X's Foreign Trolls, Google's AI Wins, and MTG's Resignation

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Speaker 4 Lesbian. She's a lesbian.
Main character.

Speaker 1 You love a lesbian. Well, that's clear.

Speaker 4 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher, and I'm stoked. I just ran and worked out and I'm drinking kefir.
That's what I'm doing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm Scott Galloway. I did none of those things.

Speaker 1 I don't even know what kefir is. I've heard it.

Speaker 4 I think some people pronounce it kefir. I don't know.
I just love it. Let me just say.

Speaker 1 I just, I'm just pretty sure anyone who drinks it also includes their pronouns at the end of an email.

Speaker 4 No, it's just so good for you. It's full of protein.
It's full of all kinds of good fermented. This is like, I am so much like it.
You like fermentation.

Speaker 1 I'll give you that.

Speaker 4 I like fermentation stuff. I'm going to get you some sauerkraut for Christmas because it's a perfect gift for someone like you.

Speaker 4 I just want to keep you alive. That's really what it is.
And it's not a metaphor to your personality in any way. How was your weekend?

Speaker 1 I was all right. It was nice.
Boys were home. It was really nice.
A lot of Premier League.

Speaker 1 My doctor was in town, which is kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 It was good to see him. And

Speaker 4 do you socialize with your doctor?

Speaker 1 I do. He's a nice guy, and he started a really interesting business.
You would like him, actually.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's the first time we've socialized,

Speaker 1 and they do this really high-end

Speaker 1 thing. Anyway,

Speaker 1 nice man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's probably.

Speaker 4 But what if you don't like him socializing? What happens then? Doesn't that sort of queer the relationship, so to speak?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I really like my

Speaker 1 I go get these PRP shots in my in my shoulders and my doctor there is this guy named he's a super super handsome impressive doctor dr lindor i want to send him up he's the team doctor for

Speaker 1 i think he's the orthopedic uh for the new york rangers for the hockey team

Speaker 1 anyways um i like my doctors prps for people that don't know are platelet rich plasma that's it's spun and then the the golden part gets put in it supposedly help wounds they're using it for hair now too yeah i haven't used it for here i think that train has left the station i use it i damaged my labrum what's interesting i damaged them both at the same time as if they were speaking to each other and as you said they take your blood they spin it and then they put whatever it is the golden part in the golden part back into you and they re-inject it back in your shoulders which isn't super pleasant and then the next day it inflames and i guess it's meant to promote healing and there's a cumulative effect i did it three or four times took out very interesting results some especially for hair but go ahead so it worked for you oh it's real i would say it took away 70 or 80% of the pain.

Speaker 4 Yeah, people used to take steroids. I had that issue, and that's not as that doesn't last.

Speaker 1 You can only do that a number of times, though, right? Correct. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I had a frozen shoulder when I was

Speaker 4 younger. And then it went away.
It did go away, I have to say. Anyway, listen to us talking about

Speaker 1 this. And it's

Speaker 4 I had an interesting, first of all, I went on a date with my lovely wife, which was nice, and some friends.

Speaker 4 Many people in the restaurant love pivot, by the way.

Speaker 4 And then,

Speaker 4 and then my friend from sixth grade, Trebby Williams, came over for brunch with her husband, Chris Keeney, who was my eighth grade boyfriend. So it was really fun.
It was,

Speaker 4 I know. They're wonderful people.
They found love.

Speaker 4 This is their second marriage, both of them. And I have to say,

Speaker 4 both of their spouses died.

Speaker 4 And they are wonderful.

Speaker 4 I love having friends from that. I know you have those friends, and I really value it quite a bit.

Speaker 1 Do they have did they have kids from their previous marriages? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yep. Older kids.
You know, her daughter is a professor at Berkeley or associate professor.

Speaker 4 Her other daughter is a really well-known tattoo artist in

Speaker 4 Los Angeles, oddly enough, interesting.

Speaker 4 And he has kids. I don't know his kids as well, but

Speaker 4 yeah, they did.

Speaker 4 They're a wonderful couple, I have to say.

Speaker 1 That's nice.

Speaker 1 Sounds like a nice.

Speaker 4 It was. It was a Sunday brunchy thing, and it was really, it was quite lovely.
It was quite lovely.

Speaker 1 Whenever I see someone, a tattoo artist and I was like, if you show me your boobs, I'll show you my tattoos.

Speaker 1 I call it tit for tat.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 She's not good. You'll never be able to get it.
You don't have a tattoo, do you?

Speaker 1 No, I'm not big on tats. As a matter of fact, I told my boys, no joke, I said, no motorcycles.

Speaker 1 No military, although I would probably back off of that. It's less dangerous to be in the military right now than a lot of places.
And

Speaker 1 no motorcycles, no military, no tattoos. And I'll buy them a car at 16.
And they could give a shit. They don't want cars.

Speaker 4 Wait, wait a second. What do you have to say after they're 18? It's not your beeswax that they have.
I told Louie he could have

Speaker 1 free speech and I can bribe people. Yeah, that's true.
People can work for whoever they want. They choose to work for me because they're not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 4 I see. I see.
I have seven tattoos.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know. They're pretty well hidden, though.
I've seen some of them on your wrist.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've got one on my, my first one was on my on my ankle on the wrong side. So I, they're mostly for me, and you can't see it.

Speaker 4 And it's a ginkgo leaf, which is my favorite tree, but it looks like a shamrock and people think it's a shamrock and then I feel like you think I put a fucking shamrock on my ankle so it's upsets me it's a tattoo that upsets me my first yeah I don't know I like I like them I like to go up to these bros that like have those Chinese lettering on their cat oh yeah I don't do that and I'm like do you know what that says and almost always says no I think it's and I'm like no no no it says I like dick oh okay

Speaker 4 Some of them look like mine are little hearts with my four kids initials on it. And then I have symbols of entropy and syntropy, which chaos and building, and I like it.
I'm thinking of doing another.

Speaker 4 I'm really getting an itch for having another one, I have to say.

Speaker 4 Maybe I'll put Scott S.

Speaker 1 No, don't do that.

Speaker 4 No S. Well, I have it.
I don't have an S.

Speaker 1 I, quite frankly, I don't, I don't understand.

Speaker 1 I think, I think women's skin is

Speaker 1 so like beautiful. I don't understand.
I don't personally understand why anyone would ink it up. I don't, I don't get it.

Speaker 4 but I love them. I'm so happy with them.
I look at them all the time. They're for me.
I'm going to get one for Scott. I'm going to figure out a little Scott one and put on my ass.
That's mine too.

Speaker 4 Then I never have to look at it.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm going to get one. I'm getting a Scott tattoo.

Speaker 4 Everybody, write in. What tattoo should I get to symbolize Scott? Okay.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 4 All right. Let's have a contest.
Happy Christmas. Anyway, we have a lot to get to today.
There's so much went on over the weekend.

Speaker 4 There's also a ton of tech news, political news, political and tech news.

Speaker 4 Google is the top of the news, as far as we're concerned, scoring on victory with its latest AI model and its stock. And Trump falling for Mamdani, which we called.

Speaker 4 But first, a number of America First and MAGA accounts on X. This is a huge story that the media is not paying attention to.
And Scott and I have been stressing this for years.

Speaker 4 A lot of these MAGA accounts on X appear to be based in places like Russia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan.

Speaker 4 According to the company's brand new About This Account feature, the tool rolled out late last week shows where an account is based, when it was created, and how many times its username is changed.

Speaker 4 I think this is a good thing.

Speaker 4 I think this is actually a good update. X has had a product called the feature, an important first step to securing the integrity of the global town square.
I would agree.

Speaker 4 Though he later warned of a few rough edges that will resolve this week. He also said any data is incorrect.
It will be updated periodically based on the best available information.

Speaker 4 That means they're... to manipulate it the way Elon has been doing Grok.
I think you're as shocked as I am that foreign actors are behind some of these accounts.

Speaker 4 I saw a post on threads, your MAGA hat was made in China and your MAGA hate was made in Russia. Nothing about you is America first.
Also, many ex-users pointed out inaccuracies in their own locations.

Speaker 4 So it's not limited to MAGA accounts.

Speaker 4 And let me link this with another story because it's a bigger idea of this Russian manipulation. As the peace talks continue between the U.S.

Speaker 4 and Ukrainian officials in Geneva, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is insisting the U.S.

Speaker 4 wrote the 28-point Ukraine peace plan that's been circulating, a plan that many Ukrainians dismissed as a capitulation.

Speaker 4 This comes after a bipartisan group of senators said Rubio privately described it as a Russia's wish list. Rubio is trying really hard to thread this needle.

Speaker 4 Rubio has been denying and downplaying, saying the plan was early document that received input from both sides.

Speaker 4 Trump said over the weekend that if Zelensky doesn't agree to the peace plan, he can, quote, continue to fight his little heart out.

Speaker 4 Marco Rubio is in a real fucking jam here, but more to the point, the Russians, both things show the manipulation of information by Russia with this group of people.

Speaker 4 They are so, they're such, you know,

Speaker 4 idiot assets, essentially. What are your thoughts on this? Because you and I have focused on this quite a lot.

Speaker 1 These platforms,

Speaker 1 the GRU, the Mossad, the CIA, the NSA, the CCP couldn't have dreamt these platforms up in their wildest dreams because not only can you use them to track people and find their key relationships, if you're a foreign entity that can't beat us kinetically or economically, you just take this unregulated

Speaker 1 industry where now two-thirds of people get their information and that has no regulation and a management team that is just totally focused on economic wealth and shareholder value.

Speaker 1 And why would you spend four or five billion dollars trying to build an aircraft carrier when you can spend $100 million and essentially create a pretty strong narrative against providing more weapons and aid to Ukraine by weaponizing troll farms and using these porous platforms.

Speaker 1 The thing that is probably more influential than the actual statements itself on these social media platforms is the comments. I mean, I can't help it, and I don't think most people can help it.

Speaker 1 They say something. They make a declarative statement, a viewpoint.
We should be shipping long-range missiles,

Speaker 1 specifically the flamingo and maybe the tomahawk into Ukraine.

Speaker 1 take out the refining infrastructure 1%, and boom, the war is over. And your comments will fill up with,

Speaker 1 there you go again, you warmonger and you're trying to start World War III. And then you click on these things and it's like dog mom, Wisconsin with three followers.

Speaker 4 You know, it's like, what, you know, those pictures of them with screens in front. You've seen those pictures of these farms where there's hundreds and hundreds of screens.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so I think she and Putin and I would argue Hamas would be stupid not to make massive investments in trying to shape the narrative in the U.S. to their favor.

Speaker 1 We do it with our psyops. I just don't think we're as good at it.

Speaker 1 And just a brief unmasking of where these accounts were coming from shows that foreign actors are having a real impact on our discourse.

Speaker 1 Now, what's a little different here is that I think a lot of these MAGA farms or MAGA accounts that have huge followings are actually not people trying to shape the narrative for propaganda purposes.

Speaker 1 They're people just trying to make money.

Speaker 1 So if you live in Nigeria and you find the easiest way to get several hundred thousand followers is just to be crazy MAGA, you do it and you make some money.

Speaker 4 That's a really good point, Scott. It's not for influence.
It's for money.

Speaker 1 Well, I think it's both.

Speaker 4 But it also creates influence, right? Because these people get all jacked up.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And there's just no getting around it.
I've been thinking about this a lot.

Speaker 1 And my advice to younger people, or if you want to be quote unquote, a thought leader, like, I don't think Muhammad Ali or Margaret Thatcher would have given a flying fuck what their their comments were in social media.

Speaker 1 And that's a good way. Five years ago, seven, seven, ten years ago,

Speaker 1 I would be on social media and I'd say something, but I was there for the likes.

Speaker 1 And the likes were dictating what I said and how I thought because I wanted to please people and I wanted affirmation for others, or at least influencing it.

Speaker 1 And then what I realized is, okay, that just results in more extremism. And when we all bark up the same tree, we get stupid.

Speaker 1 And that a real goal should be, you don't want to ever purposely offend people, but

Speaker 1 you should be saying things, writing, tweeting, whatever, based on things you believe.

Speaker 1 And comments be damned because

Speaker 1 I know this.

Speaker 4 You still read comments, don't you? I don't read them as much.

Speaker 1 I read the first 10 to just get an idea.

Speaker 4 I'm blocked now. I don't respond.
I used to respond.

Speaker 1 Now I block. Oh, no, respond.
Never weigh in.

Speaker 4 Well, we used to. We used to respond.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 I haven't responded in several years now.

Speaker 1 But my point is, and it's hard to do this because everybody,

Speaker 1 until just a couple hundred years ago, maybe even less than that, if you were shamed by your tribe, you risked being expunged and you would die. If they say you're out, you're dead.

Speaker 1 You get eaten alive, literally, by predators and other animals or other

Speaker 1 lone travelers. So shame is very powerful.
So when you go online and you say, we should be shipping along, the best way to end the war in Ukraine is to win it and this is how we win it,

Speaker 1 you check back because you know you're going to get a lot of very

Speaker 1 negative comments.

Speaker 1 And at the end of the day, if you want to be, you know, some people need to be careful because they're younger and they're still trying to establish their careers, but if you have economic security and people love you unconditionally, try not to play to the bots and the narrative and the comments.

Speaker 1 Because as much as you may think so, it plays a much bigger role in shaping your narrative than you think.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 4 And I think, you know, of course, I hold, you know, I've always looked at Mark Zuckerberg going back when he said there's no Russian influence on our platform, which was so, think about how insane that was and how incredibly mendacious that was in terms of what he did there.

Speaker 4 I remember calling them and like, well, how does he know? Like, did he check? Like, of course. And then he came up with some 0.1.
Like, how did you know that so fast? Like, it was such, it was so like

Speaker 4 lying would be a kind way of putting putting it, I thought at the time. And with Musk, the same thing.
He doesn't care what goes on at his Nazi porn bar. He doesn't.

Speaker 4 Like, as long as he gets the influence he requires, I mean, his manipulation of Grok is laughable.

Speaker 4 You know, Elon's, and he, of course, got total ratio last week when they said, is Elon the best, you know, person to be peed on in history? And they're like, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 No, he's a physical specimen. Grok cites him as a physical specimen.
Him and LeBron James.

Speaker 4 Then people, you know, does he eat poop better than anybody else? And they did that. Yes, he's the best poop eater and stuff.

Speaker 4 So the whole thing is so laughable, like that you would spend this much money. And, but the irresponsibility of the platform, I don't think you can avoid it, these platforms actually, that they exist.

Speaker 4 You can avoid this kind of foreign influence, but I think you could mitigate it. And they don't seem caring about mitigation.
I was, I wonder how this idea of showing where everyone's from was meant.

Speaker 4 Was he trying to fuck with MAGA? Because that's where most of the abuses seem to be.

Speaker 4 You know, I just was, I was wondering what he was up to, like, because he let it happen, but now they've changed it. And now you don't know what they're going to do.
They'll manipulate.

Speaker 4 They'll just show. They'll just,

Speaker 4 as usual, they'll make it into a dog's breakfast, I think, in terms of being able to follow it. I want to know what you also think of Rubio, this Rubio situation.

Speaker 1 But just some data. 2016, Russia's internet research agency poses Americans and used micro-targeted Facebook ads to promote divisive political issues.

Speaker 1 In 2017, Russian operatives used Facebook accounts to organize, get this, over 60 protests in America, both before and after the 2016 election, the Stop the Steal bullshit.

Speaker 1 In 2019, over 7,000 Iranian accounts are banned on Twitter, most of which were commenting on U.S. politics.

Speaker 1 2023, the federal government stopped warning big tech of foreign influence, stopped campaigns

Speaker 1 or stopped warning them in response to GOP backlash. And in 2024, U.S.

Speaker 1 intelligence officials warned that adversaries, including Russia, China, and Iran, were utilizing AI to influence the election, primarily looking to undermine Harris.

Speaker 1 Just be clear, folks, these foreign actors seem to be on the side of the GOP typically. They're on the side of divisiveness, first and foremost, but

Speaker 1 a close second is the GOP, because the GOP seems to be parroting, and this is the segue to Rubio, seems to be parroting Sergei Lavarov, the foreign ministry head of Russia, his talking points.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's just insane that all of a sudden the GOP has come from, I mean, things have, talk about the world being turned bass outwards.

Speaker 1 We used to be the, you know, give peace a chance and let's play basketball against Russia and do an exchange of people.

Speaker 4 The Russians, McDonald's in Moscow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it was the GOP where I don't, I looked into his eyes and I saw the KGB. I mean, it was the GOP that was the hardline.

Speaker 1 You know, Mitt Romney was mocked by Obama by saying Russia was our biggest foreign threat.

Speaker 1 And then all of a sudden, now it appears that the GOP is basically the staunchest ally of Russia abroad, with the exception of India and China, who just want cheap oil at 38 bucks a barrel versus 61, which is what

Speaker 1 the price for

Speaker 1 light crude is. Anyways,

Speaker 1 I don't recognize this shit anymore. This isn't even the GOP.
It's an entirely different political party.

Speaker 4 Well, except they're also sending that moron Witkoff over, who has no experience. And Jarrett is back

Speaker 4 and seems to have just had someone else do his homework. And Rubio,

Speaker 4 who had a pretty good reputation from a foreign policy point of view when he was in the Senate, is now just,

Speaker 4 I think, I guess he wants to run for vice president. He's never going to win.
Well, you know, because he's going to run with J.D. Vance, the two most

Speaker 4 charmless and charmlesser.

Speaker 4 It just, I sort of, I think he was trying to signal the senators. That's why all these group of senators said he privately described it.

Speaker 4 So I think he's trying somehow to like back channel them that this is all bullshit,

Speaker 4 but then goes out and defends it at the same time. It's just

Speaker 4 he's a fascinating political figure. He seems like in personality, like small dick energy kind of thing, but he seems to not to, he seems to be wanting to signal them.

Speaker 4 And I suspect he was the one that was doing it, but then publicly won't do it. It's, I don't know, it seems very strange.
He should quit.

Speaker 1 You guys are going to quit. This is, look, I do think it's a bit unfair.
I I think Wickoff and

Speaker 1 Jared deserve some credit for the ceasefire in Gaza. And I'm skeptical of a real estate developer usurping and

Speaker 1 playing like geopolitical ambassador, but they deserve credit for

Speaker 1 facilitating that agreement. This is incompetence on display and our Secretary of State trying to pretzel himself with what I call it flood the zone, interesting narrative and big words.

Speaker 1 And if you listen to an interview with Marco Rubio or Secretary Rubio on Meet the Press,

Speaker 1 after about two or three minutes, it's like watching dogs watch television. It's like, okay, I know he said something, but I'm not sure what's going on there.
He just, it's just like this total.

Speaker 1 And Marco Rubio, since I think the age, I think he's a very talented politician, but I think since the age of 22,

Speaker 1 everything he does is totally dictated on how can I get more one,

Speaker 1 an additional straw to pull in Iowa when I run for president. He was initially initially put on a committee, one of the Republican meant to address the immigration issue.

Speaker 1 I mean, we had a chance to really address this shit about 20 years ago, and he bailed when he found out that the far-right part of his party, which he was going to need in his planned attempt to run for president a couple of years later,

Speaker 1 didn't want dreamers, didn't want a path to citizenship. So he will say and do absolutely anything that he thinks is going to get him to be president.
He demonstrates no leadership at all.

Speaker 4 No, I think Trump called him pretty clearly.

Speaker 1 I think he was right. But you would, unfortunately, and I don't, you know, he is, I've been told not to say this, he's the fastest tortoise.
I was going to use another analogy

Speaker 1 in this cabinet because he is a smart guy. He is well-versed in geopolitics, but this just makes us look fucking stupid.

Speaker 4 It does. It really does.

Speaker 1 Let's take the 28 talking points from Russia and say that's our plan and then say, no, it's not our plan.

Speaker 4 I know. Europe went crazy.
Anyway, we have to move on, but it's the whole thing is together, everybody. Try to understand the systemic situation happening here of manipulation of

Speaker 4 the strongest country in the world.

Speaker 1 Anyway, it does, just real quick, though,

Speaker 1 it does come back to tattoos, and that is, generally speaking, I don't like tattoos.

Speaker 1 But I love women with tattoos because it shows a history of poor decision-making, which plays to my benefit.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you're never getting any. Anyway,

Speaker 4 speaking of, here's something that will repel you.

Speaker 4 On our last episode, I predicted that Donald Trump and Zoran Mamdani would get along like peas and carrots. And guess what, Scott? What am I going to say next? I was.

Speaker 1 I'm telling you, it's the name of your biography.

Speaker 4 But I was. I was right.

Speaker 4 I was fucking dead right. Was I dead right?

Speaker 1 And dot, dot, dot, I was right.

Speaker 4 Dead right. This one was fantastic.
Their Oval Office meeting is described as a love fest with Trump looking smitten as he grinned at the mayor.

Speaker 4 Alec, Trump praised Mamdani's campaign, called him a very rational person, and said he'd be cheering him on as mayor.

Speaker 4 Let's listen to Trump explain what he finds so fascinating about Mamdani.

Speaker 1 I think he's different, and that can be in a very positive way, but I think he's different than, you know, your typical guy, runs, wins, becomes mayor maybe, and nothing exciting.

Speaker 1 Because he has a chance to really do something great for New York. New York is at a very critical point,

Speaker 1 and he does need the help of the federal government to really succeed. And we're going to be helping them.

Speaker 4 Trump even brushed off Mamdani, previously calling him a fascist. He says, don't answer that.
I'm fine with it.

Speaker 4 For his part, Mamdani told Meet the Press over the weekend that he stands by his criticism of Trump.

Speaker 4 Then there was a lot of glamour shots in front of FDR, the socialist president, the most socialist president. And of course, there was a picture of Mamdani.

Speaker 4 and he from behind looking over, I suppose, the Mar-a-Lago patio. And it was sort of a, this can will be yours someday, son.
It was so romantic.

Speaker 1 It was, I don't think people were wrong about the romance of it.

Speaker 4 Not on Mamdani's part, on Trump's part, which was weird. Now, let me be clear: he will invade New York if he wants to tomorrow.

Speaker 4 Like, he could shift on a fucking dime, but I think he understood the political strength of Mamdani as a winner, as we talked about. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 1 I think it was really, I think it was an incredibly shrewd move on both their parts. I think it made both of them seem a lot more statesmanlike.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 this was just the definition of a win-win.

Speaker 1 And I think Trump wants to be,

Speaker 1 you know, popular, well-liked in what he sees as his city, his home city.

Speaker 1 Mamdami,

Speaker 1 Trump has always been very luxist and loves a handsome young man. He's always been very important to him.
And he admires those people. And Mamdami is both those things or Momdani.
He also,

Speaker 1 you know, Trump is attracted to strength. Mamdani's win is nothing short of remarkable.

Speaker 4 Yeah, twice.

Speaker 1 And also, Mom Donnie was really smart to be in the Oval Office and show that kind of respect and not be crazy and not dress nicely as opposed to Elon.

Speaker 4 I remember the visual of Elon standing there in like a t-shirt, looking like a lunatic, like a drug addict. It looked like

Speaker 1 a hot topic the day before it had its going out of business sale.

Speaker 1 He's like, swing by. Doesn't our uncle like this shit? Yeah, buy it all.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 this was a win-win for

Speaker 1 both of them. Absolutely Absolutely both of them.
Momdani needs to figure out a way to get along with the federal government and the president that will only help New Yorkers.

Speaker 1 At the same time, Trump, it shows him being gracious, statesmanlike.

Speaker 1 I think this was

Speaker 1 win-win, absolute win-win on both parties.

Speaker 4 Here's one quick part:

Speaker 4 he was before Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have met with him. I mean, seriously, like Trump took

Speaker 4 the shine of Mamdani

Speaker 4 and they didn't. Like they could have easily done that.
Right. And Trump was not scared to do that.
And he's the least likely to have done it.

Speaker 4 It really, I just, I find them so ham-handed in terms of how they handle things.

Speaker 4 And again, the only person who, you know, you could, you, every, you can do, you can do on a, this is an exciting win for New York, et cetera, and Democrats. I don't agree with them all the time.

Speaker 4 They could, that's, you know, that's kind of what Trump did. Like he did say, they did indicate, you know, differences, but he was sort of just celebrating the win, I guess.
And

Speaker 4 that's a political opportunity the Democrats have missed rather significantly. They've got a star in their midst, and Trump understands.

Speaker 4 He has political acumen, that's for sure. I don't think, I think tomorrow, if he wanted to,

Speaker 4 he'd change his mind and invade New York if someone gets in his ear. But for that moment, I was like, smart political guy, always been smart.

Speaker 1 Our American leaders are supposed to embody what it is to be American. And I remember playing,

Speaker 1 you know, peewee baseball and getting beamed in the head on purpose by the pitcher. I remember playing pee-wee football, and we would, people would try and purposely hurt you.

Speaker 1 And at the end of the game,

Speaker 1 standard accepted practice, no matter what happens, the end of the game, the whistle goes off. You shake each other's hand and you congratulate each other.

Speaker 1 And I believe that in politics, and it used to be this way, you congratulate the winner and you say, I will work with you and

Speaker 1 I will do my best to help you, you know, try and make America better. I don't, you want to give people the benefit of the doubt.
You want to say, I would have not, I'm not a resident of New York.

Speaker 1 I would not have voted for Mom Donnie. I hope he is successful.
Everyone has an obligation to give people the benefit of the doubt, to shake their hand and try and be productive. And the two of them,

Speaker 1 intentionally, unintentionally, inconsistent, whatever you want to say, they did that. That is what our leaders are supposed to do.
Yeah, it was interesting.

Speaker 4 It was a really interesting, and from a visual point of view, you talk about visuals all the time. It was like, hello, son.

Speaker 4 I mean, someone was saying that Stephen Miller and JD Vance must be on suicide watch at this point. But who knows? Who knows?

Speaker 4 I don't think, you know. Anyway, let's go on a quick break.
When we come back, Google gets a big win in the AI arms race.

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Speaker 4 Scott, we're back with more news. Google is taking a big step ahead in AI with the launch of Gemini 3.
The company's latest model outperforms competitors on over a dozen benchmark intelligence tests.

Speaker 4 Alphabet's market value is currently exceeding Microsoft's for the first time in seven years. Nice job, Scott, in picking that Alphabet as your stock pick.

Speaker 4 But Gemini has a way to go in terms of users. Chat GPT has 800 million users each week compared to Gemini's 650 million monthly users.

Speaker 4 You know, oddly enough, lots of people are praising it. Mark Benningoff, who shifts on a dime, is saying, holy shit, this is really good.
People who use it are saying it's really good.

Speaker 4 This nano banana kind of thing.

Speaker 4 Is this a real shift? Because, I mean, as you and I both talked about,

Speaker 4 there's a real problem for OpenAI not to become Netscape right here, that that's the issue. Maybe a superior browser, everyone was using it, and then they weren't.

Speaker 4 This stuff can go away rather quickly, and Google has so many hooks into people

Speaker 4 through search and to make the leapfrog. And if it's a better product, so much the better.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's so in my predictions deck of 2024 for 25, one of my predictions was the Empire Strikes Back. And I was making a reference.

Speaker 1 Alphabet has the most IP around AI in history.

Speaker 1 They got caught asleep at the switch, and it's the ultimate example of the innovator's dilemma in the sense that they didn't want to cannibalize their search business.

Speaker 1 So they didn't monetize it or productize it. And then they created an opening for

Speaker 1 open AI, but they have gotten a memo in a serious way. And

Speaker 1 when you have 2 billion people logging into your platform every day, you just have this unbelievable fire hose you can point at a product.

Speaker 1 And now, arguably by a lot of metrics, Gemini 3, their latest AI model, is the best performing LLM in the world.

Speaker 1 Have you used it?

Speaker 4 Have you started using it?

Speaker 4 You're a ChatGPT boy, or Claude. You're Claude personally.

Speaker 1 I like Claude. But I do go back and forth.
And what I find really powerful is not Gemini, but the AI summaries at the top of every Google search group.

Speaker 3 They're getting better and better.

Speaker 4 They were terrible at the start. Now they're really.

Speaker 1 And something that skipped most of the media is that Gemini has also turned on ads on its AI overviews. So that will be a massive new revenue generation tool for one of the most widely used AI tools.

Speaker 1 And they, I think, are saying, okay, we're in the ad business, not the subscription business.

Speaker 1 So that means the tools roughly 75 million daily users will see sponsored results in the AI summaries that appear at the top of the Google searches.

Speaker 1 And that means they're the first AI company to turn on ads. So I saw that as more significant here.
And in the short term, users may prefer Cloud and ChatGPT, which are still ad-free.

Speaker 1 But what I have been surprised at.

Speaker 1 Have you heard the term fast TV? So linear TV.

Speaker 4 Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah.
Tubi and stuff. Yeah, Tubi.

Speaker 1 So linear TV is you turn on the TV and it's just running.

Speaker 1 It's not streaming tv so every year for the last 20 years streaming has been eating into linear's market share for the last two or three years it stopped 50 of time spent watching video is linear tv some people like the passive relaxing less costly version of TV where they just sit there just like when I get on the law and order channel and I just let it play yeah I see good fellows while I'm watching it for 15 minutes commercial Then I go three more channels.

Speaker 1 Oh, there's the Shoshank Redemption. I'll watch that for eight minutes.
Then, oh, it's a sports.

Speaker 1 It's that hot news anchor. I'll watch her for a while.
It's my hotel room. Yeah, you just browse, right? Yeah.
Oh, it's, you know, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 It's Anderson Cooper.

Speaker 4 I'll watch him for Santa Claus. I watched that the other night.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you see the same movies they play over and over. But for me, it's literally like,

Speaker 1 I mean, families spend 50 minutes a week, almost an hour a week, almost a week a year, deciding what to watch on Netflix.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 1 And when you just sit down and start scrolling through cable, it's pretty.

Speaker 1 So, anyways, the ad market is just

Speaker 1 enormous. And the way that these guys were going with subscription and Google, Alphabet, who's arguably the best advertiser in the world, has said, no,

Speaker 1 it's the ad model. They have an extraordinary front end to aim consumers at it.
But all of it, I would argue,

Speaker 1 all the narrative is around Gemini

Speaker 1 threatening Chat GPT. I think the most

Speaker 1 important is DeepSeek and Chinese open-weight AI

Speaker 1 are going to erode all of their market share.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Will you start using Gemini 3 for me? Because I don't have time to use.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's funny. I got to get better at this stuff.
I only use two. I'm really lazy.
The one thing.

Speaker 4 I don't use them at all. I'll be honest with you.
I don't really have that many needs.

Speaker 1 Oh, what I would recommend to anybody is I've tried to do this to my friend Greg Shove, who's the CEO section, which is trying to upscale people in the enterprise for AI.

Speaker 1 He said, he gave me a tip and I have done it. Like right now, right now, I have a second screen and I always have a second screen.

Speaker 1 And the primary purpose of the second screen is almost everything I get, especially if it's digital, I upload into one of two LLMs and I'm trying to learn what you can do with this thing.

Speaker 1 And you start to learn what it's good for and what it's not good for. And it's really, it's really useful.
I find

Speaker 1 because what they're finding in corporations is these companies have signed up big site licenses and they're excited about it and no one's using it. No one's adopting it.

Speaker 4 Well, it's quick answers, right? It's really quick.

Speaker 4 And as they become more accurate, the problem is accuracy, of course, but it's sort of like you used to go to the encyclopedia and now it's there for you, explained and packaged in a way that search never was.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I find, I mean, the way I describe it is you have the world's smartest intern who's read the entire internet, but you do learn like the more information you give it, I ask it to take on a voice.

Speaker 1 I ask it what additional questions can I answer for you to make your answers more complete. Can you graph this? Can you recheck this? This doesn't sound right.
You begin having a dialogue with it.

Speaker 1 And I find it, I do find it fascinating what it can be used for.

Speaker 1 And anything you get digitally, anytime you get a report from your doctor that's digital, upload it to these AIs and see what they say about it.

Speaker 4 I don't want them to have my information.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're more worried about that than I am. I am.
I don't want, I don't know.

Speaker 4 I just, anyway, please use it for us and bring back a report. Anyway, another related story: markets remain unsteady.
Now, we have talked about this a lot, and it went up.

Speaker 4 And with NVIDIA's fantastic earnings, we talked about last week. The market still remains unsteady amid this continued AI bubble fears.
They did not go away after NVIDIA's impressive earnings.

Speaker 4 It was just a short-term fix. NVIDIA wiped out its initial jump from the earnings.
It's now down 2.3% in the last five days. They're all down.
Bitcoin has like gone to the basement.

Speaker 4 The Trumps have lost a lot of money. I know we feel bad about that.
At the timing of the taping of the SP 500, the Dow Jones are down around 1.5% for the month after a rocky couple of weeks.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, crypto, as I said, is crashing on track to have the worst month since 2022. So, and there was all these memos like Jensen Wong saying, we better slow this fear thing down.

Speaker 4 But it didn't work.

Speaker 4 It hasn't hasn't worked, I guess. And people are still

Speaker 4 investors aren't quite as concerned. And by the way, everyone should read this Wall Street Journal story by Jonathan.
I think it's wild about the ridiculous accounting tricks that

Speaker 4 Meta is using for its data centers. It so feels like AOL.
It so feels like so much of the stuff. And this is the guy who unearthed the Enron problem.
So pay attention to him. But go ahead.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 so economic history is typically when we have these sorts of,

Speaker 1 I don't know, manias or bull markets, about the time everyone acknowledges they've gone crazy, they then go insane. And that is,

Speaker 1 so granted, the market had a pretty swift reversal last week, but these stocks, Alphabet just hit an all-time high.

Speaker 1 NVIDIA's checked back a little bit, and everyone's talking about how Bitcoin is sort of a canary in the coal mine.

Speaker 1 But keep in mind, even though though Bitcoin has had its worst month, as you pointed out, since 2022, it's back to where it was in April, and it's still up since the president was elected.

Speaker 4 So it just had those big run-ups. That's why.

Speaker 1 You would argue the narrative is doom. What's really happened is just like a small checkback, but the narrative has gone from AI boom to AI bubble.

Speaker 1 Generally, through economic history or the history of the markets, what you see is... When people say this is crazy town, it then goes insane.

Speaker 1 And then about the time everybody says, well, maybe we are in a new economic model and everyone throws in the towel, that's when you get the crash comes.

Speaker 1 So, if you were to look at, I mean, even if you were to overlay Open AI and Nvidia's valuation, say, against Netscape, it still looks like there's room to run.

Speaker 1 Having said that, I always like to disclose what I'm doing. I'm going to wait.
I've been paring down my big tech stocks.

Speaker 1 I'm like, look, I, I may be wrong, but I know that they're, I know I'm selling at good prices right now.

Speaker 4 Right, right. You're taking your earnings, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but the, the, the,

Speaker 1 the markets feel very, very nervous right now.

Speaker 4 It's fragile is the word you use.

Speaker 4 Fragile.

Speaker 1 But what's interesting is what you see a lot of times that I love this term, the markets climb a wall of worry.

Speaker 1 It's usually when we're not worried that the markets just throw up. Right now, this, to me, again, I wouldn't say it's 97.
I think we're in 98 right now.

Speaker 1 All the smartest people in the room are saying these things are overvalued. And as my friend Barry Rudholtz pointed out to me, from 97 to 99, the NASDAQ doubled.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 So I don't know. When is the down? When is the down?

Speaker 1 Well, that's the thing. Nobody knows, and you're worried about missing out on gains.

Speaker 1 And again, the only answer, in my view, is to be more diversified, move more into cash, but also just be incredibly diversified.

Speaker 4 Yeah, stick more gold bars up your ass. That's my opinion.

Speaker 1 And Warren Buffett has amassed a cash pile of $360 billion, I think.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he really has. It's really interesting.
It's his last move, I think, interestingly enough. And then he'll buy, but I mean, he's quite old, but it's one of his last moves.

Speaker 1 I'd have to say that. You know, people talk about the 15 tech stocks that are up more than 70%,

Speaker 1 they were down 6%. But folks, okay, so now they're only up 64% for the year.
You know, it would just make sense that there wasn't drawdowns, but I don't think we can call this. a correction yet.

Speaker 4 Still, the worry persists. People are very worried.

Speaker 1 And there's going to be more and more.

Speaker 4 How are we spending money? You know, like abandoned, and I'm really drunk at Sailors, probably.

Speaker 4 All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green says she will resign.

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Speaker 4 Scott, we're back with more news. We don't have Marjorie Taylor Green to kick around anymore, or Trump really does.

Speaker 4 She announced that he will resign from Congress in January after the President Trump called her a traitor for break.

Speaker 4 And Marjorie Taylor Brown, I'm not sure what that was, but that was a weird nickname, for breaking his stance on the Epstein files.

Speaker 4 Green said in an announcement video that she refuses to be a battered wife, hoping it all goes away and gets better. She dragged out the battered wife metaphor.
Let's listen to more of what she said.

Speaker 6 I have too much self-respect and dignity. I love my family way too much.

Speaker 6 And I do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president that we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms.

Speaker 4 We have one more clip that she said for you, Scott. Let's listen.

Speaker 6 I believe in term limits and do not think Congress should be a lifelong career or an assisted living facility.

Speaker 4 Ah, she's speaking to you. She's speaking sweetness to you.
President Trump called the announcement, great news for the country.

Speaker 4 Just this morning, there was some reporting on Punch Bowl, which I think is highly accurate about lots of people are going to depart, lots of Republicans, which are going to send possibly Johnson not controlling the House

Speaker 4 by the departures in January, because they can't get those people in place fast enough in these special elections.

Speaker 4 And so there might be more departures, largely because the White House keeps kicking the shit out of Congress, which, of course, at any time they could take control, by the way, Congress.

Speaker 4 You have an enormous power within your ranks, except you're run by, you know,

Speaker 4 Mike Johnson, who is a toady to Trump, which he's going to be a footnote in history very soon, I think.

Speaker 4 What do you think this means in terms of how do you think she handled it? She put out lots of information. A lot of people said it was.

Speaker 4 uh you know uh it was a strategy some people say she's going to run for president she says she's that's nothing nothing of the sort um other people were talking about how much money she made through stock trading she started off with 700 000 and now is 25 million um there's all kinds of different things and of course jasmine crockett was like oh you had a week of president trump yelling at you and you run and i have you you know, I have years of it.

Speaker 4 And you better suck it up, sister, kind of thing. So there's a lot going on here.
I mean, how do you think she handled this? Talk about it from a brand point of view, if you don't mind.

Speaker 1 I think the people we're going to be most harsh on in history won't be some of these people who were, in my view, wrong and demonstrated really anti-American.

Speaker 1 just made a series of bad decisions and demonstrated incredibly low character. I think the people that we're most disappointed in are the enablers.

Speaker 1 Like, when I look at World War II, I just think, how did we turn away that cruise ship of Jews looking for refuge? How did

Speaker 1 Europe ignore?

Speaker 1 Why did the French were so quick to hand over lists of Jews? Like the enablers.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the Republicans here,

Speaker 1 behind the scenes, as soon as they resign from Congress and go on Bel Mar, find their testicles. And they have enabled this.
There's just no getting around it.

Speaker 1 When Senator Rubio lets Zelensky be abused like that, he is enabling the invasion of Europe by a murderous autocrat, which anyone who has any historical context knows that is not right.

Speaker 1 When we have this type of just incredibly irresponsible fiscal policy, we know that ends poorly, and Republicans have supposedly always been the fiscally responsible ones.

Speaker 1 When we have extradition killing of people in fishing boats that would take 20 stops to get to Miami with the supposed fentanyl that is never that is not produced, nor is there any evidence being of it being in Venezuela and Republicans have been about stopping these forever.

Speaker 1 I mean, these people are just enabling.

Speaker 1 I don't, are these guys getting, getting blown by the hottest women in the world as long as they're in office? Like, why do they,

Speaker 1 why do they so desperately want to be, want to hold on to their jobs and just put aside all sense of character?

Speaker 4 Well, Well, she's smarter than most of them, right?

Speaker 1 That's where I'm headed.

Speaker 1 We're so desperate for someone to speak up that the nation, and she has been a leader on the Epstein files, the nation just is really impressed with MTG.

Speaker 1 But what I want to remind people of is who she is. Correct.
And

Speaker 1 I've said, I don't think it's fair to treat Mark Benioff as an apostate. I think you have to look at all 35 millimeters of their life and not just take one frame.

Speaker 1 And I just want to remind people of Representative Taylor Greene. So in terms of election and political legitimacy, she repeatedly promoted false claims about the 2020 U.S.
election being stolen.

Speaker 1 She supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election result and objected to certification.

Speaker 1 Her comments about Democrats have included making statements comparing Democrats and political adversaries to Nazis. She suggested the U.S.

Speaker 1 is in a form of civil war and has used rhetoric implying Democrats are enemies of the country. Her conspiracy theories.

Speaker 4 You're crazy.

Speaker 1 She

Speaker 1 constantly

Speaker 1 parroted QAnon narratives, which she later said she no longer believes. Claims about various mass shootings being false flags, speculation about space lasers.
She didn't say Jewish space lasers.

Speaker 1 She said space lasers in connection with California wildfires and then connected to the Rothschilds, which are are often a trope for anti-Semitism.

Speaker 1 Terms to COVID-19, she frequently attacked public health measures, comparing COVID restrictions and vaccine policies to Nazi-era persecution.

Speaker 1 Her interaction with colleagues, highly publicized confrontations with other members of Congress, including yelling at colleagues in hallways, posting inflammatory signs outside her office about LGBTQ issues, referring to political opponents with demeaning or conspiratorial language.

Speaker 1 Her January 6th related statements criticized the treatment of January 6 insurrectionists, calling them political prisoners, referred to the January 6 events in ways that critics say minimize the violence of that day.

Speaker 1 Her statements about minorities and social groups, and I'll wrap up here in a few seconds. Let's just, let's do a real biopic here.

Speaker 1 She made comments about Muslim members of Congress, including past suggestions they should not serve and be subject to loyalty tests.

Speaker 1 Gun-related incidents, incidents she appeared to endorse violence against Democratic leaders, filmed herself confronting a school shooting survivor, David Hogg.

Speaker 1 And meanwhile, she's leaving Congress with about $23 million, including trades and palantir, three days before they were awarded contracts from a committee she serves on. You know what, Ms.

Speaker 1 Representative Greene? Good fucking riddance.

Speaker 1 And we are so desperate for some semblance of sanity from the GOP that we laud this person because she's good on the Epstein files.

Speaker 1 Her house was not raided like Bolton's. She has not been threatened with legal action like Senator Schiff, but oh no, she's being persecuted.
Do not trust this woman. This is

Speaker 1 no legislative accomplishments whatsoever. Her history and her record are bigotry, anti-science, being divisive, good fucking riddance.
Yep.

Speaker 4 And Scott, I love you. Let me just say, I love you now.
More than ever.

Speaker 4 Because one of the things that drove me fucking crazy was all these interviews, which I really did agree with her on a lot of things, but no one said, what's your stance on trans still?

Speaker 4 What's your stance on Muslims? What's your, they didn't ask the, I thought if I got her, you know, on an interview, I'd be like, okay, you don't like, I agree with you on the Epstein files.

Speaker 4 Let's talk about your other points of view and like remind people of who this person has been. I agree.
I agree. I, I kind of like when people make big shifts, but this person

Speaker 4 has, is a history of

Speaker 1 real toxicity.

Speaker 4 And I thank you. Scott, I love you.
I'm not going to even go anymore.

Speaker 1 Anyway, tattoo with my dad.

Speaker 4 I'm going to get it. I'm good.
Everybody write in. What should be my Scottish?

Speaker 4 I'm getting a tram stamp for Scott.

Speaker 4 Anyway, very quickly, Eli Lilly just became the first healthcare company to hit a trillion dollars in market cap powered by its increasing demand for GLP-1, weight loss drugs, Mujaro, and Zeppbound.

Speaker 4 Scott's been talking about this, saying the most important thing, the company's stock has surged more than 36% this year in a recent deal with the Trump administration to cut drug prices, push shares even higher up next.

Speaker 4 It plans to seek FDA approval for a GLP-1 pill by the end of the year. All the other companies are doing the same, aiming to bring it to market by the mid-2026.

Speaker 4 Wall Street expects the pill alone could join up to $40 billion a year at its peak. Costs will come down for these drugs probably considerably.
So

Speaker 4 as you said, healthcare is a better bet than AI right now, correct?

Speaker 1 I picked Technology of the Year every year, 23 and 24. I picked AI, 25.
My technology pick was GLP-1. I think.
GLP1. I'll give you a shout out.
I watched your interview.

Speaker 1 I thought it was actually quite interesting with Scott Jennings.

Speaker 1 The guy looks like the old Scott Jennings is going to show up and eat him.

Speaker 1 I saw, who is the old Secretary of State under Trump that he hates now? Mike Pompeo.

Speaker 1 I was at one of these Master of the Universe, and I saw

Speaker 1 literally, he looks like a different human being. Yes.

Speaker 1 70% of America, the one thing Americans share is we're fat. 70% of Americans are obese or overweight.

Speaker 1 Talk to me about someone who's in AI and who's on GLP1 and ask them, what has had a bigger impact on your life?

Speaker 1 These things are,

Speaker 1 these things are,

Speaker 1 I think it's the most important technology since GPS.

Speaker 4 I would agree. I have to say in this reporting for the Secret CNN documentary, of all the things, and there's lots of things, sleep and health,

Speaker 4 the two things, AI and cancer research, people are absolutely thinking this is a critical, the ability to find these answers and drug discovery.

Speaker 4 But the number one thing, and CRISPR, of course, is another big technology technology in health, but the absolute number one thing all the doctors, GLP wants.

Speaker 1 The thing, one of the things that really ails us is income inequality. And I think that it presents an existential threat to the market.
And a real move towards fascism would be an economic shock.

Speaker 1 It's inspired by the fact we're running out of cushion in terms of our deficit being $37 trillion and the fact we spend $2 trillion or more than we spend.

Speaker 1 350 million people spend $13,000 a year on health care versus other nations at $6,500.

Speaker 1 The most important

Speaker 1 seminal move our government could make right now in terms of a moonshot wouldn't be putting people on Mars or AI weapons. It would be the following.
Put out a bid and say, we are going to buy a...

Speaker 1 a 2 billion worth of doses, 200 million people, 200 million people on our obese or overweight, 1.2 billion doses, six months, and we are going to, whoever gives us the lowest price, and we are going to give GLP-1

Speaker 1 into every rural community, every person that's obese. You want to see health care costs come down.
You want to see depression and anxiety reduced.

Speaker 3 Cortisol.

Speaker 4 Stress.

Speaker 1 Take America down 20 pounds per household, 30 pounds per household in the next six to 12 months. It would have huge social and economic ramifications for us.

Speaker 4 Everyone gets a home and everyone gets not

Speaker 4 to die of a heart attack. Yeah.
Gets a semi-cliff died. Yeah.
Anyway, you know, we should run for president. We really should.
All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Speaker 7 So no matter if you're out at a concert, a huge sporting event, or out enjoying nature, you can post when you want to post, call when you want to call, and rest easy knowing no matter where you go, AT ⁇ T has got you covered.

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Speaker 7 Based on root metrics, United States Route Score Report 1H 2025 tested with with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types.

Speaker 7 Your experiences may vary. Route metrics rankings are not an endorsement of AT ⁇ T.

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Speaker 4 Okay, Scott, wins and fails. I shall go first.

Speaker 4 My fail. Another newly released court filing claims Meta knew its platforms were harming young users but refused to make basic fixes that could have protected kids.

Speaker 4 I don't know if that's my biggest fail or the Doge no longer exists. We will miss you, big balls, but a failure, an enormous fucking failure by all the numbers.
And there's several stories.

Speaker 4 You could go look at them. Just, it cost us money.
It created all kinds of havoc. It made Elon richer.
And who knows what else he got got in terms of data? And it was very bad for the American people.

Speaker 4 A good idea to always cut costs, but this was one big corrupt grift.

Speaker 4 And goodbye, good riddance. My win is sort of in the same area where people are sort of coming around to this idea of the tyranny of wealthy people, which is not, I mean, super wealthy people.

Speaker 4 Tina Brown, who I love, just gave an interview. It's something I've talked about a lot, but someone asked her, what does his rise say about people are feeling about the elite?

Speaker 4 He was talking to Zaran Mamdani. In the last few years, we have been so bullied by the super rich.

Speaker 4 There's a sense the rich are the ones who have a voice in every debate, whether it's about academia or the way the nation is run or how we live our lives with the tech revolutions.

Speaker 4 And people have felt, I think, more and more hopeless about the enormity of the wealth and the impossibility of fighting it. Mamdani has shown how to get your fight back.
It's very inspiring.

Speaker 4 Money doesn't buy everything. All that money went into stopping him, and he's still one.
And you don't have to like his ideas to be glad for that. And I'm very glad for that.
Well done, Tina Brown.

Speaker 4 Well said.

Speaker 4 They need to shut the fuck up. That's my, that's how I would say it, but she's much more articulate.

Speaker 1 Well, they're not going to. What we need is more Americans to be activists and protest and vote for, do the research, vote for whoever you think is best, not who has the most commercials running.

Speaker 4 But also, May I Meet You?

Speaker 1 It's so funny. I went out.
I took my doctor friend to Rouge Gardens, which is kind of the hotspot here.

Speaker 4 Right. And a bunch of people.
It's a different hotspot every time I talk to you.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm on the massive arrested adolescence tour that continues.

Speaker 1 And three different people came up to me, recognized me and said, said, may I meet you?

Speaker 1 And they said, what do you think of that? And the honest answer is, I think anything that encourages people to meet each other is a good thing. I have no problem with Bill saying that.

Speaker 4 No, you may not.

Speaker 1 You should not be doing dating advice.

Speaker 1 I always started with, hey, where are you from?

Speaker 4 I know.

Speaker 4 I told people your picture thing, and everyone laughed at dinner on friday i'm like scott's thing was um take a picture of a selfie i told the bartender we all had a good laugh at your expense and then turned around and say this is from when i'm going to show when our children would meet you know let's take a selfie together there you go the bartender was like that person i would make sure left the bar left the bar i call him a cab yeah creeps his way yeah i don't i don't i don't anyways i don't i don't know where we were headed with this but i don't have a problem with with anything that encourages young people to start talking to each other

Speaker 1 I'm getting big pushback on my alcohol thing with a lot of people.

Speaker 4 Stick with it. I know you are.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Anyway, stick to your guns.

Speaker 1 Stick to your guns. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is that so that's your

Speaker 4 favorite?

Speaker 4 I just like her saying that. I want to articulate it.
We have to fight.

Speaker 4 This is what it is. It's like you don't, these people don't have knowledge on everything.
Like they need, I think they need to shut up, but we should stop listening to them, maybe is the better point.

Speaker 4 And there are ways to win.

Speaker 1 We have this wonderful

Speaker 1 guy and before him was a wonderful woman and then they call him VP of student engagement or vice chancellor, whatever they call him, associate dean of student.

Speaker 1 And their job was to do programming at Stern.

Speaker 1 And occasionally they make the mistake of asking me to get involved in administrative decisions, which never works out.

Speaker 1 And the last time I think they asked me to get involved was around the Office of Student Engagement.

Speaker 1 And I said, I need to see, I think you should have higher, greater criteria for student speakers other than they have three commas.

Speaker 1 We are so fond of inviting billionaires to speak to these kids. And I'm like, billionaires don't immediately inherit wisdom around life.

Speaker 4 You gotcha.

Speaker 1 They've just made a shit ton of money. And we should bring in people with domain expertise and

Speaker 1 academic credentials and accomplishments. And that's where I started my whole, I started going to these things where they always say, follow your passion.

Speaker 1 And I said, I figured out anyone telling you to follow your passion is already rich and made their billions in iron ore smelting. Like these people are just kind of full of shit.

Speaker 1 And I'm under the impression because a bunch of young people will look up to them because they made a lot of money. But the more dangerous thing I find

Speaker 1 is that, is that the super rich, first off, I think if the middle class really knew how the super rich live and how much power they had, there'd be a revolution.

Speaker 1 But what's more dangerous is the super rich lose their empathy. I don't, I've never bought into this notion that the super rich are naturally bad people.
I don't think that's their empathy, though.

Speaker 4 You're right.

Speaker 1 But they have their own airports. They have their own transportation.
They have their own visa procedures. They have their own access to family planning.
They have their own health care.

Speaker 1 They don't have to wait in line in an ER. They have people come to their house.
They give them NAD treatments.

Speaker 1 They have their own schools. Yeah, our kids can read or write.
My kids can read or write. Here's a fucking crazy stat.

Speaker 1 Average high school spends $15,000 per student. High schools in poor areas, $8,000 to $10,000.
The average elite private school in America, where the rich kids go, spends $75,000 a year.

Speaker 1 So what do you know? When you invest a million dollars in a kid, he's better prepared for the real world than if you spend $150,000 on them through the course of their childhood.

Speaker 1 So how can they really, they live in safe communities? How can they really empathize? It's like I've said, and this is virtue signaling.

Speaker 1 I don't think rich people, people who grew up with money will ever understand what it's really like to not have money. I just don't think you can.
I'm not saying you can't be sympathetic.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying you can't be a great leader, but you just don't understand that insecurity. You don't understand that like shame you feel in a capitalist society when you don't have money.

Speaker 1 And rich people are losing touch with the American experience. So, are they going to fight for health care? Are they going to fight for infrastructure?

Speaker 1 Are they going to fight for funding for roads and subsidies for people who can't afford it? And by the way, where I live in Manhattan, I never see homeless. I just don't see them.

Speaker 4 You're not looking. They're there.
They're there.

Speaker 1 May I just say, are you dating AOC right now?

Speaker 4 Is that what's happening?

Speaker 1 What has she been asking about me? Be honest. Never.

Speaker 4 I want your wins and fails, Cal. God, I would ask you.
I like your presidential speeches, but

Speaker 1 what are your wins and fails? Let me just disavow all notions that I'm running for president.

Speaker 1 I would give it all up for AOC.

Speaker 1 I would give it all.

Speaker 1 I would be the best first husband to AOC. I would just look at her adoringly all the time.

Speaker 4 Can I just say, she's in a room with Emily Radikowski not talking talking about it? Oh, my God. Can you please give your win and fail? We got to get out of here.
God, she's hot.

Speaker 4 None of them are interested.

Speaker 4 Your fourth grade girlfriend's not interested in you. Anyway, please, please, please, please do your win and fail.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to get me out of this. Yes, I am.

Speaker 4 Win and fail. Let's move.
Let's focus. Let's land the plane.

Speaker 1 My fails.

Speaker 1 I don't think Americans have really recognized.

Speaker 1 For the longest time until now, just how incredibly impressive the people are who decide to go to work for our government, especially at the highest levels.

Speaker 1 I don't care Republican, Democrat, generally speaking,

Speaker 1 people who get the call are the brightest people in the world.

Speaker 1 The hardest working, the people, go meet a bunch of staffers from almost any office.

Speaker 1 Generally speaking, they're the most impressive group of young people you will ever meet.

Speaker 1 When you meet our diplomats, Republican, when you meet people really far down the line in the FBI, God, they're smart. And they can also kill people if they need to.

Speaker 1 Our people from our security agency, I was talking to the guy who ran cyber, the cybercrime division for the CIA.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, Jesus Christ, this guy, this guy's the smartest person in the world who only makes 180 grand a year. And you meet these,

Speaker 1 get to know the two women who ran, who won governorships in Virginia, New Jersey. And you're like, Jesus Christ, these people are smart.

Speaker 1 And we have taken for granted

Speaker 1 generally administrations that are at a baseline level of competent. And guess what? That's no longer the case.

Speaker 1 We are putting out talking points from Russia on Ukraine that it ends up somebody didn't know were the talking points from Russia, and we're having to walk it back.

Speaker 1 We have a Secretary of Health and Human Services that is trying to link autism with vaccines on government websites.

Speaker 1 We have a Secretary of Education who referred to AI as A1, has no idea what AI is, and that's our head.

Speaker 4 She got hit in the head too much in the wrestling matches anyway.

Speaker 1 Ahead of the Department of Education, we have taken for granted this amazing American tradition where young people, when they get, Robert McNamara, terrible decision, ridiculously fucking bright guy, Secretary of Defense during Vietnam.

Speaker 1 Okay, you may not like the guy, but guess what? He was the best and brightest. The best and brightest in America usually go to DC and that, and they still go to DC.

Speaker 1 But now we've decided, oh no, competence, competence has been replaced by acolytes. And it is starting to haunt us.

Speaker 4 Is this a win or a fail?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 my fail is very simple. My fail is the slow,

Speaker 1 not even the fast burn March fall degradation into total fucking incompetence. and America was always

Speaker 1 three things we were incredibly real well resourced we're incredibly violent and we're incredibly competent and guess what that has paid off huge dividends for us because people know our memory is long and our reach is far and we are a creative well resourced competent violent people all right you win anyways that is going away we're we're we're now like

Speaker 1 you don't think people are going to take bold actions against this when they look like these people have their head up their ass they're not going to know how to respond to our invasion of taiwan hopefully they'll be out of office soon enough anyway

Speaker 1 uh my win is i've been watching this new program called pleuribus uh

Speaker 1 i've heard it's great it's strange uh i think vince i think vince gilligan kind of rewrote or tore up the playbook around original scripted drama my favorite show ever is breaking bad i felt like it called on so many interesting themes

Speaker 1 so many interesting things around the paternal desire to provide and going down this road to hell.

Speaker 1 And I also learned a lot about the meth market in New Mexico, which I didn't think I was going to enjoy. But he's got a new show out.
I don't want to spoil it because I'm only two episodes in.

Speaker 1 But, anyways, my win is Vince Gilligan, I feel like an overdue nod to him for what I think is the best series in history, Breaking Bad.

Speaker 1 And his new show looks like it's going to be, looks like it's going to be a bad thing.

Speaker 4 Lesbian. She's a lesbian.
Main character. You love a lesbian.

Speaker 1 Well, that's clear.

Speaker 4 Yes, that's clear.

Speaker 1 I did know that. So in real life, she's on your team.

Speaker 4 No, on the show, she's a lesbian.

Speaker 1 Oh, everyone now in TV is a lesbian. I get it.
Jane's is a lesbian. That's what I'm afraid of.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 All of a sudden, it's cool to be gay. It can never just be normal.
It's either uncool or very cool. It can never just be.
She's just a lesbian.

Speaker 4 Just pointing out she's a lesbian. Anyway,

Speaker 4 I'm going to watch that show and then we can discuss. That'll be good.
Okay, good. Anyway, as we said, we will miss you, big balls, not even slightly.
Anyway, we want to hear from you.

Speaker 4 Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind go to nymag.com slash pivot submit a question for the show or call 85551 pivot elsewhere in the karen scott universe this weekend on with kara swisher i spoke with jennifer welch from the podcast i've had it we talked about our frustration with house and senate minority leaders chuck schumer and hakeem jeffries let's listen to a clip

Speaker 5 as much as chuckles and hakeem drive me crazy they are the leaders that we have that they are who we have and so i'm cheering for them to succeed so if they can clean up their kind of embarrassing, cringy posts and become more relatable, I'm going to cheerlead for them.

Speaker 5 But I'm also not going to be a sycophant for them and just go along with, boy, they wrote a strongly worded letter. Go get them chuckled.
Strongly that word.

Speaker 4 There you go, badass.

Speaker 4 Strongly worded letter. I really mean it.

Speaker 4 She's great. She's a delight.
I have to see.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're having a moment.

Speaker 4 She's also very serious in a way. It's not silly.
I mean, her names are hysterical, cankels and et cetera, but she's got a very sharp mind, I have to say, and doesn't take anything at face value.

Speaker 4 I really enjoyed that talk. Fascinating background, too.

Speaker 4 Her mother was an atheist, sort of introvert.

Speaker 1 Well, and it's also kind of cool. They live in Oklahoma.

Speaker 4 Oh, she's just moved to New York. So we're going to have a party at your house in case you're interested.
Oh, really? Yeah, we're having a dinner party at your house.

Speaker 1 It's fine as long as I don't have to be there.

Speaker 4 No, you have to be there.

Speaker 4 It's going to be Jennifer. It's going to be all these badass ladies.
It's going to be great. And you're going to be serving the canopies.
Anyway,

Speaker 4 I was just going to ask you if I could use your house for the party.

Speaker 4 You know, the answer is yes. I still want to be there.
Oh, come on. They would love to see you.
And yeah, we don't like that.

Speaker 1 I don't like people.

Speaker 4 I understand, but you'd like these badass ladies drinking tequila at your house.

Speaker 1 You'd like to give you that.

Speaker 4 She's a fun girl. Let me just say.
Let's say she's a lot of fun. Anyway, that's the show.
Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Speaker 4 And also, happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving.
Are you having Thanksgiving there, Scott?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. We love Thanksgiving.

Speaker 4 And so, everybody, happy Thanksgiving. We give thanks for you.
I hope you give thanks for us. I give thanks for Scott and the whole team here at Pivot.

Speaker 1 Awesome.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher.
Ernie Intertod introduced this episode. Jim Mackle edited the video.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Oslo to Drew Rose, Miss Averro, and Dan Shalan. Mishak Kuro's Vox Media's Executive Producer Podcast.
Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Speaker 1 What is the one of the things that is most productive for your mental health is on a regular basis, be grateful, be thankful this weekend and then use it as an opportunity to every night try and be thankful for something in your life.

Speaker 1 You'll just feel better about everything.

Speaker 1 This message comes from AT ⁇ T. America's first network is also its fastest and most reliable.

Speaker 1 Based on Rootmetrics United States Root Score Report, first half 2025, tested with best commercially available smartphones on three national mobile networks across all available network types.

Speaker 1 Your experiences may vary. Rootmetrics rankings are not an endorsement of AT ⁇ T.
When you compare, there's no comparison. AT ⁇ T

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