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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Quibby.

Quibby, you are Quibby.

Yes, we will talk to you about that.

My condolences on CNN Plue and its untimely death, although not really untimely.

I just, let me give it, give us the rundown here.

We got to get to Twitter because obviously Elon's about to take it over.

But tell us what will happen to your, what's going to happen from the inside, what occurs.

Give us the lowdown.

Well, I'll try and give you the cliff notes.

Big picture, the thing, the tail wagging the entire dog of streaming right now is since I signed my deal in August, Netflix has gone from being worth $300 billion to $100 billion.

So when Netflix goes down 70%,

the entire, you know, when Netflix sneezes, the entire streaming market

catches pneumonia.

And if you look at it this way,

Netflix gives you $2 billion of content for every dollar a month, which means that even at three bucks a month, CNN Plus was supposed to show up with $6 billion in content.

They spent $300 million.

So they literally showed up with a square gun to a howitzer fight.

It was kind of over before it began.

And we even alluded to that.

The thing that was shocking is, you know, as Dev Seidman says, it's not what you do, it's how you do it.

Yeah.

There's some real, like what I'd call fairly serious

little dick energy here.

And that is Discovery's Discovery or CNN waved the middle finger, as far as I can tell, at Discovery and said, we're launching this with or without your permission two weeks before you take us over.

And then two weeks after Discovery showed up, they basically said, bitch, I'm on top.

And they not only unplugged the thing, they smothered it with a pillow.

I mean, you know how I found out about this?

What?

How?

As I find out about everything from you.

You texted me and said, are you all right?

And of course, I got panicked because I thought something really bad had happened.

No, sorry.

And then I got forwarded the article.

And I think everyone at CNN Plus, I think nobody at Hudson Squares found out about this until it was in the media.

So

I don't understand.

There's some anger and ego here because this is not, from a shareholder standpoint, how you treat people.

The executives, Discovery, CNN, and the talent.

Quite frankly, Kara, we all look really fucking stupid.

Yeah, you do.

Yeah.

Well, he had to cut prices.

Let's get to the actual thing is he has this enormous like the stock is languishing and doing badly since the acquisition right since april 8th or something like that one he had to he promised 55 billion dollars in cuts so had to start or whatever how much three billion dollars in cuts excuse me he's got 55 billion dollars in in um loans and different debt and stuff like that so he's got to cut and he's got to look like he's strong and he's a cutter by the way he's someone who does that over at discovery and so he had to show that he could do it by do something by sacrificing something significant.

Also, Jason Keilar did this, even though it was signaled to him not to, although they make the argument on that side that they did not do that, that they didn't signal to him that heavily in that regard.

There's a big argument over how well it was doing initially and whether it should have been cut this quickly.

But I think he just needed to do a flex on for Wall Street.

Like, I'm in charge.

I can cut things.

Look at what I just did and give him to buy him some breathing space.

And the way he did it, I agree, was kind of, you know, to me, you're in the media.

Oh, well, that's the way it goes kind of thing.

You better suck it up, you know, sister.

But it certainly was pretty abrupt.

It was pretty fascinating how abrupt it was.

But the thing is, a little bit of pushback there.

Most of the money had already been spent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

These anchors aren't Uber drivers.

They're going to get their money.

Yeah, they was part of the deal.

That's what I was going to say.

And the first signal I got was this is clearly ending soon.

Right.

Was all this negative press was coming out, mostly, especially from quote-unquote conservative media, and Discovery wasn't hitting back because they could have said, well, Chris Wallace's interview with Jen Saki today was the number one story in the media.

They could have said, I was getting hundreds of emails saying, why isn't it available in this country?

We had just gone on Roku.

They could have easily started pinging out good news and they didn't.

It's like, oh my gosh.

Our parents are not our allies.

They're the enemy.

There was even rumors that Discovery was leaking negative numbers about CNN Plus to create cloud cover to close it down.

And this business is about talent.

If If you're Chris Wallace, do you do a deal with Discovery ever again?

Yeah, well, he has to stay there, right?

He's going to move.

A lot of these people had contracts, just so you know, there are people who are hired and are losing their jobs and have to reapply at CNN if they're available.

And then there are people with contracts that presumably like Audi Cornish, yourself, and others.

I assume they have, I assume she has a contract, that have to be either paid out or

somehow prorated.

I don't really know.

No, they're all going to get paid out, Kara.

That's the thing.

This did not make any, whenever you see something that doesn't make sense, there's anger and ego involved.

And there is anger and ego involved here because you know what they could have done very easily?

Oh, we're going to take Chris Wallace's hit program over to the CNN Core program.

We're going to take Carrie Champion's program over to Turner for Final Four.

They could have figured out a million ways to have peace with honor here.

Instead, this was like Discovery saying, oh, wait, fuck me.

No, fuck you.

No, for sure.

I think they had to show Wall Street that it had, that it could do something like this.

I don't know.

I feel like it was, I agree.

To put it onto the Jason Kylar versus David Zaslov thing is a little bit, but it certainly is.

We're in charge here and our stock is languishing.

And so we need to do something significant.

That to me is what it looked like.

But go ahead.

You have your side.

Okay, but as someone who has run companies, as someone who's been on the board of big public companies,

this isn't how you roll.

This isn't how you treat people.

And I'm not talking about the anchors cashing seven-figure checks.

I'm talking about the gaffer and the sound guy and the editor who read they may not have health insurance.

And also, I do want to be clear: Discovery is being generous with severance, but you call people like five minutes before they read about it in the New York Times.

Well, that is, this is media.

This happens a lot.

This is not a fresh news.

I have anything I've been involved with, this has happened like a zillion times.

This is media.

So I think the league got out ahead of them.

I can't believe people would actually behave or treat other people this way.

I don't, how does, how does Discovery?

You haven't worked for News Corp, have you?

But go ahead.

I guess not.

Yeah, maybe I'm naive to the media world.

Oh, trust me.

We had such a back and forth with the News Corp people who were leaving and such astonishing liars and totally tried to kneecap us and it wasn't helpful at all.

We were going to go quietly because we wanted to leave, but they, you know, I had emails, luckily, that I, that I threatened to do.

Did you see the article in BuzzFeed yesterday?

No,

I didn't.

BuzzFeed put out this really well-researched article saying with a big CNN logo and a big Apple TV Plus logo that said CNN Plus and Apple TV

Plus had just come to an agreement.

Their Apple TV was going to begin distributing a lot of the CNN Plus content.

And it went through every program they were taking and it made a lot of sense, the RBG stuff, the Murdoch stuff.

And then it listed three programs of the weeklies, Tappers, Anderson's, and mine.

And all of a sudden, I'm getting emails from my team saying, wait, we're back in business with Apple TV Plus.

Fortunately, I know someone very senior at Apple TV Plus who confirmed that there was absolutely no talks of any kind.

So we have a hoax published on BuzzFeed.

Nobody at Warner knew anything about it.

And meanwhile, everyone's saying we need less moderation in media.

So there was what looked like a very credible article yesterday saying CNN Plus and Apple TV Plus had come to an agreement.

So the honest answer, you asked me what happens to the content?

Where does it go?

I have no idea, Kara, and nor does any appear anyone else has.

You might as well tell me.

Have they said anything?

Or what's the communication to you?

The communication.

Toss them under the bus, Scott.

Go ahead.

No, the communication from all the people at Warner has been nothing but gracious,

a little bit embarrassed,

and how can we be helpful?

They couldn't have been nicer.

The only communication I've got is I've heard from three other media companies saying, hey, do you want to talk?

But in terms, I have yet to speak to a person at Discovery.

And everyone else I speak at Warner is sort of like chagrined.

How can we be helpful?

What have you heard?

I don't think anyone at Hudson Yards has been told anything.

And what happened to your team specifically?

Since we're not getting sad at Anderson Cooper, but go ahead.

My team at Prop G Media is fine because we make the majority of our revenue with books, speaking, podcasts, and the other stuff.

So everyone here is just kind of relieved because this was more work than any of us had anticipated.

I think my, my team, our team at Warner is very nervous as they should be because what you're about to see in streaming media is going to be a bloodbath over the next 18 months.

The general cadence of the market or complexion of the market around streaming was as long as you kept growing subscriber base, even if you can ignore the economics, we'll keep taking the value of your firm up.

And then when the lead dog loses 70% of their value, they're like, I mean,

think of this math, and we'll close on this point because I know we got to move on.

There's supposedly going to be somewhere between 220 and 240 billion in investment in original content spent in America or spent across these companies.

Maybe that's a global number, but let's just use American numbers as the denominator, American households.

There's 115 million U.S.

households.

25 or 35 million are either so far right they don't want that profane streaming in their house, or they're so far left they tell everyone, oh, we only read the Atlantic, we don't watch TV.

So call it 80 million households are streamable.

That means that these companies are spending $3,000 per household to send you Euphoria and Bridgerton and Better Call Salt.

That is just not sustainable.

I'm not talking about your cable bill, I'm not talking about your phone bill.

I'm talking about how much Hulu and Netflix and

Amazon Prime are spending just on content

to send you the Marvel.

It was fine when Netscape was alone, but Netscape, excuse me, Netscape was a second.

Netflix was alone.

That said, I think Bill Cohen, who we both agree is really smart,

said that he thinks the run on Netflix is ridiculous given the finances of it and how well, how big it is and how far ahead it is and stuff.

It's a drawdown, that it's oversold.

He's like, this is ridiculous.

No, no, the amount of how the stock's gone down.

He was arguing this is stupid.

The attack on their stock is stupid and it is worth a lot more.

He just did a really interesting thing.

Well,

you could say that about everyone Moderno to PayPal.

I mean, there is literally no shortage of companies down 70% in the last six months.

But this is Netflix is the tail wagging the entire media dog right now.

Specifically, it's shedding 70% of its value.

It's the reality,

it's a basic lesson in economics.

It got overspent.

And what I'm learning and everyone learned is that when certain decisions kind of don't make sense, I don't give them the credit you're giving them in terms of trying to send a signal about how decisive they are.

This was anger and the ego.

I don't think it was a good signal.

I just think I can see them saying it.

They're like this.

Besides the we're in charge here vibe, which I think was interesting, and the sort of underhanded stuff, I think, you know, after the Zucker thing, now remember, Zazlov was very close to Zucker, and the anger at Jason Kylar is very real.

There's no question about that.

But I think

they had to

say something to Wall Street, and this was dramatic.

They look stupid doing it.

And I wouldn't mind saying that to David Zazlo to his face.

It's just the way it was done seems, it seems talent negative.

It seems makes everybody feel nervous.

I know that these deals for the big talent, like Anderson Cooper's, were part of their deal.

They got paid whether they did it or not, right?

It didn't matter.

Again, it was already paid up front.

Right.

So they look, they're just, they just decided to take the most high-profile thing and sacrifice it right there to show that they had, they were in charge here, sir.

And that was not just because they were angry.

It was because of its virtue signaling to Wall Street.

And I still don't think it matters because they are in for a world of trouble because they're not big enough.

And they're well, they got $55 billion in debt.

And they have a shareholder base that's used to a dividend and slow growth.

They've got to shift that shareholder base very quickly.

It's got to sell out of ATT.

And so they've got a transition to shareholder base.

And you've got David Zaslov.

And just so I can cement the fact that I will not be on HBO Max, David Zaslov has moved, he's gone to Hollywood.

He's moved to LA and he's going on Oprah.

You know, when you know an executive is no longer about their company, they're about themselves, when they go on to do an interview on a network that's not theirs.

No, no, it wasn't a network.

It was for a

all-hands.

It was an all-hands.

Yes, she's a friend of his.

But wasn't it broadcast?

I don't know, but it was an all-hands for the company.

Because someone who watched it said it was the weirdest thing they ever saw.

So it was an all-hands.

So that was, I'm sorry you weren't.

Okay, but if you're, if you're, granted, we all got to eat, but if you're an anchor of talent at CNN Plus, you do a deal with Discover.

Yeah, I mean, Discover is interesting.

And he's bought a big estate, and he's definitely doing that.

I just think we'll see.

You know, he's a very good operator.

He cuts costs and everything else.

Clearly.

You know, but that's what he's known for.

Hey, the bottom line is this was the right decision.

It's just, again, how it was done.

I mean, I, wow.

So your stuff, you don't know what's going to happen to your stuff.

So I was literally at university high school doing something on high schools and education on Wednesday, and this happened Thursday morning.

And last week, they put two new producers on my show because of the success and the numbers it was showing.

Yeah, you were doing pretty well.

That's what I said.

And then Thursday, on Wednesday, I found out that we were the most successful weekly program.

And on Thursday, I read the whole network and been applauded.

I felt bad.

Everyone's like, is Scott okay?

I'm like, I'm sure he's fine.

You did a nice thing.

The sex, the sex tweet was good.

Shorts.

Loved every minute over too fast.

And what if I told you, where have you come back to?

Kara Swisher, the only one who can be a home.

Kara Swishir.

I'm back home.

Can I just tell you?

Let me just say, so Scott has been a little bit more.

You can turn my room into an office.

I'm going to.

I'm going to eat.

You know what I was hanging out with last night who loves me?

Ask Amanda Katz?

Jon Stewart, my new best friend.

And I'm just telling you,

in a parking lot, the night he was being feded, he was like intensely talking to me.

I was like, you need to go into your party.

Let me just say, you better come home or else.

Have you been watching his program?

I really like it.

I don't like his program.

I don't like it.

I don't like Kim.

He and I have talked about it a lot.

We're going to have lunch.

Very educational.

He's

wonderful.

This event last night for him, Mark Twain.

It was literally, it was Jimmy Kimmel,

who I just had on top to me.

Olivia Munn, Bruce Springsteen sang.

Like, I was four, seven feet away from him singing Born to Run, an acoustic version.

Dave Chappelle was there, Pete Davidson, Kim Cardin.

It was so much fun.

And I got to say, Jon Stewart and Samantha B,

Stephen Colbert had to call in because he had COVID.

Let me just say, Jon Stewart gave one of the best speeches I've seen and so funny and so trenchant.

Is that the word?

Really amazing.

I have to say,

even though he sort of tried to retire and wonderful family, the whole thing was amazing.

But let me just say he has a lot to say still.

And I'm trying trying to get him to realize how, you know, there's a lot of stories recently that have been using an interview I did with him to say they called me casually insulting.

I was not being insulting in that piece.

I was asking him what he's doing.

And I wanted to have a good debate with him about it.

And it was turned into an Atlantic story, which was about whether he was relevant or not, because I asked him directly if he thought he was and what he was doing.

And my criticism of the show, I was meaning to say, this guy still has it.

And

I want to know what he's doing.

And instead, it was like, is he washed up?

Which I think is bullshit.

He's not.

Let me tell you.

He's time with his family.

I mean, he created the amount of people he created and created a genre.

Let me just say, as someone who's mentored a lot of people, this guy still has it.

And he's going to be great.

But I'm sorry.

Are you okay?

Do you need anything?

Do you need any

crackers, saltines?

What I found, so I mean this sincerely.

I was in my high school on Wednesday and I spoke to the leadership class there.

I was in leadership and I said,

someone asked me, what is quote unquote, the secret to your success?

And this is true.

It's rejection.

When I was in high school, I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class president.

I lost all three times.

And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president where I wait for it, lost.

The key to success is your willingness to endure failure and rejection.

And you never know what's going to happen.

You just never know what's going to happen.

So nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems.

So on Wednesday, when they told me my show was the best weekly, it wasn't as good as it seemed.

And on Thursday, when the thing got unplugged, guess what?

It's not as bad as it seemed.

So,

And I'm blessed because TV was something I did, but it wasn't what I do.

You know, it's just like, it's like 5%.

It was 5% of my income.

Now it's 0%.

And it was 20% of my time.

Yeah.

Well, now you're back and you understand where you're going to have a big hit TV show is with me.

I'm sorry to tell you.

There you go.

I hate to tell you, but you're stuck with me.

And you're stuck with our lovely pivot team.

This is where.

This is wrong.

I don't want to be right, Carol.

Wrong, I don't want to be right.

You went off with your date.

I'm trying to get.

That's not the thing.

You can't.

You can't do it for the third time.

Guess what?

Now you know.

Come on.

Come on.

You're going to have to come home and you're going to see what's going to happen.

You need to trust me on this.

You need to trust me.

By the way, people were also worried if you were upset about Elon, which we're going to talk about today.

Looks like he's getting Twitter.

Like I said.

Like I said.

You said you didn't know.

I didn't know who I thought he was.

Yes, I was also tending towards Bill Cohen's argument.

You said no way.

And I said, way.

You were tending.

You were tending.

I've written.

I've written him a tender offer.

I said, I don't know how he couldn't win.

That's what I said.

All right, Scott, you know, you're going to have to dry your CNN plus tears now.

Are you done?

Are we done?

Hold me.

Hold me.

No, we're going to move on.

Although, you know what?

You are.

It's so funny.

The first message I get, and I always get my bad news from you, you're like, are you okay?

Well, I want to say that.

I am such the needy little sister in this relationship.

I'm worried.

I felt like, oh, no, he really liked doing this.

Oh, my big brother knows something bad happened.

I'm like, daddy.

You had done some very nice work.

I thought it was ridiculous that they didn't have a plan with all the good stuff, cutting some of the stuff.

I'm not sure Jake Tapper's book thing should continue.

That's my feeling on that one.

So was public access television at Wilkestone.

Right, exactly.

But I thought your show was quite good.

And I thought, why didn't they do something about it?

In any case, you're back home.

It's an office.

You've turned it into a gym.

Dad,

where's my snoopy bedspread?

It's gone, gone.

No, we're staying here.

We're waiting for you to come back.

We knew you were going to, in any case.

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

All right, Scott, if we sound a little different, it's because we're re-recording this later in the day because things happened and we had a whole taping.

And then our fans were clamoring for our thoughts right now because Elon actually did get a hold of Twitter.

Scott, where are you right now?

You know, I'm in a car from the airport and I'm basking in the wonderful notion of Kara that that finally I get to express myself.

Finally, Kara.

Finally, I get to be the real me on the less moderated Twitter.

Thank God.

You're welcome, girl.

Here it comes.

All right.

So let me start.

We're updating this segment because just a few hours after we wrap today, and by the way, it was a very entertaining back and forth.

Twitter agreed to sell itself to Elon for $54.20 a share.

Weed a clock in a deal worth about $44 billion.

It's actually happening.

The deal was unanimously approved by Twitter's board.

It's expected to close this year, pending a vote of Twitter's shareholders and some regulatory approvals.

It doesn't look like he'll face any challenge from the Justice Department or the FTC,

but we'll see what happens.

Now, Scott, you did not think this would happen.

I did, and Bill Cohen definitely did.

So you had talked a while ago.

I'm going to give you credit that Twitter was going to be in play.

You just didn't think this was the one that would land.

So explain what you think now.

Well, in a word, Kara, this is stunning.

This is just to give you a sense of the scale here, I mean, first I want to acknowledge me and other naysayers said there was no way he'd raise the money.

He did, that there would be another suitor that would give the board cloud cover to reject the offer.

There wasn't.

I mean, Bill Cohen and you

called this perfectly.

And every time I mention the words Elon and Musk, I've gotten it wrong here, but just a sense of the scale here.

Everybody, I think, rightfully was concerned about Bezos buying an influential media property, the Washington Post.

He purchased that for $250

million.

Elon Musk is spending 180 times more money to buy Twitter.

This is his, effectively, he is financing the deal.

There's $13 a billion of debt.

$33 billion is really his.

Some of it is margin loans against stock.

Some of it's just...

cash he's putting in.

But effectively, this is the largest individual contribution to a leveraged buyout in history.

There's just no getting around it.

This is stunning.

This is a big deal.

It is.

And it's also a big deal in terms of taking Twitter private, which is something you've talked about.

Many people have talked about that it can only operate in private.

You had thought other, what were the other players you thought were going to buy it?

I thought Salesforce would use it as a CRM platform and that Mark Benioff's reputation for being a solid citizen, would he be able to thread the needle around moderation?

They'd already expressed an interest in it.

I didn't think it would be bought, though.

I thought that somebody would show up with enough shares to force change at what appeared to be a fairly encephalitic board.

I would agree with Elon there,

and implement greater moderation, go 180 from what he suggested, much greater moderation, much more curated, much more edited.

And also, most importantly, move the business model away from advertising to subscription.

That's what I thought was going to happen.

But in terms of the bite size, now is so big that there's really only a handful of companies that can take a private and LBO firms can't care because the company is not really LBO in the traditional sense because it doesn't have enough EBITDA to support a lot of debt, as is the above.

Elon's really coming in with 33 billion of his own money.

A loan, alone, a lot of it's a loan from banks.

So we'll get to that in a minute.

We'll also get to Jeff Bezos in a minute because he had something to say.

But first, former President Donald Trump says he won't go back on Twitter and told Fox News that he instead joined True Social over the next seven days.

I don't believe him.

And I wrote a column saying Elon will let him back on.

Elon protested when Twitter threw him off.

So he will certainly let him back on if he wants to be.

And I don't think Trump can resist.

But what do you think it means for all the other banned accounts, like what is it, Babylon B, a whole bunch of them that irked Elon for a little?

Well, as it relates to Donald Trump, I think Kai Rusdahl summarized it perfectly, and that is regarding his comments, he's not going back on.

Take the under on that one.

I think it's a neck-and-neck neck horse race between who is more desperate to be in the news.

And I think Trump will absolutely go back on the platform.

And

you've predicted that.

The question I think anyway.

Anyway, without Elon, without Elon.

Regardless, right.

The issue that Elon is going to face, every person from the CEO of Reddit to Dick Costello at Twitter to...

Alex O'Han, I mean, everyone who has dealt with this has the same thing.

These are really difficult problems to deal with.

And Twitter has spent a lot of time trying to figure it out.

I don't think they've gotten it right, but their employees believe they have figured out a way to thread the needle around very, very difficult problems.

And I would speculate that sooner rather than later, he's going to find out what all of us have encountered or what I've encountered when I go onto the words of companies.

And that is, I am not as smart as I thought, and they're not as dumb as I hoped.

I think he's going to run up against the same shit they've run up against.

And I don't know.

I don't know what he wants to say on Twitter that he hasn't been able to say already.

I I don't, I just have to say that.

Well, here's the thing.

So he did make a speech, a little bit of a statement about free speech, of course, when he bought it.

He wants to make sure he calls it a, you know, a public square, which I don't think it is, but go ahead.

You can make that argument.

It's a reasonable argument.

Elon wants to make sure you stay on the platform, Scott.

He tweeted, I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means.

You might want to delete some of your DMs unless you want Elon reading them.

I'm teasing.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Twitter DMs are not encrypted, which means future Elon employee employee can have access to them.

And I'm a little worried about the security, honestly.

You know, I don't know why I didn't worry with the previous administration, but I definitely would think about it.

Well,

let's do the bull case here because these are big boys and girls.

The shareholders are getting a decent premium to where it was trading just a short while ago.

And the investors are grown-ups.

So I think that at least for the first six months, I think users, people in the media, investors owe him the benefit of the doubt.

And here's the bull case.

And the bull case is that a fraction of that brain around product innovation, if focused here, could unlock tremendous value.

I think it's just naive not to think that that's not a possibility.

The bear case is that you have media, which is becoming increasingly instrumental in a time when we're becoming more polarized.

And there just don't appear to be any guard rules.

The Washington Post, which everyone is saying, well, what about the Washington Post?

They have an editorial board.

They have 700 journalists who have their own free will and can say no to stuff.

And Twitter has algorithms and likely not a CEO pretty soon and an individual who has vague ideas about free speech and quite frankly, has a reputation for punching down.

So you could make a bull or a bear case here.

Now, the board didn't get to make the bear case because it's not really up to them to make societal calls.

It's them to say, was this?

the best price for shareholders.

And I actually think the board did its job.

They didn't play games.

They said, look, the majority of the the shareholders want to do this.

It's up to the new owners what they do with the company after they own it.

Okay.

So here's the next thing is employees.

You're talking about this.

At most companies, Elon, you join people knowing they're working for Elon Musk.

He's obviously hired some very good CEOs at his other companies.

He doesn't, he's not the CEO of, well, he's the CEO of those companies, but he has very strong number twos in various places.

A lot of people might join because it's Elon.

Existing Twitter employees probably didn't like getting bashed by him.

They don't know what's going to happen to their stock.

They, you know, there's a lot of issues in a private company where you don't get compensated in the same way.

So what about that?

Well, first thing is, you know, if I were advising them, which I am not, I would say you need to do a charm tour and you need to go

elevate and publicly praise many of the senior leaders there and junior leaders and acknowledge that.

I'm here to learn.

I'm going to try, you know, I want to make this better.

I want to unlock the potential that we all agree is here.

I think it becomes in guns blazing.

I think a lot of people are going to say, you know, maybe I'll give it 90 days to see if there's some there there.

But I think he has to really err on the side.

And he's, you got to think that a certain level, he's an outstanding manager.

You can, greatness is in the agency of others, and he's achieved so much greatness at his other firms.

You got to think he has at least some instinctive, instinctual ability to really draw people around.

There's a lot of people who've left.

There's a lot of people who've left there.

He obviously has those issues in some of the plants.

Not his direct fault, fault, but certainly he's the CEO around racial issues.

But I think there's been a lot of churn at some of his companies.

At the same time, some people love working for him.

So it's an interesting question.

He's certainly doing well and producing beautiful products.

That is one thing I think.

I'm very, I think he'll be very innovative on the products.

He's a user of the products.

He owns it now.

So he's in a different way than the board that exists.

He's a fan of it.

And so he will have a lot of

interest in that.

And so that I think is a good thing.

Now, one thing, New York Times Emily Flitter pointed out that if Musks failed to replay the loan to Morgan Stanley, the bank could seize and sell Tesla stock as collateral, destabilizing a portion of the stock market.

And the public may have little to no advance warning.

This is a big swing by this guy.

He saw an opportunity, took it, but he, boy, is he putting a lot on the line here.

Well, here's the thing.

And just so I can get attacked even more on Twitter right now.

Please, I would like that.

There's still a non-zero probability this thing doesn't close.

One, the SEC, and I still holding hope that at some point they decide, well, we can't send a signal, that all guidelines are no longer in effect.

They could pop up here.

He has pissed off so many powerful people, Kara.

He's pissed off senators who meet on a regular basis with the SEC.

But the most likely thing that

contaminates or stops the plane from landing here is imagine if Tesla in the next 60 or 90 days or before the close, the stock gets cut in half.

And everyone says, well, that won't happen.

Well, guess what?

It's happened to Netflix in the last 60 days.

If that happens, he's probably not going to want to show up with this much money leveraged against stock that's worth half as much.

So, this is what they're probably negotiating right now, or they've negotiated, is a fairly large breakup fee because for Tesla to go down 50%

is not a lot in the eyes of the market, but it will be increasingly large in the eyes of Elon Musk, who has just borrowed $33 billion or has, I mean, he is levering up here.

This is a bold move.

It is.

He did see an opportunity.

Like, this was an opportunity, whether you is an expensive opportunity for him, but it certainly is a company that most people think should be better than it is as a business.

He has talked about subscriptions.

He has talked about all other ways of making money.

I'm sure advertisers are not going to like a cesspool.

So, and he's talked about not relying on advertisers because then you get to be pushed around by them, whatever they happen to be angry about at any one time.

So, I think it'll be interesting to see how he behaves with the employees and how he,

some parts of me thinks he can't help but gloat, but he's been rather controlled, sort of, except for the Bill Gates thing he did yesterday, which was to publish this picture of Bill Gates and a pregnant emoji guy and make fun of his gut and use the word boner and et cetera.

That was just ridiculous.

He said he was mad because Bill Gates allegedly shorted Tesla and if he was for a climate thing, he wouldn't have done that.

I, you know, honestly, these people are so rich, they probably even know what they're doing.

Yeah, but just okay, listen to what you just said.

And then in the next sentence, an individual now controls

solely with really no guardrails whatsoever, one of the most influential media companies in the world.

I just, it's uncomfortable to think about these two people being the same person as much as the Beavis and Bett butthead Animal House

cohort thinks this is funny.

This company has a lot of influence.

And when you're mocking people's physical appearance, when you're calling,

I just, this is not, are these the values you want to bring to Twitter right now?

So we'll see.

Or does it have influence, Scott?

I don't know.

Look at TikTok is running this laps around this company.

So is Facebook and Instagram.

This company has not been innovative.

So I don't quite, I think it's important to us.

It's important to us, people like us.

Yeah, punching down is not innovation.

That doesn't reflect anything innovative.

I agree.

But I think, look, people's behavior, I think you're going to see more and more, you know, these very wealthy people like Peter Thiel, like Elon Musk, stepping out and being the men they are, whatever they happen to be, and they want it.

They want to be the center of attention.

And in Elon's case, he doesn't care if he's the Tony Stark

villain hero, or he doesn't care that he's brought, brings a lot of attention on himself.

He loves it.

You're going to see this more and more with CEOs.

I don't think it's going to be less than that.

But again, Karen, that's the uncomfortable thing

about what is going on here.

And that is we have two billionaires that started an incredible company, PayPal.

We have two billionaires that are remarkably innovative and just impossible not to admire.

We have two innovators, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who have huge fanboy followings and serve as role models, whether they want to or not, for tens of millions of young people around the world.

And we have two billionaires, one who spent $45 billion

under the auspices of free speech and no moderation.

And we have another billionaire who invented a law firm to put another media company out of business because he didn't like their free speech when they outed him.

So, which is it, guys?

The question isn't whether about free speech or moderation.

The question is: should billionaires be implementing their ayahuasca visions of no moderation and or closing entire media firms down?

That's where we are, right?

Yeah, I know, because they do, they do.

They're very hip.

They're almost like Kevin McCarthy, not quite as bad as Kevin McCarthy.

They say one thing and do another in many cases.

But let me just tell you: speaking of billionaires beefing, Jeff Bezos weighed in, which I was so surprised by because he usually keeps his mouth shut.

Interesting question, he tweeted.

Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?

He's using Elon's phrase.

And then he was tweeting a propos of something.

Tesla's second biggest market in 2021 was China after the U.S.

Chinese battery makers are major suppliers to Tesla's EVs.

After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there almost had no leverage over the platform and that may have just changed.

Wow, that was something.

That's a gauntlet.

I said gauntlet thrown, the last, last duel.

I mean, this is, he's alleging he's a Chinese asset, I think, in some fashion.

It doesn't get more violent amongst white guys that are tech billionaires than that.

Basically,

Bezos, who is hugely respected,

Bezos sits on top of the most trusted organization in the world, just behind the military, the U.S.

military.

He never weighs in on this.

He has some issues, but go ahead.

Yeah, but publicly, he tries, he tries, he demonstrates a lot more discipline than the other side of this coin here.

And he's basically saying, if you let this guy go through,

he's a Chinese asset.

That's what he's saying.

That's what I'm reading.

It doesn't get any meaner in the Augusta Country Club locker room, Kara.

That is,

that is snapping your towel at someone's, that big head and the twins.

and then saying

and then saying your your wife your fourth wife is ugly and you don't make any money it does not get me meaner around the you know over the cob salad i was gob smacked when i read this because bezos never does this and you know i think he was probably mad over the penis jokes that elon tells about his rocket and this is just it's literally

senator ron wyden senator elizabeth warren guess what they they have very tight contacts with the people at physias that try to assess or i forget the name of the agency the international security risks here.

They are very close with the commissioners at the SEC.

You know, at the end of the day, just good business advice, you want to err on the side of taking some shit, showing some grace, and not pissing people off.

You know what most CEOs have in common?

is they've been really good at not pissing people off.

They may not even be the most talented person in the company, but they haven't made any enemies.

And that is not how Elon got there.

And maybe he's the new century, new millennial ceo this guy has a this guy has the worst thing about it is his enemies are not earned he's made enemies really stupidly it hasn't been worth it well though you know you could say bezos is competing with him in space and also for defense department contracts no bezos but this bezos is a worthy enemy i'm talking about why does he turn bill gates into an enemy you think bill gates really appreciated that no that was interesting and then of course he has a beef with mark zuckerberg too he has a beef with a lot of people i've had beefs with him and i i mean they go away but it's a really interesting situation that what's squaring up here is really interesting, these fights.

What about, I think a lot of users that go, I'm leaving now, or certainly like the people who were moving to Canada when Trump left.

I think their issues are business issues away from all this noise.

And there are political issues.

There are regulatory issues coming up, but he's got to get this business going or he's screwed.

He has really.

put himself out there in a way that you got to half of you has to say whoa what a thing to do what an interesting thing and at the same time, be like, oh, man, you're really out on that limb, sir.

That's a limb you're out on kind of thing.

Yeah, but again, shareholders, when you look at businesses, we oftentimes don't really understand what the real lever or what is really going to change the atmospherics here.

And what people don't realize is the thing that will have the most impact over this company, likely in the next 90 to 180 days, is the share price of Tesla.

If Tesla holds or continues to go up and defy gravity, everyone's going to say, you know, Elon, you be Elon, not that we have any choice.

if this stock resumes it does anything similar to any other company in this growthy frothy part and gets cut by 20 30 or 50 percent

as strong as he are as strong as he is as much people love him people are going to start second guessing the out of him he's going to get stressed out and his bankers are just going to go heads up if it goes down another 50 we need you to start selling tesla stock which will send it down another 70 percent so you want to watch what's going to happen to Twitter?

Tell me what's going to happen to Tesla stock over the next 90 to 180 years.

It'll be interesting to see.

By the way, Jack Dorsey's going to make a, if this goes through, he's going to make a billion dollars.

There's a lot of rumors that he's in on it, right?

But he's the individual.

Well, they like each other, right?

They do, indeed.

That's my board.

And Jack's mad at the board.

He was leaving the board.

Maybe he's staying with Elon.

I don't know.

I mean, that would be important.

If he brought Jack back, bringing Jack back is always a good move necessarily for morale.

I think people really do like Jack, including Parig, in in order to keep up with

Parag, Sarah.

Have you heard anything there?

Well, you know, Jack and he were, he was Jack's choice.

I suspect he probably is okay with Elon.

I don't know.

He's going to make

$40 million here.

Maybe he exits stage right and says, I'm going somewhere else.

You know, this is going to be for recruiters.

could be good for some of the people at Twitter.

I actually think Elon would be smart to keep them, at least in the short term.

Yes, 100%.

I would stay.

I just want to see what happens to

us.

Yeah.

Oh, I'd so stay.

But just back to your notion around users, let me be clear.

I don't think anyone, I think other than like the, you know, the junior, you know, the associate editor of Mother Jones trying to make a point with 700 followers, people aren't going to leave the platform.

It's addictive.

For those of us who are on it a lot, we get a lot of joy and a lot of value from it.

I think that's

still not growing.

It's still not growing.

It's still not growing in the way that it needed to, the way that TikTok is, the way in other people are.

But you are growing.

Your growth is enormous.

you turned out me over the weekend you were worried about me you are growing

i am not growing but this is fun for us thank you elon for all the content and bezos we love you but we love you buddy thanks for treating that

finally it can be me cara finally

finally um in any case it is gonna be some melee is what i think but thank you for scott calling in from your car thank you um we we our fans wanted us to comment right away and so we this team by the way you thank the Pivot team for scrambling to get this done.

More to come for sure as the days go by.

Blue check tomorrow.

Blue check on all.

Blue check, baby.

You know it.

We're going to go on a quick break.

We come back.

President Obama will introduce very quick pitches, some fixes for big tech.

We'll speak with friend of Pivot, Kim Kelly, about Amazon's unions, people who deserve more money, which are the average worker at many of these companies.

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Scott, we're back.

Elon's not the only person thinking about free speech in social media.

President Obama spoke of the dangers of that unregulated platforms pose for society in a speech at Stanford.

Here's what he said about fixing the supply and demand of misinformation.

Go ahead.

On the supply side, Tech platforms need to accept that they play a unique role in how we as a people and people around the world are consuming information and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society.

With that power comes accountability.

And in democracies like ours, at least, the need for some democratic oversight.

As citizens, we have to take it upon ourselves to become better consumers of news.

Looking at sources, thinking before we share, and teaching our kids to become critical thinkers who know how to evaluate sources and separate opinion from fact.

So what do you think, Scott?

I'm sorry.

This is, well, I, you know, I had lunch with him talk to talk about this before this speech.

And,

you know, he's just catching up.

Just, it feels like he's just catching up.

So stuff that's, and almost a lot of stuff that's moved on.

I don't know how you feel about this speech.

I just like the fact that he's getting back in the ring.

I guess, yeah.

And I do think that it's a big, important topic.

He is,

you know, it's sort of, I almost feel like, I hope he has the same impact as Francis Hauigan.

Francis Haugen kind of came in and said what we sort of all knew, but she put on a masterclass on how to package it and give it real visibility and real heft.

And I hope he can do the same thing.

around misinformation.

But anyone who's been following this stuff, he's basically just regurgitating shit that's been out there for a while.

Yes, that's what I would say.

Actually, interesting, it was an off-the-record thing, but I can say what I said.

When he said, what should we do?

You know, he was looking for solutions, which was a great idea.

He's so smart, and so,

you know, he's got a really sophisticated idea about this.

I thought he was pretty cozy with tech people back when I criticized him before on this when he was in office.

And I said, You know what?

I think we need a time machine, and we need to go back, and you should do something when you were president.

And so, I don't think he appreciated that particular suggestion.

But that's you being casually insulting, casually insulting, that's right.

But come on, I mean, one of the things is Trump was also very critical of these companies, and we made fun of him, right?

So, but he had had a very different reason.

But, you know, I think these politicians are way behind and they just need to do legislation.

Like, stop with the, with the, with the big speeches.

I, I really have a lot of respect for President Obama,

but I think the speeches

and we should fend for ourselves is, you know, it's sort of like, try not to smoke cigarettes, kids, even though they're addictive.

We'll do nothing about it.

Try not to, try not to eat those Twinkies, or although I don't think that should be legislated.

But I think it's just do some privacy legislation.

Come on, get on that side, get pushing on that stuff.

I don't know.

I'm glad he's here, but I would like to see some significant muscle behind this.

And meanwhile, on the other side, the right-wing halfwit, Ben Shapiro, did I say that out loud, gave us the clearest description yet of the right's new approach to business, speaking of free speech, which businesses have under Citizens United.

Here's what he said last week.

I am the most free market person on the right.

I'm an extraordinarily pro-free market person.

I don't believe that generally the government should crack down on the operations of businesses.

However, if you decide to just become a woke corporation that does the bidding of your Democratic taskmasters, don't be surprised when you get clocked with a legislative two by four.

F around and find out.

F around, and that's what Disney did.

Oh, my

God.

I mean, this is just, okay, the villages, which is this retirement community, which is very conservative.

Should they have a special tax status too?

Should we wait till there's a Democratic governor and revoke their tax status?

It's ridiculous.

Chick-fil-A has very conservative values in terms of their membership.

So does Hobby Lobby.

So does In-N-Out has psalms on their goddamn trays.

And guess what?

I still eat there because I recognize that

business and the capitalist engine, it should march on.

to start going after, to start, I mean, we're literally just politicizing everything.

And what this DeSantis and all these guys are saying is, I don't care about the long-term health of the citizenry I've been charged with protecting.

I'm just going to try and make headlines and throw red meat at my whack job far left or far right voice.

It's just, again,

no, nobody's thinking long-term.

The incentives here have clearly been so perverted.

that everyone is politicizing everything.

And now they're going, and not only that, we brought it on ourselves a little bit.

I think when corporations and CEOs started saying this, bring your full self to work.

And now Exxon is having to decide what flags they fly or don't fly.

You know what?

I do think there's something to the notion of what you do outside of work is your business.

We are here to provide you with economic security for you and your family.

And I don't see anything.

I would be really critical.

IBM was critical to gay rights issues and racial issues way back in the day.

I see that as civil rights.

I think that is a law.

That's not, I don't think of that as even taking a political stand.

That's

equal rights.

That's civil rights.

Not everybody agrees, as you know, because these attacks on trans people right now going on, and

they're seeping over into gay issues.

You know, it's interesting.

Let me just finish on that because I'll get attacked for that.

If you really mean it and it's part of your culture,

okay, fine.

I think so much of this was just virtue signaling.

I think so much of this was putting out black squares on Instagram saying black lives matter when they don't have a black person on their board.

They've invited, they have stuck out their chin, these corporations,

by

wading into waters they weren't really committed to swimming in.

Well, they have to be committed to it, right?

That's the thing.

That's the issue is if they are committed, they should do it.

Like Patagonia doubles the frick down, and that's who they are.

That's what they do.

You know what you're getting into when you go to work for Patagonia.

Or Chick-fil-A or anybody else, right?

This is what they are.

But let me just say, these, these, these Republicans attacking business like this this is so ridiculous and so counterproductive in so many ways.

And DeSantis doing these bills, obviously now they're going to have to pay for Disney.

Disney was paying for itself and now they're going to have to pay for them, which is ridiculous.

I do think you're going to say companies like companies like Citigroup and Yelp have policies in place to pay for out-of-state travel for employees who need abortions.

Corporations do play an important role and should have a say in things.

And so, and they're going to get caught in this anyway.

But what is really offensive is this idea of, you know, when I was listening to that Ben Shapiro thing, I was like, what are you, like, I called him Putin Light.

I'm like, really?

Like, really?

Like, there's one thing to

boycott, or I don't want to use it.

Like, we left Florida for our thing.

It's another thing to pass legislation based on political speech.

It just, it's like, this is bullshit.

This is like ultimately, I can't believe I'm defending companies.

But honestly,

if they're for free speech, you know, Florida district banned dozens of books from its library.

They actually do things.

The left screams a lot, but the right really does things.

They

included a picture book for kids, which Clara loves called Everywhere Babies, which could not be a more innocuous book.

It's insane.

There's one gay couple in it, I think.

That's it.

And it's even like, you know, it's hardly noticeable.

I mean, these people do not like free speech if this is what they decide.

Now, look, Ben Shapiro is making a children's part of his empire.

Good.

He should.

He should sell it.

If you want to buy that, buy it.

Like, good for you.

Like, that's, I'm glad that they're doing that.

And I will not buy it for my children, but, you know, other people can.

And so that's really where you're at.

It's,

you know, it's, they just don't want to compete.

I feel like they feel like communists to me at this point, the Republican Party, I'm like, you know, or something else that it just, it used to pride itself as being business friendly, almost too business friendly.

And they've been to this attack, the gays fair before, and they lost badly.

So, you know, the other guy, Chris Ruffo, who's been, who was the, was did the critical race theory, was warning Disney, I'm going to warn you.

I was like, okay, Anita Bryant, sounds good.

Like, you know, good luck, good luck.

At some point, you're going to over, you're going to overreach, and that's where we're going, I think.

I agree with you.

I think whenever you hear a Republican or especially a Republican podcaster say, I'm, I'm free markets, they're about to say something that's ridiculously non-free markets.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

I'm a capitalist.

The engine of economic growth and the full body contact and violence of competition, you need those fires to burn.

I didn't like the bailouts or a big component of the bailouts because I think they were nothing but cloud cover to keep rich people rich.

You need churn.

And I don't like it when Democrats do it.

And I don't like it when Republicans do it.

And when Republicans do it, it's really, really cynical.

And it's because they've always claimed to be the pro-business part of the party.

So I find all of this,

it really comes back to incentives.

And unfortunately, our elections now, because of hardening through gerrymandering and not ranked choice voting, but basically primaries where it's basically who can out crazy the other person.

And

now everyone's just focused on all of our senior politicians, all senior politicians in Florida right now.

Rubio, Rick Scott, and DeSantis are all just literally staring at a 60-plus white evangelical voter and trying to capture his gaze.

And they're not governing Florida.

They don't care about Disney and taxes and the health of Florida.

They're like, how can I convince this guy with a straw in Iowa that I am fucking batshit crazy?

And I mean, did you know what Rick Scott proposed?

That we're going to

do away with all federal legislation so we shut down all vets hospitals.

The guys in the space station can't communicate.

And they were unprepared for that.

They were unprepared for that.

And they're like, okay.

And they said, but if it's good, we can reinstitute it.

I'm like, are you, have you, are you that far off the deep end where you would actually take a staff of 120 people and all this money that it costs to run

a senator's office and propose legislation that we're going to just shut off the federal government?

And basically, there'll be no air traffic control the next day.

You know who's winning here?

Steve Bannon.

This is his playbook.

Is that right?

Chaos.

Yeah.

Chaos.

Chaos.

And eventually you start to wonder, like,

you know, who, what country are you rooting for at this point?

You know what I mean?

Which is,

I don't know.

It's really, it's, this is, if you look at those things, the idea of destroy, it's also, Peter Thiel has those elements.

Let's get rid of it all.

Like, if you read his stuff, it's down that avenue.

And so, no government is yeah, but let's get rid of it all after I have built well

based on

subsidies of EV charging stations.

Yes.

Or I have hired thousands of engineers.

I work for the Defense Department, or I do this.

Takerist.

It's totally a takerist culture.

Takerist.

All right.

Well, that is a perfect thing to bring in our friend of Pivot.

Kim Kelly is a labor journalist, organizer, and author of Fight Like Hell, The Untold Story of American Labor.

She joins us to discuss the history and current state of the unionization movement in America and what's next for workers and management.

Welcome, Kim Kelly.

Thank you so much for having me.

So there's a lot, we talk about this a lot, and Scott

has a very tough perspective on unions.

Obviously, there's there's a lot of activity going on, and Amazon Distribution Center is voting on unionization as we record this.

Bernie Sanders and AOC both spoke at a rally there over the weekend.

That's across the street from another Staten Island warehouse where Amazon workers voted to unionize earlier this month.

They still have to create a contract and do the very heavy lifting part.

Starbucks workers have voted to unionize across the country, including in Seattle this week, and Apple Store employees in Georgia have filed for a union election.

Apple employees at Grand Central Store in New York City seem to be headed that way, too.

So give us an overview because Scott and I also have felt that the union,

these are victories, but it's still hard going.

So give us an overview from your perspective.

Sure.

I think it's such an exciting moment in American labor.

And I think it's especially exciting for people because, as I'm sure you know, as you alluded to, we've kind of been on the back foot for a little while.

You know, union density is down.

The numbers aren't great.

We're just coming out of an incredibly anti-labor administration.

Like workers have not been having the best time, especially as the pandemic continues, as, you know, the minimum wage continues to be garbage.

Like it's, it's a difficult time to be a worker in America, right?

And I think that what we're seeing, this renewed energy, this renewed interest in organizing, that's a very positive thing.

It's a positive sign of where people's heads are at.

I think workers are starting to really understand the value of their labor and the value of their lives, right?

Because as this pandemic has gone on, we know who's been hit the hardest, who's been hurt the worst, you know, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized.

I think black and brown communities were hit twice as hard as their white counterparts like i think there's been kind of a reimagining of what work is and what it should be and what it could be too and we're seeing these workers at these massive kind of all-encompassing corporations like amazon at starbucks apple now realizing that you know We work for the richest people in the world.

We are struggling.

We are being treated like machines or robots or like we don't matter at all.

There's got to be something we can do.

And there is organizing, unionizing.

And the fact that they've been so successful at Amazon.

The one spot, and it still doesn't have a contract.

Like, I'm just let me just interject.

And then, Scott, I'm sure, has some questions.

Labor unions are generating more headlines, that's for sure.

And I'm not pushing back on the need for it because I do think there's a massive need for it, but it doesn't mean there's more actual support.

Unionization rates, as you know, went down between 2020 and 21, the midst of the pandemic.

Just 10% of workers are union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But a majority of Americans say labor unions have a positive effect on the country, even though you're back on your foot.

And I think that's being kind in terms of its power, because these companies really do have the power right now.

Sure, yeah.

Like you said, the numbers aren't great.

And

we are at a point where

the labor laws are not in our favor.

We're dealing with the plague of right to work.

We're dealing with an NLRB that has been much more interesting and much more aggressive than it has been in recent years.

It still needs more staff.

It still needs more resources.

It needs more legal bite.

But I think things are changing.

I mean, the fact that public support is at, I think, what, 68% is pro-union, that's a big deal.

And really, the thing is that most workers, I would say, in this country, would like to join a union.

It's just very hard for them to do so.

And that's not their fault.

That's due to the laws and the government politicians and

all of this historic red tape that's been thrown up and makes it more difficult to organize.

And honestly, I think that is one of of the reasons why the Amazon victory, first victory, matters so much is because these workers kind of had every odd stacked against them, but they still pulled it off themselves.

They didn't rely on existing infrastructure or resources from other established unions.

Right, which was interesting.

I was talking with an Amazon board member, and they're like, they did it with weed and pizza.

They were fascinated by it.

And so what you're saying, Scott, go ahead.

So nice to meet you.

So I need a preamble here before I bust into my questions.

I've been a member of two different unions.

I was a member of a union when I was a box boy in college at San Vicente Foods.

When I started at NYU as an adjunct professor, I was a member of the AFL-CIO.

I'm not entirely sure how we ended up in that union.

But anyways, I think unions are right, and I think a lot of Americans are in favor of unions, but the numbers are not less than great.

The numbers have been abysmal.

I mean, we've gone from 20% union membership in 1985 to 10%.

We lost a quarter of a million union members in 2021.

And granted, they do the right things.

But haven't unions been sort of the perfect enemy for corporations and right to work in that is they give the illusion they're helping.

And it just feels like this construct of a traditional union is right but not effective, that it's not doing its job.

And

I worry that these small victories are nothing but continued headfakes, that we need a different construct than unions to protect the American worker.

I apologize for the speech.

I'd love to get your response to that.

I don't know how many union workers would agree with you, though, that it doesn't matter, that it's just headlines and whatnot.

Like, if you've ever bargained a union contract or seen what that difference feels like between going from pre-union to post-union, like, that's a big deal.

And also, AFLCO is a unionist federation.

Oh, excuse me, thank you.

What's the difference?

I'm not sure I know.

The AFLCO is a federation of different labor unions around the country.

Right, thank you.

Kind of like an umbrella thing.

Got it.

Hey, I pay my dues.

I pay my dues.

Good.

We need those dues to hire organizers and to give resources to workers trying to organize.

And I think we can't really discount the impact of right to work, too, especially in states where there isn't a strong pro-labor legislator and

there's a great tradition.

a great tradition of people being able to organize.

Like the folks in Alabama that tried to organize their warehouse, they got crushed the first time around.

And, you know, they didn't have that much outside help.

They were trying really hard to do this.

Amazon crushed them.

Amazon was found to have union-busted them in a way that wasn't really legal.

That's why they got their second election.

I mean, it's interesting to hear like kind of not anti-union, but sort of union skeptical things like this, because that's not what I'm hearing from within the movement.

That's not what I'm hearing from workers.

And honestly, I think maybe that matters more, you know, like people,

we can appeen, we can analyze, we can think and talk about what's happening, but what's happening on the shop floor?

What's happening in the warehouses?

So, talk about that, because your book is subtitled The Untold Story of American Labor.

What do we forget about the labor movement?

What lessons should current organizers take as they're moving forward?

Like,

what works?

Because it looks like it's different everywhere.

Is there something that you think will re-energize it?

Besides the skeptical part, we get that.

We get that.

But

Amazon is super aggressive.

Starbucks is, I'm guessing, going to be super aggressive.

Apple, I suspect, will be very aggressive the same way.

And offer workers, oh, we're going to give you this much money.

We're going to give you, you don't need those people to do that.

What is the construct in order to push back at those efforts that they're going to make?

Which is going to be a sort of velvet, you know, iron fist and a velvet glove approach is my guess.

Sure.

What really matters, what has led to the victories and the half victories and all the positive change that we have seen because of the labor movement, because of workers, it's solidarity.

I know that sounds like a bumper sticker, but honestly, building real relationships and community between workers, crossing barriers, crossing over whatever manufactured divide that the boss puts between one another because of

whatever differences there are between you and your coworker.

Like, that is how we win.

That's how we've always won.

That's how they won at Amazon.

They had people who spoke different languages and prepared different kinds of food and met people on a human level, person-to-person, worker-to-worker.

That's how, I mean, there's an example I can think of from 1946 back in the day

in Hawaii, the Great Sugar Strike, when there were a situation where there's these massive sugar cane plantations.

The workers were predominantly Asian immigrants and Native Hawaiians.

The owners were white guys from the mainland.

And when it came time to strike, the workers were in a position where they were separated.

There were different camps for different workers.

Chinese folks were here, Filipino folks were here.

The bosses treated them differently, paid them differently, tried to make them feel as if they had nothing in common.

And the way they won was by coming together and getting translators and building strike kitchens and realizing they had more in common than they did, than they had that separated them.

It's really, it might even sound a little Pollyanna, right?

But crossing over through these divides and realizing that, honestly, it is us against them, the working class against capital, that is an important lesson to learn.

And that is how we have gotten anywhere.

by sticking together, by building collective power, by really sticking to the real principle of solidarity.

That's how we're going to win.

That's the simplest answer.

Like, that's how we do it.

How have, say, these tech companies tried to put differences between people?

I'm assuming giving bigger salaries than, say, a restaurant or something else.

Talk about what they've done that's been effective and maybe something that looks like it's effective, but isn't really for the workers.

Well, just to come back to Amazon, one of their

most fatal flaws that they made was trying straight out the gate to paint Christian Smalls, the president of the independent Amazon labor labor union.

They tried to paint him as inarticulate, as uneducated.

They were being bent to racist classist jerks about it.

And wonder of wonders, that did not resonate with the working class black and brown membership of that union, the workforce at that factory.

They've tried to find a scapegoat and they burst a leader.

This is the kind of thing that companies do because they don't understand what it's like to do those jobs.

They don't understand what it's like to be struggling in that way.

They haven't had to break a sweat in 20 years, probably.

And one of the things they would do at the Besmer warehouse that did unfortunately prove effective because folks maybe didn't have as much of a firm understanding and base in the union tradition because it's so hard to unionize there.

They third-partied the union.

They put out all these flyers, this propaganda saying, oh, this is a New York City union coming down here to Bama to try and take your money and tell you what to do.

And in some ways, that worked.

And it was really unfortunate.

But it was also BS, we'll say.

And we can see how those kinds of divide and conquer tactics, sometimes they work, but if you inoculate against them, if you have something to show for, if it's easier to shut that down, then like it doesn't, it's not as effective.

You know, before Scott gets to the next question, when they did that to Kristen Smalls, I know a lot of, I was like, stop it.

He's fantastic.

I had spent some time talking to him.

And I was like, this is a huge mistake.

He is not, he is so effective.

And we had had him on Twitter spaces a bunch of time.

I talked to him a bit.

And it was really amazing how stupid that was.

I remember saying, this is the stupidest thing.

Like, do not discount this Fagai.

He's really sharp as attack.

Like, literally, how would you not want a leader like that who comes from the community who's like handsome, who's cool, who like doesn't wear a suit?

Like, that's the kind of labor movement I want to be a part of.

I don't care what guys in suits have to say, and a lot of people don't either.

He also was nobody's friend.

Like, you know, he pushed back against AOC and others, too.

He wasn't, that was what I thought was super effective about him.

He was going for the worker.

I thought that was a very interesting, he's a very interesting leader.

Scott, go ahead.

So last administration, very anti-labor.

We'd like to think this administration is very pro-labor.

What would you ask for from the Biden administration that they aren't doing?

Or what are you hoping to get out of the next two and a half years from the Biden administration or hopefully six and a half years?

Assuming they do anything,

they need to pour resources into the NLRB, beef it up, make it tough.

It's just the national labor relationship.

They need staff, they need money, they need support, they need to be able to enforce these contracts and to be there for workers that reach out to them and file elections.

I mean, there's like 200 Starbucks across the country that have filed elections and are going through elections.

Like, that is a lot of staff and a lot of lift.

And they need to, I mean, obviously, raise the minimum wage, raise, like, give people health care, actually, do something about the climate.

It's all like, if you want to be for the workers, do things that help workers instead of like make nice headlines or make the Republicans hate you a little bit less.

You sound disappointed in the administration's efforts to date.

Is that accurate?

Am I reading that accurately?

I would say the one good thing that the administration, well, I don't know that much about it.

I don't really care what the Democrats get up to, right?

But one of the most positive things I've seen from this administration is the pro-labor stance and some of the pro-labor moves.

And the appointment of Jennifer Abruzzo as general counsel to NLRB.

That is a big deal.

That is great.

If they can just keep doing that kind of thing, that will help.

That will get us to close to where we need to be.

They just have to put their money where their mouth is and also go after these tech oligarchs that are trying to grind us all into dust.

I love that.

So talk about the minimum wage.

Scott has a thing where he talks about the ridiculousness of the minimum wage going from 725 to 725.

Well, these oligarchs make a lot of money,

which is

really astonishing.

Talk about what needs to be done there.

It seems like that would be the most important thing government can do.

Tax all the rich people that are oppressing us.

Take their money and give it to the people that made it.

These people that sit in C-suites and issue press releases and play fussy with the government, they're not working.

They are exploiting.

They are benefiting from the labor of the working class.

$7.25 is a joke.

$15 an hour is nothing.

Like, even I'm not an economic expert, but like things cost more.

And Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are fine, whereas workers in the picket line are struggling to pay their bills or buy food at the grocery store.

That is not fair.

Like, the minimum wage should be at least $25 or $30 an hour.

People can't live like this.

And after a certain point, the people at the top that expect to benefit from us and our work and our labor, they're going to find out that, you know, you can only push people so far before they either do something about it or they dip out entirely.

You know?

Scott?

So, first off, word.

I agree with you.

At some point, a comity of man, being American means dignity and work, and inflation is up 30%, the NASDAQ's Quintuppold, CEO, pay is up 7x, and minimum wage has exploded from 725 to 725.

I worry that when we turn it into what feels like a class argument, I mean, you said attacks the people who are exploiting us.

I worry that we lose

allies and that we should make it more of a capitalist argument, that we need to bring people back into the labor.

Allies.

this is class war.

Well, if we position it that way, I think we lose.

Because I'm on your side, but I'm trying to figure out how we position it as a capitalist argument, that we need more people to be drawn back into the labor force, that when we don't pay people a living wage, they end up in the emergency room, they end up with mental health problems, they end up in a vet hospital, that this is just smart economically.

That rather than going after the morality of it, that we go after the economics.

Look, I would say, like, just to build on what you're saying, a union worker is a happier and better paid and healthier worker, right?

That's the worker you want in your workforce, in your factory, in your shop.

Like, it is, it makes good business sense to make sure that workers are healthy and mentally prepared to do their labor.

They're not stressed.

They're not falling apart.

They're not worried about making it home to pick up their child.

Like, it's...

Tormenting and exploiting workers doesn't help anybody.

We should have learned that back in the Gilded Age, but here we are in the sequel.

Yeah, the sequel.

It's interesting.

I know you've got to go.

One of the things I always tell a lot of these people, you've either got to figure this out and soon with cooperative working with workers and paying them what they deserve, or you might as well armor plate your Tesla because that's where it's going.

There's a lot more of us than there are of them.

All right, we'll leave it on that.

This is a book by Kim Kelly.

Her book is called Fight Like Hell.

It sounds like she's going to, The Untold Story of American Labor.

There it is.

Thank you for putting it up.

You can find Kim Kelly on Twitter at Grim Kim.

Is that right?

Grim Kim.

Good for you.

That's a good one.

I like that.

All right.

Thank you, Kim Kelly.

And thank you so much.

Everybody should read this.

A very important topic.

And it is absolutely true.

We have to figure something out here because it's not going to stay the same at all.

And these workers deserve

much more attention in the whole entire stack that happens here rather than just celebrate the tech oligarchs.

And I think that's the perfect name for them.

All right, Kim, thank you so much.

Thanks, Kim.

Nice to meet you.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear some predictions.

Go for it.

What do you got for me?

Besides, you're not going to be on CNN Plus for the future.

I'm definitely off.

I'm two scaramuccias and one quarter of Quibi.

By the way, I want to apologize to everyone at Quibi.

I was like dancing on their grave before it was over, and now I'm getting attacked rightfully for saying that.

Look, I think what you're seeing in the growthy part of the market, I mean, everything from PayPal to, you know, you talked about it to Netflix is all this stuff's off 70%.

The streaming market, the content market is about to get taken to the woodshed.

It's just going to be so fucking ugly.

There's going to be so many layoffs because all of a sudden everyone's figured out spending $3,000 per household to deliver these.

There has never been a better time to have a couch and be into edibles, and the party's over.

You're about to see enormous consolidation and radical cost cutting at the biggest and strongest.

I mean, it'll be everyone, maybe with the exception of Apple TV Plus and Amazon Prime Video, because they have just literally infinitely deposits.

Which might take advantage of the situation.

Yeah, who knows?

They might come in.

And also, I think

Discovery stock with a $55 billion overhang.

Gosh, I think that's going to be an an interesting stock to watch.

And my prediction is comes back to this.

What about Netflix as a possibly being bought?

Boy, would Apple love to pick that up or Amazon?

Well,

I think Google and Facebook would have liked Twitter, but the problem is the logical buyer of Netflix probably can't because of antitrust.

Yeah.

But

I think what you're going to have here, so and I've said this before and I'll double down on it, the current structure of Discovery

does not survive 24 months.

There's just so many great assets, so much debt, a weird shareholder base, and a single class of shares, meaning you can get an activist, and you've got a CEO who's gone Hollywood and has moved to L.A.

This is Bill Cohen's column today.

Is that right?

I haven't read it.

Yeah.

No, I know.

It's like he has that.

He has different thoughts, but he thinks they have a real rough road ahead of them, I would say.

Yeah, and I think they're going to have to find ways to monetize some of these assets and that the disposition of some of these assets will be accretive.

And similar to what happened to Stanky, where Stankey woke up and had too much debt and assets that aren't performing to the expectations of when they bought them, I think Discovery is going to wake up and realize that these assets,

that the whole here is less than the sum of its parts.

There's some amazing assets within this corporate structure.

And anyways,

my prediction is Discovery, enjoy it.

You're the dog that caught the car.

And guess what?

That car's not slowing down and it's going to get away with you.

They're going to have to make some moves other than costcutting here.

And I think you're going to see an activist come in when the stock hits.

Interesting.

All right, but let me just let me make a picture of myself.

Yes.

You don't have Scott Galloway to kick around anymore.

That's right.

And

let me tell people something.

I'm going to make a statement.

That show was terrific.

And you know I insult you when they suck.

I didn't like your other shows.

Thank you for saying that, Carol.

That was really well done, Chuck.

I didn't like every bit of it.

Did I give you pretty good criticism of the parts I didn't like?

Just like I did with Jon Stewart.

You were casually insulting.

Insulting.

Let me me just say it was a great show.

And so

anyone that wants to like kick Scott Gallamy better, you got to go through me.

That's right.

That's right.

I am such the chick in this relationship.

I am sensitive and needy.

No.

Do not fuck with me on this issue.

Thank God.

Seriously.

Yes.

Your opinion and affirmation means a lot to me, Kara.

So thank you.

Yes.

No more man in the street for you, but we are going to make a hit show.

You'll see.

You'll see.

We will.

Yeah.

Don't you know?

Old man with erectile dysfunction in the street?

No.

Yes.

No.

But it was a good show.

and there were several good shows on that network.

And I think those people deserve, and the people who helped make them deserve kudos.

It was not anything to do with the content.

It wasn't terrible content.

Same with Quibi, by the way.

There was some very good stuff on Quibi.

So for those creative people, you'll be fine.

It may be a little hard for a little bit, but stop kicking them around.

They didn't, the content wasn't the problem.

It's economics all the way.

There you go.

Anyway, so don't forget, we want to hear from our listeners.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit your questions for us or call 8-55-51PIVOT.

The link is also in our show notes.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Friday for more.

Can you read us out?

Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Andretat engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miles Severo.

Make sure you subscribe 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 for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

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This month on Explain It to Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

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