Big Tech Earnings, Trump Media Stock Plunge, and Guest Margaret Brennan

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Speaker 3 I love Scott being irritated by me, and I love being irritated by Scott.

Speaker 3 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 1 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 3 Scott, are you back in London?

Speaker 1 I am, and I'm actually happy to be here. I really, I don't know if, well, it's hard for you to notice this, but

Speaker 1 being back in London and being in the U.S. for two and a half weeks, I was

Speaker 1 surprised, is it surprised? Well, noticed it is visibly,

Speaker 1 observably tense in the U.S. right now.
Yes, indeed.

Speaker 1 I was at a fundraiser on Saturday for JED, which focuses on, it's a wonderful nonprofit that focuses on works with high schools to help with teen mental health and suicide prevention.

Speaker 1 And I was giving a talk, and out of the blue, someone from a corner yelled, Trump 2024. And then someone else on the other side felt compelled to start booing him.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 this is a fundraiser for teen mental health.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 Why did they do that? Why did that Trump person do that?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I don't know, but

Speaker 1 everyone you talk to seems very tense, very polarized, very on edge. One of the things I really appreciate about the UK is that here elections run six weeks from start to finish.

Speaker 1 It does seem that everyone just sort of is like kind of non-plussed a little bit by the results and then they just, you know, keep calm and carry on. I could not get over how tense it felt in the U.S.

Speaker 1 Do you feel that?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, absolutely. Everywhere you go, it's really nuts.
It's really crazy.

Speaker 3 You know, it's very hard to find humor in it. Like sometimes sometimes there's humor in political campaigns, but the, you know, I think the ugliness level, led by the Republicans, really,

Speaker 3 is gotten to a point and then the Democrats respond. I don't think politics should be funny, but it also should be feel like you're one country, I guess, in some regard.
And it doesn't feel like that.

Speaker 3 Like on either side, if they win, feel like

Speaker 3 the people have been ginned up so much that Kamala Harris is the devil, essentially. And

Speaker 3 that people on the other side are, you know, another Trump administration is disastrous for our country. I think it's really, they feel like it's existential in some weird way.

Speaker 3 I mean, not weird way, it is. It is, it feels, in fact, it feels existential, including people who are not that, I wouldn't say dramatic are saying that, you know, are very worried.

Speaker 3 And so, and I think the inclusion of the world's richest man, I'm sorry, with the money feels like he's buying an election, right? That's weird. You know, this is, you say it's a podcast election.

Speaker 3 I say it's an Elon election, right? Can billionaires buy their way? I mean, rich people always have, but not in this explicit and naked, an attempt to help their own interests, right?

Speaker 1 You don't think people would say that about Kennedy and his father and what happened.

Speaker 3 And yes, but it wasn't, this is naked. Like, I guess we always knew it, but this feels so naked and explicit and transactional

Speaker 3 that it's, you know, I guess we kind of

Speaker 3 believe a little bit that we're like not like that, but then here it is, right? I think that's, that's really what's, I think, created the real tension

Speaker 3 in the situation is that this, the richest man in the world who is an immigrant to this country is displaying so much rancor, creating so much division,

Speaker 3 even more so than Trump. I can't believe it, if that's possible.
And I think that's what's sort of getting on people's nerves. It's sort of,

Speaker 3 you you know, I was saying this to someone.

Speaker 3 It's ironic that a week before

Speaker 3 on Halloween week, all the masks are off.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I recognize that my kids know very little about elections. So I've been.
Trying to teach them about democracy.

Speaker 1 So just as an exercise, last night I let them vote on dinner and they picked pizza, but then I ordered Indian because we don't live in a swing state.

Speaker 3 Very funny, Scott. Trying to calm things down.

Speaker 1 trying to lighten the mood. Trying to lighten the mood.

Speaker 3 Anyway, we've got a lot to get today, including the latest earnings from Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta.

Speaker 3 With just a few days until the election, Joe Biden creates a headache for Democrats, which I think is not, is a not nothing burger, but he did it.

Speaker 3 And Donald Trump makes some creepy new comments about women, which was par for the course, just another Tuesday.

Speaker 3 Plus, we'll get some last-minute political analysts from our friend of Pivot, Face the Nation host, Margaret Brennan.

Speaker 3 But first, former president Trump's True Social was briefly worth more than Elon Musk's X, which has been declining in value, as we've talked about before.

Speaker 3 True Social parent company was shortly valued over $10 billion, while X Holdings is valued at $9.4 billion, and that's probably being generous.

Speaker 3 The Trump media stock was briefly halted several times this week for moving so sharply. It's gone up and down.
It really is interesting. There's a lot of weird movement in this stock.

Speaker 3 I'd love to really actually see the transactions. Meanwhile, the parent company lost more than $10.

Speaker 3 $16 million in the quarter ending June and doesn't have very many people on it, which, of course, this is not about its fundamental business issues.

Speaker 3 However, on Wednesday, Trump himself lost $1.3 billion in net worth after the worst trading day ever

Speaker 3 for the company. We do disagree on why this is happening.
I think there's a lot of gaming going on here, and I would love to see the logs of who's buying this.

Speaker 1 Say more about what you mean by that.

Speaker 3 Well, if you're someone who wants to support Trump, like these polymarkets, everyone's like, oh, Peter Thiel owns it.

Speaker 3 And it turned out there was one trade in France from one guy, you know, that made that made it go up. So we're all like, oh, Trump's winning, but he's not because one guy did it.
Right.

Speaker 3 And so I worry this stock is being manipulated by Trump adjacent people and who knows who they could be to make it go up and down.

Speaker 3 I don't think this is a bunch of like, maybe it's Wall Street gaming, the situation.

Speaker 3 It feels very gamed, like on some level, the way it's gone up, because getting away from the fundamentals of this company, which both of us absolutely agree is a piece of shit, right?

Speaker 3 It's a shit sandwich inside a shit, you know, pie, whatever.

Speaker 3 It seems unusual that this is happening. I don't think it's popular sentiment.
It's some other sentiment. And you think differently.
You think differently.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it's an interesting thesis. And that is that

Speaker 1 if

Speaker 1 a stock or a poll indicates that Trump is likely to win, that it gives people confidence or incentive or momentum on the Trump side.

Speaker 1 And then I've also heard a counter theory, and that is it's being manipulated by a wealthy Democrat who wants to give Republican voters a sense it's in the bag such that people stay on the couch.

Speaker 3 I can see.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't hear that one.

Speaker 3 That's fascinating.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That was my friend Whitney Tilson, who sends out a really thoughtful email almost every day.

Speaker 1 So I can see someone manipulating, well, let me back up. This is what I think is going on.
Polymarket,

Speaker 1 Kelcha, is that what it's called?

Speaker 1 Something like that, yeah. Anyways, there's a bunch of them

Speaker 1 that are basically wagering sites where you can bet on, amongst other things, every state. You can bet on margin of victory, and you can bet on the election.
And right now on polymarket, it has

Speaker 1 Trump at 62.

Speaker 1 approximately 62 or 63 and Harris at 37 or 38 percent.

Speaker 1 That is a wide margin.

Speaker 1 And I think the logical thesis, or the most obvious one, and kind of Occam's razor, I think the one that probably is correct, is that the kind of person that goes to a site and bets on an election is probably younger, probably more male, and those people skew heavily Trump.

Speaker 1 Because if you look at the actual data, I mean, the majority of the data across the A-plus list polling sites says that it's pretty much a toss-up. And so if you were a betting person,

Speaker 1 I mean, I'm actually thinking of doing this just for fun.

Speaker 1 I might put some money on Harris a polymarket because this is what it means. If you bet $100 on Harris and she wins, you get approximately $287 or almost triple your money.

Speaker 1 And if someone said you Cara, bet on this coin flip and you don't know. And I would describe the election right now as from just the data I see trying to be as unemotional as possible as a coin flip.

Speaker 1 But if someone said you care,

Speaker 1 you bet $100 and you pick heads or tails. And if you win, you get $287.

Speaker 1 You would do that because it's asymmetric upside.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. In fact, let's do it.
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 Well, that's actually what I'm thinking because, not that I'm

Speaker 1 hopeful, but I'm not that confident. I think it's literally a coin flip.
But if on a coin flip

Speaker 1 you're getting $287,

Speaker 1 then again, you have disproportionate upside.

Speaker 1 So I think the thesis that these markets are driven by who bets which way or the other, the most obvious explanation is that the people, it's like, do you remember when Floyd Mayweather fought Conor McGregor?

Speaker 1 Anyways, this UFC fighter, this whiter-than-white guy, red-hair, Irish guy, who's actually not that great an MMA fighter. He's just very loud and obnoxious.

Speaker 1 Well, anyways, and he fought Floyd Mayweather, who arguably has the fastest hands in the history of boxing. But the odds were much tighter because

Speaker 1 I think people still like the idea. I think there's some unconscious racism where people like the idea of the white guy beating up or winning the, you know,

Speaker 1 beating the black guy. There's always, throughout the history of boxing, there's always a little bit of bias for the white guy, the great white hope, so to speak.
Right.

Speaker 1 And the best bet or the easiest bet was on Floyd Mayweather fighting an okay MMA fighter that has never boxed before. Anyway,

Speaker 1 my point is, you're getting asymmetric upside to the notion of...

Speaker 3 Who won that thing? I don't even know.

Speaker 1 To Conor McGregor's credit, he fought a competent fight, but Floyd Mayweather absolutely dominated and won, as he should have.

Speaker 1 But the thing that I don't think is being manipulated for Trump's favor is the stock, because

Speaker 1 the stock was almost at 100 a couple of years ago. It's been as low as 12.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if that's sending signals into the marketplace. Why not?

Speaker 3 Why couldn't one or 10? Listen to this. This is an interesting thing.
Fortune had a really interesting investigation.

Speaker 3 In separate investigations completed by the blockchain firms KS Labs and Inca Digital and shared exclusively with Fortune, analysts found that polymarket activity exhibits signs of wash trading, a form of market manipulation in which shares are bought and sold often simultaneously and repeatedly to create a false impression of volume of activity.

Speaker 3 Chaos Labs found that wash trading consisted constituted around one-third of trading volume in polymarkets, presidential market, while Inca Digital found that a significant portion of the volume on the market could be attributed to potential wash trading.

Speaker 3 The other ones, you know, they're looking at those too. And I think you could do the same thing with this, with this stuck.
Very little needs to trade to make it go up.

Speaker 3 And if you wanted, I was intrigued by the democratic thing make them feel confident and then you know let put put put a hundred dollars for each of us on that will you do that will you do that and i'll owe you a hundred percent um i might i might do a little bit more than that but anyways the the

Speaker 1 I buy the thesis around the polls because around the the betting sites because a lot of media reports on the betting sites.

Speaker 1 And when the media reports that according to Polymarket or Calci, that Trump is almost two to one favored, that sends a signal that's probably on the whole good for the Trump

Speaker 1 campaign. Where the stock is, I don't think does much around a signal or confidence or lack thereof.
I don't think it creates much of an echo effect in favor of one candidate or the other.

Speaker 3 I would short that stock like nobody's business because you wouldn't like, well, it could just rise. Yeah, you could rise.

Speaker 1 You got to be very careful shorting a stock like that because if he wins,

Speaker 1 there's a scenario where it goes to 100 bucks on November the 6th. And

Speaker 1 the dangerous thing about short selling is your losses are unlimited.

Speaker 3 Yep, that's true.

Speaker 1 Anyways, but I guess what I'm saying is I absolutely buy your thesis around manipulating and the incentive around manipulating the betting markets.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure I see the connection to the incentive around manipulating.

Speaker 3 One, two, it doesn't need that many. I'd love to see it.
I'd like to actually see the trading. Anyway, we'll see what happens when we go forward.
Let's move on to things, other things.

Speaker 3 Apple released its first set of Apple intelligence features for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac this week.

Speaker 3 The role includes notification and email summaries, text writing tools, image editing, and improved series, stuff we're kind of used to already.

Speaker 3 The response, of course, has not been overwhelmingly positive, with a number of views calling new features underwhelming.

Speaker 3 And I think they are because we've been using them on Google and everything else. But as Tim Cook noted in an interview with WSJ magazine last week, the technology will take some iteration.

Speaker 3 It's not about being first, but best.

Speaker 3 Apple intelligence helps iPhone sales? And how long do they have the need to deliver real changes to Apple phones to make technology worth? Well, they aren't making the investment other people are.

Speaker 3 They're just using the investments other people are making. So probably a good bet from what I can tell.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, we talked about this. The concept that Apple,

Speaker 1 I think the reason that the stock is trading at an old, you know, historic high in terms of multiple earnings, it's all-time high in terms of the actual stock price, is that one, it continues to be sort of a safe place for growth and continued dominance, dominance, great execution, great management, unbelievable cash flows, the most profitable product in the history of mankind is on a gross profit level, the iPhone and maybe the App Store on a gross margin basis.

Speaker 1 But what I think people got excited about was the business model. Basically, they said Apple is going to not get into this arms race.
It's going to be a weapons manufacturer.

Speaker 1 It's going to be on the right side of this arms race, and that is it will ultimately position their Apple intelligence as someone who they co-brand and probably get some enormous licensing fee from.

Speaker 1 And they're not entering into this multi-10, $20, $50 billion arms race trying to develop their own unique LLM strategy. They're going to leverage every other one's CapEx.

Speaker 1 But in terms of the actual product offering, underwhelming is probably the right term so far. It really isn't,

Speaker 1 I mean, it's not like you turned on, you pull up iOS and think, wow, AI is really changing things. It's not.

Speaker 1 Things like main features unveiled include graphic cues to indicate the presence of AI in apps, writing tools, okay, an AI eraser and photos for editing and notification summaries.

Speaker 1 If they hadn't said AI, you would have just thought these were kind of small incremental upgrades. You wouldn't have even noticed.
And so look, but it's the business model that's got people.

Speaker 3 That they don't have to pay so much for the benefits. That's right.

Speaker 1 Well, they've said we're not getting into this arms. I mean, to be viable in this thing,

Speaker 1 you have to be allocating $10, $50, $100 billion over the next

Speaker 1 three, five years. And Apple said, I have an idea.

Speaker 1 Rather than investing $10, $50, $100 billion, why don't we collect $10 or $20 billion a year from whoever wants their logo in front of the billion wealthiest consumers?

Speaker 3 Yeah. And Apple's shares are up the last six months and year-to-day by quite a bit, 25%,

Speaker 3 because they aren't making making these massive investments.

Speaker 3 You know, we'll see how they roll it out. And of course, as most people know, these things get better as they're used, right? And they figure out.

Speaker 3 And I think they'll probably do the best job of deploying the usages. I find a lot of the, I say I use Gmail.
I find their house. Can you want me to help you write this? You want me to say it?

Speaker 3 I find it annoying and not helpful. I wish I could turn it off for the most part, including in the search where they give me an answer that I wasn't looking for.

Speaker 3 I just don't think it's yet yielded what maybe it will help us do. And I suspect Apple will be the best place for doing that, but it is underwhelming so far.

Speaker 3 And speaking of all the investments, let's get to our first big story.

Speaker 3 Scott, it's been a big week for tech earnings. We're going to focus in on tech earnings.

Speaker 3 First up, Microsoft's stock is down 4% after beating expectations for quarterly revenue and earnings, but forecasting slower than expected growth.

Speaker 3 The company's revenue increased 16%, net income rose 11%.

Speaker 3 Very strong performance. Microsoft said its AI business is on track to surpass an annual run rate of $10 billion the next quarter.

Speaker 3 But CFO Amy Hood says she expects Microsoft to take a $1.5 billion hit to income, mostly because of expected loss from open AI.

Speaker 3 As for gaming, Microsoft said Xbox content and services revenue grew 61%, driven by Activision acquisition. So I suppose we could ignore that pretty much.

Speaker 3 This AI, Satya said, 70% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365 Copilot for at least some employees.

Speaker 3 Just a lot of big spending here for what they're doing, right? From what I can tell. Well, why don't we?

Speaker 1 Let's just do a quick kind of round the world on the tech earnings here because there was a bunch of them.

Speaker 3 All right, let me go to Meta then. Okay.
Meta's shares are down 2%. The company's revenue is up 19% to $40.6 billion and profit was up 35%.
Very impressive.

Speaker 3 The growth is already driven by advancements in advertising targeting, which the company says comes from its investments in AI. That's the real plus here.

Speaker 3 But the company also raised its annual spending forecast to $38 to $40 billion.

Speaker 3 Incredible. It spooked Wall Street, the spending on AI, essentially.
Moving to Alphabet, the company's revenue grew 15% and its cloud revenue grew almost 35%.

Speaker 3 The company said its growth is due to, you guessed it, its AI offerings. Google's search business revenue is up 12.3% and remains the biggest contributor to revenue growth.
A couple more.

Speaker 3 Snapstock is up 21% in the last five days after sales jumped 15% and companies net loss narrowed to $153 million from $368 million.

Speaker 3 And Reddit shares really are on a tear, topped $100 for the first time after reporting 68% jump in revenue and turning profitable.

Speaker 3 You recently talked to its CEO, and I just saw him at this event I was at with Reid Hoffman. Apple and Amazon will report earnings after we tape on Thursday, but that's a good look at some of these.

Speaker 3 Please, please go on, Scott.

Speaker 1 Well, there's just no getting around it. It was an outstanding.

Speaker 1 just an outstanding quarter for tech companies. And what's become clear is that expectations are no longer expectations.

Speaker 1 Essentially, Meta exceeded revenue and earnings expectations.

Speaker 1 Its revenues are up 19%,

Speaker 1 its earnings up 35%, and the stock is down because now the expectations, Kara, in this market in tech, the expectation is that you're going to beat expectations.

Speaker 1 So it's just the people are so used to quarters where these companies just blow away expectations that when they just sort of mildly beat expectations,

Speaker 1 that's not enough. And the thing that people love about

Speaker 1 Meta, if you will, is that its AI-driven feed and video recommendations led to an 8% increase in time spent.

Speaker 1 on the core platform and 6% increase on Instagram. And so when you take increased time on the platform, growth in the platform and an increase in ad rates,

Speaker 1 you know, nitro, meat glycerin, meat, you know, C4 or whatever it is, ad ad impressions increased 7% year on year, and price per ad increased 11%.

Speaker 1 Also, in contrast to what we were talking about with Apple,

Speaker 1 people look at Meta and say, what spooked it?

Speaker 1 While it has much stronger earnings, much stronger revenue growth than, say, a company like Apple, people are spooked by the fact that Meta has said, no, we're entering into this arms race because we're going to take CapEx up and we're going to go after,

Speaker 1 you know, we're not decreasing the spend in this ridiculous AR thing that everyone was hoping, but we're going to increase substantially our spending, you know, in these AI wars.

Speaker 1 Microsoft revenue and earnings beat, but the stock down 4%, total revenue up 17%. That's incredible.
And the revenue mix is a lot of money.

Speaker 3 These are old companies, remember. These are old companies.

Speaker 1 Off a huge basis. When you grow a company 17% on 62 billion,

Speaker 1 you're you're growing your top-line revenue. You have incremental revenue growth of $10 billion.
The revenues from Azure, Microsoft's cloud offering increased 33%,

Speaker 1 which probably increased their margin mix.

Speaker 1 And then the company that is probably the best performing IPO in tech of the last several years, Reddit,

Speaker 1 recognized revenue growth of 68%.

Speaker 1 The company became profitable. The stock soared 22%.
The stock has tripled since its IPO a couple months ago. Daily active users increased 47% year on year.

Speaker 1 And get this, it was the sixth most Googled word in the US. It's now being translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, going global.
And international users grew 44%.

Speaker 1 And then even the little engine that's been struggling is doing well. And that is Snap.

Speaker 3 That was interesting.

Speaker 1 And what's interesting here is Snap didn't have nearly the quarter of the other folks, but its stock jumped 10%. Why?

Speaker 1 Because the expectations, everyone's kind of waiting for Snap to get sort of crushed, right? And they occasionally pop up and say, no, things are pretty good here. And when they do,

Speaker 1 the stock goes up. The sales were up 15%.
Losses narrowed to $150 million from about 370.

Speaker 1 The reported daily active users were up 9%.

Speaker 1 And they also announced a stock repurchase program, which doesn't make sense to me when the company is losing money. But anyways, there's just no getting around it, Kara.
Tech is eating the planet.

Speaker 1 And what you look at here, just to link it to something else, I had dinner with a household name amazing anchor on cable TV who makes tens of millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 And this person told me that all the negotiations that are coming up this year between the stars and the cable, the cable networks, they're being offered salary cuts of 50, 60, and 70%. Why?

Speaker 1 Because when every tech-driven media platform is growing their top line by $3, $5, $10 billion,

Speaker 1 guess where that's coming from? The traditional media ecosystem. And the two are absolutely linked.
This money isn't being invented. There is some growth in the economy.

Speaker 1 People are spending more time online. But more than anything, there is a bit of a zero-sum game here.

Speaker 1 And if you're in the ad-supported media game and you don't have an AI ad stack where a third of the planet is already on it, you are just fucked right now. And

Speaker 1 the only ad-supported medium that is growing

Speaker 1 and bucking the trend is what Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway do right now.

Speaker 3 Podcasts are blowing up. They haven't AI'd us yet, Scott.
They haven't. They will.

Speaker 1 So far, so far, we're holding our own, but it's the media ecosystem right now is really going under fundamental change. And speaking of media ecosystem, the only thing

Speaker 1 finish with here, because I don't think people really consider what's going on here, if you think, what is the number one streaming player? What do you think?

Speaker 3 I don't know, probably Netflix, right?

Speaker 1 I think everyone would say, 90% would say Netflix, but it's not. The number one streaming platform is YouTube.

Speaker 3 Oh, YouTube. Yeah.

Speaker 3 They're right.

Speaker 1 You're right. It's funny, right? We don't even think of it that way.
I would have said the same thing, but they're beating them.

Speaker 1 Their combined ad and subscription revenue over the past four quarters has surpassed 50 billion. That makes them the number one highest growing video app.
Netflix is 37 billion.

Speaker 1 So get this, YouTube at 50, Netflix at 37.

Speaker 1 And I think there's a decent chance if Alphabet gets really scared, they made offers a peace offering, even though it's not what the DOJ wants.

Speaker 1 Well, if they spun YouTube and they got the same multiple that's been assigned to Netflix.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 This is a company. YouTube as an independent stock would be worth approximately a half a trillion dollars, which is real, real cabbage.

Speaker 3 I'll tell you, my kids, that's what they watch. That's what they watch, YouTube.
They use Reddit. They use Reddit, YouTube, Snapchat.
It's really interesting to watch their behaviors.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really interesting. Very good analysis, Scott.
We'll see. So very quickly, very two sentences.

Speaker 3 Would you buy or sell with stock right now with the downward push around expectations?

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, which stock, Karen?

Speaker 3 Would you buy all of them? The basket of tech stocks.

Speaker 1 Not only would I buy all of these companies, my financial advice is I wouldn't buy these six companies. I'd buy these six companies and the other 494 in the S P

Speaker 1 buy them all. You don't need to be a hero.
Don't try and find the needle in the haystack. Buy the whole haystack.

Speaker 1 These companies are on fire right now, but they're also trading at really rich multiples, meaning if there is a recession, if all of a sudden a big company announces tariffs, say suddenly we have tariffs.

Speaker 1 Or probably more realistically,

Speaker 1 if a big company that's been a big purchaser of GPUs or is a corporate user of AI announces they're reducing their purchases of GPUs or that AI is not living up to their expectations, you are going to see the water flow out like a tsunami is coming.

Speaker 1 The ripple effect across all of these companies would be dramatic. So, yeah, is Pepsi or is Ford or whoever it is or is Exxon, are these boring companies?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's unlikely they're going to go down 40 or 60 percent. A company like NVIDIA could absolutely go up 50 percent.
It could easily go down 50 percent.

Speaker 1 So you want to diversify and buy all of them.

Speaker 3 Diversified. So buy us some Kamala stock, okay? Buy us in the middle markets.
All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back, how Joe Biden created a last-minute mess for the Democrats.

Speaker 3 We'll get some election insights and calm from Face the Nation's Margaret Brennan.

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Speaker 3 Scott, we're back with our second big story. Inevitably, given next time we talk, it'll be election day, is what's going on on that, because it'll affect technology.
It'll affect everybody.

Speaker 3 President Biden may be off the ball, but he's back in the spotlight this week after appearing to say Trump supporters were garbage. He didn't quite say that on a call with Latino voters.

Speaker 3 It doesn't really matter. Biden later said he was describing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's hateful language as garbage.

Speaker 1 And it was.

Speaker 3 I think that's, it looks like that's what he said, but he has a problem talking sometimes. Kamala Harris has tried to distance herself from the remarks.

Speaker 3 She did indeed distance herself, but Trump sees on him dressing up as a garbage man, which I thought was a bad idea because he said he had garbage too. So now I'm like, oh, now you're making fun of,

Speaker 3 I don't think any of them are.

Speaker 3 Well, Kamala Harris tried to get out of it, it but both trump and biden look like crazy old men and also trump stumbled uh visibly stumbled when trying to get into the garbage truck which has even got a lot of attention um he looks really old this week i have to say suddenly he looked like my mother i just i don't know what happened he suddenly became

Speaker 3 um uh you know the flat it's just older just older my mother's 90 compared trump's 78 i guess are biden's comments really matter i don't think they do i don't think anyone's thinking of biden i don't know it was a dumb thing to say

Speaker 1 late in the campaign he should probably be saying nothing at this point.

Speaker 1 So it was kind of an unforced error. And I have to catch all of this.
I'm really trying to moderate my bias, and I realize it's impossible at this point. But I think that

Speaker 1 Tony Hinchcliffe's comments may, in fact, have a real impact on the ground. From what I hear, there are some Latino voters and Puerto Ricans who are pretty pissed off.

Speaker 1 And they do see some early signs that some of these folks are

Speaker 1 more excited to Tra Harris than they were previous to these comments. Biden's comments, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I don't know if everyone was like, I was like, is he still here? What? Huh? Oh, there he is.

Speaker 3 I don't think, but I have to say, Trump did, once again, because I think he's the real fucked up saying things person in this particular part of the election.

Speaker 3 Biden was the winner on that when he was running, but now Trump is really kind of lapping him quite a bit with comments he made at a rally on Wednesday because women are scared of him.

Speaker 3 So what does he say? Let's listen.

Speaker 4 Four weeks ago, I was saying, no, I want to protect the people. I want to protect the women of our country.
I want to protect the women. Sir, please don't say that.
Why? They said,

Speaker 4 we think it's very inappropriate for you to say. I said, why? I'm president.
I want to protect the women of our country. They said.

Speaker 4 They said, sir, I just think it's inappropriate for you to say, pay these guys a lot of money. Can you believe it? I said, well, I'm going to do it whether the women like it or not.

Speaker 4 I'm going to protect them. I'm going to protect them from migrants coming in.
I'm going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things.

Speaker 3 Ooh, creepy. That gave me the creeps.
Whether they like it or not, which is kind of his brand, right? I'm going to grab them by the pussy whether they like it or not. I'm going to do whatever I want.

Speaker 3 There's two more allegations of groping, which is like just added to the pile of groping allegations, which I think are entirely true.

Speaker 3 Any thoughts?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't, I don't, you know, I talk about

Speaker 1 men's natural instinct should be a move to protection. This is not what we mean.
Yeah, I don't think that's what you're talking about. So, look,

Speaker 1 I don't think these things matter. And unfortunately, again,

Speaker 1 I believe that these outrageous comments actually help them because they crowd out any serious conversation.

Speaker 1 Any serious conversation around their policies, whether it's economic growth, whether it's what's inflationary, whether it's expanding services such that the sandwich generation can have an easier time taking care of their parents, whether it's trying to figure out a way to ensure the deficit does not result in massive interest rates on the next generation.

Speaker 1 You reverse

Speaker 1 any serious policy discussion, reverse engineers to whether you like it or not, perfect is not on the menu, that you should vote for Harris.

Speaker 1 But we don't have a serious conversation because all the oxygen is about fucking garbage trucks.

Speaker 3 Anyway, oh, interesting. Joe Rogan, you've been talking about it being the podcast election.

Speaker 3 I assume I'm saying it's the Elon election, has clarified that an interview with Kamala Harris is not off the table.

Speaker 3 Rogan posted on X that he declined the Harris campaign's offer to record an interview because he didn't want to travel to her and would have gotten only an hour to talk.

Speaker 3 He loves to go on for a while, which they should have known. Honestly, he talks for like nine hours sometimes.
He discussed it a little more on his podcast, Let's Listen.

Speaker 5 You could look at this and you'd say, oh, you're being a diva. But she had an opportunity to come here here when she was in Texas and I literally gave them an open invitation.
I said, anytime.

Speaker 5 I said, if she's done at 10 o'clock, we'll come back here at 10 o'clock. I go, I'll do it at 9 in the morning.
I'll do it at 10 p.m. I'll do it at midnight.

Speaker 5 If she's up, she wants to, you know, drink a Red Bull, fucking party on.

Speaker 3 I think she should try to talk to him still. Trump sat down with Rogan for a three-hour interview, which really didn't move any needle, I don't think.
I don't think he did very well on it.

Speaker 1 He actually,

Speaker 1 I would disagree with that. If you listen to him.

Speaker 3 I think he sounded old. I did listen to him.

Speaker 1 It did. I do think it softened his image.
I think that was a win for the Trump.

Speaker 3 Well, I felt like he felt old. That's what I got from it.
Old man, old man talking. J.D.
Vance recorded an episode on Wednesday. He was probably pretty good because he's sharp on those things.

Speaker 3 So you think she should still try to talk to him. Is it too late?

Speaker 1 Well, whatever is required,

Speaker 1 she should do it. Because look, we keep repeating this.
Her going on road. He's not a gotcha kind of person.
I think she'll do well in that format. I think

Speaker 1 sometimes when she's hard-pressed on the spot for a snappy, quick, Obama-like or boudige response, she's not good at that.

Speaker 1 In that format, in the fact that Joe, I think, tries to position people in their best light, present them in their best light.

Speaker 3 No matter what they're saying, no matter what they're saying.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Regardless of that. Measles.
You know, measles vaccines, Joe.

Speaker 3 You're a good guy, friend of measles.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But having said that, the thing I find a little bit off-putting, quite frankly, is that as important as Joe is, as wealthy as he is, I do like valuing your time.
I get it.

Speaker 1 If the vice president, if you've interviewed one candidate, you're about to interview the VP.

Speaker 3 She got out of your way.

Speaker 1 If the vice president calls you and says, I'd like to be on your podcast, you get on a fucking plane.

Speaker 1 I do think that's a little diva-ish on his part. Now, having said that, that's his right.
And given that's the conditions he's laid out,

Speaker 1 her going on that podcast is the same exposure as if she went on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox every night during primetime for a week. So,

Speaker 1 should he get on a plane? Yes, he's not, which means she should get on a plane. It's worth it.

Speaker 3 She should. She should have done it then.
I think it was a mistake. I think it's a mistake.
You know, he's very controversial. We get it.
Doesn't matter. Just get on there and throw down with him.

Speaker 3 Drink a Red Bull. He'll love you.
He'll tell you, oh, wait a minute. Maybe you all should vote for him.
It'll definitely muddy the waters. That's for sure.
That's what it'll do.

Speaker 3 And that's what you kind of want.

Speaker 3 And a follow-up to our discussion from earlier this week, Jeff Bezos has spoken out on the Washington Post decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in an op-ed that was in desperate need of editing for the Post.

Speaker 3 Bezos said no quid pro quo of any kind was at work. We didn't necessarily think that.
Acknowledge when it comes to the appearance of conflict, I'm not an ideal owner of the Washington Post.

Speaker 3 I called that a no-shit Sherlock comment. He also called out podcasts and social media posts for spreading misinformation division.

Speaker 3 I feel like he was talking about us, Scott, but I don't know, maybe, maybe all of us. I feel like off the cuff podcast, That sounds like us.

Speaker 3 What did you think of his attempts at cleaning up the mess?

Speaker 3 They've now gotten to 250,000 subscribers since the announcement that there would be no endorsement, $30 million in revenue that they hardly have.

Speaker 1 That's about 12% of their

Speaker 3 digital subscriber base right now. But it's probably more.
It's probably accelerated.

Speaker 3 Boy, has he shit the bed. And let me just tell you, it's not the reporters of the Washington Post, not some of the editors.
Some of the editors have been sort of weak need as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 3 But boys, he made a mess of this. Man, and that piece was very obnoxious, I thought, and very old school.
I was like, oh, really? The media is not liked?

Speaker 3 Did you just check into this problem we've got? And never mentioned Trump's attacks on the media, never mentioned social and searches impact on the media,

Speaker 3 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 His response was well written. He

Speaker 3 attempted.

Speaker 1 He attempted to debunk the notion that there was any connection between

Speaker 1 he claims that he had no idea that Blue Origin was meeting with the Trump campaign. There's no getting around it.
The optics are really bad.

Speaker 1 And generally speaking, in terms of governance, when you own a media property going into an election and you're the owner and you are not the publisher, you're not like Arthur Sulzberger in the building involved every day.

Speaker 1 You are just a quote-unquote passive owner. You stay the fuck out of there knitting.

Speaker 1 leading up to an election of this, of this anxiety and importance.

Speaker 3 Where you have a lot of business interests that are clear.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're just, you have conflict. You want it.

Speaker 1 I love the term plausible deniability.

Speaker 1 So if they had screwed up and they decided to do this or not do it or whatever they did, he can say, folks, I spent $350 million of my own money because I think this is an important institution.

Speaker 3 Is it $250?

Speaker 1 Wow, he got it for a song, didn't he? He did, yes. Anyways, he spent $250 million to get a big fucking headache.
Anyways, but if you'd said, I believe in this, and I think

Speaker 1 his initial initial motivation was actually pretty noble here, and I would argue he's been a decent steward

Speaker 1 because he's kept his hands out.

Speaker 1 He should not be making editorial decisions as a passive owner that occasionally shows up to talk to people, you know, to flex his biceps and talk to people and give them a rally speech.

Speaker 1 He should be able to say,

Speaker 1 I get to decide who runs the thing. And then beyond that, they get to do what they think is best.

Speaker 3 Let me just, let me make a further further argument. Owners do this.
They do. They do insert themselves.
But for one, he never had.

Speaker 3 And to do it a week before the, you know, 10 days before the election was astonishing. Like that, he never had.
And then he does right now.

Speaker 3 And then he's like, oh, it was like bad timing or bad planning. I'm like, you know what? You were at a Katy Perry party.
I saw pictures of you at sunset. Like, you had no time, sir.

Speaker 3 Like, he had plenty of time to have, if he really, this really meant a lot to him to do it. It looked, I don't think he knew Dave Limp was meeting meeting with Trump.

Speaker 3 I don't necessarily, but I do know that there doesn't have to be a quid pro quo to understand that your business interests are problematic here at best, right? Not even at best. They are problematic.

Speaker 3 Second thing is his tone in this piece was someone who has just checked into the media ecosystem. You know, I was literally like, 2008 is calling and wants its billionaire back, essentially.

Speaker 3 It was such an old idea of the media and without leaving in other factors that are so obvious to someone as smart as this this guy was sort of perplexing.

Speaker 3 And then the tisk tisk tone was really like, it's couldn't he have just said, oh, what did I make a fuck up? Because this is my fault, clearly. This is all my fault.

Speaker 1 I didn't read it that way.

Speaker 1 I read it as a solid letter with the right tone. The issue was, as you read it, though.

Speaker 3 Nobody in media liked it. I can tell you that.
It was like daddy was lecturing us about his own fuck up. He smashed the car into the wall.
And it's not us. We didn't smash the wall into the car.

Speaker 1 Well, okay, just one person's opinion. I read it.
No.

Speaker 3 Everybody's opinion, but go ahead. Go ahead, your person.

Speaker 1 So far as far as I know, I do have domain over my own opinion. All right.
So this person's opinion is that the tone and it was well written and you made the points you needed to make.

Speaker 1 The problem is if you look at the fact pattern and you look at the timeline, you read it. And if you've been following this, as I have, quite frankly, Jeff, it sounds as if you're lying.

Speaker 1 And so I thought the tone was right. I thought he made the right points.
But quite frankly, after reading it, I just don't believe him.

Speaker 1 I don't believe this was all a coincidence and that he kind of, it just, it all stinks. And again, for me, it goes back to governance.

Speaker 1 When you're worth $150 billion and you're off doing other things, which you deserve to do, have the right to do, and you buy a media company.

Speaker 1 You stay the fuck out of their bidding, especially two weeks before the election.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know why he just didn't say I made a mistake. The guy who ran PR for him says he has convenient principles.

Speaker 3 He said a long time advisor to Bezos, who was around a long, he was very much right with Bezos, criticized his cowardly last-minute decision by the Washmos leadership to abandon presidential endorsements, said he believes the move reflected classic Bezos business principle about protecting your self-interest by avoiding unnecessary mistakes.

Speaker 3 He said it was convenient principles. And I think he was right.
I think this guy's a business guy. He didn't.
This is Bezos's.

Speaker 3 Anytime there was a mistake at Amazon and an actual mistake they made, Bezos never apologized and never

Speaker 3 indignant. And that's why I think I react this way, because he used to do this all the time when they made clear mistakes.
It was our fault.

Speaker 3 It was always someone else's fault but himself, which is very classic tech bro. But he can't do that here.
I'm just saying here is the wrong place to do it.

Speaker 1 But let's go meta on the notion or the concept of apologizing. Traditionally in business, when you said, I own this, I got this wrong, I'm going to make this right.

Speaker 1 That was an opportunity to increase trust amongst your constituents. Unfortunately, in this ecosystem,

Speaker 1 still, still with business, I do think it makes sense to apologize. But unfortunately, most of the incentives now are to never apologize.
And

Speaker 1 because the people you pissed off don't forgive you, and everyone else is like, see, I told you

Speaker 1 there, all the incentives kind of line up around not only not apologizing, but quite frankly, doubling down. And until people, until, until people start saying, good on him, he apologized,

Speaker 1 I'm subscribing back. But they don't.

Speaker 1 I remember when, and this is a totally different thing, but when I was doing the show for Bloomberg Television and they asked me to do promos, and I went and did these, what I thought were funny and what they initially really liked.

Speaker 3 I thought they were funny.

Speaker 1 I appreciate that. And then they came out, they said, we have Houston, we have a problem.
You've offended some people in the newsroom.

Speaker 1 So we need you to say that you did this without our knowledge and we need you to apologize. And I said, I'll absolutely do the former.
I'm not doing the latter because I'm not sorry.

Speaker 1 And it wouldn't help anyone.

Speaker 1 So, because apologizing, one, I do believe in apologizing. I just apologized to my kids the other day.
And

Speaker 1 I do think that in business, you have to say, I'm doing a business meeting today. I bet on a concept for our company that took everyone off track.
I was wrong.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to apologize, but I'm going to acknowledge the mistake and say, I own this. I think in business, good leaders do that.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, with social media and the media, all you do is keep the cycle going. You know, admits mistake, admits it was a blunder.

Speaker 1 People attack you from both sides.

Speaker 3 Could he have just taken it? Like, this was my decision. I see the impact.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 I see the internal.

Speaker 3 I've been called by dozens of Washington Post people. They really love this newspaper.

Speaker 3 And I just think he doesn't, he's acting like the Amazon CEO I remember him to be in a situation that he cannot do that in. This is a very different creature.
He did not buy it to make a lot of money.

Speaker 3 It's, he can't treat it like it's Amazon and just get, leave, get out, get out. This, get out if you don't like it.

Speaker 1 Every billionaire that goes into media leaves regretting it.

Speaker 3 They should.

Speaker 1 There's a wonderful movie, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's a great movie.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it's just such an incredibly tragic story about these 17, 18-year-old German kids who basically think they're going to be, play a sport and end up in just the most brutal trench warfare, watching their friends be maimed as they fight over the same 100 yards or 100 meters of land.

Speaker 1 And this is, I don't, in any way, want to diminish their experience. But everybody, I can't think of a billionaire that's gone into media and thought, that was fun.

Speaker 1 I mean, you own a football team, you might end up selling it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he should have bought a football. He should have bought the baseball team.

Speaker 1 You know, occasionally your fans don't like you, but on the whole, I think most billionaires who buy a basketball or football team think, yeah, that was a kick in the ass.

Speaker 1 And I got to hang out with players and it was fun and all my friends thought I was cool.

Speaker 1 Name a billionaire. And there's probably been a dozen billionaires who have bought a media company recently.

Speaker 1 Name one who thought, wow, that was a great idea.

Speaker 3 I agree. I agree.
I think it's got to be in the hands. You know, here I'm giving a compliment to Rupert Murdoch.
He runs his things because he understands media. He does not

Speaker 3 he you may, listen, he manipulates the post, New York Post, and stuff like that. I never had a problem with him at the, never, never in, in a million years would he do this.

Speaker 1 Well, he understands the journal.

Speaker 3 He understands his position. He does.
He understands media. These guys think if there's a nail, I'll hit it with a hammer.

Speaker 3 And that's, and the last part is the problem is he's perpetrated a number of difficulties on this paper, including the hiring of Will Lewis with all that controversy, right?

Speaker 3 So they've gone through that. They've now gone through this.
This is in a very short amount of time.

Speaker 3 It's just like making trouble here for these people who are trying their very best in a very difficult, speaking of political partisanship environment.

Speaker 3 And he's just brought nothing but shame on them in that regard or mistakes. And you know who's going to pay for this?

Speaker 3 Because he's not ponying up the money would be my guess because he's quite cheap in many ways.

Speaker 3 Is they're going to lay off reporters and then the quality of the product gets worse. And then, you know, that's, it's unfortunate.
Jeff, you can do better.

Speaker 3 This is not, this is not your Amazon warehouse or the people.

Speaker 3 don't make them work on a door Jeff that that was his big thing remember we work on doors because we're cheap don't do that here and you don't have to over fund this but don't be such a just don't behave the way you're naturally inclined to here and maybe give these people a fucking break because they're doing a great job but let's just review a few of these purchases and purchasers and think did this work out for him remember when jared bought the observer yeah that didn't do you remember when sam zell bought the tribune no that was a mess yeah he's also a jerk but go ahead Do you remember that kid, Chris Hughes, who bought the New Republic?

Speaker 3 He's a nice guy. Oh, that was a mess, wasn't it?

Speaker 1 I think Lorraine Powell Jobs has done a good job.

Speaker 1 You know her better than I do.

Speaker 1 If she could go back in time, would she buy The Atlantic again?

Speaker 3 I think so. I think she feels good.
I think she's got some good people in place. I think she's, if you had to pick one, she's the best one, but it's a small property, right?

Speaker 1 Musk and Twitter. I'm not sure he would do it again.

Speaker 1 He's immolated $30 billion.

Speaker 3 I understand, but I think he loves

Speaker 1 it.

Speaker 1 It's a good investment.

Speaker 3 It's a good investment. It's a small investment.

Speaker 1 Benny Off and Time, maybe, but he bought that for scrap.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 These things

Speaker 1 are just...

Speaker 3 Patrick Soon Shang of the Daily Times.

Speaker 1 And we have a couple of friends who we really like who just bought the Daily Beast or partnered with Barry Diller. I'll be curious what they think in a year or two years.

Speaker 1 Because you have, you're, you're, you're, you're trying to, you're trying to stem the flow of a river. I mean, you are swimming upstream in these traditional media companies.

Speaker 1 And in addition, the few times I've been in a newsroom, I've been struck about how talented these people are, how hardworking they are, and how fucking precious they think they are, and that they shouldn't be subject to the same economic realities the rest of us are.

Speaker 3 No, that is not true. They get it now.
They have gotten it now. I don't agree.
I left the post because of that. And I think every single person in media does understand that.

Speaker 3 They do not think they're special. They think they're less than special.
I would disagree with you on that. In any case, we'll see where it goes.
Maybe Kara Swish will buy the Washington Post.

Speaker 3 That's what apparently was written about recently.

Speaker 1 The way the Washington Post should be a group of very wealthy people who see like a civic value, which the Washington Post does add.

Speaker 1 They put together a trust of multiple parties, so no one personality gets crucified.

Speaker 3 That's true.

Speaker 1 They get to hire and fire the guy or gal who runs it, and that's it.

Speaker 3 That's it. That's it.

Speaker 1 And if they want to raise money or if they want to sell the post, they have to come to this trust.

Speaker 3 But other than that,

Speaker 1 the trust is like a star chamber of people.

Speaker 3 Safety and numbers, rich people. Safety and numbers.
And then, say, have people like Karen Scott there to take the shit. We're good at it.
And we can push around other reporters.

Speaker 3 You know, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Done being on boards.

Speaker 3 Oh, yes. No, I was thinking more my assistant for you.
Anyway,

Speaker 3 let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Speaker 3 margaret brennan is the moderator of face the nation and cbs's chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret welcome thank you um we've brought you here because we need to calm the down and you are we always feel good when we go on margaret brennan's show because you're so like even-handed and very clear and calming so that's what your job here is thank you i went to catholic school all my life so i just keep it all inside you keep it inside and later comes out it's all sublimated and then rage comes out later you know Rage eat or rage exercise or whatever.

Speaker 3 So election day is fast approaching. Do you think anything is going to change the minds of people who haven't voted yet?

Speaker 3 Everything is 50-50-50-50-50-50. And I actually, it seems like it is indeed this time, 50-50.

Speaker 3 Right. That question of are there any unpersuaded voters left in a country that is this divided?

Speaker 3 I don't know the answer to that.

Speaker 3 What I can say is the fraction of the populace that I think the campaigns are most focused on are the voters who are on the line about whether or not they get in the car and they bother to go and show up on November 5th, the low propensity voter.

Speaker 3 So their minds might be made up, but they might feel fine just liking tweets or whatever from their couch. Whether or not they cast the vote is what particularly Democrats are concerned about.

Speaker 3 And that is where the campaigns are putting their emphasis because it's going to come down to turnout in a 50-50 election and just

Speaker 3 an election election potentially one on the margins, potentially here, one of the closest presidential races in history. So, why aren't the Republicans concerned about low-propensity voters?

Speaker 3 Because, you know, this is the bro dude that doesn't get off the couch and may be, in fact, stoned. Like, you know, that's that gang who doesn't vote at all.
Like, I know lots of those people.

Speaker 3 Well, what's kind of amazing,

Speaker 3 and it hit me in particular when I was out at the RNC this summer in Milwaukee, was realizing what Trump has done for his movement,

Speaker 3 not necessarily the Republican movement, which is to activate a lot of those low-propensity voters.

Speaker 3 You know, the folks who are not Bush Republicans, but are the Kid Rock Republicans who were loving that at the RNC, who were chanting the mass deportation now

Speaker 3 chants with the signs.

Speaker 3 He has activated that.

Speaker 3 And that is that base vote that at least says they are going to show up for him, even if they didn't show up in 2022 during the down ballot races, so congressional races where traditional Republicans were perhaps more concerned about showing up.

Speaker 3 And maybe that is a way of explaining why there wasn't that red wave in 2022, but there could be a different factor at play, the Trump factor himself in 2022.

Speaker 3 But they love him and want to vote for him. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Good to see you, Margaret. So inflation, bodily autonomy, immigration, kind of the issues that have been getting the most attention is the premier issues in the media.

Speaker 1 Do you think there's any one of those that will play a bigger or smaller role than expected?

Speaker 1 Or is there anything we're not talking about, the media is not talking about, that you think is going to play a bigger role?

Speaker 3 We see in our polling data that the economy is the number one issue. That's not surprising to me.

Speaker 3 I mean, like any country I've ever gone to and covered social unrest or political strife, it's always a kitchen table issue. So that's not surprising.

Speaker 3 What is surprising is the degree to which it is in Donald Trump's favor and the fact that people are so frustrated with the moment they're in that they have a bit of amnesia as to what the last year and a half of the Trump administration was when the economy was shut down.

Speaker 3 That's surprising to me, the selective memory portion of this.

Speaker 3 In terms of factors that people are voting around

Speaker 3 or could influence the vote, particularly in the past few days, I've been inundated with warnings and

Speaker 3 messages of concern about an exponential increase in attempts to manipulate the minds of voters. And we need to talk about that to make the public aware.

Speaker 3 I don't want to over-index that and make people somehow anxiety-ridden about their votes, but the degree to which there is

Speaker 3 there are foreign actors trying to hack people's minds, as some U.S. officials call it, is of concern and may be a real factor in

Speaker 3 the confidence level in our institutions and in the process. That concerns me because that's a day after November 5th story.

Speaker 3 That's the do we see violence the 6th of November or the 6th of January question.

Speaker 3 Right. Once again, whether they get manipulated, they feel like it was stolen.
And they've been, listen, it's been articulated by podcasters that have been paid by Russia.

Speaker 3 It's been articulated by podcasters who haven't been paid by Russia. Right now, there's a story up about major podcasts on the Washington Post, about major podcasts that are doing election denialism

Speaker 3 on repeat, constant repeat, which is a real problem. In terms of early voting, over 58 million people have cast their ballots, either in person or by mail, very strong.

Speaker 3 Are there takeaways or indications how things might go from these early voting numbers? Now, more Republicans are now participating because Trump isn't saying not to.

Speaker 3 In terms of the gender gap, women account for roughly 55% of the early vote, while men are at 45%, according to Politico. Anything you're seeing, or does this seem normal, this amount of early voting?

Speaker 3 Just there's more Republicans doing it.

Speaker 3 There are more people showing up early. There are also more states who have made that possible.

Speaker 3 You know, so like there are changes that have happened between 2020 and 2024 to just have people go and get this out of their systems before November 5th.

Speaker 3 That will be a factor just in terms of that early impression of the vote. It's, you can't say which party is up or down necessarily based on this early snapshot.

Speaker 3 You just can't. Each county, each state, many places processes things in a different way.
So it can look like a blue wave that then turns red, you know, the next day. So

Speaker 3 I'd stay away from that. But I would say, like, it is interesting to me to see people show up early

Speaker 3 because that would suggest they're activated, which would suggest they're not apathetic.

Speaker 3 Or they don't want to deal with election day because they're worried about violence. That's one issue I have.
I'm like, oh, really?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I'm like, who knows? Yeah, not here where I am, I guess, but it definitely went through my brain.
Like, what possible horrible thing could happen on Election Day? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, that might be how my brain is wired, frankly, to worry about those scenarios.

Speaker 3 But I've been trying to make an effort on our program, at least lately, to turn to secretaries of state from these battlegrounds, which we know are going to be so heavily litigated, like Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and most of them are fantastic, by the way. I did an interview with Brad Raffensperger and Adrian Fontes, and it was great.

Speaker 3 And they both were the same in a lot of ways, which was fantastic in that regard. It gives you confidence.
It does. It did.
I was like, oh, phew.

Speaker 1 And, Margaret, you've covered a lot of elections, and

Speaker 1 you're in broadcast, which is struggling economically, but it's still relevant.

Speaker 1 How has the coverage of this election, just using it as a marker of time, how is the business of covering elections changed?

Speaker 1 What's different about your day-to-day job and what does it say about the state of media and how we report and shape people's views on on the election it's a great question

Speaker 3 um an anxiety-inducing question i mean there are a few different ways of answering it but in terms of like how i think about my job on sundays i argue and i believe that the platform we have the hour i have on sundays is more important than ever because first of all, every single week, I have to prove to the audience that they need to continue to have faith and trust in me because I'm really concerned about the

Speaker 3 winnowing away of trust in our institutions.

Speaker 3 And I make journalism one of those, the fourth estate, one of those, that you need to be able to trust that I am accurately reporting to you what the Secretary of State in that state is doing and that your vote was, you know, counted, for example, or during COVID when there's a mass pandemic and I can actually tell you what the CDC is saying or not.

Speaker 3 You need to have that faith in me. So, like, that is what motivates me and concerns me.
And it's also, frankly, the one way I can exert control in an environment where we don't have much over

Speaker 3 the media environment writ large. I can control what comes out of my mouth and the hour I have and the territory we have and just try to amplify truth.

Speaker 3 At the same time, it is now expected of me as a journalist to actively negate lies, right? It's not just amplifying truth. It's a have to do that.

Speaker 3 And then also this other job of being able to fact check on the fly.

Speaker 3 All of that environment that we are in, in terms of information at your fingertips, has changed the job that I have to do as a moderator because it's changed the politics and how politicians seek to engage.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 You push back rather well, but it's still a waste of your time. You're not getting to actual things here.
It's frustrating. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. And you do it in a very classy way.

Speaker 3 There's so so much screaming now that I find your program, I don't mean calming, but it's definitely clear-headed, right? But it still wastes your time.

Speaker 3 I sometimes think is, why does Margaret have to deal with this shit? Like, stop, just let's, let's talk about the thing.

Speaker 3 So, so we're, we're not likely going to know the results of election day on November 5th. That's what people think, but who knows? It could be days or weeks for a winner is determined.

Speaker 3 What's your sense of what will happen in terms of people challenging results? I don't know how much you have gotten out and how ugly it might get.

Speaker 3 What's your sense from doing a lot of these interviews? Again, I think a lot of the elected officials are incredibly competent, both Republican and Democrat, especially on the ground.

Speaker 3 They're really small localities.

Speaker 3 And they're trying their best, but you've got these both, we've got very aggressive efforts by the Trump people in legal challenges, would be my guess, if they fall behind.

Speaker 3 And obviously, Kamala Harris is going to do the same. You know, she's a lawyer by training, and obviously she's not going to let this one get away from her if she thinks she's won.

Speaker 3 So what do you imagine is going to happen? We've already been through one insurrection

Speaker 3 and some real ugliness. Where do you see it going? I'm really concerned.
I'm really concerned about political violence.

Speaker 3 We see it in our polling that we do here at CBS: concern,

Speaker 3 not just if Donald Trump wins, if Donald Trump loses it, like either scenario, the other party believes that there is potential for violence.

Speaker 3 There's some interesting data that Robert Pape, this professor at University of Chicago, has done where he saw on the left this

Speaker 3 polling question he put was: Is violence justified to prevent Donald Trump from taking office? And it was pretty remarkable to see the number of yeses he got to that question.

Speaker 3 So it just reflects the level of tension there is in this country, where

Speaker 3 I've had some very concerning conversations with former officials in particular,

Speaker 3 who were involved in 2020 and saw things up close, who

Speaker 3 are warning, you know, look,

Speaker 3 this is very possible, but

Speaker 3 local police should be able to mostly handle security. You know, we shouldn't be back at a scenario where we're looking at 2020-like protests

Speaker 3 with violence in major cities. Well, there's certainly organizing.
I've done a lot of time recently on Facebook on the militia sites. They're quite preparing themselves.

Speaker 3 It's really, and of course, Mark's letting them go right ahead and do it.

Speaker 3 Well, that's, I mean, this is a story, Kara, I mean, you know the space so well, but I've been talking to officials recently about that, of like, how do you deal with the fact? Like after January 6th,

Speaker 3 you saw Twitter and you saw Facebook then what try to take Donald Trump off offline or actors who were promoting violence because they saw it actually realized. All that seems to be gone.

Speaker 3 Like there are no, there are no speed bumps there. And

Speaker 3 it's a cesspool. And I'm concerned when I read FBI bulletins out there warning that it's, you know, it's journalists, it is poll workers.
These are election workers.

Speaker 3 I talked to these secretaries of state, and they've got security.

Speaker 3 I mean, in Maricopa County, I asked the Secretary of State if they were putting snipers on the roof in Maricopa County because it was a news story

Speaker 3 in the United States of America.

Speaker 3 Amazing. So astonishing.

Speaker 3 It is. And it concerns me, the information environment we are in, that there are voices who want to stoke that chaos and be chaos agents and can be, you know, amplified by bad actors.

Speaker 3 And so I think in terms of having a calm voice, we need to acknowledge that. We need to call it out.
But it is, it is concerning for all of us. Yeah, taking down the temperature.
Scott, question.

Speaker 1 Margaret, where do you get your news?

Speaker 3 I'm a news junkie. So I'm

Speaker 3 constantly reading. I read the journal, I read the Times, I read the Washington Post,

Speaker 3 I read Politico. I read because of my time covering Wall Street, I still get some newsletters from financial analysts who I also really like.
I like people who can bottom line things for me.

Speaker 3 So I read a lot of that, the FT,

Speaker 3 but I go to trusted journalists and journalism sources. I do have to use X

Speaker 3 as an aggregator, but I had to take myself off of it when we did the vice presidential debate

Speaker 3 because of just the vitriol and the hate.

Speaker 3 You don't have to be on it. Trust me.
I had probably had four times the amount of followers. You don't need to be on it, but that's just me.

Speaker 3 Do you use it for intake?

Speaker 3 I don't. I don't use it at all.
I don't use it at all. I don't find any difference.

Speaker 3 I can find it on all the news organizations. And, you know, we didn't talk about this earlier, but Threads has grown now to 275 million.
It's gotten better.

Speaker 3 And I'm not a biggest fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but it's a clean place. You know what I mean? It's a relatively, there's a lot of tisk tisk on it with a lot of on the left, but I don't mind that.

Speaker 3 They're just like, how dare you? And that's like, okay, I dare.

Speaker 3 But the stuff on Twitter is toxic and ugly and violent. So I'm not interested in it.
It doesn't help me or help me get more insight at all.

Speaker 3 News reporters have got to get off of it. Like right away.
Like that's my feeling. What is your plans for election night?

Speaker 3 There's all kinds of different ways people are getting their news, but what are you, what are you all doing? And is it,

Speaker 3 you know, again, as Scott said, the money is tight at your organization, although you've got a better new owner than others, let me say. I happen to know him.

Speaker 3 So, I mean, it's a low bar, but that's the facts.

Speaker 3 How are you preparing to cover it? And I assume you're assuming it's going to be a week-long thing.

Speaker 3 We do assume that. And, you know, in terms of allocation of resources, you still got to have reporters in the field.
So we are doing that.

Speaker 3 We are going to have people in all the battlegrounds, the reporters.

Speaker 3 I'll be up in New York at our election studio that has been built out with all sorts of new technology to help us explain things more. I think we put a lot of deliberate thought into

Speaker 3 explaining to people, for example, in a super tight race, stop paying attention to the popular vote. Let's remind people the path to 270 electoral votes, right?

Speaker 3 Be very deliberate in reminding people of the benchmarks they need to watch in the battlegrounds in particular, the seven states we're watching. So we'll be doing that.

Speaker 3 I'm digging into, because I'm a bit of a policy nerd,

Speaker 3 into some of the things that are on at play, like the 10 states where reproductive health care initiatives are on the ballot, the degree to which that'll impact voter turnout or not,

Speaker 3 digging into the economy in particular. I mean, it's amazing that.

Speaker 3 you know, I was out in Erie, Pennsylvania last weekend, and you look at Western Pennsylvania and the perception of the economy is very different than what the economic data would tell you on a national scale.

Speaker 3 So understanding regionally what's impacting how people feel about the country we're in right now is something I've been putting thought into. And of course, national security, the world is on fire.

Speaker 3 So connecting those dots is something I'm going to be trying to do. on election night with Nora O'Donnell and Maurice Dubois and John Dickerson and our whole team.

Speaker 3 Got a great team. And we're glad you're there, Margaret.
We really are.

Speaker 3 You can catch Margaret every Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, and she'll, of course, be part of the CBS, as she noted, election night coverage. We look forward to watching.
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 I love listening to the podcast.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Margaret.

Speaker 3 All right, Scott, isn't she the best? I love Margaret Prayer. Yeah, she is.
She really is a pro.

Speaker 1 Total pro.

Speaker 3 Pro, is how I think of her. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 She just makes connects dots, which is why I like her. Not all these people do.
All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Speaker 3 Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction from you.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know, prediction, aspiration, wish. I do think that I think Vice President Harris is going to win the election i think there's a few things

Speaker 1 that will um carry her across the finish line one

Speaker 1 when i look at the attributes of

Speaker 1 most will be sexist girls they're more organized uh they are

Speaker 1 um a little bit more meticulous and i think when it comes to election day

Speaker 1 i think a lot of young women are going to find a way to schedule time and get to the booths.

Speaker 1 And a lot of young men, just bottom line, as someone who's raising young men, I affectionately call them dopes. Their prefrontal cortex does not catch up until the age of 25.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they're not voting, right? Because they're too young.

Speaker 1 That would be all yeah, once 17,

Speaker 1 I asked him, who would you vote for? And he goes, well, I vote for Harris because you're voting for. And I'm like, I hate and love that answer.
I agree.

Speaker 1 Anyways, but my point is, I think that you're going to see more, I think women are motivated. Quite frankly, they're more organized.
They're more meticulous.

Speaker 1 And I think, I don't want to say they take their civic responsibility, they're just more organized. It's like

Speaker 1 girls do better in school. I think girls or young women are going to do better at showing up on

Speaker 1 election day. I bet more of them have already, and I don't know, the data here, too.

Speaker 1 I'd like to think that young men are getting the message around

Speaker 1 a need to protect, or I'd like to think that that's a theme that's resonating here, that they do see that there is a certain level of demonization and attack for special interest groups.

Speaker 1 And I'd like to think they're stepping up. And three,

Speaker 1 and again, I don't, this might be confirmation bias.

Speaker 1 I'm just too emotional here, but I think this self-inflicted unforced error around Puerto Rico with 400 to 500,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania could be very, very

Speaker 3 problematic.

Speaker 1 Could be a big issue.

Speaker 3 It's so close to the election. It really is.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So anyways, and again, my gut might be overridden by by my emotions here, but my gut is that she's going to pull this out.
That's my prediction.

Speaker 3 Let me just read something. I'm going to go pile onto you.
And by the way, everyone should read Scott's endorsement of Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 It's essentially, if you want to have sex, vote for, if you want to be an incel, vote for Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 I think I pretty much boiled that down, right? Is that correct? It's a very funny.

Speaker 1 Lots more, and I knew this was going to happen, lots more subscribers than I've ever lost in a single day.

Speaker 3 Oh, well, I think it's very funny and fun to read. I love it.
It's worth it.

Speaker 1 What's the point of being wealthy and having people who love you if you don't speak your mind?

Speaker 3 I know, but it also is a really good read. I think it's a great test.
Someone, even my, even Amanda was like, I thought, Scott, what? And then I'm like, good argument, Scott.

Speaker 3 She often goes, Scott, what? And then she's like, I must give it to him.

Speaker 3 In any case, I'll tell you, I have, let me read this to you.

Speaker 3 Wall Street executives, political gamblers, and cryptocurrency traders are piling on their bets that former President Donald Trump is returning to the White House.

Speaker 3 But the stock market may be telling a different story. U.S.
stocks have been on a tear with the Bellwether SP 500 climbing more than 10% since August.

Speaker 3 While the stock market is not necessarily representative of the broader economy, the SP 100's performance in a run-up to election has historically been a strong indicator of whether the incumbent party's candidate will retain control of the White House, correctly forecasting all but four presidential races over the last 96 years.

Speaker 3 So interesting. So

Speaker 3 that's the actual stock market, which is very hard to manipulate, is saying. And that's the one I would test.
I have one quick prediction.

Speaker 3 I went and saw, I'm interviewing the director of Wicked Zoom, John Chu, who I love. I went to see Wicked yesterday, and Amanda came with me.

Speaker 1 The Movie Wicked?

Speaker 3 The movie Wicked. Oh, it is

Speaker 3 fucking spectacular. It's going to win every Oscar.
I got to tell you, one of the best. Who's in it? Ariana Grande and Cynthia Arrivo are the main characters.
I have to tell you,

Speaker 3 both of them.

Speaker 3 They are spec, it's like Barbie Times 2. I don't know what it is, but it has so much weight.
Feels a very Harry Potter in a way. All the other characters are astonishing also around them.

Speaker 3 Michelle Yeo, Bo and Yang is in it. There's all these astonishing characters.
Jeff Goldblum. It's an amazing movie and it's substantive.
It is beautiful.

Speaker 3 The costumes, the special effects. And at the heart, a female, speaking of females, bringing it to female friendship, these two, Ariana Grande blew me the frig away.

Speaker 3 Arrivo. is the anchor of this movie, but they are so electric together as a relationship.
It's going to win all the Oscars. That's my prediction.
Huge hit coming for Universal.

Speaker 3 I have to say, I was, I did not expect it. I thought it would be good because it's a good story, but it is something really fantastic.
I recommend.

Speaker 3 And it's going to be like a Taylor Swift concert for girls. And I think a lot of boys will go because it's got a Harry Potter vibe to it, too.
Anyway, that's our show.

Speaker 3 I want to mention several people reached out following our conversation last week about a mother suing character AI over her teenage son's death.

Speaker 3 A few of you pointed out a part of the story that was perhaps even more troubling. Let's listen.

Speaker 1 While it was an excellent critique on character AI, you failed to mention the role of the gun.

Speaker 3 The gun thing's a bit beyond us here outside the US, and for it to not even be part of the story really does send chills.

Speaker 8 Kevin Russe's full story detailed how the parents knew prior to his death that their son was depressed, and yet his stepdad left a gun unlocked in a drawer in the home.

Speaker 1 Wasn't the stepfather a contributing factor in this tragedy for not properly securing the weapon in the first place?

Speaker 8 The story could have been about a tragic suicide attempt connected to character AI, but instead, he is dead.

Speaker 8 Parents can't monitor their kids' online activity 24-7, but they can and they must keep guns out of their children's reach at all times.

Speaker 3 Those clips were from Steve Sachs, Kate Darrow, and Sierra Fox, and we really appreciate it. It was a very good point to make

Speaker 3 in a terrible, terrible story, not just about AI, but about guns in this country.

Speaker 3 Thanks to everyone who called in. We want to always hear from you, and you're always incredibly thoughtful, most of you.
So send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 3 Go to nymag.com slash pivot.

Speaker 1 By the way, most is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Speaker 3 Well, those are just letters to you, Scott. And I'm glad you do that endorsement, Scott.
Fuck people if they, you know what? It was good. Go read it, everybody.

Speaker 1 And by the way, everyone, I just want to say everyone who unsubscribed, full refund coming your way. Yeah,

Speaker 3 full refund. And I endorse Scott Galloway.
I have nothing to sell you. So

Speaker 3 you can't unsubscribe. You don't have to listen to it.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 3 I don't want to be right. Also, go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.
And don't forget to send us your photos of you dressed up as me or Scott on threads.

Speaker 3 One last note elsewhere in the Cara and Scott universe. Scott, you talked with your favorite geopolitical expert, Ian Bremer, on Prof G this week.
Really smart guy. Let's hear a quick clip.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm talking in part

Speaker 9 about the relationship between China and the United States.

Speaker 9 That, I mean, we are heading towards confrontation, but both countries are trying to avoid sudden crises and ensure through a lot of high-level communication that the relationship doesn't deteriorate any faster than it needs to and any more broadly than it needs to.

Speaker 9 The Americans are doing that, I think, in part because we've got our hands full with a couple of different wars and an election cycle.

Speaker 9 The Chinese are doing that because their economy is performing worse than I've ever seen it. Certainly since the early 90s, maybe since the 70s.
I was just in Beijing a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 9 I spent the week there. And every provincial government is bankrupt.

Speaker 3 That's very thoughtful. From his mouth to everybody's ears.
We cannot get in a war with China, any kind of war.

Speaker 1 Nice guy, too. More importantly, he's a good guy to have drinks with.
Nice man. Yeah, great.

Speaker 3 It was a great show. It was really good.

Speaker 3 And I urge everyone to go listen to it because Ian smart.

Speaker 1 You're stressed and generous today. It's a unique cocktail I'm not used to.
You are very high strung and also generous.

Speaker 3 I know. What do you want? Why would I be generous? If it was shitty, I would say it was shitty, but it's not shitty.
Don't be shitty, Scott. That's all.
Your take on Bezos is wrong.

Speaker 3 That's good advice. On that essay, it was so badly written.
And I'm going to go through it line by line with you. Okay.
Just copy editing. Just copy editing.

Speaker 1 That sounds like torture.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I know, I know. My kids hate it when I do that.
All right, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.
Please read us out.

Speaker 1 Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.
Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Mia Severio, and Dan Shulon.

Speaker 1 Yeshat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and takes stock of the blessings of the best decision they've ever made and that is to live and vote in America.

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