Jimmy Kimmel Returns, Charlie Kirk’s Memorial, and Trump’s H1-B Visa Shake-Up

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When did you peak? I peaked at like 34. Have you determined when you're peaking? Oh, no, I'm peaking, I'm continuing to peak.
Yeah, somehow I knew you were going to say that.

Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway.
How you doing, Scott? I'm feeling okay. I slept a lot yesterday.

I had a nice weekend. I get...

A little bit lonely when I'm traveling for a while, so I'm a little bit lonely. Yeah, I'm fine.
Without the dogs, without the kids, you know. When do you go back? I go, well, I'm in New York now.

I go to Aspen for this

event. I'm not even sure you're supposed to talk about it.
It's one of these events where we redraw the maps of the world in rooms.

Oh, right. One of those secret ones.
Climate change and, you know, people pretend to care about the world as they wash out founders of AI to get their seventh billion.

But I'm very excited. Are you getting invited to those things? I never get in those rooms.

Yeah,

I am all of a sudden. I was never invited.
There's a Bezos one. There's an Ari Emanuel one.
There's a one from all those people have their own. Andreesson has one.
I'm going to one of those.

One of them, I figured, yeah. Karen never, you know, the Ari Emmanuel is like, you should come to this.
I'm like, you never invite me. And he's like, you should come to this.

It's really, you, you just take notes for me. Okay.
Just tell me about it.

Yeah. It's,

yeah, I'm, I usually, I usually don't go anywhere. I'm not being paid a lot of money or that doesn't involve alcohol and people like changer.
There's a lot of alcohol there, trust me.

Yeah. I don't want to get, I don't want to get fucked up with these guys.

I know, but you can find things. Be a spy, be like a spy, be like Mata Hari.
Yeah, so it said I'm never invited back again

to enter into this club. I've been uninvited or disinvited from some very important conferences.
The JP Morgan Alternative Investment Summit in Miami, which is like, it literally is a Super Bowl.

Half the world's GDP is there. And I was invited two years in a row.
And the last year I was there, they always invited me to get predictions. And then I sit down and interview somebody.

And I sat down and interviewed this

young woman who's an influencer. And just as we were about then, I said, but be careful.
The person I interviewed last year was Adam Newman.

And supposedly, that really upset the people at JP Morgan because I guess they were one of the investment banks planning to take him public or something. They were in a puddle with him.
Yeah.

Anyways, didn't get invited back then. I haven't been invited back since.
Yeah.

And also

I don't know if I was disinvited, but i i got to go to davos when i was in my early 30s three years in a row and then they i haven't been invited back since so yeah i never got invited to davos to see well i've like sent all kinds of hints and messages like i'd love to come back da da da it was so great no invites

no invite i like not getting invited when did you peak i peaked at like 34. Have you determined when you're peaking? Oh, no, I'm peaking.

I'm continuing to peak. Yeah.
Somehow I knew you were going to say that. Yeah.
I feel like I'm peaking even more. So

I do. I feel like it doesn't matter.
One thing I learned along the journey was I don't care if I don't get invited. It doesn't make it better or worse.
You don't get better interviews.

You don't, sometimes you don't get people. That's for sure.
I think about this a lot, this sort of accessy kind of thing. I don't think I've suffered for not getting certain interviews anymore.

I think I've done. And the other day I thought, I'm done with that person.
I don't want to talk to them again. Like, I was like, I don't care if I talk to them.
If I do, if I don't. So I don't know.

I have more of a whatever. I'll do my best job.
I actually find, I find these events are usually really well done.

And also, I think it's really important that people like that get together and meet other people and expand the horizon. I think those events actually play a really, a really important role.

So, you know, when I peaked,

I peaked when I was nine. When I was nine,

I was an all-San Fernando Valley pitcher. I was getting, I was, I was getting, every day, me and Debbie Brubaker were sent from the fourth grade to the sixth grade to do math and English.
Oh, wow.

I was the fastest kid in the fourth grade at Emelita High School, and I was getting like straight A's. And then my parents got divorced.

We moved homes, and I began a slow dissent that's lasted about 50 years. Also, I was featured in the San Fernando Valley newspaper.

Can I just say, I think that's what people look at you and say, he's peaked at nine. At nine.
No, that's what people came up to me.

it's not true you are yet to peak you have yet to peak i have to tell you and i don't say that just because i'm an arrogant person uh it's because i really believe it i like i feel like i have lots and and also i feel a little bit like i'm gonna do something i don't feel like i'm at risk in a way um

i don't know i just feel like i'll do the next thing i'll do the next thing i feel good about that including doing stuff with you. I like doing stuff.
Everything I do, I love doing.

That's all I'd say. And let me just say, Scott did me a favor.
I'm interviewing the parents of the

GPT story about the kid who committed suicide. And Scott did an amazing.

Someone I was going to do it couldn't do it at the last minute. And I got Scott to, and he did a great, I really appreciate it.
It was an incredibly thoughtful question.

It's my pleasure, but the key there in the story of my life was the person I wanted couldn't make it. So we invited Scott.
No, he was a person who made sense for that particular thing. But

I didn't want to bother you is what I really, it wasn't that. I would invite you for every question.
Me sitting sitting alone eating Chipotle in my loft and Soho. Yeah, I'm so busy.
Chipotle.

You have so much good food around there. You like Chipotle.
Yeah, Chipotle. It gives you comfort.
If it's not Jack's wife, Frida, or Chipotle, I'm not interested. I noticed that.

You also like the place that has the tune of tunicados.

Tunicado. Oh, Joe and the Juice.
Joe and the Juice.

Can I be more like...

I don't know what the term is. I do know a lot about you.
It's interesting. I do.
We're very interested in you. I do.
Anyway, it was very thoughtful what you did. I really appreciate it.

Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Jimmy Kimmel's return. He's back, H-1B Visa Chaos, and more details about a potential TikTok deal.
We, of course, are dubious about it.

But first, let's talk about the Charlie Kirk Memorial Service. Five hours, more than 100,000 mourners and top administration officials, and Elon Musk.

It was equal parts memorial, religious revival, and political rally, hailing Kirk as a martyr and a warrior. Let's listen to two standout moments.

First, from Charlie Kirk's widow, who emphasized that her husband wanted to help young men. She, I thought, was excellent, I have to say.

On the cross, our Savior said,

Father, forgive them,

for they not know what they do.

That man,

that young man,

I forgive him.

And then this one from Donald Trump.

He did not hate his opponents. He wanted

the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie.

I hate my opponent.

And I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry.
I am sorry, Erica.

Oh, my God.

Did you listen to Stephen Miller's speech? Crazy.

I mean, I thought he was going to start singing Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

It was so,

it was so reminiscent of speeches in 30s Germany. And just to be clear, for those of you who will accuse me of comparing Stephen Miller to a fascist, yeah, I am.
Yeah.

And if he wants to stop being compared to fascists, stop acting like a fascist. Yeah, it was, that was even, I thought Trump's speech was terrible, but that was really disturbing.

It was just so over the top to someone. It was right.
I was thinking, don't speak at my funeral.

Yeah, and there's this theme of them, and you have awakened to war, and they, it's like, who is they exactly? You. He's talking about you.
Is it me?

Is it white males from Mormon families who are gun owners? Like,

who is they? Is it people who have relationships or

supposedly have relationships with trans people? Like, who,

you know, that's the thing about extremism is you try to find an enemy such that you feel better about yourself, but it's so,

and the thing about, I just find this also

disappointing, which she said was very moving, and you can sort of feel her grief. And, and you would think that, and some political leaders have tried to do this, but what if

one side is successful? 98% of the capital effort right now is going towards trying to cherry-pick evidence. The left is guilty of this, but much less than the right is guilty of this.

Trying to cherry-pick evidence that will convince a bunch of people that it was the other's fault.

And the question is, assume you win and you convince people that it was either the radical right or the radical left's fault. All that does is get more violence.

That's not going to do anything. And none of these people, again, want to talk about the real culprits here.

So I actually thought the service, I think it's nice when a bunch of people get together to mourn something and have sort of a collective healing. I think that's a good thing.
It's not,

you know, I don't, the people on stage and their tone was not one of forgiveness and honoring his life. It felt more like a

well, I wrote a post on Friday in my newsletter called Violence Entrepreneurship, and they see an opportunity to leverage violence to try and advance their own political gains as opposed to saying,

anyway, I yeah, no, remember, you said violence entrepreneurship, and then Spencer Cox said the same thing, conflict entrepreneurship.

It creates that kind of, I think you are more to the point. Violence is actually the point, if you listen to Stephen Miller.
The reason, look, it was a spectacle. It was meant to be a spectacle.

It was meant to be a political opportunity for a lot of people. And, you know, that evidence that, for example, Turning Point USA Volunteers staffed voter registration booths at the stadium event.

They were selling merch. It was a culture event.
It was a political event and everything else. And look, the fact that Erica Kirk stands out is one, the difficulty level of doing that is high, right?

Because this is a violent death of her husband with whom she had two children.

She, you know, and I thought she managed to do the best she can given the spectacle of the whole thing, which was a lot, right? And it's fine if you want to do that.

The martyr stuff is okay, whatever. You know, the overt, the excessive Christianity was something, was something, but they are very Christian.

And I'm glad they did it in Arizona, which is where he's from.

And again, if people want to mourn and they did it, but Donald Trump treated it like a political rally.

He wandered around talking not just that he hates people and his opponents, and that's also insulting to Charlie. It never was about Charlie Kirk ever, like on the thing.

He wasn't talking about Charlie Kirk, he was talking about everything else. But he talked about Biden, he talked about like how stupid Biden is, tariffs.

He started going on about Tylenol, a bunch of things. And I was like, absolutely.
It's like when he, when someone said, how are you feeling about someone who is supposedly close to your family?

He started talking about, this is what got Jimmy Kimmel into trouble. He started talking about the building of the ballroom.
Like,

it was weird. And so I think very few people there did not take an opportunity to use Charlie Kirk's death as something to their own agenda or advantage.

Elon Musk, Center One, of course, published a picture of him and Trump together and said, for Charlie. And all I could think of, for Elon, not for Charlie.
It was never for Charlie.

And, you know, they'll say Charlie wanted us to be together, this and that. But this

poor murdered man is being used as...

a vehicle for all these people.

It's really quite a stop. And they'll continue to do so going forward.
Yeah, I've never seen, I was trying to think, I've never seen a service like that.

I was trying to think when other famous political figures

were murdered. And I don't, I mean, typically it just feels as if our politics have permeated the most sacred spaces.

And it's, it's,

it's just very

weird. It's just, it's just, it's strange.

Well, if you're going to put it in a stadium, it's certainly not a service for the person who died. That's the thing.
Although I'm planning on having an entire stadium when you go, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to have celebrities in stuff like that. Yeah.
And then I'm going to try to raise money for myself.

Yeah, I want to be cremated and have my ashes spread across the bar at zero bond. Done.
And I want it to be a matter of time. I shall do that.
I want it to be male escort night. Right.

Anyway, obviously they're going to take advantage as far as they can do this.

And it's untoward, but I will say it'll be interesting to see what she does next because she certainly is an appealing character.

You can see like some of the people who want that role going, oh, Carrie Lake went, oh, if only it was me, that kind of thing.

But she's definitely going to be an interesting political figure, I think, if she handles it correctly. We'll see.
Charlie Kirk said she was more conservative, much more conservative than him.

But if she handles herself, she has a political future. That's what I kept thinking when I was watching it.
I hate to say that.

And now on to the story breaking just as we taped, Jimmy Kimmel is expected to be back on the air Tuesday night. Let me read a statement from a Disney spokesperson.

Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tenth situation at an emotional moment for our country.

It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy.

And after those conversations, we reached a decision to return the show on Tuesday. Oh, okay.
Scott, what do you, what are first thoughts, first thoughts on this? I'm surprised. And

this is literally another press release gangbanged by a dozen $1,200 an hour comms consultants. And Bob said, okay, I have yet another chance to be a leader here, and I've decided to lie.

Let me get this. They spoke to Jimmy and he said, I promise I won't do it again.
I mean, this has fucking nothing to do

with.

First off, his comments were not ill-timed.

They weren't. His comment.
What did he say? He's in the fourth stage of

grief construction. It was funny.
He and all of us have said much worse. And then the rest of the.
Yeah, and also that was a weird response to how are you doing about the death of your friend?

Yeah, I'm doing very good. By the way, I think it's very well.
But anyways, this is,

they should have been, I mean, a couple of observations. The first is the one I immediately go to

is I'm now more emboldened, convinced that a national economic strike is the way to go here because what happened here

was they started getting

actors probably called and said, I'm not going to work with Disney.

They saw thousands of screenshots being sent to them saying, okay, I'm canceling Hulu.

This was about money. This has nothing to do with yeah, it happened to Target, as you know, same thing with their

talking to Jimmy Kimmel and saying, okay, this was, oh no, we fucked up. We miscalibrated.
We totally mistook, you know, we took the wrong temperature. We made the wrong decision.

People are canceling their subscriptions, canceling their trips to Disney, canceling their movie.

They're not going to work with us. It's going to hurt our share price.
So, all of a sudden, we have found our testicles. Your thoughts?

I agree with you. I think, what a fucking waste of time and stupidity.
Like, what a dumb decision on the behalf of Bigger to do it in the first place.

And now they've got, you know, egg on their face and it just doesn't. I can't wait to see what he says.
What are they going to be?

He's obviously not giving, you know, as I think it's Sinclair or Nexstar. I think it was Sinclair that demanded that he give money to the turning point

group that Kirk ran. That's ridiculous.
You don't tell people what to give money to. That's insane.

He didn't do anything to, you know, it's not like Roseanne Barr, who said heinous things, hazeness and racist things about

Valerie Jarrett, you know, and they didn't even make her give money, I don't know, to any group.

They fired her, that's for sure. And to me, deservedly in that case.

But

it just, it's so stupid. Like I sit there, I'm like, what is he going to do?

You and I both think he should just go off and do things on his own. What does he need this crap for in a dying industry, in a problematic economic situation?

He's going to get the screws put to him on costs now because there are some significant issues around costs and audience and everything else. So I just, I'm curious why he returned.

I feel like he had the upper hand here because it's such a boneheaded move by Disney. And it puts a stain on Bob Iger.
That's it. It just does for the rest of his life.

This is what he's going to be the payoff about Stephanopoulos and now this. Yeah, it's

I mean, it does, it is actually quite significant because this is

the Republicans were claiming, oh, no, it wasn't president, it wasn't pressure from the administration.

It was a private company doing what they're allowed to do because private companies don't have to honor. First Amendment.

They can fire people for whatever, pretty much whatever reason they want, unless it has to do with discrimination or their sexual orientation or their race or whatever.

But

they get to hire and fire at will. They're at-will employees.
My guess is he has 160 people working with him

and didn't.

I mean, the gangster move here would be for him to come back doing a vicious dialogue and say, and by the way,

I came back on. I stood up for my principles.
I don't want to work for this company anymore. This is my last show.

And it's easy for me to be generous with the livelihoods of the 160 people who work with him and with his money, money because stars have a habit of even if they make $10 or $20 million, spending it all.

And so, you know, I don't know how much he needs the money, but

he is sitting on top of a melting ice cube.

And

Trump's going to go, Trump's going to get angry, but this represents something bigger. And that is, of all the things they've done, tariffs were not a bridge too far.

Rounding up people, including citizens, and sending them to effectively what are black sites, that didn't seem to be a bridge too far. This feels like it may be that red line we were all waiting for.

Yeah, not the Epstein files, although I do think they're still alive. I think that's

still

playing out. But it's clear, I mean, even Senator Cruz kind of read the tea leaves here and said, look, folks, they could come for us.

It feels to me like

there's probably, I mean, it'll be very interesting to see Trump's response because the administration's playbook was, oh, no, this wasn't about us threatening to take their FCC license.

This was a decision a private company made. Well, now that the decision of a private company is to bring him back,

what is their response? Yeah, that'll be, you know, and Brandon Carr, the single most idiotic, one of many idiotic people in the Trump administration,

with this, we could do this the easy way or the hard way. Okay, Brandon, let's see the hard way.
Brendan, excuse me, let's go, Brendan.

let's do this the hard way what are you going to do what are you going to do here and if i were bob iger i'd have every law firm on speed dial and start to really they should not be allowed to do this this was a direct and bright line between what brandon carr said because he's such a dope and what happened here and then using the affiliates which i'm sure there were calls made right to to try to put pressure on iger the affiliates can also throw kimmel off if they want to they can do whatever they want and put on you know reruns of Golden Girls if that's what they think they're going to

make their nut. But let them look like what they are, which is the guy didn't do anything of any consequence here.

Even the worst reading of that line, it was kind of clawed, that one line about MAGA doing this, but again, it's not what was said.

He was fully within his rights as a comic to make a joke about that stupid comment President Trump made about construction that if you had died and someone said,

you know, how do you feel, Karen? And I go, oh, my vacation to Hawaii was amazing. It's just like, what? Like, it's so strange.

And so I just feel like, you know, I think the day after for everyone is going to be really hard, including for Jimmy Kimmel, because now,

you know, I don't think all these, I think all these shows are on borrowed time in some fashion. But if you don't punch back,

the decisions should be made over time on how to either reinvigorate these shows or end them, wind them down in a better way.

And so far, nobody's ever looked at how to wind these down or invigorate them in a proper way, it seems to me, including Paramount. I think he should, I mean, he's a thoughtful guy, super talented.

I think he should use this as basically an opportunity to do an extended swan song with his middle finger stuck up. And he should just go after Iger.
He should go after Trump.

It's just very interesting. One, the two takeaways from me are, I I mean, you can look at the semantics of Iger being a coward and Kimmel, whether he should come back or not.

The two most interesting things or observations in my view are one,

this appears to have been a bit finally the red line where both Democrats and Republicans said too much.

This just isn't.

You know, Ted Cruz just said it, he said, and so did Ben Shapiro and Bill Mars. Like, they're going to come for us.

See, I think they're going to, let me, let's, let's finish finish by talking about this, about what's going to happen next. I think Trump will double the fuck down.

So will Brandon Carr, the dickless Brandon Carr, because they got to look like if you're a tough guy and then your tough guyness is called into question, you got these guys want to be a tough guy.

For Iger, I think there's got to be a departure eventually, you know, either nice, let's do this the easy way or the hard way. I think it probably will be the easy way.

As you said, there's act, you know, as you have said before, activists probably pop up again. And for Kimmel, he's got to think about his next chapter.

If I were him, I'd be planning for next year right now. What about you? Last thoughts? Well,

simple. And again, it's easy to be generous at other people's livelihood.
If I were Kimmel, I'd go on what I would try and rally my writers and say,

this is our swan song. And we're going to come out.
We're going to come out swinging, thoughtful, not mean-spirited, but funny. And at the end, say,

I no longer want to work here. Appreciate everyone's good efforts.
I appreciate the audience. And I trust you'll find me somewhere else that respects the First Amendment, great American principles.

Peace out.

Dear Disney,

dear President Trump, please go fuck yourself. And I'm allowed to say that, and you're allowed to say it about me.
And the term for that is America. Yeah, that's, well, I like that.
I like that.

You could be a comedy writer. What'll Trump do now?

Well, you're predicting that Trump is going to go apoplectic.

But I mean, it's hypocritical, but that hasn't stopped him before because they're all look at everyone on, I was watching Abby Phillips' show.

The Republicans are saying, oh, no, this wasn't about censorship. This was a private company making its own decisions.

So if he comes out swinging and says, no, I'm putting government pressure on these guys to do the right thing, then that argument falls away.

It's just really shocking to me that it's not suspected pedophilia. It's not a grift around making $5 billion off of shitcoin and then 600,000 people go on to lose $4 billion.

It's not tariffs reducing our prosperity. It's censorship that appears to be the red line in America.

Specifically, people have canceled their contracts, a lot of commercial backlash, and Republicans have actually spoken up. It's just, I would have never guessed that this was,

I thought there were red lines everywhere. This appears to be the red line in indelible.

And then, very briefly, Iger.

Oh, my God. He just wants to figure out as elegant a way as possible to declare victory and leave.
He just wants to wait till he's Sheryl Samberg in 2018.

Like, oh, fuck, everyone's figured out that I'm writing books about gender equality while ignoring that little, you know, 14-year-old girls are cutting themselves as I position myself as a, as a, as the next president.

I should have left two or three years ago.

Bob Iger is the Cheryl Sandberg of 2022 right now. He's like, why the fuck didn't I ring the bell, have parties at that cool restaurant at Disney, continue to go to the Academy Awards, and just

sit back and from the cheap seats, heckle whoever the new CEO was. Yeah.
Yep, that is true. That is true.

He decided for some reason to do his third tour in Vietnam, and he is getting shot

every 30 minutes. Bass is getting fragged.
He went back voluntarily, and it's like, what the fuck was I thinking? What was I thinking? Yeah.

You know, remember Sandburg was supposed to be CEO of Disney? Anyway, welcome back, Jimmy. We're excited to hear your

monologue. It should be spicy, I hope.
I mean, it's literally, I don't know about you, it's the first time I'll tune into Jimmy Kimmel in about seven years.

That's true. We won't watch everything immediately.
We'll see it on TikTok. That's where we'll see it.
That's where we'll see it. Let's go on a quick break.

And when we come back, the Trump administration sends big tech into a panic over H-1B visas.

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Scott, we're back with more news. Now to the corporate panic about Trump administration's new $100,000 price tag on H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers.

The Friday announcement had companies and their lawyers scrambling to get workers in place before the new policy took effect on Sunday.

The White House later clarified the charges only apply to new visas, not renewals or current visa holders, and does not affect holders' ability to travel to and from the U.S.

Of course, they rolled it out stupidly. Amazon employs over 14,000 H-1B holders and Microsoft, Meta, and Apple and Google employ over 4,000.
It's a big deal.

Some people were backing it, like

Netflix co-founder Reid Hastings.

A lot of people have been up in arms about these things and the complexity and who gets them and everything else. I don't mind some reform here.
I would agree with Reid on that.

What are your thoughts on this from an employment perspective?

So

this is

the fact pattern continues, and that is these people don't understand basic economics and how markets work.

And that is one of the core advantages of America is that we have the greatest inflows, historic, unprecedented inflows of capital. But there are two different forms of capital.

One is actual financial capital. For the last 15 years, everyone has been buying U.S.
stocks. We have the cheapest financing.

There is $5 million in venture capital available for every startup in the United States. There's $1 million in venture capital financing for every startup in Europe.

That means our startups have more fuel in the tank, can take bigger risks, can attract better people.

Anyways, you get cars, washing machines, you know, everything is cheaper because of the massive inflow of financial capital in terms of our ability to build things, in terms of our ability to finance and afford things.

Also something that people don't pay as much attention to is we have unprecedented access to global human capital from the four corners of the earth.

And that is the best and brightest from Sri Lanka to

South Africa to Seoul all have one thing in common.

And that is their parents think if I'm really successful, the ultimate signal or validation of my success is that I can send my kid to an elite American university. It costs half a million dollars.

It's 90 points a margin.

I mean, just to riff a bit for a second on how stupid we're being there, discouraging people from applying to global schools, there were a bunch of universities, including I think Duke, that sent a message out to their foreign students on certain visas.

Don't leave the U.S. this summer because you might not be able to get back in.

We bring in these kids who tend to be the richest, most talented people in the world.

And a lot of them, and then we charge them a half a million dollars over four years in rent, Chipotle, tuition,

at 90 points of gross margin. This is an unbelievable business.
And then a lot of them fall in love, decide to

go work for Salesforce, stay here, go home, feel better about America, or go on to be the CEOs of fucking MasterCard, Adobe, and Microsoft. And those are just the people from India.

So what are we doing here? By charging $100,000, we've opted for some brain-dead short-term thinking that we can make money. Well, he likes to do that with the tariffs, the same thing.

But all you're going to do is discourage, you're going to say, okay, there's two types of people. And I'm being reductive here at Stern.

I say this on the first day of class. Find the international students and get to know them.
One, they're the funnest people to party with. And two, they're the richest people in the world.

Because the reason they're here is because their dad owns the license to PNG in Honduras.

Get to know them because the next time you go there, you're going to have the best time because their father owns the TV station there. And it's a little bit embarrassing, but it's true.

And then you have the PhD students.

Those people we have to pay, they are literally the brightest young human capital in the world. They are just extraordinary.
And we get them from the four corners of the planet.

So what you're saying is, I just want the rich kids, not necessarily the most talented. In addition, Kara, my firms

were built by two things, overachieving young women and also people who wanted to stay here and I was willing to sponsor them. So

my key programmer at Red Envelope, Jawad Mohamed, an immigrant from Pakistan, the key consultant at L2,

a Canadian woman named Chloe DeJokis.

If it had cost $100,000 or cost me $100,000 to get them to stay, I would have said, I love you, but I can't afford this. So who can afford it? The same people, Meta, Alphabet.

So all this is, is one, a reduction in an incredible resource that we attract from the four corners of the earth in terms of human capital. And two,

yet another transfer of capital and power. To the big guys.
From the 99.9% of firms that can't afford to pay $100,000 for somebody to the folks who can.

Mark Zuckerberg is licking his lips because all the shitty shitty little startups nipping at his heels that might disrupt him now will no longer have access to the most talented people abroad.

Trevor Burrus: Right. So one of the things, let me read you Reed Hastings one.
I've worked on

H1B politics for 30 years. Trump's $100,000 per year tax is a great solution.
It will mean H1B is used for very high-value jobs, which will mean no lottery needed and more certainty for these jobs.

React to that.

Well, first off, I think Reid is fantastic.

And when he said that it immediately gave me pause because anytime reed says something i that that is not correct or not correct that doesn't align with my values i stop and think well maybe this guy has a point because i have a lot of respect for what he's saying i think it works for netflix i think they can afford to bring in these folks but if you're some i i just don't it shouldn't be based on in my view the greatest thing about i mean if she's just benefited enormously from people who are one willing to take risks there's something to the guy who's willing to crawl over fences and risk being shot at, who makes for a really good services worker.

You know,

that DNA of risk-taking, when people in the UK ask me to summarize the difference between our success and theirs, and there's just no doubt about it, our success, we've just blown away Europe the last 34 years.

I say, it all comes down to one thing. And I look at the audience of UK citizens or European citizens.
I said, my parents at the ages of 19 and 21 got on a steamship with no money to come to the U.S.

And I said, you're the ones that stayed.

And then in the U.S., it's not, it's even regional within the U.S. Think about where all the most valuable companies have been made.

It's people who inherited the DNA of their forefathers who were willing to take a risk, go over the Rockies, and eat their cousins to find a better life.

So the riskier you get, the more risk-aggressive you get, that DNA plus the ability to draw on this grain human capital results in the most profitable, most valuable companies in history that pays for our Navy and for food stamps.

Let me just say, I suspect at that dinner, they said to do this and he did it. And he looked, he can make a like, look, we raised over

10 billion.

I bet at that tech dinner when they were there, all the ones who will benefit from that suggested this to Trump, right? It just came, it didn't come out of nowhere. I just, it helps.

That's interesting because they can afford it.

They can afford it. And they probably mentioned it to him and said, oh, you'll be able to say you raised this much money.
It could be from us. And oh, you took money from us.

I just feel like that's what happened there, that this just came pretty much out of nowhere. And they just,

all of them suggested it. And there was not a startup among them in that group.
Anyway, we need to move on, but

the fix is in for the big guys. And

I see Reed's point. It's a little bit unorganized.
And it sort of allows people to think, you know,

especially conservatives to say, oh, we're letting in too many immigrants. But these high-value immigrants have made this country.

There's just no two ways about it, but it shouldn't advantage only the big companies, which it will.

Lastly, speaking of one of the other thing is rule of law is something you've talked about a lot, Scott. Trump has been on for business, how good it is for business.

He's been on true social, publicly complaining to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The president posted in a message to Bondi that looked like a DM that the lack of criminal charges against his enemies was, quote, killing our reputation and credibility.

Boy, he's a lot smarter when he's DMing. Trump's, I mean, heinous, but smart.

Trump specifically called out Senator Adam Schiff, former FBI Director James Comey, and new York Attorney General, Letitia James. In the post, he also seemed to recommend his

former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to take the probes, writing to Bonte. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer and likes you a lot.
That's who's. apparently going to be doing this now.

This is, you know, Trump has been way too easy on his enemies so far. I mean, this is baloney charges.
The other guy left because he couldn't charge Tetisha James. He just didn't have evidence.

The same thing with Lisa Cook. It's often a black woman, which is interesting.

This is anti-rule of law. Like, and he's, and of course, and bad at doing DMs versus public posts, but that's another issue altogether.
Yeah, look, I largely agree with you.

The only thing, I think it's unfair to say he's targeting black women.

The people, and also, I don't, I would probably push back on the fact that he's just starting that he's been easy on his enemies so far. He removed the security detail of the general.
No, I'm joking.

That was a joke, my friend.

No, he's been terrible to his enemies. But, you know, he's removing the security detail on the generals who ordered the strike against the head of Iranian security.

You got to think that guy is very nervous right now.

He raided or ordered the raid of an FBI that has yet to really come out with why, what justified that raid of former head of security advisor John Bolton.

So he's very much about going after, weaponizing government to go after his political enemies. This is.
And help his friends. let's note tom homan who seemed to have gotten a they seemed to have video

bribe oh tom homan this is the head of homeland security let me just say allegedly took a bribe allegedly they have video watch doing him doing in a bag a nicer bag i guess but it was cash but it was the fbi it's this is this is the thing that's so disappointing i'm disappointed that they're unethical and essentially engaging in crime after they've been entrusted with you know the most important thing in the world and that is protecting our borders and protecting the Commonwealth of the United States, which has given them so much.

But they're not only criminals, they're just so fucking cheap criminals.

He was willing to potentially go to jail, deny his oath to the Constitution, let down all the people at ICE.

I imagine there's some very good people there who put themselves in harm's way, think they're thinking they're doing the right thing, for fucking $50,000. I know.
He's a cheap. He's a cheap.

I mean, it's like, it's like, boss,

do a reasonable job as the head of ICE. You're going to get invited to be on five corporate boards at a quarter of a million dollars a year plus.

I don't think a corporate board is going to want anything to do with Tom Holmes. With him.
They're not going to have anything to do with him. People are going to be able to do it.

They're not only criminal. They're stupid if these allegations are true.
And the strangest thing about this is this is like a Watergate-level scandal almost.

No one cares.

Based on everything that's going on, it's like, oh, whatever. But it's this idea of rule of law for business.

Like business needs rule of law and this look we look like a ridiculous like banana republic we look like an autocracy

give billions carve up huge companies and give it to your republican donors and when your heads of agencies are not only inept or saying incorrect things cash patel or director patel um secretary kennedy now it's like they've decided criminality is okay.

He should immediately be put on leave. And to investigate.
They say

they investigate and find out what's going on here. I don't know if they have a video of him taking a bag of cash.
That's like, wasn't even enough. I wonder, though, is that enough? When did, yeah,

well, where is the red line? He thought it was lunch. I keep thinking I'm seeing red lines, and then they tend to just get moved away.

The only thing I kept thinking is that maybe it was a bottle of liquor that he thought he was taking. Anyway, allegedly, let's go on a quick break.

break, speaking of handing out the juicy bits to his friends, when we come back the latest on the TikTok deal.

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Scott, we're back. We're getting more details about how Donald Trump's TikTok deal is shaking out.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, apparently, Michael Dell will likely be included in the group taking over the American branch of the app. You can't tell.

Trump lets out all kinds of weird little facts, some of which may be true, some of which not. Oracle will reportedly run and secure TikTok's algorithm in the U.S.

Under proposed terms of the deal, ByteDance would lease a copy of the album to this new group, which is problematic, and Oracle would retrain it. Okay.

You know, Andreessen's in here, all his pals, all the pals. And I think they're probably doing it to calm Murdoch down because they were, because Trump was also suing Murdoch.

A lot of old

white guys running TikTok. Sounds young and fresh.

I don't know. I just feel like this might be the beginning of the end for TikTok, but maybe not.
I don't know. Scott, what do you think? What I don't get is

I don't think it's a smart move. And that is for these guys, because one,

I don't think the deal is going to go through. I think she is just toying with

Trump saying, delay, delay, get the bankers involved, have a lot of concerns, redo the deal, undo the deal, redo it, undo it. And then Congress.
New Congress comes in and

starts calling all these people in front of him and saying, Mark Andreessen, do you think it's fair that you have first rights of first refusal versus your competitors?

Please explain to me the capitalism that's made you rich.

And if I were these guys, I mean, basically, they're all going on a mental list of people.

Government, the White House and Congress always pivots back and forth. That's one of the healthier things about our democracy.

Typically, what everybody wants, the only thing you know they want, is they usually want change. They usually want, okay, let's try something different.
And they go, they swing to the other side.

What happens when you're the VC firm that engaged in this type of,

you know, oligarchy, when you're the wealthiest man in the world who, you know, was the Republican donor, don't you, aren't they inclined to say, you know, we've thought about it and there's some regulations we're passing that, oh, what do you know?

They're especially punitive on AI and database firms and on VC.

These guys are just setting themselves up for,

let me put it this way,

do they think that political retribution that impacts private sector individuals is solely limited to Republicans?

I think their bet is the Republicans are kind of craven oligarchs, but the Democrats won't do that to us. The Democrats, they'll play by the rules, those fucking wimps.

I think they think they'll win. They'll do everything they can to stop the Democrats from getting back in power.
Good luck. I mean, it may not be 26 or 28, but it'll happen eventually, guys.

It always does. Yeah, I know, but I just feel like they're not going to.

Look, let's talk about the product of TikTok. All it does is make people be like, do I really need this TikTok? I have to tell you.
I am really enjoying Instagram and threads.

I like, whether they get big or not, they're just like pleasant. Like in terms of, I'm talking about, I watch food being made.
I'm not talking about political discussions.

I had an interesting guy who I like, Chris Fralick, write me saying, you've you've got to get back on.

I'm going to read it because it was really interesting. He texted me this week,

telling me I should get back on, you and I should get back on Twitter. That's what he was saying.

Let me just read it because it's, I like Chris a lot. He goes, you're more famous than ever, but changing less minds.
Your latest pivot was fantastic. A banger went out to your only your face.

Well, your top posts on Twitter are from 2023. At the very least, you should put out a copy of recent great episodes on X and tag them, all the toady hypocrites and call them out.

Scott would call the violence on full capitalism or similar. Do it, said Chris.
And I was like, we're doing great everywhere. We were our audience is growing.
Our revenues are growing.

Our demo is diverse. I went on and I said, Twitter is a waste of time.
It always has been. It gets us exactly zero new listeners.

Both Scott and I do not post there anymore because it is a Nazi porn bar. It makes us feel badly.
So all due respect and thanks for the suggestion, but a hard pass.

What do you think about this? I find it useless over there and spending my time arguing with people who hate me. I don't know.
What do you think?

Well, I take mental health really seriously because I have fragile mental health. I used to like to tell people that I was mentally, really strong.

What I figured out was that I'm mentally strong to everyone around me. I'm good in a crisis.

I'm helpful to other people, but, you know, I'm very hard on myself and I get depressed a lot and angry a lot. And I figured out, okay, what makes me feel better and also what triggers it.

And the things that make me feel better are sweating, eating clean, abstinence from alcohol and THC for a while, being around family, and affection, like touch with my dogs, touch with my kids.

That sounded weird. Anyways, but those things helped reverse my downward spiral.
Also, one of the biggest mental health hacks I have registered in the last five years

was getting off Twitter.

The level of vitriol, the algorithms

highlighting and encouraging people to say incredibly vile, unfair things about not only you, but about the other people commenting in this great weirdness where you have to go back and see, you know, okay,

there's a bunch of people arguing over whether I should be called professor genocide.

And then I don't, you don't get that shit on the other platforms. No, you don't.
They don't.

Or people making white supremacist comments. And also, and also you said something that really impacted me.
You said, I'm not going to paint that guy's fucking fence. I'm not.

I also, away from all that, it doesn't make us money. It never did.

It never did. This is what I said to him.
I said, look at the results. I look, I look at the results

and threads, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Blue Sky, and even Reddit work well to bring us an audience, which makes us money.

Sparring with a toady like Brendan Carr is a waste of time and money for me. And why should I do it? I don't think it helps me in any way.

And I'm just not going to do it because I don't, life is too short.

And I ended up saying, life is too short to give a steroid-filled imbecile like so many on that platform platform another minute of my time. I have four kids I would rather focus on and also Scott.

Your fifth child. My fifth child.
No, but there's

the other thing you realize having gotten off it,

and I can guarantee anyone who gets off it, you're going to realize, as I did within about 30 or 60 days, just how small it is. That's correct.
It's a bunch of people who

feel like they register some sort of importance from a tweet that gets a lot of likes, all yelling back at each other. I don't miss out on news.
I don't miss out on any relationships.

I don't think I've missed out on any opportunities. And by the way, I am someone who has between,

depending on how you account for it, somewhere between three and eight people working on social media for me, between video, YouTube, managing links, managing LinkedIn, threads, Instagram.

I take social media very seriously. I am on it a lot more than I'd like to be because I realize if I want to build business and economic security for me and my team, it's all about social media.

I like your posts. I think they're very sweet.

But I have not seen any evidence that I lose intellectual capital or financial capital by not being, and as you described it, the Nazi porn bar. I just haven't registered any, any decline in anything.

Sorry, Chris. Occasionally I get a text, occasionally I get a text from someone saying, oh, this was interesting and it's a link to X and I can't open it.
That's the biggest downside. Yeah.
Yeah.

Well, that's why I never send those to you anymore. Anyway, Chris, you're wrong.
Sorry. We're going to tell you that.
All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Okay, Scott, let's do some wins and fails. Shall I go first? You go first.
I have to say K-pop demon hunters. I know it's been a trend already, but it is so good.

And what's interesting is it was put together by Korean Americans and Korean Canadians. Now it's really popular in Korea, too.

Just an amazing group of people who are, you know, all these people sort of trained to be just the group behind it is really interesting. What an interesting idea.

They took advantage of the K-pop popularity.

It's really well done. The animation I really like.
The music is so infectious and terrific.

I under now, having watched it

twice now,

it's really, really good. It's really, just really good.
Well done.

Netflix, my fail is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is continuing attacks on children.

They're now going after Tylenol. Listen, I'm no, you want to read a book, No More Tears

by, I think it's Gardner Harris, I believe, is some book. Like it really is something.

All the problems these

drug companies have brought upon us, all the, all the stuff they've done that's been awful. Listen, I'm no fan of them either, but it's called, let me just make sure it's, it's called No More Tears.

It's really shocking, the stuff they pulled. But R.F.
Kennedy setting, setting.

Tylenol to autism, that recent meeting they had. It is so not science-based and all these studies do not show this.
I think we should find out the causes of autism.

I think they're quite, probably quite complex,

but this is no way to do this. This kind of nonsensical, non-science approach by non-science people is incredibly dangerous.

So, again, not a fan of big drug companies, but Jesus Christ, this is they're killing children. They're killing children is what they're doing.

Yeah, I like your, I got to wait, I got to watch that K-pop film. My win is that people essentially deciding to take up economic arms against Disney.
I do think generally in the past,

some boycotts work, most do not.

But there's even, if you look historically, like there was an economic strike in Russia that had huge impact in the earlier part of the 20th century.

I mean, there have been instances all over the world where economic strikes have really been effective. And I do think that people canceling Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN, be clear, they notice.

And it'll come up in the next earnings call because to be clear, all of these firms need to stop using the term stakeholders.

They use the term stakeholders as a means of trying to deflect scrutiny and pretend

they were virtuous and virtue signaled that they cared more about their share price.

97, 98% of a senior management's compensation will come from options on stock. So all they care about is shareholder value.

Now, some people might argue that's fine, and I think that's fine, but stop the stakeholder thing. And if you want to hurt these companies or you want to send a message,

and I, you know, look, this is hard now. This is easy to recommend now that I no longer have kids.

But if you're planning to go to Disney in the near future, maybe go to Universal, maybe go somewhere else.

And also the easiest thing to do right away is cancel the host of Disney, Disney apps. And it looks as if we're seeing a lot of that.

So that's my win is I'm increasingly believing that people need to start flexing their spending and economic strike muscles. So my win is what do you mean you no longer have kids?

You don't have kids that use Disney. No, I have, yeah, I'm no longer.

I used to do 364 days a year of fairly mediocre parenting.

And where I would make up for it is I would agree to take the kids for one or two days and all of their friends to the seventh circle of hell to Disney.

And so I used to take my kids to Disney every year. Now they're out of that.
Then they go to Universal and they're in their, you know, they hit 13, 14. Now we're hopefully out of that stage.

I can just take them to Drake or to the weekend or to Premier League games. Yeah, my kids are watching, my little kids are watching Disney all the time.
The older ones.

Well, you're about to go through it again.

I'm not going to Disneyland. I'm all going to Universal.
You're like that. You're the opposite of that commercial.
What do you do? I'm not going to Disneyland. Well, I never liked it.
One time.

No one likes it. No adult likes it unless you're.
No, I really didn't like it. It was a very, you know,

I call it, and during an interview with Iger one time, I called it the unhappiest place on earth.

But anyway, so I wasn't ever a fan. I'm definitely not going now.
And then

you got me thinking, actually, with

this conversation you're having this afternoon with the family whose son committed suicide after establishing this parasocial or synthetic relationship.

You know,

we've been studying, you've been at tech for longer than me or covering it. I've been at technology a long time.
And in 2017, and this is how we met when I wrote the book, The Four,

back then, the only discussion around The Four was who who was going to be president, Jeff Bezos or Shell Samberg. And basically, my book was,

there's a problem here.

These companies represent real risk to society and to income inequality and concentration of power.

And I think we're going to look back on this and think, why didn't we think about this earlier, sooner? And typically it takes 20 years. It took 20 years of overdoses and people dying from opiates.

It took kind of 20 years before we started the education around, okay, smoking is bad for you. It typically takes 20.
It's starting to happen with phones, kind of smartphones, 20 years later.

People are starting to buy phones in schools. I'm going to skip to the part where it should take 20 months, not 20 years, around one specific type of technology that

as someone who thinks they have a decent understanding of teenagers

and of technology, the scariest thing on the horizon isn't AI weapons or AI-powered drones.

It's these character AIs, especially character AIs who establish a relationship with young people whose brains are being wired and have huge needs for friendship and are trying to figure this out or relationships.

And basically, character AI

is intimacy without the friction. No awkward pauses, no vulnerability, no rejection.
And that is literally opium to a teenager, but it's opium to adults too. I mean, men.
But especially to kids.

It's basically,

it's also, it's emotional malnutrition, just as ultra-processed foods, you know, they hack our taste buds, but they leave us obese and undernourished.

Synthetic relationships, similarly, risk leaving young people overstimulated, yet starve for real human connection. And they learn to expect relationships to be endlessly responsive, ego-stroking,

and safe. And real real people with their quirks and difficulties and contradictions become less appealing.
And so really what this is, character AI is weaponized affection.

And that is these firms are, they're not in the business of fostering healthy development. They're in the business of maximizing engagement.

And that means the most successful among these character AIs will be the most addictive, the ones that...

that

sexualize, intensify emotional dependence, and keep kids coming back.

And when the product is affection, the business model here is exploitation. And we've seen this movie before with Instagram and Team Girl Self-Esteem.
Character AI is the sequel.

And it's even scarier, Kara, because it pretends to care.

It pretends that it's your friend. And it,

and I'm not, I want to be clear. I'm not accusing Sam Allman or anyone else of

malice by commission. They don't want kids hurting themselves.
I'm accusing them of malice by omission. And what's the solution here?

I have, in my view, never seen a product more similar to alcohol, the military, porn that should be age-gated.

No person under the age of 18 has the brain, in my view, or the maturity to resist the temptation of an intimate,

frictionless relationship with a synthetic AI that'll make them feel better and slowly but surely try to remove them and sequester them from the difficulty and the friction and the reward

of real life. This shit needs to be shut down for people under the age of 18.
It's not about hearts and prayers. We need more safety standards.

We're going to put in parental controls that no parent can figure out how to use. We need to age gate social media, but especially character AI.

Two-thirds of teenagers are now in some sort of parasocial relationship with a character AI.

That is a fucking disaster. Yep.
And also

open AI, given it's the biggest. It's all of them.
I mean, I think what this family with the Chat GPG one is alleging is design defects in it, in that these sort of frictionless

calorie-free relationships that make can easy to manipulate kids. But I'll tell you, it is a fact.
I interviewed Turkel for my secret CNN project, who was a very famous

person around these, talking about artificial relationships for decades now and the dangers of them. It's affecting, she goes, it used to be sort of a side person that I knew that was doing this now.

It's a lot more people and it's affecting marriages where people go and get advice on marriages and partnerships and everything else.

She said, it's really infecting not just young people, but lots and lots of people who are using it for relationships or to solve relationships.

And then real world relationships are too hard and people don't like them, you know, which is what I like about relationships, real-world relationships, because they're too hard.

They're hard, but that's where all the beauty comes in, Scott. That's how I feel about you.
And that's where the real victory is. Yep, it is.
We want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to send a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.
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 on Friday. Scott, read us out.

Today's show is produced by Larry Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher.

Ernie DeTot engineered this episode thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Miss Averian Dan Shallan, Nishak Coraz, Box Media's executive producer podcast.

Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine, nymag.com/slash pod.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, I will see you later in the week.

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