Charlie Kirk Assassination Aftermath

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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Box Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway.

So today we should start very much saying what happened yesterday in Utah was a terrible and tragic situation.

I think there's been a lot of like a lot of anger, a lot of accusations, a lot of really ugly stuff going on.

But being able to speak, even if you disagree with someone, and as you might imagine,

Scott and I have disagreed with Charlie Kirk many times.

You can say what you want, but having this happen is probably the most heinous thing that could occur in a country like the United States, where we're supposed to be able to say the most horrible things and continue to debate.

Scott? Yeah, look,

I've been thinking about this a lot, as most people have, over the last,

whatever, 18 hours. Look, he,

I mean, this

at the end of the day, or the beginning of the end is the following. A 31-year-old father of two was needlessly murdered.
All right.

That is a tragedy, full stop. Should not happen.

And we should be thinking about

tangible actions to make sure

it happens less.

Charlie Kirk, in my view, and we said this, And just to be honest,

I won't speak for you. In my view, said a lot of divisive, hateful things.

Absolutely. At the same time, his format was really powerful and productive.

And that is a lot of people on the far left and the far right go into their echo chambers in a studio somewhere behind a mic and only listen to or respond to people who are supporting them.

He went on campus and he would have these open mic, you know,

challenge me or debate me or prove me I'm wrong. Prove me I'm wrong, it was called.
Yeah, prove me.

And I thought that was really productive and courageous because he was subject to a lot of TikToks and videos that made him look bad.

And a lot of times he would make great points and show that a lot of young people weren't being critical thinkers about their progressive views.

And a lot of times young people would show up and say very intelligent things that

counteracted in critical thinking and showed that he was wrong. That is a productive dialogue we should have on campus.

Campuses are supposed to be, and this is one of the most upsetting things about a very upsetting thing, university campuses are supposed to be an incredibly safe place physically, but a dangerous place intellectually.

And that is, and unfortunately, this reduces both. People, I don't know about you, I'm rethinking some of the campus appearances I've committed to.

They are supposed to be physically safe spaces, not only for the speakers, but for the students.

And

I won't even get into some of the high school stuff, but you have to appreciate he was a great businessman at a very young age, a father of two, and

his dialogue in his format, I felt was a productive, brave dialogue, right?

This is a tragedy. Let me get to some of the second order effects.
I want to get your thoughts.

It's just so disappointing that universities are becoming a place because of violence and schools, this should be the safest places in the world for discourse. That's just super,

super upsetting. What I find,

and this is where, as progressives, I feel a pressure to feel the other side. I think the reaction from the far right on this is so fucking bullshit.

Every person on the far left has said something along, I don't care if it's Secretary Clinton, Vice President Harris, everyone has said basically,

we condemn this violence.

This is never the solution. Our hearts and prayers go out

to Charlie and his family. The far right has had a very similar narrative for half of it.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Charlie and his family, and this is the fault of the radical left.

That is political violence only begets political violence.

And Trump, our commander, our divider-in-chief, immediately goes on, highlights political violence against every Republican, forgetting to mention the violence against Speaker Amerto Pelosi's husband, against the lawmakers who were murdered in their home in Minnesota.

You know,

accidentally slips past every Democrat and says political violence has to stop and then goes on to foment. political violence.
Yes, I would agree. I was sort of like, what? I was like, okay, good.

Yes, no political violence. And then shifting into the radical left thing immediately was shocking, especially because there's nobody knows.
They haven't caught this. I don't know.

It's a guy, apparently. What a shock.
But

it's, you know, they have, they've got the gun now. They have videos of the person who did it.

They believe it's a college age student. I don't know how they know that.

But they must have videos of some sort. So the question is, why would you immediately, without any proof, say something like that at the worst? Now, let me give him one tiny little out.

They were very close, and you could be very, very angry and very upset about this incredibly violent death. And unfortunately, it was all over the internet

extraordinarily.

It was an execution, really, was what happened here. And everyone saw what happened as murder.
And

for him to shift to that, the only thing I can give him is. Okay, he was a friend, but this, you're also the president of the United States, right?

That's the, that was what I kept thinking is like, what in the world would possess you to immediately start with the vengeance? Like, I don't know. I was sort of like shocked myself.

And I'm, I'm usually never shocked by Donald Trump, but this one was sort of shocking to me.

If you go online right now onto any of these platforms and you see the stuff that's getting 70,000, 80,000 likes, it's someone saying, that's it, it's war on the fucking radical left.

Someone who is understandably outraged and upset. I'm like,

well, okay, do we know the radical left was responsible for this? Are you forgetting what's happened to Democrats? And the far left wants to feel

the far left wants to feel empathy and a call for taking the temperature down. I get it.
The far right,

let's be clear, there's some stupid people saying stupid things online about him.

I mean, about his death, not about him, about his death. I haven't seen that.
No, it's just usually like anonymous. Like they're cherry, the right is cherry-picking some dumb, stupid assistant.

Yeah, I haven't seen

any famous person from the left who has any credibility saying anything, but our hearts go out to the family. Violence is not the answer.
This needs to stop.

And then you have very famous, very famous right-wing hosts saying, This is it, this is war, and it's the radical left. It's the fuck.

I laid this at the feet of the radical left, and the president has said this, and that is, that just begets,

that just creates more violence. And the problem is

the solution is

the following.

We have two very famous, and people should own their grief. I get upset a lot and emotional on this podcast.

I like it when people are vulnerable, but I heard two very famous right-wing pundits yesterday crying over this on air. Fine.
I get it. You may have known him personally.

You have the right to your own grief and emotions.

We don't seem to express the same grief for the people every day that are shocked. We didn't seem to be as concerned.
With the two students in Colorado, yes. With the students in Colorado or

the students who were shot and murdered while praying. And

if the left and the right are serious about this, I mean, if they're serious, it all comes down to this. I live in the UK.

In the next year, in all of the UK, there will be approximately 30 gun deaths.

In the United States, in the next six hours, there will be 30 gun deaths.

We don't know the motivation of the shooter. We don't know who he is.
I'm comfortable saying he, because let's be honest, it's always a he. What we also know is...

The government is saying that, just so you know, they're saying it's a man. We also know that this person used a high-powered rifle,

and there's too many goddamn guns. And Charlie Kirk used to say, You have to pay a price for certain rights.
And he said, look, there'll be a certain number of deaths. I buy that in theory.

I'm comfortable with an increase in prevalence in crime with protection or certain search and seizure rights. That someone can't show up in my home and just say, we suspect you.

So I get the concept, but it's an issue of scale. At some point, does a total fidelity to gun rights begin to come at such an unbearable cost? And this is an example of this.

And I don't hear anyone saying, well, that's not true. I heard AOC say this.
If we're serious about this,

we can talk about dialing down the rhetoric. Good luck with that.
You know, Jesse Jesse Waters was already out yesterday saying, this is war, right? Okay.

The rhetoric, good luck with trying to get people to dial down the rhetoric with social media that makes hundreds of billions of dollars by enraging people with their algorithms.

If we're serious, we have to reduce, we have to have sensible gun control laws. Yep, 100%.

So just to update people, as of this recording, and that could change, the manhunt is still underway for the person who the government is identifying as a man who shot and killed 31-year-old conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

Officials, as I said, said they've recovered the gun and believe was used in the shooting in the woods nearby, a high-powered bolt-action rifle. Investigators also a video, as we said, of the suspect.

They're trying to use facial recognition to identify the person.

The FBI was pretty clottish at the start. They had fired the head of the Salt Lake City office because she was a Pakistani woman, apparently.

And they were very clottish. They said there were suspects in custody when there weren't.

Kash Patel's not really exactly seeming very sharp here, but we'll see.

These things are very chaotic. At the same time, the government is not supposed to feel chaotic.

In terms of reactions, as you said, a lot of people did denounce the violence and linking his words to his death. He is not to blame for his death, let's be clear.
I'm sorry, people.

I know you were angry. at some things he said, but just then be angry at things he said.
That's pretty much where it stops.

Although President Trump, as we said, is blaming the radicalist rhetoric and others calling for war.

One of the first things out of the gate was Elon Musk saying the left is murderous, essentially. If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die.

That was possibly one of the worst. Steve Bannon and Jesse Waters, same thing.

We're not at war with them, and nor this is this is really irresponsible for high-profile people.

Utah's Republican governor, Spencer Cox, took a different approach. Now, it's a little long, but I think it's well worth listening to.
So let's listen to what he said.

Our nation is broken.

We've had

political assassinations recently in Minnesota.

We had an attempted assassination. on the governor of Pennsylvania.

And we had an attempted assassination

on a presidential candidate and former president of the United States and now current president of the United States.

Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken.
Nothing I can say can bring back Charlie Kirk.

Our hearts are broken. We mourn

with his wife, his children, his family, his his friends. We mourn as a nation.

If anyone in the sound of my voice

celebrated even a little bit at the news of this shooting,

I would beg you to look in the mirror

and to see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere.

I don't care what his politics are. I care that he was an American.

I thought that was so eloquent and actually really just perfectly done. Political speeches are so important at times like this or from leaders, political leaders.

And I thought this was just exactly the right sentiment. And he was acknowledging the anger.

He was acknowledging the difficulties of someone disagreeing with Charlie Kirk on some of the things he said.

But he also

was pointing out, we just have to,

get beyond this and noted he was a father with children. And at the same time,

talking about assassinations of Democrats, essentially, and trying to equalize them. I thought it was fantastic.
I don't know what, and I wish it had gotten more attention than,

and then it was followed by Trump, which was so non-was the opposite of leadership, I thought. Yeah, he gave what felt like a presidential speech, right? Acknowledging

that was, I think he did exactly what you would expect

from a leader. So, you know, kudos to him.
And again, the thing that really struck me as someone who's on campus every day,

between

people being, you know, conservative voices being shouted down on campus, between

intimidating certain students or getting in the way of their learning, between

this is

the whole point of a university is we put it outside the city center for a reason such that people could say provocative

upsetting things and they were they were they were allowed to do that and Charlie Kirk

I think the you know in my view one of the most positive things you could say about him was he was he was endorsing that and and

I thought what he was doing on campus regardless of what you think of the rhetoric was actually a positive I liked those videos.

Yeah.

And a lot of people, a lot of people felt, I think the people who were angry at him were angry that we didn't have as strong a voice as going on campus and saying and presenting a different viewpoint.

He was just very good at what he did.

But there is something, you know, the Australian, the, I think it's a newspaper magazine, kind of summarized it, said that

there is a real,

we're having, culturally, we are really struggling in the U.S. And it really stains our amazing accomplishments.

And this is an example of that, that these places that are supposed to be places of critical thought and free speech, something like this that happens. And also

just the fact that we have normalized, there are so many.

I'm not in any way saying this is less heinous or excusing what happened here. When you're a public figure, and

you decide to go into politics, I'm going to say Charlie Kirk. When you decide to run for president, the bottom line is one out of three presidents the last 50 years have been shot at.

You know, there are certain risks.

If you're going to school,

you don't have a choice. You don't enter into a high risk.
These are supposed to be the safest places in the world. There's been 24 shootings on college campuses.
And school and high schools.

That's just colleges.

And we're talking 40,000 people a year, 121 people every day.

And I've said this over and over, the free gift with purchase coming to the UK is I no longer have these horror fantasies around getting up in the morning and seeing my kids high school on CNN.

I was, you know, I was thinking, like, what is this idea of what a college is?

I interviewed, you know, Jordan Klepper, actually, his recent documentary was about Charlie Kirk, you know, about people, how he went there.

And it was a really interesting discussion because in many ways, you know, he was saying it's sort of the reason why he was successful is he actually showed up and talked to them, right?

That was the thing.

Even if they, and that's why he was able to convince them.

And he goes, he goes, it was sort of no different, a little bit different, but not that much different as people that came to campus and gave out free hats and beers, right?

Like, hey, let's like, whatever it happened, whatever the marketing thing had to be. But he really did market the ideas.

And he was just before he died, he was throwing out hats. He was creating a situation.
And I would agree with you. It was, I was always sort of, where was

a version of this for Democrats making their case? And again, let me say, stuff that came out of his mouth was so upsetting to hear for me and many others.

I think I kind of stopped, I started ignoring a lot of the stuff he said because I knew he was doing it to get people's goat.

But if you were a college student, that would be, I don't want to use the word trigger because it's gotten so abused, but

it was not nice, right? Like if you were a gay person, the things he said or a woman or a black woman or whatever. And

yet, you know, there's that sort of Hyde Park corner kind of idea of our world where, you know, the idea of Hyde Park is a park in

London where people can say whatever they get on a soapbox and say whatever they want. And some of it's really

just heinous.

I've been there and it's really like, what did you just say? And I think we've lost the ability to

not react because you should react and get angry. You should push back.
You should be incensed, right? I think all those things are kind of good for the development of minds, right? Like,

what did they just say? But it's almost like being in a bar. Like, you don't then hit someone.
You don't then,

you're like, you, you could even call, you know, you're an asshole when that happens. I mean, it happens a lot, actually.

And I just, I, I, I don't know what

the problem is, and I talk about this, is that I think, I do think online gets it even worse like it gets into people's heads in a way that I don't know what would cause you to do this to like get on climb yourself on a roof and shoot someone

like in execution style like what is the what is the jump and sometimes I think you know this you know sort of the stew of hate speech that's available to people sits in their brain especially online especially as it goes viral what is that leap from

you know if you said something something to me offensive, Scott, I'm not going to use Kirk as an example because he just

died. But if you said something terrible to me, why would my first thing be to get a gun and shoot you? Like, what happened? Where's that moment?

And I think, I think a lot of the stuff online does get people. You can see it in the notes from shooters.
You can see it in the guy who shot the people in Minnesota.

There's something that turns with the constant steeping online, especially, and in videos and things like that, that creates that jumping off point.

I don't know what it is, but there is a moment where they say, I think what I'll do is get a gun. And I think what I'll do, and that's not a new thing.
Look, we've had that happen throughout history.

But it seems like just so much

of an easier leap than it used to be.

Maybe I'm wrong. I think it's, but see, I do think you can disarticulate it down to a few things.

And that is, one, people are spending more and more time online. And that does a couple of things.
One, the algorithms have connected engagement with enragement.

So

if you want, if you go online, it tries to figure out if you're conservative or progressive and then take you to the extreme and start making the other side look bad, look evil, look dangerous.

And so there's a culture of rage dividing us, being fueled by the deepest pocketed, godlike technology with Paleolithic institutions to regulate them.

So that's incredibly well said. Our profit motive in the United States and 10 companies driving the entire market have a rage motive that divide us.

Maybe they didn't intend to, but that is what's going on. Two,

the social isolation of young men.

And that is too many young men are going into those bubbles, getting enraged, and they, because they're not going into work because of remote work, because they're not getting as many economic opportunities, because they're not doing as well in school, because their prefrontal cortex doesn't develop as fast as a woman's, because they don't have as many romantic opportunities, they're not connecting with friends, they're not connecting with work, they're not connecting with romantic partners, they're isolating from their family.

And when that happens,

when those guardrails are no longer present, they don't have the ability to see, oh,

I just met a Trumper at work. And you know what? He seems like a pretty cool guy.

Or he enrages me and I'm not going to talk to him, right? Right. But I learn how to deal with it.

And I realize that, or my girlfriend or my mother or my father says, what the fuck are you doing and saying? Stop that. No, that's not right.

Or they start asking you questions that help illuminate that what you are thinking makes no sense. So we have people, we have profit connected to rage.

We have the social isolation of young people who have no guardrails and start becoming increasingly

prone to irrational behavior that if they were more social, they'd have greater guardrails.

And then the kicker is we take an enraged public and young men and men who have no guardrails and are much more prone to irrational thoughts and behavior.

And then we make weapons of war easily accessible.

Yeah, it really is. It's, you know, there, again, there have been shooters over all of history, right?

There's not, this is not, there's always someone somewhere, but it just feels like that leap is so much smaller for so many people, right? I think I'll take a gun.

I just kept thinking, what, whoever did this was like, I'm going to take my gun. I'm going to climb up on that roof.
I'm going to murder someone. And thinking it was the right choice.

You know what I mean? Like, this is your only choice. Why did you go down there and ask him a fucking question and yell at him? Like, you know what I mean? Like, what that to me,

it's just there's a, I don't, maybe this person's mentally ill. I don't know.

One of the things that we should talk about very quickly, the offshoot of this, is all these conspiracy theories around this guy's death, murder. I'm going to say it's a murder.
It is.

Which is like, they have, what's incredible is they have all these videos.

It looks like they have videos of almost everything.

And that's an interesting thing in law enforcement.

But now there's all these conspiracy theories of there's now a video of two guys making hand signals, looking like they're telling the shooter to shoot.

Then there's other people saying it's a, you know, it's an intelligent ops from Russia or Israel or this and that.

And then another person arguing, oh, if it was that, they wouldn't be seen on the roof, which kind of makes sense. If you're really good at what you do, you don't get seen essentially.

And it just,

this conspiracy stuff is, you know, who, who's, in whose interest is it for Charlie Kirk to be dead and move away from the Epstein files, right?

And you just sit there and you're like, what if you were a young, I kept, I'm confused by all this stuff. I'm like, oh, huh.
And then

I get dragged in and then I'm like, no, no, stop. We don't know anything right now.
Right.

But if you're a young person, boy, is all this post-murder conspiracy theory is even worse to have to deal with. I don't know.
I just find it very upsetting in that regard.

And I can't imagine being a young person who's

not quite there on judgment on any of this stuff. Well, and we don't have,

and I'm a party to this yesterday, we don't have anything resembling fact-checking or anything that's measured.

So, you know, it's again, these socially isolated young people with a profit motive around spreading conspiracy theory.

Typically, these types of shooters fit a tip, not always, but typically they're young men who are hoping to regain social capital with what they see as a heroic act of violence.

They're, you know, isolated,

feel like people don't respect them, are looking to gain back social capital and think they can get it because they've been convinced this person or this movement is truly demonic and that they would be heroic in killing this person.

And, oh, by the way, dad's got a sniper rifle. I mean, I don't know if you felt this way.
I felt unnaturally hit in the gut by this.

I just thought, oh, fuck, this is just so bad for everyone and everything.

And I feel bad for him. I feel bad for his family.
I feel bad for

the chilling on dialogue this is going to have on university campuses.

I feel that the dialogue is immediately going to go to

be politicized and blaming the radical left, which has to be. I see the whole road ahead.
Yeah. And, oh, I'm already seeing stuff.
I'm like.

You know, oh, was it a trans shooter? And I mean, you're already seeing this shit, right? Was it an Epstein? I'm seeing now, was it an Epstein shooter? Cause he backed off on the Epstein stuff.

You know what I mean? Like, and you sit there and it's like, could be anybody because they're all fucking crazy. We don't know.
You know what I mean? Like you're like, oh my God.

And I think the fact that we, one of the things I hate about this in a weird way is we have so much information and so much is bad. Right.

I have refrained from saying very much about anything online because I'm like, I don't know.

I want to wait and see who, what, what happens here and then figure out what where I was going with this is, and I immediately took it down and I need to be more careful.

I saw this video of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been, in my opinion, very courageous around all of the Epstein stuff, I saw this video of her coming outside of her office and putting up a picture of that card, right?

And putting it on her, the front of her office and then hitting her hands together. I'm like, wow.

You know, and I immediately posted it and said, you know, I have a lot of mixed emotions looking at this.

And then immediately my files are like, Scott, it's AI.

I'm like, oh, fuck. And I immediately took it down.
Yeah. But not before it went, but not before it went out to 1.2 million people.
I know, I know, I know. That's why I said I have posted very little.

Yeah, me too. That's Spencer Cox.

Can I ask you one more question? We have to move on. But you said you're nervous about appearing on college campuses.

I'm not, but I have someone very close to my life who knew I'm supposed to speak at a public university. I don't have nearly the footprint and popularity of this guy.

So I don't mean to sound, I don't mean to create false equivalence, but I'm supposed to speak at a university, a big public state university, and someone very close to me is like, no, you're you're not going.

Yeah. You know, obviously this

evokes an emotional reaction. And this person has said, well, yeah, I don't give a shit.
You're not going.

And

comedians who used to be the pushback here, I think a part of the anger from the left from Charlie Kirk was, quite frankly, because he was just more effective.

We did not have an equivalent Charlie Kirk going on campus as organized, as youthful, quite frankly, as courageous. He was not afraid.
He got in front of people. Sometimes he made a great point.

Sometimes he looked stupid. He didn't care.
He played a huge role in Trump's election.

And I think part of the venom from the left around how pissed off they were about Charlie Kirk was quite frankly, he was just more effective than us. Part of it.

Some of the things he said were terrible.

100%. He did it on purpose.
Well, he did it on purpose. Like a lot of people, he would say incendiary things to get a reaction and get more YouTube videos.

Even if he, even if I don't know, you know, maybe he believes this shit. Maybe, you know, hopefully he doesn't.
But anyways,

who used to be on campus doing this was comedians.

And now comedians won't go on campus because they're like, I don't need anyone shouting me down or waving a Palestinian flag in my face or I just don't need that shit. And so we on the left,

I just, I remember, I remember at UCLA when I was there, everyone from Bill Murray to REM to, you know, I'm dating myself to Carl Icahn used to show up.

And I know a lot of people are like, I'm not going to fucking campus. Did you hear what happened to my friend on campus? And by the way, it happens just as much to people on the far right.

Far left, too. Far left happens.

It happens both. Someone's upset and they feel on campus emboldened to interrupt them, try and make them look stupid, or worse, right? And it's really,

I mean, we're probably headed to an environment where we're going to have, I would think at some point, we might have metal detectors on campus. I don't know.
I know. It's depressing in that regard.

How would you feel if you were invited to speak at a campus right now in a large crowd, 2,000 or 3,000 people outside in the square like that, how would you feel?

Nervous because

nervous. Just basic areas of disagreement that you or I might say

strongly, because we're always like making jokes and saying rude things. I mean, we said,

someone had a micro dick, I forget who it was.

You know, stuff like that. We're always, well, we're always saying that.

I was like,

if one crazy fucking online incensed person with a gun shows up yeah i could see it now and i before i could never see it like they got mad at one little thing i said it makes me nervous it does it does because it's not because i think uh i don't want people to disagree with me it's that i i think some people have something's happened to some people online and they have access to a gun that's yeah it's nerve-wracking yeah

I could see it.

For a second, I definitely think about it. Anyway, very quickly, I want to talk about the political violence the other side of the world, Nepal, which is really sort of shocking in a lot of ways.

The country is now under nationwide curfew after mass protests led by teenagers and young adults turned deadly.

The unrest began after the government banned social media, but protesters also are calling out unemployment, corruption, and inequality.

It was a bigger thing than just social media, but social media set it off about this sort of culture of elitism.

And it sort of manifested itself.

And the only reason I'm talking about it is because what I'm hearing from lots of sources that they're about to announce the TikTok deal, it's going probably going to Larry Ellison and a bunch of investors.

I noted this online.

And one of the things, of course, was it was supposed to be banned, right? And this is supposed to be the solution to it. And I wondered, what if it did get banned?

Would something like this happen with young people? Probably not in this country. But I don't know if you have any thoughts on what happened, Paul.
It was sort of social media is what set it off.

I don't think it was the root cause, but nonetheless.

I don't know that much about it other than typically it's young people that start revolutions because young people are more risk-aggressive and willing to go to a score a square and risk getting shot.

And, but I mean, quite frankly,

I'm not trying to

obviously loss of life is anywhere as a tragedy, but I just thought, oh, God, they got their Instagram. That's what that was the final straw.
They got their Instagram taken away.

It just felt like I would not have guessed that. I don't know anything about the Nepalese culture.
I don't, but you know,

countries not this country use social media as everything.

Like like it's it's tv it's and so including business right that's how they basically like shutting down the newspapers and the tv stations when they take away yeah yeah so i for people that don't understand it and i think this was a hugely corrupt sort of nepo economy where these people had just about had it and then they were like now you can't say anything and so and it has a culture of free speech this country anyway it's just just interesting to watch

i'll bet anything you you just summarize it i don't even know what happened and i think i know what happened and that this was the excuse but I'll bet you anything, it's a lack of economic opportunity for young people.

That was the kindling and them taking away their social media was the spark.

If you reverse engineer almost any uprising among youth, it's that they get pissed off that there's a group of people sucking oxygen out of the room from them and that, okay, we're fed up.

We don't see a future for us to to find a family, be treated fairly, and it's a group of it's a group of old people who are aggregating too much information, or I'm sorry, too much power.

Yep, exactly. And, you know, I often don't say this because I do think some speech is indeed hateful and damaging.

But the solution to a lot of this is more speech and more dialogue.

And I think one thing that really kind of stuck in my crow was that NMSNBC let go of Matthew Dowd, who said some very factual things on the air, perhaps not good timing

about Kirk. And he seemed to blame Kirk for his own death.
I listened to it, I wasn't really clear if he actually said that.

Um, what he was talking about was, you know, what we were just saying is that there's so much hate that he was essentially saying if you put hate out in the world, don't be surprised if you get it back, which is probably not the nicest thing to say at the moment.

You said you raised the temperature like on that, you might get you might get burned, right? I felt like this was when I saw his comments, I felt that MSNBC was essentially

the Democratic Party virtue signaling and kicking out Al Franken. I just thought, okay, good for us.
Good for us.

I don't get it. Yeah, I didn't get that.
I wrote that some people there and I was like, I'm sorry. I just like, again, this is

whatever you think about Charlie Hurt, he was about saying things, right? That's provocative as you want. And I just, I don't find that particularly provocative.

And maybe we should be a little nicer, right? When someone dies, absolutely. But it seemed over, like,

it was an overreaction in such a way. The good news is we can trust that no matter what Fox says and falsely accuses Democrats of being responsible, they will not get fired.
Yeah. I know that.

I was like, Jesse Waters, have you looked over at Jesse Waters? Like, what in the

we're at war? I'm like, I'm not at war with you, Jesse Waters. What in the hell? Like, what is he talking about? And I know Bannon's just doing it to be Bannon.
I didn't get it.

When I first saw his clip, I thought there must be another clip for why he got fired.

I think that was a bullshit move. And I'd love to

love the leadership over at MSNBC. I think they got this wrong.
Yeah, me too. Anyway,

I actually told them this too. Anyway, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, Larry Ellison becomes the richest person in the world as Oracle stock soars.

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Scott, we're back. Oracle founder Larry Ellison briefly became the world's richest person this week, edging out Elon Musk.

His net worth climbed to $393 billion Wednesday after Oracle shares skyrocketed on a blockbuster earnings report, up 42% at one point.

Oracle said it won several billion-dollar contracts in the latest quarter, quadrupling bookings from a year before.

The company also is forecasting that revenue from its AI-powered cloud business will jump from $18 billion to $144 billion by 2030.

On top of all that, OpenI just signed a deal to purchase $300 billion in computing power from Oracle.

And again, I am understanding he's going to get control of TikTok or somehow be the lead person in that. And he's obviously very close to President Trump.

And they had been involved with TikTok before, let me be fair. They were part of when the last time they were trying to figure out what to do about TikTok.
Who knows?

We'll talk about that when it happens.

But, you know, this is sort of NVIDIA too. I don't know.
This is Oracle is now a major AI player.

What do you think about this?

I think Ellison is a visionary and he doubled down. I think he figured out that, okay, there should be one,

the most valuable company in the world, NVIDIA.

It would be okay to be the second biggest infrastructure company centered around AI. And he made a massive investment, and it's paying off like crazy.

Their cloud revenue is projected to increase 77% to 18 billion.

They expect their cloud revenue, it was their projections that got the market excited. They project that their cloud revenue will hit $144 billion by 2030.

That's a 14-fold increase versus the 10 billion it brought in last year. It said, credibly, the CEO said, we're going to increase our cloud revenue 14x

in the next four years. Now, what's interesting here is a great deal of that comes from a deal with OpenAI, who will purchase $300 billion computing in for five years.
So get this.

Essentially, OpenAI has said, we're going to pay Oracle $60 billion a year for compute, despite the fact we are currently OpenAI, only making $10 billion a year.

They are so confident in their growth that that they've just committed to spend $60 billion a year on computers. Yeah, I noticed that.
Despite only currently making $10 billion.

So he became the richest person in the world for a brief moment, biggest one-day gain in history, 36%.

He owns approximately 40% of Oracle.

And

this is a good bridge to Apple. What he has done is Larry's gangster move was Oracle was becoming a mature company, very profitable, and they were buying back shares.

When the company went public, he owned 34%.

Now he owns over 40% because they've used that excess cash flow to buy back shares until two years ago when he said, uh-uh, the future's in AI. It's an arms race.
I'm going to massively invest in AI.

Who did not do that, Kara? Trivia question. Apple.
100%.

Correct for 20.

One guy said, it's time to put back on our growth pants, so to speak, and start massively investing in AI.

And this was the gangster strategic move, arguably of the last five years, was an old company saying, fuck it. And an old guy.
And an old guy and an old company. We need to start dancing again.

You may have gotten used to our dividend. You may have gotten used to our share buybacks.
Uh-uh. I'm going large because there's no number two to NVIDIA, but there's going to be.

And now squarely, Oracle

has basically put their elbows out and crashed the party and said, oh, no, you may think we're old and dodgy or whatever. We're not.
We're hip. We elephants can dance.

And now, you know, I mean, this was

an incredibly smart deaf move of Larry Ellison. I would never count him out.
And also his CEO, Saffra Katz. She is really also very sharp.
I mean, I think it's really interesting.

I think, of course, they did also see the writing on the wall with the Trump administration backing AI. You know, they've been very aggressive at showing up at these AI events.

And you remember he showed up at that event with Sam Altman, with the president, that pissed off Elon Musk and everything else.

And at the same time, he put a big investment into Twitter, and probably he's about to double-cross Elon by owning TikTok, right? Or at least controlling TikTok.

So this guy just, whatever it takes, and of course, his son, he funded his son's purchase of Paramount. And so this guy is just very vibrant for an elderly man, I'll say.

Okay, well, just in the price increase from yesterday, I mean, 36%,

what is that?

I don't know what the increase. I'm pretty sure they could buy 30 or 40 Paramounts with just the increase in Ellison's net worth yesterday.
I mean, he said to his son, go plan traffic.

Here's $5 or $7 billion.

I've just increased my net worth by $100 billion. Right.
So, yeah, go have fun with Paramount. I mean, the numbers here are so staggering.
It's I mean, let's do the math.

He's worth about $400 billion.

He he

the stock was up 36% went up a third. So he made $130 billion yesterday.
I know. What did they buy Paramount for? Five or seven? Yeah, something.

Yeah, so they could go buy 20 Paramounts with this increase.

His son, he could, if he has 20 kids out there, which is a possibility given what I know about Larry Ellison, he could say to all of them, go buy your own Paramount with the gain.

I think it'll actually increase the chances. And I know you think it's small ball Paramount.
I know you do. And I think you're right.

But I think that it'll increase the chance they might buy Warner. They might, you know, they might do something to, as you say, consolidate and milk and maybe

have some growth somewhere along the lines. It gives them the heft to do so.
You're going to see some, I think, very aggressive moves from Paramount.

So,

you know, we'll see. Larry Ellison, well done, Larry Ellison.

I had the strangest evening with him once

have you had any interviews with him oh yeah I've interviewed him many times we had him at code several times

I have no sense of him oh he's very funny he's I mean sometimes he's awful sometimes he's funny he's

I've always I hate to say I enjoy spending time with him, but I do. I have to say he's really interesting

because some of his views are not my views at all. Again, someone I don't agree with, who I really enjoy talking to because he's so smart.

And people will fry me for that, but I don't care.

He

I interviewed him once at once, several times at Code and All Things D. One was just about his business, and it was interesting.
And then when Steve Jobs died, he we talked about Steve.

He was very close friends. He was his best friend, I would say.

And one time I said to Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison's your best friend. He's like, Yeah, I know.
It's so weird.

Like, you know, they were very different in their political outlook, et cetera, and were very close friends. They had a very similar I know why you like him.
You relate to him.

He's 81 and he married a 33-year-old. I get it.
You guys have been a lot of people. He's married a lot of people.
He's married a lot of people. He's still dated.

I know. I'll tell two very quick stories about Larry Elizabeth.
So he was on stage.

And then when he was doing the sailing thing, I met him over near where his sailing stuff was in the regatta in the San Francisco Bay.

And we spent the evening just, he was talking about his kids, which was really interesting, David and his daughter, Megan.

And, you know, he was like, they're really actually pretty okay. And it's nothing new to me.
It's the mothers. And it was super, super interesting.

And I'll tell the, all right, I'm going to tell one more Larry Ellison story. So he had this house in San Francisco that he threw a party at for something or other.

And I went because it was one of these stunning San Francisco Pacific Heights houses. And he didn't live in it, I don't think.
I think he just had it for parties. And

I like looking at houses. I'm like, I like seeing what they look like.
And so whenever I go to a party, I wander around and look at things. Like I shouldn't do that.
I do that at your apartment, Sure.

I do that a lot. And so I was, I was wandering,

wandering around. And he has, I think he has Israeli security.
I think that's what he has. He's very, he's a big

supporter of Benjamin, I think Benjamin, not new in Israel. And

they caught me

upstairs.

upstairs and and they bring me downstairs to him and and he looked at me he goes oh i knew it would be you you know what i mean like he was wandering around and he goes what were you doing?

And I said, I was looking for

the hooker and stripper room. I just said a joke like that.
And he goes, oh, that's in the basement, Kara. And it was like,

I just think he's funny. He's funny.
He's a funny guy. He's also awful.
He's definitely

rich. Well, not only that, he became the richest man in the world.
He's like, who, who thought that? Like, who saw that come? Yeah. Anyways.
Yeah, he also spends the money. You know, he had that hat.

He had that house. It looks like he imported it from Japan.
He's got,

yeah,

he's a very stylish billionaire. He was always the original.
Well, you know why he spends that money?

You know why he spends that kind of money and married a 33-year-old. All right.
Why? Because he can.

Aha ha. Anyway, anyhow, we'll see what happens.
We'll watch for that TikTok thing. Also, obviously, you just talked about Apple.

It rolled out its newest iPhones this week, including the iPhone Air, which Tim Cook is calling a game changer. I do not agree with this.

It's the thinnest phone ever, about a third slimmer than current models, though there are trade-offs in battery life.

Apple also unveiled a new watch model as well as AirPods that can translate foreign languages. That was pretty cool.

Meanwhile, AI barely came up with the event, a big shift from last year when Apple intelligence took center stage. Let me say, this iPhone with the bump on the back, I saw it.

I ran into Eddie Q at this morning show event and he showed it to me. And I was like, it has a bump on the back.
It's a big bump. It wobbles.
Like, it's skinny, but then it has this big bump,

which

people are talking about online a lot. It's also

it doesn't i i don't want to buy it i have to say i don't know why maybe i'll buy the 17 but the skinny one is not attractive because it has the bump i don't i don't know what to say anyway um do you think it's a game changer from what you saw i'm just sitting here thinking am i allowed to be crude the day after a murder yes go ahead whatever i mean uh okay the announcement a what cook called a game changer i would call a hand job and an advil it was like yeah all right i don't

yeah fine I, I, yeah. Was anyone begging for a thinner phone? I don't know.
If it was without, if it was a thinner phone with capabilities and out the bump, sure. Why not?

The most exciting thing, and it's available on other platforms, is real-time language translation for the AirPods. I think the AirPods are the most underrated tech product of the last 10 years.

I think essentially they're not even a tech product. They're the most ubiquitous, expensive, high-margin piece of jewelry in history.

People are now roaming around full-time with a pair of earrings called an AirPods that cost $300 and probably $110. I ordered them last night.
Yeah, I just leave them in now.

They're just everywhere.

What this signals, though, and where they will get scrutiny per our most recent conversation is that over the last decade, essentially, Jobs is, Jobs is a builder.

He did not believe in share buybacks. He wanted to amass a huge cash hoard and then such that they were durable and enduring.

And if they wanted to, they could take big swings, either acquisitions or go very deep after certain product development. Tim Cook is an operator.
And by the way, you got to give it to Tim Cook.

He's taking the company from 300 billion to 3 trillion. The question is,

have those $700 or $800 billion in share buybacks to date, they have bought back approximately 40% of their outstanding shares, meaning over a 25-year period, they're effectively taking the company private.

The question is, when you have these meh product announcements, have they gotten to a point where they, quite frankly, should be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more promiscuous, and be spending some of that unbelievable cash generation and taking more big swings.

Because yesterday, there were no big swings. There was nothing that compelling.
And this is the difference. It's easy to play money, money quarterback, but let's do it.

The difference between what Ellison did was a couple of years ago, he said, oh my God, AI is a once-in-a-lifetime generational tech innovation.

I am shifting from being a share buyback company to an RD company, and I'm going to take a massive swing here. And it became, and the stock was up 38% yesterday.

Apple has basically said we are a mature company. And the problem with Apple being a mature company is that its stock right now does not trade as if it's a mature company.

It trades as if it's a growth company at a PE of 33.

So where there will be a lot of second guessing, as I'm doing now, is Tim Cook, quite frankly, not keeping up with his peers because he's decided we're going to go into kind of a rest home.

We're going to continue. Icon started this by putting pressure on them for share buybacks and a dividend.
They did both.

And unfortunately, they aren't taking the big swings they used to under the jobs tenure. Yeah, this phone, I'm like, no, like, no.
I mean, I'll wait for the fold phone.

I'm interested in the fold phone, that's for sure. It kind of becomes an iPad.
I'm going to look at that, but it's going to be heavy.

Like, I just don't see a compelling need to change my phone with these things. And I like changing phones, by the way.
We'll see where it goes.

One of the funnier ones was people made, social media was also joking about i knee pads for Tim Cook, referring to last week's events. Well, here's a stat.

Over the last decade, Apple has spent $500 billion more on share buybacks than on R ⁇ D. That's crazy.
And what do you know? Their products are feeling kind of meh. Meh.

I have to say, some people think the bump on the iPhone is presaging some glasses, some sort of glasses thing that's happening next. So it's sort of a signal.

What's in there, apparently, would work quite elegantly, apparently, with glasses. But we'll see.
We'll see. Let's see some products that really wowessed him.
I have to say, this didn't.

Next up,

let's talk about very quickly President Trump's contributions to Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book.

Obviously, the murder of Charlie Cook has sort of pushed that off, but it was getting a lot of attention.

As previously reported, there was a letter from Trump to Epstein featuring a cryptic conversation within a hand-drawn woman's body. I would say a teenage girl's body is what it looked like.

There was also a photo of an oversized check appearing to be signed by DJ Trump with a note,

Epstein saying showed early talents with money and women and had sold a fully depreciated woman to Trump for $22,000.

President Trump is calling it a dead issue when asked.

You know, I think probably this Charlie Kirk situation is going to push it out of the headlines, but at the same time, I still think this Epstein thing has staying power.

Thomas Massey looks like he has the numbers to

force a release.

And in fact, Kirk, before he sort of went backwards a little bit, had had said there should be, I was watching a speech where he said it should be full and full release of unredacted release to the public.

So I don't know what you thought. I thought it just, Trump pretended he didn't draw, and then they showed him drawings.

He said this birthday book didn't exist. It exists.
He said he didn't write a letter. It looks like he wrote a letter.

I think the idea that it's fake is kind of ridiculous. Way back then, someone knew he was going to be president and decided to do a fake thing.
This seems ridiculous.

I think he did it, and he should just say he was sorry and he won't do that.

And they're doubling down on hoax and whatever. I still think it's very damaging to him.
This remains damaging. What did you think? Well, the question is, is there a red line?

Like, we knew he was a rich kid. Okay, that's a reason not to like him.
We knew he was not a very good businessman. We knew he took companies bankrupt.
We knew he didn't pay subcontractors.

We knew that he was accused of sexual assault. We know he's an insurrectionist.

I mean, is and now there seems to be be evidence everywhere that he was at a minimum cohorting with a known and convicted pedophile.

And the notion that this is a forgery is like, well, okay, you mean somebody 21 years ago broke into the Epstein estate and decided to frame the president who at that time was a Democrat, thinking when he's president, this will embarrass him.

I mean, it's just like the logic, the math ain't mathing here.

And I liked what Representative Moscovitz, I think, said in one of the congressional hearings, said,

You guys, this is outrageous. Why don't we, let's move to bring in forgery experts and have them opine on this?

I mean, the whole thing is just sort of, at what point are we going to find out the guy is literally the dark lord? I mean, what gets, look at the things, every time he's suspected of something,

we find out it's true, and it doesn't seem to matter. The question is, is this

is this the red line? And I am convinced that I'm going on the Times of London radio tonight. I'm convinced the only reason he's supposed to come to the UK,

I typed into AI last night, name, if I were a president trying to keep Epstein out of the news, please name actions and policies that would push Epstein out of the news cycle every 48 hours.

And it gave me a playbook for everything he's doing, some of which he's already done, some of which I think he's going to do.

But he's coming over here to talk about free speech, which I think is ridiculous. But anything that pushes

Epstein out of the news cycle is what he's doing. But I don't know.
I don't have a, I think this is, it feels like this is the one thing that is sticking to the guy. Because he was a friend of his.

Like, I don't, what I don't get, now, look, I have no idea what happened. I don't have any idea if he's guilty of anything.
But why not just say, oh, I was such bad judgment. I'm so sorry.

Profane, stupid, locker room talk.

That was dumb.

Locker room talk. Yeah, that worked last time.
And I shouldn't have written this. And it was before anybody really knew.
And I didn't know. I wasn't paying attention.
And just say, oh, I'm so sorry.

That was so dumb. Like, that's what Gates did.
That's what like everyone who's been there had Linton said it.

And it doesn't, I mean, it sort of sticks to them, but not like this. This is, and I know he's president, but just the drawing was so like, I absolutely think he grew that.

I looked at it. I was like, yes.
When I first saw it, everything about it supposedly being pubic hair, supposed to be

an underage girl. I didn't even get it.
I looked at it. I'm like, and the thing, the creepiest thing about it is he clearly hired creatives.
He organized resources to put this thing together.

It wasn't like a stupid note between friends. where you an error in judgment.
He gathered creative professionals around and said, this is what I want. This is what I'm thinking.

And then they came back with a subtle image of a pre-pubescent girl, and your signature will be pubic hairs. And he went, bingo.

That's exactly what I'm trying to get across. Now, now laminate it, frame it.
Wait, what about this? What kind of paper should we use? You could tell that there was real thought that went into that.

Thought into it. I agree.
Scott sent me a similar thing for my birthday, everybody, just so you know.

Okay.

I agree. Anyway, it's going to stick to you, Donald Trump, no matter what happens.
It's going to be on your,

it's going to be on your record no matter what you do. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about Kamala Harris's sizzling upcoming book, which is sort of getting lost here with all the news.

Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

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Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

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Scott, we're back with more news. An excerpt from former Vice President Kamala Harris's upcoming book, 107 Days, was published in Atlantic, and it is spicy.

In it, Harris says recklessness allowed President Biden to make the decision to run again. She also said the decision should not have been left to an individual's ego.

The former vice president also says that the president's staff fueled negative stories about her performance and often refused to defend her. That is true.
I saw that in real time.

What do you think? I mean, I'm going to interview her, just so you know, at a live event in Washington in two weeks, I think.

I'm excited to talk to her. This book was also written with the help of a very good author who's also a friend of mine, Geraldine Brooks, who is also a Pulitzer Prize winner and everything else.

She's sort of going the agassy route by hiring a really great writer.

So thoughts?

She really went there. I did not think she would, but there she did.
Well, okay. Thanks, Captain Obvious.
I feel the same way about.

Vice President Harris as I feel about all these Republicans who grow testicles after they leave office.

We don't need you to decide it's reckless now.

Had you demonstrated the leadership capabilities we hope from a president, you should have walked in and said, I don't think you should run again, and I'm not going to support you to run again.

Maybe you don't anoint me. Fine, but I have an obligation,

duty to the country, and you should not be president. This is fucking ridiculous.

And she's soft, up, close, and personal, but instead, like a lot of people around him, she decided to whistle, you know, whistle past the graveyard. She does talk about it in the thing.

It's like, I think there is, when you're in those situations, everyone's like, well, it's up to Jill and Joe, right? You know what I mean?

Like, even if the same thing with Trump, if there's something, and no one will do anything. Like, those, those environments create overly cautious, very reticent people saying it's up to him.

Like, even, you know, Newsom did it. They all did it.
Newsom also did it. So did like all the Democratic people.

Someone who probably deserves

more credit was Representative Dean Phillips, who very early said,

I'm running because I don't think President Biden is fit to run again. And he got pretty swiftly pilloried and swept away.

He didn't get a lot of traction, but he does deserve some credit for coming out early.

I'd like to roll with that dude. Representative Phillips.
You met him. We met him at the DNC.
He came over to us. He came on my pod and came out.
I actually seemed like a nice man. But look,

if two podcasters can say a year and a half before he's too fucking old,

the vice president and the people around him him should have enough fidelity to the White House or Democratic ideals to realize pop-up, it's time for pop-op to get a gold watch and retire. I know.

I know, but you

can imagine that environment. Everyone engaged in it.
You remember the emails we were getting? Sign up. You don't understand the assignment.
I was like, oh my goodness.

You don't think the world sees this? We need to stop Trump. I'm like, not like this.
This isn't going to stop Trump. He's going to fall over dead and then we're fucked.
You know what I mean? Like.

Yeah, I don't.

Look, I don't.

I think the vice president, I've said this before. I think the vice president, given a UK-style election format in an American environment, she was shortchange.

And President Biden, Supreme Court Justice or Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senator Feinstein have stained their legacy. because they let their narcissism outweigh what was right for the country.

Full stop. And

for her also,

quite frankly, you can't blame an 80-year-old because he's 80 and his family, which can't see clearly because that's their dad and their husband. But the people around him,

Secretary Blinken, Vice President Harris, they all should have sat him down. And finally, to his credit, I think it was Senator Schumer and Speaker Emerita Pelosi.
Pelosi.

And by the way, he did an exit voluntary. He's not talking of Pelosi.
I think it's Pelosi who did it. Because she went in there and said, I'm really sorry.
We're both old. We both need to go home.

And if you don't announce you're getting out of the race, every three days I'm going to have someone, a Democrat, announce they're not supporting you. He didn't want to leave.

This was not his decision. Supposedly he's going through all this rumination and contemplation.
But all his rumination and contemplation isn't about how badly he fucked the country.

It's about, could I have won if I'd stayed in? The narcissism here of these folks, and again, it goes back to what we were talking about before the shooter. People need guardrails.

And what I mean by guardrails is people who have the balls and the credibility to sit in front of you and go, no, you're wrong. You have to stop this.
You have to stop this.

You're not thinking, you're not thinking clearly. I have no doubt that none of them did that.

Including her. And so what should I ask her? Give me a question for her.

In 10 years, would you, if someone could say to you, in 10 years, you can be a Supreme Court justice or be drafted to run for president again, doors one or two, what would you rather do? Oh, good one.

I like that. That's a good one.
And also, quite frankly, did you really let down the country by not having?

Oh, God,

I'll be there in your ear like a producer with Anderson Cooper. Yeah, you'd also never ask her.
I have the guts to ask her. You'd be like, oh, no, you're much nicer in person than me.

You're much nicer in person than me. No, but on stage, I'll ask her.
You know, I'll ask her. Well, you can get away with it.
Everyone's like, oh, that's her. There goes that Kara.

There goes that Kara.

That sassy Kara.

Once again. And isn't she charming?

But yeah,

I think the whole establishment did it. But I do like that she wrote it anyway.
I'm kind of like, good, just tell us what happened. And then we don't do it again.

All right. She didn't have to do this and she did it.
So we'll see if she's wrong again.

They're all I know, but I'm telling you, I mean, she wants to be drafted to be president again. They all write books.
They get a big,

everyone needs to make a living. She got two or three million dollar advance to write a book and she wants to make it interesting so people read it.

And okay, wow, what a revelation that it was reckless. Okay,

no shit.

No shit. And now that doesn't help, Vice President.
Scott's review. No shit, Charlotte.
No shit. Really shit.
No shit.

Really?

Really?

It wasn't the right move for him to stay as long as he did.

It was reckless. Wow.
Anyway, we got one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Well, it's the boring stuff that moves the needle, but

we have become

kind of the master. We are the messy of own goals.

And for those who don't know, Lionel Messi, greatest football player in the history of the game.

And the most recent one barely got any coverage. But

earlier or last week,

I think it was

on September 4th, the Hyundai Motor Group Meta plan in America was raided by ICE.

About 475 people were detained, including 300 South Koreans who were here on a B1 visa, visitor visa, which don't normally authorize certain types of manual long-term work, but they're used all the time for the type of work they were doing.

And legal representations argue that many workers' contracts had the required specifications. So it's up for debate whether they had the right visa or not.

And they're saying that Homeland Security, Georgia State Patrol, that their actions followed a warrant and investigation into unlawful employment practices at the plant. So what happened?

These people who are incarcerated, South Korea immediately chartered a plane, has brought brought them all back to South Korea.

And by the way, this factory is part of a, you know, this was going to be a $7.5 billion factory.

This is exactly what the president claimed he was going to do, bring manufacturing and greater investment into America. South Korea is a fantastic ally.

What if Germany said, you know, the U.S., U.S., you're just cleaning up with an AI. We need some of your great American companies to invest in Germany.

And we opened an NVIDIA plant there, and we had people over there under what looks to be a legal visa. And then German police raided it, incarcerated our engineers.

How would we respond? So

this is how South Korea is going to respond. LG, Samsung, Hyundai, they're going to substantially curtail any plans for capital investment in the United States.

This was not only stupid, but it's basically going to set us back economically. So this was again, yet again, another own goal.
And then my other one is Russian drones.

Russia is, everybody says, you know, Trump was fond of saying, oh,

Russia would have never done this if I was president. Russia is poking Trump in the eye right now.
First, a cyber attack on an EU plane with an EU minister, fine. That's a test.

And most recently, they have flown attack drones into Polish airspace.

And

to see how... how we or the EU respond.
And I'm not going to get in, my prediction isn't a geopolitical prediction. My prediction is the following.

The best stocks for the second half of the year or the last quarter of the year are going to be European defense stocks because Russia sending attack drones into Poland.

By the way, Poland is protected by Article 5 of NATO, meaning if they're attacked, all 32 member nations of NATO are attacked. What does this mean?

Russia is contemplating or toying with military action against NATO. So what is the economic implication of that?

You're about to see Poland has already increased its percentage of GDP going to defense spending. By the way, Poland is an economic miracle.
It's going to go to defense.

Oh my gosh, you're going to see an increase in defense spending coming out of the EU nations. And they're going to say, you know what? We're not spending it on Northrop Grumman.

We're not going to spend it on Andrew.

We're not going to spend it on Boeing. We're going to spend it on European defense companies.
And guess what? There aren't that many of them.

So the publicly traded, the 10 or 15 publicly traded European defense stocks are about to see the mother of all capital inflows.

So the best performing stocks for the last quarter of the year are about to be European defense stocks because of these drones that Putin sent into Polish airspace. Yeah.
Wow.

You're going geopolitical investing. That's really good.
I don't know.

We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about Businite Tech or whatever's on your mind.
Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Elsewhere in the Cara and Scott universe, this week, Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with Justin Wolfers. I love Justin, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan.

Let's listen to a clip.

That AI is the most interesting technology of my lifetime, and we may be on the cusp of one of the great technological revolutions. I also might be wrong.
That's fine, too.

That debate

is arguably the most interesting and most important economic debate.

How to regulate AI, what role it'll play in our lives, how to cushion people for its impact, how to turbocharge it so that we get everything we want out of it, may be the most important economic debate of our lifetimes.

And instead, we're sitting around talking about tariffs.

Ah, fascinating. Fascinating.
You've interviewed Russell Crowe. That's great.

I am Maximus.

He's coming out with a new movie where he plays, I think, Goering, Herman Goering, during the Nuremberg trials. It looks amazing with Rami Malik.
Oh, it looks so good. Okay, that's the show.

Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Larry Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher. Ernie Editod introduced this episode.
Jim Mackle edited the video.

Thanks also to Judo's, Miss Severo, and Dan Shallan. Nashad Kura is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

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

We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great weekend.

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