Epstein's Out, Rapinoe's In, Plus a Social Media-Less Summit

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And this is Scott Galloway.

Scott, we are together.

We are together.

Together at the...

District of Columbia and our nation's capital.

Yeah, and thank you very much.

You and Tammy Haddad and Hillary Rosenda

threw a book party for me last night, and I not only felt very American, I felt very loved.

So thank you.

Yes, it was a nice book party for the algebra of happiness.

But you had a rant.

You ranted in front of the power elite of Washington.

That was nice.

I loved it.

But everyone seems so shocked.

There's no ranters down here.

No, no.

Everyone literally seemed like they were going to swallow their tongue.

We weren't sure if they were horrified or turned on.

It was a mix of,

it was like sex with me when I was a younger man.

I'm horrified yet slightly compelled.

What is going on here?

Well, because you were like, first of all, you trashed all the tech companies and then blamed everyone here for not doing their job, right?

You're like, they're doing their job, but you're not doing yours.

If it walks like a duck.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And then you talked about happiness, how they can be happy, which is.

Which makes sense.

That was an easy segue.

That's right.

Angry to professor on happiness.

That makes all the sense.

Yeah, it was quite something.

There was silence in the room.

You had Steve Case there.

You had a bunch of people.

You had a lot of, it was very good.

Executive producer from Meet the Press.

Yeah.

Are you going to go on now?

Do you think that?

No one's invited me on Meet the Press.

That's what's called good judgment.

Yeah, bring the crazy.

No, we should.

No, let's go back to.

Who's that woman with perfect skin who's like crazy smart, who's on there all the time?

She was there last night.

Yeah, I don't know.

Is she the oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She was on our Yamiche.

I'll send her.

She was a code.

She's amazing.

She's super impressive.

Yeah, yeah.

She had been to the Acosta press conference.

She was telling me all about it.

Yeah.

And he was there too, although he looks 14.

What's with all these young people?

Seriously.

14.

Who was there?

Who?

Jim Acosta?

No, no, no, Jim Acosta.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they look 14.

Yeah.

Looks like a kid.

And the former Wonder Woman was there.

It was really fascinating.

Oh my God, Linda Carter, how awesome was that?

Was that?

And you, dude.

I'm going to throw you a Washington party.

Literally.

You're welcome.

And

one of the things I thought about after meeting Wonder Woman is that it's so easy to have stereotypes.

I would have thought that she'd be kind of reserved and like, I'm Wonder Woman and kind of coy.

And she runs up to you and hugs you and she's delightful and nice and friendly.

Yeah, it looks great.

Stereotypes are dangerous.

Yes.

Anyway, we had a good time and now you're tricked out with swag from Tammy.

Democracy of Washington posts.

I have a V-pillow, t-shirts, all this.

He's wearing a Democracy Dies in Darkness t-shirt from the Washington Post, which is very funny.

So good.

Good.

I'm glad you had a good Washington time.

And here we are in Washington.

There's lots to talk about in Washington.

Right now, as we speak, I think President Trump is having a social media summit.

Yeah, that'll work.

I know.

We'll get to that.

Well, actually, let's start with that.

So I wrote this week about the decision, the really big decision, actually, that he cannot block people on Twitter.

He's got a, everyone, he can't block people he doesn't like, essentially.

And neither can other public officials.

And I wrote a column about how he's more tethered to Twitter than ever.

Like this is sort of the marriage, the marriage made in reality, heaven, and that he, how he uses it and what would he do without it.

And one of the things he's having, of course, even though he's indebted to Twitter and indebted to the internet and others in the tech space, he's having the social media summit, which he didn't invite Twitter and didn't invite Facebook to.

Nor do they want to come.

And it's packed full with people who are going to whine about shadow banning and this and that.

So

anything?

Well, we talked about this.

It is a marriage made in hell, right?

But it's a marriage.

They're incredibly good for each other.

Twitter is probably, you know, there's a few billion dollars in market capitalization they own to the president because they're constantly in the news.

And he has direct access to, what, 63 million people?

Yeah, 63.

He's at 63.

Unfortunately, the media will ask questions back, and they have a little bit of discretion, and they editorial and filters.

And people argue that's what's maybe the problem with the old media, but a lot of the stuff he puts out there just wouldn't be newsworthy.

Right.

And, you know, the notion that social media has been anything but outstanding for the far left and the far right,

it's kind of whack job central.

Right, I would agree.

So I wrote it in the comment or something, it's more important is not just that it's good for him, he's using it to govern.

And so one of the things that happened this week, and it's happened several times, is that he put out a tweet essentially saying the reports about the citizenship question not being on the census were fake and they were actually statements put out by the Justice Department, which he is in charge of, and the Commerce Department.

And so the people at the Commerce Department and the Justice Department didn't know what to do.

And one of the lawyers in the case, because the judge was like, what's going on?

And he's like, I don't know what the tweet means.

You know, so he's governing by tweet.

So it's really fascinating if this is appropriate or it is what it is, essentially.

Well, it's just a shocker to see the president be wrong on something.

It's,

you know,

they then did what he said via tweet.

Whatever he commanded via tweet, they're doing.

Yeah, I don't, I just don't understand.

I mean, the interesting move would be if Twitter said, look, he's violated our terms of service and then kicked him off the platform.

I think that would be incredibly interesting to talk about

Twitter.

Yeah.

But the problem is someone would then create a shadow account and just start posting everything he says.

We've seen some.

But that's harder.

That would still be harder.

It would really minimize his impact on Edwards.

Or at least delay it.

Certainly.

It would not have the same visceral, quick, hot pop.

But look what's happened.

All the intermediaries that thought of themselves as having discretion and power are being disrupted.

Whether it's, you know, we talk about direct-to-consumer is this hot space where it's like away or quip or Peloton, where they've said we can bypass this industrial complex of just distribution and go straight to the consumer.

And the same thing's happened with media.

Everyone said, okay, let's go buy, let's do an end run around the gatekeepers.

And the president reflects that.

And in some ways,

he's doing an end run around his own agencies.

Well, my sense is he doesn't listen to anyone.

I don't think that's it.

It's just interesting.

I think using it, it'll be interesting if it's continuous.

And Sean Hannity.

Yeah, that's true.

Hannity's his dude.

I think he probably is there today complaining about social media.

So who's there?

Facebook and Twitter aren't there.

Who's there at social media dude?

Nobody.

Nobody from social media.

Is Pinterest there?

No.

I don't think any of them.

Nobody's going to.

Listen, I talked to Silicon Valley people.

I mean, there aren't that many of them.

There's only two or three of them.

Yeah, but I talked to social media people who are like, we're not going.

We weren't going to go to the next one.

Well, that's the worst photo op in the world, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That's like, okay, I'm standing next to somebody.

I'm not going yelled at by right-wing.

I don't need to be scolded.

Yeah.

Anyway, they're not going anyway.

They weren't invited, and if they showed up, actually, they'd be jailed because you can't break into the White House.

It's interesting that they're doing this without it.

But whatever.

It's just for press.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

So the other big story, obviously, is Jeffrey Epstein.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Now you're looking at me.

Yeah.

So give me your view on it.

You go first, Jared.

This is so dangerous.

I know it is.

It is.

They, you know, this was implications for the country, obviously.

And obviously, this guy is linked all over the place.

He's not just linked in Wall Street.

He's linked in Silicon Valley.

He's got a lot of Silicon Valley investments.

But

when you say linked, okay, this is where I was.

Yeah, go ahead.

Please try not to.

There's no good way

now that this is successful.

The abuse of young women.

Look, let me start off by saying, if he's guilty of half of the things he's accused of, he should die in prison.

These things are terrible, but when they're against children.

I like the fact that Michael Jackson died 90 pounds in bald because I think his truth had emerged in terms of what he had done, and he needed literally to be anesthetized every night to sleep.

I think he got his comeuppance.

And I think Jeffrey Epstein didn't.

But I think there's a couple things going on here that are interesting, and I think ultimately will come out.

And the first is, I think we're in the midst of a revolution.

Whenever you have this level of income inequality, it's a bigger, you're going to bigger picture this for us.

I'm going big.

Okay.

I'm big picturing it with the big dogs going wide angled.

Right.

So this report.

Wide angle.

This represents what?

The pullback.

My brain is a Leica on heroin.

All right.

This represents what?

Well, okay, so whenever you get to a level of income inequality, as we have now, it self-corrects in one of three ways.

War, famine, revolution.

And we're in the midst of a revolution where we've decided to go after rich people.

Now, he's a rich pedophile, but this is the thing.

Florida fucked up and didn't figure out a way to put him in prison for the rest of his life.

And I believe this is, quite frankly, is double jeopardy.

And they're claiming because the feds decided not to prosecute him, they can prosecute him again.

But what would happen if all of a sudden we decided in 20 years that crack or 10 years was the scourge of the universe and we started going back and reprosecuting people who are already out of prison for crack?

So did Florida, the Florida state prosecutors totally screw up here?

Florida federal prosecutors, Alex Acosta, who is the labor secretary.

Oh, yeah, and he's in a ton of hot water now.

But I don't think, look, this is an awful person.

He should be in prison right now.

But part of our justice system is you don't retry things.

They screwed up.

They shouldn't have screwed up.

Well, what's going to happen?

They're going to come up with new people now.

This is just...

You think they'll find out?

Oh, lots, tons.

I I think they probably already have them at this point.

And so it's, you know, and also there were other activities that they weren't prosecuting in New York.

And so

that's what they're claiming.

They're claiming one of the victims came into New York airspace.

Yeah, there were tons of stuff.

And I think yesterday, like, six or seven more came up.

And so I think that's where it's going.

And what's the media doing?

The media is immediately going, okay, who was on his plane?

Right.

I mean, if someone offered me a chance to get off Spirit Airlines and they were a pedophile, I'd say, okay, fine.

Look, the implications are that people knew.

I think that's one of the things.

of these guys were.

But the rumor was out there.

The rumor was out there about him among a lot of people.

Even Trump's comments that he's a great guy, he's a terrific guy, but he likes the young people.

Like, they were all insinuations, almost persistently.

They knew what was going on.

Or some section, some version of it.

And so I think that's what was interesting.

Old media actually started this thing off, which was Julie Brown, Julie K.

Brown, who just kept at it because she was writing about the settlement,

which I think brought prosecutors here in the southern district of New York going.

And so it's interesting.

Old media does have have a little kick in it.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So what's clear, though, sort of more going on, if you commit a crime, you don't want to be poor because prosecutors come in and say we're going to put you away for 30 or 40 years unless you cop to a plea and go to prison for three years.

So I believe there's a lot of innocent people in prison who were worried about spending the rest of their life in prison, so cop to plea.

And you also don't want to be a billionaire, because I think billionaires have become new targets in what is a soft revolution against rich people.

Interesting.

So what you want to be so badly about.

This one was so

violative of everything.

But I don't know.

I do think, anyways, I don't think being rich is a crime.

So bottom line is, if you commit a crime, you want to be rich-ish.

You don't want to be.

You don't want to be.

The worst place is to be poor because you have to cop a plea and you're probably intimidated and have to end up in prison, maybe when you shouldn't be in prison.

And second, you don't want to be a billionaire because we're in the midst of a revolution.

All right.

But now, the economy, as we're going to get to the last thing here, has never been better.

You know, we've got this great economy.

The Fed is thinking of cutting rates and the economy went crazy.

But one of your rants yesterday was against rich people getting away with stuff at the party, and also that there weren't enough startups, that startup culture is dead, essentially, is that there haven't been enough of that.

And so, how do you juxtapose these two things?

Billionaires ruining everything and being unfair to billionaires?

Because I think you're right.

Well, I think it's a nuanced argument.

Look, the Fed cutting rates, I'm not an economist, but it feels to me like socialism on steroids when we artificially suppress interest rates such that we can create asset inflation.

Who owns assets?

Rich people.

Right.

So, and who needs a little bit of inflation to get greater wages?

Middle class people.

So, again, this is nothing of a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

The notion we're going to cut interest rates to me just makes absolutely no sense.

And also, you hear all these billionaires, Jamie Dimon and rich people saying tax me.

It's not noble, it's self-preservation.

They recognize that people with pitchforks and lanterns are coming for them.

People are just so fed up.

So, there's a lot of work here, but I think we're in the midst of a soft revolution.

We're also in the midst, I think, when the Epstein case, I think the Southern District is, and I'm going to my prediction here, I think the Southern District is hoping someone can get someone to kind of drop a dime on the president.

And I think this is an end run to get at the president.

And I think we have a group of very intelligent government officials who have said this is no longer about partisanship.

They look at the president and say, okay, he's a bigot.

He's a Republican.

Maybe we like him.

Maybe we don't.

But I think the thing that has created real concern amongst government officials, including people of the Southern District, is he's stupid.

And it's dangerous to have someone stupid in the White House.

I think when you have the Iranian government seizing or trying to seize the British tanker, as they did this morning, it's because the president and his diplomatic staff have failed to acknowledge one of the basics of game theory and geopolitics is that agency or strength and greatness is in the agency of others.

And we've slowly but surely done the equivalent of cut our military in half by alienating our European allies who have large armies, fantastic intelligence services.

So Iran is like a shark bumping a big fat stupid seal right now.

And

a big fat, stupid seal would be Trump, correct?

Yeah,

clarifying.

Blowing a drone out of the air.

Sea mammal.

There you go.

See Mammal.

Blowing a drone out of the air.

And because they know we're not going to go into the Middle East for a third time, and they know the guy's military has been cut in half because he's not getting along with our allies.

They're just literally, they couldn't, they haven't read basic game theory strategy.

And Iran.

I wouldn't imagine they would, Scott.

Well, and this all goes back to the worst geopolitical decision of the last 50 years since we went into Southeast Vietnam was when we decided to take out the buffer against Iran and

destroy Iraq.

But anyways, that was the Iraq-Iran award.

Now Iran's this power, and quite frankly, they are flexing their muscles, and they're now the power in the region.

And I think we're somewhat neutered to do anything about it, unfortunately.

All right, let me get you back to the economics of the startup culture, the innovation, the startup.

So there's this myth that we're in this, you know, everyone would call this era of innovation, largely this myth fomented by big technology.

And we're actually in an era of non-innovation.

Which is what you said last year.

30 years ago, 15% of companies were less than a year old.

Now it's down to 7%.

Twice as many companies being started in the Carter administration as they're being started now, because the fastest growing parts of our economy, search, social, digital marketing, technology hardware, are all controlled by one or two monopolies or duopolies.

So we've basically said, I know, let's take the fastest growing parts of our economy and let's let one firm dominate it and aggregate unbelievable spoils from the entire market with a few people.

So you have companies worth $550 billion, Facebook spread across 22,000 employees, and you have companies like Ford with 150,000 employees at worth 50 billion.

And it's great to be a shareholder of Google, right?

It's great to have real estate or the Ferrari dealership in Palo Alto or San Francisco, but it's terrible for the economy.

And the government's job is to prevent a tragedy of the commons.

And we have to do it.

Did you feel like you got through them last night?

I don't know.

Did you have a lot?

Yeah, I've been down here a lot for me.

But look, I have this really kind of, I think, a strange impression of D.C.

And my impression of D.C.

is it's a bunch of thoughtful, nice people who want to do the right thing, who get along.

And that's my impression so far.

Everybody laughed when you said that.

Yeah, Representative Walden, Senator Warren, Senator Bennett.

I meet with these guys, and they all seem really genuinely concerned and want advice on what to do.

So look, the world isn't what it is.

We can absolutely fix this.

The thing that's unfortunate, I think, is a lot of people feel resignation around big tech and that we're outgunned and it's too late.

And it's just so ridiculous.

The people down here turned back Hitler.

They've cured Polio.

I had this discussion with my son last night.

He goes, maybe they're too big to fight.

And I go, nobody is too big to fight, Alex Swisher.

Are you kidding?

We took on the Imperial Army of Japan, the Imperial Navy of Japan, which had never lost a battle.

I have the Imperial Navy, Scott.

You've got to go to the war.

You've got to go to the History Channel.

I'm old.

This is one of the ways I can tell I'm old.

I just watch films about Hitler.

And the idea of a cruise doesn't sound like it.

We are not invading Silicon Valley.

It's not involved.

Yeah, well, we can absolutely fix this.

Well, I like this professor.

We're going to take a break now.

We're going to get back to other things.

Next, I like this Professor Galloway comes to Washington.

Yeah, it's fun, right?

Yeah.

And I'm getting all the swag.

And I was at the Line Hotel with all the cool millennials

getting pretty drunk.

I met a transgender hooker.

She was pretty nice.

And then a nice young man came up to me and said, I love your work.

Yeah.

Where's King?

And no, they didn't say, oh, wait, we got to tell this story.

I will do it next.

Let me take a break and I'll tell the story and get back.

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Just gotta come back.

Tell your story.

So I'm getting on a helicopter to go to Montauk because that's how the big dog rolls.

With you on Blade?

And yeah, I'm on Blade, which is literally like douchebag air.

Anyway, so the guy, I don't even call it with the lights and the L of S, is we having a helicopter in.

Yeah.

Right.

He's like guiding him in left, right, whatever, which is the ultimate invisible until you fuck up job.

You're totally anonymous, and then you might become infamous for a brief moment.

Anyways, we're going out trying to make sure that the tall guy, the big bird guy, doesn't get decapitated by this blade spinning at 1100 RPMs.

And he's got a pretty important job.

And he looks at me, and then he looks back, and then he whips his head to me and stops doing his very important job and goes, and screams out, where's Kara?

So literally, people, again, we're conjoined twins.

People think that we just roll together.

We don't hang out anymore.

We don't hang out.

You invite me out all the time.

You always say you're going to take me out to dinner, and then what do I get?

Nothing.

I gave you a party.

You know who loves me and is pretending she doesn't know me?

She's my new crush.

Who?

Maureen Dowd.

Oh, yeah.

She was there.

Oh, my God.

She comes.

She's like, hi, I'm Maureen Dowd.

And I'm like, you're a saucy.

You know who I am.

You know who I am.

Kara, she's seen the dog at the park playing with his ball.

She knows who I am.

You know what?

Maureen Dowd.

Oh, my gosh.

She got Nancy Pelosi to give up some good stuff.

Oh, that was huge.

There's a fight with the squad on Twitter.

There's a fight with the squad.

So it was that, like, okay, that's going to be my win.

Maureen Dad won this week by getting Nancy Pelosi and the squad into a fight.

And then Nancy Pelosi is saying, don't tweet to them, to the squad.

You can't do that.

That's true.

That's AOC.

No, it's not my win, but it was fascinating.

My win, obviously, is Megan Rapino.

Yeah, that's inspiring, incredible.

And you know what?

It's a great forward-looking indicator.

My son's 8 and 11.

They're in town, and we were going to hang out.

And they're like, no, we're watching the women's final.

And we were just, that was an amazing game.

What's her name?

The woman from Madison, Wisconsin.

Probably one of the greatest goals in soccer history.

She was great.

Rose Lavelle.

Rose Lavelle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

But I think Megan Rupina is really interesting.

And she's sort of using this media moment everywhere on Twitter, on stuff, you know, saying, I want everything.

I deserve everything, essentially, which is, you know, confident women is not something you can see a lot.

You do see a confident women, but she's really aggressively confident, which is great.

And then she's using it to say, you know, we have to be better.

We've got to love more, hate less.

She talks about making the world a better place.

And then she talks directly to trump your message is excluding people you're excluding me it's just a really interesting use of all the mediums by her now and this team And it's weird, too, because the reaction when a female athlete kind of commands the space she occupies, it's seen as obnoxious.

I mean, look at what dudes do.

Look at the celebrations and how obnoxious they are.

But when a woman does it, it's, oh, no.

Oh, I think people like it.

I think a lot of people, I think she'll get used to it.

They better get used to it because that's the way lesbians roll.

And that's what we're going to do.

I do that all the the time.

It's interesting because when I did a podcast once and someone was like, why do you think you do well?

I said, because I'm fantastic.

And they were like, well, isn't that?

And I was like, what?

The reaction was fascinating.

And the fail to me this week is the Zoom for Mac

with the major security vulnerability.

I think they've had a good run in the stock market, but they have a camera business on your computer or your phone or something like that.

I love Zoom.

Do you use Zoom?

I do all the time.

Yeah, it's great.

I love it.

I love it.

It's a great product.

Yeah, we predicted that was going to be one of the better IPOs.

Yeah, but they can't have a a security vulnerability in their cameras.

They just can't.

No, if the camera on my computer is recording shit, it is going to be

highly embarrassing for me.

So what is your win and fail?

So actually, I'm going to go, my fail is the dispute between AOC and Pelosi.

I think Putin and his bitch, the president, would love to see the Democrats go after each other.

We're falling into their hands.

Yeah.

And AOC is the Muhammad Ali of our generation.

She's brave, she's amazing.

And Nancy Pelosi is the Nancy Pelosi of our generation.

All right.

The two of them should literally lock hands and say, all right, we're the peanut butter and chocolate of this shit, and we're just going to

do our job.

So the notion, in any way to see them not hand in hand, it's like, all right, get in a room and hug it out because they're too important and they're too important.

They don't agree on everything.

I've got to protect the middle door.

I don't agree with Nancy, but I'm with her.

I know, but she's got to protect the middle.

She's got to protect the ones that got her there.

Behind closed doors.

Behind closed doors.

So they just do that.

And every now and then a bad tweet.

I just don't think they start snipping at each other.

I think that's it.

And then Kelly and Conway jumped in and used a phrase from.

Yeah, well, she used the word cat fight, which made her look stupid.

It's like, we're not back in dynasty days.

She used the word catfight.

There you go.

Anyway.

What is your win this week?

My win is kind of strange.

It's the United States Navy.

So

my close friend, Connie Hallquist, whose husband, Commander Brian Cowan, passed away a few weeks ago and was laid to rest with full military honors.

And this is a super impressive guy who decided to spend 20 years in the Navy.

Impressive guy.

And obviously speaks well to the Navy to be able to attract him into the service.

They have two wonderful kids, Luke and Anna.

And then last night I met this young man, Lieutenant Ross Urich.

Is that his last name?

Something like that.

He was really impressive.

Yeah, and I immediately liked him because he was an oarsman like me at Yale.

I was at UCLA.

And what does he decide to do?

Does he go to Wall Street?

Does he go to work for Google?

No, he goes to medical school at Penn and then goes to Walter Reed to do his residency.

And now he's on a ship conducting surgery on young men and women at sea.

And I think it just makes me feel a little bit safer knowing people this impressive are standing watch for us.

And I think, how does the U.S.

Navy, how have they created a culture that has and continues to attract such impressive young men and women?

And I don't know what it's done, but

hats off to the Navy for standing watch and whatever it is they do to continue to attract some of our best and brightest young men and women.

So my winner is the U.S.

Navy.

I'm feeling very patriotic.

In the Navy, because you're in D.C., my dad was in the Navy, you know,

he was.

Yeah.

He was a doctor in the Navy, right?

He was a doctor, he's a lieutenant commander.

Yeah.

He was, indeed.

And where was he just?

Was he on a ship?

A lot of places.

He actually did a lot of stuff with it.

And I saw he was on those boats.

He was in San Domingo.

He was, you know, we put him through school.

He didn't have money.

He was poor and not poor, but he couldn't afford college.

And it put him through medical school and college.

And then he served until he got out and he died just right after he got out of uniform.

Literally half a year.

And he was very young.

He was 33.

34.

34.

Yeah.

So his whole life was in the military, which is interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, I have wonderful pictures of him.

It's an interesting place.

You know, I wanted to go in the military.

I don't know if you can.

Yeah, you told me that.

I mean, you're being made or kidney.

I wanted to.

No, I wanted to be in the military.

I wanted to be military intelligence.

Yeah.

I wanted to go around and do.

And what stopped that?

How did you get up here at Vaughan?

Gay.

Gay stopped that?

Gay stopped that.

I'm old.

Isn't there a large story?

Don't ask, don't tell stopping.

There aren't gay people.

There are, but they don't tell.

They didn't tell back then.

I'm going to talk to Mayor Pete soon about that.

I already told, so you can't go in if you tell.

And Mayor Pete came out fairly late.

After he was in the military.

After he was in the military.

Yeah.

I couldn't, Don S.

Don't tell.

I couldn't do it.

You just couldn't do it?

No, I couldn't.

Sarah's like, ask me.

Ask me.

I'm going to tell you.

I want to tell.

I already told.

It was told.

It was told.

It was impossible.

You came out when it wasn't cool.

It was not cool.

It was very hard.

Yeah, before Will and Grace.

Yes, before Ellen.

Pre-Ellen.

When it was a bug, not a feature.

Yes, exactly.

It was problematic.

But anyway, I really wish I had been in the military.

That would have been nice.

I would be a general right now.

General of something.

I don't know.

Yeah, that's just frightening.

I don't even like to think that.

I would totally be a general.

And then I'd have a fight with Trump and things like that.

It would be great right now.

My dad took me to Annapolis to try and get me excited about it, mostly because he didn't want to pay for my college.

And I found out, you know, the first year, it's changed now.

They weren't allowed off campus.

And then I went to UCLA during sorority rush.

I'm like, no, I'm going to UCLA.

I'm going to UCLA.

I'm going to see you in the Army.

All right, predictions.

We got to finish up.

We got to finish up here.

I mean, I got to get you on the train back to New York.

That's right.

Prediction.

We're going going to revisit a prediction from the episode.

You were talking about North Korea and the Chinese trade war, and you said within the next 90 days, people are going to start geopolitically testing the system and Trump's weaknesses.

And we're more than halfway marked to that 90 mark.

And you were correct.

Well, look, again,

agency and strength.

Our strength is in the agency of others.

And when our adversaries see our allies fracturing because of just incredibly poor strategy and weak thought leadership on the part of the administration, They start testing us.

And so North Korea is testing us.

Now, Iran is seriously testing us.

So

this was going to happen.

It's only going to get worse.

And it's a huge disappointment that we're literally fracturing probably the greatest alliance in the history of mankind, and that's the North American Treaty.

The North Atlantic allies.

It's just incredible to think that we would be this stupid and not think there was going to be ramifications.

So at this 45-day, what is the next testing?

I don't think.

Let's double down on your prediction.

It's difficult to, it could be anything.

It could be Russia deciding to, like, quote-unquote quote, do a soft invasion of one of their neighbors.

It could be another missile being launched by North Korea, another test.

It could be the Iranians spinning up their uranium again.

I mean, all sorts of stuff.

I'm pretty sure it's not going to be Canada.

I'm pretty sure it's not going to be Canada.

CHAPTER's not doing so well out there.

He might need something.

Yeah, guys.

That guy, I don't know.

That guy's great.

Yeah.

Anyway, he might need to do something.

Yeah.

Might need to make something.

Take over Minnesota.

That's it.

Minneapolis is ours.

Tomorrow belongs to me.

I mean, basically, Minnesota is Canada.

I just managed to mix Nazis, Justin Trudeau, and Minnesota.

I'm not clear how that works.

Well, I am still a little bit drunk.

I had four makers and gingers last night at the bar.

All right.

So that was nice.

Oh, and who gave me a ride home?

Your ex-wife.

It's literally like you're

again, you're the sultan of Brunei with if you were a man, you would be horrified by you.

It's like there's wives, ex-wives, kids everywhere.

Yeah.

Anyways, but yeah, I don't know.

Wow, what can I say?

Oh, back to Barbara.

Back to Barbara.

You know, and I start thinking: is there a ready tiller near here?

I mean, I don't know what's going to happen.

Let's get you out of Washington before you end up in the tidal basin with a stripper.

That is really what's going to happen.

You say that like it's a big one.

I can't believe you didn't go to Trump Hotel.

Got to have my hobbies, Carol.

All right, whatever.

I got to get you out of Washington before there's a scandal du jour.

Anyway, there's lots of big political guests coming on Rico Decode Decode soon.

I interviewed your friend Michael Bennett, Senator Michael Bennett yesterday.

And Pete Buttage, I loved him.

He was very wonky.

Senator Bennett.

Yes, Pete Buttigiege is coming in today.

You're going to see him in a second.

Are you excited?

I can't even, that's literally overwhelming.

Well, he's going to be here in like four minutes.

Anyway, Adam Schiff, I'm going to visit up on Capitol Hill.

He's a gangster, too.

Yeah, I'm interviewing Lauren Underwood and Andrew Yang.

And there's so many political people.

I'm going to hopefully be talking to Elizabeth Warren soon.

Yeah, what do you think?

I think you're super impressive.

No, not bad.

I mean, this is going to be interesting.

I'm going to need your help with questions.

Yeah.

No, I.

Give me one for Pete Buttigig since he's here.

Why did you come out so late?

Well, everyone asked him that.

Give me another one.

What has he said?

Because I did.

And what about,

I would be very interested in how serving in the military has changed his view of the world.

I think that people who serve alongside brave men and women and put their lives at risk for the country, I just think that's got to change you forever.

All right.

I'm curious how

he feels.

And also, quite frankly, is he taking oxygen away from other candidates?

Can a gay man who oversees, governs 150,000 people, a third of the size of a congressional district,

what makes him believe he is qualified to be president, other than we have someone totally non-qualified right now?

Well, that would be an argument.

Is America ready for a gay president?

I'd like to think so.

Do you think America's ready for gay?

You've had a gay president.

You've had a gay president?

I'm sure we have.

That's there are rumors everywhere.

Really?

Yeah, but it's back in the 1800s, so let's forget.

Oh, really?

Let's just cool.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

But I'd like to think we're ready.

I'm just an enormous fan of his.

I think he's got the...

But you think he's taking up too much oxygen.

Interesting.

Well, he's fairly captivated, but good for him.

We met his strategy head, the woman who's sort of the mastermind behind the curtain.

She's an incredibly impressive person.

Met her last night.

But yeah, he's look, he's done a great.

Who would have thought?

It's just, you know what's impressive about these people is they even have the confidence to say, okay, I'm mayor of a city of 150,000 people.

I'm going to run for president.

That takes a lot of confidence.

Confidence is the one word for it.

Yeah.

So what is it?

Is it confidence or the delusion, right?

But right now it looks like confidence.

He has a vision.

And also, I need you to help him explain.

He keeps talking about you can't have, you know, what's more important, democracy or capitalism.

I still don't quite understand what he means about that.

All right.

I will ask him.

He says a lot of things that are like that.

So yeah, they're like, wow, he's so smart, but I don't really understand what he's saying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which kind of describes Michael Bennett.

He's very wonky.

Yeah.

He does explain.

Yeah, he does explain.

He's still my man, though.

I know.

He was great.

He's a lovely guy.

But Mara Pete's in the wings.

Man in the wings.

All right.

I will ask these questions of these people.

Anyway, thank you, Scott.

Thank you, Karen.

Thanks for hosting.

Thank you again for hosting such a wonderful party.

I felt very American and I felt loved and affirmed, which I need

all of those things.

The algebra of happiness.

Thank you for sharing.

Where you made everybody miserable.

There you go.

Anyway, you were correct, though.

Anyway, Camila Salazar, produced our show today.

Nishat Kirwa is Pivot's executive producer.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson and Erica Anderson.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast.

If you like this week's episode, leave us a review.

You can email us if you have any thoughts on the show or suggestions or topics you'd like to hear us discuss.

Pivot at Voxmedia.com.

Pivot, Pivot, the only pivot from Voxmedia.

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