TikTok's Future, Big Tech at Trump's Inauguration, and Biden's Final Warning

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Speaker 17 I wait for the day where you're going to say something to me that I'm going to have to break up with you. I really don't want that to happen.

Speaker 17 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher, and it's inauguration weekend. I'm so excited I'm leaving town.

Speaker 15 The inauguration, ton of pornography, a lot of drinking, pironi, Xanax, 80s music, aerial firefighters. Just hang with me.

Speaker 15 Someone asked me they were worried about me because I got so triggered at the election. They said, you all write about the inauguration.
I'm like, well, am I all right?

Speaker 15 I feel like Vin Rames after he was ass raped in pulp fiction. Yeah, I'm pretty fucking far from all right.
And I just,

Speaker 15 the Democrats, in an attempt to be somewhat civil and, you know,

Speaker 15 like they're back at their Princeton review,

Speaker 17 I'm, I'm done. I'm not, I'm not going to be elegant or graceful about this.
We're not being,

Speaker 15 I refuse to normalize this shit.

Speaker 17 I just, yeah, let's refuse. I'm with you, Scott Galloway.
I say, someone's like, we have to now get along. I'm like, do we? Do we? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Just like they did.
Yes, I agree with you, Scott.

Speaker 17 I'm on board. Someone told me, you know, you have to get along.
I'm like, do I? I don't do that in my regular life.

Speaker 17 I'm not, I feel like I'm going to just stick to my consistent state of being irritated.

Speaker 15 I'm going to be more partisan, more pornographic. So for those of you who don't know, and this is a part of the program where we pat ourselves on the back, Karen and I's.

Speaker 15 relationship ordeal ends with Vox soon and we're hoping to renew.

Speaker 15 We love Vox, but we're out there talking to people, and literally every media company in the world wants Kara Swisher and is willing to put up with Scott Gowell as sort of the tariff, if you will, for getting Kara Swisher on board.

Speaker 17 Oh, I like that.

Speaker 15 And as a means of weeding out, I'm going to just become so fucking pornographic and vulgar, and we're going to see who really wants to.

Speaker 17 Who really, really wants to do it?

Speaker 17 I do not mind the pornography. You know where I'm going? By the way, away for the weekend, Miami.
Your favorite. Oh,

Speaker 15 I can tell you where to go. Stay at the Faena.
Go have

Speaker 15 dinner at Sparrow Italia. Okay, I'll.
You're staying at the Lowe's?

Speaker 17 Just don't even. I'm not going to explain.
Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 17 I have children with me. I have children.
Faena is not a children hotel.

Speaker 15 Lowe's is a guy looking to meet a pro at the bar who's on, who's with the National Cotton Growers Association.

Speaker 17 That's what I'm aiming for.

Speaker 15 That literally, if you wanted to find the one hotel that feels like you're at the Days Inn in Detroit or a corporate hotel, you found it in South Beach.

Speaker 15 Stay with me. If you're looking for kids,

Speaker 17 I'm serious about this.

Speaker 15 I need to do an intervention. Stay at the edition.
That's a little bit more family-friendly.

Speaker 17 I like the addition. Yeah.

Speaker 15 You know, they have that beanbag throwing thing, and there's enough kids there that the adults can't get too angry. The find is a little too adult.

Speaker 17 They're too adult. That's, I agree.
Stay at the edition. Okay.
All right. I will do that.
In any case, I'm excited to go there because the weather is going to be beautiful.

Speaker 17 And down here in Washington, it's going to be like in the teens.

Speaker 15 Yeah, there's a polar vortex.

Speaker 17 polar vortex, and it's called Donald Trump.

Speaker 17 Yeah, so they're going to show up here. There's all these pressures.
You know, they're having a party. Uber and X are having a party along with some other people.

Speaker 17 But that, and I wrote Dara Costa Shahi, I'm like, are you at a competition to be the least deplorable?

Speaker 17 He laughed. He's like, you should come.
I'm like, I would rather poke my out with a dry stick.

Speaker 15 I got invited to a party, an AI party at the inauguration where they said that

Speaker 15 Musk and Sachs will be there. And I thought, some intern fucked up the guest list.
How did I get on this thing? I know.

Speaker 17 How did you? They kind of like you. They're just going to try to draw you away from me.
That's what they try to do.

Speaker 15 Well, they, you know, what they see? They see, they see, I'm like, I'm like a Jehovah, you know, they knock on the door and I'm a Jehovah's Witness.

Speaker 15 And they like, see, like, he seemed like a really unhappy and vulnerable. Yeah.
I think we should stop by tomorrow. I think all these guys think there's a chance.
They think that

Speaker 15 I haven't taken the red pill yet, but they think it's in my medicine cabinet. Yes.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 15 You're a little worried I'm going to lose it.

Speaker 17 To the day where you're going to say something to me that I'm going to have to break up with you. I really don't want that to happen.

Speaker 17 But then you come back and you say thing, I'm going to be pornographic. I'm not going to be, I'm going to be partisan.
And then I love you again.

Speaker 17 Anyway, so anyway, we're both not going to be here for the inauguration, but good. You know, it's my favorite part.

Speaker 17 So they have a lot of the ex-presidents are coming, but Michelle Obama is like, peace the fuck out. She like, she's not coming and she's not explaining why.
That's my two favorite part of her.

Speaker 17 She's not, I love that she's not explaining why. She's like, I'm not coming.
That's all.

Speaker 15 Because it sounds like the shittiest party that you don't want to have, that you don't want to go to. Yeah.
I don't know.

Speaker 17 None of the presidents are going to the lunch. Clinton, Obama, and Bush are not going to the afterward lunch that they're supposed to go to.
They all pieced out of that.

Speaker 17 They're going to the show, but then they're not going to the lunch.

Speaker 15 I think there is a. I'm going to try and bring this back to a life lesson.

Speaker 15 One of my mentors, this guy named Barry Rosenstein from Janet Partners, said one of the really nice things about having economic security, he said life is three buckets.

Speaker 15 There's things you want to do, right? You want to hang out with your kids, you want to go to see Cole Palmer play for Chelsea, whatever it is. There's things you want to do.

Speaker 15 There's things you have to do, right? If Bancoff, the CEO of Ox, is in town and says, I really want to meet with you guys, we kind of have to do that, right? I mean, that's more launching have to do.

Speaker 17 Yes, sure.

Speaker 15 Well, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 17 It's not like that, though, but okay, yeah. Go ahead.

Speaker 15 Yeah, but if, okay, what? I don't know. I don't know.
If

Speaker 15 there's just things

Speaker 15 your mother-in-law is not doing well and you need to go visit her. You have to do that, right?

Speaker 15 Anyways, and then there's things you should do. And building your career is about things you should do.
You should go to this event because who knows, you might get a client.

Speaker 15 You should go to the bot mitzvah of your coworker's daughter, whatever it might be. He said, the thing about economic security.
is you can eliminate should.

Speaker 15 He said, now I just do things I have to do or I want to do. And it was really kind of an unlock for me.

Speaker 15 And the thing that's so disappointing about these guys and what is obviously a kleptocracy where one of them, I just don't think any of these people want to go. None of them have to.

Speaker 15 They're all worth $100 billion.

Speaker 17 I'm going to update you on that, but go ahead, keep going.

Speaker 15 They've forgotten what is the point of supposedly being economically secure in a democratic society that supposedly has some rule of law where the DOJ won't be weaponized against you or the FDC.

Speaker 15 And that is, none of these people want want to be there. I just don't, I don't think any of them want to sit out in 15-degree heat and watch cold.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and watch and watch basically all of them, you know, slowly bend the knee

Speaker 15 to the new audit.

Speaker 17 And he's also sitting them next to each other. This, remember when I wrote that piece calling them sheeple in 2016, where I, where they all.

Speaker 15 That must be the one article I haven't read that you wrote.

Speaker 17 And anyway, I wrote a piece that was rather, because I broke the news, they were all going to Trump Tower and they did the sheeple dance. And they're doing it even worse this time.

Speaker 17 So, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. And let me say, and they don't like each other.

Speaker 17 They'll pretend to, but I don't care what they tell you, they do not have to sit next to each other on display. I don't know if, which is what Trump is doing.

Speaker 17 He's putting them like they're China dolls on his shelf. Tim Cook is going.
TikTok CEO, Shao Chu, is going.

Speaker 17 Sundar Pichai is going. Interestingly, Sachinadella is not going, though.
He did meet with them, and then Elon had to do a drop-in.

Speaker 17 He is not going, which to me is interesting. I think Sam Altman is going.

Speaker 17 Mark Zuckerberg is co-hosting

Speaker 17 a reception with billionaire Republican donors on Monday evening, including Miriam Adelson.

Speaker 17 So I just, this is that, they're like being moved around like

Speaker 17 like dolls or something like that. It's really, I find it, I don't know why you would be that rich and be pushed around like that.

Speaker 17 I just, I'm rich enough not, I mean, I have enough money where I'm like, fuck you, right? Entirely right.

Speaker 15 And to, from a shareholder's perspective, these guys can't break out of the cycle of shareholder value. And to a certain extent, the reason they're CEOs is

Speaker 15 they're supposed to be fiduciaries or shareholder value. And the greatest, I got to admit it, the greatest return on investment.

Speaker 15 for a $3 trillion company right now or OpenAI is to give the inaugural committee a million dollars and say he's handsome and show up at his event and be polite.

Speaker 15 You're showing up at your boss's daughter's wedding and putting money in an envelope. I like the way you describe it, like a mob wedding.
And I hate to say it from a shareholder standpoint.

Speaker 15 It's the smart thing to do.

Speaker 15 And this is the problem with a kleptocracy or an autocracy, and that is the incentives through the campaign where if I shitpost Democrats and Vice President Harris, I know that if she wins, she's not going to come after me.

Speaker 15 I don't know that with this guy. So it creates incentive opinion, rhetoric,

Speaker 15 false compliments that are, you know, essentially kind of feel very much kind of Russia-like. Oh, I love Mr.
Putin. He's so handsome and he's so great.

Speaker 17 I have talked to several of them off the record who are going and they really don't want to go. Let me just say, I mean, I suspect Zuckerberg, Musk, and Bezos do.

Speaker 17 Okay, that those are going to be the three that are going to sit together in the thing. And I suspect Tim will kind of be along the edges, putting his eyes down quite a bit.

Speaker 17 Same thing with Sundar and Sam. That would be my guess.
And the rest of them. And it's interesting, I haven't heard a ton of like Bob Iger.

Speaker 17 Bob Iger is busy dealing with the fires and because he's got a lot of employees who are homeless right now because they have most of their operations in that area.

Speaker 17 But I haven't heard a lot of high-profile other CEOs. I don't know if Jamie Dimon's going.

Speaker 15 Oh, Carrot, they're the only CEOs.

Speaker 15 The only people who matter are going. I mean, these people control the media.
Right. They have companies.
Oh, you know what's interesting? I don't know. Is Jensen Huang going from NVIDIA?

Speaker 17 I don't know. I'll find out.
I'll find out.

Speaker 15 I would be really interested to know if he's going.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Knowing him, I don't think you care compared to, I mean, he's probably worried he's going to be deported because he didn't born here, right?

Speaker 17 Yeah, I don't, I don't, I think he was born in Taiwan.

Speaker 15 I'm not sure. He went to, I believe, he went to Oregon State and then to Stanford.

Speaker 17 Well, let me let's see. Sundar was born in India.

Speaker 15 Sit him next to Bannon.

Speaker 17 Next to Bannon. Bannon, is he going to be there? Because he's been going.
I mean, what I would do if I were Trump.

Speaker 17 Musk and Bannon. I'd make them sit next to each other.

Speaker 15 Celebrity dance.

Speaker 17 And I'd make them kiss. Like, like, you know, like you're on, like, you're on.

Speaker 15 The Prince of Dorn in the Mountain.

Speaker 17 Yes, right. You must kiss now.

Speaker 17 You must dance together.

Speaker 17 One jig.

Speaker 17 See, that's what I, nobody knows how to be rich and evil.

Speaker 15 Speaking of being rich and evil, waiting for the inauguration right now. Yeah.
It feels like James Bond and Goldfinger waiting for the laser to cut your dick off. Oh, no.

Speaker 15 You know, coming up the thing.

Speaker 15 By the way, that was a joke from, I think that was Jimmy Kimmel. Is that Jimmy Kimmel? No, Stephen Colbert.
I need to credit the comedians I steal from.

Speaker 17 Anyway,

Speaker 17 interesting, meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Ab, new President Joe Biden delivered a stark warning in his farewell speech on Wednesday about the dangers of tech titans with unchecked power.

Speaker 17 Shall we listen?

Speaker 15 Today,

Speaker 19 an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.

Speaker 19 We see the consequences all across America. And we've seen it before.

Speaker 17 So Biden mentioned the tech industrial complex. You're welcome, Biden.
I say that all the time.

Speaker 17 Taking a page from Dwight Eisenhower's military industrial complex, he also said, quote, the truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.

Speaker 17 I, you know, they, of course, made fun of him that he's whining. I kind of liked it.
I like that Joe's going down fighting. I like that.
I like the whole thing. What did you think?

Speaker 15 American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense.

Speaker 15 We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

Speaker 15 The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. This was Eisenhower

Speaker 15 warning about the military-industrial complex, and it was a very precious speech.

Speaker 17 Keep that in mind.

Speaker 15 Yeah, this was a guy who was not afraid of war, was a big supporter of the military, and he saw the emergence

Speaker 15 or the conflation of private interest and national interest to create a permanent military-industrial complex. And there's no doubt about it.

Speaker 15 Biden speechwriters looked at this speech, and I loved this speech.

Speaker 17 I think this is,

Speaker 15 and unfortunately, no one gives a shit because Musk is going to show up at a fire station and dominate the media, or they're going to talk about Vivek Ramaswani taking the J.D. Vince Senate seat.

Speaker 15 I mean, I got to give it to them between

Speaker 15 X and social media, they have basically just squeezed out. I mean,

Speaker 15 is Biden still president?

Speaker 17 You wouldn't know.

Speaker 15 This was an important speech. It's actually,

Speaker 15 in some ways, I think it's his most prescient speech. It's a warning about the aggregation and the concentration of power around an industry.

Speaker 15 And no one gives a shit.

Speaker 17 No, they do give a shit. Here's why.
I was thinking about the Jack Smith thing getting released,

Speaker 17 the files and some of this other stuff. And everyone's like, well, it's over.
I'm like, you know what? Historically, it's not. We have to think long term.
Eventually, this will have importance.

Speaker 17 I don't know what happened when Eisenhower gave this speech. We weren't there, and obviously we don't know.
But I feel like it's important for history to have this on the record.

Speaker 17 It's important for this report not to be suppressed. It's important for Biden to say those things.
And I do, you have to sort of get a bigger, more historical thing and how it's going to go down.

Speaker 15 What do you think Biden's legacy will be in 10, 20, 50 years?

Speaker 17 Well, I think it'll be tarnished by the fact that ran again when he said he wasn't going to.

Speaker 17 I think that's hard. In 10 years, I think, you know, he's leaving behind a really strong economy.
He's done a lot of great things. I think probably good.

Speaker 17 I think eventually good, except depends on what Trump does, right? If Trump creates, you know, a dystopian future, it'll be bad. If he doesn't, maybe

Speaker 17 better, I guess. I think in the long run, better, if everything, if we move along from Trumpism.

Speaker 17 Just depends. I don't know.
But getting it down for history is critically important, even if it doesn't matter. That's my feeling.
I mean, remember that at long last, have you no shame?

Speaker 17 At the time, I think that was smothered out. And now it is when it was during the Army McCarthy hearings to Joe McCarthy.
That wasn't when he went down, by the way. It was much later.

Speaker 17 And so I just feel like it's to say it is important.

Speaker 17 Often people say that sometimes when I say things, they're like, why are you doing it? And I said, I'm not doing it for today. Like, I'm not,

Speaker 17 it must be said. I think.
And I think Biden deserves much credit. Speaking of things that I talk too much about, over 400 employees at the Washington Post sent a letter to Jeff Bezos.

Speaker 17 This is interesting. 400 employees.

Speaker 17 The letter expresses concern about the future of the paper, including, quote, recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of the institution.

Speaker 17 It makes a point to note that the concerns are unrelated to Bezos' decision to end endorsements of presidential candidates.

Speaker 17 I'm just pointing it out. You don't have to say anything.
I think 400 employees doing that is interesting. I didn't make them.

Speaker 15 So maybe they could, if they really got serious, maybe maybe they could do a lunch walkout

Speaker 15 look folks as somebody okay all right all right i've i haven't run big companies i've run medium-sized companies don't send me letters just quit just just just go to work for the new york times

Speaker 15 okay all the all the peacocking and posturing and complaining and whining uh you know what i said to my ex-wife yeah i understand let's get divorced i mean

Speaker 17 that was harsh lovely woman lovely woman all right Anyways,

Speaker 15 I'm kind of done with employees bitching and moaning, and it's a free labor market.

Speaker 15 The reporters of the post are some of the most talented journalists in the world. Okay.

Speaker 15 Jeff Bezos isn't going to... You want to talk about things he should do and he won't? You really think this is going to move the needle?

Speaker 17 I get it. I get it.
I'm going to interject here because when I worked there, bitching and moaning during

Speaker 17 a very early Me Too thing made a difference. Initially, they ignored the reporters and they pushed it and pushed it internally and it worked.

Speaker 17 It can work

Speaker 17 at certain times.

Speaker 15 I think that's the mother of all false analogies.

Speaker 17 Well, why? It can work to speak.

Speaker 15 Sexual harassment and suppressing the rights of women and

Speaker 17 that's just a whole

Speaker 17 warning. Cartoons? Yeah.
One time the post cut cartoons. They took out cartoons and it so angered the readers that they put pictures around the post.
That worked. They put it back.

Speaker 17 I'm just saying it's okay to speak.

Speaker 15 We didn't talk. Let's bring this back to me.
You want to buy newspapers?

Speaker 17 Just said I bought. What? What did you buy?

Speaker 15 I bought a football team in Columbia.

Speaker 17 What? Are you part of that group? Yeah.

Speaker 17 Explain for the people. Are you Ryan Reynolds adjacent?

Speaker 15 Yeah, not even. Not even.

Speaker 15 I'm like at the very bottom of the article. And they say, also joining the investor group as podcaster and author.
Yeah, I'm my midlife meat crisis, Kara. I am part of a group.

Speaker 17 Explain the team. I don't have any interest, but go ahead.

Speaker 15 It's the second largest team in Bogota Laya Quidad.

Speaker 17 Second largest.

Speaker 15 It's the second largest team in Bogota. Bogota.
I got to say that correctly.

Speaker 17 Bogota.

Speaker 15 This really. Bogota.
This really smart kid who scans the world for teams and investments approached me and said, we're putting together an investor group.

Speaker 15 And I really like this kid named Rob McElhaney. He's Ryan's partner in Wrexham, and he does this fantastic show called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
and the two of them

Speaker 17 a friend of mine from apollo ava longoria we've anyways we've bought this team do they know who you are do you get to hang with them do we get any perks for this situation well i it's cost me a lot of money i hope so no but do they know who you are are you just

Speaker 17 like the people you just spoke of right

Speaker 15 no but rob does i think rob got me into the deal and also the the guys who do the deal i the honest answer is i don't know how i got into this why did you get in the deal may i ask what what why Like, of all the people.

Speaker 15 Because I fear death and refuse to acknowledge that.

Speaker 20 How did they get to you? It's like.

Speaker 17 How did they get to me?

Speaker 17 You scan the world and you go, ah, Prof Galloway.

Speaker 15 As a Keraswitch. Well, no, no.

Speaker 15 I don't know if you listen to this or other podcasts. I'm super into.

Speaker 17 You can talk about it.

Speaker 15 I'm super into football. Yeah.
And I wanted to buy the Glasgow Rangers, but I couldn't figure that out. And so this, I'm excited to spend more time in Columbia.
So are we going there?

Speaker 17 Are we flying?

Speaker 15 Oh, we're going there a lot.

Speaker 17 Are you kidding?

Speaker 17 Are you going to scramble can i come with you yeah or at least your boys can come with me anyway so good okay all right well that's kind of glamorous team owner from now on i want you to call me team owner okay i'm gonna wait a fourth fifth wife start making ridiculously uh uh like stupid bigoted racist statements and have the league freak out oh all right yeah i can't wait i love that you're the like the the other guy the the other guy in the investment group i like that at the bottom of the press release i like that it's hilarious if you read if you do read the articles i'm literally the last sense.

Speaker 15 They said, also joining the investor group.

Speaker 17 You're like, crawl, you're at the hang at the bottom rung, hanging on. Ryan Reynolds' ass is way up there along with the leave.

Speaker 15 I'm Sophia Coppola at the Academy Awards. I'm like, I'm here.

Speaker 17 She made some movies. She's made some very excellent movies.
Anyway,

Speaker 17 I'm congratulations, Scott. I think that's great.
I think that's great.

Speaker 17 I'm not going to be buying a team in any case.

Speaker 17 Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including last-minute plans to save TikTok, big deal, and the heated confirmation hearings for Trump's cabinet nominees.

Speaker 17 Okay, so then let's let's get to our first big story.

Speaker 17 As we take Thursday morning, we're still waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on the TikTok ban. TikTok, Supreme Court.
I mean, it's January 19th, is when it runs out, which is Sunday.

Speaker 17 But a lot of TikTok news is happening since our last episode. First up as usual, I was right.

Speaker 17 Chinese officials are reportedly internally discussing an option of selling TikTok to Elon Musk, though TikTok has called the reports pure fiction, as if they'd know.

Speaker 17 Of course, they would like Elon to have it.

Speaker 17 He's a Jason. He's got a lot of business interests there.
TikTok also has a lot of advocates in its corner.

Speaker 17 President-elect Donald Trump is considering executive order to save TikTok once he's in office, although someone likened it to a press release with

Speaker 17 better stationery because it doesn't have the force of law.

Speaker 17 Because five years from now, if Trump's not there, a Democratic president or someone else could hold Apple and Google liable, just so you know.

Speaker 17 So I think they're going to follow the law and not Donald Trump. I think you're right.
I think I got that.

Speaker 17 Enforce it. Senators Ed Markey, Ron Wyden, and Corey Booker, Booker, along with Representative Rokana, our friend Rokana, have announced legislation to extend the TikTok ban deadline.

Speaker 17 It already has a 90-day thing that the president can put in place if there's efforts underway, but there are not efforts underway.

Speaker 17 And President Biden's administration is considering, who would push this thing, is considering ways to keep TikTok available in the U.S. if the ban goes into effect.

Speaker 17 TikTok has said it might close down Sunday.

Speaker 17 There's a number of things that could happen, but I suspect if the Supreme Court says it's legal,

Speaker 17 Apple and Google will shut it down or they'll shut themselves down.

Speaker 17 Talk a little about the backtracking and what I know what this is about. The delay is interesting to me.

Speaker 17 Maybe there's a little bit of, or maybe they all want to write their own this because this is such a big and it is a big and important decision. Tell me what you think here, because

Speaker 17 the delay is interesting. And I only think they all want to write.
That would be my guess. And they need some time to do that.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think it has geopolitical overlay, and that is China and the U.S. are the two biggest economies.
I wouldn't call us enemies, but we're adversaries. And I think it's just

Speaker 15 dumb from a game theory standpoint. I mean, essentially what's happening here is the Biden administration kind of got tough,

Speaker 15 proposed this legislation. It passed.
It's law. It is law of the land.

Speaker 15 Law of the land.

Speaker 17 Law of the land.

Speaker 15 And all this bullshit with Democratic senators trying to scramble to write new laws to extend the ban, hoping that China will back down. Well, guess what? We're blinking.

Speaker 17 They're not.

Speaker 15 And so to not actually ban this thing, regardless of the fallout, I believe weakens our ability and

Speaker 15 gives she the ability to think, you know what,

Speaker 15 when shit gets real,

Speaker 15 we don't blink. They do.
We're blinking right now. And I think that has geopolitical ramifications across any negotiation, whether it's China or trade.

Speaker 15 And that is, they've said, They've essentially said, we're calling your bluff. And we've said, oh, okay, maybe we can figure out a way to extend the deadline.
So maybe you'll blink.

Speaker 15 They're not going to, or it doesn't appear they're going to.

Speaker 15 The other observation I would make is that, and I really hope this doesn't happen around Elon, is whenever Elon says something incredibly stupid or cruel or just downright bigoted,

Speaker 15 people do the kind of trumping, oh, you know, he doesn't mean it.

Speaker 15 It's late at night. He says these things.
You're right. It's just he has kind of a, one of the things we love about him is he has no filter, he has a lack of control.
Well, guess what?

Speaker 15 Where he has a filter

Speaker 17 like

Speaker 15 you know,

Speaker 15 a woman on

Speaker 15 Tinder who's attractive, who's like gonna, you know, swipe right on one out of 7,000 men. Notice how he never says anything negative about China.

Speaker 17 Of course not.

Speaker 15 He's got real self-control and maturity when it comes to China. Never said anything.

Speaker 15 Oh, and by the way, Brazil, who said, go fuck yourself, all of a sudden, he's really polite and doesn't say any strained around Brazil.

Speaker 15 So this is the problem with, again, with a democracy and free speech that's not enforced for everybody and people aren't protected universally, is the incentives become shitposts to people who don't have the balls or are still holding on to the fidelity of free speech and democracy because there's no downside.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Speaker 17 I do think the Supreme Court will probably weigh in on national security issues. It seems like it.
All the other courts have done so. It is the law.

Speaker 17 A Trump executive order will do nothing, just so you're aware. It's just empty things.
And he can say, I'm not enforcing it.

Speaker 17 Pam Bondi in her hearing, which we'll talk about in a minute, didn't confirm or deny whether she do. It doesn't matter what they think.

Speaker 17 If you're with Tim, what matters is what Tim Cook and Sundar Pachai think is going to happen to him in five years if they don't follow, because they can be liable for $60 billion in fines, right?

Speaker 17 If they don't follow it,

Speaker 17 even if Trump later and stuff like that, they are liable. They have to follow the law, which is right now that.
Now, Congress can change it. They can shift things.
They can make new legislation.

Speaker 17 They can override the ban completely. But then you're right.
We look like fucking wimps. We look like wimps to China.
And once again, and of course, Trump wants to do the deal.

Speaker 16 I'm going to do the deal.

Speaker 17 I can see apparently spending an enormous amount of its time because it's so visually interesting to him. It's like, I'm going to show the art.
I keep saying art of the deal. Like, stop it.

Speaker 17 Like, there's no deal here. You were the one.
Let me just say, you know, the OG person who started this? Donald Trump with his executive order against TikTok.

Speaker 17 I agreed with him at the time, by the way. And so

Speaker 17 he started this mess, and now he's going to come. It's like the arsonist is going to come.
put out the fire. He started this thing.
Now he's trying to stop it. Everyone wants credit for the deal.

Speaker 17 There's all these very self-interested people around the basket, like Jeff Yass, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, whatever cockamame idea they have, whatever billionaire can take over.

Speaker 17 And so I think they're going to,

Speaker 17 there's nothing they can do. There's nothing they can do unless they overturn the actual law, which they can do.
That's what they absolutely can do.

Speaker 17 Interestingly, while TikTok users are worried about the app will be banned, I flock to other Chinese social media app.

Speaker 17 They didn't rush off to meta or anything else called RedNote, which is apparently, I haven't gotten. It's apparently very fun.

Speaker 17 The app has grabbed the number one spot on Apple's most popular free apps chart chart with a reported over 700,000 new users joining in two days. They can do this all day and night.

Speaker 17 You remember that from

Speaker 17 The Avengers? I can do this all day and night. The Chinese can do this all day and night with us.
And now people are flocking to all these Chinese apps. Well, we're going to ban all those, right?

Speaker 17 I mean, it just goes, we should have had a larger... a larger bill because

Speaker 17 we should have had a larger bill. That's what happened here.
We had a shitty bill that was all ridiculously political and performative. And now we've we've got this.
And have you tried RedNote, Scott?

Speaker 17 What do you think about?

Speaker 15 Oh, Kara, I can barely like,

Speaker 15 I had to have my assistant download Blue Sky. I am so sick of building an audience and then finding out that the people that own this one are bad and trying to get on another one.

Speaker 15 I'm just kind of, I mean, there's tug-tug boat. There's just so many.

Speaker 15 I'm just, at some point, I'm just going to go back to post-its and maybe put it in the elevator and maybe my neighbors will find it funny. I'm just going to start posting memes.
I lived in Washington.

Speaker 15 I lived in faculty housing until 2017. And there was a woman there whose, you know,

Speaker 15 NYU is a gentle place, and we don't kick people out of faculty housing. So it's literally a senior's home.
I was, hands down, the youngest person by about 70 years.

Speaker 15 And there was a woman there whose husband, who was like some big wheel in, you know, the Greek classics in the 60s, has been living there.

Speaker 15 And she'd be outside, and I liked her because she'd play with her dog and this tennis ball. And she used to, she put up a little cork bulletin board and she'd put up like funny comics.

Speaker 15 That's where I'm headed. I think that's the last safe platform for me.

Speaker 17 I'm going to get you a cork bulletin board.

Speaker 15 I'm going to find a cork board and I'm going to post my shit there of aerial firefighters.

Speaker 15 Anybody on Monday,

Speaker 15 anybody on Monday that needs a break from this, I'm not going to advocate joining me in my Peronians

Speaker 15 methodology, the Panix method. I am going to be non-stop posting 80s music and footage of aerial firefighters.
That is it. That is it.
I'm not.

Speaker 17 That's your pornography.

Speaker 15 Nothing about this. No, pornography, I'm going to do on my own.
I don't even take a risk out.

Speaker 17 I've got a story I wrote you about how popular they become, how it's been like online pornography, watching these things. Oh, really?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I said shit. I don't read most of those.
You should send shit out all day. I don't read most of it.

Speaker 17 You do. You should read it.
I sent it directly to you. It's all about the area.
And also, there's many women in that group.

Speaker 15 The funniest thing you send me. You did send me something where I laughed out loud loud: a picture of Pete Hagseth.
Yeah. And it said DUI hire.

Speaker 17 I thought that was realistic. Yeah, that was funny.
That was an AI thing. Yeah.
Yeah. We'll get to that then.
All right. We'll see where what's going to happen to the band.
Supreme Court, get going.

Speaker 17 TikTok, TikTok.

Speaker 17 When we come back, we'll talk about the contentious confirmation hearings for Trump's cabinet, including DUI hire Pete Hagseth, and take a listener mail question about recovery responsibility with the LA fires.

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Speaker 17 Scott, we're back with our second big story. A number of President-elect Trump's cabinet nominees are on Capitol Hill this week for their confirmation hearings.

Speaker 17 It's, you know, the speaking performative. Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio got a welcome reception from senators on both sides of the state.

Speaker 17 Senator Rubio has been a very good person. Low barco is more qualified.

Speaker 17 Low bar.

Speaker 15 He's like the statesman of the 20th century right now.

Speaker 17 Yeah, Lil Marco, Lil Marco is low bar, Marco.

Speaker 17 And may I call you, Marco? Well, Attorney General nominee Pamboni faced pointy questions about election denial and prosecuting Trump's enemies.

Speaker 17 She was pretty slippery, I thought.

Speaker 17 And when asked by Senator Blumenthal about whether she would enforce the TikTok ban, Bondi avoided another direct answer. What a good lawyer she is.
Let's listen.

Speaker 15 Will you commit to enforce that law on your first day

Speaker 32 if you are confirmed? Senator, as I discussed with you during our meeting, that is pending litigation within the Department of Justice.

Speaker 15 Well, it's pending litigation, but will you enforce that law?

Speaker 32 I can't discuss pending litigation, but I will talk to all the career official

Speaker 32 prosecutors who are handling the case. Absolutely, Senator.

Speaker 17 Oh, what?

Speaker 17 Give her the job. I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, I find all.

Speaker 17 I know how she did that.

Speaker 15 It's pending litigation. I just,

Speaker 15 are you going to pick your kids up from school after school today? That's speculative, Senator.

Speaker 17 I don't.

Speaker 15 That's a hypothetical idea.

Speaker 17 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 17 She's not going to enforce it, but it doesn't matter. They'll enforce it themselves.
What did you think of of her at that hearing? Just curious. Pam? Yeah, Pam.
Let's call it Pam, Marco Pam.

Speaker 17 Let's diminutize all of them. Well, look, okay.

Speaker 15 One, as a citizen and when these people evaluate people for what are incredibly important jobs, I would find it refreshing if some of them actually answered questions, even if it upset people.

Speaker 15 But in terms of her skill set, I thought she demonstrated real skill.

Speaker 15 She demonstrated outstanding political skills. She came across as indignant and refused to answer any questions.
And that's the environment we're in. So she was, I thought she was quite skilled.

Speaker 15 I don't, which makes her quite, which makes her, quite frankly, probably even more scary.

Speaker 15 I think Hegseth.

Speaker 17 Oh, we're getting to that. Let me read.
Yeah, so the real fireworks happened at the hearing for defense secretary nominee, the very unqualified Fox News host.

Speaker 17 He's qualified to be a Fox News host, Pete Hegseth, whose confirmation is looking likely at this point.

Speaker 17 Hegseth had heated exchanges with Democrats over allegations of sexual misconduct, his comments about women in combat, and whether he's qualified for the job.

Speaker 17 And when asked by Senator Alyssa Slotkin about whether he would carry out an illegal order from the president, Hegset danced around and badly. Let's listen.

Speaker 34 Do you believe there is such a thing as an illegal order that Joe Biden or any other president, Donald Trump could give?

Speaker 34 Is there anything that a commander-in-chief could ask you to do with the uniformed military that would be in violation of the U.S.

Speaker 17 Constitution?

Speaker 35 Senator, anybody of any party could give an order that is against the Constitution or against the law.

Speaker 34 Right. Okay.
So, and are you, so are you saying that you would stand in the breach and push back if you were given an illegal order?

Speaker 35 I start by saying I reject the premise that President

Speaker 17 at all.

Speaker 17 All right. Well, again, you know,

Speaker 17 and they also came out swinging during the hearings, focusing a lot on Heg said personal shortcomings. I did not feel this was an effective strategy.

Speaker 17 Me and the Cuban didn't think it. I thought

Speaker 17 they should, like, nobody cares that he's a drunk and a and a cheater and possibly a sexual uh predator i mean allegedly i think he seems pretty yucky to me creepy at the at the very least creepy and drinks too much uh we know that i don't think anybody cares obviously donald trump doesn't care the senators these republican senators don't care what they needed to do was show what an incompetent person is and and and uh senator duckworth tried to by by uh trying to get him to name

Speaker 17 yeah right exactly um that's they should have been a rat a tat with what about this in the ukraine what about here what about the houdies what houthies what about syria what would be your next move in syria what would be like blah blah blah blah blah blah to show he is just as dumb as a box of hammers and that would have been a much more effective thing to do centering in on his with his honestly i don't care that his wife was there i mean he's obviously a pig but um and he may have changed i have no idea i i don't get the impression i've heard there's been reports he continues to drink heavily.

Speaker 17 I don't think that matters at this point, even though I agree it's pretty heinous. But I thought they bollocks this badly.
What do you think?

Speaker 15 I think you're exactly right. You kind of stole my fund.
First off, Senator Jill Brown's questioning of him totally triggered me, and I was trying to figure it out. And I'm like, this is summarized.

Speaker 15 Her tone and his face summarize the last year of my first marriage. It just,

Speaker 15 that was a joke. I thought that'd be funnier.
Okay.

Speaker 15 But I feel bad. You're exactly right.
The questions, folks, Trump has demonstrated that we have moved. And that is, and Democrats kind of started this off.

Speaker 15 You know,

Speaker 15 a lot of former presidents have not acquitted themselves well.

Speaker 15 But basically, President Trump has demonstrated that at least 49% of the populace and probably like 70, like regarding drinking, personal behavior, what I'll call more generally, we refer to as character,

Speaker 15 you know, Honey Badger just don't care. And it doesn't, you come across as indignant, you come across as a cultural priss.
It doesn't work.

Speaker 15 What they should have been asking is, what do you think is the likelihood or the capabilities of an amphibious assault on China? And what are we doing to prevent that?

Speaker 15 What new technologies or combat techniques have you learned from the wars in Gaza and in Ukraine? And I think it would have demonstrated,

Speaker 15 I believe, that quite frankly, he just doesn't have a command

Speaker 15 of the, he doesn't have the domain expertise to make really good decisions around this stuff.

Speaker 15 I believe I don't, you know, he knows a lot about combat, but these, the Defense Secretary is supposed to be able to make very high-level decisions strategically that position us to be the greatest, continue to be the greatest fighting force in history, and then coordinate resources across all sorts of agencies and five different branches of the armed services.

Speaker 15 And they didn't go there. Instead, the Democrats.

Speaker 17 They went a little bit around his bad management of his tiny little things, which I think they should have, too. But even that isn't adjacent.

Speaker 15 Senator Duckworth was the only one that kind of did her, in my opinion, that kind of did her job. And that is.

Speaker 17 She's been in the Army previously.

Speaker 15 He can be a low-character person and still, I hate to say this, be probably a competent Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 15 What you can't be is a high-character person who doesn't know what the fuck you're doing and how to organize

Speaker 15 3 million men and women in uniform with multiple alliances, multiple technology.

Speaker 15 I mean, you have to understand

Speaker 15 somewhat the incredibly complex supply chain of trying to figure out a way to

Speaker 15 arm and supply nuclear submarines roaming the earth that

Speaker 15 aren't even coming above water for 18 months at a time.

Speaker 17 This shit is complicated. Showing him as incompetent, showing, like, I was always like, show, don't tell.
They kept saying he was incompetent. Show him as incompetent.

Speaker 17 Show that he can't answer a question. The funniest one, though, was you show this, like, what are the countries in this group and what are the countries in this?

Speaker 17 And then you ask him, okay, what are the three brands of vodka? You could make a joke. You could bring that drunkenness in

Speaker 17 because he knows the three. That was George Conway.
That's pretty disrespectful.

Speaker 17 I know it is, but I'm just saying, you just, well, if they're going to do the performative thing, you might as well do that.

Speaker 15 General Jim Beam and Sergeant Jeff Daniels.

Speaker 17 Right. This was the George Conway thing.
First ask him the hard question and then ask him one that he knows the answer to.

Speaker 17 But it was, it's really, it was just, let me just say, I was interesting when I said this and Mark did the same thing.

Speaker 15 I got like, like, oh, people do care.

Speaker 17 I'm like, they,

Speaker 17 I care. You care.
Nobody else cares or they don't care enough to knock him off for this. And by the way, if you don't think we've had really creepy, drunk.

Speaker 17 The Secretaries of Defense in our history, I don't know what you're smoking because we have.

Speaker 17 We've had a lot of creepy people in high high positions of power in this country for years and years and years. I'm sure we've had rapists.
I'm sure we've had drunks.

Speaker 17 I'm sure we've had all kinds of malfeasance. But what matters is competency in this moment because publicly, it doesn't, it doesn't,

Speaker 17 they didn't put a glove on this guy, I thought.

Speaker 15 But just to be clear, he's never been convicted of anything.

Speaker 17 Right, exactly.

Speaker 15 He's clearly.

Speaker 17 He paid off. That's fine.

Speaker 17 Yeah,

Speaker 15 which in some cases people do pragmatically. I feel like I have to be Mika with me on Morning Joe right now.
Right.

Speaker 17 But

Speaker 17 I'm all about.

Speaker 15 I don't think Nixon was a good man, but I actually think he was pretty fucking brilliant geopolitically.

Speaker 15 I wanted somebody, I'd like Dave Clark, the former head of operations from Amazon, to be Secretary of Defense, because the bottom line is when you run defense, you are essentially the world's most important operations person.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 there was no questions around the dumb important stuff, like supply chain, weapons developments, new tactics in war, like tunnels and drones are the new weapons.

Speaker 15 In every war, whether it's tanks or jet engines or radar, there's new technologies that change the landscape.

Speaker 15 And if you're not on top of those technologies, you stand to lose to a smaller army, as evidenced by what's going on in Russia and Ukraine.

Speaker 15 And there was no thoughtful discussion around whether this guy has any command of that whatsoever. Instead, they wanted to know he, if he was drunk at some, at some gathering.
I mean, come on.

Speaker 15 Anyway, I thought the Democrats came across as like,

Speaker 15 okay, maybe, maybe you just bang your intern quietly or your PhD student, but just ask the fucking questions about being Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 17 Exactly. I think, I don't know if it would have worked necessarily, but it would have put it on the record, right?

Speaker 17 It would have put it, it was, and someone was arguing with me, and I said, do you know that Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin was deadly because she was polite? She's like, what do you read?

Speaker 17 What about this? She wasn't rude. She just, she just showed that Sarah Palin was unqualified and ignorant.
And she didn't do it rudely. She didn't, she didn't.

Speaker 15 You couldn't name one newspaper.

Speaker 17 Yeah, remember that? That was

Speaker 17 name just one. Go watch that interview.
And that's how they should, they should have had Katie Couric in there teaching them how to ask questions. And she did it very gracefully.

Speaker 17 But at the end of the interview, she was, Sarah Palin was finished, as far as I was concerned. And we understood.
Everyone, the penny went click.

Speaker 17 The other thing that I thought, I will say one thing, Joni Ernst, I get that they're putting pressure on you and they're going to primary you if you didn't do this, but you have your values were around women in the military and sexual assault.

Speaker 17 She is the sexual assault victim.

Speaker 17 At some point, you got to stand up for what you are and you didn't. And

Speaker 17 you've taken a dive. And I understand why you did, but boy, I'm sorry.
You should have stood up for women and you didn't. So, and women like yourself.

Speaker 15 I've been thinking about Senator Ernst, and I thought, God, it's given her background. And I thought, is it unfair to hold someone to a different standard because they were a victim of something?

Speaker 17 Not just that. She was in the military, too.

Speaker 15 Well, the one I love, though, my favorite, is Senator Susan Collins is going to take the weekend because she's concerned.

Speaker 15 You want to talk about a new position in the narcissist crypt?

Speaker 17 Right.

Speaker 15 It is deaf. There's a place for Senator Collins because Senator Collins, I will, maybe Kelchie.
Oh, my God. I'm going to bet on this.

Speaker 15 If anyone can find a betting site around how Senator Collins is going to vote,

Speaker 17 she's like, look at me.

Speaker 15 I'm concerned. I'm a moderate.
I'm thoughtful. I need to take the weekend to review his testimony.
I have never been this confident ever since Floyd Mayweather fought Conan McGregor that,

Speaker 15 oh, yeah, Senator Collins is really struggling with this decision. It just, she's like, look at me.
I'm a thoughtful moderate.

Speaker 17 Nobody owns me.

Speaker 17 That vote.

Speaker 15 No one, Pete Hag Seth and President Trump are not worried about Senator Collins falling in line with the Republican Party. But she's like, please, look at me.
Look at me. I'm going to think about it.

Speaker 15 I'm not sure.

Speaker 17 The one I like is Murkowski. I think Murkowski has got a set, but not the rest of them.

Speaker 15 Because in a good way.

Speaker 17 Because she won.

Speaker 17 They went after her and she won. So she...

Speaker 15 One of the keys to having moderates who actually vote their conscious and aren't live in fear is that it's, I think it's final five voting in Alaska where moderates actually get elected. Right.

Speaker 15 Anyways, I'm all Andrew Yang.

Speaker 17 Well, they do have the prospect this time. It's slightly different, but I don't really care.
I'd still wouldn't, I'd still be fuck you, is

Speaker 17 deploying Musk's money. He keeps threatening, Trump keeps threatening the deploying of Musk's money.

Speaker 15 I'm going to a new members club tonight, Shea Margot, and I'm not sure I'm going to drink, Kara.

Speaker 15 I'm not sure I'm going to get fucked up and become more charming and like myself and like the world more. I need to think about it, Kara.

Speaker 15 I need to think about the ills of it.

Speaker 17 Remember, you are a team owner now. Behaves like one.
That is behaving like one. Are you kidding? That's fair.
That's fair.

Speaker 15 I just need to show up with a young, young hot woman.

Speaker 17 You're Ryan Reynolds adjacent now, finally.

Speaker 17 Can you get him to come on the show? Ryan Reynolds? Yeah, get him to come on the show.

Speaker 17 Now that you're friends or whatever.

Speaker 15 Okay. I just want a discount on Mint Mobile.

Speaker 17 Yes, Mint Mobile. Okay, Scott.
They're one of our sponsors many years ago, or maybe recently. Okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question.

Speaker 17 This question comes from Nancy in Santa Rosa. Let's listen.

Speaker 36 Hey, Scott and Kara, this is Nancy in Santa Rosa, California. My question is economic and tied to the fires in Southern California.

Speaker 36 Having lived through several wildfires and been evacuated, I have to say it's breaking my heart to see what's going on in Los Angeles. But my question for you two is, where are the banks?

Speaker 36 It seems to me we're talking about government assistance. We're talking about rebuilding assistance.
We're talking about assistance, what the insurance companies are going to be able to do.

Speaker 36 But it seems to me that most of those homes and most of those businesses were in buildings that were basically owned by the banks and the occupants were paying it off.

Speaker 17 So where are the banks?

Speaker 36 That's my question.

Speaker 17 Where are the banks?

Speaker 36 Once again, in another disaster, where are the banks? Thanks, you guys. You've made me so much smarter than i deserve to be

Speaker 17 well thank you nancy from santa rosa i'll very briefly say where they will be here because they will suffer losses or they will collect all this property because a lot of people probably aren't going to keep you have to keep paying your mortgage even if your house doesn't exist from what i understand uh because you have the commitment to the banks many people will default or work out other terms with these banks or the banks will get the properties or the land i guess and be able to develop it or sell it or or whatever i mean i think it's that's what's going to happen here and i think probably probably some of them will suffer.

Speaker 17 Some of the banks will and some won't. You know, the more disturbing conversation going on is all these idiot Republicans saying that they're not going to pay.

Speaker 17 They're going to add, you know, add conditions

Speaker 17 onto payments around disaster relief. It's just a ridiculous way.
Our country has always went to the aid in disaster relief. And so that to me is heinous.

Speaker 17 But in this case, I think the banks will either own the properties or get building loans to build these things back at probably pretty good rates.

Speaker 17 I know Newsom's working working towards keeping insurance companies off the backs of people and getting probably government will probably play a big role here. Scott? Actually,

Speaker 15 I think they're going to be fine because I think it's federal legislation.

Speaker 15 I know that in Florida, to get a mortgage, you have to show proof of insurance.

Speaker 15 So I would imagine the majority of those homes that burned down are going to get an insurance check such that they can continue to pay the mortgage. The banks cover their ass as they're supposed to.

Speaker 15 And if you're in a high-fire area or a dangerous area or i think even if you just get any mortgage you have as a condition of getting a mortgage you have to show homeowners insurance so i don't think they have much exposure the more interesting conversation in my view and i'm a bit of a darwinian here

Speaker 15 we have a tendency to always want to socialize the losses and the reality is when you build a tinderbox or decide to buy a tinderbox in a beautiful spectacular desert with high pressure and low pressure systems i'll go to me me.

Speaker 15 I live on the water in Florida. There's real climate change risk or weather risk.
And my view is I should either pay for the insurance at a market rate or move or the value of my house should go down.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 so instead, we go to this understandable sympathy for these people.

Speaker 15 And taxpayers, including people who could never afford to live in the Palisades, end up bailing folks out.

Speaker 15 I just hate to say it.

Speaker 15 I think if you're going to live in a dangerous area because of the upside to you personally from a consumption standpoint, I don't think taxpayers should be bailing these people out.

Speaker 15 And until people feel the full weight of whether it's climate change or the cost of living in high-risk areas, we're not going to do anything about it.

Speaker 17 It's a fair point. It's a fair point.
I think there's initial disaster relief you can bring in.

Speaker 17 And, you know, cover costs that people pay back and things like that. But I tend to agree with you.
I think you, you know, I know I live in an earthquake zone in San Francisco.

Speaker 17 So I went out of my way to put in steel girders and put them down into the bedrock. I did so much stuff around fire

Speaker 17 in terms of

Speaker 17 of not having as much wood. I thought about passive art.
It's called passive architecture, which is thicker walls, more concrete, et cetera. I didn't do all of it because it was an old house.

Speaker 17 I wasn't able. It was an old wooden house, but I definitely did everything possible.
It cost me a lot of money money to do so.

Speaker 17 I have enormous insurance, you know, on that because of earthquake insurance.

Speaker 17 And it's all at the cost to me. Now, I would expect some

Speaker 17 federal help around food or temporary things or relief, but I wouldn't demand it after a certain amount of time.

Speaker 17 Safety would be one of them, like keep my house safe, keep like looters and things like that.

Speaker 15 Why should taxpayers, federal taxpayers at the gas pump, paying whatever it is,

Speaker 15 tax on their current income as a waiter or as a chiropractor. Why should they be subsidizing my right to live on the water in Florida?

Speaker 17 Well, that's a bigger question. Why should people pay for schools? Because if I don't have kids, why should I pay for corn schools?

Speaker 15 Because there's a social good to having an educated populace. Is there a social good to making sure Scott can stare at the ocean waiting for the ass cancer?

Speaker 15 It's not my, it's not your right to live in a spectacular desert that collides with the sea, with these beautiful mountains that create these funnels of hot air.

Speaker 15 If you want to live there, in my opinion, you should bear the costs, including the risks.

Speaker 17 Well, Nancy, the banks will be fine. If there's a mortgage of any kind, the banks will own the property.
That tends to be the situation. Or they'll figure something out.

Speaker 17 They always sort of work it all out and will overcharge people as healthcare companies have gotten so good at doing.

Speaker 17 Anyway, if you've got a question of your own that you'd like to answer, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot, submit a question for the show or call 85551-Pivot.

Speaker 17 All right, Scott, one more quick break and we'll be back for your prediction.

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Speaker 17 Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction and make it good.

Speaker 15 I think that inflation and the 10-year bond are going to be the adults in the room in the next few months.

Speaker 17 Explain.

Speaker 15 Well, if you think about 13,000 homes have been destroyed, and the idea that, I mean, Trump's two big policies are, I mean, a few things.

Speaker 15 The implicit kind of expectation that he'll either keep taxes low or lower them. Two, that he'll be very, he'll take a tougher stand on illegal immigrants.

Speaker 15 And three, that he's going to impose tariffs. This is the perfect storm for inflation.

Speaker 15 And where you're going to see examples of it that hit the news are when people start to rebuild in the palisades and the hiring pool is vastly diminished and the cost of a washing machine or a garage door is up 40 or 60 percent.

Speaker 15 And that month you see a bump up in CPI and the tenure goes fucking crazy. It's like his entire, the person I am most excited about in the Trump cabinet who is the most qualified is the tenure bond.

Speaker 15 Because if it starts to spike and goes and says the expectation of inflation is coming back because of this guy's inflationary policies around tariffs,

Speaker 15 deporting immigrants. And I want to be clear, if you've committed a crime and you're an illegal immigrant, that's your second crime.
I am down with those people

Speaker 15 being deported. But the reality is, if you go to a construction site, it is an undocumented workers' Lollapalooza.
It is indeed.

Speaker 15 And by the way, some of these people, speaking for a friend, are remarkably fucking talented and hardworking.

Speaker 17 And they're in California, by the way.

Speaker 15 And will get on a roof, work 12 hours such that they can make, you know, 300, 400 bucks that day, and then send 200 home, you know, to wherever it is, to El Sal or wherever they're from.

Speaker 15 But the fact that all of a sudden these people are going to be scared to show up to a work site or that they might be worried about, or they just might not come here. It's been this

Speaker 15 on a positive note, this workforce has been one of the most flexible, economically advantageous workforces in history.

Speaker 15 And then you're going to start this bullshit around taxing all these products. And by the way, these folks, the next day, will implement reciprocal tariffs.

Speaker 15 You want to talk about the choke point in AI?

Speaker 15 You know, I used to think, oh, it's nuclear stocks are going to go up. Nuclear stocks, my analyst, Ms.
Avariel, reminded me that nuclear can't really be online.

Speaker 15 They can't handle a third of the incremental demand by like 2050 because there's latency in building a nuclear power plant. She said it's going to be all about liquid natural gas.

Speaker 15 We get a lot of LNG from Canada. What happens when Canada gets sick of being pissed on?

Speaker 17 Food prices.

Speaker 15 You're going to see they,

Speaker 15 do you know how many products?

Speaker 17 Chicken.

Speaker 15 There are cars that are eventually sold or quote-unquote manufactured in the the U.S. that go back and forth to Mexico, different components and different parts, like a half a dozen or a dozen times.

Speaker 15 So they immediately reciprocate with like-minded tariffs. And what's going to bring it to light is some of the costs around trying to rebuild.

Speaker 15 And then the adult in the room on the cabinet is going to be the tenure. And if inflation starts to spike, all of his grandiose plans around tariffs,

Speaker 15 it's going to come undone.

Speaker 15 So anyways, my prediction is that the rebuild effort as we begin to cost it out are going to shine a light on the inflationary pressures of kind of Trump's signature policies.

Speaker 12 God, that was boring.

Speaker 17 Man, no, it wasn't.

Speaker 15 It's interesting. Jesus, I'm bored.

Speaker 17 No, it is interesting. You know, Man and I are renovating our house in D.C., and we were thrilled it's almost done.

Speaker 17 Like, I remember we were like, we missed like all the cost of wood, all the cost of labor, all the costs of all the things that were from all, you know, we bought locally.

Speaker 17 We did a lot of local stuff, windows fixed and stuff like that. But I went to this guy who was doing our window restoration.
We restored old windows.

Speaker 17 And it was, I don't know who the workers were, but they were these wonderful skilled workers all over the place. And I, I don't, they were all from

Speaker 17 other countries, every single person in there. He was training them and they were wonderful craftspeople.
But I don't know where they were from. I don't know anything about it.

Speaker 17 But at the same time, I was thinking, oh my God, if this was in Trump administration, this would cost us double to do the renovation, or it would be the inflation pressures or the ability to even even have workers would have been like spiked.

Speaker 17 And I agree with Scott, it's going to be if people are going to start to feel it really hard. Food prices,

Speaker 17 furniture, couches, everything, everything you own is

Speaker 17 subject to this problem. We are so intertwined.
One of the great stories actually I would push people to look at was how the

Speaker 17 Atlantic did one on how many plastics there are in everything we do. And so one of the reasons these things burn so quickly was because

Speaker 17 so much of our goods from couches to everything, we have so much plastic in our houses that goes up and is quite tough.

Speaker 15 I heard we have plastic in our testicles.

Speaker 17 Did you read that article? Not my testicles. Mine are clean.
My testicles are clean.

Speaker 15 Based on that down vest you're wearing, I'm now convinced you have testicles. Where did you get that thing?

Speaker 17 Stop it. David Sasloff gave it to me.
Oh, of course he did. Yeah, he wears it.
Of course he did.

Speaker 15 He wears it.

Speaker 17 I said, where can I get one of your lesbian vests? He wears a lot of layers. Yeah, the guy got it.
I had an interview with

Speaker 17 Mark Thompson at one of their events, and this was part of the schwa. That fits.
That's very Kara Swisher. It is.
It is. I love it.
It's one of my favorite things. It's high quality.
It's very soft.

Speaker 17 Because it's from David Zaslaw. Before we go, a quick look at what's going on elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe.

Speaker 17 This week on Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with our favorite Canadian who now will be under tariffs, Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor-at-large of Deal Book at the New York Times and co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Squawkbox

Speaker 17 disclosure. He's not actually Canadian.
We just call him that. Let's listen to a clip of you and Andy Ross.

Speaker 39 If China is prepared to sell to Elon Musk and only to Elon Musk, what does that say about the leverage and influence that China must think that they have over Elon Musk by dint of his factories and Tesla business?

Speaker 39 in the nation state that is China.

Speaker 39 And then it probably raises a whole secondary order of questions, which is, if China feels this way, how should we as Americans feel that people are calling him the co-president of the United States?

Speaker 17 To say nothing of Russia, Andy Ross, and his influence, his various influence. How did that go with you and him?

Speaker 15 I love Ron DeRoss. I think the most trusted journalist in the world right now is Anderson Cooper.
And I think second is probably

Speaker 15 I think the most trusted business journalist in the world

Speaker 15 is Andrew. And my co-host,

Speaker 15 Ed Elson, this 25-year-old kid who's been working with us, who is to me what I am to you, and that is, I discovered his ass.

Speaker 15 And he said to him, he stopped the podcast, no joke, and he said, you're my professional role model. To which I responded, well, I hope he pays your bonus, bitch.

Speaker 17 But anyways. I was like, not good.
Ed, don't you understand the fine art of kissing up? He has better hair, let's be clear.

Speaker 15 He's arguably the most likable man in media. I've never heard anyone say anything bad about Andrew Osargan.

Speaker 17 I think he's underpaid, actually. I've told him that because

Speaker 17 he wants to work at the same time.

Speaker 17 I know, but he could make bankier. He could make bankier because he could go off on his own.
He and I

Speaker 17 have

Speaker 17 he likes to stay. He can't give speeches.
He can't do other things. He can't do this.
He can't do that.

Speaker 15 Maybe you should buy the New York Times.

Speaker 17 Oh,

Speaker 17 God.

Speaker 17 Listen up. Next week, we'll be in your feeds a day late because of the holidays.
See you on Wednesday to talk about the inauguration. We're going to tape on Tuesday after Sullivan.

Speaker 17 I have plenty to talk about. All the pictures of

Speaker 17 the three amigos or the three idiottis who will be sitting at the parade.

Speaker 17 And listen, it is no degrees, and the richest people in the world have to sit there on really uncomfortable chairs until Donald Trump gets up. What a great world this is.
Scott, read us out.

Speaker 41 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Speaker 15 Ernie Natod engineered this episode.

Speaker 41 Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Mia Severo, and Dan Shulan. The Shakh Cara is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

Speaker 15 Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine of Vox Media.
You can subscribe to the magazine to nymag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 15 We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Speaker 15 The Dallas Cowboys, the Los Angeles Lakers, Manchester United, Man City, Cricket in India, nothing, nothing compared to that second best team in Bogota La Ecuid.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odoo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 6 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 18 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 23 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 2 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 5 Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 7 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 25 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 27 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 28 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 9 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 31 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 11 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 14 Try Odo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

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