Elon's OpenAI Bid, Trump's Judicial Strategy, and DOGE's Shock and Awe

Transcript

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Speaker 17 Oh my God, I can't go to a sex movie with you.

Speaker 6 I just, that just flashed through my brain. That wasn't on my bingo card either.
So

Speaker 6 yeah,

Speaker 6 that's not going to happen.

Speaker 17 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I am the very cruel Kara Swisher.

Speaker 6 And I'm the deceitful Scott Galloway.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and we're both mean, right? We're both mean.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I know. We're awful.

Speaker 17 That one's accurate.

Speaker 6 Don't you think? The revolution begins with two podcasts.

Speaker 17 I know. So I don't know about you, you know, but that was kind of something for Elon to attack us on the Twitter.
We're neither of us are over there. So we had to be told by people.
We're like, what?

Speaker 6 What?

Speaker 6 Wasn't that nice? Although I'm glad I didn't have to read, I guess there's 11 or 12,000 comments. The same thing happens whenever this happens.

Speaker 6 Well, my guess is it wasn't talking about your grayed hair and my broad shoulders, but they

Speaker 6 I, my, whenever you want to tweets, I mean, the same thing happens. My phone starts blowing up.
I'm like, are you all right? And I'm like, oh, shit, did something bad happen?

Speaker 6 And like, he's, and then someone sent me a screenshot. And I'm like, I don't, the thing about being off of Twitter is you realize how small it is.
It's like, no, my life is absolutely no different.

Speaker 6 And the thing that immediately came to mind is one of my favorite quotes of FDR: is that I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. I know.

Speaker 17 It's so weird.

Speaker 6 Let me just add, though,

Speaker 6 these were my comments.

Speaker 6 And he goes after you. Of course.
It's like, okay.

Speaker 17 He's taking a bullet for you, Galloway.

Speaker 6 I'm like, I said these things, Elon.

Speaker 6 Not Kara. And he's...
acting like these individuals. First off, can the guy not afford autocorrect? It's like, young, it's like his team or grammar, pick a struggle.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 the notion that there's somehow these, he portrayed these, this team as being in Guantanamo Bay when the reality is they're on a Discord server figuring out if their logo or their meme should have sunglasses.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's just. To portray these kids as victims is just kind of hilarious.
But I did feel bad that he went after you and not just me.

Speaker 6 Of course.

Speaker 17 Well, I am pretty obnoxious about him all over the place. So it probably like glommed up into one.

Speaker 17 He didn't say anything i know but in general on on cnn where i call him a toddler an adult toddler on any day of the week and twice on sunday or anything just us threatening him but here's the deal here's first of all all we all you said and all and i tend to agree with is you know these from the reporting the exceptional reporting by wired for example these guys a couple of them sound like a prick right like and we said it these people sound like pricks they're doing something that's probably fun fun for them they get to work for elon musk they get to like raid the government or everything else we just were like this is not the way we should make sausage in our country it's really gross how they're doing it this way and they need to do it in a legal way that's all we said and he tries to insinuate that we're threatening them because as i say everything every accusation is a confession by these fellas and um let me just read the the thing

Speaker 17 for people and understand he reposted a video of us talking about doge employees in our last episode.

Speaker 17 Swisher and Galloway are threatening talented young software engineers who gave up high compensation for death threats in order to help American people.

Speaker 17 Shame on Swisher and Galloway, cruel, mean, and deceitful human beings that they are. First of all,

Speaker 17 They're going to make high compensation later, Poax, by doing this.

Speaker 17 This ups the compensation level for them because they become legend among tech people, whatever, because they work for Elon, depending how it turns out. Also, they didn't trade it for death threats.

Speaker 17 Like they traded it because this is what they want to do, and they were enthusiastically doing it. And we don't have to like them.
And just by not liking them, we're not threatening them.

Speaker 17 So that's fucking nonsense. And neither you didn't threaten them in any way.
And it's a larger part of a strategy of intimidating journalists.

Speaker 17 They're trying, he's trying to shut us up and somehow link us, if anything ever happened to them, to them, just because we don't like them.

Speaker 6 Well, okay.

Speaker 6 Just to steel man it, he does have a point in the sense that, let's be clear,

Speaker 6 in my opinion, trespassing and illegal takeover of our government to hack the system such that veterans and kids and people benefiting from Head Start,

Speaker 6 this is on the president and Elon Musk. It's really not about these kids.

Speaker 6 It's really not about them.

Speaker 6 But what I would ask him is that he come after me when I say things like, wow, Elon Musk appears to have made a hard Reich in his politics or that the new modeled Tesla model model SS is coming out.

Speaker 6 I say those things. You don't.
I know. And if he's going to accuse me of overreach,

Speaker 6 then come after me, bitch.

Speaker 6 To go after the woman, it shows one of two things. Either you're weak or you have an incredible bias.
I misogynist.

Speaker 6 If the man says something about you, and you keep going after the woman who's near him, that just implies incredible weakness on your part.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I get it. I understand it.
I do attack him protectively.

Speaker 6 And I realize you don't need protecting. I don't need protection.
I just found it like he puts your name first. Like you did that.
I was me.

Speaker 17 Well, he likes to do that. You know, but let me just say about the death threats.

Speaker 17 You know, when I got death threats, when he said my heart was seething with hate, remember with the OL Roth where he said, yo, all was evil, and I was, my heart was filled with seething hate.

Speaker 17 I got, should he have not done that? I didn't like. bitch and moan about that.
And I got a lot of really frightening stuff aimed at me. I mean, he does it every time.
So, you know what?

Speaker 17 And instead, he bitches and moans about it. Well, I'm bitching and moaning now.
Guess what? I got death threats. Guess what? I can handle it.

Speaker 17 It just is, again, a larger strategy of intimidating journalists and other people who speak out and disagree with him. President Trump called for the Washington Post to fire columnist Eugene Robinson.

Speaker 17 Elon Musk called, speaking of which, investigative reporter Catherine Long, who was writing about this stuff, disgusting and cruel.

Speaker 17 You know, just this is what these people do all the time. They do all kinds of intimidating and rude remarks.

Speaker 17 And that's to say nothing of his endless anti-trans stuff, anti-immigrant stuff, his tasteless stuff about gay people, his tasteless stuff about women, about anyone who opposes him.

Speaker 17 So this guy, you know, pot, kettle, nice to meet you.

Speaker 6 Anyway, there you go. Well, you know, look,

Speaker 6 we get it wrong sometimes.

Speaker 6 But just keep in mind, both Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, we live with our children.

Speaker 6 And so we got that going for us.

Speaker 6 And we're not giving Nazi salutes.

Speaker 17 That was your best one. You're such a great dad.

Speaker 6 You're an amazing father.

Speaker 6 To the best of my knowledge,

Speaker 6 I have not hired video game players to pretend they're me such that I can go on podcasts and say I'm a world-class video game player. I'm not creating fake accounts to call myself an amazing dad.

Speaker 6 I do a lot of virtue signaling around my fatherhood, but I haven't gone that far.

Speaker 6 And far, I am not addicted to ketamine. I have shown some discipline around that.
I'm willing to try. Oh, I'm willing to try.
No,

Speaker 6 I didn't get there. I just went out and drank instead.
I had something called, I had two mezcal margaritas and half an edible, and that worked for me. That all worked.

Speaker 17 Jeff Swisher said he'd help you if you'd need help because he gives ketamine every day as a doctor. Not that he's

Speaker 17 a good thing for you.

Speaker 6 I had, I'm sorry, I keep bringing this back to me. I had lunch with Chris Anderson from TED.
Oh, yeah. And he sat down, and it was so lovely.
You know what he said to me?

Speaker 6 He looked at me and he's like, me and Jacqueline, his wife, who's lovely, he's like, are you all right? I'm like, yeah, well, I mean, I'm no less fucked, I'm more fucked up than I usually am.

Speaker 6 People after hearing that podcast are worried about me and taking me out to lunch and sitting me down. He goes, no, no, really, no, really, Scott, are you? Are you all right?

Speaker 6 And also, would you be willing to come back and do another talk?

Speaker 6 And it was.

Speaker 6 Did he step down from Ted? He's like, he's basically, it's kind of a gangster move. I I don't know if you've heard about this.
He said, I'm giving Ted away.

Speaker 6 And of course, he's going to give it away to some billionaire who put a bunch of money behind it. But he has basically decided to give Ted.

Speaker 6 He needs every Democrat over the age of 100, like 40, 50% of them needs to take a note out of the Chris Anderson pagebook. He's a great fiduciary for organization.

Speaker 6 He thinks Ted plays an important role. He's like, it is time to bring someone more youthful and vigorous and some new ideas to this thing.
And he's going to give it away.

Speaker 6 And he's doing this big competition to give Ted away. I think it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 17 You know why? Because he's tired as fuck. I know where he sits after leaving.

Speaker 6 Oh, 100%.

Speaker 17 I was tired as fuck.

Speaker 6 I wanted to go out.

Speaker 6 He's on the last helicopter out of the Saigon Embassy.

Speaker 17 Go out. And I was like, oh, it's the legacy.
La, la, la. You know what? I was tired of doing it.
I was just fucking exhausted. And I did a great job, but I feel his pain.
So are you okay, Scott?

Speaker 17 Are you okay? Especially because Elon attacked you.

Speaker 6 I answered him the same way I always answered that question. I hate my life less and less every day.
Things are going pretty well. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 But this notion that like, I'm not, this shit used to bother me. Yeah.

Speaker 17 It did.

Speaker 17 It doesn't bother you anymore. It doesn't.

Speaker 6 I feel like I'm turning into one of those villains that gets energy from attacks.

Speaker 6 I love that this guy hates me.

Speaker 17 He punches you and then you get his energy, like that kind of person. Seriously.

Speaker 6 We're doing some right, Kara. We're doing some right.

Speaker 17 It's true. He does call most people disgusting and disgusting, cruel, pedo.
When he calls you a pedo, that's when you know he loves you.

Speaker 6 You know, that's why. We're headed that way.

Speaker 6 I don't know, but you, you pointed it out.

Speaker 6 Look, let's just get to the source here. It's just so clear the guy wants to fuck me.
I mean, that's what I said.

Speaker 6 Sexual tension is a little bit of a drink. I get it.

Speaker 6 I get it. And he's rich.
So there is a shot here. There is a shot here.
He is very rich.

Speaker 6 I could maybe go there. Like three mezcal margaritas.
No way. And 10 milligrams.

Speaker 17 Then I have to ask.

Speaker 6 At this point, Kara, I have an open mind.

Speaker 17 I played this game with someone. I'm not going to tell you.

Speaker 17 I couldn't answer it. But, you know, fuck Mary Kelly.
Fuck Mary Kelly on your hair. Okay, I'm going to do this.
You're going to answer it right now. Okay.
Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg.

Speaker 6 Go. Yes.

Speaker 17 Which one? Go ahead.

Speaker 17 We might have played this before, but I'd like to.

Speaker 6 Oh, I would definitely marry Bezos because I'd like to roam around in a thong on one of his yachts.

Speaker 6 I think that would be a good look for me. I'd be willing to embarrass myself.
They go to the best parties. I love the fashion.
Oh, my God. The fashion I get to wear.

Speaker 6 I'm so down for a lot of cosmetic surgery. Oh, my God.

Speaker 6 I just decided I'm coming back as Lauren Sanchez in my next life.

Speaker 17 All right, Mrs. Bezos.
Excellent. Okay.
That's it. Okay, not kill.
We won't use the word kill because it's not nice. Okay.
Cause we're not cruel and disgusting or whatever.

Speaker 6 So that's Mary. So fuck.

Speaker 17 Yeah, fuck.

Speaker 6 Oh, God.

Speaker 6 I want Zuck to put on one of those jiu-jitsu outfits and start manhandling me a little bit. Ooh.
And then a few things go the wrong place. Oh,

Speaker 6 yeah.

Speaker 6 Let's get...

Speaker 6 Let's get ready to rumble.

Speaker 6 Oh, my God. And

Speaker 6 I'm not going to say kill because I don't even think it's funny to joke about violence, but

Speaker 6 I am Lawrence Sanchez, and

Speaker 6 I'm making sweet, sweet love to the Zuck.

Speaker 17 As always, everything goes back to Elon, who has continued to plague us, but he's now plaguing Sam Altman.

Speaker 17 A feud with this, with the CEO of OpenAI took a new turn today when a consortium of investors led by Elon is offering $97 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI.

Speaker 17 The bid was submitted on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 17 And in a quote,

Speaker 17 Elon Musk said, it's time for OpenAI to return to open source safety focused force for good it once was.

Speaker 17 Obviously, for people that don't know, Elon and Sam and others created Open AI together as a nonprofit to battle, and I did an interview with them at the time about this, both of them,

Speaker 17 to battle the bigger companies and the privatization of AI. And so it was going to be a nonprofit that was going to focus on safety.
At the time, Elon thought AI was going to kill all of us.

Speaker 17 He's changed his tune on that, obviously, over the years. And this is a really shocking news.
What do you think, Scott? What's he up to? Because he's not busy with other things, for goodness sake.

Speaker 6 I think this is a rich man's version of I'm Invading Greenland.

Speaker 6 I think this is a distraction. So first off, if I

Speaker 6 got to be clear, I got to do more research here.

Speaker 6 Essentially, what they've done accidentally or unintentionally is by starting out as a nonprofit and then pretending that they would maintain some fidelity to the nonprofit once they smelled the hundreds of billions in potential shareholder value, they accidentally created a two-class shareholder company.

Speaker 6 And that is, they have essentially some shareholders, the nonprofit, that have a lot of governance rights.

Speaker 6 And the for-profit group

Speaker 6 is raising money at a $300 or $350 billion valuation.

Speaker 6 And Musk has found a way to try and create a cudgel, or according to him, essentially get control of, if you will, the voting shares by taking over the non-profit side of OpenAI. Now,

Speaker 6 what this really does is probably force

Speaker 6 them to pay more in their negotiations, I think, since the last round on what they're going to pay or what share of the equity the nonprofit gets in the for-profit.

Speaker 6 But be clear, this is based on the false premise. The statement that you just read that he's concerned

Speaker 17 with anything.

Speaker 6 Well, look at his investors.

Speaker 6 WME and Baron Capital aren't going to put billions of dollars up to

Speaker 6 try and protect the world from AI. That's not why they make investments.

Speaker 6 They would be, as soon as possible, their investors here of this $97.5 billion bid would be looking for a return on their capital.

Speaker 6 They're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. I think what this is at the end of the day is I think this is an attempt to slow him down.
I think he sees this as... a free call option.

Speaker 6 I'm going to fuck with a guy, slow him down. I want Grock or XAI to be, I don't like this guy.
I've convinced a bunch of people to come in with me.

Speaker 6 And if for some reason we managed to get control of the voting class shares of the nonprofit, then good for me. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 17 Well, I think that, you know, they've been trying to stop this move. And I believe the lawyer is the same lawyer that's dealing with this, made this offer.

Speaker 17 But they've been trying to mess with the move to OP. And he's been suing OpenAI for a wide range of things, right? And it boils down to he wanted to take control of it.
They said no.

Speaker 17 He huffed out and they were like, goodbye, and didn't, you know, didn't chase him in any way. And so he had made a sort of bid to take over it at the time.

Speaker 17 And they thought that they would be, he would be irresistible as a lover, I guess, of this company. And it didn't work.
And so now he's been just furious ever since as it's become more profitable.

Speaker 17 And he has this sort of enmity towards Sam Altman that's really severe. I heard it myself, but at the time when they started it,

Speaker 17 that was the idea of it. But of course, it was all for profits for all these people in the end.
And so this will mess with their move to it. It'll cost them more.
It'll be interesting to see what

Speaker 17 Microsoft has to say about this. Obviously, they're still negotiating over their equity stake in this thing.
It was $157 billion is the valuation they're looking at now, which is enormously high.

Speaker 17 You know, when they started as a charity, maybe for a moment there, but the minute it got profitable, all of them were running for the for-profit subsidiary and that's what and they and and open a has emails from musk talking about wanting to turn it into a for-profit what if his entities what if his entities aren't for-profit that's correct they have emails saying it like he's a liar he's a liar about wanting this particular sentence or a fabulous or whatever he he's just doing it for the for performative nature of this um but i think the the question is what it will be valued at and so he's just setting it higher.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 who would end up with this controlling stake in the new open AI? Now, he could have waited until it did this and then tried to make a play for it publicly. But you're right.

Speaker 17 It's Joe Lonsdale from Palantir, Ari Emanuel, like literally the least

Speaker 17 charitable people I know, right?

Speaker 6 Let's just say they're the most capitalist. Capitalist.
They're probably charitable people, but no one's going to put 100%.

Speaker 17 I mean, they don't want to do this for the good of humanity. That's humanity.

Speaker 6 100%.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 17 And so, you know, I think he's filed all these legal complaints saying that they had betrayed their nonprofit mission at the same time,

Speaker 17 colluding with Microsoft. And this Toborov was the one that tried to get the Attorney General's California to do this and do a fair market value.

Speaker 17 It's a fuck you, Sam, kind of thing.

Speaker 17 And I think he was just to come to the present, there was this announcement at the White House that Musk tried to shit all over this $500 billion on AI infrastructure in this joint venture called Stargate.

Speaker 17 And he tried to, you know, he tried to, he wasn't in on that. And this is something Trump announced at the White House with Sam Altman.
And

Speaker 17 so he just doesn't want, he wants to block Sam Altman at all. And to say that they're doing it for the charity or fully compensated is just the ploy in order to get.
close to it, right?

Speaker 17 And he said they didn't have the money. He's called Sam Altman a swindler.
I mean, he called us deceitful and mean and cruel, but Sam Altman's a swindler.

Speaker 17 So, this is very typical of him. And it's largely because Rock just hasn't caught up as much as he's made these efforts to do so.
You know, I think

Speaker 17 this group was on track to value this company, which we think was too high too,

Speaker 17 at $157 billion.

Speaker 6 Well, first off,

Speaker 6 let's be fair. Sam Altman is not a swindler.
The rest of that might be true, but

Speaker 6 look, this is the same emotion

Speaker 6 as a really angry ex-spouse.

Speaker 6 You go through a contentious divorce, you give your half of the house to your spouse, and then the moment you leave, the house ends up going from a million in value to a billion. So you not only feel,

Speaker 6 you feel, you're so fucking angry that you left. You agreed to leave.

Speaker 6 He gave up all of it. I mean, it just reeks of, you know, burn this village to save it, angry, angry ex-spouse.
I'm just so upset at the bad deal I agreed to. He left.
They have those emails.

Speaker 6 He wanted out.

Speaker 17 He wanted to run it. He wanted it to become a for-profit.

Speaker 6 And he's now a distant, distant player in the race. And he's got a bunch of people together who all want to be around the Elon Magic.
And he does create a ton of shareholder value. With

Speaker 6 chaos. At a minimum,

Speaker 6 I'll slow them down.

Speaker 6 I'll get in the news cycle again.

Speaker 6 And I'll pretend that it's something righteous. I mean,

Speaker 6 yeah, yeah, I'd love to see Ari Emmanuel, the guy from Baron Capital, to stand up and tell us why you think AI needs to be a nonprofit and you're not expecting a return on investment here.

Speaker 6 You're willing to do this for the good of humanity?

Speaker 17 Very fair. Actually, let me say I made a mistake.

Speaker 17 This transition was part of a $6.6 billion funding round in October that valued at $157. These new talks, $300 now.
It's $40 billion in a new funding round.

Speaker 17 SoftBank would lead the round in discussions to invest between $15 and $25 billion. This is going to just, and this Stargate thing separately is raising money.

Speaker 17 And Sam's working on a chip, also a very manic entrepreneur, by the way, as is Elon. And they're trying to raise billions for Stargate.

Speaker 17 This puts uncertainty into it, which is exactly what he's trying to do. He's trying to put uncertainty into a deal because they didn't want him.

Speaker 17 They didn't, they declined his kind offer to own the place, right?

Speaker 6 Like, I think what's going to happen here, though, is I think

Speaker 6 the two people that are going to rally around Altman are going to be arguably

Speaker 6 one of the more powerful people in tech here and one of the grown-ups, Satcha Nadella and the deep pocket at Masio Shi-san. I think this is going to thrust Sam further into their embrace.

Speaker 6 And I think they're going to rally around Sam because here's the thing. around Musk.
If you're already rich, you don't want to put up with this guy. You don't want him anywhere.

Speaker 6 Do you think Satcha Nadella wants to go to board meetings with Elon Musk?

Speaker 6 These guys,

Speaker 6 it will create a distraction, but you're going to see, I think, Satcha, Microsoft, and Masiyoshi-san will see this as an opportunity to kind of bear hug Altman.

Speaker 6 But Altman, in my view, at the end of the day, the most successful people over the long term put themselves in a room full of opportunities because they make a lot of allies.

Speaker 6 And I have been wrong so far, but one of these people has largely been making allies and another one of them has been making people a lot of money, but has been making a lot of enemies.

Speaker 6 That's a fair point. I think that is going to come, I think that's going to come home to Rooster.

Speaker 17 Well, we'll see. What's interesting, it just reminds me,

Speaker 17 you know, my favorite movie is the original Patrick Swayze Roadhouse. Do you know that?

Speaker 6 You're kidding me.

Speaker 6 I love it. Sam Shepard?

Speaker 17 No, it's Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott.

Speaker 6 Oh, Sam Elliott. From Lifeguard.
That guy's a dream. That guy.
I love him so much.

Speaker 17 Anyway, Swayze was in it, and he plays Dalton. And, you know, he's trying to save a town, essentially.

Speaker 17 Jake Gyllenhol made a terrible version. It made me want to cry afterwards.

Speaker 17 But there's a guy, Ben Gazara, plays a guy named Brad Wesley, and he wants to own the whole town, including this shitty bar, right? Like, by the way, OpenAI is not a shitty bar.

Speaker 17 And there's questions around after DeepSeek. Like, is it...
too overvalued? All of these companies, right? But anyway, Ben Gazara has to own everything, including this shitty bar. And that's what

Speaker 17 Elon reminds me of Brad Wesley. It didn't end well for Brad Leslie in that.

Speaker 6 All I remember is Kelly Lynch.

Speaker 17 Kelly Lynch. That's right.
Dr. Elizabeth Clay.
I know this whole movie so well. So getting out of the roadhouse thing, it's like, can you, aren't you busy ruining the government over here?

Speaker 17 You want to come and fuck with this guy? This is the level of this guy's energy, I will say, energy and manic nature that he, that nobody gets. Like he just can't stop.

Speaker 17 It's like it's demented at this point. This is a demented effort.

Speaker 6 I don't know. But he's the ultimate vendor's dream because he says to these enormous law firms of incredibly talented, smart people and bankers, he has unlimited funds.

Speaker 6 And this, again, goes to the notion that power corrupts and absolute power, absolutely corrupts, and people just shouldn't have this much money.

Speaker 6 He can say to all of his bankers and all of his lawyers and the smartest people in the services industry, okay, I got 10 minutes. Here's your directive.
Fuck with Sam Altman.

Speaker 6 Come back with a dozen ideas. And somebody came back and said, well, actually, the nonprofit has governance rights.
So we can make a bid for

Speaker 6 the nonprofit. And he says to the banker, get on it.

Speaker 6 I think the directive here was pretty simple. Fuck with these guys.

Speaker 17 Okay, because the best part of this is the relationship between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, I just want to read the tweet that Sam Altman had in response.

Speaker 17 No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want. All right, we have to move on and talk about the Super Bowl, which was won by the Philadelphia Eagles.

Speaker 17 President Trump became the first president to attend the Super Bowl and had a totally normal reaction afterwards, posting on True Social.

Speaker 17 The only one who had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift, who got booed out of the stadium. Mag is very unforgiving.

Speaker 17 Actually, Donald, this was kind of a big like, fuck you, by many people at the event. The ads were star-studded with appearances by Ben Affleck, David Beckham, Glenn Powell, and Billy Kristol.

Speaker 17 Brad Pitt did a long, a big long ad for for the NFL, which was a little woke there. I mean, Open AI made its Super Bowl debut with a 60-second, $14 million spot.

Speaker 17 Obviously, Kendrick Lamar ruled the fucking school. And he just,

Speaker 17 someone said, you know, he should get the Nobel Hate Prize because he did such a beautiful, artful job of saying fuck you to the Trump administration.

Speaker 17 But I just thought it was beautiful. I thought this was amazing.
I thought this was amazing. And I thought it was artful and beautiful.

Speaker 6 Did you, what did you think? Oh, I got none of that. So

Speaker 6 I wasn't going to watch the Super Bowl.

Speaker 6 It really, there couldn't be anything more American than a bunch of boner pill ads and opioid-induced medication ads while we watch young, beautiful men get CTE. I mean, it really is American.

Speaker 6 I don't watch it. But instead of like Roman, Coliseum, and Lions, we have Taylor Swift.
And I promised myself I wasn't going to watch. And then my 14-year-old goes, Dad, you want to watch Super Bowl?

Speaker 6 And I'm like, yeah, of course I do. I mean, so a chance to hang.

Speaker 17 So you heated up the nachos and got to it. Okay.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but it started at 11.30 p.m.

Speaker 17 What did you eat? Set the scene for me. What did you eat?

Speaker 6 We had milk and oatmeal chocolate ship cookies. Oh, all right.

Speaker 17 It's kind of dull.

Speaker 6 I know. That is kind of dull, isn't it? And then, but, of course, it was my 14-year-old didn't want to hang out with his dad and watch football.
He wanted to stay up till 2 in the morning.

Speaker 6 I thought Kendrick Lamar was incredibly boring.

Speaker 6 I didn't think it was a good performance at all, but I realize I've kind of aged out of that shit. I don't know.

Speaker 6 But my favorite, though, hands down, though,

Speaker 6 I mean, the ads that occasionally really move you, there was this wonderful ad. And I don't know if you saw this, but it was of a man sitting at the Super Bowl and he had an empty seat next to him.

Speaker 6 And someone leans over and asks him, why is it, there's an empty seat? And he says that he bought two seats for him and his wife, but his wife, unfortunately, had recently passed.

Speaker 6 And then the guy goes, well, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 6 Why

Speaker 6 did you not bring someone else from your family? And he responds, they're all at the funeral.

Speaker 6 I love that. I love that.

Speaker 17 Oh, you saw that on TikTok. All right.
Moving on. Amazon shares are down 2.5% in the last five days after a mixed earnings report.

Speaker 17 The company reported better than expected earnings and revenue, but told investors to expect slowing growth ahead based on Amazon's estimates.

Speaker 17 First quarter revenue growth could be the slowest gross on record for the company. On the upside, revenue rose 10% and net income almost doubled thanks to a cost-cutting campaign.

Speaker 17 There's only so much you can cut, I guess.

Speaker 17 It's set to pass Walmart in revenue the first time. What's up with this, Scott? This is an area you is it is it is it the effect of Sheen and Tamu or what's going on here?

Speaker 6 I don't think so. I think investors now consider Amazon as essentially a cloud company with a retail unit and their cloud division actually missed estimates by about $100 million.
And

Speaker 6 even though the growth was 19% to $29 billion, keep in mind that while AWS represents just 15% of Amazon's revenue, it's responsible for the majority of its operating profit.

Speaker 17 Which CEO Andy Jassy used to run. Let's just keep, used to run.

Speaker 6 And is the reason he's the CEO?

Speaker 6 Because essentially, as AWS goes, so does Amazon now. And so the analysts and shareholders are essentially, yeah, yeah, yeah, retail, find, find, find, Amazon Prime Video, yeah, whatever.

Speaker 6 What's happening with AWS?

Speaker 6 initially thought that

Speaker 6 I've said this in my predictions tech two or three years ago that Amazon would eventually spend AWS and AWS would be the most valuable company in the world in five or seven years. And they didn't.

Speaker 6 Another one wrong. Another one wrong.

Speaker 17 You know, I asked Andy about that during an interview, and he said they absolutely are not going to. And I believed him at the time, but you know, I thought they should have.

Speaker 6 I know they should have.

Speaker 6 They're absolutely not until they do. But, anyways, but they essentially, Amazon's firing on all cylinders, but the fact that they say they were capacity constrained,

Speaker 6 the miss was enough to scare investors, though, because it's so important in terms of their margin. AWS's operating profit margin was 37%.
The rest of Amazon, get this, it's just 7%.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 it is really, that's the tail wagging the dog here. Amazon is a cloud company with a retail division.

Speaker 17 Yeah. So what happens? What does an investor do? Should they spin it off? It would really be a problem.

Speaker 17 You know, you know, you always talk about shit goes versus this is not a shit go, but it's a version of that, right?

Speaker 17 If they take the higher growth one and spin it off, is it still too, is it too late to do so?

Speaker 6 Look, I've advocated for a long time that if you took Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet, and Facebook or Meta, and you turned them into 15 companies, you'd end up with an aggregate that within 24 months, these 15 companies would be worth much more than the original four.

Speaker 6 That breakup was a bad idea, said no one ever. Breakups are one of the few things in history where the government intervention always works.
Shareholders win, innovation wins.

Speaker 6 The reason, do you think if Google had been a standalone unit or if Google Cloud had been a standalone unit or Google AI had been a standalone unit, do you think they would have stopped?

Speaker 6 Do you think they would have most likely had an AI application sooner? But they don't.

Speaker 6 They want to make sure they don't fuck with the toll booth known as search. Shareholders win, consumers win because it creates more competition.

Speaker 6 You know who wins really big is the employees because they have more people bidding and trying on their time and renting. Right.

Speaker 17 And they are more innovative. You know who doesn't want to do that? People who love to just keep their little groups together and then also then want to merge to get bigger.
Trevor Burrus, Jr.:

Speaker 6 The only people that really benefit are the person who wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms, not just Westeros. And unfortunately, because they're dual-class shareholder companies,

Speaker 6 they usually get to make the decision. But if you look at it from a pure shareholder standpoint, I would argue that you'd want to break them up.

Speaker 6 But in terms of, I think Amazon is the kind of of company, my biggest holdings for the last 10 years have been Amazon and Apple.

Speaker 6 And even when Apple gets to 34 times earnings, which is quite frankly kind of crazy town, the fact that it's growing 2% a year and it's growing, it has a P multiple of 34 versus its historical average of like 18 or 19, you should probably sell.

Speaker 6 But at the end of the day, these are the kind of companies that you just sort of hold forever because they just continue to innovate. So do you imagine them breaking it off?

Speaker 6 Not in this environment. No, no, no.
Not with the, not with, with Cantor and Congon.

Speaker 6 You're going to see these guys are all telling their bankers to sharpen their pencils and actually go acquire and gobble up more stuff now.

Speaker 17 It was interesting. I interviewed a conservative economist, Orrin Cass, today, among others.
And he was like, I was like, you'd be for mergers. He's like, no, I don't think mergers for whatever.

Speaker 17 No, thank you. Like, you know what I mean? Like, because they aren't necessarily the best thing for economic growth.
They don't necessarily promote it. It just promotes bigger companies.

Speaker 17 And then they fall into the crosshairs of regulators also, and they spend a lot of time doing that.

Speaker 17 Anyway, I agree.

Speaker 17 They should break themselves up. You should always break yourself up.

Speaker 6 Just to talk about concentration of power, my friend Andy Cohen at J.P. Morgan pointed something out.
This blew my mind. And I've seen that.

Speaker 17 You're not the guy from the Housewives series? That's not your friend?

Speaker 6 Oh, no, not Anderson's friend. No, Andy.
Andy is like the most likable guy in the world. He literally is exactly in the seat he should be.

Speaker 6 And that is he is managing tens of billions of dollars for high net worth families. And he's just the most likable guy in the world.
And also very smart, nice man.

Speaker 6 Anyways, he said something that just blew my mind. I, of course, was like doing my party trick and throwing out stats.
And I said that the U.S.

Speaker 6 equity market now was 50% of the total value of all equities globally. And he said, no, it's actually, if you add in debt, corporate debt, America represents 70%

Speaker 6 of all value globally. So if you think about it, would you rather own the world?

Speaker 6 Would you rather own America for $70, or if you could own everything but America for $30, which would you pick? And what that says to me is that America is overvalued.

Speaker 6 And not only is America overvalued, it's really the whole world is vulnerable because there are 10 stocks that represent 28 to 33 percent of the value, meaning that somewhere between one and six and one and five dollars globally is dependent upon a small number of companies.

Speaker 6 And if Amazon and other folks show any slowdown in AI or cloud, oh my gosh.

Speaker 17 Yeah, if there's an AI mouth there, these economists noted that.

Speaker 6 That's going to be an echo felt around the world. Really?

Speaker 17 We're going to have to bail out the tech bros at some point. Anyway,

Speaker 17 all right, we'll see. Let's go on a quick break.
And when we come back, Trump's latest tariffs, speaking of bailing out people and Doja's latest targets.

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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back. President Trump is touting his latest tariff plan after hitting pause on those Canada and Mexico tariffs, which are such a joke, such a ridiculous fucking joke.

Speaker 17 Trump now says he plans to impose 25% tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum will apply to everybody, including Canada, Mexico. Reciprocal tariffs on U.S.

Speaker 17 trading partners are also reportedly in the mix this week. I'll note, we're recording on Monday morning.

Speaker 17 Whether he's going to follow through on it, it's not true. Having just interviewed three economists, none of them think these are a very good idea.

Speaker 17 One of them thought tariffs sometimes are a good negotiating tactic.

Speaker 17 And sometimes when they're explicit in certain areas, very

Speaker 17 surgically done, they're a good idea. This was the conservative one.
The others thought this was just attacks on people and none of them ever happen, right? And what a stupid way to,

Speaker 17 you're trying to, one of them, Mariana Moscato, was saying that you have to focus in on production subsidies over tariffs, like to help companies, to help industries and be very specific about it versus tariffs, which is just a blunt instrument that is about the past.

Speaker 17 Anyway,

Speaker 17 talk about these. This seems like this is just some more airblowing from this fella that upsets markets.

Speaker 6 World leaders are learning how to deal with him, and that is you mollify him by making some token gestures.

Speaker 6 Basically, Claudia Scheinbaum and Trudeau said, all right, I'll tell you what, we'll do this. And they were already doing it.
Yeah. And then he walks it back.

Speaker 17 And also, there wasn't that much fentanyl coming over the border from Canada. It's so ridiculous.
And linking it to things that have nothing to do with economics are ridiculous, right?

Speaker 6 But they basically, they basically kind of managing him. But

Speaker 6 our presence across the world is a function of leverage and relationships.

Speaker 6 And if you said to your husband, you're really vulnerable right now, whatever, you're out of work, and I'm going to leave you unless you do the following things. And you're really like,

Speaker 6 he or your partner might be so scared and so upset and so vulnerable, they say, okay, you're bigger than me. You're more important than me.
I agree.

Speaker 6 But what does that do to the long-term relationship? And I don't think people realize that these people, at some point, they will find explicit and implicit ways. Canada,

Speaker 6 we're brothers in arms. They're our allies.
They're our friends. They followed us into Afghanistan.

Speaker 6 This is just so short, so short-sighted. And it's also

Speaker 6 the hint or the insight here, I think, is the following.

Speaker 6 The adult in the administration here is the 10-year bond in the stock market, and the 1% who Trump listens to, corporations and very, very wealthy people. And what happened here was the following.

Speaker 6 They called him and said, this is all cute, but you realize, you know, XYZ company, we're we're going to lose 20% of our sales overnight, and you're probably going to see gas spike, and you're going to see the 10-year bond.

Speaker 6 And he pretends that he has a victory and he walks it back. And I think the lesson here for Democrats is the following.

Speaker 6 I think that we are now at a point where because they control all three branches of government and we really can't do anything through our institutions in sending congresspeople to wave their cane at the building of the Department of Education, that's just not an effective strategy, optically.

Speaker 17 Is that an age remark? Go ahead. Sorry.

Speaker 6 Oh, fuck. Put a third of them on a fucking ice flow.
I've had it. I've had it.
The Democrats are all about it. It literally, it literally looks like.

Speaker 17 It's bipartisan if you're going to be afraid of it.

Speaker 6 It looks like a senior's home where they've canceled water aerobics at this point.

Speaker 6 That's how effective an outrage they. Charles Schumer will win.
Oh, okay. Thanks.
That feels better, Chuck. Anyways, these people are so fucking pathetic.

Speaker 6 Oh, no, it's they've switched Jell-O-Night to Tuesdays. Rise up, America.
My God.

Speaker 6 Anyways,

Speaker 6 this is the strategy.

Speaker 17 This wasn't so grim. I shouldn't laugh, but it's funny.

Speaker 6 Go ahead. This is the strategy.

Speaker 6 Fine. You want mutual assured destruction.
We are not going to approve an increase in the debt limit, and we're going to have a failed treasury auction.

Speaker 6 And the 90%, the 1% who own 90% of the stocks, you're going to start getting calls from them. You want to go gangster? Let's go gangster.

Speaker 6 Because the bottom line is when it comes to economics, the tariffs, you know what Trump did? He blinked. He did.

Speaker 17 It doesn't just blink. It's all such nonsense.
It's not even blinking. It's like...

Speaker 6 There's a lesson here. This is where we have leverage.
The leverage is around the bond market and a failed treasury auction. And I recognize this could set off something really ugly.

Speaker 6 But before it sets it off, the people he cares about, corporations, which have their lowest tax rates since 1939, and the 1% who have garnered an extraordinary amount of spoils, are going to call him and say, you realize the Democrats are going to shut down.

Speaker 6 You're going to be the first president that has a failed treasury auction. That is our leverage.
Enough of this, enough of this screaming into TikTok.

Speaker 6 And this is where we have leverage, and this is where we should go.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's interesting. So,

Speaker 17 speaking of which, Elon's powerback continues with Doge warming itself into at least 15 government agencies. Of course, he's going to do this.
Trump says he's happy about things are going.

Speaker 17 He sang Elon's praises and talked about Doge's next targets in the Super Bowl interview with Fox News's Brett Baer. Let's listen.

Speaker 31 I've had a great help with Elon Musk, who's been terrific.

Speaker 6 Bottom line, you say you trust him.

Speaker 31 Trust Elon? Oh, he's not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it.
He's so into it. But I told him to do that.

Speaker 31 Then I'm going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He's going to find the same thing.
Then I'm going to go to the military.

Speaker 31 Let's check the military. We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse.

Speaker 17 Yeah, they've found a billion, maybe. But this is already stuff people knew with other commissions, including Steve Ballmer, has shown a lot of costs.
This is not new stuff this man is finding at all.

Speaker 17 And it's very small in comparison to most of them.

Speaker 17 They're always trying to find like the gold toilet seat. That's what they're always, you know, like, oh, it's a $600 toilet seat.
That's what they're looking for.

Speaker 17 But the federal judge temporarily blogged Doge's access to the Treasury Department payment system over the weekend, citing risk of irreparable harm, though it's unclear when or if Doge employees will comply with that order.

Speaker 17 We'll talk about compliance. We're going to get into that strategy with the courts after the break.

Speaker 17 But thoughts on the latest Doge move is the Consumer Finance Protection Board, which has returned money to the Treasury by a lot, temporarily closed its offices and suspended its services.

Speaker 17 And they're pushing to rapidly develop a custom AI chat bot to analyze government data, according to Wired. And Doge employees have also fed sensitive data from the Education Department.

Speaker 17 department into AI software to probe the agency's programs and spending, according to the Washington Post. This has all been done before.
It's just very performative.

Speaker 17 I think it's just to gain access to the data and who knows what. I mean, you don't necessarily have to assume they're nefarious, but why not?

Speaker 17 Why not just go start with nefarious and work your way down from there? Your thoughts?

Speaker 6 I think it's war. And I think that unfortunately we're on the wrong side of it.

Speaker 6 And we thought we built these impenetrable institutionals, these Maginot lines, and they just dropped, the Nazis just dropped paratroopers behind this impenetrable border called the Maginot Line.

Speaker 6 And I think we're on the Democrats. The Panzer tanks have rolled in and we're trying to fight them on horseback.
We shouldn't be talking about what's outrageous about this or what's wrong about it.

Speaker 6 We should be saying the following.

Speaker 6 If a group of talented engineers can come in and cut off payments to veterans, cut off payments to children in low-income areas, then once we're in power, I wonder if we could find some really intelligent young people to cut off payments to Starlink overnight.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Overnight.

Speaker 6 We think, by the way, we're wondering if space is sovereign territory and that you're trespassing and we should take control of your 51 satellites. And we have some really talented people

Speaker 6 from Google and from different tech companies that we think could go in and shut down Starlink and start asking questions the next day and find out. And let's find out if maybe it's not legal.

Speaker 6 Let's find out. So instead of like screaming into fucking TikTok or on MSNBC, you, if you can do this, well, we're going to come up with some creative ideas about maybe we could do the same thing.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 17 Unfortunately, that's where it leads, right? Presidents have been trying to expand their power for a long, long time, right? This is not a new trend and it's bipartisan, by the way.

Speaker 17 But this is this is sort of, what's interesting to me is how performative it is. And then when you call them out on it, they're like, how dare you call us out?

Speaker 17 But I'm like, they're literally going jazz hands all over the place and then making these ridiculous statements about cost savings when they're saving very little. It's not strategic.
It's not legal.

Speaker 17 They're not doing it with Congress. And I understand the need to a little shock and awe in that regard.
I'm not against that.

Speaker 17 I do think the way they're doing it is just so deleterious to what they're trying to accomplish, which is, you know, they put a tiny little bit. We want to say make the government more efficient.

Speaker 17 No shit, Sherlock. So do the rest of us, right?

Speaker 17 We want to make the government more efficient, but to like, to do it in this way is purposely creating havoc and purposely against what you're supposed to do to actually save money.

Speaker 17 And they're going to find very little savings by doing this. The fact that he mentioned military was my, I was like, oh dear, you're going to go over that over on that rail?

Speaker 17 Because they're the only thing, you know, I was just interviewing these economists today, and Paul Krugman correctly said the United States is an insurance company with a military because most of the spending is Medicare, Medicaid, and things like that, or the military.

Speaker 17 So if you're going for the Medicare,

Speaker 17 where the real money is, good fucking luck on that one. And if you notice, they're not.
So the fact that he mentioned military was really interesting to me.

Speaker 17 And again, probably full of fraud and full of problems, but not in the in the way that they're talking about in any way, I don't think.

Speaker 6 Okay. So something I've struggled with my entire career is the difference between being right and being effective.

Speaker 6 And I think the majority of the Democratic Party and the majority of media talking about some of the points you've just referenced

Speaker 6 are right.

Speaker 6 I want to move to the effective part of the conversation. Absolutely.
And this is how I think we become effective. If you want to hurt Trump or stop him, you got to stop Musk.

Speaker 6 And if you want to stop Musk, you need to go after the surface area of attack. And it's one thing, it's money.
It's already happening in Europe.

Speaker 6 EV sales in Europe are down 6%, but they're down like 20% to 40% across France and different nations.

Speaker 17 It was like 69% in Germany or 100%.

Speaker 6 They're off dramatically.

Speaker 6 Should you be signing up for T-Mobile right now? Should veterans be signing up? Should veterans be communicating to their colleagues or institutions or people in areas affected by this?

Speaker 6 Should they be saying, T-Mobile, I'm not down with you partnering with Elon Musk at Starlink? Should you be flying United Airlines, which just announced a big deal with Starlink?

Speaker 6 Should you...

Speaker 6 And I'm just speaking for a friend here, but what if every time you get an Uber, every time I get an Uber, if it pulls up, if it says Tesla Model S, I cancel and I put in the notes.

Speaker 6 I will not write in a Tesla. I'm done being right.
Let's be effective. And

Speaker 6 this is about going after one-third of Musk's wealth was

Speaker 6 not only created by these democratic institutions and rule of law, which he has no fidelity to. So fine, let's take some of it back.

Speaker 6 But trying to talk about how outrageous this is and whether it's illegal or not legal, let's go after all these guys care about. They care about power and they care about money.

Speaker 6 Let's move from the right part of the program to the effective part of the program.

Speaker 17 Well, here's the only problem. Look, its shares were down very low for a while

Speaker 17 in the low 200s. Now they're, you know, they peaked right around Trump's election time at 400 and some.
And now they're slowly ticking down. They're at 358.
They're still enormously high, right?

Speaker 17 It's 175 PE ratio. And the stock is falling.
That's the opportunity. Right.

Speaker 17 The stock is falling, but it's not so, you know, I think, I definitely think you should focus on Musk and how much money he's making out of this and how he's, you know, if

Speaker 17 he had spent some money against USAID, I don't know who paid for that. If it was the American taxpayer, it was a lot of money ill-spent attacking USAID.

Speaker 17 If he spent his own money, he could knock himself the fuck out.

Speaker 6 T-Mobile subscribers, do you want to work with a guy who's giving Nazi salutes?

Speaker 17 Right. Yeah.
Yeah. It's interesting.

Speaker 17 But what else? I don't think it's wrong to

Speaker 17 try to push back the legal, legally. I think that's quite so.

Speaker 6 That's happening. That's happening.
The only way you get either of these guys to notice, in my view, is you go after their money.

Speaker 17 And what about the access to data? Do you, I mean, everyone, of course, thinks, you know, we're in the middle of a bond movie where they're winning the whole, the whole nine yards of it.

Speaker 17 How do you feel about the data part?

Speaker 6 I asked this sincerely. What is

Speaker 6 What is the concern? I understand that we don't want to hand over our data to this individual.

Speaker 6 I've seen some, I don't want to call it conspiracy theory, but theories that the end game here is to get data to train his AI models.

Speaker 6 But I don't fully understand why people perceive, other than just a pure violation of people's privacy and getting access to your data and what they could do with that data. I mean,

Speaker 6 if these people who have access to all of our information truly think we are cruel and deceitful people, that's probably not, you know, that's not that comforting.

Speaker 6 But what is the fear or the concern beyond just the circumvention of the democratic and constitutional norm?

Speaker 17 Well, I think it it's it's opening it up, creating a real a real danger in terms of opening it up. Let me just let me just read you someone who knows.
I was talking about CISA.

Speaker 17 He was making cuts to CISA, which has always been in his crosshairs, Trump's crosshairs. Elon eliminated the ability to track disinformation on Twitter.
Zuck eliminated it for Meta.

Speaker 17 Stanford cut the Samos-Rene project. Pam Bondi just eliminated the FBI task force that tracked foreign influence campaigns.

Speaker 17 And now this at CISA, all this when disinformation is now being spouted to AI speeds. It's a gift to Putin and Xi.
On CISA in particular, they've been in Trump's crosshairs since 2020.

Speaker 17 It's barely getting, you know, it's not much there was a cut, but still on anyone's left. But what they're saying is

Speaker 17 the who can pay to track disinformation and do legal takeouts were.

Speaker 17 and everyone else, the electorate, were just fucked.

Speaker 17 And so, you know, this was someone who's been covering this, is that we are very exposed and also allowing the Chinese and Russians incredible possible access to sensitive data.

Speaker 17 Every single one of these researchers I talk to is like, are you kidding? This is terrifying. We just opened the gates.

Speaker 6 This just feels,

Speaker 6 I think,

Speaker 6 you know, I don't know what the definition,

Speaker 6 you know, if you talk about Gladny, I think America, unfortunately, is paying the price for so much.

Speaker 6 security. I don't think they realize how many people

Speaker 6 do not wish us well around the world. Yeah, they don't.
And that they're fairly sophisticated and they understand how to use data and how to weaponize it. And

Speaker 6 how many people work so hard and take huge risks to try and protect us. And that a lot of that effort,

Speaker 6 decades of skill, effort,

Speaker 6 sacrifice is being just kind of thrown out the window. And until, I mean, it just goes to these very basics.

Speaker 6 The biggest takers and the people most upset and the people who want to tear down the government are the people benefiting the most from these programs.

Speaker 6 I mean, the reality is, Kara, is you're in my life. It's not going to change that much.
I mean, I think there's some.

Speaker 17 I'm concerned about the Russians and the Chinese. I think that equally affects all of us, no matter what economic bracket you're in of them having this information.
You know what, though? I get that.

Speaker 6 But if America's... I mean, we're now in an economic weight class where we can move to Milan.

Speaker 6 It's just so incredible that the people who seem to be most,

Speaker 6 it's like they're burning their own house down. Look at the regions that we're so deep red.
They're the ones that benefit the most from these programs.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 6 So my attitude is, okay, you want your Medicaid.

Speaker 6 You don't want your insulin. You don't want your kid.
You don't want a school in your, you know, in that rural town mandated by the federal government. You don't want your uncle in veteran affairs.

Speaker 6 I mean, fine. Okay.

Speaker 6 Here's the country you wanted.

Speaker 17 I agree with you, but at the same time, I do think this stuff out in the wild, it's it's like someone just opened all the nuclear things and just like we need to clean up this nuclear stuff and just open them.

Speaker 17 I just think puts us, it literally puts us in a bond villain movie situation. I think.
Anyway, I think there's going to be huge repercussions going forward. And it was, it's a gift to

Speaker 17 China and Russia. Every single person who I find intelligent thinks this.
All right. Let's go in a quick break.
More on Elon and Trump's strategy to target courts, not just Elon, also J.D. Vance.

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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back as Donald Trump and others continue to push their agenda. The only thing standing in their way appears to be the courts for now.

Speaker 17 Federal judges have halted parts of Trump's executive order blitz, including the federal spending freeze, worker buyouts, and Doge's access to the payment system, as we mentioned earlier.

Speaker 17 But everyone's attacking the judiciary.

Speaker 17 First, Musk called for the impeachment of a judge who ruled against Doge. He's also proposing that the worst 1% of appointed judges be fired every year.
Sorry, Eileen Cannon, you're going.

Speaker 17 This undermined the strategy was especially by J.D. Vance.
He put one out that got enormous attention.

Speaker 17 And I think it's a coordinated effort.

Speaker 17 He posted over the weekend that judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power, which of course everyone was like, did you you go to Yale Law School?

Speaker 17 Trump administration lawyers also filed a motion saying Doji Lee impinges on the president's absolute powers of the executive branch, which, of course, they're going to do, but they're moved to the undermine the judiciary portion of the show, I think.

Speaker 17 And the cases will likely get appealed. Some will go to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 17 We'll see where that goes. But remember, after the immunity decision last year, Justice Sotomayor wrote, the president is now king above the law.

Speaker 17 So, and even if the courts do rule against Trump, I'm going going to give you the whole package, enforcement will be up to the DOJ, which he controls. The DOJ through the U.S.

Speaker 17 Marshal Service controls that. So, a lot of my legal people say there's no enforcement mechanism for any of this stuff.
And if he resists,

Speaker 17 he can just resist. He can resist illegally, too.

Speaker 17 So, and it takes a while for things to shake out in that regard because the judiciary does not have enforcement powers.

Speaker 6 I think it's

Speaker 6 Ruth Ben-Giat, is that her name? Ben-Giat.

Speaker 6 She summarized it. I think it was her.
If it was another historian, I'm sure I'll hear about it. But she said most democracies

Speaker 6 are driven institutionally, that at the end of the day, the courts rule.

Speaker 6 And then kind of the slow burn to fascism or a dictatorship is you move to a paternalistic model. And that's the right term.
It's this file where you decide this guy knows better than everybody else.

Speaker 6 And we kind of, you get the government you deserve. And that is this guy was freely and fairly elected by a country that decided it's okay to be a convicted felon.

Speaker 6 And so he now believes, and he has the incentive structure and the results to show it, that he can be elected president despite being a convicted felon.

Speaker 6 So why on earth would he not believe and others who support him not believe that he's above the law? That's America basically said, okay, he's above the law, and he gets to make these decisions now.

Speaker 17 Well, the Supreme Court said that, but go ahead.

Speaker 6 Haven't we given him all these green green lights that say, yeah, just break the law. Just, it's okay.
Just move, move it. Don't go around institutions.

Speaker 6 Don't, you know, the law no longer applies to you. We're moving to this paternalistic government structure that is kind of, you know, more

Speaker 6 tightly associated with dictatorships and democracies.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think it's problematic. I think the issue that they don't have enforcement,

Speaker 17 if a group of people is willing to break laws and then break rulings against their activities, there is nowhere to go, right? And then, if I, I mean, the place to go is people protest, right?

Speaker 17 That's the next step. And of course, he could declare martial law, which is an you know what I mean? If we protest even slightly, maybe he'll say it's martial law.

Speaker 17 So, it really does, it really does, you know, put it into stark relief how fragile our systems are in ways that I think we don't think about.

Speaker 17 Let me just read something someone who I really respect wrote me, who's pretty well done.

Speaker 17 This is an impending constitutional crisis. Courts and Congress become subordinate to the executive branch, and then our system crumbles at its foundation.

Speaker 17 We are nearing that moment, if not there already. Our system is far more fragile than most people appreciate.
It depends on people in power respecting the constitutional framework.

Speaker 17 At bottom, it's an honor system. Most people in power get this at a gut level and will not touch the third rail.
But here we are in uncharted territory.

Speaker 17 Never have we seen this happen at such a scale and depth. And I said, oh, well, that's happy.
And he said, it's going to get worse before it gets better. And I said, What does better look like? And

Speaker 17 he responded, they're going to break too many things. Markets will eventually crash and people will lose basic services.
The problem is it will take time for the public to really feel it.

Speaker 17 He brought it back to the market itself, too, is when the market goes, that's when they stop, right? And that's, you know, that's, there's a lot of damage in the interim.

Speaker 17 And this guy's not a, trust me, he's not a like

Speaker 17 hyperbolic person in any way. And he's usually like, eh, whatever, for a lot of Donald Trump's things.

Speaker 17 But in this case, concerned, especially when it has to lead to market meltdown, essentially, or violence.

Speaker 6 Makes sense.

Speaker 6 I mean, I'm so sort of overwhelmed and having...

Speaker 17 I'm sorry, did I just depress you?

Speaker 6 I mean, I'm just, I'm having a difficult time processing every sort of destruction of our institutions and what felt like, what feels like everything, the pillars of what we thought we could rely on and sort of default to, that judges matter, that laws matter, that institutions matter, that there's a level of mutual respect, that you don't hack the government and stop payments to people in need.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 it definitely feels like the operating, we've pressed the reset button and we're not entirely sure what's going to happen when it reboots back up.

Speaker 17 Right, right. That's a really good way to put it.
It is sort of, you know, for people who don't understand it, it is this Silicon Valley ethos of. Do we really need judges?

Speaker 17 Do we really, they question everything. And in some cases, that is a great thing.
In other cases, it's deeply dangerous, right?

Speaker 17 The idea of things that probably we, not we shouldn't be questioning, but maybe we can do it better. They don't ever want to do it better.
They just want to wreck it and then clean it up afterwards.

Speaker 17 And that's a, that's a very Musk-like characteristic. It's not just him.
It's a lot of Silicon Valley.

Speaker 17 And so it's that thinking that, like, what could go wrong? Is it so bad if we break it? And I think you have to really understand their personality.

Speaker 17 And when it will matter was when, for at least Trump, from my, from what you just noted, will be when the economy tanks, when the market tanks when there's when rich people get get made discomforted by this right versus just the moral argument that you should make that this this system has worked for centuries and pretty well even if it has all kinds of hair on it right that this this is actually where we've never had a stronger economy we've never been more productive uh we've never been more everything and yet Here we are starting to take apart the pieces that actually quietly hold it together.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but there's

Speaker 6 I agree with you.

Speaker 6 And that was my narrative kind of coming in, you know, when I was told to understand the assignment and support Biden and Harris, which I agreed to and signed up for for a lot of reasons. But

Speaker 6 what a lot of America has said is

Speaker 6 the narrative that you throw a bunch of numbers at me about the market and our prosperity.

Speaker 6 And all I know is this all reverse engineers, in my opinion, to income inequality and people being reminded every day that they seem to be the only people that aren't succeeding and that no one, you know, that they're left behind, that their kids, they can't afford them.

Speaker 6 40% of Americans now have some form of medical or dental debt.

Speaker 6 I think there needs to be a new crop of leadership that comes out with really dramatic bold.

Speaker 6 So I'd like to, you know, let's lower Medicaid two years every year for the next 25 years until we have nationalized medicines.

Speaker 6 There just needs to be some really big bold ideas from the left as opposed to burn everything down.

Speaker 6 And these discussions, I don't even want to entertain these discussions with the right right now because as far as I'm concerned, no, I'm not going to engage in a conversation with you.

Speaker 6 You're trying to foment an illegitimate form around this discussion.

Speaker 6 You have, in my opinion, you're trespassing and you're illegally hacking our government systems without government oversight.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I just don't think we should even, you know, sure, talk about how outrageous it is.

Speaker 17 I'm just pointing out it's not an excuse. It's an explanation of what their mentality is.
And I think these people do not care about disruption and or the effect.

Speaker 17 And I think downstream away from all of this huffing and puffing by everybody, and it's very serious stuff, Scott, it really is, is

Speaker 17 this is going to affect, this has nothing to do with the price of fucking eggs, right? Any of this. And it's not an attacking the court system, which is people who run businesses like laws.

Speaker 17 Laws are good. Laws is good.
If everyone, you know, runs stop signs and runs red lights and decides to murder people, this is not good for the economy. This is not good for stability.

Speaker 17 And so what's interesting is this

Speaker 17 thoughtless idea of

Speaker 17 breaking without thinking of the implications of it. And I'm not exercised about it.
I'm sort of like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Like, are you crazy? This works pretty fucking well.

Speaker 17 And so, to me, it all does boil down to people who like disruption and don't mind breaking, and because they're in a position to be fine with it, and maybe they'll benefit in the new order.

Speaker 17 And regular people who are going to see see enormous economic stress from all of this if they keep going at the rate they're going.

Speaker 17 I mean, basically, if the rule of law feels at risk, if judges feel nervous,

Speaker 17 if when you call the U.S. Marshals Service and they decide not to come because Pam Bondi

Speaker 17 is a suck up, that's a problem. That's a real, people don't believe in the law, really, pretty much.
I don't know. I think that's an economic problem.

Speaker 6 Well, when I moved to London, within kind of six months, I just gained a new appreciation for America in terms of the viscosity, the risk aggressiveness.

Speaker 6 In general, people start from a position of yes. They're optimistic.
There's just a shit ton of opportunity. Our universities are just incredible.
Our entrepreneurs are incredible.

Speaker 6 I generally think that in the wild in America, people are generous, really decent people. I'm so impressed with our...

Speaker 6 It sounds weird. I miss my students.
I miss the service.

Speaker 6 We used to have this wonderful program that like a GI Bill. all these incredibly talented young people who went to work in government.

Speaker 6 America works less bad than any other nation in the world. And I think a lot of citizens in the United States are about to find out that government isn't as bad as they think.

Speaker 6 And they're really going to miss it when it gets shut down, when they stop. You know, the FAA does an amazing job.
Your Veterans Affairs Department, sure, there's a lot of waste.

Speaker 6 But the reason why, one of the reasons we are, you know, respected around the world and get the best treaties and have 700 military bases is because we have all these people who are willing to sign up and put themselves in harm's way and then when they come back we attempt to reasonably honor them and take care of them it just

Speaker 6 people are about to find out just how well actually American government does work and if you have to move to London or if you have to have your benefits taken away and find out what happens when these institutions collapse okay so be it I hope the collateral damage isn't as enormous as it likely will be, but I just feel like we're dealing with a series that Americans have become.

Speaker 6 Everybody has a tendency to say Americans are, I think they're fucking spoiled children at this point. I don't think they realize how fortunate they are at the largesse and inefficiency of government.

Speaker 17 All right, Scott, just remember you're mean, cruel, and deceitful. One more quick break.
We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Speaker 17 Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first or would you like me to go first? You go first.

Speaker 17 I'm going to do two wins today. One is, I got to say, Wired's coverage of all things Elon and Doge has become essential reading, scoop after scoop and all the craziness.

Speaker 17 Well, they've got got a new editor, Katie Drummond, who's

Speaker 17 they call the digital thorn in Elon Musk's side, is Wired.

Speaker 17 But I got to say, finally, this is, you know, Wired has gone in and out of relevance over the many years, but I got to say, this is just great reporting. And their subscriptions are up.

Speaker 17 Amanda came home. She goes, I just got a subscription to Wired.
Like, you know, it's just, it's doing a great job on basic news. And it's been very fair.
It hasn't been snarky.

Speaker 17 It hasn't been, it's just been, here's who they are. This is what they're doing.
Here's what's happening. I have to say, it's essential reading.
And I have to, I give them great credit for that.

Speaker 17 And I like to call out institutions that have really

Speaker 17 just really improved our lives. And they're doing a great job.
They're doing a great job and doing it with real like steadiness, which is really hard to do.

Speaker 17 My other win, I hate to say this, but the penny thing, that Trump wants to end the production of pennies. I hate pennies.
So I'm happy with that.

Speaker 17 I wanted to say one positive thing about the Trump administration.

Speaker 17 I just, I don't, I don't like cash. I don't like cash at all.
That's the, that's how I feel. So I feel this is a win.

Speaker 6 There you go. Uh, I have two wins.
I don't know what platform it's on, but I'm fascinated with this woman. She's a historian and staff writer of the Atlantic named Ann Applebaum.
Yeah, I love her.

Speaker 17 She was just on the podcast. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And I've just, I'm learning a lot from her. And I think she has a very measured and thoughtful way of looking at history and relating it to what's going on now.

Speaker 6 So I would recommend everyone tune in or do a search for Ann Applebaum on

Speaker 6 Instagram. And then I'm going to have another win because

Speaker 6 I'm too freaked out to have too many fails. I've been watching The Penguin, and it's actually just okay.
It's not what you expect. It's good.
It's not great.

Speaker 17 I haven't won all those awards.

Speaker 6 But Colin Farrell, is that his name? Is it Colin Farrell? Colin Farrell.

Speaker 6 He's, I mean, my God.

Speaker 17 He's transformed. Jesus.

Speaker 6 I think he'll win a lot because you know what they like. They want you to play someone who's mentally disabled or overweight or, you know, they want want you to transform into someone else

Speaker 6 yeah supposedly it took four hours every time but he is i mean it's just fascinating to kind of watch him and how good he is it's hard not to take your eyes off his performance so that i think it's just i think his performance is just incredible um i think occasionally you know

Speaker 6 Walter Wyden Breaking Bad, I forget the actor's name.

Speaker 6 You know, occasionally there's a performance, the guy. Brian Cranston.

Speaker 6 But this is that kind of role. And it's just,

Speaker 6 just as an unwind, just to appreciate this guy's craft. And he's, you know, he's so handsome and he's so, I've never thought of him.
I do think, you know, we were talking about Brad Pitt.

Speaker 6 I think really exceptionally good-looking people don't get the credit they deserve as actors.

Speaker 17 Yeah, he's a good-looking man.

Speaker 6 And you know what he did? He had to, he had to do four hours of makeup to make him really, really ugly for you to realize what a good actor he is.

Speaker 6 But anyways, my winds are Ann Applebaum and the Penguin with Colin Farrell.

Speaker 17 He's done a ton of great movies. He was in a remake of the one set on Mars that Arnold Schwarzenegger was in, Total Recall.

Speaker 6 Do you remember that? Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 17 I'm sorry. I like the Schwarzenegger version much better.
But yeah, he's been in a ton of stuff.

Speaker 17 He's a very talented person in general and a handsome man.

Speaker 6 He's a handsome man. And a handsome man.
There you go. Have you seen the one with Nicole Kidman where she's banging the?

Speaker 17 I can't do it.

Speaker 6 I can't do it.

Speaker 16 I don't want to watch her have an orgasm.

Speaker 17 I'm sorry. Really? Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I think you're being ageist. I don't think so.

Speaker 6 She was the young hot Nicole Kidman you were.

Speaker 17 I literally have no fucking interest in it. I have no interest in it.
I don't want to see it. Don't want to see her having an orgasm several times.

Speaker 6 What did you think of the commercial with when Harry met Sally when they redid it? Did you see that? They redid the scene.

Speaker 17 I didn't see the commercial. I have to watch it.
I don't like when they redo things like that.

Speaker 6 It's don't watch it. It's depressing because you realize how old you are because they look like Democratic congresspeople storming the Department of Education.
It's like, oh, God.

Speaker 17 The only thing I liked was

Speaker 17 new Mission Impossible is coming, and I can't wait. The reckoning, whatever, dead reckoning.
Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 17 Go to nymag.com/slash pivot, submit a question for the show, or call 85551-Pivot. But speaking of movies elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, I talked to Cynthia Arrivo on On, who is the great,

Speaker 17 she's in Wicked, but she's also been in the color purple on Broadway.

Speaker 17 She's all over the place. She was in Harriet.

Speaker 17 This woman's like,

Speaker 17 if she wins an Oscar, she gets an e-got.

Speaker 17 And I think she's great. So I interviewed her.
Let's listen.

Speaker 38 I think part of doing this tour is to make sure that everybody understands that it's not just a chick film. It's not just for little girls.
It's not just for kids.

Speaker 17 That it's actually for everyone.

Speaker 38 There is something for everyone in it. And that just because there are two women protagonists, that doesn't automatically mean that no men can understand what's going on.

Speaker 38 We don't say that of films that are mainly male, and most films are mainly male. I mean, we have the Irishman, which was

Speaker 38 quite frankly all men, but nobody is saying this is a do film. No, we go and we watch it because it's a good film.

Speaker 6 We go and we watch good cinema.

Speaker 17 That's aimed at you, Scott.

Speaker 6 I want to see Wicked. It's supposed to be fantastic.
I want to see it. And she's supposed to be an immense talent.
And I like Ariana Grande.

Speaker 17 Good cinema. She also talked a a lot about being queer, a whole bunch of stuff.
It was really, actually, a really good interview. And I needed a palate cleanser, Scott.
I needed a palate cleanser.

Speaker 17 You deserve it.

Speaker 17 I went from Ann Applebaum, and now I'm back into it with a legal and economic one. So I need a palette cleaner.

Speaker 6 I'm going to bring you back. I'm going to make you watch Nicole Kidman have orgasms.

Speaker 17 No, we're not. I would never watch that with you.
That would be so awkward. Oh, my God.
I can't go to a sex movie with you. I just, that just flashed through my head.

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 that wasn't on my bingo card either. So,

Speaker 6 yeah,

Speaker 6 that's not going to happen.

Speaker 17 Because I had a discussion with Louie the other day when we went to see Sausage Pidgey.

Speaker 17 No, no, no. I took him as a teenager to Sausage Party.
We were laughing our asses off because it was like awkward parent. I took him to Sausage Party, which is a cartoon.

Speaker 17 I thought it would just be funny. And it turned out to be food having a lot of sex that was gross.
And he looked at me while we were watching it and he goes, this is awkward.

Speaker 17 And I go, I'm the worst parent ever. Shall we leave? He goes, no.

Speaker 17 And I had to stay there and watch this horrible food orgy with my son at the time it was terrible I can't watch Nicole Kidmoo okay we're not watching the Nicole we're not doing that we're gonna go to we're gonna go to a mission we're gonna go see wicked

Speaker 17 you should go see wicked with me let's do that okay

Speaker 6 okay let's do that okay Scott that's the show we'll be back on Friday with more pivot Scott read us out today's show is produced by Larry Moon Zoy Marcus and Taylor Griffin Ernie Intertod introduced this episode thanks also to Drew Burrows Ms.

Speaker 6 Severio and Dan Shulan Yishak Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 6 Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 6 We'll be back on Friday for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Please judge Kara

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Elon's OpenAI Bid, Trump's Judicial Strategy, and DOGE's Shock and Awe

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