Trump Takes Office, TikTok’s Brief Shutdown, and Crypto Cronyism

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Speaker 17 Trump declared the beginning of a, quote, golden age of America.

Speaker 18 I think Zuck is hoping it's the golden shower age.

Speaker 5 I think that guy's going dirty.

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

Speaker 18 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 17 Dark greetings from the USA and hail, Satan, Scott. The second reign of Trump has begun with a plethora of things.

Speaker 17 We'll talk about some of these ridiculous executive orders, which have no meat to the bone, as they say.

Speaker 17 But let's get right to the inauguration. I know you were drowning your sorrows in 80s music and firefighter videos.
Did you watch the inauguration?

Speaker 18 No. So one of the things I would recommend any dad does with his son, because it's a lesson, or his 15-year-old son, it's sort of a rite of passage in the Galloway household about culture, politics,

Speaker 18 homosexuality,

Speaker 18 culture, sex, is to watch the entire eight seasons of Game of Thrones.

Speaker 18 And I believe in season five,

Speaker 18 Stanis Baratheon decides to burn his daughter, Shireen, at the stake.

Speaker 18 It is such a disturbing scene that running through it the second time, I decided for my own mental health, I'm just not going to watch that entire episode.

Speaker 18 And for me, the inauguration was the burning of Shireen Baratheon at the stake. I thought, I just don't need to watch this.
Although I will say

Speaker 18 really my one takeaway in Stay With Me Here

Speaker 18 is the most important person on the planet right now or the person with the most potential to do real good for the world is Lauren Sanchez.

Speaker 17 Oh, all right.

Speaker 18 I mean, let's be honest. The Zuck is hornier than three bald cat.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I went back and looked at that video because I thought it might have been unfair. It was not unfair.
He was catching a look.

Speaker 18 If she really wanted to do the world a solid,

Speaker 18 she would seduce Mark Zuckerberg, the Zuck. He's down for it.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 17 I didn't think you'd go there, but go ahead.

Speaker 18 And then Priscilla Chan gets half the voting chairs and boom, mental wellness

Speaker 18 and trust in institutions skyrockets.

Speaker 17 I don't know. She was right there with them.
She was right there with Mark at every event.

Speaker 18 No, no, no, but

Speaker 18 she was in the overflow room because she doesn't have.

Speaker 17 No, no, she was there. She was there.
She was standing next to him.

Speaker 18 She's in the rotunda.

Speaker 17 She was in the rotunda. She was next to him.
You didn't notice her because she was wearing pearls and a very conservative outfit, but she was right next to him.

Speaker 18 You're right. I didn't notice her.
I did not notice her.

Speaker 17 You didn't because Lauren was like, you know, bustier.

Speaker 18 Here we are. Hello.
Come meet the girl.

Speaker 17 We hate to talk about clothes, but. Oh, my God.
Melania Trump looked like a nun next to Lauren.

Speaker 18 She looked like she was headed to the Capitol to force people to give tribute of the Hunger Games. She looked so, and I love the air kiss.
They clearly are very fond of it.

Speaker 17 Oh, that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 The hat. That was a strategic.

Speaker 18 But Lauren Sanchez is the leader we need right now.

Speaker 17 That was a strategic hat.

Speaker 17 All I looked at was ladies. I spent the whole time looking at the ladies there, all the different ladies.

Speaker 18 I think the fashion was off the hook, the pictures I've seen.

Speaker 17 Well, some of it, yeah, they definitely dress, many of them.

Speaker 18 I don't think they look great. I thought that people look great.

Speaker 17 Yeah, well, some of them do. So I don't like that look.

Speaker 18 It's very shiny. And all those tech leaders and those beautiful knee pads they all had.

Speaker 17 I know. They, you know, I'm surprised they weren't exhausted by the weekends.
And some of them had like a, like really were trying not to smile.

Speaker 17 Like Tim Cook smiled occasionally, but was trying to have a stern look. Sundar Pachai didn't know what he was doing there.
He's like, oh, Jesus. He was next to Elon.

Speaker 17 It was the whole thing, the whole panoply was. So ridiculous.
And then Trump, my favorite part was Trump putting them up there right in the front.

Speaker 17 And now I know he wanted it inside because it looked better. It looked better inside.
It was like actually a beautiful tableau kind of thing

Speaker 17 in a, in a repulsive way, but it was beautiful. So if he was on the dais outside, you wouldn't have seen them all like that.
And they would have been all bundled up.

Speaker 17 But instead, it's like, look at the rich people I collected one after the next, like, and the lady, and the lady and stuff.

Speaker 17 So it was really, he, and he put them right there, right in the, in the, right next to him, right over his shoulder. So you couldn't avoid them and moved out.
Governors moved out.

Speaker 18 Yeah, they were in the overflow room.

Speaker 17 Yes. No people that were at his rallies, no people that he cared.
It was all rich people.

Speaker 17 And then he even stuck Miriam Adelson in the back, like, which was kind of interesting.

Speaker 17 And Dana, Dana White, but he wanted to show, I have a trillion dollars of people right here and they're at my behest.

Speaker 18 And I own them.

Speaker 17 And it was such a, they were so played by this guy. It was, I, I, it kind of was like, kudos, Trump.
I've never been able to

Speaker 17 nag them like that. I've never been able.
But he did. He like had them in their spot.

Speaker 18 I thought was interesting. The only point of light that brought a smile to my face was there's a rumor that this guy named J.D.
Vance is vice president. Yeah, I heard it.
And he did show up.

Speaker 18 Trump looked like he was going to fall asleep when they were swearing Vance in.

Speaker 18 But there's an image of Vice President Vance's daughter wearing all these band-aids on her fingers. Yeah.
It's really adorable. Do you remember band-aids for kids?

Speaker 17 They were bluey band-aids, actually. I clocked that.
That's a flex.

Speaker 18 That's a mom flex.

Speaker 17 I mean, they ignored him completely. And interestingly, we'll get to the people getting out of jail, but Vance said they wouldn't let out violent criminals, and they have.

Speaker 17 He doesn't know what's going on. I mean, Musk is the one, and we'll get to Musk in a second.

Speaker 17 But President Trump declared the beginning of a, quote, golden age of America, even though we're kind of in the golden age of America after taking the oath of office on money, calling his inauguration Liberation Day.

Speaker 18 I think Zuck is hoping it's the golden shower age.

Speaker 5 I think that guy's going dirty.

Speaker 17 That guy's going dirty.

Speaker 17 All right. He said he was saved by God to make America great again, referencing last summer's assassination at Tampy Maria.

Speaker 18 But God decided to kill that fireman. I'm sorry.
Go ahead.

Speaker 17 No, you're right. It's all such bullshit.
He made a series of announcements about his inaugural address, including one that made Hillary Clinton visibly laugh. She was there.

Speaker 17 I love that Hillary just said, you know, she's like, I know a lot of people are like, they shouldn't have gone, but I'm like, I'm down with her being right there. I'm down with Mike Pence being there.

Speaker 17 Like, you tried, you tried, dude, and you didn't succeed. So let's listen to Trump.

Speaker 20 A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and we will restore the name

Speaker 20 of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs.

Speaker 17 It's so ridiculous. It's so fucking ridiculous.
It's so laughable and stupid.

Speaker 17 And I ran into, of all people in the CNN green room, Elizabeth Warren, and I thought she'd be all, you know, had her, had her dander up. And she's like, that was so friggin' laughable.

Speaker 17 Like, what in the world? Like, so dumb. He also said that we're going to expand.
He says this manifest destiny thing, but not just on this planet, but let's listen to that.

Speaker 20 The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation.

Speaker 20 One that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.

Speaker 20 And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.

Speaker 17 Okay, not exactly JFK,

Speaker 17 but

Speaker 17 this is what Musk has been after the whole time. It just, the penny kind of dropped.
And I went back and listened to a couple interviews I had done with him many years ago, 2016, 18.

Speaker 17 His need to get to Mars seems to have been his goal here in a lot of ways. It was not money necessarily with this guy,

Speaker 17 but it is this whole Mars thing. What did you think of these Gulf of America and Mars situation?

Speaker 18 Well, first off, the notion that America will again be the most prosperous, most admired, most powerful nation in the world. Well, good news, boss.
It already is. It's all of those things.

Speaker 18 It is, that's right. And the naming stuff is sort of, I mean, it's just, it's just kind of ridiculous.
The Gulf of cheaper eggs. It's just, it's just sort of,

Speaker 18 it's just sort of dumb, right? And the thing that really struck out to me, and I would imagine,

Speaker 18 so first off, this guy's full Putin. Did you notice we're going to expand new horizons for our flag?

Speaker 18 So what, we're invading Canada? I don't, where are we going? And by the way,

Speaker 17 Mr. Anti-War wants to take on other countries.

Speaker 18 Yeah, we want out of bad wars, but we're becoming imperialists. And I'm down with Canada becoming the 51st state because that means Democrats win everything.

Speaker 17 That's correct. Yep.

Speaker 18 So I don't, I thought that was really unusual, but I get the sense that he really has decided that Russia is the role model, both in terms of kleptocracy, in expansionary vision.

Speaker 18 On the whole, I thought the stuff I've seen, I think Republicans do optics better than we do.

Speaker 18 Oh, absolutely. I thought the aesthetics, the

Speaker 18 fashion, they get famous rich people up front and their hot wives. And if they're hotter, give them a better seat.
I think they just understand that shit

Speaker 18 better than Democrats.

Speaker 17 So, though, I have to say, a lot of people who are at the parties felt it was a lot of like cheap tricks. There was a lot of, I got a lot of people had to go, you know, they just had to go.

Speaker 18 A lot of people. I think it was made for TV.

Speaker 17 Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean.
Like, people who are there was like it was joyless and cheap tricks, which is, and these weren't, these were Republicans. They were like, this is gross and not cool.

Speaker 17 It wasn't cool, someone said to a friend of mine.

Speaker 17 What was interesting

Speaker 17 was the visuals.

Speaker 17 It was all for visuals. I did find his speech petty and small-minded as he is.
He's still, he's in a perpetual campaign.

Speaker 17 This guy who's never running for anything again is in a perpetual, he just can't get out of the campaign mode and get into the governing mode ever.

Speaker 17 And now, Elon Musk, of course, is getting to go to Mars, and we hope he goes first.

Speaker 17 We're very excited for his travels there, never to come back, because he can't come back, by the way, just so you know. He told me that.

Speaker 17 But he gave a speech at

Speaker 17 the Capitol One Arena where they did the, they usually have this inaugural parade that goes by the White House. They canceled that.
And again, for spectacles' sake,

Speaker 17 leaving aside Billy Ray Cyrus at one of the things, it was quite a spectacle. So let's hear Elon's speech.

Speaker 21 You know, there are elections, elections that come and go. Some elections are

Speaker 21 important, some are not.

Speaker 17 But this one, this one,

Speaker 21 this one really mattered.

Speaker 21 And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you.

Speaker 17 You know, at the noise at the end there, that's Elon thumping his chest and doing what appeared to be a fascist Nazi-style salute.

Speaker 17 Some people are calling it a Roman salute, but a Roman salute was a Nazi salute. Some people saying he was doing his heart goes out to you.

Speaker 17 That's not how you do it. It was weird.
Some people are blaming it on him having Asperger's.

Speaker 17 You know, I'm sure, you know, in the sound of music, Rolf was just showing his heart went out to the Bontrop family when he did that symbol, that signal.

Speaker 17 But

Speaker 17 it was stupid. I don't know what to say.
It's like, oh, we're going to be on the incoming of a flood of this kind of bullshit.

Speaker 17 It was, if given he's in the public eye so much, he should be very careful about his signals that he does.

Speaker 17 I think a lot of people are letting him off because of the flood of other things that happened. I don't know if you had any thoughts.

Speaker 18 Like,

Speaker 18 I'm like you, I'm not a huge fan of Elon Musk, but I actually think he did a decent job. I thought he looked good.
I thought he seemed enthusiastic. He captured the audience.

Speaker 18 I think the hand gesture was unfortunate,

Speaker 18 but I would give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't, I don't think.

Speaker 17 Except the Nazis were getting let out of jail. That's the only, like, I don't give him the benefit of the doubt.
Like, I assume you want to.

Speaker 18 You really, you're connecting the two.

Speaker 17 I don't know what he's doing.

Speaker 17 I just think he had, if you're in a position of that much power and that much influence and you're in the public eye, you should try not not to do things that could be construed that way.

Speaker 18 I just think that.

Speaker 18 I agree with you, but I don't think it's fair to conflate what he did with anything supporting the Third Reich. I don't, I just, I think that's a bridge too far.
I think, I think that's unfair to him.

Speaker 17 Which is, I think, what he might have wanted to happen. Honestly,

Speaker 17 he loves to troll people in some way to get people. He's expecting us all to go, oh, how dare he?

Speaker 17 I think as usual, it was sloppy and obnoxious is what it was at the very least. I think he knew exactly what he was doing.

Speaker 17 And to attribute it, you know, it's interesting when everyone's like, he is, you know, autistic or a ton or is on the spectrum.

Speaker 17 A lot of people on the spectrum are like, I've never done a Nazi type salute kind of things.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but I mean, okay, again.

Speaker 17 I agree. I'm not going crazy.

Speaker 18 I think he got caught up in the moment and made like to the moon.

Speaker 17 I just he did it twice. Let's just be clear.
He did it twice. And if you watch it, it's weird.
It's as weird as can be. I'm not, look, there's nothing to be done with this guy.

Speaker 17 He's going to continue to try to troll us and try to do all kinds of things that sort of like tickle liberals

Speaker 17 outrage. This is his thing.
This is what he's going to do till the end of his life. And he likes to do it.
He likes to make memes. I think he absolutely knew what he was doing.
I don't think he cares.

Speaker 17 I don't necessarily think he's, he's,

Speaker 17 you know, I don't know what he is. I don't know why he did it.
That's, but I thought it was badly done at the moment, definitely.

Speaker 17 I think you have to be careful about signals and things like that. But I agree.
I'm not going to, I'm moving on. Like, whatever, Elon.

Speaker 16 It was weird.

Speaker 18 Weird.

Speaker 17 In addition, as I said, they all had prime seats. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sunder Pichai, better seats than cabinet nominees who were behind them, I believe.

Speaker 17 What's incredible is the other notable attendees, too. Joe Rogan, Rupert Murdoch was there.
I didn't see him there. I don't know where they put him.
LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, TikTok CEO Sho Chu.

Speaker 17 really full of business people more than anybody else. And even Miriam Adelson, a big donor of his, was shoved, even though a business person, shoved in the back, which was interesting.

Speaker 17 I don't know. It was quite something, and it was definitely made for TV.
Trump quickly got to work on Monday evening, issuing sweeping pardons to over 1,500 of the January 6th rioters.

Speaker 17 He was thought to have not, J.D. Vance said he wasn't going to let off people who had violent things, but that's exactly what he did.
He let out very violent people who had beaten up

Speaker 17 cops very clearly, people who had gotten 20 years to life, people who were obviously there to cause mayhem, but he let them off too. One woman who was just inside and got, was

Speaker 17 a nonviolent protester,

Speaker 17 wouldn't take the thing. She said, I committed a crime.
I thought that was pretty honorable.

Speaker 17 But he let off some very dangerous people. I know a lot of people that worked on those cases, and they are terrified now that these people are out and emboldened.

Speaker 17 They essentially said Trump now has his own private militia at his behest.

Speaker 17 I think that was pretty upsetting. I don't know what you thought about that.
One, to me, was the most seriously disturbing of all the many executive orders.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I don't know. There's a few trying to revoke birthright citizenship, trying to override the 14th Amendment.
That feels,

Speaker 18 you know, some of it. I can understand declaring a national emergency at the border.
Declaring a national energy emergency is just dumb.

Speaker 18 Gas on an inflation-adjusted basis is cheaper than it was 50 years ago. We are the largest oil producer in the world.
Biden issued a ton of drilling permits.

Speaker 18 So that's nothing but just a false narrative. And it goes back to the notion we were talking about.
America will be the strongest, most respected. We're there.

Speaker 18 Unfortunately, Biden was unable to communicate that effectively. Correct.

Speaker 18 Some of the stuff that, you know, this expansionary, visionary stuff seemed very strange to me. It felt like we're colonialists colonialists again.

Speaker 17 What do you think of this strategy of flooding the zone with shit? Now, I know all presidents do this. They put out executive orders.
These are just one outlandish idea after the next.

Speaker 17 Most of them have no force of law. Most of them are just press releases, as they said, on Better Letterhead.

Speaker 17 But it is this flooding the zone with shit to get Democrats, you know, completely flummoxed.

Speaker 17 How dare he? How dare he? How dare he? Oh, how he dare he do that.

Speaker 18 They should just not respond. Most of this,

Speaker 18 I think a lot of it was throwing red meat at sort of populist symbolic. I do think it was a baller move to have a ton of executive actions as he was on the desk.

Speaker 18 It kind of visually represents leadership. You know, some of the stuff immediately said,

Speaker 18 I promise these things.

Speaker 18 I'm making do on these promises day one, even if they don't hold or even if they tried. I tried.
I think he's being

Speaker 18 one of the more generous things I think you could say about Trump's tenure the first time around was that he

Speaker 18 proved to be more of a pragmatist than an ideologue. And I do think he could have had an executive action around tariffs right away, but he didn't do that.

Speaker 18 He's obviously using it as a negotiating tactic, which again is a pragmatist. Some of this is just,

Speaker 18 you know, some of the, okay,

Speaker 18 the people who got out of prison, I'm not comfortable with it. It's awful.

Speaker 18 I'm almost like, just give it to them so we can stop fucking talking about it and having museum exhibits where Marjorie Taylor Greene goes into like a zoo and holds the hands and prays.

Speaker 17 I get the move along idea. I get it.
It's just some of these people are dangerous criminals. That's the, it's, you know, he talks about.

Speaker 18 That's, that's a fair point.

Speaker 17 He, he talks about dangerous criminals on the street. He just let out some day.
I, I, the, the, I, there is a point to moving along. Washington let off the people who did the whiskey rebellion.

Speaker 17 He did it, right? People who had, that happens over and over again. You just say, that was wrong.
Let's move on.

Speaker 17 In the case of us, he could have picked out a few and even jd vance said so that were dangerous and beat up cops yeah the violent criminals the proud boys the oath keepers right that ones that beat up cops said guilty to sedition jail you go yeah the stuff around you know

Speaker 18 there's only two genders there's male and there's female i almost seen that as just unimportant but mean yeah it's like it it's just okay

Speaker 18 you're just thumbing your you're just waving the middle finger at a group of people fine have at it be be who you are i don't think think that's going to have much, much effect.

Speaker 18 I found this was mostly, you know, kind of like most of these things were sort of, where's the beef? Or

Speaker 18 what actual impact on the ground is this going to have? I agree.

Speaker 17 I thought it showed weakness, actually. I was like, there's too many of them.
There's too many ones and all of them are kind of empty. It was sort of performative.

Speaker 17 I thought he should have been much more strategic and stronger. I thought they were all, I think they all showed.
You know how Mark is like, Mark Zuckerberg is like, I'm grilling meat.

Speaker 17 I'm shooting buffaloes. I'm finding it's that's what it was like.
I was like, you're not a man because you have to performatively man at us.

Speaker 18 There is one, though, just real quick. There's one I actually thought was good, or the singular one I thought was good, was reclassifying federal employees, making them easier to fire.

Speaker 18 I don't see any reason why federal employees shouldn't be subject to the same standards and anxiety that the private sector is.

Speaker 17 Okay, but he's using it to put loyalts in. But yes, yes, I see your point.

Speaker 18 And a return to work mandate is kind of a quiet firing. But just in terms of actual data, this notion, this trope that the right likes to circulate, that

Speaker 18 the government state, or what do you would call it, the social state? What's the term that is? Deep state.

Speaker 18 Not the deep state, the government state or the welfare state, whatever it is, that the government's too big. Government, the percentage of employees

Speaker 18 represented by government employees has toggled between 14 and 17 percent for the last 15 years. It's at 14.2 percent right now.
And the majority of those employees are state and local government.

Speaker 18 So actually, employment amongst government employees is at

Speaker 18 a bit of a low right now.

Speaker 18 So the notion that it's just our deficit and our spending has exploded because the far right and the far left come together to agree on reckless spending and deficits and interest and entitlements.

Speaker 18 But the notion somehow that the employment base has ballooned, it just isn't accurate.

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah, I know. It's just their way to attack people and try to scare them.
And that's why I don't like it. It's not done to make things better.
It's done to terrify, which is stupid.

Speaker 17 All right, let's go on a quick break. When we we come back, we discuss what is exactly going on with TikTok after Trump's late move and talk about the meme coin and other things.

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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to delay enforcing the TikTok ban for 75 days, though it's unclear if that order will hold water legally.

Speaker 17 Most people think not. This follows TikTok briefly shutting itself down in the U.S.

Speaker 17 for about 14 hours over the weekend ahead of the ban going into effect, which was just a performative piece of bullshit on behalf of the TikTok executives.

Speaker 17 As he signed the order, Trump attempted to explain the new plan where the U.S. would run TikTok as a 50-50 joint venture with its current owners.
It's inexplicable, but let's listen.

Speaker 20 The U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok.

Speaker 20 And congratulations, TikTok has a good partner. And that would be worth,

Speaker 20 you know, it could be $500 billion or something. It's crazy.
The numbers are crazy. But it's worthless if I don't, if the president doesn't sign, then it's worthless.

Speaker 20 If the president does sign, it's worth maybe a trillion dollars. So I think

Speaker 20 like a joint venture. I think we would have a joint venture with the people from TikTok.
We'll see what happens. I mean, that's one of many ideas I've had.

Speaker 17 You know, I don't mind ideas here, but this is

Speaker 17 EO is just pointless. It just is.

Speaker 17 He doesn't have very many options because there's a lot. And by the way, people like Tom Cotton and others are like, you're not going around this law, Apple.
And guess what?

Speaker 17 Right now, you cannot download TikTok and other bite dance apps on the Apple Store or the Google store. These people have good lawyers.
They understand that Trump is all blather. He can't do that.

Speaker 17 Now,

Speaker 17 he gave some

Speaker 17 assurance to, I guess, Akamai and Amazon and Oracle, but they are liable, very liable right now for billions and billions of dollars if they don't comply with the law.

Speaker 17 The only thing Trump can really do is pass a new law. That could happen, which is not going to happen.

Speaker 17 He could try to get some deal done with the Chinese. There's no reason the Chinese need to do this.
I don't care what he threatens them with.

Speaker 17 And he doesn't have many options. He just doesn't.
As a president, he doesn't have a lot of options except for following the law.

Speaker 17 He doesn't have to follow the law. You can order the Justice Department not to follow the law.
But as you can see,

Speaker 17 as I said, Scott, they'll pick the Supreme Court and the Congress over Donald Trump in this situation. And so you can't download TikTok right now.

Speaker 17 But talk about this 50-50 joint venture. I don't even understand.
The American public owns it? I don't know. Maybe give every American a share in TikTok.
That would be great.

Speaker 18 Whatever. So this isn't unusual.
The government owning a stake in what was a private company, it's happened all the time. And there's a word that describes it perfectly.
It's socialism.

Speaker 16 Communism.

Speaker 18 Socialism is the government owns the means of production, whether it's the UK government deciding it's a good idea to invest in in an innovative car company called DeLorean, whether it's Obama who fell under a lot of criticism for making low-interest loans to Solandra.

Speaker 18 This is

Speaker 18 pure socialism. This is the government picking winners and losers.

Speaker 18 And the notion that the government, we kind of one of the basic basics tenets or pillars of American capitalism that has proven to be right is the government is not good at picking winners and losers.

Speaker 18 That when we have full body contact violence in terms of competition with an operating system of rules that produces unicorns and prosperity and hopefully attacks them at a good rate and we can reinvest in our navy and seniors etc but the notion that the president could decide which companies we're going to be jvs with and which ones were not in addition this goes to a much larger point here and that is are we a serious people

Speaker 18 we had a law passed by 79 senators 350 congresspeople, one of the most bipartisan, unanimous laws of our elected representatives in recent history.

Speaker 17 They can't agree on lunch, and they agreed on this, but go ahead.

Speaker 18 Signed into law. We gave them six months to divest.
And then when it comes, you know what we do? We blink. We say, oh, wait, we're going to extend it.

Speaker 18 And by the way, on a dime's notice, TikTok, which legally has to listen to the CCP, was able to inspire, rally, and motivate tens of millions of people to talk about the TikTok ban, voice their opposition.

Speaker 18 And I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the good folks at TikTok decided to tweak the algorithm and elevate all of that content, such that 170 million Americans were all of a sudden inundated with a certain viewpoint, right?

Speaker 18 That then resulted in political pressure that resulted in presidential action. What happened on Saturday and Sunday

Speaker 18 is exactly the reason this thing needs to be banned.

Speaker 18 What is the next issue that the CCP slash TikTok can decide to inspire, rally, and motivate tens of millions of Americans to put polit to exert pressure on our elected representatives?

Speaker 18 And the notion that somehow China now,

Speaker 18 we gave them six months. Here's a law.
Our elected representatives, we passed that, and you know what they said? Hold my fucking beer. You are not a serious people.

Speaker 18 And we now think that they're going to come to the table?

Speaker 17 They're expressing interest in working with Trump. This thing's going to be done by, what they're going to do is the, I call it the Elon feint.

Speaker 17 They're going to get it into the hands of someone they like who they can manipulate or, or that there's, it's going to be fake. They're still going to be there.

Speaker 17 And it's still going to be, if, you know, the two people I trust on this whole thing, one is Tom fucking Cotton.

Speaker 17 I think he's speaking some truth about the dangers of China and manipulation of the United States.

Speaker 17 And AOC, which did a fantastic thing on, I think it was Blue Sky, where she's like, Look, I didn't see any substantive,

Speaker 17 any kind of substantive manipulation here. I'd happy to do this if they would show it to us, right? Both of them are like, this is all, we all look like fucking idiots.

Speaker 17 Both of them said the same thing. Like, you either put up or shut up.
You either follow the law or you do, if you're going to pass this law, pass another one. Like, that's what they can do.

Speaker 17 And Trump, they'll do something behind the scenes, but it will result in much less security, much less privacy when they should have gone back and done a broader law about all these companies, all of them, and have a thing in there saying foreign adversaries can't own this much of a big media property.

Speaker 17 That's all they had to do. And they wouldn't do that because they get all their bank from those,

Speaker 17 switch to photo of all those rich people, tech people on the dais. This is

Speaker 17 this is all fixed. Now, I, let me just say, one person wrote a piece, Kevin Roos wrote a piece, What if no one misses TikTok?

Speaker 17 So he was like, there isn't that much anger as you think. The only people I feel for is the creators who are making money on this platform.
And I do love entrepreneurs doing that.

Speaker 17 They can go somewhere else. You know, they'll go to YouTube or wherever they can go to do things.
And I'm sorry about that.

Speaker 18 The economics are really interesting because

Speaker 18 I have a 14-year-old son. The average 14-year-old American boy spends 17 hours a week on TikTok.

Speaker 18 So if you take out sleep, basically without TikTok, you're getting an entire day back for a 14-year-old boy.

Speaker 18 Now, unfortunately, he's not going to use that to study or play the piano or hang out with his dad.

Speaker 18 He's likely, the calculation is about 10% or 15%

Speaker 18 goes to Snap, 20% to YouTube, and 70% to Meta Platforms. So there's $23 billion kind of up in advertising revenue for grabs here.
About 15 or 13 of it would go to Facebook.

Speaker 18 10 times revenue is $130 billion. You're looking at essentially Mark Zuckerberg is about to get $20 billion wealthier personally with the banning of TikTok.

Speaker 18 But I think all of this goes to a different issue, and that is one,

Speaker 18 if a Chinese-owned or

Speaker 18 a CCP-influenced company can exert massive political pressure, I don't need to see evidence of whether or not it's a security threat.

Speaker 17 I agree. That's where I part with that.
That's like, okay. I think she was making a good point is that they voted too quickly and didn't do a broader one.

Speaker 17 That's what was really, that was was her biggest beef, is that it just was jammed through. Nobody got to really think about it and nobody did a broader one.
And I agree with her on that.

Speaker 18 The American word and American laws no longer have veracity. It's like, okay,

Speaker 18 we can buy off their politicians. We can invest, make people wealthier.
It's now a kleptocracy. And when they say something, do they mean it?

Speaker 17 I don't know. Well, they do mean it because Apple and Google are not following this thing.
That's where I look at it. These lawyers are like, no fucking way we're going to expose ourselves to this.

Speaker 17 That's, that's, to me, the fact that you can't download it says everything to me. Trump has no power here in this thing.
And he will do some jazz hands deal

Speaker 17 with his pals, but they've got to get Congress to and the Supreme Court to approve it. And I think in this case, the two other branches of government are prevailing in this case.

Speaker 17 Let's get to some very, very quick headlines because I do want to talk about that meme point. But first, President Biden's last hours,

Speaker 17 he pardoned his family members, Dr. Fauci, members of Congress who served on the January 6th Committee, General Mark Milley.
I didn't mind the last parts of those.

Speaker 17 The family members kind of really wasn't a great thing. I thought it set a terrible precedent.

Speaker 17 In a statement, Biden did say the pardon should not be mistaken as an admission of guilt, but that's exactly what it'll be mistaken as. I mean, any quick thoughts on that?

Speaker 18 It's a race to the bottom. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And that is when you're worried your family members or someone who you may not agree with their policies, but did their level best as head of the National Institute institute of health or the cdc could come under political prosecution or just by virtue of somebody doing their job it

Speaker 18 it's a race to the bottom we've become that nation now and you're just going to see uh all sorts of um

Speaker 17 i don't know uh abuse of abuse of the powers of the presidency because i don't but i don't blame him at all i don't that's exactly how i feel i was like oh god did he really have to do this this is bad you know being the being the stand-up guy hasn't worked for him.

Speaker 17 So I guess he thought, well, fuck it. And he did it right before.

Speaker 17 John Stewart was joking about it.

Speaker 17 Did he auto pardon? Because he was sitting in the room when it was announced, when it was done.

Speaker 18 No one wants to disarm unilaterally.

Speaker 17 Well, speaking of disarming, the Department of Government Efficiency's first cut ended up being... Vivek Ramaswamy.

Speaker 18 You're fired.

Speaker 17 Ramaswamy was reportedly parting ways with Doge to launch a campaign for governor of Ohio, which he's not going to win.

Speaker 18 He's not running for two years. He got fired by Elon Musk.

Speaker 17 Yeah, exactly. No, totally.
The news came just hours after Ramaswanami posted a photo with Elon on X, the caption A New Dawn.

Speaker 17 There's tons of reporting that they didn't like this guy, essentially, and Elon didn't like him. And actually, a lot of people didn't.

Speaker 17 In the meantime, moments after the swearing-in district court filings alleging Doge doesn't comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, I would agree with it. They're using Signal.

Speaker 17 They're using Signal. They should do that.
If this is so transparent and such a good thing, why don't they do it in the full light of day? What do you think of Doge now, Scott?

Speaker 17 I know you want to cut government waste, and there's been a lot of these commissions over the years, but this seems like a ridiculous circus at this point. I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 18 Doge is one of the lesser offensive things. I don't want to prehate it.
I think it's important on a regular basis. They call them different names.

Speaker 18 Every president has had his own, you know, rule on efficiency or better government. It needs to happen on a regular basis because government spending is like a, I don't know, a barnacle on a boat.

Speaker 18 They're just hard to get, hard to scrub off.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 18 they've already eliminated waste by 50% on this commission.

Speaker 18 I think it's hilarious soap opera. The idea that this guy is trying to spin the narrative that he's leaving to run for governor, you know, the word is Musk.

Speaker 17 And then the governor of Ohio gave it to another guy. He wanted to be appointed for the van seat.

Speaker 18 Well, that was for Senate. Now he's saying he's going to run for governor.

Speaker 17 I know, but he wanted that seat, apparently.

Speaker 18 Yeah, but supposedly the word is Musk and his team were like, this guy is all hat and no cattle. What's the term used? The Brian Williams term?

Speaker 17 Yes, all hat and no-cattle, yeah.

Speaker 18 You know, that he was just couldn't find a mic he didn't like, which, you know, you can imagine Musk and him fighting. Yeah.

Speaker 18 That's like Ryan O'Neill and Farah Fawcett, you know, fighting for a camera.

Speaker 18 This guy, that was a good 80s reference. That was a good 80s reference.
Anyways, I can't imagine the two of them.

Speaker 18 Musk is wealthier, more powerful, said, I don't like this guy. He's out.
This notion that he's doing it to run for governor in 24 months, he would have loved to stay in this high-profile position.

Speaker 18 That would have been the best thing he could have done in terms of name recognition. So this is not his idea.
Man down.

Speaker 17 First man down. First irritating man down.

Speaker 18 That's right. The first firing.
Actually, this is really

Speaker 18 the first firing of the Trump administration.

Speaker 17 Zivek Ramasalani. Oh my God, he's so irritating.
That couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Anyway,

Speaker 17 I don't really, it's sort of like, as you were saying, when Bannon and Musk were fighting, I'm like, I'm rooting for the bullets.

Speaker 17 Anyway,

Speaker 17 this is the most important story. I think Scott and I were both totally offended by this.
And I think it is actually a serious problem of corruption.

Speaker 17 Trump and Melania have released their own individual crypto meme coins. They're called, just so you know, meme coins, these kind of coins are called shit coins.

Speaker 17 There's a fart coin in case you're interested, and many others like it. As of Tuesday morning, the two coins were worth $8.4 billion combined.

Speaker 17 President Trump's reportedly planning an executive order to make digital assets a national priority. Well, he can, well, he promises to release $1 billion of his own coin in the next three years.

Speaker 17 This is just - they don't have to stay at the Trump Hotel anymore. They can just bring the receipts for buying his shit coin, essentially.
This is really bad.

Speaker 18 Staying at the Trump Hotel or playing golf there where he saw the ledger of golf officials buying stock in Donald Trump media, that was all checkers compared to this, Jess, because with Donald Trump Media, he has to file with the SEC a public document saying I'm selling shares, the price would crash.

Speaker 18 Now,

Speaker 18 the following conversation, I would speculate, will or already has happened. And that is, President Trump, congratulations on your enormous victory.
It's your good buddy buddy Vlad.

Speaker 18 And guess what we're thinking of doing? The treasury here in Russia is thinking of investing $600 billion for a variety of reasons in cryptocurrencies, specifically the Trump coin.

Speaker 18 And my economists, wouldn't you know it, have calculated that based on the small float of a half a billion dollars, when we pulse in 600 billion rubles or $10 billion, that's going to take the market cap of this thing easily to $50 or $60 billion.

Speaker 18 And should you decide to sell 20% of your stake overnight, what do you know? And I just bring this up. You'll become one of the five wealthiest men in America.
And in unrelated news.

Speaker 17 And you don't have to say.

Speaker 18 And nobody will know. And in unrelated news, President Trump, we would like you to seize arms shipments to Ukraine.
I mean, this is just so.

Speaker 17 This is bribery, writ large.

Speaker 18 They have created, it's kind of a bond.

Speaker 17 This is what they thought Bitcoin would be used for. Bribery, corruption, pornography.
That's a great point.

Speaker 17 I'll tell you, a lot of crypto people are like horrified because they kind of, they were like, great, we're finally getting our legs under us around some really important, you know, legislation and regulation.

Speaker 18 What if you can't get

Speaker 18 two or three Republican senators on board for a federal ban of abortion? And he just calls them and says, hey, on the down low, you're old, you're leaving. I can give you $10 million

Speaker 18 in crypto to your fund or to another account you name, and no one will ever know. No one will ever know.
Oh,

Speaker 18 Taiwan or China, you're about to invade Taiwan.

Speaker 18 We don't need to do it covertly. Just call them.
Oh, Sudan, the largest argument of humanitarian disaster globally right now. More people are dying in Sudan every day than in Ukraine.

Speaker 18 What if he just calls both of them and says, it's eBay for geopolitics. Whoever buys more Trump coin gets U.S.
intelligence and some of our heavy armaments and Smelania.

Speaker 17 It's called Smelania.

Speaker 18 And nobody has to know. Nobody, I can sell it.
I can buy it. Buyers and sellers.
Totally opaque. This is

Speaker 18 America, America is more from a platform that used to be about prosperity and making money. I think that's wonderful, such that we can tax these people and again, invest in the middle class.

Speaker 18 That's important to have that ambition. It's important to make money.
It's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 18 But we also were a platform for civil rights, for rule of law, for electing a group of people that had laws, that recognized conflicts of interest such that they could think with some level of patriotism about preventing a tragedy at the comes long term and do what was right for all Americans.

Speaker 18 And then we could project those values overseas and try and advance women's rights, try and advance democracy, try and do away with honor killings and do away with child marriage and child.

Speaker 18 We could project our now all of that has been crowded into a tiny little box and America is essentially becoming a platform for how do you make the jump to light speed. And it's a hunger games.

Speaker 18 And if you make money, you have a remarkable life and you get to sit up front with your hot wife but everybody else unless you have money sorry folks yeah you're not even you're not on stage this really has gone and they run media they run all everything they have a lot the meme coin his coin is literally the democratization of kleptocracy this is the thing people must pay attention to and do as much reporting on as possible is this bribery system that they've put into place and it's again

Speaker 17 we don't even know we don't even know we don't even know we don't even know and of course they've now captured the irs so there's not going to be any any investigation by the SEC.

Speaker 17 They've captured the SEC. There's no way to, it's up to reporters who they're putting the pressure on to be silence, right? A lot of people are definitely pulling back.

Speaker 17 I mean, a lot of the coverage was like, look at the pageantry of normalcy of power. Like they, they didn't mention Felon once.
They didn't mention the insurrection.

Speaker 17 They did mention the insurrection several times. Isn't it ironic? This is where

Speaker 17 the insurrection happened and they're sitting there, right? They're all sitting there as if nothing happened. They did mention that.
But for the most part, everyone's going to be pulling back.

Speaker 17 They are. They're absolutely going to be pulling back and you're not going to see it.
And that is what Russia is. Russia is a broken, hollowed out

Speaker 17 state full of people, haves and have-nots, of really making nothing, no innovation. And instead,

Speaker 17 just that tableau of the tech people up there should tell you every single thing you need to know about this particular, what's about to happen. Hopefully, there'll be pushback.

Speaker 17 I don't, we'll talk about that in another in the next episode. Like, what is the actual pushback? What is the way to control it?

Speaker 17 Because they do have their hands on the AI, they have their hands on crypto, they've got their hands on by the way.

Speaker 18 They revoked that executive order. That was one of the executive orders they undid.

Speaker 17 They did, yeah, Biden's AI, Biden's AI, which was quite a good, fair one, I thought. Um, they just don't want any business.
I, I would, um,

Speaker 17 this crypto thing is really bad. It's like, just, it's just, as you said, Scott, democratized corruption.

Speaker 17 All right, 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. I think I'll go first.

Speaker 17 Sure.

Speaker 17 Yesterday, someone who I really had a high regard for, Cecile Richards, who I recently interviewed in June, died of brain cancer. She had suffered from it.
She used to be run Planned Parenthood.

Speaker 17 She did an amazing job. She's the daughter of Anne Richards, who was the legendary Texas governor.

Speaker 17 Just an amazing woman, just devoted to public service, devoted to helping women, very articulate, moved Planned Parenthood forward, you know, in terms of health care.

Speaker 17 Everyone always focuses on the abortion part of it, but it was a, it's a very very important health care system for a lot of people.

Speaker 17 Just a tireless fighter and a decent person.

Speaker 17 Never was,

Speaker 17 I know the left has a reputation of being scoldy or anything like that. She just was dignified.
She fought. She was strong.

Speaker 17 The fact that she died on this day, let's remind you, it's MLK's day too.

Speaker 17 And it is his day, period, not just two,

Speaker 17 was really sad. And she was an inspiring figure to me and many other people.

Speaker 17 And so her life was a win.

Speaker 17 I would contrast that to the demented interview that Andreessen did with the New York Times, where he all manner of inaccuracies, but mostly a poor broken man who had who had something happen to him in his childhood, which is unclear, just is taking it out on the rest of us.

Speaker 17 What a ridiculous victim mentality he has. It's so sad.
And please read it because you can see the problems I've had with him over the many years. It's never his fault.

Speaker 17 It's always someone else's fault. Someone's getting in his way.

Speaker 17 And he has to use inaccurate historical and other references to make his points. And just

Speaker 17 comparing

Speaker 17 the two of them, I just couldn't think of a bigger contrast.

Speaker 17 Someone who is dignified and a real contributor to society and this guy, who certainly has contributed, but just

Speaker 17 can't bring everybody else with him in the journey of

Speaker 17 his life.

Speaker 18 There you go.

Speaker 18 My win is, I just think you got to give it to the guy. I think this is my win is Trump.
I think his

Speaker 18 just trying to call balls and strikes, I think this is arguably the most iconic, remarkable political comeback in history.

Speaker 18 And I hate to acknowledge it, but the guy left under the cloud of an insurrection. And since then, he's been a convicted felon, and yet he managed to exploit weaknesses.

Speaker 18 And there were many in the Democratic Party who were seen as totally out of touch with real world issues that affected Americans. And he legitimately won the presidency back.

Speaker 18 I don't, I think it's bad for America. I did not vote for the man, but I just think you got to give them their due.
I think they ran a masterful campaign.

Speaker 18 And to say we'd be sitting here four years after this mob invaded the Capitol, I just, I think it's remarkable. It's the most remarkable political comeback in history.

Speaker 18 And so that's my sort of, I don't know, awkward or uncomfortable win.

Speaker 18 My fail is, again,

Speaker 18 we are not a serious people. We're in the World Health Organization, we're out.
We're in the Iran nuclear deal, we're out. We're in the Paris Accords, we're out, we're in, we're out again.

Speaker 18 We're banning TikTok, bipartisan legislation, signed into law. Oh, just kidding, we want to do a deal.
Our ability

Speaker 18 for our enemies and our allies to take us seriously around anything has been so dramatically diminished. No, you can,

Speaker 18 if you do do this, if you don't cooperate with our enemies, we have your back. Do they take us seriously when we say that? No,

Speaker 18 you can turn over information to protect American service people if you give us information on the Taliban's movements, and we will make sure that you are safe and we get you out.

Speaker 18 Will they take us seriously now? No, you should not invade Taiwan. We will reciprocate.
We will defend. Taiwan is an ally and we will defend them.
Do they take us seriously at our word?

Speaker 18 We are not a serious people. And the lack,

Speaker 18 the back and forth, the lack of consistency, the lack of respect and regard for established treaties, presidents of the previous president

Speaker 18 is hurting us. We are no longer a nation.
We're a platform for making money and dividing the spoils amongst an increasingly few number of people, such that they can take their third wife.

Speaker 18 or second wife or whatever it is to the to the inauguration and whoever's richest gets to sit at the front as as Melania, as First Lady Melania, asked for someone to give tribute in her.

Speaker 18 This is, we have fallen so far so fast.

Speaker 18 And I'm also, quite frankly, a lot of blame resides with traditional Democrats

Speaker 18 for providing just an opening here for being this, in my opinion, out of touch with

Speaker 18 regular Americans' real issues.

Speaker 18 Anyways,

Speaker 18 my fail is that we are so inconsistent around our policies, even our laws we don't want to enforce, and we are blinking left and right. We are not a serious people.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think there has to be a different kind of political leader among the Democrats that is really either just, I don't know, because then you do the tit-for-tat thing.

Speaker 17 You do what Biden did with the pardons. You lower yourself and race to the bottom.
You have to kind of lower yourself.

Speaker 17 You have to, it does have like, speaking of Roman salutes, it has an end of Roman Empire vibe to it. It definitely does.
Never been more powerful, never been more

Speaker 17 prosperous overall. Not for everybody.

Speaker 18 Karl Marx, capitalism collapsing on itself.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's really, it's a disappointment because we have so much.

Speaker 17 But the panoply of those tech people, I cannot believe, that's what I can't believe, having covered these people, you know, and I wrote in 2016 that they were sheeple. Boy, are they sheeple?

Speaker 17 Boy, was that a good call.

Speaker 18 But let's be let's be even handed her. Are you really disappointed in Tim Cook?

Speaker 17 Aren't you

Speaker 17 disappointed in Tim Cook? Absolutely. I know why he did it.
I get it. I get it.
But he, you know, he didn't, Sachindella wasn't there. He didn't have to be there.
Maybe he did. Maybe he did.

Speaker 17 Maybe I, there's all kinds of behind the scenes things happening that I don't know, that we're not privy to.

Speaker 17 I'd like it to be in front of the scenes. I'd like an explanation.

Speaker 17 I think it's probably just a shareholder

Speaker 17 thing. Sam Altman was there.
There were lots of people there that didn't want to be there. That's for sure.

Speaker 17 And I told you, I got a text from someone saying, I hate myself more than I think you hate me right now for being being here. And I was like, I doubt it.
I doubt it.

Speaker 17 I see why you are, but doesn't mean I hate you less than you hate yourself. But I mean, there is a point where you have to say, and not be.

Speaker 17 The thing that the Democrats do is they do this sort of huffy indignance about it. How dare they? You know, this kind of stuff.
Just like, don't show up like Michelle Obama. That's what you do.

Speaker 17 Like, like Mother Pence didn't show up too, by the way. I bet they were like throwing back shots like at a bar together.
Like, fuck that guy.

Speaker 17 You have to create a whole new narrative and story about America for people that gives them hope and gives them, makes them feel like it's fair and not that panoply of bullshit with those people.

Speaker 17 Like, and they, you know, they looked good, but it did look like the hunger game, Scott. I think you're right.

Speaker 18 100%.

Speaker 17 Anyway, on the other hand, Darren Sam says we need you.

Speaker 18 We need you.

Speaker 17 I would rather her be president. Like, I don't know.
She's very good. She's smart.
She's a president. She is smart.
I've met her. She's smart.

Speaker 17 I think she could do a lot more with her intelligence.

Speaker 18 I don't know. I think she's doing pretty well.

Speaker 17 All right. Whatever.
Okay.

Speaker 18 I don't know. I think she's doing pretty well.

Speaker 17 She's an adjacent, brilliant person, but she should be in the center of things. Like, more Mackenzie Bezos.
I'm sorry. Sorry, Lauren.

Speaker 17 I think she's running circles around you in the end.

Speaker 17 And historically, she's going to run circles around you.

Speaker 17 We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.
Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Speaker 17 By the way, if you want to see more Lauren Sanchez, go check out her threads, Scott. She really put them up.
She put up a lot of photos you might like of herself. Oh, yeah.
I'll send them to you.

Speaker 18 That's all I need is Kara Swisher sending me nude photos.

Speaker 17 It's not, well, it's almost nude, but it's go, just go watch it. It's very performative.

Speaker 17 I'm going to keep my words to myself. It's unusual to look at.
But she does it all the time. Anyway, good for you.
Good for you, Lauren, if you want to do that.

Speaker 18 I'm in favor of that. I'm going to send her a Trump coin.

Speaker 17 Okay, all right. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott Universe, I recently spoke with Yonder CEO, Graham Degoni, for On with Kara Swisher.
You'll like this, Scott.

Speaker 17 Yonder is the company behind those patches getting used at concerts and in schools to lock away phones. It's a physical manifestation of the problem we have with these things.

Speaker 17 I really like this product, and this guy... was fantastic.
Graham explained to me why it's so important for kids to be separated from their phones in schools.

Speaker 34 What's really important for young people in education, I think, is mostly developing critical thinking faculties. Absolutely.

Speaker 34 And so when you think about the type of assignments they're getting, the tools at their disposal, I think the risk is that young kids are becoming information retrieval machines, and that's not critical thinking.

Speaker 34 And no matter where we think we're going as a society,

Speaker 16 information retrieval systems.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 34 Without that,

Speaker 34 we're not going anywhere fast. And that's not necessarily a native faculty.
It's a muscle that has to be flexed.

Speaker 17 Anyway, so great. He was so interesting.
I thought you would like him a lot, Scott. I kept thinking of you throughout the show.

Speaker 17 In any case, Yonder, Jonathan Haight loves Yonder, for example. You have to really just get these things out of your hands because they're so addictive.
They're addiction machines.

Speaker 17 And so I kind of love this business. It's pretty simple.
And he's doing a bunch of other things around getting your phones out of your hands for just a short time of the day at least.

Speaker 17 Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more.
Would you please read us out?

Speaker 18 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoy Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Entertod engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Ms.

Speaker 5 Severio, and Dan Shulon.

Speaker 18 Nishak Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 18 You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

Speaker 22 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great week.

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