Tech Money in Politics, SBF, and Billion-Dollar Barbie with Co-Host Teddy Schleifer

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

Sitting in today for Scott Galloway is Puck News founding partner, Teddy Schlieffer, who reports on Silicon Valley billionaires and their impact on the world.

Welcome, Teddy.

By the way, Teddy used to work for me, so he's going to be extra nice.

Thanks for having me.

No problem.

I think this is finally going to be the week where Scott Galloway learns who I am.

Oh, really?

He doesn't know.

He confuses with Dylan Byers.

That's why.

True.

At one point, I was at Code and I tried to speak to Scott in his love language, words of affirmation.

Penises.

Okay.

Yeah.

I went up to him and I said, you know, Scott, huge fan of you, blah, blah, blah.

Licked him up and down.

And then he only wants to talk about Bill Cohen.

Oh, right.

Several minutes of, you know, Scott, you know, I'm buttering him up, doing my best.

Yeah.

Doing my best, Kara Swift.

He loves, you know, he loves.

He only wants to talk about other people at Puck.

So, Scott, it's great to meet you.

We have a ton of stuff to talk about.

We'll talk today about the latest on President Trump's mounting legal troubles, as well as who's signing the biggest campaign donation checks for 2024.

There's a lot going on.

Our friend at Pivot today is communications consultant Frank Luntz, who's perfect to talk to you, who will help us make sense of all the poll numbers coming out about the election, which are very confusing for a lot of people and very unclear, I think, in many ways.

But first, grab your popcorn.

This is perfect for you.

The Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg fight is allegedly coming to X.

I'm not so sure it is.

I'm not sure if it's made up or whatever.

Musk tweeted this weekend the fight would be streamed on his platform, that all proceeds would go to charity for veterans.

Zuckerberg replied, shouldn't we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity and suggested he is ready today?

But Musk hasn't confirmed.

And then he said he had a neck problem.

He's getting an MRI around his neck, which is, it's so Trumpian in this way.

So talk about.

Convenient timing, you know?

Convenient timing that he needs an MRI, right?

You know, I think this is ridiculous and it's bad for Mark.

What has happened to these people?

Because it really is sad, actually.

It's sad and pathetic.

And they think it's hysterical.

I know Mark works out.

I think that's great.

Like he was kind of, you know, skinny and

felt nerdy.

And I think it makes him feel good.

And I think that's great.

I think this fighting is kind of cool.

I did judo.

I had a grabbing belt and judo.

Sure do.

I like that stuff.

It's interesting, but it's mostly for

sport and fun.

And I don't think there's anything sporty or fun about this.

And by the way, I hope his shareholders sue him for doing this.

Look, this is more about Mark than it does about Elon, right?

I mean, the fact that Elon Musk is, you know, shit posting his way through another crisis at one of his companies.

That's like, that's been true since, you know, Twitter didn't exist and shit posting didn't exist in the PayPal era.

But like,

I don't really think we're learning that much new about Elon.

The fact that like Mark, who for the last five years has so resisted being a main character is now like so, suddenly so willing to be a main character.

Is that just like a reaction to Elon or is that maybe Jeff Bezos over making out on a yacht?

I mean, it's not just

I'm happy he's making out, but honestly, posting about making out, it's at some point, like one, I get it.

17, I'm sort of like, ooh, it's good.

The Lauren Sanchez Instagram account is a gift, a gift to page six.

It is.

I enjoy it.

I enjoy it.

Sure.

We all have our guilty pleasures.

But look, I mean, I mean, Marx,

to some extent, I feel like the removal of Trump from office

has made a lot of tech leaders

felt like we're entering this new era where they can just erase everything between 2016 and 2020, right?

Where

if this was three years ago or four years ago, there's no way that like Mark would be this carefree, you know, just guy who's into MMA and, you know, just loves making jokes.

Right, exactly.

You know, every I think, I think there's like a little bit of like a,

I'm not saying this is fair or not, but I think he feels that there's a redemption tour that can happen now, right?

That the media overstated things, like they overstated Cambridge Analytica, for instance, or they overstated the role that Facebook played in helping Trump.

Yeah, but this does, does this land him in a better place?

He's being brought down.

Elon has tarnished his reputation rather significantly.

This pulls him to that level.

I do have,

you know, Mark is a nice guy, right?

Like ultimately personally i i find him to be relatively he's not an he's not a like look at me and i get that he wants to show off his physique which is fine which i guess is fine but i just feel like who in his family or cheryl samberg or somebody is like what is wrong with you that you want to be sweat you know you know ball grabbing and groping with um with elon musk ew yuck sweaty You think this actually happens?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I think Ari Emmanuel is working at it, apparently, and dana whatever the hell that guy's name is i think they would love it because it's a big payday for them in some way even though they'll say it's all going to charity you know it's going to be a disaster and sure i mean here's here's a radical idea kara these people could actually donate the money to charity with with i know without the fight it's it is it is technically possible according to the law and you know yeah

we'll see if they take up that option how much philanthropy do they do because you write about this yeah sure i mean i mean elon uh has basically said that he thinks philanthropy is child's play compared to the world-saving mission that is acquiring Twitter or I don't know how we survive without him on the planet.

Right, sure.

I mean, it's definitely a great man theory of history that he subscribes to.

I mean, he thinks he thinks philanthropy is bullshit, and he thinks that it's generally just a PR expedition, which like, I mean, there's an element of truth to that for sure.

I mean, I mean, Mark obviously has, you know, set up Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

I think it's now in its eighth year.

They have, you know, several hundred employees.

You know, he spends a day a week on it.

Priscilla Chan runs a day-to-day.

You know, Mark sees Gates as his role model, right?

Elon does not see Gates as his role model.

And I think he's very dismissive of the philanthropic industrial complex.

And

the fact that he's going to be donating to charity for this is.

Maybe this is, you know, the gateway drug.

It's such nonsense.

He's not paying any.

He's not going to give any of the money.

He's just not.

It's going to be all saying he is.

Part of me is like, I hope the mark beats the shit out of him.

And at the same time, I'm like, why do I hope Mark beats the shit?

I feel bad about myself thinking that.

Anyway, speaking of people I don't feel bad about, Sam Bankman-Fried is having a bad month.

You've written about him a lot.

Federal prosecutors in New York believe SBF deserves to have his bail revoked, saying there are no likely conditions he will abide by to stop witness tampering.

Sounds like Trump a little bit.

Has evidence.

Prosecutors pointed to SBF already contacting potential witnesses and sharing personal documents belonging to his former girlfriend, Carolyn Ellison.

With the New York Times, reminder, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to 13 charges and Ellison pleaded guilty to seven.

Where are we with him now?

He's sort of sitting at home at his parents in Palo Alto, right?

Is that correct?

He is for now.

I mean, prosecutors want to put him in jail until this October trial.

You know, one, one good rule of thumb for any leakers out there, when, when you leak, you generally don't want to tell people that you leaked.

Just a general rule of thumb.

You kind of want to keep that.

So, but, you know, Sam basically under some scrutiny from prosecutors admitted that he leaked, you know, this Google doc from Coward Ellison for the New York Times.

And now in, you know, there's some similarities to Trump, right?

Which he's not supposed to, right?

Explain.

They're not supposed to, like with Trump, he's supposed to not say, you come at me, I'm going to come at you, or

Jack Smith is deranged, whatever.

Right.

But there's the exact same tension between like free speech rights and

interfering with a trial, witness intimidation, right?

I mean, we're going to talk about Trump later.

I mean, the idea that he feels he is speaking his truth.

And Sam Bagman Freed feels like I have a a right to defend myself.

But there's a difference between like, remember the sub stack posts he was doing earlier this year where he is now going into the Alameda balance sheet, blah, blah, blah.

Like, sure, that's free speech rights.

But Carolyn Ellison is like the star witness in the trial.

Right.

And she's, she's like pence.

She kept extemporaneous notes, apparently.

Right.

I mean, this is also, I mean, this is obviously a self-serving explanation.

So like, take this with a, with a pound of salt.

But in the media, like, we're trying to get any intel we can.

Sure.

So like I don't blame the New York Times for publishing it.

And I do believe that like, you know, defendants have a right to protect themselves, especially when you're kind of being prosecuted in this high-profile trial.

And I think lots of people have probably convicted Sam Megman Free already in their minds, the same way that like, I feel like when Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to jail, lots of people thought she was probably been in jail for five years, right?

Because you sort of read about the indictment and you forget about the details and you assume that the bad man did bad things.

So I think Sam has a right to protect himself, but where's the line between protecting himself and witness intimidation?

Have you talked to him recently?

Yeah, I've talked to him a couple of times over the last couple months.

And how does he feel?

Is a little unmade bed up okay.

Is he doing okay?

You know, I think

how old is he?

How old is he?

He is he's 30s my age.

Yeah, because he looks like he's like a seven-year-old.

He's by the Stanford campus.

You know, he has this 75-pound German Shepherd that's his friend.

You know, his parents are trying to live their lives as best they can.

Yeah.

You know, even though they're kind of implicated in San Francisco.

Well, they are.

They were very involved with him.

Oh, my God.

His brother, you know, he just got off on this campaign finance charge, which is huge news for like everybody in the political concentric circles around Sam Eggman-Fried because like, you know, I mean, we've talked about this before, Carol.

I mean, he was spending so much money on politics.

There were so many people who were like implicated, probably

none more than his brother, who obviously has the exact same last name and maybe he should change it.

Yeah.

because

campaign finance charges dropped, but like everyone's already thought you know, he's he's guilty, but that's what people think.

Yeah, yeah, I don't really feel sorry for him either.

Um, but I what I do feel good about is Barbie is worth a billion.

Scott's not here, but I think I'll take a moment.

Barbie is worth a billion.

Oppenheimer's made about half that.

Greta Gerg has raped in more than a billion dollars.

The global box office, making the first U.S.

film directed by one woman, to reach a billion-dollar mark.

You called it.

I called it.

I did.

To what do you owe your just clairvoyance?

It was

market savage.

You know, watching the Taylor Swift thing happening, there is a real power to women's spending, like in young girls' spending.

And the love of someone like Taylor Swift and this had a similar vibe to it.

Like girl, I hate to say girl power, but you know, it is.

And it was also smart.

I thought it was much more canny than people.

It wasn't a silly, frothy thing.

If you go back the second time, you see a lot of things in it.

And people were dying for something like this, like something that you could just enjoy, or you could also go, huh, that's an interesting point they're making.

So I don't know.

I just feel like it's a great, it's also just a great movie.

And Greta Gerwick's a fantastic director and writer.

There's some similarities, I feel like, in tech where lots of VCs for a long time just sort of cast aspersions around like women-focused industries.

Like I'm thinking about like makeup and glossy hairs.

It's like, you know, where like, you know, people just assume that this is like the bee weeks.

Right, right, exactly.

And the fact that like, you know, obviously, I mean, this is an obvious point, but obviously men are seeing this movie as well.

Right.

And to some extent, I think this should be something of a wake-up call to like Hollywood.

It always does.

What sells?

It's a fantastic movie.

They just think it's some sort of outlier, which it's not.

But we'll see.

We'll see.

I hope there's not a part two.

I hope she doesn't do two.

But anyway, let's get to our first big story.

Donald Trump keeps breaking his own records for the number of times a former president has been indicted.

He's now at three.

Last week, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted Trump on four counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in the January 6th insurrection.

The indictment references his knowing lies about election fraud, recruitment of fake electors in the swing states, and obstruction of the Electoral College, vote certifications, and other possible indictment coming out of Georgia before the end of the month.

Where are we with this?

Because he seems to be trying to make hay out of this situation.

He's the leading presidential candidate.

DeSantis is a distant sex in fading, I would say.

You can talk a little bit about, there's a lot of tech supporters of DeSantis, for example.

I don't think there's any tech supporters of Trump anymore, but maybe I'm wrong.

You know, some of these charges carry quite a lot of things.

I'm going to be a little bit this 641 years because he's using it for fundraising.

These white-collar crimes never get that.

They get like a fraction of it.

So I'm going to let him do that.

Like it's not, he's not going to be in.

jail for 641 years.

He may not even go to jail.

I know, but he may even not go to jail because the secret, he might might have to like live around if he, if he gets convicted.

He's fundraising off these indictments at a Friday rally in Alabama.

He says, anytime they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls.

We need one more indictment to close out this election.

What do we think?

I mean, that was some conventional wisdom that Trump was saying.

I mean, like the fact that he's kind of right, right?

I mean, just want one more indictment, two more indictments.

And every time, you know, every time he gets indicted, he raises.

We'll talk to Frank

about this, who's coming up, but who's going to come up and talk to us.

But because there's little signs that maybe not so much, yeah.

I mean, when you read the indictment, unlike the Stormy Daniels Mash Money case, or frankly, the Mar-a-Lago documents case,

I feel like the gravity of the charges really hits you in a way that, like, we, we all experienced January 6th, right?

I'm sure you can like, I'm sure you probably have cinematic memory of like every phone call you took that day, every text, which is obviously not true of like, you know, our

mutual experience reading the Mar-a-Lago documents, our mutual experience with Stormy Daniels.

So I feel like our lived experience makes, you know, as the kids say, like makes the

January 6th indictment just feel so much more significant than anything else that's happened in politics.

Also, it's like, I feel like reading it, it's also, it's a little bit of a testament to journalism, right?

I mean, so much of this has been reported.

Right.

And it's based.

And like, I mean, you would think that there would be these huge scoops

embedded in the document, but I feel like I read a lot of this in Nike Harry.

It's a lot of details.

Yeah, it's a a lot of, it's absolutely.

What's going on with DeSantis?

Now, very few people in Silicon Valley supported Trump before.

They were sort of near him.

Like, I know Mark Zuckerberg met with him.

Elon's met with him.

They were on those councils.

A lot of tech people were on those councils.

They went to that famous 2016 meeting, which I

actually scooped that.

You know, they were all there.

I'd written 2000.

Yes, yeah.

Where is the support on the Republican side in the people you cover?

Look, I mean, I think

I'd be hard pressed right now to come up with a single personality in Silicon Valley who's excited about Donald Trump.

I mean, like, it goes back to what I was saying

kind of in this, in this post-Trump era, quote unquote, whatever you want to call it, where people can go back to being Republicans, like Mark Zuckerberg can go back to being Mark Zuckerberg.

He's not constantly thinking about Trump and, you know, how he's positioned vis-a-vis Trump.

There is zilch.

There is no one in Silicon Valley who I think is excited about Donald Trump.

I mean, for a long time, and I'm eager to talk to Frank a little bit later on the show about this, is like, I think lots of people in the industry who are conservative were flocking to DeSantis because he was the only game in town.

And there was a feeling like, you know, well, regardless of whether or not you thought abortion ends should happen at six weeks or 10 weeks or 20 weeks, it's like, if you don't like Donald Trump, this is the only person who seems to have a chance of winning.

So who cares what you think about Tim Scott?

David Sachs has given him money through that, whatever the help pack he's got, and then others.

Who is still with DeSantis?

Who's with Tim Scott?

Obviously, Larry Ellison was a big backer, early backer of Tim Scott.

Where is the money?

Where is the money going now since it looks like Trump probably has it wrapped up?

I think Larry Ellison is going to be a huge story of the next year for me.

This is the head of Oracle.

Tell me about that.

Sure.

I mean, you know, I think there is a concern that Larry Ellison could be this cycle's Shel Natalson.

I don't mean that in a good way.

I don't mean that in a good way.

Well, I never thought Natten was a good way.

This is the Las Vegas, whatever the hell he was.

Casino magnate who died,

was it two or three years ago now?

So Larry Ellison loves Tim Scott.

Larry Ellison is an emotional guy who falls hard for people like Marco Rubio, B.B.

Netanyahu.

He loves some Tim Scott right now.

And the reason he could be the Shell Natalson

of this time around is

there are lots of Republicans who want to consolidate against Trump.

We're going to talk about Frank a little later on.

The idea is there's going to be this great consolidation and that, you know, everyone's going to drop out and we're all going to find, you know, the white knight, whether it's Glenn Youngkin or Ron DeSantis, and we're going to beat Trump because all the rich people in the world are going to pool together all of their money on their little text chain and save democracy from Donald Trump.

And then you've got Larry Ellison over here who says, I am super committed to Tim Scott.

No matter what happens, I'm going to spend a gajillion dollars to help this this guy, which is just what Shelton Addison did.

Through the packs.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is just what Shelton Nadison did for Newt Gingrich in 2012.

You know, there was like Newt Gingrich had like negative 0.75 support,

but he had one rich guy in his corner who prevented the consolidation.

And then, you know, Mitt Romney won, and that was the Republican primary.

So there's lots of concern right now when I talk with major donors that, like, how do we get Lowry to like, you know, sing from the same songbook here?

So what songbook do they want to sing from?

Because his Sansus has just been abandoned by one of his major billionaires.

What's his name?

Robert Bigelow.

Yeah, what does he make money?

Paperbacks?

He's a hotel guy, but

he also is a prominent investor in UFO research.

Whatever.

So where are these

billionaire clubs?

So they want to stop Ellison from doing it and backing DeSantis?

I don't see it.

I think they're abandoning DeSantis, the billionaires.

Yeah, well, so the.

And is Sachs and Elon doing that or not?

Yeah, I feel David Sachs is much more powerful because of his bark than his bite.

And I mean that lovingly to David Sachs.

I mean, this is a guy who is, like, the amount of money he's spending on politics is like not that much.

Let's be real.

He is not Larry Allison well.

But I'm saying there's like a group of people that are DeSantis fans.

That's correct.

There's all this hoopla around Elon and like, is he going to fund this or that?

Like these people are actually pretty parsimonious with political spending.

I mean, Elon is not like, they're not spending billions of dollars.

No, he's just yapping his mouth.

He's just yapping his mouth.

I'm aware.

But I would argue that that is

more important than Elon giving 10 or 20 million bucks.

The fact that like Elon is, you know, is a,

it goes beyond just being a billionaire.

No, I don't think that.

I think the money matters and ads and ads, you know, people are here, not hearing as much of Elon because he says things so much.

I don't think he's a political player in this regard.

And

I don't think everyone goes, ah, Elon likes this.

I think it's maybe negative.

Oh, that asshole likes it.

I'm going to go this way.

So who are they coalescing behind?

Who do you, if you had to guess, who would it be?

Well, so right now we're recording this.

It's in August.

We're in August 2023.

And we're like in this, I think what you're getting at, Karen, is we're in this like,

it's early, but it's also this like transitional period where you know who donors do not support, but you don't know who the white knight is.

I mean, I do think there's going to be lots of donor agita around Glenn Young after November when, you know, he hopefully, in his opinion, you know, helps flip the Virginia legislature that there's going to be like, oh, we just need, we need someone else.

Like, that's the classic fantasy that you know who you do not support, which you know that these donors do not feel that Ron DeSantis or, you know, the vec Rob Swami or Nikki Haley, like, you know, there's going to be this dissatisfaction with the field.

And I think like, you know, Glenn Young's phone is going to be blown up in November 15th to do this last minute.

save democracy push.

But the reason this all sounds like a fantasy, Kara, is this all feels so futile.

You know, I'm just feeling like there is a sense when I talk with major Republican donors right now that we're just like wasting our time, right?

That Trump will be the Republican nominee.

And, you know, some billionaire will spend a couple million on Person X.

Some other billionaire will spend a lot of time.

Which billionaire will they all run to Trump then if he's the nominee or not?

I mean, like

not to be too nihilistic, it just feels like it just feels like all these people are wasting their time, that there is, you know, the Republican primary base seems unshakable and whether or not you know Larry Ellison spends 50 million or 500 a million or 500 billion like Trump has shown from 2016 that he did not need these people

in 2020 like I mean you remember this I mean people were sucking up to him just because he was the only game in town he was also president Right, right, sure.

But like there was no credible Republican primary to Donald Trump in 2020.

Yeah, but they don't want to give the money.

They don't want to give the money, correct?

You mean big Republican donors?

Yes, big Republican donors.

Sure.

I mean, I mean, I mean, like, to do that, I think there would be a little bit of egg on the face just to admit that, you know, these donors are much more impotent than they make themselves feel.

These people don't, I mean, like, you know, I think there's, you deal with all these guys.

These all have huge egos.

They see themselves as political savants.

The reality is 2016 demonstrated that.

They don't know what they're doing.

They don't know what they're doing.

Last question on this.

So there's Trump.

Is the money going elsewhere to governors?

Is there other people it's going to so they can at least have, or senators, or is there any backers that's excited them in some way?

Because that's another way to control things.

You don't have to have the president necessarily.

Sure.

I mean, look, I mean, there's how many conversations have I had with major Republican donors during the Trump era who are just like, well, I'm really focusing down bowet, blah, blah, blah.

It's like a way to pretend that you live in this fantasy world where, you know, wear Republican parties for low taxes and that's it.

I mean, mean, I think there's going to be clearly some Republican excitement around Virginia after

Youngkin.

You say,

yeah, I mean, I mean, there's Virginia elections this year.

If he wins, if he doesn't, then he looks like it.

Right.

Then he then certainly he's, you know, certainly he's not running for president if he gets creamed.

But I mean, I think there's, you know, this, this, this feels, though, if you're a Republican donor, 2024 feels like maybe the last gasp of

donors thinking that they can control the process.

Like

the big opinion or the conventional wisdom in politics, right, that's popularized by Bernie Sanders is that politicians are beholden to their donors.

You know, the billionaires.

No, Trump's not beholden to any of them.

But like, I think that he could use the money.

He could use the money.

That's all.

Sure.

But I just feel like

the way that politics really works and

the way that donor politics really works is that it's really donors.

It's really politicians fooling donors into thinking that they have influence and less like donors capturing.

The dog is wagging the tail this time.

A little bit.

So, who's

lining up for Biden?

Who's lining up in that space?

Reed Hoffman.

Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to say, you're a huge Reid Hoffman fan, right?

Yes, I am.

Yeah, I like him.

Not huge.

I would say,

well, you know, the bar is so low.

So

I was going to say, relative to the other

Palmafia folks.

Yeah.

Oh, well,

yeah.

Yeah.

So who is Reed and who else?

They seem enthusiastic for Biden.

I mean,

Reed, I think, is the most creative political actor in Silicon Valley.

And I say that for good and for ill.

I mean, Reed obviously stepped in it a lot over the last eight years, but he, you know, is the most important thing.

Yeah, he keeps recovering.

Daniel Gene Carroll,

definitely.

Yeah.

Is there anybody else coming to the fore now that Sam Bankman-Freed's

arrest?

I was going to say, like, have you heard of this guy named Sam Bankman Freed?

It could be the new big thing in Democratic politics.

You know, I think a big story over the last couple of years has been Dustin Moscovitz, right?

Who's one of the other founders of Facebook?

Someone else I like quite a bit.

Yeah, I like Dustin too.

And, you know, he

has popularized like a different approach to political philanthropy where he sort of like, you know, he, we, we don't have to go revisit all of the follies of effective altruism that Sam Mankman Fried has reminded us all of, but Dustin Moscovitz is sort of like the grown-up in that, in that world.

And, you know, he believes that if you have a dollar, right, and you can donate it to

procuring a malaria, an anti-malarial bed net in Africa,

that's probably a better use of money than trying to elect Barack Obama.

But what if the threat to the world isn't Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but the threat to the world is like Trump nuking the entire world or

hypothetically, like a pathogen that kills, you know, millions of people, hypothetically.

Then maybe the dollar is better spent on politics.

Dustin's a a huge player in this role, too.

I like him a lot, actually.

I think he's really interesting and smart.

And his wife also is involved.

Former journalist.

Former journalist, Carrie Tuna.

All right, Teddy, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about opposition research in politics, and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Frank Luntz.

As a founder, you're moving fast towards product market fit, your next round.

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Teddy, I want to talk about your story from July, which I thought was really terrific about opposition research campaign against Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal, who's been a big Republican donor, who is sitting it out, right?

Seems to be not, yes?

Yeah, yeah, I think it's broadly fair to say, yeah.

Yeah, but and reason because he's like, doesn't like just is sick of it, right?

Is sort of, he didn't spend that much money, by the way.

He got a lot of, he got a lot of throughput for his $30 million, essentially.

Opposition researchers dig up dirt on political candidates.

This is very common these days.

It's extending to their top donors as well.

Again, I'm not surprised.

Why wouldn't you?

Your story centered on one man in particular, a model named Jeff Thomas.

Teal was in a relationship with him.

The opposition researchers wanted to interview Thomas to see if he had any information he could use against Thial.

The opposition researchers, led by a Democratic political officer named Jack Theory, hounded the guy as you wrote.

Talk about this.

I was, I have an issue with this because, like, these are all adults, Okay.

And I get that he had, he was mentally

fragile, I think, because he ended up killing himself.

His death was rendered a suicide.

Suicide, right.

So

and then, of course, there were all the conspiracy theories, which were outlandish, I thought.

But talk a little bit about this.

The story here is Peter Thiel, who obviously has become a major player in Republican politics.

You're totally correct, though, like David Sachs, barked bigger than the bite.

But he spent 30, 40 million, right?

And he got

one guy elected.

Yeah, got one guy.

Sure.

J.D.

Vance, Blake Masters, is not mean.

And he was integral to Trump, too.

He introduced Silicon Valley people to Trump.

I don't know how effective that was, but he was his guy for a while.

Right.

And he's become disillusioned with Trump, I'm pretty sure, correct?

Correct.

So Peter has become a target.

of the left.

And this is not to like, you know, break out or violin for, you know, one of the richest people in the world, you know, having to deal with some meanie liberals who are, you know, looking into his personal life, but there were meanie liberals looking into his personal life.

Let me also be clear, he was mean to liberals.

Like, come on, he like attacked, he saw suit against the media just because he was in a peak.

This is a big boy, a big rich boy, right?

So, you know, and so that, let's just make that clear, but go ahead.

Well, I mean, the question is, where is the line in

opposition research, right?

Or frankly, where's the line in journalism?

about, you know, what sort of things in someone's personal life are merit for publication or merit for attack versus, you know, just letting people's private lives be their private lives.

And Kara, I remember, I remember, you know, you and I have talked about this privately, just like the sense about like what in like the Me Too era, like, is worth publication, right?

And we left a lot out at Recode.

We were very

we did, because if it didn't have, if it had a direct issue with the business, like we did write about Sergey Brin's affair, because it had a direct impact.

Otherwise, the stuff I know, I was like, I don't care if they're taking drugs.

I don't care if they're having an affair.

I don't care.

I don't, we never did.

And we knew about it, but we didn't write about it.

Right.

But you have the bar of a journalist, right?

Now, if you were an opposition researcher who is, you know, working to elect Democrats, your bar might be very different, right?

Like,

there's no international association of APPO researchers that are going to like censure you

or remove your credentials.

Like anything kind of goes.

And I feel like what's happening now with Peter Thiel is like, People are looking into how he kind of conducts himself.

And there was this group of APO researchers who were in West Hollywood trying to interview men who like go to Peter Thiel's parties.

He has a lot of parties.

I don't think that's any big secret.

I don't care.

Good for you.

But you can see why, if you are a liberal who believes that Peter Thiel is a capital T threat to democracy, it's like, let's go get this guy, right?

Yeah, so why is this a surprise?

I think this happened to Clintons.

This has happened to George Bush.

There was a look into his affairs.

There's like, this is not a new, fresh thing for opposition research.

So tell me why this is different.

And let me, just for people that know this guy, Jeff Thomas, I actually did follow him because I was aware of this relation.

Sure.

He told Peter about this, Peter Thiel, which you wrote.

Peter asked him to move out of the home he was paying for.

Sometime later, he dies by suicide.

Yeah, that's right.

This is tragic, but what is the blame here?

And I think opposition research is just going to get worse than it has, but it's already been pretty bad from what I get.

I mean, watching the Clintons, watching the, and some of it might be true about them, by the way, a lot of this stuff.

So I, you know, I wouldn't ever do it and I wouldn't do stories on it, but certainly a lot of people would these days.

I think what's new, Kara, is that this is now, people are now going after donors in a way, in a way that like, like, look, obviously people have enemies, right?

Everyone's got enemies.

Bill Clinton has enemies.

You know, there are.

people who look into everyone's personal life since the beginning of time.

And when you talk with defenders of the OPO research campaign, as I did, they say like, they're going after George Soros.

You know, they're going after tons of well-meaning liberals and looking into their personal lives.

Like anything goes, I do feel like the bar has gotten so, so low,

especially in Oppo, where, you know, the way that Oppo used to work for people who read the news is like, you know, if you see some story that says Joe Manchin didn't pay his taxes according to record.

His daughter is this and that.

Yeah.

Right.

Like like,

let's cut the bullshit here.

Like reporters are not coming up with that idea.

Like, most of the time, that was fed to them by an OPO person.

And then you write the story and like the story is true.

And, you know, it's a win-win.

The journalist gets a scoop.

The Oppo person gets their hit, as they're known in the OPPO world.

The way that Oppo is working now, and I think this story illustrates it, is like Oppo researchers going on Instagram and messaging other gay men in West Hollywood and trying to get them to leak screenshots of their, you know, conversations with Peter Thiel.

That's like human intelligence, as people in Spycraft would call that.

That's different than like

spies were also looking at because of his closeness to all these powerful people.

Like I imagine people are doing it on all these people.

And I'm not, I guess I'm just not surprised.

And he's, this is a guy who stuck his head far above the parapet.

It's not someone who's just like hanging around giving money.

He's been very loud.

He's been very present.

He's sitting next to Trump at a giant tech meeting.

Is there something wrong with that?

Because

when I think of corporate people, you know, I don't know, there was

that story when Don Lemon, that one before he was fired, I was like, oh, look, he's going to get fired.

Like, I'm seeing this dribbity drab.

You see it with media executives all the time.

I actually even called them.

I said, you're going to get fired.

There's opportunity.

I was like, yeah, because I was like, come on, it's so obvious.

Because in that particular story, it was 20 years ago.

I was like, so they've been digging, someone's been digging up some stuff.

Is that wrong, do you think?

Or I don't know.

You seem to think it was wrong in the piece or that it had a responsibility to this suicide.

I think that there's

it's hard to talk about this without really going into every allegation, which we can't really do, which is definitely a challenge of the piece for sure.

But like the reality is like there is some line between personal life that is relevant to the public interest and personal life that is not, right?

I mean, you're saying, for instance, like there are things in Recode where person X is having a fair and it could be salacious and tawdry and would get clicks.

And like, maybe you could squint and argue it's relevant to the business, whatever that is.

Right.

But then there's like, you know, the Sergey-Anne, you know, um, uh, news, which I definitely do think was the right call to publish about that.

And like, and like, I really feel like we're in this anything goes era now in Oppo, where, where there's no real repercussions for anything.

Because like, also in the journalism side, there's always someone who's going to publish it, right?

I mean, a lot of the story that I wrote about centers on Ryan Grimm at the intercept.

And that's obviously an ideological outlet, right?

And, you know, you don't have to get your OPPO published in the New York Times.

Like, you know, there was this huge story a couple weeks ago where, you know, these random anonymous accounts on Twitter were like tweeting these DeSantis videos with Nazi imagery.

You remember this stuff?

And like, there's no, there's no punishment for some random anonymous captured two tweeting a video.

Like, you don't even know who these people are.

Yeah, but this is what Trump does publicly.

They're all doing it.

I just, I feel like, I feel like they do it and it's going to get worse just the way, you know, and some of it's for the good.

Me too stuff was opo research, if you really think about it, right?

Some of it finally out there.

And it did have pertinence, right?

It did have pertinence.

And it seems to me, if you stick your head that far, you're going to have people looking into you.

I just don't even know why they think they're going to.

Either in the old days, it was you got blackmailed, right?

Or

you had to leave your job or something like that.

In this case, you know, especially with the attacks on Soros and many others, I'm sort of like, well, guess what?

Guess what you did?

And I think you had a quote from Peter saying that.

I guess now I feel bad for hillary clinton right no for for anita hill anita hill

i know i was like oh my god sure sure yeah yeah you know peter peter again billionaires love to see themselves as the victims of yeah of the meanie liberals the comparison to anita hill though was was precious i know but i was like you were a pretty tough sharp elbowed dude like you're not and you should use those anyway very interesting story i thought it was fascinating brings up a lot of things and again it's a tragic death of jeff thomas um in any case and you should read it it's on park it's it made me think a lot and i was trying to think if it was fair or not to say, you know, to do operation.

I came to the conclusion: yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

These people are trying to wield power.

And if they're trying to wield power, good luck to them.

You know what I mean?

Fire with fire.

And again, the George, I could name 20 different big Democratic donors that get targeted.

But anyway, speaking of which thing of power, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Frank Luntz is a a communications consultant and pollster.

He has conducted over 2,500 surveys and focus groups in more than two dozen countries.

I've just found out my son loves Frank Luntz.

I had no idea.

And does my mother, as usual.

You've had some really interesting polls out lately.

But first of all, you just got back from Ukraine.

You were there, what, 24 hours?

Is that correct?

Les.

I was.

I spent 10 hours on the ground in Kiev.

It took almost 48 hours to get there, almost 48 hours to get back.

I had the chance to meet with the President Zelensky, and it was an

eye-opening experience.

I think to myself, because I'm Ukrainian.

Both of my grandparents on my mother's side, both my grandparents on my father's side are Ukrainian.

So they're there, but for the grace of God, go I.

And I've been to Ukraine five or six times already.

And every time I left, I wanted to call

my grandparents and say to them, thank God, thank you so much for deciding to come to America, for deciding to risk it all and make a difference in the people who came after you.

I am so blessed

that they made that tough decision.

And I think of how hostile we are to immigration in this country.

I think of, I don't understand the darkness and the meanness and the divisiveness.

And I don't understand the seeming love of Putin or love of Russia when they're doing so much destruction and damage and really destroying a people.

I don't get it.

Yeah.

So you went there to visit and to understand what was happening on the ground, right?

Had you been there before the beginning of these hostilities?

Yes.

This is, I think this is either my fifth or sixth time.

It's a beautiful country.

with beautiful people and it's being destroyed.

I went to meet with this child organization, this defense of children organization, because they're stealing kids and taking them into Russia.

I paid homage to the people in the various communities who had given their lives to support their country.

And there are these Republicans who seem to be pro-Putin.

I don't get it.

I don't understand.

This is not the country that I grew up in.

This is not the party that

I joined 40 years ago.

It's hard to believe it's been that long.

So, talk about that.

Why are they doing that?

Is it politics?

Let's switch to politics.

Why do they think, and it's not just them.

It's Teddy and I have written about Elon Musk and a whole bunch of people are seemingly pro-Putin, anti-we're not anti-I don't know, because he's also doing Starlink there.

So, there's a real movement politically among Republicans to do so.

Not everybody by a stretch.

Lindsey Graham's very supportive of Ukraine.

Lots of Republicans are.

Why has that happened from your perspective politically?

In two words, Donald Trump, in early in this conflict, he talked about Putin being brilliant.

And I urge listeners who don't want to hear this, go back to the original speeches of Donald Trump in the opening of the war and how he praised Russia, he praised Putin.

He said this makes total sense.

He's a brilliant strategist.

Of course, he would do this.

And even now, even now, He's trying to force Ukraine, or he would force Ukraine to make peace when their country's been invaded, their people have been killed, their infrastructure has been destroyed, children have been suffering.

And in essence, there are people within the Republican Party who want Ukraine to give, to capitulate.

It's not their fault.

And this is part of what's wrong in politics right now is that I don't believe the public knows the truth.

I don't believe that they actually understand what's going on there, because if they did, they would have a different point of view.

I'm sure I sound to a listener like I've lost control, but I have to tell you, every time you and I talk, it's worse than the time before.

The combination of social media, of AI, of politics, of division, of hate towards each other, it's getting worse.

And I think that we're going to lose control between now and Election Day.

And I don't know if we can withstand it.

I don't know.

All right.

Talk about that.

How do you get those?

So Trump shifted people's opinions here.

Ordinarily, most people, Americans would be like, the Russians, no, thank you.

What does it take to get them off that bandwagon and following that?

I think it's a skill that people don't focus on, and it's not words.

So, what brought me to prominence is not what helps bring about the change.

I think you have to see it.

I think you have to feel it.

I think you have to experience it, which means the pictures become more important than the language.

What you show and what people see is more powerful than what they hear.

So, that's change number one.

Number two is they have to understand, in a word, consequences.

What are the consequences?

Should Russia win?

What are the consequences?

Should Ukraine win?

Because it's not just about those countries.

And frankly, it's not even just about China.

It's about us as human beings.

Do we fully understand the consequences of ChatGBT, of AI, of technology?

Do we understand the concept?

And I don't believe we do.

And I think that that's got to be a change that we have to start looking at the impact of our decisions.

So you do polls one after another, and it doesn't seem to be moving in that direction.

As you said, they don't seem to care about the legal woes in Trump's case.

They listen to him on Ukraine.

It doesn't seem like any Republican candidates have a chance of beating him at this point.

He can beat himself, I guess.

That's the way it goes.

Where are we right now?

You've done a lot of poll groups.

I've been following them.

They shift back and forth in an interesting way, but give us a sort of roundabout of where we are right now.

Let's focus on the Republican side.

On the Republican side, Ron DeSantis, the governor, and he said to me in Iowa that I'm too critical of him.

So let me say something in support of his candidacy.

He has the best advertising of any candidate,

a one-minute ad that talked about how our culture is changing, how the things that we came to take for granted aren't what they used to be, and it's really, really impactful.

That said, Republicans don't want government choosing winners and losers.

They don't want weaponization.

If they don't like it from Joe Biden, they're not going to like it from a Republican either.

So DeSantis' numbers all across the country have been deteriorating.

In his place, in Iowa, Tim Scott is rising, and in New Hampshire, Chris Chrissy is rising.

Different states, different electorates, different priorities, different candidates.

At this point, we have never had on either the Republican or the Democratic side someone with this much of a lead that doesn't get the nomination.

So you're correct there.

But I got to tell you, as I look at this, as I listen to the words, the phrases, the emotions, the passion of that Trump vote, I don't know if anything can change it.

I don't know if

even great debate performances in August, September, October, November will change this outcome.

And here's why.

Trump is perceived as a victim.

He's perceived as being persecuted.

His enemies are the same enemies as the average Republican.

And so every time he gets indicted, his numbers go up.

And people are just not willing to hear an alternative narrative right now.

They get their information from

sources that affirm them rather than inform them.

The people they talk to are all in a silo.

And this is a much bigger issue that I know you deal with.

I know this podcast deals with.

We're screwed as a society because we can't even listen to people that aren't affirming what we already believe.

Okay, Teddy?

Frank, a very memorable campaign for me to cover was I covered the Wendy Davis campaign in 2014, which she lost by, I think it was 21 points.

And that race has kind of put a stamp in my mind about how races are covered and whether or not, what it means for a race to be quote unquote competitive.

We all cover that race in Texas, the Houston Chronicle, like it was a five-point race, and that means covering this ad or that ad or why is Wendy Davis visiting Houston or Dallas, blah, blah, blah.

And she lost by 21 points.

And I felt like we all wasted our time covering this race because she was never going to win.

I'm thinking about the Republican primary right now and whether or not reporters and frankly, like people like us, are wasting our time.

Where we're arguing about Tim Scott rising in Iowa or Chris Christie rising in New Hampshire and going from 5% to 10% or DeSantis firing a third of his staff, like whatever the news of the day is.

Do you think there actually is a Republican primary at this point?

Let me put it this way.

Would you call the Republican primary competitive?

At this moment, you're correct.

At this moment, it isn't.

But we've never had a president who, in the middle of this campaign, based on when the trials are scheduled, he could be found guilty.

He could be heading to prison, technically, in the middle of the campaign.

So how can you not cover it this way?

How can you not hear from every voice?

And my issue, I'm glad you raised it, is that the people who are supposed to keep us sane, the people who are supposed to tell us the truth and interpret what's happening, has lost all credibility, all trust.

And it shouldn't be that way.

And I'm going to say something that's heretical.

I need the New York Times.

I need the Washington Post.

I need the Wall Street Journal because they're the ones who will say, wait a minute, Mr.

Former President, what you say is not true.

But if the public won't believe your reporting, if they won't believe either what you say, how you say it, or what you choose to say, then we really are screwed.

And that's the source of this, and you can hear it in my voice.

That's the source of this angst.

That's the source of this frustration is that there's no way to bring accountability into this election because the people who are supposed to do it, the FBI, the intelligence, the Justice Department, everything has been politicized and polarized.

And I'm using screwed because I don't want to use the F-word on the radio.

You can use the F-word.

It's not the radio.

You can use the F-word.

So according to Quinnipiak University poll, nearly half of all Americans would consider voting for a third party.

You brought that in.

You did focus groups with some of them.

Why don't we see those numbers supported in actual elections?

I was thinking this yesterday.

I was like, there just kind of has to be a third party now, you know, especially among disaffected Republicans at least, and maybe some Democrats.

Can you talk a little bit about that happening, whether it's no labels or whoever?

What kind of impact does that have?

I think no labels could have a significant impact, but the key is that it's not another party.

It's not, it cannot be political.

It cannot be bipartisan.

It has to be nonpartisan.

It cannot be the best of the Democrats, the best of the Republicans.

It has to get around all that.

Because if it's political, then it's part of the same thing that the public is saying enough.

And in fact, if you ask me, what is the one word that describes how the most Americans feel right now about our politics, about the election, about a system of government?

It's enough with an exclamation point.

And no labels has the opportunity to whichever Kenneth ends up running at Joe Manchin.

Joe Manchin's perfect, but he's not the only one.

Maybe John Sununu from New Hampshire, maybe Tulsi Gabbert from Hawaii, even a Mark Cuban, even a business person, but it's not bipartisanship.

It's non-partisan, non-political, non-traditional.

It's someone who truly comes from outside the system, has the experience that would enable them to do the job because the thing after not being political, they want results.

By the way, it's not getting things done.

Getting things done is the process.

They want actual results.

And the third value that we're looking for is the truth.

This person better not be political, better not have been shown to say one thing and do another.

If you can show accountability, results, and the truth, you're credible.

Frank, I had one question on polling regarding no labels and just third-party candidates in general.

I feel like there is a very

intense

attachment to the sender right, you know, low taxes, but keep, you know, keep abortion rights, this hypothetical candidate when we talk about it, right?

And I think this shows up in polling like at a time like now, right?

It's August 2023.

This we're talking about polling an election that's

16 or 14 months away.

Do you feel like there is any sign in kind of polling that people might like that sort of candidate theoretically, but then like when they actually go to vote, you know, they're just like driven by partisanship.

And it's like, sure, they could be, you know, a Wall Street Republican, but they vote for Trump anyway.

Or this is our choice.

We got, I'd like something other than Coke and Pepsi, but I guess that's what I have to pick, right?

I'm wondering whether polling is overstating these people's appeal.

Absolutely not.

This is different.

You have a president who is 80 years old who's asking for support for when he's 86 years old.

You have another candidate who's asking support when the guy is being indicted, seems like every week for another crime.

And the public is looking at both these candidates and saying, no,

both of you, go away, give us something different.

I work for Ross Perot, so I've been through this on a personal level back in 1992.

And Ross Perot ended up with 19% of the vote, and he was certifiably crazy.

Think of what has happened since 1992.

How much more negative we are, how much less optimistic we are, how much that we believe that the two-party system is broken.

It's not working for people because nothing that they're looking for is getting done.

And both sides demonize each other.

If Ross Perot can get 19% of the vote, and as I say this, I'm so emotional that I'm actually spitting all over my computer.

If Ross Perot can get 19%,

an independent candidate can get at least 25%, even 30%.

Can they win?

I don't think so, but you cannot count them out.

Can't them out.

Okay.

When you talk about that, it's kind of, it's one of the things that tends to happen is that, and our history, we've had this happen.

Parties change, that there are, there have been several different shifts.

Do you imagine this is one of those times?

And how does it actually come about?

Because, you know, in the case of you are sort of comparing Donald Trump with.

Biden.

He has passed some significant legislation compared to most presidents, by the way.

It doesn't seem to sink in with people or he doesn't get credit for it.

Inflation is now at 3%.

You know what I mean?

Things have calmed down considerably.

He's not going to get it because of the age thing, pretty much.

That's the big wrap on him, correct?

Is his age, not his that they don't like him or that they don't think he's effective, correct?

Or am I wrong about that?

But Donald Trump also has a significant set.

He brought our attention to China, which no previous president, Republican or Democrat, had done.

He addressed the issue issue of economic development.

We were having quarter after quarter after quarter of serious, significant economic growth.

The unemployment rate under Trump, they said it could never get that low, and it did.

So Trump himself can point to this.

The reason why they don't.

But he doesn't.

He spends a lot of time talking about election fraud.

Exactly.

So instead of focusing on, okay, I did this.

This is step one.

Let's now focus on the future.

He's so trapped in 2020 that not only do I think that he would lose if he's the Republican nominee, I think he would bring the entire Republican Party down with him.

The American people don't want to look backward.

It's part of what makes us uniquely American.

We're focused on the future, and he's creating this sense of resentment and revenge.

that also wasn't really a part of our culture and it's now become that way.

And that's my criticism.

That's my focus.

So you just said you don't think he could win.

I have have to tell you, several of my Trumpy relatives are tired of him.

They really are.

And they weren't before.

They absolutely weren't.

They're like, I think he might be guilty.

Like they are, it's getting through.

I know you don't think it is, but I think it is with not the craz, not the ones that go and buy all the hats.

That's a different group that's never going to change.

But the ones that were like, I liked his tax thing.

I like, I like the China thing.

I like this.

They're all like, what a fucking loudmouth.

pain in the ass.

And I think he's probably a criminal.

And they, that's what they think.

Now, I don't know who they're going to vote for.

I don't think they'll vote for him.

i don't think they'll vote for anybody actually

is what i and that's why joe manchin suddenly becomes a viable option but i need they would vote for him so i'm glad that you raised this because i've been unable to present this on cable news those who want to sink donald trump aren't doing it the right way if you insult his supporters they will never leave him if you demonize the good stuff They won't hear the bad stuff.

I keep saying to anyone who will listen, if you want to indict him for criminal behavior, don't give him five days to define what that indictment is about.

He doesn't play by the same rules.

He doesn't act the way any other candidate acts.

So you have to understand that.

And

it's not about killing him with kindness,

but demonizing is not going to get you where you want to go.

Which, although Biden's been quiet, hasn't he?

He has been quiet.

He hasn't gone on the offensive against him on that at all.

I haven't heard a word.

I haven't heard a word from him about this indictment at all.

He's on the beach.

He's riding his bike around.

That's my impression.

He's nervous because of what is happening with Hunter Biden.

With Hunter, right.

And it's,

I just think that we've weaponized politics

to a degree that and I recognize we did the same thing 150 years ago.

The campaign against Grover Cleveland in 1892 was vicious.

The campaign against Thomas Jefferson in 1800 was vicious.

But

we didn't have social media.

Well, Joe Biden remembers it all.

We did not have social media.

Trump is three years younger, but go ahead, keep going.

But he acts so much younger.

He's still old.

We didn't have social media.

We didn't have AI.

We didn't have the ability to only collect news from one perspective.

And I think that it's just making everything so much worse.

Do you get the sense, Frank, that

any regular Americans are able to

recall or frankly just string together a couple of sentences about kind of the

legal fraucus that Trump finds himself in right now?

And I ask that because I think

as a news consumer, I'm like somewhat concerned that just the cacophony of different Trump-related legal scandals right now, there's now three indictments.

There could be a fourth indictment coming out of Georgia right now.

You know, legal stories in general are like difficult to follow, right?

Filing, motion to dismiss, you know, maybe it's going to go to a different judge, a different courtroom.

You know, there's going to be like four overlapping stories at the exact same time.

And I know that like to the average, you know, news consumer, they might just be generally aware that like, oh, Trump is in legal trouble, period.

And like the details don't really matter.

But I also wonder if that could be bad for democracy, that if there could be a sense that like all of this just sort of merges into one like general details don't matter, deep state out to get Trump, like that it's not actually persuading people because there's too, almost too many indictments and too much chaos.

And maybe that works to Trump's advantage.

And it's hard as journalists to like write about these things in a digestible way because there's almost too much happening.

And I wonder if Trump can take advantage of that.

Well, first, I always target my language to everyday ordinary Americans.

I don't call them normal Americans.

I don't call them regular Americans because that's pejorative and that's harmful.

If they're everyday ordinary Americans, that's you and me.

By the way, this stuff does matter.

So the listener will not be able to see that

how I'm looking or how you look and what you say, but it does matter.

Second is that the key has to be to clarify.

So that

you're trying to simplify something that's very complicated.

And third, you can't be shown to having having a point of view.

You can present the evidence.

You can present the facts, which is actually more important than the evidence, and do so and lay it out.

First, second, third, fourth, fifth.

Frankly, the newspapers have an advantage the first time in modern in the last 10 years because they can actually print it and people can see point one, point two, point three, all 10 points.

But I've been looking and they're not doing it.

Everything,

you mean, you mean print the indictment, you mean, actually, themselves.

Actually, or or explain it, clarify it.

Explain it point by point by point.

What enumerate one, two, three, four, five.

That's not true.

The Times did it, and so did the Post just soon.

But they have to keep on doing it.

By the way,

one time,

and then you have all the criticism of it day after day after day.

One time doesn't do it.

It has to be some sort of repetition.

It is not being communicated in a way that people hear it, and therefore it it will fail.

You don't have a choice here.

If you want the public to be fully informed and understand what's at stake, you have to communicate in their language, using their words, using the method that they receive it, not yours, not mine, just theirs.

Okay.

I have one more question.

You were talking about social media and AI and chat GPT.

What impact do you think it's going to have?

What is the most important element from the tech point of view?

Is it the tech billionaires giving money?

Is it the social media?

Is it Twitter?

I think Twitter's sort of fallen on harder times than that.

I don't think it's as relevant as it was.

Who do you think is the big decider here, the most influential part of the system right now?

And I actually don't look at it that way.

Okay.

I'm in a relentless pursuit of the truth, wherever it may take me, which means that I criticize people who I used to support.

It means I support those who I once criticized.

People will not know the truth with the combination of social media and AI and the way that everything is changing.

You were at an event I was at.

You heard my voice on the screen and they played something I did not believe.

And it sounded like my voice.

I had people standing around me saying, did you say that?

Obviously, I hadn't.

The truth is in jeopardy.

The truth, the facts.

And

that is the warning that I give everyone listening, that you're not going to be able to know what is fact and what is fiction unless we figure out some way.

And I'll acknowledge something to you.

I have talked to representatives, senators, and congressmen that they have to get this under control, that they cannot just say it's freedom of speech, cannot be regulated, because if we, if we let.

You're talking my language, Frank.

You know, I've been doing it for a decade.

Yes, and you, and

actually,

your ideas and your philosophy behind it, with my language and messaging, we might actually save democracy because, and I think

I'm serious.

I'm serious about this.

I think that this could be the last election that we have as a country if we don't get our act together.

Whoa.

All right.

So, your prediction, I was going to say what happened in 2015.

Last election is your prediction.

It's not my prediction, but I'm saying that just as the experts say that there's a 15% chance that AI could destroy the world, well, there's a 15% chance that it could destroy American democracy.

And it's not just happening here.

It's happening in other countries across the globe.

Democracy is under attack, and we need to find some ways to ensure that it survives and thrives.

All right.

I'm going to make you end on.

What is that thing we need to do?

Legislation?

Is it what?

Because it's quite powerful.

You know, I have great concerns about it.

There has to be legislation that

you cannot tell people that the vaccines are unsafe when it's a lie.

This is affecting how we think about health.

It's affecting our behavior.

And this is just the beginning.

What happens in the next pandemic?

And because of AI,

these narratives that are simply false are spread throughout the population.

What are we going to do?

What are we going to do when we have an economic meltdown and AI starts to blame certain people?

It starts to make accusations that are simply factually untrue.

I'm on the side, at least, let's make sure that our children are not poisoned.

Let's make sure that young people, that we have some sort of controls in social media so that a 10-year-old or 12-year-old is not being fed information that causes her to believe that she's fat, that causes her to want to take drugs, that causes her to behave in a way that's damaging to her.

The young women and young men in this country, they can't defend themselves.

They're 10, 12 years old.

They don't know the difference.

Let's at least start with legislation to affect young people, and then we'll deal with the adults later.

Well, Frank, optimistic as always.

I don't know what to say.

Give me one optimistic thing.

You have to.

I'm sorry.

I'm going to make you.

Okay.

The Baltimore Orioles were my baseball team when I was a kid.

I have left them over the last 20, 25 years to support other teams.

My sense of optimism is if the Baltimore Orioles can actually have a winning season, then America can survive.

Okay.

I'm going to leave it at that.

Frank, as usual, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

It's my honor.

Well, Teddy,

that was a dose of sunshine and daffodils.

Swisher Luntz 2028.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know.

He's changed quite a bit, let's just say.

Yeah.

I mean,

you know, he said, combine your technical know-how with his messaging ability.

Yeah.

Mr.

Contract with America feels a little liberal, more liberal than you.

Sure, sure, sure.

Interesting.

Anyway, I think he's 100% right about Ukraine.

It's an existential issue.

The Russians are really thugs.

Anyway, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Teddy, let's hear some wins and fails.

Why don't you go first?

Sure.

Let's do.

Can we start with a win?

Yes, please.

You can start with whatever you want.

You're such a positive fella.

Let's do Sean Hannity.

A win.

Sean, no,

rare positive mention for our friend Sean.

I think that this debate.

I'm not that you call everyone your friend.

None of these people are my friends.

Friend of Pivot, Sean Hannity.

He's welcome to come on.

Yeah,

I feel like this debate with Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis is going to make Sean Hannity relevant in

the world of Washington.

I think he's Gavin Newsom.

Sure.

I mean, it was a little bit of,

it was a little flirty, that interview.

A little, because Gavin

is a handsome man, let's just say.

And I was like, Does Sean Hannity have a little man crush on this guy?

I think he does.

So Hannity obviously is like,

when's the last time we thought about Sean Hannity?

In the Tucker Carlson era of Fox, where this was the dominant personality, like Hannity just was not relevant at all.

And for the first time, people are talking about Sean Hannity, which if you're Sean Hannity or you're Sean Hannity's friends or agents, like you're just happy to be talked about.

It really does, it really does seem like that debate.

is happening, right?

I mean, both are now arguing.

You know, when Hannity's not such a giant asshole, he's not a bad interviewer, honestly, when he's not just sucking up.

Yeah,

I hate to say it, but when he does a good job, he does a good job.

Like he's not bad and he has good.

He just, what he lets is when Trump does an interview, lets everything slide.

That's all.

And then you're like, come on.

And you can, you can see it in his head.

Like, I really need to say something, but I'm not going to because I really enjoy the suckuppery.

But, but I thought the Gavin Newsom interview was actually quite good.

I think they, I think they both, I thought it was well done, actually, in that case.

And I thought Gavin gave as good as he got in that situation.

So what do you think is going to happen?

I mean, They should do a cage match.

That would be sure, sure.

I was like, Yeah, I was going to say, what do you think is likelier to happen?

Oh, my God.

Gavin would kick his ass.

No, what's likely to happen?

The Newsom DeSantis debate or the Elon

Cork fight.

All right, so when?

I should be some sort of parlay bet here.

Okay, I accept your win.

Go ahead.

Okay, sure.

My fail.

Yeah.

So I just got back from Switzerland, Kara, and I'm going to say my fail is the American train system.

I was just, I was just in Europe, and I know, I know this is not

so good.

It is, it is, it is amazing.

Like, I have so many stories of like our train is running two minutes late, and there's like a bus and a boat, and everyone is coordinated, and it's this beautiful, beautiful symphony where, you know, the boat will take you right on time to the gondola, to the vernicular train.

And, you know, I know, I know that I'm getting, I'm getting emotional here, but

it made me realize why can't we have nice things in the United States where in the US, it's like your train is running late, you know, see it, see you in three days when you're stranded in, you know, at Penn Station.

Like the Swiss, it's just,

it was really beautiful just to see the entire way that like the transit system of the United States could work.

But meanwhile, like, you know, I mean, the infrastructure bill that was passed by, you know, Democrats, like it's pretty much centered on roads, right?

It's centered on highways.

It's centered on cars.

I don't think we can like blow up the U.S.

train system and start over from scratch, but being in this, in the land of the, of the mountain train made me realize, like, which made me wonder why can't we have nice things?

My win is an astonishing piece by Jen Sr., who's one of my favorite writers of The Atlantic.

It's a story about her aunt.

It says, the ones we sent away, it's a remarkable story about an aunt of hers, her mother's sister, who, you know, you read this about someone like Rose Kennedy or something like that, but about Americans at some point during the past century, sequestered, I'm reading from the name, sequestered from public views, warehouse disappeared, roughly shorn from the family tree.

And her aunt, Adele, was institutionalized when she was

a young child in the 1950s.

And the advice they would give to parents, and now today they are not.

They are mainstreamed into education and they improve quite a bit.

And so then she went and visited someone who was like her aunt.

And this kid is thriving at home and with a very dedicated parent,

mother.

especially.

And I just found this piece to be really pertinent about the way we warehoused people.

And I think upcoming with all the problems we have around the elderly and where to put people,

how we deal with care,

speaking of truly American.

tragedy and a lot of fails in a lot of ways too, was really, it's worth your reading.

It had so much pertinent today.

And on my fail, I mean, it's very briefly,

the Times is reporting on Clarence Thomas, speaking of billionaires, undisclosed lists.

And this latest, one of his friends, this looks like a friend of his, Anthony Welters, former executive at United Health Care, who sold his company, which was called Something Else.

He bought him his RV, essentially, and it looks like he probably didn't pay off the loan.

I don't know, allegedly,

because he wouldn't say whether he paid it or forgave it.

He said it was satisfied, which means it wasn't paid off, probably.

So, you know, it's just more stuff: tuition help for family members, travel on private jets and yachts.

And I know, like, all these justices, but no one does the grifting like Clarence Thomas.

I think it's a systemic problem.

It should be much more transparent.

Republicans obviously won't budge, but

it's an ongoing embarrassment.

This guy was pretending he's in his, it's like a luxury RV.

It's not like a regular guy RV.

I've been in a regular RV, I had an regular guy RV, but

it was like a hotel on wheels.

It's a four seasons on wheels.

Reading about that story made me very fascinated.

This entire kind of like RV

cottage industry where there's, you know, all these like conventions and clubs and like high.

But there's regular ones, but these are high.

right sure sure sure i mean i'm i'm obviously familiar with like an rv park right which is a right you know rv club for for normal for normal people but that there's this entire you know rv has to cost you know seven figures or more and there's this entire little high-end uh stratification even within the rv industry i had no idea that existed so clearance thomas really needs to stop anyway we want to hear from you the listeners send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Again, Teddy, that's the show.

Explain where people can find you.

Sure.

We are at Puck News, and I write a weekly email for people who are interested in the world of tech wealth and philanthropy and politics.

It's called The Stratosphere, and anybody who's listening should subscribe to Puck.

Yes, they should.

And actually, there's a lot of money in tech, I understand.

We'll see.

Allegedly, allegedly.

Allegedly, allegedly.

Anyway, we'll be back on Friday for more Scott-Free August.

We've got more fantastic guests.

I will read us out.

Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Travis Larchuk, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Endritot engineered this episode.

Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back later this week with another breakdown of all things tech and business.