G-7 nations' historic tax reform, Bitcoin 2021, and Friend of Pivot Jon Meacham on de-platforming Trump

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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 Scott Galloway.

So just one question.

Yeah.

Queer 50 question mark.

I get it every year.

It's not like...

Queer 50?

Yeah, that's right.

There are 50 important queer people, and I'm one of them.

There's 51 of them, actually.

We always throw one at them.

50.

And I want another methodology.

You're number eight.

Why are you not number seven or number nine?

I have no idea.

I get on these lists.

I like literally never.

When I was married to my ex-wife, who was the CTO of America, we were always on the couples list, right?

Like there's only, they have to always have a bunch of paralesbians in there.

So these are just these lists.

I think they're fine, whatever.

You wanted to be part of the queer 50, didn't you?

Well, I'm part of the hot 50.

I was 51.

But I heard I was very close to making the hot, straight erectile dysfunction 50.

You are number one with a bullet, as they say.

You are number one.

It's just these, these lists.

I don't, you know, Vanity Fair had one.

I used to be on it.

And it just, I don't understand them.

I don't, I don't, I, they're fine.

This one's fast companies.

I get on every gay list.

There's not a gay list I don't get on.

There's just not that many, you know, loud mouth lesbians.

You're big on the gay list.

It's like me, Kate McKinnon.

You got your Rachel Maddow.

I have the same thing.

In media, like there's, there's like a list, like Roxanne Gay is on it.

You know, just like, it's the same.

There was this charity show through the early part of the audits called Dress to Kilt, where they would invite the most famous Scottish people, and it would be Sean Connery, number one.

Yeah.

And then the guy from Succession would be number two.

Yeah, for sure.

And then they like number three was like the guy who ran the convertible debt desk at Credit Suisse.

I mean, they're just on the show.

Did you see this show?

And I got the show, Men in Kilts.

I think it's on HBO.

Yeah, it's on one of the streaming links.

I'm glad you finally brought it up.

Oh, yeah.

It's a great show.

It's going to be great.

Is it?

Who is it?

I think the Scottish have been, it's time we got, we've been vastly oppressed and overlooked.

Oh, come on.

It's a lot of like eating haggis and wearing kilts and showing off your

naughty bits.

That's it.

Literally is like one of those like, here's what we think of Scotland in

the ridiculous narrative.

It's a spectacular country.

It is.

I have spent much time there.

I've driven all over Scotland.

I love Scotland.

It's beautiful.

With a proud legacy.

Some of the smartest people in the world have the same thing in common, and that is they were Scottish and they left.

And we all watched the Mel Gibson movie, as you know.

He was Scottish, right, in that movie?

William Wallace, yeah.

Yeah, that guy.

In real life, he's an Australian racist.

After that one, he was Scottish.

All right, listen, we got to get to business.

Besides me being a famous lesbian and you being

a semi-famous Scott person, person of Scottish descent, Jeff Bezos is going to space, Scott.

Your dream has come true.

Just 15 days after the World Culture Riches Man leaves Amazon, he will fly to space on a ship manned by his space exploration company, Blue Origin.

What do you think of that?

Here he goes.

Okay, first off,

he's beating Musk to space.

I got to give the guy credit.

In terms of midlife crises, this guy came to play.

I mean, this guy came to play.

First off,

I used to, I mean, I got a lot going on.

I got a lot.

You're going to have to give me space.

Okay, I'm giving you space.

I'm giving you space.

First off, I'm now convinced the guy isn't just on HGH and testosterone.

He's gone full android metabolic steroids.

Yeah, in addition, he has pumped his face full of fillers.

He looks like he's heading to the friends reunion.

Allegedly.

And okay, so look, if these

billionaires,

if these billionaires really want to add big tech, but really want to add value to society, the way you really add value to society is through great original scripted programming.

So I thought of this reality show called Trillionaire Trillionaire House.

Yeah.

They all live together in the Salesforce building, which by the way is leaning.

So they're kind of on a regular basis, they fall, they lose their balance.

One of them falls off, right?

Always.

And we take the big tech, give me some running room.

We take the big tech CEOs and their girlfriends or boyfriends and we put them in a place and next door is the friends people, the reunion.

And so episode one, right?

So Bezos and his girlfriend, who by the way, I'm sure is a lovely woman, but let's be honest, she looks like she was built in a factory from lesser parts of other mistresses of billionaires.

She's just, she, she just seems cliche for me as a billionaire girlfriend.

I'm going to get a lot of shit for that, anyways.

They have crazy sex like every episode.

She comes rolling out, dressed as Dorothy with a llama.

That's episode one.

All right.

Episode two, they bust in next door and they steal Matthew Perry's opioids and we all get ridiculously fucked up.

I am

the guest.

Episode three, Bezos goes into space And on the launch pad, the thing blows up because they find out instead of rocket fuel, they filled the tanks with guerrilla semen.

Because this guy,

this guy, I mean, if they really want to change the world, we'll come in and solve the mystery.

What do you say?

Oh, and Tim Cook and Lisa Coudreau just walk around really judgmental, saying things like, I wouldn't have put myself in that position.

They are just disgusted with everybody.

They are just judging.

Lisa Coudreau looked great.

She did not look, she looked fantastic.

I like her.

I think she's really good.

I love her.

I want to get her on my podcast at some point.

Listen,

here's the deal.

He's doing a lot of pictures in front of rockets in little outfits like Richard Branson does.

And I think Richard Branson's going to space, so Musk has to go to space.

This is like amazing, these three guys.

I mean, seriously, what is what is

going to be like a stowaway?

All right, Bill Gates.

Could you be a stowaway?

Bill Gates, what do you think?

You're looking so good for this podcast.

We're $2.8 million.

We should do a GoFundMe, and I get to sit next to Bezos going into space oh my god can we please yeah that would be pretty good right let's do it because if you going into space with bezos the two bald guys taking

i'm scared i am so scared if i got on that seat next i could do it i could raise the money i could do it i would just you know what i would do i would just inappropriately flirt with him like grab his hand grab his hand a lot and just stare at him and wink

come on that'd be good the straight 51

the straight 51 goes to space with jeff bezos musk what do you think think Muss thinks about this?

Because he kind of wanted to go.

I don't know what any of these people are thinking.

I don't know.

I mean, my life is so hetero fucked up, and I look at these people and I feel grounded.

I feel like,

so to speak, what is going on with this?

He used some Latin phrase in his Instagram.

I don't even, I got to look it up.

But you look at it, you think about all the

move forward forcefully, whatever, something like that.

I think space travel is expensive and dangerous work.

And then I look at Bill Gates and I decide, okay, here's a guy who's decided instead of like,

instead of sword fighting with his penis in space and going to Mars or Neptune.

Hold on.

Yeah, but I've decided that's okay.

He's trying to make a better toilet.

So I'm going to get a job at Microsoft and accept his dinner invitation.

Pivot narrator, it's not okay what Bill Gates did.

I'm going to get a job, and if he wants to take me to dinner.

Editor's note, it's not okay.

Anyway, anyway.

All right.

So he's going to space.

And then I heard from Vox HR for the first time.

You know who is not going to space?

Mark Zuckerberg, who possibly should be launched into space.

But Facebook finally announced the ban of Donald Trump on his plasma will extend at least two years.

Oh, wow.

They made a decision.

They, of course, kicked the can down the road.

This weekend

on a show, I think in Britain or something like that, Nick Clay called me that commentator.

I wrote a big, he calls me that.

They're doing exactly what I said for them to do every time.

And

they're not a queer commentator.

That commentator.

Nick, we've spoken.

We know each other.

I'm not that commentator.

That's like saying that nasty woman who we actually are doing is

that sellout, that lipstick on cancer, that narration online.

Anyway, what do you think of the thing?

We're going to have John Meacham on later in the show to talk about Donald Trump and social media and different things.

But initial thoughts.

What are your initial thoughts?

Well, you wrote an article in the New York Times about how you portrayed Mark Zuckerberg as being

that his naivete is really dangerous.

I actually don't think it's naive.

I think he knows exactly what he's doing, and he creates all these sideshows where they wring their hands.

What, like, oh my gosh, you mean people are being pulled out of cars because of rumors circulated on WhatsApp and hanging them?

I don't know what we should do.

I know, let's run newspaper ads.

That'll solve the problem.

I don't think he's that stupid.

I don't think he's naive.

I think he's generally a sociopath.

Okay.

But

look, I think this is a concerted decision.

They figured out they run tests.

They're not losing money.

And they get to wrap themselves in a blanket of saying, after 1,449 days of havoc into a 1,460-day tenure of lies and misinformation,

we want to be commended and lauded for doing the right thing.

They didn't get commended they said it was too short a time that the time frame was you know that they couldn't just make a decision like jack dorsey did um which is interesting um i i think it's i you know what i said this is just this is just them not making saying they're not going to make a decision and then waiting too long causing havoc and then they're doing it like doing what

I don't mean to be rude.

I said all along they were going to do.

The same thing was on Holocaust deniers.

The same thing was on Alex Jones.

They have to be dragged, kicking and screaming into it.

And of course, then you get all the right wing doing their, you know, their little censorship dance, which of course it's not.

It's just what it is.

It's a corporate decision here.

Now, whether they're too big, that's another issue.

Maybe they shouldn't be so big so they're able to make these unilateral decisions.

In any case, it was a long time coming.

And of course, they only did two years, which brings us past the 2022 elections.

So he won't be on for that.

And the question is, if he runs for president, you know, from his performance this weekend, he looked a little slow.

A little slow.

Oh, I forgot.

Episode five.

I forgot about episode

inner club.

Okay, so Elon Musk and Grimes.

Grimes goes full yoko ono and figures out a way to break up SpaceX because he decides she's so brilliant, she needs to be the lead engineer for SpaceX.

Okay, all right.

But where does, where do Musk and Bezos and Branson come together?

That's what I want to know.

I don't think Branson qualifies for the trillionaire house.

Oh, come on.

I don't know.

Come on.

Put him in there.

Like, how about how about two parachutes, three people kind of thing?

That's how I would go.

That would be test of the

speaking of Scotland, the test of strength, right?

The test of strength, that kind of thing.

But I love the idea that the apartment would be angled and getting more slanted every day and they keep falling over each other.

Like they make big, indignant speeches about going to space, and then they stand up and trip and they start sliding.

Oh, God.

Get your job.

That's your day job, Scott.

Gail, owe it to us.

Scott Gellis.

Now we're going to talk about serious things, okay?

All right.

Okay.

Time for the big story.

The G7 Summit of Nations has come to a historic agreement on global tax reform.

Over the weekend, the finance ministers from the most advanced economies have backed the U.S.

proposal.

It calls for corporations around the world to pay at least 15% tax on earnings rather than the 0% tax or the very low tax as most of them spend.

The nations included in agreement are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and the U.S.

U.S.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tweeted that, quote, the global minimum tax would end the race to the bottom in corporate taxation and ensure fairness for the middle class and working people in the U.S.

and around the world.

Now, not included here are all the low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland,

I think Malta, Cyprus.

There's a couple of them.

I forget, I just talked to Marguerite Vestiger about this today, which was interesting, who's coming to the code conference.

But one of the things is that

they didn't include the low-tax jurisdictions who object to this.

So I don't know if it works if they continue to exist, these low-tax jurisdictions.

But what do you think, Scott?

I think this is really important and

fantastic leadership on the part of the G7 and specifically Berkeley professor Janet Yellen, who just quietly does the work and does a great job.

This is important because

effective tax rate for Amazon over the last 10 years, 20 billion profits, 4.5% tax rate, Apple, all kinds of double-dutch sandwich and tax avoidance.

And when the G7 come together, they can, first off, a lot of those tax havens are, I don't want to say UK-controlled, but UK-influenced, you know, the Isle of Man and Ireland.

And so I think that when the G7s say, okay,

this is the global tax rate, they will have the ability to speak with a pretty big stick and go into these jurisdictions and say, overnight, say, well, okay, we'll put you out of business.

We'll figure out a way to stop this.

And this is not only going to, I think, a fantastic thing in terms of global cooperation.

It's kind of almost like a modern-day NATO where the enemy isn't Russia.

The enemy is organizations that have overrun government and aren't paying their fair share.

The thing it will lead to is an intrastate tax treaty in the U.S.

But

I think it's wonderful.

I think it demonstrates incredible leadership and coordination.

I love it when nations, democracies, join hands.

It used to be the G8, and then we kicked out that gas station posing as an economy called Russia.

Gas station posing is an economy.

And then we

mean mafia run gas station posing.

There you go.

But I think, look, I believe that

our ability, I think we've been so divided internally because of bullshit, just

divisiveness being propagated by algorithms of amplification and bad actors.

I think that any news where we, as a nation of democracy, or as a confederacy of democracies, do things like this, I think it's wonderful.

So Biden,

the tax at 20% was negotiated down to 15%.

Is that a big deal?

He's going to have to just take lower numbers, right?

Is that correct?

Yeah, it's not as, as it's more than, but it's more than they're paying.

So

I think it's a great start.

And then when they see it's effective, they might decide to raise it.

I read this.

I thought this was one of those stories that is much more impactful.

It's going to create, I think, $350

billion to a half a trillion dollars a year in incremental revenue.

This is money these nations need.

The pandemic.

We talked about that one-time tax on wealthy people or wealthy corporations.

One of the things that's interesting here is that the U.S.

returning made it happen.

Like that this would not have happened under Trump, obviously.

100%.

And so, you know, he wanted to find social media companies sort of in a retaliatory way.

And this is actually a fairer way so that everybody pays their fair share, which I think.

This is actual governance.

Yeah.

So what do you think how tech companies are reacting to this?

Is it a good thing?

And you know what?

They have no choice.

What are they going to say?

We should get their money repatriated under Trump and America.

What are they going to say?

We should pay lower taxes than a nurse.

I mean, what are they going to do here?

They'll come up with reasons.

they're strangely quiet here because even Nick Clegg can say, well, that commentator, even he can't come up with, even he can't wallpaper over this and say.

And Facebook, of course, came out and said, we welcome this.

But look, this is the largest, most profitable, successful organizations in the world should be the biggest taxpayers,

not the smallest taxpayers.

And this is a great first step.

And as exciting as it is about equity in the tax system and the tax code, it's just exciting to see us joining hands with our brothers and sisters over in Europe.

I love this, Kara, almost as much as the trillionaire house.

Yeah, it's interesting what happens now.

Besides the G7 leaders, there's going to be a meeting of the G20 finance ministers in Venice, in Italy, in July.

So that'll continue it.

So, you know, and then, of course, there's negotiations with all the countries with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 140 countries.

There's a quote here.

If G7 agrees and then the G20, the likelihood of a broader agreement is probably pretty good, since Elk and Senate Policy and Tax Foundation Center for Global Tax Policy.

But there's operations, there's opposition from, as I said, Ireland,

which brings in U.S.

tech firms with a corporate rate of 12.5%.

They had problems with it.

There's other jurisdictions.

And of course, Wall Street's always worried about

a global standard of taxing across the world, cooperation.

They like it best when it's all messed up.

You know what I mean?

They like it best when it's confusing and difficult.

Complexity is a tax on the poor and on small and medium-sized business.

And like I said, if you can navigate by starlight, you want to race boats at nights with a lot of islands and obstacles.

And

the reason banks don't like this is they like to be able to do these ridiculous things in the Cayman Islands and figure out a way that they pay lower taxes than someone who owns seven dry cleaners.

So this is

a great move, and it's a sign of immunity is kicking in.

I just, I absolutely

love it.

We'll see if they push it through correctly.

It does have momentum, though, and it does have momentum because Biden's talking about it.

And they need the money from the pandemic.

They need it.

And these corporations have never done better.

And they need to be

paying their fair share.

I think that's 100%.

All right, Scott, let's go to a quick break.

We'll be back to talk about a giant Bitcoin gathering in Florida and friend of Pivot presidential historian John Meachin to talk about Trump on the platforms.

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Scott, we're back.

At least 12,000 people streamed into Miami over the weekend for the Bitcoin 2021, a gathering celebrating Bitcoin.

The conference has been postponed last year, but this week, the biggest post-pandemic business conference took place in Miami, near where you live, to discuss all things cryptocurrency from Bitcoin to NFTs.

The Winklevoss twins were on stage, of course, and told the crowd: if you own Bitcoin today, you'll be a millionaire in the future, for sure.

Congratulations.

Then Jack Dorsey came on stage and said, If I were not at Square or Twitter, I'd be working on Bitcoin.

Square has added over $170 million worth of Bitcoin in February.

Over the weekend, Dorsey also endorsed, announced that Square is considering making a hardware wallet for Bitcoin, which makes sense.

And of course, Elon Musk is sort of an anti-Bitcoin, I think.

I think.

I can't tell.

I don't haven't followed his latest tweet.

So go ahead and rant about Dorsey being on stage and not doing this.

I can't get him to come anywhere.

And he goes to a Bitcoin conference.

He summed it up.

He put out a tweet saying there's nothing more important in my lifetime than working on Bitcoin.

I thought, well, what about ensuring the platform you're in charge of doesn't continue to be a handmade dissedition?

What about getting a similar return to the shareholders of your second family that's living in a trailer park versus your first family at Square?

I mean,

this is, I think, a very authentic tweet.

He's obsessed with alternative payments and Bitcoin.

And by the way, that's his right.

But okay, that just tells you who he is and what he's focused on.

He didn't say the most important mission in my life is to ensure healthy dialogue for democracies.

Right.

He didn't say the most important thing work I can do is to use great media as a platform to unite people as opposed to divide them.

I mean, nothing he is thinking about in his sleep

from nine to five has anything to do with this micro-blogging platform called Twitter.

Yeah.

And more power to him.

I think the guy's a genius.

Have you seen the product innovation?

By the way, what did Square just announce?

A cold storage hardware wallet to compete with Ledger and Trezor.

And by the way, it's smart.

It'll probably drive the value.

But what is he doing at Twitter?

Oh, we can change the color of the app icon.

Okay.

Oh, my God, the innovation.

I'm blown away.

Anyways, I rewrapped a gift that he bought for the Twitter, for the Square Kids and gave it to the Twitter kids.

That's did you hear any?

I didn't pay any attention to the conference.

Did you pay any attention?

I didn't.

You didn't go?

Like, you're such a like, I could see you swanning around Miami like that.

Well, I do like the swan.

You like the swan.

I do like the swan.

And they would know you, too.

They'd be like, oh, there's that guy.

No, the crypto guys don't like me because I've gone after Musk.

That's true.

But now they don't, the Bitcoin guys don't like Musk right now, I think.

They don't know what to do.

They're just, they're just so torn.

what do you think about this but on a real level that we are having it by the way we're having an event in miami in 2022 i don't think maybe we shouldn't buy the winkle vie what do you think we should what does uh bitcoin uh 2021 event say about miami as a as a cryptocurrency hub interesting yeah it's that's a smart move right to try and identify to get the iconic said to me to try and get the iconic event for bitcoin down in miami look miami's having Miami's no doubt no no doubt about it having a moment and uh good for them I think it's smart and you can pay for your, like, I don't know, your Suntan lotion and your parking fines and crypto now.

But it's, it's, uh, I think it's great for Miami.

I don't know.

I don't know if there was anything that interesting at the conference.

Right.

There was a lot of partying, it looked like it looked like it was a party.

You know, you know, what's interesting about this is it reminds me of really early internet gatherings, right?

So there's all these really skeevy people and unctuous, oily, unctuous is oily, unctuous people.

And then you sort of see glimmers how important it is.

And of, and, you know, speaking of the global tax stuff that's going on, there's going to be global regulatory issues around all these cryptocurrencies now.

The focus, that's their next focus, the international financial regime,

regulation regime will start really, they're already doing it, squaring in on this stuff.

Yeah, and I mean, bigger news was El Salvador said that it's now legal tender down there.

And if you look at the transfer payments, the amount of money that's transferred back to people in Central American and Latin American countries, and the fact that this could do away with a lot of the onerous fees that people have to pay, that's exciting.

That's a great use of crypto.

It's going to be, I think it's just, this is going to be the year of regulation, I think, for

now.

You're not in cryptocurrency.

You're in the pickaxes, right?

You're still not buying cryptocurrency.

Yeah, I'm a no-coiner in the sense I've never owned a coin, but

I do think there's something that's not.

That's what they call people who don't get it.

Like when I'm on people's calls.

You don't get it.

You don't want to buy it, though, right?

I just, I am, one of my many flaws as an investor is I always want to buy stuff on sale.

So when Michael Saylor told me to buy it at 18,000, I said, I'll wait till it's blowed at 10, and then it rocketed to 60.

And it's come back, I think, to 35 or 38.

Just because, you know what I don't want to do?

I don't want to be in any asset class where I have to depend on the blood sugar level of Elon Musk.

That's the bottom line.

I don't like investing in things where I have to hope that Elon has decided whether or not he needs to wallpaper over an earnings miss at Tesla and sell it and go on Saturday Night Live.

I just don't need that stress in my life.

Yeah, well, maybe if he goes to space, you could do it during that time.

Oh, God.

You know, I'm holding Jeffrey's hand.

I am bidding $2.9 billion and I'm literally going to show up in a fucking dress and start like just...

you know, eyeballing him just to make him really uncomfortable.

Well, I have to say, I've been increasingly, I mean, if Square does a wallet, even though there's lots of wallets available, it becomes a feature, it becomes a thing you have.

It's going to be more and more popular.

There's just no other way around it.

And and i don't know about the prices rocketing up and down but it's certainly going to be an asset class that everybody's going to have to hold i think despite the fact that it's kind of ridiculous like winkle voss guys like swanning around oh you mean

the the the guys who claim they're william watt like the the the i mean they it's amazing they present themselves as mavericks and outsiders like two rowers from harvard

yeah they're

they're mavericks there take it stick it to the map they were early i i literally have insulted them so much in my life but they were early to this i remember them talking about it they they were

early to bitcoin they were no doubt you know they've got a nose for things they certainly were super early to social media they it up and let mark zuckerberg pull a fast one on them and then zuckerberg you know went on to glory or whatever you call it and then they were early to this they were the one of the first people talking i first people i heard talking about it and at first i was like oh those idiots but then i got to say they were early to it they were early actually the first person was someone i actually do respect um talked about it.

But he was from a country that had,

you know, they had currency problems there, and it made total sense.

So it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

But it was apparently a big success.

A lot of people there.

We're excited to come to Miami in early 2022.

Should we have people paying Bitcoin?

What do you think?

You think we can get Jack Dorsey to come down and talk to us?

Doubtful.

I hate to say this, but I have ruined the relationship between Jack Dorsey and that commentator.

That's when

he's there.

Oh, he'll come on.

He'll eventually come on.

He'll do it.

Him and his beard will drag himself down and he'll be fine.

Anyway, we are going to bring on our friend of Pivot next.

We're joined by John Meacham.

Meacham is the Pulitzer Prize winning historian and a New York Times best-selling author.

He's also the host of a new podcast series called Fate of Fact.

Oh, I want to hear about what that means.

So, John, I've talked to you many, many times, and we've been talking a lot about the platforms, Facebook and Twitter, dealing with former President Trump's presence.

This is, I don't know if this is unprecedented or not, given you're a historian and as a presidential biography, what do you think the significance this week of Facebook essentially banning Trump for the near-term future, at least?

Well, it's an unusual moment for Donald Trump because it is he's actually learned that actions have consequences.

Yeah.

And,

you know, Facebook and Twitter, and I'm a layman on these things, but they

they are publishers

kinda, right?

And so I know that their business model and their philosophy is that they are not exercising editorial control.

But

as it says in the Bible, to whom much is given, much is expected.

And I think that,

you know, to me, these decisions make all the sense in the world in a commonsensical way.

And I think that it will have, I that the steps these platforms took in the wake of January 6th have had an impact.

Right.

A positive impact.

A positive one, but a negative one for Trump.

Has there been any

precedent where this has happened with another not being able to communicate

in the communications vehicle of the day?

Like, has there been any precedent for this?

No, I don't think so, because

if you think about the, so the American presidency dates from 1787.

Washington comes in on the 30th of April, 1789.

He had access to the printing press.

You know,

our friend Al Gore would tell you that democracy was a direct result of the printing press

by democratizing information

and leading to the empowerment and agency of certain individuals.

You know, when Thomas Paine

wanted to publish common sense, his barrier to entry was

just a very minimal one.

He went and found a printer and published it and it went out.

And so I can't think of a president who, the only thing I can think of is

there have been moments where networks have said, we don't really see why this deserves prime time.

But if a president summoned a press conference, they'd have to come.

So I think it is unprecedented.

But I would argue that, with the exception of Andrew Johnson and some of his actions during Reconstruction, Trump is unprecedented.

So we shouldn't be surprised that

an actively undermining force to the institutions of a free and popular government, and that's Trump, would face some consequences in that sphere.

Scott?

John, first off, nice to meet you from a founder of work.

As a historian, when you observe President Biden's tenure so far, what other presidents does he remind you of?

And what does that say possibly about the way he's going to govern?

It's a great question.

I should say

he's a friend of mine.

I'm proud of that.

And I do help out occasionally on a volunteer basis.

I have no policy influence whatever, but I do help him with some speeches from time to time.

So all that said,

this is like 1933 in some ways because of the scope and scale of the crises that he stepped in to have to deal with.

The divisions in the country are as profound as the ones that LBJ stepped in

after Dallas in 1963 and Nixon in 69.

We sort of skip over that one.

It's interesting

as an analogy.

But 1968 was such a cataclysmic year.

You know, 47 Americans on average died every day in Vietnam.

Not captured, not wounded, died, 47 a day.

Dr.

King, Senator Kennedy, Chicago Convention, and the fact that George Wallace on Election Day 1968 carried 13.5% of the popular vote and five states.

So that was, you know, Nixon was not coming into

a circle where we were all singing kumbaya.

Here's the fearsome, the fearful answer,

the troubling answer to your question.

To me, this increasingly feels as though we're living in 1850s America,

where you have a

minority of the country, in this case, the Republican Party, in that case, the Southern slaveholding interest,

driven by an aristocracy of economic power,

structural advantages within the Constitution itself,

and a self-created theological and philosophical

doctrine of justification for the course they wanted to pursue.

Now, what's troubling about that, so that makes Biden Lincoln, right?

What's troubling about that is that Abraham Lincoln, and we sort of skip over this sometimes when we're talking about it, Lincoln didn't solve our problems in a vacuum.

750,000 people died

from 1861 to 1865 in order to create the country that at least continues to be worth defending.

So I'm not predicting civil war, but the divisions feel,

and I want to be very clear, this is not a both sides thing.

It's the Republican Party that has gone off the rails.

The Democratic Party could go off the rails by this afternoon, but they haven't yet.

They are having a coherent conversation about the relative role of private enterprise and the public sector, a coherent conversation about the role of the state.

You can disagree with that.

I disagree with a lot of it.

But it's a conversation that would be recognizable to Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

The conversation that, which is not even really a conversation, but this passionate

elemental argument about the will to power that the Republican Party is having is not part of that coherent conversation.

Can I ask you a question then?

So,

what fuels it?

Is it just Trump or is it the social media, the polarization itself?

So, your podcast centers on American culture of polarization, which is not a new thing.

It's not a, listen, there's been so much polarization if you go back at every period.

So, where does that that come from now?

And how do you combat it?

Because I think these social media platforms have become the fuel of that, or at least partially, or it's one of the

part of the infrastructure of polarization, right?

There's no doubt about that.

Did it exacerbate existing divisions?

I would say yes.

My argument that I make in the podcast, and this is just my opinion, is that

one way to understanding Trump as part of a coherent, if troubling, American narrative is pretty straightforward.

He's George Wallace.

He's Strom Thurman.

You know, he's Pat Buchanan.

Maybe Huey Long.

Huey Long.

You know, so he's a populist figure.

So if this is just about Trump, that's one conversation and a coherent one.

And he's Joe McCarthy, right?

If Joe McCarthy had become president in 1956,

that's what this is, what this was.

So

that's a coherent, sort of almost straightforward conversation.

What I have come to see, and I wrote a book about this three years ago,

what is different today

is that

one of the two parties that we depend on to create a politics about the mediation of difference, the conciliation for a given period of time of conflicting interests,

is no longer a coherent

good faith actor within that system.

And that is a difference of kind, not degree.

And so my argument in this podcast was, why is that?

So why was the Republican Party

so vulnerable to this takeover,

to this

manifestation of itself?

And I think part of it has to do with conservative Americans who believe that the establishment itself, including their establishment, has failed to deliver on fundamental promises and premises of the movement.

So Eisenhower becomes president after a 20-year drought.

Imagine the psychology of being out of power for 20 years.

And he preserves the New Deal.

He says any party that tries to undo Social Security at this point would be committing suicide.

He appoints Earl Warren to be Chief Justice of the United States.

Warren, within two years, within a year of his appointment,

arguably the inflection point of the last 100 years is May 17th, 1954, when Brown versus Board of Education was handed down by a Republican Chief Justice 9-0.

The court goes on, of course, to ban sectarian school prayer, goes on to the Miranda decision.

Then,

what does the Nixon administration do?

Well, Nixon appoints four justices, three of whom become moderate to center-left people.

It was a Nixon appointee who wrote Roe v.

Wade.

Cut to

Reagan, who's supposed to have been,

in the political drama of the time, was the true conservative against the accommodationist Nixon Ford years.

Reagan cut taxes dramatically in 1981, and then he raised them five times.

Federal spending went up under Ronald Reagan.

Anthony Kennedy was a Reagan appointee who ultimately makes

is the deciding vote in the

marriage equality decision.

George Herbert Walker Bush's whole life is disappointing the right, and

he loses the election because of it.

And then George W.

Bush would tell you, if he were here, that there's a direct line between TARP and Trump.

So it would be, it's just, it's an anti-establishment, racially inflected reaction that

puts passion in the place of reason.

And again, I'm not, I like to say I'm a Democrat with a small D.

I voted for both parties.

I'm George Bush's biographer.

You know, I'm not a crazy lefty at all.

But at a certain point, you got to practice what you preach.

And people like me who believe in America,

I think, have to believe in the capacity to change your mind when circumstances change.

Sure.

Sure.

So how to combat it?

And maybe Scott has a question in that area, but what do you do about it when you have this inflamed public or part of the public, a small part of the public, but a powerful part, an inflamed party, and then it's fueled by persistent propaganda and misinformation that flows over all kinds of media, but a lot on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere.

How do you deal with it?

You can take Donald Trump off, but it doesn't really solve the problem.

It doesn't solve the problem, but it doesn't hurt it either.

No.

It doesn't make it worse.

But I do think there are these structural forces.

So my view is

I think of this as the 5 to 10 million project.

81 million people voted for Joe Biden.

74 million people voted for Donald Trump.

If you could convince 5 to 10 million Americans that they were wrong, that

in fact

the worldview that Biden represents, the ethos, the temperament, the policies, that in fact, that should be where the center of gravity is, as opposed to this

entirely self-seeking, nativist,

largely racist,

disruptive force to democracy, which is what Trump represents.

If you can get five to 10 million Americans, then you're looking at, in American terms, a pretty remarkable shift.

Because

38%,

my baseline on this is 38%, because the Washington Post published a poll in 1955

38% of Americans after Joe McCarthy had been censured

thought he was right.

Okay, Scott.

So that's that's the baseline.

So if you can get to 55, 56% and the way you do it, Kerry, I think you just, you have these conversations.

You just got to tell the truth.

It just feels, I mean, it just feels like at the end of the day, it's the white patriarchy saying we're going to hold on to it.

And

it feels to me like everyone's the troops are lining up.

It's the white

patriarchy versus a new generation that's browner, woker, and the white patriarchy.

And they have a lot of supporters are saying this has worked really well for a long time and we want to hold on to it.

Anyways, that was more of a statement, no question, so I'll ask a question.

What

the president's legacies are usually much different three decades out as opposed to three months out.

If you had to guess what Trump's legacy will be in 2050,

put some color on it.

Well, if

this is the end of the Trump story,

so we have to caveat that.

So if he doesn't run again, if he weren't elected again,

let me put this.

What would the 2015 to 2020 Trump legacy be?

I think it is

I sometimes think about this because you think, what will the PBS, American Experience, producers of the future put together, right?

You know, what does the OBIT package look like?

And I think it's going to start with the escalator.

And I think the next image is

January 6th.

I think that there are some dates, there are some moments that loom large, as you say, in the short term, but which fade over time.

And there are some events that grow larger.

And if I were betting,

I would say that January 6th grows larger.

And

you literally, you know, literally, he gives a speech and they storm the Capitol.

And what people like me like to point out is

the Confederates didn't even get to the Capitol during the Civil War.

They got as close as about Silver Spring Marrow,

but they got in this time.

So it will be

that he was a a disruptive force

for democracy.

It will be that

the worst pandemic in 100 years

went

unaddressed in an efficient way.

The vaccine development, absolutely.

But

we knew that.

We knew that had to happen.

We needed moral leadership and moral, I don't mean ethical, moral in the sense of customary.

FDR once said that the presidency is preeminently a place of moral leadership, by which he meant how we act.

The root of the word moral is custom.

So

Trump will be this vivid, disruptive force,

impeached twice.

And I think that any conversation historically about him will begin at the end.

When you look at this,

will these moves, I want to get back to sort of how polarization happens and focused on tech a little bit, will these moves to stifle him?

By the way, he did it to himself by the breaking of the rules.

Will that work?

Because he's failed

being that internet is such an important part of reaching these people and polarizing them.

Or is there enough many, you know, there's, are there a thousand

duck-sized Trumps out there like Marjorie Taylor Green, Pet Cruz and others?

Is that available?

Has the die been cast in terms of his influence online already without him being there?

I don't think so, but I'm not a digital native.

I just visit.

My sense is

Trumpism

is now part of the DNA of the Republican Party.

That said,

without his

popularity, without his framing of it,

I think it becomes, I could be wrong, but I think it becomes easier to fight.

It's easier to fight Marjorie Taylor Greene than Donald Trump.

Yeah.

Right.

Today.

Today.

Today.

Or

Gates or whatever's in it.

So

if you.

If it becomes a guerrilla movement, right?

If it becomes, let me put it this way.

If Trumpism, even though it has this vast infrastructure with the Republican Party, becomes an insurgency as opposed to a general-led

movement, I think that's good news.

But I think that,

again, I think what the tech platforms have done is right.

I think that self-evidently, Donald Trump was trying to undo a culture of the free exchange of ideas and fair play and the possibilities and opportunities that we strive to make real for our people.

And he,

to use the cliché, but clichés are clichés because they're true, he yelled fire in a crowded theater.

So don't sell him any more tickets.

I really appreciate these are really terrifying things to hear about.

John Meachin has a host, host of a new podcast.

That's all right.

Don't worry.

We'll handle it.

Host of a new, I'm here.

We were through, we went through a civil war and a revolution, and we came up in the end, and now a pandemic.

So, John is the host of a new podcast series called Fate of Fact, which you can listen to and hear about all the polarization going on and maybe try to find a way away from it.

John, we really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, John.

Thank you all.

All right, Scott, that was terrifying.

One more quick break.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

Do you have anything?

What?

Do you have anything?

Do you have anything to fail?

I don't.

I don't.

I don't have any wins or fails.

I think I was glad Facebook made its decision.

I think, as usual, it was, you know, qualified.

So I guess I'll give them a win for finally doing the right thing that everyone else has been suggesting forever.

So I guess that's kind of a win.

What's it called?

Like, so says that commentator, the clear 50.

That commentator is glad that they did it,

but that commentator also thinks what the fuck took so long.

So that's what I would say.

So my win is global cooperation, our superpower as a species.

I'm really excited about this G7 tax treaty.

My fail is, I think, one of the...

signals of a top or when an economy becomes vulnerable to a crash versus a correction is really poor corporate governance.

And you see how it happens when everyone's partying, when everyone's making money.

And when at the same time, you couple that with our,

we diminish our institutions and underfund our SEC and our DOJ and this gross

idolatry of innovators, we lead to companies totally disregarding corporate governance.

And I think you see it around market manipulation from Elon Musk, but it's happening everywhere.

A company called Coinbase has two insiders, not independent directors now on its audit committee.

And the audit committee, if you're ever on a board, there's always a dude in his 60s who thinks he understands business and pontificates.

And you have to remind him, boss, you're just here because you're in a partner in an accounting firm and you're the audit of our, you're the chairman of the audit committee.

And that person plays a really important role because their job is to be the source of truth and go, no, we're not going to give into our temptation to juice the stock and start double counting revenues.

There's all kinds of games and shenanigans you can play in terms of what the audit committee approves or doesn't approve in terms of how a firm accounts for and reports its earnings.

So Under Armour was found pulling revenues forward because they didn't want the stock to crash.

The Cheesecake Factory, by the way, all this is based on a wonderful article by Lynette Lopez from the Business Insider.

Cheesecake Factory was basically inflating their numbers.

And you're seeing, you can see this is just being set up everywhere.

Coinbase has two insiders on their audit committee.

That is totally not cool.

Why?

Because they're in a lockup.

So are they going to be sober and adroit about releasing accurate information?

Are they going to wait till their lockup's over and they've sold their stock?

Yeah.

You have Palantir.

Check this shit out.

Palantir.

I'll check this shit out.

Go ahead.

Palantir is taking shareholder money and investing tens of millions of dollars in a SPAC in exchange for that company signing a long-term contract with that money with Palantir.

And you think, well, what's wrong with that?

That's an innovative way to finance customers.

What's wrong with that is shareholders of Palantir don't need Palantir buying SPACs for them.

They can do that on their own.

And what that does is that creates related party transactions, which were everywhere in 1999, that says Palantir is not able, after 17 years as a company, never turned a profit, to grow its revenues organically just based on the value of its product.

It's got to lend people money.

By the way, SPACs, a lot of these SPACs won't be around.

And so what it creates is related party transactions that when shit gets real,

you don't have a correction.

You have a crash.

So poor corporate governance, all these financial engineering, what it does is it sets up an economy such that when things get ugly, they get really ugly really fast.

Yes, they do.

And I do think that the corporate governance here is indicative of a top where we've decided, well, as long as the lights don't come on, as long as the music's good, we're going to ignore that there's someone convulsing in the men's room.

I don't know where I got that.

Anyways, the that was your weekend, I guess.

That's called a Tuesday night

at Trillionaire House.

So I think there's a lot of poor governance here at these companies.

And I think the SEC,

I do think we need guardrails.

I think think it's out of control.

I mean, my sense is Michael Milken went to jail for less than what a lot of the shit that's going on here.

Yep.

So, and it indicates, in addition to all the ratios we look at, whether it's the multiple on earnings, the percentage of GDP controlled by private, by the stock market, all these things are reminiscent of 2008 and 1999, as is really poor corporate governance, where companies are not acting as fiduciaries such that they can keep their stock high until they get out.

That's my fail.

That is an excellent fail.

I would agree with that.

This is, of course, not a new issue, but it sort of becomes, I think the levels of our temperature, just like the planet, get raised and raised and we adapt to them.

And just what John was talking about is the

constant

horrification that these people bring, you know, to the table just makes you feel like, okay, they're doing that now.

Okay, they're doing that now.

And you get really

you get numb to it.

I mean, one of the things that happens is as they raise the stakes, it becomes more normal to be thinking in crazy ways.

And therefore, Marjorie Taylor Greene gets elected right now.

I think here's the fail.

I think 22 of the people running for Congress believe the election lie, like have like a running on that the election was stolen.

Like, why would you run for office if you think elections are stolen?

And of course, the minute they get elected, they would, those elections will not be stolen.

But

it's really, it does.

You can't tolerate what these kind of things, you know, you can't, you absolutely cannot tolerate this kind of stuff

when you're when you're looking at it.

Because it does, as, as, as there's a really good New York Times piece today, you look about the actual impact of Donald Trump's, when Trump was banned on social media.

Well, it did lower the temperature quite a bit.

He still, you know, they have in October 20 statements without half a million total likes.

So he'd make a statement and they'd get lots of 253,000 shares

on Facebook

or 248,000 likes and retweets if he said something crazy.

But now in March 2021, statement has this has close to the same in other places because they've got Donald Trump fan page, Breitbart, Fox News,

I Love My Freedom.

There's one called Jenna Ellis.

It doesn't stop proliferating just because the main source of the disease is gone.

And they quote their statements.

You know what I mean?

They quote their statements, whether it's Newsmax or Fox and Friends or whatever it is.

And then people who are against them quote them too and make it go all around.

So anyway,

so that's, I think you're right.

I think you're right.

This is a really big topic and it's an important one.

And it's quite important.

What are you doing this week, Kara?

This week, I am,

I don't know, things.

I'm writing.

I'm writing.

I'm podcasting.

I'm doing all kinds of stuff.

And I will be working on the code conference.

I got you someone.

I'm not going to tell you who it is yet.

Really?

I'm not going to tell you here because we're not going to announce it yet, but because it's not done, done, done, but it's someone you wanted to interview.

And I got some.

You want to send a friend?

What does that mean?

I got someone that you wanted to interview for you.

Really?

Barbara Eden.

What?

Barbara Eden?

Barbara Eden.

Yes.

Pam Greer.

Pam Greer.

It's Pam, isn't it?

Finally.

Oh, my God.

I know Pam Greer, by the way.

Are you really?

Yes, I do.

She was on the O Word.

She's a lovely, lovely person.

She was a lovely person.

So I didn't know her very well.

I just met her briefly.

In any case,

we'll be back on Thursday because there's going to be a lot more news.

The newsy week, Apple just had had its big event.

We can talk about that a little bit more.

And we can go from there.

It's a lot of small things, but there's a ton of stuff they did that was sort of innovative.

And yet they're still involved in all kinds of regulatory problems and cases.

Anyway, Scott, that's the show.

This is a very hefty show.

We'll be back on Friday for more.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for the Pivot podcast.

The link is also in our show notes.

Scott, can you read us out?

Today's show is produced by Rebecca Sinanas.

Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs.

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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.

All it takes is $2.9 million, and the dog will be holding Bezos' hand as we launch into space as lovers.

It could happen.

It could happen.

Oh my god, I hope it does.

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