How Trump Will Impact the Economy, Big Tech, and Social Media

Support for Pivot comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks.com is personalized and honestly, that makes shopping much easier.
Let's say there's a Burberry jacket I like. Now Saks.com can show me the best Burberry jackets, any similar styles from brands I probably didn't have on my radar to begin with.
Saks.com will even let you know when the Prada loafers you've been eyeing are back in stock or when new vacation shirts from Casablanca are in. Who doesn't like easy, personalized shopping that saves you time? Head over to Saks.com.
Hey there, this is Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, a podcast about tech and media and what happens when they collide. And this week, we're talking about the symbiosis, the codependency between big-time sports and big TV.
And what's going to happen to that equation as the TV industry gets smaller and smaller and smaller. On to explain it all is the veteran sports business journalist, John O'Ran.
That's this week on channels from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hi, I'm Neal Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.
We're in your feed twice a week. On Mondays, we have interviews with some of the most influential names in tech and business, taking a deep look at how high-profile leaders make decisions and navigate our uncertain future.
And on Thursdays, we bring you analysis of big ideas and breaking news, looking at how tech has reshaped the whole world and how all of it fits together. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Together forever and ever to be, together forever we'll be. Which one do you think is going to die first? Um, I'm banking on me.
Yeah, I am too. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher, and I have my annual cold where I sound like Brenda Vaccaro. Good to see you, Scott.
It's good to see you. I just want to kick off the pod today with one question, one query, one inquiry, Kara.
Yeah, what's your inquiry? What the actual fuck? Fuck! We were so wrong. What the actual fuck? Scott, how wrong were we? Let's discuss.
Oh, you know what? As someone who's wrong a lot, this was especially wrong. This was...
Spectacularly wrong. Yeah, yeah.
I got it. I'm not sure I could have been more wrong, Kara.
Yeah, I know. I know.
I got to say, though, on the morning after we taped, the morning of the election, I started to get a bad feeling. I don't know why.
And maybe it was just the yips from the Hillary Clinton thing. But I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
Something like that. And it was weird.
But I never said it. But we were wrong.
Describe your day, which is my way of saying I want to describe mine, but I'll let you go first. By the way, where are you? You look very nice, and it's a very nice hotel room.
I'm in Vegas, baby. I'm going to drink myself to death here, like a la Nicolas Cage.
You're in Vegas. I'm in Vegas.
I'm giving a speech so I can make money because I'm going to make more money under the Trump administration, while others who voted for him will not.

In any case, I'm here for a speech.

What hotel are you at?

I love Vegas.

MGM Grand.

Everything is green.

All the lights are green.

Yeah, you kind of missed it on that one.

I know, I know.

Which one do you like?

Which hotel do you like?

Well, I'm getting old, so I like to stay at the Wynn, specifically the Encore. But when I was younger, I used to stay at the Aria.
Also, the Cosmo is kind of cool. Yeah, I've stayed at all those places.
I'm going for F1 next weekend, and I got a speech there next Wednesday. Yeah, there's a lot of F1 stuff in all the shoppies and stuff like that, a ton of F1 stuff.
You like that. I haven't been to that.
Do you actually watch the race? No, I go to hang out with hot people and basically party. I mean, I'll go to the race one night, but I've been to F1 in several cities and the city really does come alive.
I'm in F1 Miami, Montreal, which in my mind is the best. I've been to, where else? Look, we're trying to talk about anything else but the election.
Okay, this is my day very quickly. I got up.
How did it play out for Kara Swisher? Okay, took the kids to vote. We went to our area voting.
We voted. So, election fraud.
Is that what you're saying? Your kids voted? Yes, exactly. They did several times.
And we showed them the whole thing. I've done that.
You've done that with your kids. Who did your grandparents vote for? Yeah, right.
And so then I went, Claire and I hung around for a little while. And then she got the day off from school because she's in public school to vote, obviously, the five-year-old voted.
And then I did some work. I did a bunch of work.
And then I just hung out. I worked out.
I was trying to feel better. And then I kept getting the yips.
I really did. Was there a moment during the night where you're like, oh, no.
No. When she gave her speech, even though it looked beautiful, her last speech in Philadelphia, I thought, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
She's not going to connect. This is not going to connect with people.
I don't know why. I just felt like, oh, this.
And you don't. See, I felt that way about Kamala's speeches every time she opened her mouth.
But you felt it was especially non-resonant? I don't know why. I thought it was really beautiful visually, and I was worried about the message.
I was like, huh. And there wasn't enough time.
I also didn't think there was enough time. But at what point during the evening did you go, uh-oh, where there's trouble in Mudville? Right away.
Right away. I was watching and I'm like, no, this is, this is, something's happening here.
I don't know what it was. And it was just, and Chris Wallace actually said there was something that when the independents came back in his favor in one of the states, and it was where they might have gone to her.

Even it was a state he won.

I can't remember what it was.

There was something like that.

And when they were talking about economy so much, Chris Wallace said she needs a miracle very early in the night.

And I think Chris is very an astute watcher of these things,

having done so many. But then I started to feel really sick because I got this cold and I was feeling Clara and Sal had had this same thing.
It's like a 24-hour nausea thing. And I went to sleep and I woke up at 5.30 the next morning and I was, and then I knew.
So what did you do? so I knew I had sort of this deja vu of 2016. I remember when they were showing a map of Florida county by county, because back then Florida was considered potentially a swing vote or a swing state.
And it was just so obvious. I like math and I'm fairly good at it.
And right away, I thought she's not only going to, Secretary Clinton's not only going to lose Florida, she's going to lose it by a lot, which means she's done. And for me, this was when, and it happened fairly early, it happened at 1 a.m.
my time, or I think about 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, is when they announced the results of Georgia because he came in 2.2 points ahead of her.
And I thought that's not a blowout, but that's pretty significant for a state that there were some hopes she might be competitive in and that Biden won. And I thought, that's it, she's done.
And then the next day, so I was very stressed out about it. I was more stressed than I thought I was going to be or more upset than I initially thought I was going to be.
And I'm a huge fan of Dan Harris. And I thought he had that method, that straw breathing method to relax where you go in for two seconds through your nose and then like you're blowing on a straw for twice as long.
So I did that. And just to be clear, that shit does not work for me, Kara.
It did not work.

So I went to my method of relaxation and I waited till noon. I had a Peroni, then a Xanax, and then another Peroni, or as I like to call it, panics.
The panics method. And I find it not only relaxes me, but a little insight about the dog, I become an outstanding dancer on prescription-grade pharmaceuticals.
Wow. And I listen to 80s music, and I danced around.
The dogs are very upset. The dogs do not like me dancing.
They totally freak out. So you turned off the TV.
You turned off the TV. Oh, I went on, actually, I went on Amazon's live election coverage, which I really love, by the way.

Oh, you did, that's right.

Ryan Williams is the right host.

He's a mix of really credible but really comfortable at the same time.

And you know who I saw was our good friend Jessica Yellen, who did a great job.

Anyways, but the next day I'm like, I don't want to hear the analysis.

I don't want to hear anything. I don't want to hear everyone contradicting each other as to what went wrong or what went right.
But it was, I haven't, I just literally 10 minutes ago upgraded from pajamas to athleisure. So I'm in, I've been in pajamas.
I've been drinking a lot. I've been watching Netflix and my stocks are up.
It's COVID again. It's literally, I'm in COVID again.
Yeah, yeah. So I'm not going to ask you what I think, but what do you, how do you, how do you think of the reaction and how are you, how do you think our audience should process this? Well, look, what Dan also said, my new Yoda around anxiety, action absorbs anxiety.
And I think one of the keys to success is the ability to mourn and move on. So I've given myself 24 hours to mourn.
And then the next day I thought, okay, should I be giving money to Planned Parenthood? Should I be getting more involved in Wes Moore's campaigner? I did a call with a guy named Seth Moulton, the Democratic Congress person who I'm really impressed with. Should I be giving money to Amy Klobuchar? Is there, or I imagine already there's a 2026 candidates.
I'm like, okay, that's it. Let's get on it because the ray of sunshine here, if there is one, is it traditionally a midterm? It's a huge opportunity for the non-incumbent party.
And so I'm spending time with my boys. I'm doing things I enjoy.
And I'm going to say, okay, I didn't like the way this turned out. What can I do to make sure it turns out differently in 24 months? So I'm already sort of trying to take action, if you will.
What do you do, Kara? I wrote a really long thing at 5.30 in the morning talking about a lot of things. I'm like, we don't have to go.
Everyone's like, oh, the American people have spoken. I'm like, 50%.
I was looking at all the things, and I get it. He won in all the right places.
Winning is winning, right? But that's different from everyone, right? It's really the polarization is absolutely even, Stephen, very close, right, if you look at various things. What I really want to understand is what was the messaging that didn't work, right? What was the message that didn't get through? What was the calculation in their head? How did they vote for someone found liable for sexual assault? And what was the calculation and why did that message not resonate? And why was it okay, given all the evidence that he's crazy, he's deranged, he's obviously addled? Why did none of those things matter to people? And again, the two choices are they don't believe them.
They don't believe all those cabinet members. They don't believe all these things about him and his history.
Or they are fine with it if they can get lower grocery prices, or they felt better than they did before. You know, do you feel better today than four years ago? And I think that trumped it.
And I just couldn't, I can't get past those things, but a lot of people can. And maybe that's why we got it so wrong.
You can't believe that they could say okay to that, especially women, which a lot of

white women voted for Trump again. Well, I'm not talking about the way the world should be or our

version of what it should be, but the way the world is. And I put out a thread on this and

immediately I'm going on CNN, MSNBC, and Smirconish in the next 72 hours to talk about what

bottom line is I think the Manosphere won here. I think this was the bro vote that won the election.
And if you look at the age group that had the biggest swing from 2020 in terms of who they voted for, hands down, there was an 11 point swing towards Trump among 18 to 29 year olds. Yeah.
And if you're a self-appointed social justice warrior, or you're making judgments on someone's character, or you may not think they acquit themselves well personally or professionally, but you can't afford a home. The government or the left is lecturing at you about bailing out people who went to college where you have absolutely no prospect of going to college, either because of inability to get in or inability to afford it.
If you can't see a way to having anything resembling the life your parents had, you're not interested in being lectured about who's a better person. You not only want change, you want disruption.
You don't even want conventional Republicans. You certainly don't want Democrats.
And the other age segment that swung the furthest was, in my view, their parents, 45 to 64-year-olds. Because if you're a single mother and everybody, this is what did not show up.
Everybody vastly overestimated the role that bodily autonomy would play in this race.

You're right.

Because Trump was able to distance himself by convincing people, I'm actually not as crazy as some of the people here. And so people had some comfort that even if they voted for Trump, it wasn't necessarily a vote against bodily autonomy.
But what they do see is if you're a mother or you're a parent and your kids, specifically your sons, are doing terribly, you just want change. You want to burn the whole place down.

So if you look in my view, if you look at what really drove this election, it was one bodily autonomy was not the referendum, the motivator that people thought.

And it's not only young people that are struggling, 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago, where seniors are 72% wealthier. If pop-up and Nana complain, it's bad.
But if your son or your daughter are doing really poorly and can't afford their rent and see their lifestyle going down and are more depressed and more anxious, you want to burn the whole fucking thing down and so you do you do i think if you don't have the luxury of caring that i think in a lot of ways you know i think what you're saying is you don't have a luxury the social issues become a luxury yeah that's what i mean yeah yeah you don't have that you don't have that and so i i get that i utter i completely get that what i don't get get is the embracing of darkness that he has. I guess they just don't believe that he really is like that, right? I think that's what it is.
Although, you know, then you get all his crazy followers who are like Nick Quentes today on Twitter and someone that sent it to me tweeted, your body, my choice forever. like that kind of stuff terrifying to lots of people.
And so I think the emboldenment of this is, maybe they're overstating it, maybe, I don't know. I find them terrifying, these people.
I do. And I do have the luxury of finding them terrifying.
And I think that's why, especially to my kids, to my marriage, everything else, and other people don't. I guess I'm not angry at them for that, but there is going to be a real split in people who can be scared of it, who can live with fear in that fear.
And of course, that is a motivator too, because fear does motivate everybody rather than just joy. She was trying with joy.
She was trying with forward. I think, let me just say, I know everyone's piling on the Democrats.
I thought she, in the short, the error they probably made was not to have a primary, right? 100%. A short primary so that we could pick if she had even been picked.
I thought she did do a really nice campaign the best that she could, but she was dragging Biden behind her the whole time. And she was part of that administration.
And I think that's what people were reacting against was the Biden administration and how they felt, even if lots of stuff was up and to the right for a lot of people. I think she couldn't shake him unless she shook him.
And so another candidate that wasn't a Biden person might have been more appealing, but I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure that would have worked either.
I think you're zeroing in on the fatal flaw here. And that is, it was very difficult.
First off, Vice President Harris should hold her head high. She should.
The hand she was dealt, given how much pressure was on her, given how outstanding she was in that debate, I think she can feel really good about herself. And we should feel good about her.
President Biden should be buried in a crypt along with Senator Feinstein and Ruth Bader Ginsburg that says fucking narcissists that ruin their legacy. If we had had a competition,

the primaries are outstanding

at producing battle-tested candidates

that people get comfortable with

and who are really good on their feet.

And she might've been that person,

but if she'd been that person,

she would've been better prepared.

Or the nation might've said,

who wins in a primary is who foots and rises to the moment. And voters get to decide in this moment, maybe we don't want, fairly or unfairly, the incumbents.
Maybe we've just decided two thirds of people think America is going in the wrong direction. So we want someone a little bit outside of the party who has a D, but says is not working.
Yeah, like Jared Polis. Colorado did amazingly well.
Like across the state, Democrats killed it. Or someone we haven't heard of.
Someone could have risen up and been there at the right moment in the right time. This is absolutely, in my view, on Biden and the people around him and the Democratic establishment, including many of our friends who are emailing me saying, you're hurting by not supporting Biden.
He's going to be our nominee. It was insane that he didn't live up to his promise in 2020 that he was going to be a transition candidate.
If there's any blame here, it's quote unquote, the establishment and on President Biden himself. She did her level best.
They also vastly overestimated the role bodily autonomy would play in the election. Do you realize more women or fewer women voted for Harris than voted for Biden? It's not quite the number because all the California votes aren't in yet.
Her votes will rise with California. But yes, I know he didn't get that many more votes.
I very, I don't even think, I think it's pretty even Steven with him. He just got the votes he got.
He kept his votes and he increased in certain places among everybody except for a small group. What was it? I don't know.
What I was looking at was Colorado where Democrats did astonishingly well. So what Paulus is peddling over there is working like economy.
Let's stop fighting over ideology. We're not self-appointed social justice cops.
Yeah. Right.
Exactly. Let's be reasonable with strong economy.
But actually, he did better across every group in every region, except for black women who are 6% of the population. Any other demographic group, any other region, he won every swing state.
I mean, if you look at, this really is, and I don't think this is a good thing. You had the New Deal Democrats in the 30s who had a mandate and a pretty serious sweep.
This wasn't a landslide, but it was a distinct, decisive win. You had the Republicans in the 80s.
I do think that this does signal a shift in policy around immigration, around foreign policy, around trade. I mean, there's just no getting around it.
This is America saying we want to go in a different direction. I do think this was a pretty big statement from the American people.
Let me just say, people are like, oh, it's a huge landslide. You know what a landslide is? Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964, 61% of the votes.
FDR, 60%. Richard Nixon, 60%.
Orangie Harding, 60%. Reagan, 58%.
Herbert Hoover, 58%. Roosevelt, 57%.
Eisenhower, 57%. T.
Roosevelt, 56%, 55%. This was not that.
It was just not. It just wasn't that.
It wasn't a landslide. It's not even in the top 10.
But that means half the country is dissatisfied. So it's who do you want to bring over and how do you bring them over to the other side? How do you make them feel like they're, like, although we may just be polarized, right? It may just be that shift back and forth.
It'll never be that way again. Back and forth.
Or not. Right.
It'll never be 60. The three issues that showed up, or were the most important, were inflation, immigration, and the issue that I think was the biggest issue where the Democratic establishment made a huge error here around some of the things we were talking about was incumbency.
And that is if you look at every Democratic nation across the globe from India to Japan. They've gotten slapped hard.
The incumbents have been getting kicked out. And to think that we were going to buck that trend in a nation where two-thirds of people saying we're headed down the wrong track was just incredibly naive.
And then the big shocker for both, I'll speak for you, for you and me, I was convinced bodily autonomy was going to play a bigger role than it did. Me too.
There were some interesting videos of people saying, oh, Trump is for abortion rights.

Let me say the last thing, and then we'll have to move on and talk about some of the

real impacts.

I think there was an enormous amount of propaganda in this, pushed by Elon and others that really

worked, like worked in a way that they often do.

So many exit interviews were so incorrect.

It was crazy.

Like, they were just doing just interviews. And I have to say say the interviewers were just saying, what do you think of this? They weren't like guiding them in any way.
And there was this one woman where she's like, yeah, Trump isn't going to do this. He's for abortion.
And there was tons and tons of just misinformation all over the place. And I think the role of propaganda where people had different facts going in was really quite extensive, I think.
I had a lot of people telling me things. I was like, no, that's actually not true.
That's actually not true. And I think that it was sort of pervasive, the misinformation and the constant lying about things.
And I think what she spent a lot of time doing was whack-a-mole. And that's a bad position to be in.
To be right and to tell people they're wrong is a bad thing because they don't want to hear that. So I think there's 10, 20 years ago, we're going to study the propaganda, use of propaganda by foreign and domestic.
And it's going to be something else, including Russia and others. But that's something we're not, that's been building for a very long time.
But just outside of the big three we mentioned, right, immigration, inflation, incumbency was quote unquote democracy. Constitutional democracy was a big issue for people.
But what was so strange about that is that Republicans were more worried about it than Democrats. And I go to, quite frankly, misinformation.
Let me get this. You're worried.
You genuinely believe that there's a conspiracy across our electoral officials and that the election was stolen. That's where your misinformation really came in.
Republicans were more worried about constitutional democracy than Democrats who had seen their representatives cowering in fear because a guy still hasn't conceded the election. This is just, there's no getting around it.
People are now getting two-thirds of their information from platforms that have a vested economic interest in spreading misinformation because it's just more novel and it's more interesting. There's going to be so many forensics, but I think where the Republicans tactically did really well was I think Trump's embrace of the manosphere.
He went on the top five or six kind of manosphere podcasts and basically said, if you're a young person or a young man or someone who sees how a young man in your life is struggling, I got your back. And I think people are really turned off what they view as self-appointed social justice police on the left.
And there's such an enormous shift taking place demographically. One of my role models, Peter Jarker, used to say demographics are destiny.
It's no longer true. If you look at the border states, Latinos in border states actually swung very much towards Trump.
A lot of immigrants are like, I came here legally. I'm not down with what's going on here.
Or they don't have the same empathy for other immigrants. Let me read something.
There was someone who was doing some research around Filipinos and other immigrants in Hawaii that are Republicans. The sources of information are nothing like we've ever heard of.
Yes, there is still the staple of Fox News and Newsmax. There's also a lot of reading of Epoch Times, One America News, and Rumble.
But I had a deep conversation with a native Hawaiian, let's call her Lily, who regards Trump as a demigod. She showed me on her phone the stuff she reads and listens to every day.
I have never heard of them before, and we listen to them together. The conspiracy theories in these sites are wild to say the least, but she is convinced they are true.
This is, it's really, it does work, these things of where people are getting their information. So that'll be, I think, the information environment.
And now I understand why Elon bought Twitter. That's my feeling.
You had a really interesting you popped up in my my feed, something you said on CNN about your thesis around. Oh, him.
True social and Twitter. I thought that was really interesting.
I thought someone very big big wrote me that who was right before about him. And they think they're going to merge True Social with Twitter and then take it public.
Well, it's already public. You're saying it'd be a reverse merger.
You have a public vehicle with True Social. Yes, exactly, I'm sorry.
Yeah, yeah. That would be a massive dilution for Twitter shareholders who would basically be getting $3 million in revenue and have to give up a third or half the company.
But it would be a way, to your point, of funneling billions of dollars from Musk to Donald Trump legally, as far as I can tell. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, it was interesting when someone brought that up to me. All right, well, let's get to everything now.
And by the way, again, we're sorry we were wrong, audience. I don't know what to say.
I think we live in a different place and have different values and different things that are important to us. Anyway, let's move on.
There's a lot to get today. We're going to dig what the victory means for tech and business.
We're going to look forward, including the impact on the economy, big tech regulation, and social media. Let's start with the market.
Stocks soared on Wednesday following the news of Trump's victory. The Dow had its biggest single-day gain in two years on Wednesday, up 3.5%.
The S&P was up 2.5% and the Nasdaq 3%. Trump media shares spiked to around $44 a share, though not quite as high as you predicted.
If Trump won, you thought $80. Tesla went up nearly 15%, making Elon Musk richer than ever.
NVIDIA and Goldman Sachs hit all-time highs. The net worth of billionaires led by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who we'll talk about shortly, surged by over $63 billion.
Other winners, private prison company, Geo Group, and Core Civic rose 42%, which is depressing, and 27% respectively, likely anticipating detainments tied to Trump's immigration policies. Talk a little bit, Scott, about the stock reaction.
So to be fair, the market's actually bifurcated here, and that is the stock market likes it because stocks are basically the present value of growth opportunity and what the earnings or projected earnings are of a company. And there's a belief that they call it growth, but basically what they're anticipating is an extension or even additional tax cuts on corporations, which will increase their earnings and increase their stock price.
So the markets love it. But the first person I heard from who said it's over, the first person to call it, and he was right, was a friend of mine named Justin,

who's the chief investment officer for Millennium, which manages $70 or $80 billion. He was the co-head of Goldman Sachs, this fixed income department.
This guy has a very big brain. And I said, how do you know? And I said, I immediately went to, because of Georgia? I'm like, what are you, you're watching the map? And he said, no, the credit markets, the 10 years spiking and the markets understand that Trump, whose policies will be much more inflationary, is about to win.
And I thought that was really fascinating because if you look at the credit markets, they believe that Trump's policies will be inflationary and the 10 years actually spiked in terms of the yield. So companies or the equity markets like it because they think earnings are going to go up because of a lower tax burden on them.
But the credit markets right now don't love it because they think its policies are going to be inflationary. But the S&P had its best day in nearly two years.
I mean, the markets, the equity markets like this. And again, I hate these signals because they're false flags because the vast majority of equity, of stock market equity in this country is held by a small number of people.
So basically what the market was telling us is that one, his policies are likely going to be inflationary and two, the rich and corporations are going to do really well. Yep.
Yep. That sounds about right.
The price of Bitcoin also rocketed to an all-time high of $75,000 on election night crypto-related stocks. Also ticking upwards, Trump has previously voted the idea of government-owned Bitcoin Reserve and pledged to fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who's considered an enemy by the crypto industry.
They spent a lot of money trying to get rid of Sherrod Brown and others who were opposed to their sort of wild lifestyles, essentially.

What do you think will happen if he strips back any regulation?

There's hardly any, but any regulation. Well, the bull case is that they have been somewhat remiss to embrace innovation and trying to protect the dollar, and that they're getting in the way of true innovation across what is the biggest asset class in the world, and that is the dollar.
So we know we're going to get, we're going to get less regulation, which will be if you're a bull on Bitcoin and innovation around this stuff, there'll be more investment into the category. You can already imagine Andreessen and some other funds starting to deploy capital again into the crypto world.
You're going to see more fraud, more people lose money, more shit coins. You probably will see, to be fair, more innovation.
You'll see less regulation. You'll see soaring prices, I believe, across some of the mainstays that's already happened, Bitcoin, maybe ETH.
But you're also going to see a bunch of people, basically, Gensler will be gone. You'll see what you also might see, though, is actual stimulus or support.

I wouldn't be surprised if these guys were money good on being publicly very supportive of him.

And in exchange, their payback now or their compensation is he's going to say,

each year we're going to take $100 billion and put it into this asset class called Bitcoin. I wouldn't be surprised if he basically comes up with something that not only blesses it and reduces regulation.
He's talked about it. He's talked about it.
That creates stimulus for this sector. So you're about to see the go-go days again, I think, in kind of blockchain and crypto and funds pop up and start deploying capital again.
Yeah, we'll see. And lots of problems, of course, if there's no regulation.
Moving on to the bigger picture of the economy, voters cited the economy as one of their top concerns in exit polls. And clearly, they think Trump is the man to manage these things.
Reminder, Trump has pros high tariffs and targeted tax breaks.

He's also floating, ending federal income tax and replacing it with revenue from tariffs.

He said the economic plan will rapidly defeat inflation, which most people think the opposite,

quickly bring down prices and reignite explosive economic growth.

How soon before inflation goes up?

You just mentioned it.

Talk about that.

What do you think?

The tariff thing is terrifying to most economists.

Yeah, but to be fair. What he said, what he said about tariffs.
So he's proposing anywhere from like 60 to 100% tariffs. To be fair, what the market is saying, and so far the market's kind of gotten it right.
I thought Polymarket, these betting markets were way overestimating the probability that he would win. Very early in the evening, if you went on Polymarket, it had him at 90-10.
And I thought, what? 90? There's no path? But basically the market is saying that they believe, as far as if I tried to interpret the market, that they believe there's going to be a split government and he won't be able to push through these economically disastrous tariffs because the market does not seem that spooked. The credit market does think there's going to be inflation, but we live in a consumer economy.
And if you saw these tariffs actually implemented, I do think you'd immediately see a recession. And the market, I think, is saying we don't think he's going to get these through or he's not going to go through with it because these actual proposed tariffs are just insane in terms of what they would do to the economy.
The market's not buying it. The market doesn't think it's going to happen.
They don't think he can do it, even though he talked about it. I think in general, the market has basically had a big yawn and said, other than cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy, we think this is going to be, if I read what the markets are saying, we think this is a split government and there aren't going to be any radical changes to fundamental radical changes to- Well, not if he wins the House also, which is still up for grabs, although it looks like- I don't see, I can't imagine several Republicans, I think several Republicans are going to go Joe Manchin and love the limelight and say tariffs are a tax on the consumer and I'm not comfortable with this.
I do think you'd see some Republicans defect. Because he really can't come and get them the same way because he's almost dead, right? He's old.
He's not going to be able to affect them quite the same way. He's not going to have the energy.
88% of Christmas gifts under the Christmas tree are from China. You don't see some guy from the South saying, making a populist argument, saying, no, we can't have our Christmas gifts for our little ones go up.
I mean, I don't think he's, the market is saying they don't buy these tariffs, at least at the scale he's proposing. Yeah, yeah, because he's more enervated and he doesn't have the,

he can't target people as well in the next, he doesn't have that power that he had.

Isn't he technically a lame duck president starting in about a month?

Yeah, that's interesting to think about.

And Vance certainly doesn't have the juice that he does.

He's going to try to grab it, but I don't think he has the juice.

Big tech leaders are taking to social media, of course, to congratulate Donald Trump. This is typical.
Let's just start off with that. The one that stuck out, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Sunar Pichai, and Sam Altman wished Trump well.
I thought they were pretty anodyne. So did Mark Cuban.
He was like, Godspeed. You know what I mean? He was like, you won fair and square, which I thought was fair.
I thought that was classy of him to do so. He didn't like slavishly say something.
The person who did, Jeff Bezos, was quite different from the others. He was on the first to kiss the ring, calling Trump's win an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.
It did not have a tone of someone who owns the Washington Post. He's the only one who actually has another thing he's got to think about, which he didn't at all in any way.
So I thought that was problematic. And it was much more effusive than the others.
You know, they all want to work with this administration. They've done it before.
They don't want to be in its crosshairs, and they'd like to get rid of all the different investigations and things like that. Although a lot of Republicans like these investigations very much.
And so that's a really interesting pushback. Talk a little bit about these CEOs, obviously.
More than anyone, tech CEOs weighed in. They're smart to do it, Cara.
He responds to this type of obsequious flattery. And if they're focused on their shareholders, they're smart to do it.
And you kind of have to throw up a little bit in your mouth when it's more than anything than just a polite congratulations. But if you reverse engineer it to shareholder value, they're smart to do it.
Just a lot of foreign leaders pretend that he's really interesting and that they're fascinated with him. And he's going to get more, he's going to get more, you know, when you're courting someone and they tell you that they're really into jewelry or baseball trading cards and that they will like you if you buy them these things, you buy them these things.
And he's made it clear that if you say nice things about them, it works. So I think they're smart to do it.
Yeah, I agree. But I thought Bezos was a little bit abusive.
If you could put them next to each other, it's really quite a different tone. And he does also own the Washington Post.
He might have been a little less ask. It's all about money.
The Washington Post is nothing but a nuisance farm right now. He shouldn't own it then.

He shouldn't own it then.

Stop owning something where you have to.

We're talking about should versus is.

Jeff Bezos is all about money.

He already did that already with the dumping the endorsement. So I just felt like he should have maybe been a little less kiss-assy.

That's my favorite.

You're saying he's the wrong owner, and we've agreed.

Yes, that's correct.

Anything about the Peter Thiel factor? I think he's the quiet one here. Musk gets all the—we're going to talk about Elon in a second, but I think Peter Thiel is the one, the real mastermind here in so many ways.
And I know people—I thought he clocked Trump early and was in there at the last election. I think he clocked Vance.
I think he's been quiet. He doesn't need all the attention the way Musk does.
I think he's far smarter than Elon Musk in many ways. And I think he's, all roads lead to Peter Thiel in this regard, even though it seemed like he was out of the election, right? But I don't, I feel like he's, every one of his tenants is here, is present here.
You first highlighted this to me, and it struck me as something. I just hadn't thought about it.
I hadn't connected the dots the way you had, and I've thought about it more and more, and I think what you're saying makes sense. Because, I mean, here's the scary thing.
With Trump's age and body mass index, there's about a one in three chance he leaves the White House feet first. In four years and two months, an obese, what is he, 78-year-old man, it would be very hard to get life insurance.
And that puts a guy in the White House who will never utter one word to Peter Thiel, and that word is no. He owes everything to Peter Thiel.
That's how he got to be a senator. That's how he got the VP spot.
And so if Peter Thiel calls him and says, I need you to do this tax or put a tariff here or deregulate this or create a floating island where billionaires don't have to pay tax or we totally ban the following activities or so, Vance, if he can, we'll do it. I just don't think Vance could ever say no to Peter.
He is where he is. He is one heartbeat from the presidency, not because of an impressive business career, not because he's a great politician, because of Peter Thiel.
Yeah, that's the one to watch. And even though Elon, as usual, the circus clown, likes to take all the attention, as Bloomberg put it, Elon is about to find out what $130 million for Trump gets him.
We mentioned the Tesla stock surge. That's added $26 billion to his net worth.
But Elon stands to benefit in a number of other ways, including government efficiency commission role, EV and autonomous driving policies that benefit Tesla, and more government contracts for SpaceX. Trump has previously pledged his support for Elon's goal of sending a rocket to Mars.
That one I don't mind so much. I honestly don't.
And as I mentioned, I think Elon merges X with True Social. So I also think they're going to have a falling out.
I really feel like this is coming. If I had to make any one prediction, that's what I feel like.
Peter is very quiet in the background and gets exactly what he wants. Elon can't help himself and neither can Trump.
And Trump's the president. So, thoughts? Well, look, this arguably, you could say that Musk's $119 million in donations to Trump were one of the best investments that's ever been made.
He made it over approximately three or six months. And in exchange, his net worth has gone up $15 billion just from his Tesla shares, which skyrocketed on news that Trump was retaking the White House.
So if someone said to any billionaire or any institution or any hedge fund, here's $119 million. If you give us $119 million, we think if the markets are right, there's a two-thirds chance you're going to get $15 billion back.
So you got to give it to the guy. Best investment of the year was Musk's dollar, his $119 million investment in the Trump campaign.
Yeah, because if she had won, he was never going to get that dinged for it also. Yeah, that's exactly right.
$15 billion on $119 million, that's the best trade of 2024. Yeah, so what's going to happen next now? Well, so I need to disclose, we talked about this.
I was planning, you know, under, see above, got it wrong. I thought Polymarket, the gambling site, which had, it was $40,000.
Which is owned by Peter Thiel, or is invested in Peter Thiel. I didn't know that.
So 4060, Harris to Trump's likelihood of being elected. So you were going to get two and a half to one.
I saw that as asymmetric upside because I thought it was a coin flip according to the polls that I saw. So I was going to take $400,000 and put it on Harris thinking I could get a million back.
And I want to be clear for people listening. This is not investing.
This is gambling. And I can afford to lose that.
And it would ruin maybe an afternoon, but it wouldn't have any impact on my life. And I don't want to in any way tell people that they should be doing this.
So, but I was planning to do it. So I went to the site, signed up for it, wait till Harris went down to 38, then up to 42.
And the site said, you can't be a US citizen. And then it said, you can't transfer money in from the UK.
So I could not figure out how to get one of these betting sites up. So I went to a different strategy.
I decided to, I sold, I did a call or call strategy on Donald Trump media. And that is, I thought, if this stock, if he loses, the stock goes below 10, if he wins, it could skyrocket.
But I also thought if he wins, this is no longer a prediction vessel. It's just a shitty company.
And I actually thought there's a chance it might go down even if he wins. So I sold calls at 20 bucks a share, way, way into the money thinking this thing could crash.

There's a good likelihood it could crash.

But I was worried, well, what if something fucking crazy happens and it goes to 400 and I owe someone $8 million who I sold these calls to?

So I bought calls way out of the money at 60.

I got $20 in premium for buying or selling calls at 20.

I got six bucks.

It cost me six bucks to buy calls at 60.

So my downside was limited to like two and a half million bucks. My upside capped at one and a half million.
And what's happened is he won, the stock spiked. I'm like, oh, fuck, bad day for Scott.
But since then, the strategy around, it's no longer a tracking stock. It's just a shitty company now.
It's come down, I think it opened at about 31 bucks today. Yeah, it's gone down.
So I got very lucky. It's better to be lucky than good.
I was going to make a straight wager on Harris and couldn't because I'm in the UK and I'm impatient with websites. Yeah, probably you can't use it.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
So this kind of, I think it's called a collared call strategy so far, so far it's working out because Donald Trump media, I think people are waking up and going, okay, now what? This is a shitty little company that's no longer a prediction machine or gambling. It's basically shares or ownership in a company that has no revenues but is hemorrhaging money.
Yeah. Interesting.
We'll wait and see for you. But anyway, Peter Thiel, along with the founder of Ethereum, raised money for Polymarket earlier this year.
Just so you know, he's involved in that one too. It's interesting times.
But Musk and Trump falling out. Thought, real quick thought, then we'll go on.
You know more about this than I do, Kara. It's an interesting theory.
Why do you think? Because there was a movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme where the future and the past person could never come together. It was called Time Cop.
I recommend it to everybody. And you couldn't ever be in the same room with your future self and your present self or your past self, whatever, because it would blow up.
The world can't take that in the same place. And at the very end, the villain gets into, he gets them to get in the room together and then everything breaks loose and they blow up essentially.
I don't quite understand it, whatever. I think these people can't coexist together in the same room for much, for too long.
That's my, that's my sense. Maybe I'll be completely wrong, but I feel like that Trump likes the attention and Elon likes the attention and there's only so much attention to go around.
And if the same, remember when Bannon got kicked out, when he got all the attention as being the puppet master of Trump and then Bannon got, I know he didn't get totally kicked to the curb. He kept getting brought back, but kicked to the curb and brought back.
He kicked Bannon to the curb very early. We forget this in the Trump administration because he sucked up all the oxygen.
So Elon might be very smart to not suck up all the oxygen. That's my feeling.
So I don't have a view on this other than a better version of Time Cop is the 2012 movie Looper starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Oh, yeah. Also with Emily Blunt, Piper Peribou, and a vastly underrated actor who is one of the best actors out there who should have been nominated for his role in Escape from Dannemore, a guy named Paul Dano, who was also in Little Miss Sunshine.
Anyways, that's a great movie in the same concept. Yeah.
Would you like to go back and meet your past self, Scott? I've thought about this a lot.

I would like to go back to my past self and just say,

trust me, everything's going to work out.

Really?

I could have used to hear that a few times.

Interesting.

How about you?

Would you like to go back and...

I am the same person, so no, not really.

Yeah, but would you like to go back and say anything to your own yourself?

Maybe invest in something.

Buy NVIDIA, bitch. Buy NVIDIA.
Take that job that you were offered in. Sell the Subaru Impreza and put it all in NVIDIA.
No, actually take some of those jobs that was offered and then have the money to become Elon Musk of presidential politics. Anyway.
Take some of those jobs I was offered. Well, I was offered jobs at all the big tech companies.
I would have been very wealthy. I would have been a billionaire.
You are very wealthy because you discovered podcasts with a dog. That's right.
Everyone asks on Reddit why she puts up with me. Three words, Benjamin.
Benjamin, that's it. No, I like you.
I like you. I want to be one of the first people person I want to talk to after this.
I like you too. All right.
Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about what regulation of these big tech companies will look like under Trump, plus the future of the TikTok ban.
Remember that? Today Explained here with Eric Levitt, senior correspondent at Vox.com to talk about the 2024 election. That can't be right.
Eric, I thought we were done with that. I feel like I'm Pacino in three.
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. Why are we talking about the 2024 election again? The reason why we're still looking back is that it takes a while after an election to get all of the most high-quality data on what exactly happened.

So the full picture is starting to just come into view now. And you wrote a piece about the full picture for Vox recently, and it did bonkers business on the internet.
What did it say? What struck a chord? Yeah, so this was my interview with David Shore of Blue Rose Research. He's one of the biggest sort of democratic data gurus in the party.
And basically, the big picture headline takeaways are... On Today, Explained.
You'll have to go listen to them there. Find the show wherever you listen to shows, bro.
Scott, we're back with more on what the second Trump era means for tech and business.

Let's start with antitrust regulation.

We talked earlier about Gary Gensler.

Let's move on to FTC Chair Lena Kahn.

Elon Musk wants her fired.

J.D. Vance has said he's a fan.

I'm guessing she'll probably go, but the FTC, if people don't forget, is currently suing Amazon and Meta.

The Meta case was launched originally under Trump and would lead to Meta unwinding Instagram and WhatsApp. I don't really know what's going to happen here.
There's all these conflicting people in the Republican Party about her. As you know, there's conservatives.
I think J.D. Vance is one of them.
Thoughts on that? I actually am betting she's going to stay. She's one of the few.
I mean, think about it. She's one of the few individuals that has fans on both sides, even if she has more fans on the Democratic side.
She's not offensive. She strikes me as quite politically astute.
And also Trump is not a big fan of some of the companies she's going after. Yeah.
He doesn't have the attention span to stay that focused on this. And doesn't it kind of soften his image to leave the existing younger, wonky woman as chair of the FDC? Yeah, I don't know.
I have to do more reporting on it to find out. But I mean, a lot of these tech companies are hoping that's what will happen and these will go away.
They should be kicked out. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, but he's, it's really, I'm curious what your thought is.
Yeah, there's competing forces here. Right.
Vance particularly, and Matt Gaetz, he's still here with us, unfortunately. You know, those people are quite fans of them and they don't trust big tech.
They'd have to kowtow to Elon now, but I think in general, they're not tech fans. But if he's just playing poker and thinking about leverage, why wouldn't he let these antitrust actions and trials continue? And then right when it gets to the eve, when he has real power, maybe call him and say, I want this and I'll kill it.
I don't know. Why wouldn't you play poker and continue to turn the screws on him? Yeah, it's cool.
And he loves it. Someone, you know, that two dogs in a box thing.
He likes that. He does that all the time in his other company.
A knife fight in a closet. Yeah, it's cool.
He loves that two dogs in a box thing.

He likes that.

He does that all the time at his other company.

A knife fight in a closet.

Yeah, something like that.

Let's move on to the DOJ, which is suing Apple for monopolizing the smartphone market.

Then there are the two Google anti-monopoly cases, the one over ad tech and the other over search.

The search one was originally launched by Trump's DOJ.

The district court judge ruled this summer that Google has an illegal monopoly over search, but remedies won't get decided until the summer. I'm not so sure he has control over this at this point.
He seemed to switch gears on breaking up Google, saying, if you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What can you do without breaking it up to make sure it's more fair? Again, same thing. I'm not sure he has as much control over this as that because the case has already been decided.
But certainly, you know, we'll see what happens. There'll be another antitrust person.
It'll be interesting to see who he picks. That'll matter rather than John Cantor.
This is a guy that supposedly every person that presented to him was coached by the people who knew trump few just a few words and pictures so i think anything that's complicated and exhausting like the nuance of the doj trial i think ultimately they he just moves on and forgets about it i don't yeah these are going forward i think yeah i don think, yeah. I don't think he's that...
I think he's like a cat... Like, oh, look over here, a cat chasing a red dot.
So I think this stuff, my guess would be this stuff to explain why we're not doing it, bringing someone new, all the meetings required, all the economists he needs to talk to. I think he'll just get exhausted by it and say, oh, fuck it, just let him do what he can do.
Well, they may try to slip it by him, right? I don't know. I feel like advance will be important here.
Or he could be. He could insert himself in this.
We'll see. He might give that work to Vance.
Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.
But obviously, everyone is focusing on TikTok. Trump is the first president to own his own social network, as shitty as it is.
He tried to roll back portions of Section 230 during his first term rather cloddishly. Didn't work.
He wanted to ban TikTok in his first term. Back in September, he wanted to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
He seemed to change his mind on TikTok. Do you think the ban is off the table? It's been passed, though, by Congress.
So where does this go, this case? There's so many moving parts here that we're not privy to. One of his biggest donors is this guy, Yas, who's- Jeff Yas.
Jeff Yas, whose biggest position is in TikTok. He has a lot of probably people who are big investors.
Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic Partners are in TikTok. He claims that he's angry at Meta and TikTok is a threat to Meta.
He could get on the phone with Xi and say, okay, stop this bullshit around tariffs. You do this, I'll do this.
And they come to some sort of agreement. Or he could decide to let them continue to do their work.
And maybe Ellison calls him and says, if you ban it, I'm going to buy it. I mean, there's so many moving parts in backroom dealing that's going to happen here that I think it's very hard to predict.
But Congress did pass the ban. So the ban, it's not a maybe thing.
It's a, they have till this time to do something. Can he reverse it though? I don't think so.
By executive order, could he extend the stay? I don't think so. We have to find out.
I don't believe he can. The honest answer is I don't know.
Yeah. But where do you imagine he'll go? And talk a little bit about Meadow when he threatened to put Mark Zuckerberg, who's kissing his ass now, in jail.
I don't think he's going to go there. I mean, I'm turning into one of these people.
I don't want to be one of these people that finds his threats cute or, oh, he's not going to actually do that. I think it would be very difficult.
And I think if Mark Zuckerberg, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is very powerful. If Mark Zuckerberg actually believes he might go to jail, you want to see someone put their thumb on the scale of certain types of content.
If someone was coming for me for jail, I would very elegantly, quietly, and in a disciplined fashion, put that whole ridiculous governance board, shove them to the side and say, I'm going to show you what it's like when you threaten to put me in jail. And you know what? People aren't even going to know what's going on because I control two thirds of their newsfeed.
And if you think the CCP has turned up polarization and division within America amongst our youth, wait and see what I do to you, boss. Well, I don't think he has the set to do it, but okay.
That Zuckerberg has the set to do it? Yeah. I don't know.
I think jail is pretty fucking scary. I think the prospect of jail, or let me put it this way, the opportunity to stay out of jail, if this guy really starts threatening you with what I'm sure Mark believes is illegal incarceration, he's going to say, all right, all right, bitch, you want to dance? Let's dance.
Because people forget Mark Zuckerberg is hands down one of the most powerful people in the world. When you control, back to what you're saying about misinformation, more Republicans were worried about the peaceful transfer of power than Democrats.
If anything brings home to you the power of social media, it's that. And to think that Mark Zuckerberg could make life very difficult for Donald Trump is not to acknowledge the fact that two-thirds of Americans are now getting their news from Meta.
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because Elon's explicitly aggressive and Mark certainly could be.
It's not his style to be threatening, I would think. Anyway, it'll be interesting.
It'll be interesting to see who they try to go after.

You know, I was joking with Mark Cuban

that we're going to share a jail cell

and we can call ourselves the Menendez brothers,

except with 100% less murder.

But I don't think he's going to—

Who wears the wig?

And who starts dating that?

Who starts eyeing the hot guy in the shower?

That's what I want to know.

Boy, that guy's a tall drink of lemonade. Have you been watching that? He's very sexy.
He's very sexy. Now, the last thing, what do you think it means for content moderation in general? They're not going to do it.
They're tired. They're not going to do it anymore.
No, it's a fucking Wild West now. I mean, if there's a lack of content moderation got him elected.
Republicans are worried about the peaceful transfer of power and democracy.

Thank you, misinformation.

Yep, exactly.

They now know they don't have to do anything.

And I think, again, we're going to be studying this in 10 years.

The propaganda is such an important part of what happened here.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails. Scott, we're back.
We're going to do wins today. Only wins.
We're going to skip fails because there's a lot of them and focus on the positive. Why don't you go first? So I have one about the election, one just more about economics.
I have two wins. I think one way to feel if you're feeling bad about this is, and I want to highlight, I think a lot of people should feel some consolation because I know so many people who just left it all on the field, so to speak.
my friends Robert May my partner at Prop G Media, Catherine Dillon, her husband

uh so many people who just left it all on the field, so to speak. My friends, Robert May,

my partner at Property Media, Catherine Dillon, her husband, Jeffrey, Liz Plank showed up at a rally in Philadelphia. My friend, Whitney Tilson, these are people who got on planes from LA or trains from DC.
They went to Philadelphia and started knocking on doors. And while I imagine they're devastated, they can feel like I showed up, I tried.
I think there are so many people that really tried hard. So my win is people who, quote unquote, left it on the field.
The other win is I really do believe that we're about to see disruption amongst local television stations who got about, I mean, just hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, actually three to one from the Harris campaign towards the end, thinking that old people decide elections and they can find them all on local news, which I describe as a depiction of what stupid people did today. Oh, two people in a car in a bad part of town got robbed today.
I mean, anyways, you're going to see most of that money not even go to digital. It's going to go to podcast, Kara.
This was the election of the Manosphere as brought to you by podcasters. And you're going to see, and when you think about it, when's the last time we had a political ad? We haven't.
You're about to see a disruption in the local news broadcast television advertising market. And all of that money is going to go to podcasts.
And if you look at graphs of attention versus revenue, 20 years ago, it was the internet is a third of time and 8% of revenue and newspapers were 8% of time and a third of revenue. And it flipped.
Money always follows attention and attention is skyrocketing. In 2025, we're going to see podcast revenue accelerate faster than TikTok, Meta, or Alphabet.
And then in 26, we're going to see a massive disruption and transfer of advertising dollars from local news stations to podcasts because that's where voters are hanging out. This was no, amongst seniors.
Yeah, they voted. And actually, interestingly enough, seniors was the only age group that went more Harris, where Harris actually picked up votes versus 2020.
But what they're going to find is the swingiest of swing voters are young people. They're the ones that are most impressionable and most up for grabs.
And guess what? Where's their medium? Podcast. I can't agree with you more.
I mean, I was, I'm already talking to people who are well-known, like, here's what we're going to do. We're taking advantage of this and building our own.
If there's a bro sphere, there's another sphere, right? That you can really do well on and motivate and excite people, right? And not a bubble, but really bring people together in a really interesting, I think it's an opportunity. I've been thinking of podcast ideas all day.
I agree with you. I agree with you.
Do you have a second one? In two years, our advertisers, in not two years, 22 months from now, it's not going to be ZipRecruiter or Athletic Greens or LinkedIn. We like them.
We love them. It's going to be so-and-so candidate for Senate or Congress or President.
You watch. You're about to see billions of dollars flushed into the system and economics always end up catching up to attention and attention to Skyrim.
And not only that, the great white rhino of advertisers is the individual they no longer can reach. And that's a young, wealthy male.
Where are they? Podcasts. Yeah.
I'm just saying it doesn't have to be just bros. There's other, the bro sphere isn't the only sphere.
And there's other spheres. That's all I'm saying is 80 male pivot is 70 habit household income 150 000 that's called an advertiser's dream because those people are stupid and spend money on high margin products like watches and cars and supplements and all this crazy high margin shit they're all on the the demographic the average average viewer, age of a viewer on MSNBC is 70 years old.
The average podcast listener is 34, which means for every person my age, there's someone who just became a voter. So, and those people spend a lot of money on high margin irrational products, which is Latin for advertisers love those people.
I think all the moons are lining up for- What you're telling me is you're going to turn into a Joe Rogan suddenly over the next couple of years and I'll have to kill you, right? Well, I hope we both turn into Joe Rogan in terms of our reach and our money. Reach is different than our attitude.
You're talking to the guy who pulled his podcast down from Spotify because of vaccine misinformation. I know.
I know. I'm just watching.
I have to watch. I watch you because sometimes it's invasion of the body snatchers.
I've had several friends who've turned in ways I really can't abide, I have to say. So it's an invasion of the body snatchers.
Don't fall asleep, Scott. Don't fall asleep.
What? You never saw invasion of the body snatchers? Donald Sutherland. If you fall asleep, you become snatched.
You get snatched. What was that name? That was one of my first crutches.
Who was the female lead in that? Oh, Brooke. Brooke.
Oh, very good. Brooke something.
She was amazing. What happened to her? Like all female actresses, she hit 40 and couldn't find another job.
Brooke Adams. Brooke Adams.
Brooke Adams. She was very good.
Actually, Jeff good actually jeff goldblum was in that god is that funny how uh my my guess is his agent called the director and got him in it um uh leonard nimoy was in it oh my gosh well go back let's go back and watch that together and then we'll wear our pajamas all right so here's mine um i know everyone's feeling bad and i do and i wrote, as I said, a long thread. I was walking, and at least 50 people hugged me for my thread, which was fascinating to me.
But one of the things that you, they're always, I got a lot of right-wing people. It's like, now you see we're right.
I'm like, you're not that right. It was 50%.
And they really want you to feel bad about feeling the way you do. Your opinions are just as good as anybody else's if you have them, if you feel abortion's important, if you feel that whatever you think is important is important because it's what you think about it.
And so don't give in to the now we have to understand them. They don't want to understand us either.
And I don't mean not to get along, but everyone's going to try to bring you to heel now. And don't.
We don't have to like it. You don't have to cooperate.
I think a lot of what Trump was appealing to was rancor and selfishness. Fine.
I get it. But you don't have to be easy.
You can resist. You can say no.
Don't feel the need to be nice. In fact, be disrespectful.
They do it and work for them. And I don't mean all the time.
Be the person you are. And also lose people who tell you to accept this.
If you are not on the same plane, lose them. I'm sorry.
It's okay to feel angry, fed up, disappointed. It's required.
And so I just, I'm not going to, just like they don't apologize. I'm not apologizing.
And so I feel like there's always moments where you can get together and understand and listen to each other 100 fucking percent. But you do not have to agree.
You do not have to knuckle under and and you just just fight for what you believe in and listen to what they have and try to build coalitions in that regard.

But we are never, this election said anything is we do not agree.

So how do we figure out a way to get somewhere where we're all moving forward?

That's my feeling.

Thank you very much.

That's my speech.

I like that. And just to add on to that, something also very important is that we talk about Brooke Adams' filmography.

She was not only in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

She was so good.

She was in what I believe is one of the most underrated films from one of the greatest authors in history, Stephen King's The Dead Zone, who's starring Christopher Walken.

And also Martin Sheen.

That is a fantastic film.

And a quick fun fact here, she is married to Tony Shalhoub of Monk fame. What an interesting couple.
What? Oh, my God. Brooke Adams.
Wait, she is? Yeah, since they've been married for 32 years. Okay, then I just met her because he came up to me in Nantucket and said he loved the podcast.
yeah that guy's a real talent he's really yes

the guy who was monk yeah and then he was on um marvelous miss mazel oh my god she was with him i didn't know that this is see that's a victory for every guy standing next to him i didn't recognize that's a victory for every guy who's not that attractive but is very talented and funny He is attractive.

Not so.

Very hot woman.

Very hot woman.

He's totally attractive.

Oh, my God. Oh my God.
Then I actually met her and I didn't know it. This is nuts.
I love you, Brooke Adams. I love you, Brooke Adams.
Let me just say, I love you, Tony Shalhoub, too. Anyway, let's move on from the Brooke Adams love fest.
Go back and watch her movies. They're great.
I want to also mention that on the latest episode of On with Kara Swisher, I spoke with two presidential historians today to get some perspective. It was really helpful to all of us as we try to anticipate what's ahead.
One of those historians. Oh, stop it.
No, these things doing amazingly well on the podcast. I'm sorry to tell you, Scott, they do well.
Lindsay Chervinsky offered a helpful reminder of how people can take action. And then Grover Cleveland said to the Secretary of Interior.
She works. She does George Washington.
The other guy does Nixon. Let's listen.
Quiet, Scott Galloway. There are still ways that even if Trump can't always be held accountable, the people around him can be, whether it is through the rule of law, through our court system, through public accountability.
And we have to continue to try and use every mechanism of accountability possible, which is, I think, the legal side or the public side of the don't obey in advance. But the best and most longlasting way to combat authoritarianism is through accountability.
And so we just have to keep trying because the most pernicious thing will be if we do give up hope. So we cannot give up and we have to keep trying to hold people to account.
That's perfect. And the word you're looking for is, oh, no, you didn't.
Anyway, it was a good interview. You should listen to it.
We do incredibly well with those historians. I also had a presidential historian on property markets, and I'll let you guess who it was.
He cited the following fact about presidents from George Washington to George Bush. Total deficits, $7 trillion in four years with Donald Trump, $8 trillion.
Guess who that presidential historian was? Beschloss.

Any ideas?

Michael Beschloss.

Anthony Scaramucci,

who is shockingly

knowledgeable about history.

He is.

He is.

He's a funny guy.

I love that.

Yeah, smart too.

You know, when you were gone

in August,

that show,

when we had him on,

did incredibly well,

by the way.

He does well

wherever he goes.

He literally is the fan favorite

of any podcast he goes on.

Yeah, he's very funny.

He's much,

I think people are expecting him not to be quite as sharp. I don't know why, but they do because of that time in the White House.
Anyway, 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. Before we go, I want to share a clip from Amazon's election night special with Brian Williams, where, as you mentioned, you made an appearance.
Brian had some fun with a classic Scott Galloway catchphrase. At the end of your segment, and I think our loyal listeners will enjoy, let's listen.
Those of you playing our home game, that was the first mention of champagne and cocaine

for the evening.

And the circle gets the square.

It goes to Scott Galloway in London.

Thanks for that.

I didn't know you were going to do that.

That's nice.

Yes. Champagne and cocaine.

Did you watch any of it on Amazon?

I did not.

Oh, it's really good.

I still think CNN did the best job,

but Amazon was really slick. I went to sleep.
Really beautiful. I went to sleep.
No. Really beautiful.
I didn't have the energy. No.
But champagne and cocaine. There you go.
That's the next four years. I think, you know, I think that kind of says it all.
Splashing the cash, flinging the bling. Champagne and cocaine.
Oh, I can't believe you have to look at that son of a bitch for four more years. Oh, the ridiculous hands, the tiny hands, the whole thing.
I thought that was gone. Oh, it's not.
Okay, here we are. Stuck in the middle with each other.
Stuck in the middle with each other. We have each other.
We have each other to deal with small hands and bad makeup. All right, we'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.
Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Christine Driscoll.
Ernie just had engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miss Averio, and Dan Shulon.
Nishak Karwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.
We'll be back next week for

another breakdown of all things tech and business. Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.

But sometimes it is.