Markets turn Trump, Long rates spike, Election home stretch, Influencer mania, Saving Starbucks

26:50Like I said, I really do think that there's a repositioning rebalance component to everything that's happening right now. So I don't think there's much to do unless you have a very specific Bet that you want to make I would just keep my head down and keep building Are you the same place sex? Are you are you Jake hell? Are you guys trading at all? I mean I think trading is a mistake time in market is better than trying to time the market And as I said before where is all this money gonna flow all this spending? But that's that's right. I mean, that's that's the key question, right? Like you change what assets you are.

27:20I don't think so and I I do think there's another thing that's worth sort of unpacking here because when you do see people feel like the economy is working against them, all kinds of interesting movements, start, cultural movements, etc. And I think that's what we're seeing in this election is people who believe in capitalism and free markets and people who don't, people who believe in free speech, people who don't, people who see themselves as victims and then other people who see them as creators. And I really study a lot of like what young people are doing. And I don't know if you guys are watching sort of the anti -work movement or the fire movement, which is financial independence for tire early.

28:02A lot of young people now are looking at financial markets, whether it's Robinhood or Coinbase or PricePix, whatever market it is, young men especially. And they're saying, I need to control my destiny. I need to, this capitalism is not working for me. I need to own equities. I need to make trades. And I need to retire early and have experiences because the capitalist system is broken to some extent. And then there's another group of people who are just anti -work. And there was this term back in the day called meat, not employed, not being educated and not in training. Basically, the people who are called the unproductives.

28:42And if you look at the peak engagement and employment in our country. And Japan has similar trends, although they're probably 10 years ahead of us. Sounds, sounds anything but me. Yeah, it's not me. It's not terrible. But we, we peaked at 68, 69 % labor participation and we're 10 % off that. Maybe more. We were at 61 or 62. I think a lot of people are going to give up because the debt is going to be so crushing that the logical thing to do if you don't think you can get out from under it might be to move in with your parents or two or three other people, tighten your belts and enjoy life and go skiing and go have experiences.

29:16And a lot of young people are electing to do that. In other words, they're not only American dream. Sorry to your point, the one thing, the one thing that I realized with a lot of young men that Jason, I think you're really hitting the nail on the head is a lot of them now do not view the job that they do as they're only path to economic independence. And if anything, they may do a job, but then they're actively trading on the side, something, crypto, options, whatever. They're on Robinhood. They're using coin base because it's almost like they've separated in their mind that the job they do will never give them the financial independence they want.

29:55And so instead, they're going to do that job because they like it. Hopefully they love it. But then separately, they're going to go and speculate to try to make money. It's a really interesting thing because I had always been taught, you earn your wealth through the job you have. And so if you wanted to make more money, you have to ladder up and do something different. Yeah, so that that's not true. That idea has been sort of decoupled now. That's a really interesting change in how people approach work. I call them Gen Bet. Like they're the generation that believes on, there's just like subset of them.

30:24It's not all of them. A number of them are just quiet quitting. And they just don't believe in capitalism. And then there's this other group which are like trying to get control. I call them Gen Bet because they just want to bet on themselves. and you know, and if they don't get wrecked by the financial markets, chain trading options, you know, and doing the other things. The other thing I'll say just in recruiting a bunch of people at 80, 90 over the last three or four months is there is an enormous difference that I have seen psychologically in the people that are 25 and older versus the people that are 25 and under.

30:59And I'm calling 25 as a rough number, but there are kids that are 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. that are off the charts could. They're motivated, they're hungry, they're like, let's get after it. And they are honestly different in the way they approach their job than folks that are in their late 20s and early 30s. I think they're in their first generation who didn't go into debt in college and didn't buy into that. Like, so they might, the millennials ahead of them might have taken the bullets, you know. Yeah, the folks that are in their late 20s, early 30s, and I'm not trying to generalize or disparage, but they lack a level of motivation.

31:36Again, generally speaking, that the youngest folks in the workforce have and that also that people in our generation sort of have. So they're sort of sandwiched in between a very different way of approaching work. And as a result, they stand out. And I don't think they're standing out for all the right reasons. Well, the majority now of young people, the number I believe, and Nick, if you could pull this up, 57 % of Jen's ears want to be influencers as their primary career now. That the idea of working a job is almost like a secondary option. The primary option that everyone would strive for is to be an influencer.

32:21and this number has grown considerably, continues to grow. And in fact, if you look at the rest of this report, this was out of a million times. Well, did you say 50 % of Gen Zers aspire to be influencers? Correct. Okay, 57%. As their career, or just they wanna be influential and build a brand around themselves, I wonder. That's what they want to do for a living. That's what they would like to do. That's what they want their paycheck to be interesting. Well, they wanna be independent. They wanna be independent and they don't think they believe the systems rigged against them. And why wouldn't you think the systems rigged against you if you went 150 or 250K in debt and you couldn't get a good job?

32:58Exactly. As a successful influencer, how would you advise the youth on their career choices? I'll play it. Yeah, look, I think that believing you're going to be an influencer is like believing that you're going to be like a rock star or movie actor. Pro athlete. Pro athlete? Yeah. Pro athlete. Yeah. It's like a one -and -a -million shot. It's just not a great thing to want to design your career around because it's just very unlikely to happen. So I think you're better off finding a career that you're passionate about, but where you're actually adding value. The world doesn't need 50 -something percent of the population become influencers.

33:37That's kind of crazy. It reminds me of a line from Fight Club where Tyler Durden says, we've all been raised on television to believe that one day would all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't. And we're solely learning that fact and we're very, very pissed off. And that was Gen X. That was Gen X. Yeah. So they're headed for a fight club like realization about this. Sax, how do you advise a young person on there? There's this temptation to go and spend all this time making content and pursue that as your career. And that's a life opportunity for you now. it's more free and open they would think than perhaps being a movie star or a basketball player used to be.

34:18So I think it's just important to recognize that if we ourselves are influencers, the reason why we're not being hypocritical is that none of us here with the possible exception of Jake, I'll ever set out to be influencers, right? We did something different. We actually had a career and we did something interesting and then as a result of that, maybe people want to listen to our pod. The idea that you can just go be an influencer without having actually done anything interesting, what's your credential for that? So what I would advise is just people should go do something productive and then if it leads to other people wanting to hear from them, then that's good.

34:56But setting out to be someone that other people should listen to without having any experience or having done anything productive in your life, it's like, why should we listen to you. One thing I did build and sell two out of my three business over the years. But there are tens of millions of people making money in the long tail as a content creator and it's low thousands of dollars in some cases per month. But if you combine that with people who are gig economy workers and they don't believe in the system because they worked really hard. They got this job at Google. They went to the office. Then they got laid off and nobody cares about them.

35:30Now they're getting dragged back into the office. They They still have these payments. And then they look at this other system where, hey, they started to get 10 ,000 followers. They started to make $1 ,000 a month and $3 ,000 a month. They actually see a path to being independent of a system that has no loyalty to me. And that's what I hear from folks. And I think it's great if we're not going to be loyal as like corporations to individuals. Those individuals are now responding in the antidote to that poison of just being laid off randomly or being dragged back to the office after your told you could work from home, all that stuff, they now believe, hey, I can be independent.

36:08And then you have to fight to get my services. And I think that's what this is about. If, and really we're going to talk about Starbucks later, and I think that's a big part of the Starbucks problem, having a side hustle makes you an anti -fragile. You have other sources of income and you can tell your boss to f off. And that's what young people are doing. I've seen it. I've seen people just quit jobs and just say, you know what? I've got other ways to make money and I don't have a big burn rate. And so that's smart for young people to do that. And I think my advice would be to build your brand, be as independent as possible and to make things in the world and show people what you mean.

36:42That's the best thing you can do. Can I give you the other side of this before we go back to macro? Yeah. Imagine that Tom Brady, who really respected Bill Belichack, but I wouldn't say is super fond of him. They're not super close. But imagine that Tom Brady had a side hustle and Let's just say he drove a noob and he made enough money where when things got hard and he didn't get enough playing time He opted out with that. It made Brady the person he was. I think the answer is no I think there are a lot of people who started companies after being in very difficult and challenging environments that stretched and pushed them beyond their comfort zone, and they lived in that world for years before they started something.

37:27If all of a sudden the answer is, let me have an escape hatch so that I can egress off whenever things get hard. I don't think you're going to accomplish much of anything because I'm not sure that that is the kind of boundary conditions that push greatness upon people. So I would just keep that in mind as well. I'm not sure the side hustle solves anything. It may actually allow you to quit before you actually get to the other side of something and realize what you're capable of. Yeah, and that's a great point. You kind of have to mentally burn the boats when you do a startup. It's Cortez. You've got to burn the boats.

38:02Yeah, I agree with that. Your life needs to be like Cortez. You've got to burn the boats. If you keep the safety net with you as you move through life all the time and you never put yourself at risk, you're never going to figure out what you're capable of. And then you're going to look back at some point and the odds that you're going to be disappointed are higher than if you actually just tried and lived it and just said, okay, you know what, I'm really glad I'm betting on myself here. To wrap up the conversation about where markets are headed, Zach, I think we were going to just do a quick round of horn.

38:34Anything that you've repositioned in your portfolio around investing or asset classes that you shift as we face kind of looming budget crises, the election cycle. I'm trying to sell for every single SaaS startup I have in sector markets. And you know how many bids there are for these SaaS companies? Negative one bid. That's interesting. I had a couple of my startups get get offers. I've had three or four secondary offers in the last two weeks. I've had to like deeply consider and they weren't like 75 what kind of companies? Let's see two are SaaS and then one I can't say because it would be too easy to guess.

39:12But the bottom feeders went from offering like an 80 % discount to now a 25 % discount. So you know you're not a lot of your Your shares and all in right. I'm trying. I'm trying. Brad Grocer's what seven percent so far I'm quickly off -loading You just super tilted free bird there looking The fifth You know, he's got 16 minutes per you know, when if he'll moderate all have him I mean, this is moderation going okay or should I do it, say, he should write all in a get sit memo. Just on the question of, you know, how do you reposition? So first of all, the easy one to avoid is, is treasuries, right?

39:52I mean, do you really want to accept a 4 .2 % yield for 10 years to own a U .S. bond? And with the looming inflation that is still out there or the looming debt crisis that might be out there. So that's probably the easy one. I think the hard one is around equities because equities are at an all -time high. Part of the reason why they're an all -time high is because the Fed telegraph that we'd have big rate cuts this year. Remember at the beginning of this year, they said there would be seven rate cuts. Those expectations have kept coming down. I think we had one, I guess, we had a double rate cut last month and we were supposed to have one more 50 -bit rate cut this year.

40:33I have to wonder if that's still going to happen. and more to the point, if you believe Dr. Miller and Paul Tutor Jones, we might be in for an extended period of higher interest rates for longer, and that will be bad for equities. Equities normally are inflation protected in the sense that those companies can just raise prices over time and keep up with inflation, and so equities are generally a pretty good thing to own in the face of inflation. But if we're in for a period of high interest rates longer than anyone thinks that's going to be bad for equities Well, I would just argue one thing which is Accept in the scenario where you believe the only inevitable path is for the central banks to monetize the debt Meaning the central bank step in to buy the outstanding treasuries that need to be issued Which both supports inflation but also introduces capital into the system and that's where both equities That's where you could see scenario or equities and gold go up while fixed income goes down to have higher rates.

41:33So it's effectively a money printing indicator or signal. Now my personal position on this going into this new era if it manifests as the markets are telling us it will is kind of where Paul Tudor Jones is. I think that commodities have and you know gold is a commodity. Everyone talks about it as being the safe height haven asset, but there are other commodities out there that are much more fungible and used in production cycles to make food, to make energy, to make goods. And a commodity -linked businesses, meaning businesses who's revenue or profit grows with the underlying commodity price growing, will outperform other businesses.

42:10They're going to struggle to raise prices or struggle to pay higher labor costs or struggle to deal with higher cogs, whereas commodity -linked businesses that effectively just make a margin on the commodity. Well, some example. the mining business, the businesses that do mining of natural resources, businesses that trade agricultural commodities. So those businesses usually make kind of a fixed margin on the underlying commodity price and they do well in the cycle. So anyway, I think that Paul Tudor Jones, because if you own a commodity, it's not a productive asset. It's not generating yield for you.

42:42But if you own a business that's making a profit and it just seems like it's easier to own Bitcoin. That's one asset, but the Bitcoin isn't a productive asset, it, right? So that's one one way to kind of build a portfolio. But I personally like owning businesses where they're doing something and making value and in the process, they earn a profit, especially if the profit grows with an underlying inflationary pressure. On the sexist point about the equity markets, there is this thing that people look at called the Buffett indicator, which is the total value of the Wilshire 5000 divided by GDP.

43:13He mentioned it in 2000 and said it's probably the most reliable measure of where equities are and where they're about to go. And there is this long run meme when you calculated going back 50, 60 years. And every time it's had a short term high, there's been a pretty meaningful retreat. So in 2000, in the dot com bubble, in 2007, during the great financial crisis, during COVID. And now we've actually said an absolute new high in this thing, which again, to the extent that you believe in indicators like this, what kind of tell you that at some point here, equities are probably going to be cheaper before they're going to get more expensive.

43:58This is definitely the high end of normal. Nick, if you pull up the PE chart, this is the obvious one to look at. It's not just how dramatic the stock market peaks are, but the price earnings ratio and it's at the high end of normal at like, I don't know for a 25 PE ratio on average 20. David, right. How can you get 4 .25 % when you have all of these risks looming over the next 10 years? Because you know, Howard Marx, his letter, he had an investment letter that he published this week. And it was so great because it was so elegant in its simplicity, which is investing in equity and investing in a bond are just completely opposite to each other, even though they're treated and spoken as if they're the same thing.

44:47And his concept is like, people need to understand exactly what the terms fixed income means. It means that you will get something reliably over a long period of time. And so the question is whether is that fair knowing everything you know today? And I mean, all of you guys have said this now for, it feels like years. And when you show these charts of like ballooning deaths and deficits, is it reasonable that the market clearing price for government issue debt over the next decade is 4%, I mean, my gosh, it could easily be 6%, it could easily be 7 or 8%, that is very scary. Totally. The big difference between a bond and a stock is that the bond provides you with, like you said, fixed income payments and those would be horribly debased if you have high inflation.

45:37A stock gives you earnings and a company can always raise its prices and so in theory it should be hedged against inflation. But both a stock and a bond are similar in the sense that they're both hurt badly by rising interest rates, right? Because not sure about equities is if we do head into a new regime of higher rates longer, does that hurt equities even though equities normally are pretty good in flation head? So I just don't know the answer to that. I do think we're headed for a period of constraints. I think that since 2008, we basically were living in a sort of a consequence free environment where the Fed could keep interest rates at or near zero.

46:24The federal government could spend as much as it wanted, we sort of normalized emergency conditions. First, we had trillion dollar deficits as a result of the 2008 GFC and then those got normalized. Then we had two trillion dollar deficits as a result of COVID and those got normalized. And then the Fed was also doing QE, which means that it's buying the US government's own bonds thereby propping up US bonds and the that bond market. So now that's normalized, that's normalized. Yeah, keeping interest lower than the otherwise would need to be to attract those bondholders. So for about 15 years, we kind of normalized emergency conditions and consequence free spending by the U .S.

47:08government. I think now we're we may be entering an era of consequences. And what that means is that you can't push on one aspect of the federal government's balance sheet without giving up on something else. So in other words, if you're going to allow higher inflation, basically monetizing the debt, the bond markets are going to make the government pay higher interest rates on its debt, right? Because they're not Tom. So we're again being a world of higher interest rates, which means that equities get clobbered real estate, let's get clobbered, the value of people's owns gets clobbered. So there's real consequences from that.

47:41Or you can tackle inflation, you know, which means that the Fed's going to have to tighten. But then I think what that means is the federal government is going to have to get religion around spending. They're not going to be able to spend all of this money. We've seen this. Our austerity measures in Europe were pretty hard for people in Greece and Spain to get their heads around. And the Americans are going to have to get used to. We can't just spend and give handouts constantly. On the equity side, though, there's also the concepts that you can cut spending and increase earnings. And that's well within your control as a CEO and board.

48:17And that's exactly what we've seen coming out of COVID. And I said it here a couple of years ago, I think the earnings are going to do well because people have this other lever and they can just turn the dial and reduce spending and increase earnings. And it's like, oh, that's painful. But it's not so painful that it's not worth doing. And so corporations have gotten religion around cost cutting and austerity and increasing earnings. The question is, an individual's have to. So they're pushing out by new cars and spending on travel. So let me just give you guys, when does the government get that austerity, that companies and individuals are forced to do?

48:54And that's the problem. You keep talking about freeberg is, this entire election cycle is about who can get more free sh**? Enough with the free sh**. Like somebody's gotta be an adult in the room and say, we don't have any more free sh** left. I think this is what the market is saying is that regardless of who gets elected here, they've both kind of shown that the deficit it will increase, not decrease under their presidency. And look, maybe that is positioning to get elected. And maybe there is a kind of more rational underlying economic advisory group that is counseling a different path than what they are presenting.

49:28And I hope to whoever is listening that that is the case for both candidates. Very deeply hope. If you look at what happened in Argentina, so we've talked a lot about Javier Melae, he came in as president and his austerity measures by absolutely slashing government spending has reduced monthly inflation from 25 % to around 3 .5%. So he's really kind of broad inflation under control. But the consequence of that is that the economy has now shrunk because the government is spending less. That means it's less revenue for certain businesses. There's less income for individuals. So they spend less. So the economy has shrunk by 1 .7 % in the last quarter and Unemployment has spiked so now unemployment is at 8 % in Argentina and it's rising fast So for the US to actually execute this policy when we have a fundamental mandate for the federal reserve who keep unemployment low Means that something is gonna have to break you can't keep unemployment low and inflation low if if federal spending gets too high and federal debt gets too high.

50:35So we are in a condition now where federal debt is too high. And if we cut federal spending too fast, we end up seeing unemployment spike. And if we don't, we're going to have inflation spike. Just one, those are the two paths we can walk. Just one thing to challenge what you're saying, because I actually disagree with it, is that I don't think that people view the spending packages of both candidates the same, because the dollar is not created equal. So there are certain programs that the Republicans have proposed that are markedly different than the programs that the Democrats have proposed, even if the numbers look the same.

51:13And so this is why I think you have to look at how the short -term markets when they thought Kamala was winning, behaved versus now the short -term markets, short -term means. How do you hedge this risk? And that has completely changed. And this is why I mean over the last 30 days you've had a complete and absolute repositioning of the front end of the yield curve in terms of risk and who's making the bets. And I think why is because the the Trump package, whether we agree with him or not, is viewed as more stimulative to long -term economic growth, which is why the inflation risk is being hedged out versus the Kamala risk, which is they're just going to spend money.

51:53Now, on top of that, what I would say is this may be where Elon Musk being able to streamline the government could be an incredible gift for us as well as our children and our children's children. And why is that? It's because if there's this sort of damacles hanging over us constantly of billions and trillions of dollars of wasteful spending. He is probably in a position to show us that we have spent decades spending more and getting less and now we can run the AB test where we spend meaningfully, meaningfully less, cut regulation and if we actually get more, you will have the proof. And that could set us on a long -term path of being more judicious in how we spend money.

52:49And I think that we deserve to run that experiment somehow. To just go back to your definition of GDP, it's true that if you cut government that might cut GDP because GDP includes government spending. However, one could argue that, although technically that is how the definitions work that by cutting government, you actually unlock resources that could be used by the private sector. And that ultimately would be listed. It would lead to more efficiency, but also stimulate the private sector. And I think that argument is particularly true when you've got an economy running a full employment. So, you know, if we had lots of unemployment, then cutting all these government workers would be very painful.

53:28But if you've got an economy that's doing quite well and there's a lot of job creation going on, then it's a good time to actually cut government because the private sector can reabsorb these people. We should use the fact that we still have that. We have a good employment picture to make these painful cuts now as opposed to waiting until it would be far more difficult. That's point I've heard in a long time. That's a great point, sex. Give us the election update. What's going on? Are we going to get your guy in office? Is it going to be Vice President Harris? What's the sense of what the polls are telling you?

54:02of what the markets are telling us, what's your read on where we're at. All the data is basically pointing one direction, which is a Trump victory. And by data, I mean the polling, I mean the prediction markets and then the early voting numbers. So if you look at the polls, there were two new polls by mainstream media. One, the Wall Street Journal yesterday said that Trump was up three nationally. And I think CNBC had a poll this morning saying that Trump was up to nationally, that's very good because... That's the popular vote. That's the popular vote. So if Trump is winning the popular vote, it's landslide.

54:38Most prognosticators say that because Republicans have a slight electoral college advantage, that Harris would need to win the popular vote by more than 2 % to have a chance at winning the electoral college. So if Trump is winning the popular vote, then it's a landslide. The second area is if you look at the state by state polling, Trump has been advancing pretty much in every battleground state for the last couple of weeks. If you use RCP, Trump is now ahead slightly in every battleground state and the momentum is all towards Trump. And then the final data point is around early voting in states where they have this early voting and put out the numbers.

55:18The Republicans are tracking well ahead of where they were in 2020. Now, there's still a question of, you know, it's just the mean that Republicans are just shifting their votes to voting earlier and then they'll do less well on election day. There's always that chance. But right now, if you're a Republican, it's what you want to see. And if you're a Democrat, it's definitely not what you want to see. Yeah. And the essay that Nate Silver wrote that was published by the New York Times yesterday said, it's a 50 -50 toss up either candidate could win, but my gut tells me it's going to be Trump. He's kind of indicated that's where, you know, as a guy who's obviously been a big prognosticator, it says the market's headed J.

55:58Cal He thinks acts is is right on this anything you're taking up for. I'm sorry. I mentioned prediction markets prediction markets have moved very very Charply in favor of Trump. It's almost two thirds one third now in favor of Trump. So there's been a huge move among Betters that Trump is going to win on polymarket. Yeah polymarket and then Cal she as well. Do you think it's over J. Cal? I'll go with Nate. I mean, I think Nate's probably the best thinker on this who I think puts a lot of effort into it. And if he says it's 50, 50 with a slight advantage to Trump, I think I would go with his gut.

56:32But he's saying don't trust anybody. I don't trust the prediction markets. And I think the prediction markets are closing that gap as we get closer because they are easily manipulated polymarket is only offshore, right? The US market is not allowed to participate in polymarket. So it's all foreign investors. Now of course, Americans could be putting money overseas somehow and using foreign accounts to place these bets. I'm guessing if you were a sharp and you really want to make money, that's what you would do. So I don't know what percentage of it. It was reported this morning that a French trader has bet $45 million on Trump on polymarket, that he is the whale.

57:11He's a French national with quote extensive trading experience. He's not quote manipulating the market. He just really is trying to build a big position So he sounds like he's a pretty active trader that I mean it's a crypto based site So you get the benefit of like you can track some amount of this on blockchains and then eventually find the person But because it's crypto as well you can also hide yourself pretty well with tumblers and other systems So I would discount polymarket a bit It's probably not as extreme as it seems, but it does seem like like Kamala has not helped herself with the interviews.

57:45They haven't been great. And, you know, it is a toss -up. And so, that's a surprise. Jamal, thank you. Any surprise? Yeah. Any October surprise still coming. I mean, there have been a few attempts the last couple days. I mean, it seems like the rhetoric for like 24 hours, there have been some really gnarly ones that we shouldn't give it. I don't think we should give any credence to. But some Republicans have been coming out talking about like a really gnarly one about the Republican side and I mean it's not much more gnarly than other things that have been set about Trump already and judgments that Trump is against him already for $100 million.

58:20So it's in that vein but I do think that that looks to me like it's cap and I think there's going to be a lot of fake news maybe even deepfakes that come out you know in the last week or two. So I think people should not trust anything they see on social media be very careful with that information. I'll tell you guys my kind of view is like things seem to be getting more inflammatory leading up to the election here. It's like we've got 12 days left or whatever it is. And the rhetoric and the tonality of the stuff that's being said is getting so nasty on both sides. And I just worry more about the reconciliation reconstruction phase that needs to happen in America.

59:05Do you actually see it on both sides? Is it equal on both sides of you? That's your observation Like I you know, I think like Trump leaning out the window of McDonald's and it was I mean I laughed pretty hard when he was like someone said to him when the interview Trump when he was serving French fries and He said something like I've now worked in McDonald's 15 minutes longer than Kamala has and then one of the reporters said Well, why do you think she would lie about that and he leads out the window He said, because she's lion, Kamala. And, you know, it's a funny joke. That's his quip. He makes fun of everyone.

59:37But I think the whole thing about making fun of everyone, it's such a different tone and a different rhetoric than I think what's gonna be needed. Because imagine if she wins. And, you know, he's painted her as being, you know, a liar and crooked and deep state. I mean, look, I'm not gonna try and - I don't know how you can possibly compare that to what the Dormacus was saying right now, which is that Trump has literally hitler. Literally hitler. He had a fashion, she called him a fascist. She said it's democracies on the line and obviously when you say something like that When you say that the fundamental system of the electoral process is on the line It implies that if he wins we've ended democracy that will inevitably lead people to feel like we're in a place of Civil chaos and I don't think that anyone's gonna feel good coming out of this.

1:00:23How do you guys think we kind of? deal with like the election outcome here, one side or the other. I mean, half the country is going to hate the president and half the country is going to hate where we are and how we sit as a country and half the country is going to think that democracy is over. I mean, one half is going to feel like this is the end. Is it just a temporary thing and everyone reconciled and we all get back to work and the elections over and whoever wins wins? I think unfortunately the mainstream media is responsible for giving roughly half the a country of psychosis about Trump because they are pushing out this rhetoric nonstop that he's a fascist, that he's Hitler, they keep putting out all these fake stories and they are basically training people or indoctrinating them that he's a slight threat to democracy.

1:01:07I was having dinner last night with someone who's a democratic pretty much gets all their information from mainstream media and she's like terrified of this. It's just not who Donald Trump is. It's ridiculous hyperbole, but if you're locked in that media ecosystem and that's all you hear you really are frightened by this. So I think that the media, the media's irresponsibility, the way that they don't report honestly and that they gin up these threats has really terrified half the country. Do you think that the Trump Trump is Hitler rhetoric indicates that the Democrats feel like you're losing the selection?

1:01:40Oh, look, it's like you're losing the selection. You're lying. I mean, that's like pretty hard for the chorus. What's so horrible about that? I mean, you could make the argument that she's lied about a lot of things. As Anderson Cooper interrogated her quite well just yesterday on that town hall. He pointed out that she had said 50 times that Trump's wall was a stupid idea and now she appears to be in favor of it. So I think that accusing your opponent of lying is pretty par for the course for a politician. What's not par for the course is saying that your opponent is literally Hitler and a fascist.

1:02:08That's just going to a whole different level of rhetoric. Okay, Timoth, do you think we're in a nasty state and we're going to be able to get out of it after the election. And I think we're going to be fine. Okay. I'm actually pretty optimistic because I actually don't think it's going to be that close. I mean, right now it's looking like maybe the land size too strong a word, but a solid victory for Trump. That's what the polls are showing. That's the picture markets are showing. That's what the early voting is showing. And if you look at all the other data points right now, it's showing Trump winning pretty handly.

1:02:41The other data point that we haven't talked about is just how these campaigns are acting in the final stretch. If you look at the Trump campaign, it's pretty much steady as she goes. You look at the Kamala campaign and they're in this throwing spaghetti against the wall mode. They're back to kind of the dark brand and type messaging where the reason to vote for us is Trump's the fastest. This is very different than they're messaging when they made the switch a roof from Biden to Kamala, right? When they first made that switch, they said, okay, let's get away from this dark brand and threat to democracy type messaging.

1:03:14It doesn't seem to be working. Let's emphasize, Kamala Harris as a change agent, as a transformational candidate, as a candidate of joy and positive vibes. And they did get a big bounce in the polls because of that. The problem is that over the last couple of months, that sort of bounce in the polls has worn off, as Harris has not been able to explain what she would change. She keeps getting asked in all these interviews, what would you do differently than Joe Biden? Anderson Cooper just asked her that, yesterday for like the 19th time and she still does not have an answer to that question. And so the problem she has is that this sort of veneer they gave her as this change agent has kind of worn off and she's seen as a continuation of Biden and the public does not want a continuation of Biden.

1:04:01And so now it feels like they're frantically trying to figure out how to reposition. They're back to the anti -Trump sort of hysterical messaging, which didn't work. It wasn't working three months ago when they made the switcheroo. So I tend to think that if you look at the behavior of these campaigns, it's pretty easy to see which one feels confident and which one is in a panic. Okay, Jake, if you could go back in time and you were Kamala's advisor when she became the nominee, what would you have advised her to do differently than she has done in this campaign today? I would have had a speed work primary and I would have let democracy play out.

1:04:39That was the big mistake. If the Democrats lose, I think they'll look back and say. 100%. And then in terms of thinking about why people believe that Trump is an existential threat to democracy, I encourage everybody who's a fan of this podcast to go back to episode 16 of the All in Podcast. And that's the episode where we all reacted the week of January 6th. And we all had great consensus amongst us that we thought this was one of the most disgusting, horrific days in the history of the country. And that Trump was trying to overthrow the election results and that he was doing so in a non -democratic fashion.

1:05:23I know some people have re -underrided or changed their positions, but I encourage you all to pause this episode and go back and listen to our very thoughtful discussion on episode 16 of the All in Pond. I would. Because we were scared as well. I think that things happen in a moment and you have to have enough compassion to say you react in a moment But then you also have to have the intellect to separate yourself from the things that happen learn more and Possibly and potentially change your mind. I don't want to be defined by a thing that I said in a moment And I won't do that to other people in that moment.

1:05:57I thought what happened was really terrible and Then since then I've got to know the person and I don't think that he actually incited much of anything That's my belief. Yeah, and that's fine that you're a belief, but I do think there's another group of people who are insane with your original assessment. Well, I think that those people need to also reundripe the way I did because I'm not really want to flip for random reasons. But that's not the point. The point is, I think that if you still believe what you believe then, then you should tell people to listen to what you said. Yeah, listen to what Sachsen, who's the Freeberg said.

1:06:31I thought we had a very productive discussion when it happened. but I think people have memory hold it. What you're trying to say, which I partially disagree with is those beliefs have changed over time. And I think it's more balanced for you to say that that's a point in time. And if you believe that that point in time still exists, that's fine for you to say that. But I think that's the way that you should say it. The other thing that I would like to say about this election, which I find really interesting, is we are in the part of the cycle now, where the side that's losing is going to pen.

1:07:05And I think it's happened a couple times, but I would just remind everybody, we have run the AB test. We know what the presidency is going to look like under Trump, except you get a real vice president plus RFK plus Elon Musk. Whether you like them or not, but my point is, I think you need to consider that you're getting for the price of one. And if the other side, if Harris wins, you mostly know what the trend will be because you've seen the trend under four years of Biden. The second thing is I think it's interesting to see that when you get into the home stretch, the losing side tends to turn on itself because they start to play protectionism for their own careers.

1:07:52And there's a lot of stuff that I think you can consume that starts to show that. And I think that's just an interesting observation. A lot of the tried and true most reliable media sources that I think we're trying to navigate as much as possible for a pro -Harris presidency are starting to push back in a way that I find a little surprising. I think the CNN town hall yesterday was one of those moments for me where even people like David Axelrod, a little bit throwing Kamala Harris under the bus. I didn't expect that at all. So I think it's just important to observe that these things are happening.

1:08:29I would agree with that. We're going to make it through whatever. Hold on, let me just give one thing to your point, you know, since I am challenging you with that episode 16 call out. I do hope that whoever wins, we all support that person to do the best they can for all Americans. And that's always been my commitment. And I did it the last two times. And we will survive this one. I don't think we'll survive two or three of these cycles if we spend 10 trillion each time. Just to add, you know, since Jake had your offer seen up, so that I participated in some things. I mean, look, I think that the goal of the mainstream media has been to try and keep us in the heat of that moment for four years.

1:09:09I mean, if you've watched MSNBC for the last four years, it's like J6 is occurring every single day. I mean, this is all that they talk about. But I think like Jamal said, we have learned a lot of things since that day. I didn't know, for example, that Twitter had censored President Trump's tweets telling all of these people to go home. That basically he said to protest peacefully. And then when they rioted, that he actually published tweets to try and tell them to go home. So that was new information. And that what that came out, remember at the beginning of the whole primary cycle, Trump did that town hall on CNN with Caitlin Collins where he dramatically pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket with the tweets and started reading them.

1:09:52That was a lot of new information for people. And I think that gave him a different picture. And then I think one other point that I think is important is that imagine if the press had tried to keep us in the heat of the moment of the summer of 2020 riots, the George Floyd riots. Then we'd have a very different perception of which party was in favor of riots because Tim Walls was the governor of Minnesota when those riots occurred. He did not want to send in the National Guard, Trump did, and then Kamala Harris tried to raise money for bail for an organization that was bailing out some of these protesters and rioters out of prison.

1:10:27So if the media was so inclined, they could portray Kamala Harris and Tim Walls as the party of the riots of the summer of 2020. I think at the end of the day that both those takes are propagandistic and they happen four years ago and it's certainly a piece of information that voters can take into account but it's only one piece of information and there's a whole lot of other issues and policies in this election and I think at this point everything that happened four years ago is kind of priceless the stock and what voters want to know about now is what would you do on the issues what would you do about immigration What would you do about inflation?

1:11:05What would you do about the economy? And when you look at the polling on those issues that voters say matter to them, Trump has a decisive advantage. And Kamala Harris cannot explain what she would do differently than Joe Biden. David Axelrod, word salad city. That's what he said last night, which was very shocking that he would say that. Totally, that is throwing her under the bus, but it's also just preserving his own credibility because it's hard to look. But this is my point, Anderson Cooper, now has to preserve his own credibility. You can only prop up a candidate so long and then at some point you have to prioritize your own media career And I think Anderson Cooper last night had to start to push back Yeah, it's like When everyone turned on Biden after the day all the journalists who had been covering Biden for so long that it was obviously in their face the whole time they suddenly have to be like Okay, I guess we got to admit now.

1:11:55He's not really there I think I think in one important way, Kamala Harris has been set up to fail here because on the one hand, she wants to distance herself from Joe Biden's record. On the other hand, she won't say what she would do differently. So she's in this kind of like never, never let this, this limbo. Yeah. That's right. But that's also not her fault. That's the position the Democratic Party put her in. And this goes back to what Jake Kals said, we should have run a primary. They should have run a primary for sure. I think they could have had a better candidate. But also, I think to go back to Freeberg's questions, this is a little bit of a pre -mortem, what should they have done differently?

1:12:29I think you either defend Joe Biden's record or say what you would do differently. You can't be in this limbo state. And Joe Biden's got to be in the White House there gritting his teeth, like wanting to get on the campaign trail and defending his record. Because I think Joe Biden thinks he has a good record. And there are things you could say in favor of that record. I mean, I personally don't think it's great, but you could talk about the full employment picture. Sure, you could talk about the fact that yes, we had 9 % inflation, but now it's down to 3%. I mean, there are things you could say.

1:12:59I mean, he did sign - Equity markets are an all -time high. I mean, he signed a lot of legislation that he obviously believed in. So the Democrats do have a record to run on. It's not a record that I personally believe in, but it's certainly one that I think you could make an effort to defend. And I think Biden, if he was the candidate, would be defending that record. and it's very awkward to have a candidate who was part of this administration who will not defend that record, who disincented herself from that record, but won't really say with any detail or conviction what she would do differently.

1:13:32That is just a losing proposition. And I think Anderson Cooper exposed it more than Brett Bear last night because Anderson Cooper had the time. Brett Bear only had 26 minutes and Brett Bear was seen as adversarial, whereas Anderson Cooper is fundamentally a friendly interviewer. And when she can't answer those questions for Anderson Cooper, that's when you know you're done. By the way, we've said this now consistently, almost monotonously now for about two or three months. She has to go into these swing states and answer about four or five critical questions. And I would just say this is still the problem.

1:14:09So if she wants to try to close this gap in the 12 days and have a legitimate chance of winning. She, I think there's still 12 days. I mean, it's a very simple way to do it. Number one, the border got out of control. We've shut it down already and we're going to tighten it even more. Number two, the stock market's at a record for a reason. Number three, the employment is at the lowest it's ever been in our lifetimes. This is the, as good as it gets, folks. And if you go with the other guy, I'll honestly take a look at what the other guy did. manager, well, you're a better campaign manager than the person that's running the campaign right now.

1:14:45They're not, they're not doing a good job. And I think that sacks is right. They're afraid of their own shadow. And they're going to walk into a meaningful reset of the Democratic Party. Well, let me let me finish number four. This person overturned Roe v Wade. That's what they're doing. And his VP candidate has said he wanted a national band. They walked that back. But if you're a woman, you shouldn't trust them. And number five, obviously, you saw what happen on January 6th, he'll do it again. And you got the judges. You just said that over and listen, I'm not Biden. Biden obviously needs to retire.

1:15:16He was a great president. He was a great vice president. We thank him for our service. I'm completely different. I have a different approach to all of this. And Trump is a wild card that this country doesn't need at the time. The end. And they would win. But I don't know who's advising her. It's the same thing with Trump. I think Trump could have just gone right to the middle. And when he was Trump 2 .0, he should be up 20 points on The fact that he's not up 20 points or 15 points on Kamala and that this is a dead heat. I think it's crazy. Trump's the easiest candidate to be. Kamala's the easiest candidate to be.

1:15:46I wonder who's running both of these campaigns. Well, it's hard to be up 20 points when the entire mainstream media is against you. There's only reporting positive things about the other candidates, only reporting negative things about you. And you have a three to one money disadvantage. One thing you could say for Kamala Harris is she has been a good fundraiser. There's plenty of billionaires who are funding her campaign. They literally have three times more money than the Trump campaign and even in California, which is a Safe state for them. You're seeing Kamala campaign ads everywhere. That just tells you there's so flush with cash that they can afford to spread the money around even in California So look the reality is that Trump has the entire establishment against him And I think for him to be ahead in the in the polls in the prediction markets and the early voting fairly decisively Is an extraordinary achievement.

1:16:34I think he's probably the only candidate who could have done that. In any event, and I do think, Jay Caldak, Kamla has tried to make some of the arguments that you just said, not very crisply, but she's trying to walk back on the border. The problem is they have no credibility on that because the Democrats, for the last eight years, have fought Trump on the border wall. It's his signature issue. And if you don't think Republicans should be believed on abortion, there's absolutely no reason to believe Democrats on the border. They fought Trump's wall. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's fair parts of all for scrap metal.

1:17:07She was supposed to be the borders are didn't even visit the border Which shows that she never thought it was important now she wants pretend that she's trump on the border Public's not buying it to handle the borders. She's so simple. She could just say what work then is not gonna work now We've had we've we've filled up and we just true dough just did a tweet. Hey, we're taking a pause for two years That's what she's gonna do. We're taking a pause for two years on the border We obviously it got out of control the end. Okay. We'll move on to the next issue All right. If the Harris campaign is listening, Jake Hell's advice is out there.

1:17:36You you may come on the pod. You're always welcome. Everyone that's running for president is welcome. Did you guys hear this rumor that bars? She's not my candidate. Did you guys hear this rumor that bars tool sports was asked if they would interview her and they turned her down? Is that is this rumor true? Apparently, I don't know. Why wouldn't they take it? No, they would take the interview. So Portnoy claims that the Harris campaign reached out and asked to be on two or three of their shows and Bart's Tool declined having her on, which is pretty unbelievable. Well, they just waited way too late.

1:18:11I mean, there's no question that last month they radically pivoted their media strategy. She became the candidate roughly three months ago. For the first two months, they didn't let her do any press interviews. Then they realized that their internals were bad. They're behind in the polls. So now they're having her go out and do a lot of media. And like I said, the couple weeks ago, that started to create a doom loop because she is not a great media performer So her poll started getting even worse. So then they got to put her out on more media to try and you know, Rebut that your doom loop was a good call.

1:18:40I'll give you credit if the comic campaign where started we'd be saying it's in a desk spiral right now Okay, you got it. You got it. Let's do it. It's a dead he we got it. Let's go. So we're gonna wrap up with Starbees? What I think is a pretty, yeah, Starbees. Super interesting topic because it's a real question around traditional shifting to digital. Is that why Starbucks is having challenges? Or is it just maturity? Or is it what happens when a brand that's successful as a luxury brand gets too big and the kind of premium experience commoditizes? So as you guys know, we covered the Starbucks CEO Brian Nichol joining a few months ago, this was after the prior CEO had been in the office for just 16 months.

1:19:26And there were a lot of problems that were plaguing Starbucks. But just this Tuesday, Brian Nickel came on and said that we're suspending guidance for 2025 after reporting preliminary earnings that showed another drop in sales at Starbucks. same store sales, which is the key metric in the QSR or food and beverage retail business attracts what your revenue is year over year. Same store sales declined 7 % year over year earnings per share dropped 25 % year over year. So, Nichol said we're getting the bad news out of the way. Now we're going to this back to Starbucks plan, focus on experience, improve the throughput experience and quality, make Ristas choose Starbucks as a career.

1:20:11And then he went through a whole plan. He put out a six, seven minute video on this whole thing. So clearly, customers are frustrated with the Starbucks product, the Starbucks experience, the employees are frustrated working there. And a lot of the system seems to be breaking down. I guess I wanted to kind of talk about what is the core driver? And is there a business lesson in all of this about premium brands or about scale and maturity and markets to be learned from the Starbucks story? So I don't know if any of you guys have gone through this earnings report or looked at the next question. I go to Starbucks on the regular and I think this really is just a case of founder versus being counter.

1:20:48It reminds me of Boeing or even Apple with their inability to produce new products post the Steve Jobs pipeline of products. And if you have anybody read Pour Your Heart into it, Schultz's biography. It's absolutely fantastic. And he really had an obsession with user experience, like writing people's names on the cups was a Starbucks innovation, remembering people's names, empowering the green aprons was like a big part of this. And then once he was out of it, and the bean counters came in, and they just got all about efficiency. The much smaller number of baristas at the store, ordering your drink through the app, and just trying to make these grind it efficiency decisions as opposed to the experience ones.

1:21:31And I think the Starbucks experience starts and begins with the baristas and that's the main problem If you've gone to a Starbucks over the last couple years sometimes you go in and there are literally 50 drinks from the Like I'm not kidding like 50 drinks On the pickup counter and then this huge wine if you're coming person and it's the most impersonal thing and the the stores are A wreck they're disgusting. They look like a truck stop and the whole point of Starbucks was to create this third space is beautiful place that was welcoming with Gorge Sliding and the baristas was supposed to make you hang out and enjoy yourself there.

1:22:07And they lost that and all you have to do is re -shultzes butt and do exactly what he did. Now there are a lot of other issues there around the competition for Starbucks employees that I think are super important. Do you think that's really true, Jake Alp? Because like, Nickle came on and he said we're going back to the core. Flat whites, It's espresso, it's nice espresso, delicious coffee, but the reality is, in order for them to have grown revenue over the last 20 years, Starbucks has expanded their menu as Chimata has pointed out to becoming a seller of sugar. They've become a seller of milkshakes and flavored beverages and high sugar cocktails, mocktails, that people run into the store to buy two, three times a day.

1:22:47That's how they were able to get the pickup, not selling what they started out doing, which was fine Italian roast at espresso. So it's now become a very different product and a very different experience. And so can you really go back to the core and not lose all the customers that I would say aren't looking for a flat white and an espresso, they're looking for a milkshake in the middle of that. I think you wanna maintain the core is the key. You don't wanna give up the core. And the core was having a great in -store experience. And I think that is not what you get when you go there, putting the sugar aside.

1:23:16It is, I think, like going for ice cream for kids. So my kids will pick if they wanna go for ice cream or Starbucks. And to your point about the Sugar Tremau, it's basically the same profile. And it's a great place to get breakfast. I'll tell you that, the egg bites and the scones are very... Let's watch Nichols. Let's watch Nichols clip and then Tremau, you can give us your take on this. This is a 30 -second clip from Nichols six minutes that he put out on Twitter. To succeed, we need to address staffing interstores, remove bottle necks, and simplify things for our baristas. We need to refine mobile order and pay, so it doesn't overwhelm the cafe experience.

1:23:50We're fundamentally changing our marketing. We've been focusing on Starbucks' rewards customers rather than talking to all our customers. And we're changing that quickly. We will simplify our overly complex menu, fix our pricing architecture, and ensure that every customer feels Starbucks is worth it every single time they visit. We must reestablish ourselves as the community coffee house. By the way, this is one of the things that Nichols did at Taco Bell. When he was a CEO there, you guys remember the Taco Bell menu? there was always like really interesting hidden things on that menu. He simplified the menu, made it very small, did the same at Chipotle.

1:24:25He takes this approach of finding the best products, simplifying the experience, simplifying the operations, and giving the customers fewer choices that ultimately leads to faster turnaround, better experience. But the tradeoff is, you have less variety that people have come to know and love, and at Starbucks in particular where there is just so much variety to choose from now, If your favorite beverage got pulled off the menu, are you going to start to go there less frequently? You know, Chimalt, I don't know if you have a take on what's going on at Starbucks and whether it tells you something about The maturity about one of the most iconic consumer brands in America This business is in trouble Next, please show the chart.

1:25:06This is Eli Lilly versus Starbucks if you look at it over a year you could look at it over The year to date you could look at it over two years five years 5 years. But what does this show? This shows sugar versus anti -shugger. An anti -shugger is winning. Say it differently. GLP ones versus things that cause you to need GLP ones. GLP ones are winning. And so I think this existential issue for Starbucks is about resetting to a much smaller footprint and a different product portfolio that tries to see where the puck is going. Where the puck is going is where a large percentage of the people that probably were buying Starbucks products and were very loyal Starbucks customers will have very different consumption habits as they more pervasively use these GLP once.

1:26:09And this in a nutshell is not something that Starbucks can fix with their current product mix. And so I think that they're fighting into a headwind. And these other companies are deeply incentivized to get American taste buds to be different. And so Jason, the things that you talked about are exactly the things that I think start to fall off the menu or just don't sell as much. because whatever the population of Americans are that are on GRP1s, let's say it's single digits, the real question is what percentage of Starbucks customers are on these things? And I think it's probably much more than single digits.

1:26:47And this is why I think you see the continuous decline in same store sales. And I think if you start to graph the adoption of GRP1s pervasively in America 2, the drop in same store sales, I think as GRP1 adoption goes up, same store sales will continue to go down. But it doesn't argue towards the original business freeberg that going there and having a cup of coffee and hanging out leisurely with your friends and having a conversation and it being a third space is the core value prop and maybe the sugary drinks maybe we'll fall out of fashion. So it may be true, but I think that the core objective of any corporation is to maximize shareholder value driven by growing profits over time.

1:27:31So growing profits over time requires increasing your revenue. There are three levers for doing this. Maximize brand, which is to get more customers. And I don't know if you can get the brand to be any more maximal than Starbucks. Maximize coverage, which is how many products can you get those customers to buy, whether it's on a daily basis, weekly basis, or monthly basis, how much of their meals and wallet share you're getting. And I don't know how many more times you can get people to go back into Starbucks each each week than they've done with their rewards program, with their digital, with their high throughput tools that they've built over the last decade and so on.

1:28:04And then finally maximize price. There's a limit to how much you can charge people. When you put those three together, you got more customers, you're selling a more stuff at the highest price possible. At some point you reach a revenue maximum. That has happened also at Apple. I think that Apple has faced a similar dilemma in the last couple of years, which is how do we get more customers? It's the most recognized brand on earth. You can only buy so many Apple products now. You know, they tried to launch the Vision Pro. It didn't go well. Today they announced that this week they announced their discontinuing production or reducing production on the Vision Pro.

1:28:35And you can only charge so much for these products. And I would argue that Starbucks is a victim of the same maximization effect. At some point, you get all the customers, you get them to come in and spend it's, it buys many products from you as they can, and you charge them the highest price possible, and then you reach this kind of maximum point on the business. And I think Starbucks has just reached that point of maturity. So to your point, it doesn't mean that it's a bad business at all. It could be a great business, a nicely profitable business, but the growth ahead of it is limited. It cannot keep growing same -store sales as it has historically because they've maximized all three of those levers.

1:29:10So fewer costs might be a way to drive more profits, more efficient operations. I think that's the natural next state for Nickel to tackle this company. The sad thing for Starbucks is that the only road that they have is to actually double down on sugar. And the reason is because the arpoos are meaningfully higher than traditional coffee. And so the economic pressure that shareholders will put on it is to actually stay in the business that they're in and try to do it as long as possible as you say free -burg and just strip out as much cash as possible. And then you just grow profit by reducing coffee and getting more efficient versus trying to add more products to get more customers.

1:29:46We're still great. The experience. But the structural problem is Starbucks should be probably a $20 billion asset. Yeah, and so what happens when a company gets to this level of maturity much like has happened with Apple is the multiple Compressor the difference though that Apple has not had the competitive pressure that Starbucks has because Starbucks competes on a level playing field with the Dunkin Donuts of the world or the Pete's coffees of the world But they compete in a completely orthogonal plane with GLP ones And I think that is not something that Apple deals with so Apple can still be At the point that you described earlier, which is let me just maximize reclash regeneration which is what they do.

1:30:21And then let me allocate that back to shareholders via buybacks, which is also what they do. So there could be another decade or so where Apple can continue to run this play with very little impact to them or to the company. Now, I'll say something else about Apple though, which is I actually upgraded my phone. I think this was three years in and I finally did it. My gosh, this phone is sucks. iOS 18 software is chunky. iOS 18 is just terrible. I'll show you one example of just like terrible design where if a designer that worked on my team showed me this, I would have fired them. Look at this.

1:30:56Can you see this? Is it possible to understand why you have two images for the do not disturb thing, one above the other? I have broken one of those. No, but it's a level of sloppiness and not taking care, which just shows you that it's like, we make so much money, it just doesn't matter anymore. That's what I feel like they're telling me. And then I'm like, well, wait a minute. Why did I just spend $1 ,200 of my hard earned money to upgrade to this thing if you don't care? How much was it, temperate? I think it was like $1 ,200 for this new phone. The other thing is that the actual upgrade itself, and I'm not exactly sure why because I didn't take the time to unpack it, it took four hours.

1:31:38The actual migration of like from an old phone to a new phone and I thought, my gosh, this is such monopolistic behavior. Right? So if it takes you an entire day to basically upgrade your phone, at some point you're just going to stay with the platform you're on and never upgrade or you're just going to stay on the exact same device because it's just too complicated. Imagine going from an Apple to an Android. It's a good way. In some ways both of these businesses are victims of their own success. They reach like market saturation. They reach their natural audience and then some and they've just got to figure out what to do next.

1:32:14and the adjacencies are hard to find. Also, all the photos, also photos. Oh, they do. It's terrible. It's terrible. Stop changing the interface, Apple. This is basically a camera and you made it terrible. It was good. Why did you do that? I think they're trying to change things for change things. One of the things Amazon's gotten correct and other services like eBay and Craigslist is when you have an interface that works and billions of people rely on it, you have to be very, very subtle in making changes to it. And they made a wholesale change to the photos app, and it did not work. It did not work.

1:32:51How do I get rid of the second silent thing on my thing? How can I just go back to the old thing? Totally. That's when you know you've failed as a product manager when people want the old thing. But isn't this just so lazy? Something's not right. Yeah. I know there's a lot of Apple people. This is, come on guys, can you just take your old sense first of what he's showing and the control center is massively confusing. It's like changing where the lights are in your bedroom and like, okay. Yeah. All right. Trouble shooting, um, part of the All in Podcast is over. I really want to say thanks to SACs for participating heavily in our Starbucks discussion.

1:33:29SACs, anything you want to say on the maturity of Starbucks or other mature tech businesses or value luxury businesses as they get big too big too big to keep growing. Anything else? I mean, I just saw an extra on Starbucks. I do like the product, but I just can't. What's your order? Tell us your order. Yeah, what's your order? I just get an Americana with a splash of oatmeal. Oh, it's like my order, that's a great order. What happened to you? Yeah, that's great. Good for you. How about I just send you some specialty chemicals that you can just pour down your throat, some Zanthomac. Some cargigen don't let them go.

1:34:07and say you put in heavy cream, you're going to get kicked out of maga. This is because you're not going to worry about milk and be maga. They don't have nut milks at Mar -a -Lago. I'm going to find out in a couple weeks, I'll let you know. Don't put that stuff in your body, dude. I bet they do. You should think that sweater that you just took from Chamoth, and wear that tomorrow logo when you go. It's like a perfect sweater for your Mar -a -Lago visit. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. The pink one's still mad. Now, I'm going to talk to her about this. Don't touch it. I'll talk to her at lunch.

1:34:34She's putting a sundress on it. Not a much of a fight. Before you came on this, Timot, she was reading. She was actually, she was just sitting on his lap and they were just chatting and I'm like, what is going on here? How outrageous. I'm going to be. What do you want for lunch? I said, what do I want for lunch? Your company. That's what I told him. Oh, sweetheart. That's what I said. She said, oh, you're born in the U .S. though. She's like, he's born in the U .S. though. He speaks to me so much more kindly than Timot. Oh my God. Oh my God. All right, this has been another amazing episode of The All In Pod.

1:35:02As a team player, I have been here to pinch it for Jake he did not want to moderate this week. So I stepped in to fill the shoes. One of the next week, you did a good job. Solitaire. Solitaire. One of this shows greatest moderators. For your Sultan of science, for the rainman, for the chairman dictator, and for the world's most absentee moderator. I wanna thank you all. And we will see you all next time. He's stealing anything that's not nailed down. I'm the world's greatest house guest. He's pretty together his own gift back. Love you besties. Love you boys. Bye -bye

1:36:04Besties are gone, go thrifty. That's my dog taking a wish to drive away. Sit next. Wait at all. Oh man, my ham is the actual meat. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug or two because they're all just like this like sexual tension that we just need to release some of them. What your beef, what your beef. Beer of beef. Beef of beef. What's good for you? We need to get my besties already. I'm going on lead!

1:36:37I'm going on lead!