follow him like him and they don't go, oh, look, he was wrong again. Look, he was wrong again.
Look, he was right.

You know, look, he was, remember, he was backing DeSantis and then he was backing RFK Jr.

Then he was, you know, he's been wrong frequently. It just doesn't, they don't, they drop.

One of the strengths of misinformation is when you have a piece of misinformation and it doesn't turn out to be true, you move to the next one, right?

You don't stay here and go, oh, you don't have a contemplation situation.

And I, let me tell you, years, I started talking about my mom, but I did an interview with Hillary Clinton.

And a couple days later, my mom called me and she goes, she goes, oh, Hillary Clinton's saying terrible things about people like me. And I'm like, what? What are they? What is she saying now?

And she started repeating things. I'm like, oh, that sounds like my interview, but that's not what she said, right? It was completely, it was a complete.

mutation of what she said, like a very vicious one. And I said, no, no, that was my interview.
She didn't say say that. And my mother said, oh, she said it.
And I was like, no, she didn't.

She said it to me. I'm your daughter.
And I did the interview. She did not say that.
No, you're wrong. She said it.
This was a conversation I had.

So I said, why don't you go back and listen to the interview and then call me back? And she listened to it. And she called me back.
She goes, okay, she didn't say it. But let me talk about the emails.

Like she moved, like the fact that she was wrong was not something that mattered. Yep.
So I think that's what's happening here. On to the next, on to the next.

Yeah, because and then Elon keeps up the bread and circuses with them, right? So now, yeah, he'll be on to something new by next week, right? Oh, oh, no, and then he attacks trans people.

His daughter is giving him a lesson in social media. I saw that.
Terrific. She's really good.

She, it's interesting because her sense of humor is not like the way his used to be, which was she's very clever.

She's she's killing it on social media, I have to say, because she's sick of her father putting stuff out about her in her life that isn't true and has apparently decided that's enough.

I've had enough of you and taking stealing my narrative, which I think is great.

Anyway, I recommend everybody following her.

Okay, Noelle, let's pivot to a listener question.

This question came in via email. I'll read it.
Given VP Harris's instant success on the TikTok platform, I'm curious what you both think will happen at TikTok should VP Harris win the presidency.

How will this influence the Congress's position on TikTok? Thanks, Ian from Chicago. P.S.
Love the show.

Just for clarification, last week spokes Christopher Harris said, the VP has said before, we don't want to ban TikTok. We would just like to see a change in ownership.

Now, of course, that's the situation which Congress passed, which it will ban TikTok if it doesn't have a change of ownership. So she's for banning TikTok, I guess.

It's kind of a little wordplay there. But your thoughts? I don't think anything's going to change because TikTok is powerful.
I get it.

I don't think Kamala Harris is going to change any of her positions because a lot of people made memes about her. I don't think that changes her mind at all.

I think

she probably thinks it's great if it helps her win an election, but

I don't see a link here. I don't see a link.
Yeah, I think she's not going to change. I think Congress has passed this law.
We'll see where it goes. There'll probably be a change of ownership.

We'll see what the Chinese government does.

But I suspect knowing her a little bit, she is

a lawyer at heart, right? She's a litigator.

And she probably does

understand this better than Biden ever could, like that

the constitutional issues are quite significant here in terms of banning this thing, and it may not ever go anywhere. So I think she knows a little bit more about where it's headed.

Secondly, probably in terms of national security, she probably has more

heft in that regard. So as with a lot of things with Harris, and I love your comments, is she seems to be trying to go right down the metal on everything, like whether it was now fracking or

Gaza or whatever. She seems to be trying to take a very modulated position.
I think she'll do that here. What about you? Yeah.
Yeah,

I think she has to. I mean, the critique is going to be she's a wild-eyed lefty.
Look at her positions in the 2020 campaign, which did not go well for her.

And so her moving more into the center absolutely makes a lot of sense to me. She wants to win an election.

She is not trying to distinguish herself from a Joe Biden and a Beto Rook, whoever the heck. I can't, it was four years ago.
I can't remember. There were so many of them.

She's not trying to distinguish herself from all those guys and gals this time. She's trying to win an election and moderating is a way to do that.

Yeah, I have to tell you, having covered, having known her since she was district attorney in San Francisco, even before she was running for that, very

when she was a local prosecutor.

You know, I remember going to one of her when my son was just a baby. It's a very funny story.
He threw a biscuit at her head and she came over and she goes, I'm going to arrest him.

And it was very cute.

And

she, she, I find, have found her not very liberal, honestly. For San Francisco, she's very conservative.
And I've always found her a modulating person. I think that 2020 thing was,

she's always seems to find the center. Even with, I used to argue with her about internet stuff.

I'm like, you could be a little tougher, but she's always like, on one hand, on the other, she's a little more, I've never found her to be, well, I know a lot of liberals from San Francisco and she wasn't, she, I wouldn't have put her in that bucket And anyway, she loved the tech moguls.

She wasn't like hostile to them. She was

critical, but not hostile. You know, I don't, I think it's kind of a lie that she's crazy liberals because she's not, I don't know, we'll see.

But she 2020, she certainly definitely went down that road. Anyway, if you've got a question of your own that you'd like answered, send it our way.
It's a good question.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Noelle, one more quick break.
We'll be back for predictions.

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Sometimes, the difference between success and failure comes down to one chance encounter. or following a counterintuitive instinct or ignoring conventional wisdom to make a bold decision.

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Or when mobile gaming giant Supercell could only rewrite the rules of the industry after failure in the company's formative stages.

Many of the best things we've learned have actually come through failures. These are all examples of Crucible Moments, turning points in a company's journey that made them what they are today.

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Listen to Crucible Moments today.

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Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

Okay, Noel, we're going to do a round robin of predictions here. So get ready.
Who's going to play Tim Walls on Saturday Night Live this year?

A lot of people are clamoring for Steve Martin to play him, but Martin says he declined and that they obviously asked him. They need a real impressionist to do it.

Maya Rudolph has already been signed on to play Kamala. She's done a fantastic job, by the way, so far.
Thoughts?

I'm going to confess, I do have a tiny bit of face blindness, and so everybody looks like everybody else to me. So Tim Walls,

I'm actually having trouble with his face. John Goodman.
Yeah, I was thinking that, John Goodman. Were you really? Yeah.

John Goodman. I googled earlier today, I googled actors that look like a dad.
John Goodman came up. So that was from Roseanne.
Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaking of which, the bear, we're not going to go there.

Even she, crazy, Roseanne thought it was crazy.

So

I think John Goodman's a good idea. John Goodman.
Although they might get someone you don't know. Like they've done a great job with replacing Alec Baldwin with a guy who's doing Trump very well.

Who does the great impressions. Right, exactly.
Steve Martin's point. Yeah, so I don't know.
I think Steve Martin would have been good.

But Maya Rudolph is brilliant.

There's a lot of compilations of her doing Kamala Harris, and they're very funny.

They're much funnier now, and they're actually on point.

There is one where she does a song, My Name is Kamala, that rhymes with Mamala.

She does this

that's very funny. Anyway,

it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun.
And also, there's The Bear with Rarf K Jr. There's J.D.
Vance's Creepitude. There's so much for Santa.

Anyway, last one. The DNC is a little over a week away.
We'll be hearing a lot from politicians. Who do you think the entertainment will be and should be? You get several choices.
Go ahead.

Oh, should be. Okay, will be.
Charlie XCX,

Miranda Lambert, Tracy Chapman, and Luke Combs. Still crying over that.

I don't know. Entertainment is a place where I'm not very good, but

Name names.

It doesn't have to be entertainers. I mean, so Taylor wouldn't do it.
Beyonce wouldn't do it. Like, there are people who are just too big.

Are they? Are they?

Do you think no? Say more. I think they should do it.
I think the two of them, here's my idea. The two of them, Beyonce and Taylor Swift,

sing. America the Beautiful.
I think that's the song. I forget the name of it.
It's the one God Shed His Grace on the, which is my favorite one because it's nice.

And then the

Star Spangled Banner, they sing it together. They sing it together.
And then they both do the big note that's hard to get to at the top, Land of the Free.

There's an expression. They put it on such a note so high, nobody can reach it.
It's a great line.

They do it together. You're going to be inside the convention.
I know. You may see it.
You may see it. I know.
That's what I would do. Here's what I would do, Simone Biles as a speaker.
Love it.

Love it.

She did such a good black job.

And she did the best black job. She was smile.
She just, I love Simone Biles always smiling. I would love to hear a speech from her.
Even her interviews, she's so like, I'm like, can say more.

Say more, please. She's magnetic.
Magnetic. She is a magnetic.
Really, truly. I was trying to think, Ryan Reynolds, you know, because he is a big hit movie.
Like, Barbie.

I don't know. Marco Robbie, so, so inoffensive, a delightful woman.
Is a rae.

Is a ray? She was president in Barbie. Anyway, stuff like that.
But like, take the flags, take patriotism, take, switch the word from,

you know, the risk to democracy to we're for freedom. That's the kind of thing they need to do.
And there's got to be an entertainer.

I still think Taylor Swift. She did that, that picture.
You saw that picture she did, right?

I did. And it is unclear to me what happened because isn't isn't her campaign, Taylor's campaign? Aren't they denying that it is a shadow of Kamala Harris in the picture?

It's a dancer of hers. I think Taylor...
It's a dancer of hers who looks like Kamala Harris in. Yes, why did she pick that picture? No, no.

I don't believe the people of Taylor Swift land because she does this all the time.

She literally goes into liner notes and puts little Easter eggs. She's an Easter egg lady.
Like, she does this. She does it all the time with wordplay and everything else.

Anybody else? Anyone else you'd like to see up there? Oh, I mean, who did the RNC have? Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan. Who's sort of gone to the middle, very clearly? Conservative now.

The rock. Not conservative, whatever.
Oh, The Rock? Yeah.

Somebody wrote a very smart line about him the other day, about The Rock understanding the marketplace so well that you never really know where he's... You never really know where he's at.

But he's good at it. He's very good at it.
Remember, people were talking about The Rock for President? The Moana 2 is coming up. Is it really? I didn't know they were making a second movie.

See, this is why I know you're a childless

cat or dog owner. Because I don't know what the...
Yes, you and J.D. Vance, go ahead and mock me.
I have a pug. I have a pug.
He does know Moana's coming, I'm guessing.

If he has small kids, anyone who has a small kid is Moana 2, Frozen 3 and 4. More Frozen.

And a live-action Moana.

Frozen is the vein of every parent's existence. You must be so pleased not to know about it.
My niece will sing the songs, and I'm like, go for it. I'm here for 10 minutes.
Go for it, girl.

I actually texted Bob Ija and I go, go, fuck yourself. How dare you text me?

Using it. I'm like, no, stop it.
You know, and then he wrote back, he goes, Moana too coming. And I was like, ah,

whatever. Good luck.
Good luck. They're doing great with Inside Out too.

But you don't have to care about these things. You get to go to adult movies where adults are.
That's so nice. Must be nice.
Anyway, that's the show.

Tell us what you have coming up on Today Explained. Lots of news.
News of the day, every day. One great story.
Dive in. We make it fun for you.
You'll love it.

What's your favorite non-political news right now?

Oh, oh, non-political news. Okay, wait, let me just see what's coming up.

Oh, should I have done this? I'm doing a show about online dating on which, in which I share with listeners what I do when I'm not online dating. And

yeah, you'd have to tune in. I'm not sure this is going to go well.
I never online dated. You didn't? Oh, I hate you.
No,

I've been going out with someone since seventh grade. I have never been single.
Just for a month. I was single for a month.
Wow. I am filled with resentment.

Don't be, because I was literally like, I just, I don't understand it. I just

lesbian, it's easier being a lesbian, I'll tell you that. Holy

crap. Yeah, we'll see.
I've also been divorced, so I've broken up with lots of people. So it's not been that

smooth. And honestly, my wife should divorce me.
She's wonderful. Anyway, we'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot.
Noelle, thank you so much for doing this.

And I recommend everybody listen to Today Explain. Great show.
Great host. Thanks for having me.
Thank you. I will read us out.
Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Aaliyah Jackson engineered this episode. Nishat Kura is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.
Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

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

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. And again, Noel, thank you so much for being on the show.
And everybody, listen to Today Explain.

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