Economic Protests, Social Media on Trial, and Big Tech Earnings

23:21So let's dig in. White House Borders are Tom Homan, he of the bag of money, just gave a presser in Minneapolis a little while ago noting he's on the ground to, quote, regain law and order. It's Tom. Tom says he's made a lot of progress since he got there like three days ago. This follows Trump saying he would deescalate a little bit earlier in the week, but the violence hasn't stopped. Representative Ilhan Omar was attacked with an unknown substance at a town hall on Tuesday. is the latest instance against a member of Congress. Representative Maxwell Frost was physically assaulted at Sundance last week, and both are Democrats, just so you know, and quite more on the liberal end of everything.

23:56Meanwhile, the two federal agents who shot at Alex Freddie have been put on administrative leave. Border Control Commander Greg Bovino has left Minnesota, but Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is hanging on to her job for now. She's now, there's a lot of pictures of her and a head of lettuce going on. And there's a lot of infighting in the between and among all those people. Three quarters of House Democrats are backing her impeachment and a couple of Republicans in the Senate are calling for her ouster. Tom Tellis, who's leaving, doesn't give a fuck anymore, has finally found his balls.

24:26What do you make of the changing of tact? And also note, Amy Klobuchar has just officially announced her bid for Minnesota governor. Your thoughts? Oh, it's interesting. I didn't know that Senator Klobuchar is running for governor. I think that's a great idea. I think, you know, I've called this before and I've been wrong. I do think this is a turning point. And when I was in high school, my mom gave me a bunch of John Irving books. Great writer, of course. The World According to Garth. And they made me feel a lot better about myself when I realized everyone else is fucked up and erotic and having weird thoughts.

24:59And it had a big impact on me. And one of the books that also had a big impact on me was George Orwell's 1984. I think in some ways it kind of might be the reason I kind of went down the progressive path. But there's a line in there, and I'll get it wrong, but it's basically, and the last act of the government was to ask us to ignore or deny what we saw and what we heard. Basically, all of a sudden, the government had gone to no longer trust your faculties of observation. It was the last and most important. There you go. Thank you. And you always have to one-up me. I'm just saying, I read the book.

25:37Why does Karis Fitch want to live forever? Anyways, so. So I can be with you. But that, yeah, there you go. I'm going to stuff your corpse and have it next to me. Like I'll just, like a poppin. I'm doing taxidermy? I'm doing taxidermy. Go ahead, go ahead. But that moment, literally that quote just popped into my mind when Christy Noem or Secretary Noem got up. We generally have these Judeo-Christian values, and I imagine there are also other religions. I don't mean to limit it. but that says when someone dies, you don't desecrate them. And when she got up and was so disrespectful of Alex Prattie and then also claimed he was a domestic terrorist.

26:20Yeah, that's actually inaccurate too. And that he was there to massacre, he was brandishing a weapon and was there to massacre federal agents. I think that was Stephen Miller. That was a moment where I thought, oh my gosh, I've never seen, I've seen people spin shit. I've seen people exaggerate, I've seen them lie, But I've never seen the administration feel confident that it could just look people in the eyes and say, you know, ignore your faculties of observation and trust, just believe what we say because we're saying it. That for me was, that felt very weird and chilling and like a turning point.

26:54And I think if you look to Americans' credit, the majority of people and a lot more Republicans have said, okay, this has just gone too far. And you know how far it's gone when all of a sudden a guy who took$50 ,000 in a brown lunch bag feels like the adult in the room. He does. People are relieved that he's there. I know. When he said regain law and order, I actually think he's probably talking about the cops themselves or these Border Patrol people with the masks. Let me just say, I had a very interesting discussion with my mom, of course. I've turned her to CNN because she decided Caitlin Collins' dress as well, and she likes it and thinks she's adorable.

27:26I think that's a good reason to watch these people. I'm fine with it. And so one of the things that was interesting is she did not like those things, you know, that. And one of the things that bothered her was the meanness. It was, I don't know, my mother could be very mean. She didn't love it. And one of the things I'll tell you, she zeroed on the masks. Why are they wearing masks? And I said, no, police don't wear masks. That was the first time judges that put away cartel. Yeah. She was asking a question, you know, and I was like, well, because they're private police and they want to hide. And she's like, well, they're worried about people knowing who they are.

28:01I said, yes, because of the things they're doing. And so it was an interesting conversation. Well, it's, I mean, think about how ironic it is. We're now deploying and coordinating unbelievable firepower and assets in Iran or in the Gulf, claiming that, okay, we need to do something because the government is executing people in the street. Well, our government is executing people in the street. So that irony, granted, it's not on the same scale, but that irony is not lost. No, no. Let me point something out. They're headed to Ohio to do this with Haitians. They're not stopping. They raided an election site to try to pretend that the election was stolen in Georgia.

28:44Very dangerous. They're going to do this thing in Ohio. These people aren't going to stop. I just don't. I know we're like, finally, we've got him. This guy, finally, we never get him. Whoever's controlling him, and I think he's not, from what I understand, he doesn't work very much during the day. Someone high up in the Trump administration told me he works five hours a day. So another 19 hours is someone else. And so I think that they're going to keep going. They're going to go. They have, Stephen Miller has no shame, and they will go to Ohio. And J.D. Vance has talked about this. So, but I'd love to, when I think about this on a metal level, I think about the Trump administration and MAGA, a key philosophy or cornerstone is that they believe if we could just turn back the clock and go back to 50s America, where white people and males were largely in charge of everything, that this would be a better place.

29:37And they're just uncomfortable with the browning of America. They're uncomfortable with more progressive values. They're uncomfortable with women's rights. And they just want to take us back. And it's almost sort of, poetic's the wrong word, but ironic. But look at the two famous, or, you know, Renee Good and Alex Pretty. So, okay, what do we have here? I mean, it's just so, I don't know if you've noticed this, we have, and I don't want to be reductive, but I'm going to be, really lovely gay parents and a male ICU nurse. It's almost as if they said, how do we find what represents the future and push back on it in the most heinous way possible?

30:22I mean, these two people in a lot of ways, and ICE's ability to sniff out really good people. There was a story about Renee Good and her partner the day before circling the school block two or three times because their kid struggles with social anxiety and waving at the kid to make the kid feel more comfortable. The send-off, the video you found of Alex Preddy, I mean, these are really good. They're not only really good people, but in a weird way, I look at them and I think, that's the future of America. And that's what MAGA hates. Well, they will keep going. And let me just say, they do in particular, let's not take the focus.

31:00They have been targeting people of color, like the immigrants who are hardworking. They're going for the Haitians now. You know, the people they're trying to weed out are very hardworking. Well, I think this was accidental or not strategic. They didn't say go find a white ICU nurse. But doesn't it strike you as just very ironic and almost like out of a play kind of? It does. The picture that got me the most was that kid. I think his parents were. The five-year-old. The five-year-old was just like his parents are immigrants. And that got me the most. The hat and then the sitting. They're just, they're so inhuman that it's really, the visuals are quite something.

31:43Now, there have been visuals before, whether it was the attacks during the civil rights era. If you remember the dogs and the hoses on people of color down in the south. And then there was, you know, the Vietnam photo of the girl running. I was just thinking of that. The corpse photo. Is this that moment? The one, the child dead on the beach. There's a lot of very strong imagery. I remember that. Yeah, there's a lot. This is coming at you so hard. That's what I was talking about this week is that. But speaking of photos and impact, Tim Cook is finally speaking out in Minnesota, calling for de-escalation.

32:20Thanks, Tim. It's like as bland as the quinoa you enjoy. After facing a backlash for attending the White House, Melania premiere the same day as Alex Preddy, the shooting. Cook noted in an internal memo that he had a good conversation with the president where he shared his views. Sam Altman also weighed in, telling Open AIES that ICE was going too far, you think. Though he said, President Trump is a very strong leader and I hope he'll rise to the moment to unite the country. Both of them had to compliment Trump and spent very little time talking about the victims. In fact, not at all. So very, I think, weak sauce responses from, and then Altman managed to get a slap in at Zuckerberg at some point in one of his statements.

33:00statements. Talk a little bit about this, because I'll tell you, internally at Apple, it's crazy. People are really furious, I can tell you that, from talking to lots of Apple employees and all levels of this company. And, you know, I think of all the companies, it's really interesting. Apple feels the most betrayal, if you look online at least, and I know that doesn't represent everything. But it certainly is not a good look for him to He's standing next to Brett Ratner, who has his own issues, and in a tuxedo. Just the whole thing. By the way, no one's ever going to see this Melania. One of the more enjoyable things is people showing pictures of theaters that sell zero tickets.

33:43Because Amazon, why aren't they more mad at Amazon who paid$40 million, spent$35 million marketing this? And there were several Amazon executives at the event. But what do you think about this? I think we love Apple. That's why, right? I guess. I don't know. I think Tim Cook is the new Bob Iger, and that is he's going to take an incredible career and put a giant, you know, shit stick at the end of it. There is an unfortunate but necessary lesson in life around the intersection between your participation in time and other people, and that is the last five minutes are the most important five minutes.

34:19When you're at a party and you're leaving, do your best to be as fucking charming as possible and go around and say hi. there's that famous study where they're giving dudes colonoscopies and one is just 45 minutes and the other is 50 minutes but the last five minutes they don't move it around so it's not as uncomfortable and the men who had the device inside of them for 50 minutes said it was much more pleasant because all they remember is the last five minutes which was not that unpleasant when you leave an organization when you quit or you've been fired you swallow everything and you could not be more fucking charming because that is how they will remember you shockingly that's how I lead places, but go ahead.

34:55You think I know, how dare you? Or just on a more serious level, if you're getting divorced, do everything you can to be as gracious and generous as possible on the way out. Even if it means taking some lumps, being treated unfairly, this is, if you've been married five, 10, 40 years, everyone, your partner, their parents, your friends, Your kids will remember who was the bigger person. And Tim Cook, unfortunately, he's been an amazing CEO. And I also, from everyone I know that knows him, including you, I don't know them. They say he's a good man. But here's the thing. This will be this small period towards the end of his tenure where he shows up to the White House for a ridiculous premiere where he says he can't wait to spend time with Melania.

35:48when he shows up with a handwritten disc drive and literally just is a sycophant to the president. And then in a statement, adding the president. That's how he's going to be? Why did he even put that in? Why could he just not this time? That to me, I was like, oh, come on, leave that out, that one sentence. What did you call a relationship with Apple in that book when I met you? What was Apple, a lover? Google is God. You know, pray to it, ask it for an answer, comes back with something. Amazon is your gut, never consumption, you know, more for less. Apple is your genitals. When you, the billion people have iOS are the most attractive potential mates in the world.

36:31It's the most subtle way of saying you should have sex with me. Well, I would argue more so. People love Apple. Incredible products. No, but they have a relationship with it. The whole thing different. They have marketed to you in a values way, right? privacy. He's had a more shareholder value than any individual in history with the exception of Jensen Huang. And unfortunately, but I'm just saying people have that's what people are like, why do I attack Apple when Meta is? I was like, because we don't like him. We like Apple. Well, this feels like more of a betrayal. Yes. We thought if there was one person who was going to stand up and say, I have been a huge beneficiary of rule of law and the progress of rights in America.

37:11And Apple's been an enormous beneficiary of competition and rule of law and what's going on here is directly contrary to everything that's given me incredible opportunities and created$4 trillion in shareholder value. We are not down with this. But instead, he's like, well, I'd love to hang out with Melania. Just make sure that we're exempt from those China, those pesky China tariffs. And de-escalate the word. This statement was such weak sauce. It was de-escalate. Like, I also thought, and as Stephanie Rule actually correctly pointed out, it was bland. And the one from the Minneapolis Commerce was like, let's all get along.

37:43I'm like, There is a side here, and it's not with the police at this moment, or not the police. The police are doing great in Minneapolis. It's these thugs. They have given Tim Cook and the rest of tech a very easy way to say, how dare you talk about people like that, which you were just talking about, Kristi Noem. They have gone to a ghoulish place. and one person who did speak out, let me just say, Vinod Khosla went, distanced himself for something Keith Raboy was saying about the shooting because Keith was wrong as always. And he also got into a beef with Elon Musk, very public about racism, which I'm not surprised Vinod is like that, but like it didn't cost Vinod anything to do that.

38:30And Vinod and I don't agree on lots of stuff, right? Sometimes he says things, I'm like, are you kidding me? But like he was a person, right? And these statements by Cook and Sam Altman and the rest of them, you're not people. Stop acting like you're not people. And that's like having to throw in President Trump as a very strong leader. Or I had a discussion with President Trump. How rich do you have to be that you can't? What's the point of having all this money? What is the point of being this powerful and having to be such just a weak person and a weak moral person? That, to me, I just don't understand.

39:07People ask me, like, what job is safe from AI? And I say, I personally think if I were to bet on one job that's only going to increase in importance, it's things around communication, strategic communications, investor relations, PR. And the two biggest communications mistakes of the last probably quarter happened in the last week. on a corporate level, whoever the fuck didn't literally body block Tim Cook from not only going to that dinner, but getting a picture with Brett Ratner. And I'm not, I'm not going to make a judgment on Brett Ratner's past. Please go read about it. Please go read. But that's just not a, that's just not a good look to be at the Melania premiere.

39:46I mean, it's like any PR person who has any intelligence in Apple thought, okay, I'm about to get fired and I deserve to be fired. And then the second biggest communications mistake, a rookie move, was for the administration to create a talking point that, oh, you show up with a gun. You're looking for trouble at a protest. It's like, well, let me get this. Kyle Rittenhouse. When Kyle Rittenhouse shows up with an AR-15, he gets invited to the Republican convention. And also the NRA came out and said, look, and there's some data here. If you have the training that Alex Preddy had and you have a license to carry and conceal and you've never committed so much as a misdemeanor, you're seven to 10 times less likely to commit a crime.

40:29There is something to the notion of safe, well-trained, registered, you know, carry laws. And for them to come out and say anyone going to the protest is looking to get in trouble, it's like, okay, so you're denying people's right to protest. And you're saying that— First Amendment. Second Amendment. And now you decide in one fell swoop to talk about violating the Second Amendment, claiming the people that have guns are looking for trouble and more deserving. The entire Second Amendment is meant to prevent this. We need to arm as a citizenry in case tyranny takes over from the government. But that's not what he was even doing.

41:07He wasn't even brandishing. The word brandish, he was brandish. I think Noam said that. He was brandishing a gun. He didn't brandish anything. He never touched his gun. Brandished a cell phone, Christy. But that was just such a huge error on their part, because quite frankly, when the NRA weighs in and says this is bullshit, it becomes a very bipartisan issue. Well, in any case, Tim Cook, bad show. Bad show all around. I think you should do an interview with Kara Swisher and then see if you can make it through that. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, big tech goes to court over addictive products.

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44:32Scott, we're back with more news. This is a really interesting big tech trial taking place that we haven't really paid attention to. It's kicked off in L.A. this week where a plaintiff is suing Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube claiming personal injury through addictive products. The statute claims features like infinite scrolling and algorithm recommendations lead to compulsive use resulting in problems like depression and anxiety. Executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify with nine cases likely to be heard. And TikTok and Snap settled with the first plans where the trial began.

45:01It's kind of a little bit of a big tobacco moment. And I know these trials, you never know where they're going to go. But really, people have not been paying attention to this trial. And it's in an area you and I talk about a lot. And there's plenty of texts back and forth about obsession and addiction. And there's a lot of discovery here that should be really interesting of these executives talking about what they're doing. very similar to big tobacco. Yeah, we know when they smoke it, they love it. Like we know they're addicted, that kind of stuff. And so I think it should be a really, I mean, we know they know this.

45:36And someone like Tristan Harris has been talking about it for years. I've been talking about it. You've been talking about it. You know, and now it's got to the dangers of suicide with young people too. So any thoughts? We're going to look back on this era and decide that letting a 16-year-old on Snap or on Instagram or on TikTok is probably more harmful than if we'd let 16-year-olds smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. 6 % of teens qualify as being addicted to drugs or alcohol. 24 % qualify as addicts to social media. And the heaviest users are twice as likely to have suicidal intent. They're also the group in the highest usage are more likely to express poor body image more than the lowest use group.

46:19The bottom line, this is, to say this is like kids smoking is unfair to tobacco. When I, I mean, this is going to sound, I've said this and I got a ton of shit for it a few years ago. It was the first time I was featured on late night TV, not in a good way. Oh, let's do it again. Let's say it again. Go ahead. Well, I said I'd rather give my 16-year-old a bottle of Jack and some weed than a TikTok. Now I agree with you, but go ahead. And they played that and said that was so ridiculous. this, when I, I didn't, I hung out with a Mormon kid all through in a, in a, in a great athlete in high school and neither of them drank.

46:55I actually think I could have benefited from easing into alcohol. Anyways, this social media that I've said this, that's the thing we're going to regret most. We're going to look back and think, how did we let this happen to our kids? And then even outside of hardcore addiction, I'm not exaggerating 60%, maybe 70 % of the family anxiety My family registers. Arguments between me and the kids, arguments between the kids and their mother, arguments between me and their mother revolve around the fucking phone and social media. I feel you. I feel you, Scott. And when we leave our kid alone and we go on vacation and we're checking custodial and he calls us and he's not at school and we find out he was on social media all night And people say, well, that's bad parenting.

47:47You're in control. Yeah, that means you don't have kids. Exactly. It's not a collective movement. If you take your kid off a snap, he is then further depressed because he's ostracized because this is how these kids communicate with each other. It needs to be a collective action. There should be no synthetic relationships. Speaking of collective actions. Can I add? I have to say one of the greatest moments of my parenting is when my son, without, but unbeknownst to me, used Amazon, to order a box to put his phone in. Alex did it and lock it away to do his homework because it was distracting him.

48:21You know what I mean? Like he, this, when he was in high school, I was really proud of him. Like he understood the issue easily. And one of the things that's really hard is including for adults. I was at one work meeting and I made everyone put the phone in the middle of the table. It was very uncomfortable. I'm addicted. Let me be clear. I was like, put him in the middle. don't touch them, don't touch them. Like, oh, I have to, my kid. I'm like, it'll be fine. Nobody's going to get an emergency. And if it is, I'm sorry in advance, but it probably isn't. We're going to pay attention to this trial because it's really important, but we're going to read out some of the texts and emails that these people know exactly what they're doing and they relish it.

49:02They relish the hold they have on people. They relish the hold they have on teens. And they are very aware, just like Big Tobacco, of what they're up to here and no matter what they say in public. And so that will be stuff. We'll be doing dramatic readings of that. All right, Scott, let's go to on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk big tech earnings.

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50:08course, fueled it. Let's walk quickly through the results. Meta posted a strong quarter with fourth quarter sales up 24 % year over year. That's really impressive. His AI spending spree continues with a projected CapEx of up to$135 billion in 2026. Probably a lot of that will be dedicated, hopefully, to advertising for them because that's where they'll get the most bang for their buck. Microsoft also shows no sign of pulling back on AI spending$37.5 billion on CapEx in the latest quarter, a 66 % increase from last year. The picture was less rosy for Tesla, which reported a 61 % drop in net income for the quarter, down 46 % of the year.

50:44The stock is still soaring inexplicably. Tesla's also scrapping the Model S and X cars using the factory space to build robots. He's going all in on robots. One thing I say about him is when he goes for it, he goes for it. And I've heard some of his robotic stuff is very impressive, but nonetheless, he's betting the farm on it again. It's investing about$2 billion in XAI. The combination of robotics and AI to me is really important. I've talked about this before. Also, there's layoffs at Amazon and related to AI and Pinterest, very large layoffs. They're all sort of using AI to cut labor costs.

51:19What jumps out at you the most? Well, I think AI is going to add a lot of shareholder value, but not where we think it's going to add the most value. I think the AI native companies are overvalued right now. I think the NVIDIAs, the OpenAI, the anthropics of the world are probably overvalued. Where I do think you'll see an increase in shareholder value is the application of it specifically autonomous. I think Waymo is going to be a trillion dollar company on its own. Targeting of ads and making the consumer experience better and creating a better advertising stack. I got to be honest, I think Instagram and threads get better every day.

51:58I think they're fantastic. I think the consumer experience and also - So does Gemini on Google, by the way. I've done a little poking around how an advertiser, I just don't see why. I can't imagine what it's like to be selling ads for MSNBC right now when the person from Meta or Google will show up and show you what they can do. Oh, you're targeting kids who just got their driver's licenses in Montclair, New Jersey? No problem. We can reach them one at a time. And with perfect ads that are AI. Yeah, at the right moment, it ends up people want to buy life insurance at 7 p.m. right after, I mean, anyways, so Meta's earnings, incredible, revenue up 24 % year on year.

52:44It's a big company. And not only that, their employee base wasn't up 24%. I don't have the number, but I think it was barely up. And then the one that was down 6 % or 7%, they were up 7%. The one that was down was Microsoft because Azure didn't let up. Its cloud company didn't. It had growth of 39%, which still topped analyst expectations. But unfortunately, the new expectations is that you blow away expectations. but still Azure cloud computing, the demand is so great that Microsoft's backlog of commercial bookings were up 110 % to 625 billion. There's some concerns about over-reliance on open AI where it's a whopping 45 % of this backlog is attributed to their quarter of a trillion dollar agreement they made in October.

53:33And also it's gross margins because of the increase in CapEx is the lowest. It's been in three years coming around 68%, which spooks in people. Tesla, I can't even begin to understand what the fuck is going on there. I think the stock should be down 90%. It's become a meme stock. It is, that's all. I suspect he's just decided cars aren't the way to do it and then he has some advantages in robotics. And several people have called me and said, actually, he's doing a lot of really innovative stuff around robotics. It's just he's betting the farm on that everyone wants to have an Optimus robot in their house.

54:10I guess. But, you know, he's done it before. Like, that's the only thing I would say. But he hasn't shown. The other thing he's done before is say, we're going to land on Mars. He makes promises he never, his mouth makes promises he can't keep in reality. So the question is, like, getting rid of, the Model S and X cars were made by Rivian and Lucid and the Chinese, right? He's gotten out of this business. He's not in the car business anymore, it seems like. And so the question is, can this robotics business meet the challenge? We'll see. Well, to be fair, they did beat expectations, but let's talk about what those expectations were.

54:49The revenues are down. Of all the companies we talk about, no one is down. What, Matt is up 23 %? And then overall, a horrific quarter, their operating margins, and that is the amount of money you get to hold on to was 7.2 % in last year, in the same quarter. This year, it was down to 46%. That's a meltdown. Their free cash flow decreased 30%. Their gap net income decreased 61%. They realized they got a half a billion dollars in automotive regulatory credits that are going to be running out thanks to the big, beautiful bill. People still believe in him. They're giving him money for XA. I think he's going to merge it into XA, like I keep saying.

55:30He's now using Tesla as kind of nutrition for xai they disclosed that tesla invested two billion in musk's company xai so this is you know and he needs a new vision a new distraction and as you said he's gone all in on optimist which i think is going to compete with the cyber truck and the segue and the palm is the biggest flops in history or maybe the mixed reality headset the other thing that struck me was the layoffs in amazon yeah and that is they laid off 16 yeah but it's for different reasons Pinterest is doing it because Pinterest is fucked in subscale. I like Pinterest. I like the people there.

56:04It's subscale. It's going to have a very difficult time. Amazon laid off 16 ,000 people in their corporate workforce, which doesn't sound like a lot because I employ 1.6 million people, but the majority of those people are in their factories. This is probably close to 10 % of their corporate staff. And this really is, I've said for a long time that AI is corporate to Ozempic, all these guys are going, you know, I mean, Amazon has said they're going to double their top line retail revenue in the next five to seven years without a single increase in the number of headcount. That's AI. And then also I think the place in Amazon's my big tech stock pick for 26, the collision and you've referenced this of AI industrialized robots of which Amazon has a million industrialized robots, and the total number of industrial robots in America outside of Amazon is 400 ,000.

56:58So they have gone just as Musk is going all in on robots, no fucking sense. Amazon, Jaffe and Bezos are going all in on AI-driven industrialized robots, which is champagne and cocaine. But they were there before. They bought a company called Kiva many years ago. Kiva, yeah. But just so you know, recent Amazon layoffs plus October layoffs is 10 % of the company. They had one. Oh, is it? Thank you. UPS got 30 ,000 jobs. I mean, these guys. Industrial robotics. I interviewed David Solomon from Goldman Sachs on Prof G. And he said, I mean, they're planning to grow their revenue substantially the next two or three years.

57:39Goldman's in a great spot right now, great leadership. They're doing well. But he admitted employment will begin to flatten. You know, no CEO is going to come out and say, I'm going to reduce 10 or 20 % of my workforce, right? No, they can't say that because then everyone, the best people start leaving. But what he did say is it's going to flatten. So what we're looking at here is - Flat is new up. Right. But this takes their earnings and absolutely makes them go crazy. crazy. And then when these companies do well, everyone, you know, the S &P does well because the S &P is now kind of the S &P, you know, it's not the S &P 500, it's the S &P 10.

58:16Anyways, these companies on the whole continue to just be extraordinary. And that is until this movement called Resist and Unsubscribe came along. Anyway, one more quick break. This is absolutely you. Corporate Ozempic. Take it away. We'll be back for predictions.

58:40Okay, Scott, I'm going to make one quick prediction, okay, if you don't mind. The Super Bowl is just a few weeks away, and go Seahawks. But I already have a prediction for the best ad, Lady Gaga. Did you see that singing Mr. Rogers, Beautiful Day in Your Neighborhood, in an ad for Redfin and Rocket Mortgage? I don't really care about the ad, but they released a teaser clip, and she sounds amazing singing. She's got incredible voice. Oh, it's going to be the best ad. I'm going to, we'll talk about the ads later because that's always fun. That was not the prediction I was expecting. It's very similar to mine.

59:11And that is we're about to engage in military strikes against Iran. So very similar predictions. Yeah. Okay. Lady Gaga. It's just so strange that the Epstein files are now a distraction from it. It's like the behavior keeps getting more and more depraved that we have to come up with even. The safest thing in America are the Epstein files, but go ahead. No, I've made this prediction before and I'm just making it again. It feels like I follow this. I love this guy, the Geo Hussar on TikTok. And I mean, I'm sold. I'm just fascinated with military equipment. And it just, it appears that all our assets are being coordinated in the Gulf for a pretty obvious reason.

59:46And I don't know if Trump is doing it for the right or the wrong reasons, maybe as a distraction, but I think he absolutely loves the Tarzan flex of leveraging the best organization in history. And that's the military. And it appears to me that they are absolutely, even the planes that are deploying to the area are like giant gas stations in the sky. I think Israel's on board because I think they think it would be good for their brand. So I think you're going to see a coordinated, some sort of coordinated strike in Iran in the next seven to 14 days. I think you're going to see a coordinated strike against Ohio or wherever they're going to attack the Haitians who are not eating the cats and dogs.

1:00:21That's where I think you're going to see the next strike. So you don't think they're going to pull back at all? No. Yeah, you're probably right. Not these people. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andertod engineered this episode.

1:00:51Manolo Moreno edited the video. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Saverio, and Dan Shalon. The Shot Curwoff, Fox Media's executive producer podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. Have a great weekend.

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