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

26:00And they think they're going to merge true social with Twitter and then take it public. Well, it's already public. You're saying it'd be a reverse merger. You have a public vehicle with True Social. Yeah, yeah. That would be a massive dilution for Twitter shareholders who would basically be getting three million in revenue and have to give up a third or half the company. So, but it would be a way, to your point, of funneling billions of dollars from Musk to Donald Trump legally, as far as I can tell. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it was interesting when someone brought that up to me. All right, well, let's get to everything now.

26:33And by the way, again, we're sorry we were wrong, audience. I don't know what to say. I think we live in a different place and have different values and different things that are important to us. Anyway, let's move on. There's a lot to get today. We're going to dig what the victory means for tech and business. We're going to look forward, including the impact on the economy, big tech regulation, and social media. Let's start with the market. Stocks soared on Wednesday following the news of Trump's victory. The Dow had its biggest single-day gain in two years on Wednesday, up 3.5%. The S &P was up 2.5 % and the NASDAQ 3%.

27:07Trump media shares spiked to around$44 a share, though not quite as high as you predicted. If Trump won, you thought$80. Tesla went up nearly 15%, making Elon Musk richer than ever. NVIDIA and Goldman Sachs hit all-time highs. The net worth of billionaires led by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who we'll talk about shortly, surged by over$63 billion. Other winners, private prison company, Geo Group, and Core Civic rose 42%, which is depressing, and 27 % respectively, likely anticipating detainments tied to Trump's immigration policies. Talk a little bit, Scott, about the stock reaction. So to be fair, the market's actually bifurcated here, and that is the stock market likes it because stocks are basically the present value of growth opportunity and what the earnings or projected earnings are of a company.

27:56And there's a belief that they call it growth, but basically what they're anticipating is an extension or even additional tax cuts on corporations, which will increase their earnings and increase their stock price. So the markets love it. But the first person I heard from who said it's over, the first person to call it, and he was right, was a friend of mine named Justin, who's the chief investment officer for Millennium, which manages$70 or$80 billion. He was the co-head of Goldman Sachs, this fixed income department. This guy has a very big brain. And I said, how do you know? And I said, I immediately went to, because of Georgia?

28:31I'm like, what are you, you're watching the map? And he said, no, the credit markets, the 10 years spiking and the markets understand that Trump, whose policies will be much more inflationary is about to win. And I thought that was really fascinating because if you look at the credit markets, they believe that Trump's policies will be inflationary and the 10 years actually spiked in terms of the yield. So companies are, The equity markets like it because they think earnings are going to go up because of a lower tax burden on them. But the credit markets right now don't love it because they think its policies are going to be inflationary.

29:03But the S &P had its best day in nearly two years. I mean, the markets, the equity markets like this. And again, I hate these signals because they're false flags because the vast majority of equity, of stock market equity in this country is held by a small number of people. So basically what the market was telling us is that, one, his policies are likely going to be inflationary, and two, the rich and corporations are going to do really well. Yep. Yep. That sounds about right. The price of Bitcoin also rocketed to an all-time high of$75 ,000 on election night crypto-related stocks. Also ticking upwards, Trump has previously voted the idea of government-owned Bitcoin Reserve and pledged to fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who's considered an enemy by the crypto industry.

29:48They spent a lot of money trying to get rid of Sherrod Brown and others who were opposed to their sort of wild lifestyles, essentially. What do you think will happen if he strips back any regulation? There's hardly any, but any regulation. Well, the bull case is that they have been somewhat remiss to embrace innovation and trying to protect the dollar. And that they're getting in the way of true innovation across what is the biggest asset class in the world, and that is the dollar. so we know we're going to get we're going to get less regulation which will be if you're a bull on bitcoin and innovation around this stuff there'll be more investment into the category you can already imagine andreason and some other funds starting to deploy capital again into the crypto world you're going to see more fraud more people lose money more shit coins you probably will see to be fair more innovation you'll see less regulation you'll see soaring prices i believe across some of the mainstays.

30:45It's already happened, Bitcoin, maybe ETH. But you're also going to see a bunch of people, basically, Gensler will be gone. You'll see what you also might see, though, is actual stimulus or support. I can see, I just, I wouldn't be surprised if these guys were money good on being publicly very supportive of him and in exchange, their payback now or their compensation is he's going to say, each year we're going to take, you know,$100 billion and put it into this asset class called Bitcoin. I wouldn't be surprised if he basically comes up with something that not only blesses it and reduces regulation.

31:26He's talked about it. He's talked about it. That creates stimulus for this sector. So you're about to see the go-go days again, I think, in kind of blockchain and crypto and funds pop up and start deploying capital again. Yeah, we'll see. And lots of problems, of course, if there's no regulation. Moving on to the bigger picture of the economy, voters cited the economy as one of their top concerns in exit polls. And clearly, they think Trump is the man to manage these things. Reminder, Trump has pros high tariffs and targeted tax breaks. He's also floating, ending federal income tax and replacing it with revenue from tariffs.

32:01He said the economic plan will rapidly defeat inflation, which most people think the opposite, quickly bring down prices and reignite explosive economic growth. How soon before inflation goes up? You just mentioned it. Talk about that. What do you think? The tariff thing is terrifying to most economists. Yeah, but to be fair. What he said, what he said about tariffs. So he's proposing anywhere from like 60 to 100 % tariffs. To be fair, what the market is saying, and so far the market's kind of gotten it right. I thought Polymarket, these betting markets were way overestimating the probability that he would win.

32:39Very early in the evening, if you went on Polymarket, it had him at 90-10. And I thought, what? 90? There's no path? But basically the market is saying that they believe, as far as if I tried to interpret the market, that they believe there's going to be a split government and he won't be able to push through these economically disastrous tariffs. Because the market does not seem that spooked. The credit market does think there's going to be inflation. But we live in a consumer economy. And if you saw these tariffs actually implemented, I do think you'd immediately see a recession. And the market, I think, is saying we don't think he's going to get these through or he's not going to go through with it because these actual proposed tariffs are just insane in terms of what they would do to the economy.

33:24Market's not buying it. Market doesn't think it's going to happen. They don't think he can do it, even though he talked about it. So, yes. I think in general, the market is basically had a big yawn and said, other than cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy, we think this is going to be, if I read what the markets are saying, we think this is a split government and there aren't going to be any radical changes to fundamental radical changes to our— Well, not if he wins the House also, which is still up for grabs, although it looks like the Republicans. I don't see, I can't imagine several Republicans, I think several Republicans are going to go Joe Manchin and love the limelight and say tariffs are attacks on the consumer and I'm not comfortable with this.

34:03I do think you'd see some Republicans defect. Because he really can't come and get them the same way because he's almost dead, right? He's old. He's not going to be able to affect them quite the same way. He's not going to have the energy. 88 % of Christmas gifts under the Christmas tree are from China. You don't see some guy from the South saying. No one's really scared of the ants, are they? Yeah, there's no. Making a populist arguments? saying, no, we can't have our Christmas gifts for our little ones go up. I mean, I don't think he's—the market is saying they don't buy these tariffs, at least at the scale he's proposing.

34:34Yeah, yeah, because he's more enervated and he doesn't have the—he can't target people as well in the next—he doesn't have that power that he had over the last four years. Isn't he technically a lame duck president starting in about a month? Yeah, yeah, that's interesting to think about. And Vance certainly doesn't have the juice that he does. He's going to try to grab it, but I don't think he has the juice. Big tech leaders are taking to social media, of course, to congratulate Donald Trump. This is typical. Let's just start off with that. The one that stuck out, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Sunar Pichai, and Sam Altman wished Trump well.

35:08I thought they were pretty anodyne. So did Mark Cuban. He was like, Godspeed. You know what I mean? He was like, you won fair and square, which I thought was fair. I thought that was classy of him to do so. He didn't like slavishly say something. The person who did, Jeff Bezos, was quite different from the others. He was on the first to kiss the ring, calling Trump's win an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. It did not have a tone of someone who owns the Washington Post. He's the only one who actually has another thing he's got to think about, which he didn't at all in any way.

35:41So I thought that was problematic. And it was much more effusive than the others. You know, they all want to work with this administration. They've done it before. They don't want to be in his crosshairs and they'd like to get rid of all the different investigations and things like that. Although a lot of Republicans like these investigations very much. And so that's a really interesting pushback. Talk a little bit about these CEOs, obviously. More than anyone, tech CEOs weighed in. They're smart to do it, Cara. He responds to this type of obsequious flattery. And if they're focused on their shareholders, they're smart to do it.

36:19And you kind of have to throw up a little bit in your mouth when it's more than anything than just a polite congratulations. But if you reverse engineer it to shareholder value, they're smart to do it. Just a lot of foreign leaders pretend that he's really interesting and that they're fascinated with him. And he's going to get more, he's going to get more, you know, when you're courting someone and they tell you that they're really into jewelry or baseball trading cards and that they will like you if you buy them these things, you buy them these things. And he's made it clear that if you say nice things about them, it works.

36:57So I think they're smart to do it. Yeah, I agree. But I thought Bezos was a little bit abusive. If you could put them next to each other, it's really quite a different tone. And he does also own the Washington Post. He might have been a little less ass-kissing. It's all about money. The Washington Post is nothing but a nuisance farm right now. He shouldn't own it then. He shouldn't own it then. Stop owning something where you have to— We're talking about should versus is. Jeff Bezos is all about money. He already did that already with dumping the endorsement. So I just felt like he should have maybe been a little less kiss-ass-y.

37:31That's my favorite. You're saying he's the wrong owner, and we've agreed. Yes, that's correct. Anything about the Peter Thiel factor? I think he's the quiet one here. Musk gets all the—we're going to talk about Elon in a second, but I think Peter Thiel is the one, the real mastermind here in so many ways. And I know people—I thought he clocked Trump early and was in there at the last election. I think he clocked Vance. I think he's been quiet. He doesn't need all the attention the way Musk does. I think he's far smarter than Elon Musk in many ways. And I think he's, all roads lead to Peter Thiel in this regard, even though it seemed like he was out of the election, right?

38:10But I don't, I feel like he's, every one of his tenants is here, is present here. You first highlighted this to me, and it struck me as something, I hadn't, I just hadn't thought about it, not at least it, I hadn't connected the dots the way you had, and I've thought about it more and more, and I think what you're saying makes sense, because, I mean, here's the scary thing with Trump's age and body mass index, there's about a one in three chance he leaves the White House feet first. You know, in four years and two months, an obese, what is he, 78-year-old man, it would be very hard to get life insurance.

38:43And that puts a guy in the White House who will never utter one word to Peter Thiel, and that word is no. He owes everything to Peter Thiel. That's how he got to be a senator. That's how he got the VP spot. And so if Peter Thiel calls him and says, I need you to do this tax or put a tariff here or deregulate this or create a floating island where billionaires don't have to pay tax or we totally ban the following activities or so, Vance, if he can, we'll do it. I just don't think Vance could ever say no to Peter. He is where he is. He is one heartbeat from the presidency, not because of an impressive business career, not because he's a great politician, because of Peter Thiel.

39:29Yeah, that's the one to watch. And even though Elon, as usual, the circus clown, likes to take all the attention, as Bloomberg put it, Elon is about to find out what$130 million for Trump gets him. We mentioned the Tesla stock surge. That's added$26 billion to his net worth, but Elon stands to benefit in a number of other ways, including government efficiency commission role, EV and autonomous driving policies that benefit Tesla and more government contracts for SpaceX. Trump has previously pledged his support for Elon's goal of sending a rocket to Mars. That one I don't mind so much. I honestly don't.

40:00And as I mentioned, I think Elon merges X with TrueSocial. So I also think they're going to have a falling out. I really feel like this is coming. If I had to make any one prediction, that's what I feel like. Peter is very quiet in the background and gets exactly what he wants. Elon can't help himself, and neither can Trump. And Trump's the president. So, thoughts? Well, look, this arguably, you could say that Musk's$119 million in donations to Trump were one of the best investments that's ever been made. He made it over approximately three or six months, and in exchange, his net worth has gone up$15 billion just from his Tesla shares, which skyrocketed on news that Trump was retaking in the White House.

40:45So if someone said to any billionaire or any institution or any hedge fund, here's$119 million. If you give us$119 million, we think if the markets are right, there's a two thirds chance you're going to get$15 billion back. Yep. So you got to give it to the guy. I've said this all along the whole time. Best investment of the year was Musk dollar, his$119 million investment in the Trump campaign. Yeah, because he was, If she had won, he was never going to get that dinged for it also. Yeah, that's exactly right. $15 billion on$119 million, that's the best trade of 2024. Yeah. So what's going to happen next now?

41:26Well, so I need to disclose. We talked about this. I was planning under, see above, got it wrong. I thought Polymarket, the gambling site, which had, it was$40 ,60. Which is owned by Peter Thiel, or is invested in Peter Thiel. I didn't know that. So 40-60, Harris to Trump's likelihood of being elected. So you were going to get two and a half to one. I saw that as asymmetric upside because I thought it was a coin flip, according to the polls, that I saw. So I was going to take$400 ,000 and put it on Harris, thinking I could get a million back. And I want to be clear for people listening. This is not investing.

42:01This is gambling. And I can afford to lose that, and it would ruin maybe an afternoon, but it wouldn't have any impact on my life. And I don't want to in any way tell people that they should be doing this. but I was planning to do it. So I went to the site, signed up for it, wait till Harris went down to 38, then up to 42. And the site said, you can't be a US citizen. And then it said, you can't transfer money in from the UK. So I could not figure out how to get one of these betting sites up. So I went to a different strategy. I decided to, I sold, I did a call or call strategy on Donald Trump media.

42:34And that is, I thought, if this stock, if he loses, the stock goes below 10. If he wins, it could skyrocket. But I also thought if he wins, this is no longer a prediction vessel. It's just a shitty company. And I actually thought there's a chance it might go down even if he wins. So I sold calls at 20 bucks a share, way, way into the money thinking this thing could crash. There's a good likelihood it could crash. But I was worried, well, what if something fucking crazy happens and it goes to 400 and I owe someone $8 million who I sold these calls to. So I bought calls way out of the money at 60.

43:13I got$20 in premium for buying or selling calls at 20. I got six bucks. It cost me six bucks to buy calls at 60. So my downside was limited to like two and a half million bucks. My upside capped at one and a half million. And what's happened is he won, the stock spiked. I'm like, oh, fuck, bad day for Scott. But since then, the strategy around it's no longer a tracking stock, it's just a shitty company now. It's come down, I think it opened at about 31 bucks today. Yeah, it's gone down. So I got very lucky. It's better to be lucky than good. I was going to make a straight wager on Harris and couldn't because I'm in the UK and I'm impatient with websites.

43:51Yeah, probably you can't use it. Yeah, that's right. So this kind of, I think it's called a collared call strategy so far, so far it's working out because Donald Trump media, I think people are waking up and going, okay, now what? This is a shitty little company that's no longer a prediction machine or gambling. It's basically shares or ownership in a company that has no revenues but is hemorrhaging money. Yeah. Interesting. We'll wait and see for you. But anyway, Peter Thiel, along with the founder of Ethereum, raised money for Polymarket earlier this year. Just so you know, he's involved in that one, too.

44:29It's interesting times. But Musk and Trump, falling out. Thought, real quick thought, then we'll go on. You know more about this than I do, Cara. It's an interesting theory. Why do you think? Because there was a movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme where the future and the past person could never come together. It was called Time Cop. I recommend it to everybody. And you couldn't ever be in the same room with your future self and your present self or your past self, whatever, because it would blow up. The world can't take that in the same place. And at the very end, the villain gets him to get in the room together, and then everything breaks loose and they blow up, essentially.

45:07I don't quite understand it. Whatever. I think these people can't coexist together in the same room for too long. That's my sense. Maybe I'll be completely wrong, but I feel like that Trump likes the attention and Elon likes the attention and there's only so much attention to go around. And if the same remember when Bannon got kicked out when he got all the attention as being the puppet master of Trump and then Bannon got. And now he didn't get totally kicked to the curb. He kept getting brought back, but kicked to the curb and brought back. He kicked Bannon to the curb very early. We forget this in the Trump administration because he sucked up all the oxygen.

45:42So Elon might be very smart to not suck up all the oxygen. That's my feeling. So I don't have a view on this other than a better version of Time Cop is the 2012 movie Looper starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis. Oh, yeah. Also with Emily Blunt, Piper Peribou, and a vastly underrated actor. He's one of the best actors out there who should have been nominated for his role in Escape from Dannemore, a guy named Paul Dano, who was also in Little Miss Sunshine. Anyways, that's a great movie in the same concept. Yeah. Would you like to go back and meet your past self, Scott? I've thought about this a lot.

46:18I would like to go back to my past self and just say, trust me, everything's going to work out. I could have used to hear that a few times. Interesting. How about you? Would you like to go back and... I am the same person, so no, not really. Yeah, but would you like to go back and say anything to your own yourself? Maybe invest in something. Buy NVIDIA, bitch. Buy NVIDIA. Take that job that you were offered in. Sell the Subaru Impreza and put it all in NVIDIA. No, actually, take some of those jobs I was offered and then have the money to become Elon Musk of presidential politics. Anyway. Take some of those jobs I was offered.

46:55Well, I was offered jobs at all the big tech companies. I would have been very wealthy. You are very wealthy because you discovered podcasts with the dog. That's right. Everyone asks on Reddit why she puts up with me. Three words. It's Ben-ja-min. Benjamin, that's it. No, I like you. I like you. I want to be one of the first people person I want to talk to after this. I like you too. All right. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about what regulation of these big tech companies will look like under Trump, plus the future of the TikTok ban. Remember that?

47:30There is a lot to talk about when we talk about Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel. One big question I've got is why in 2025 are late night TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel's show still on TV? Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks. If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes. But what are you even anymore? What even is your brand anymore? I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, and that was James Ponowozik, the TV critic for The New York Times. This week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now.

48:19That's This Week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

48:28Scott, we're back with more on what the second Trump era means for tech and business. Let's start with antitrust regulation. We talked earlier about Gary Gensler. Let's move on to FTC Chair Lena Kahn. Elon Musk wants her fired. J.D. Vance has said he's a fan. I'm guessing she'll probably go, but the FTC, if people don't forget, is currently suing Amazon and Meta, and the Meta case was launched originally under Trump and would lead to Meta unwinding Instagram and WhatsApp. I don't really know what's going to happen here. There's all these conflicting people in the Republican Party about her. As you know, there's conservatives.

49:00I think J.D. Vance is one of them. Thoughts on that? I actually am betting she's going to stay. She's one of the few. I mean, think about it. She's one of the few individuals that has fans on both sides, even if she has more fans on the Democratic side. She's not offensive. She strikes me as quite politically astute. And also, Trump is not a big fan of some of the companies she's going after. Yeah. He doesn't have the attention span to stay that focused on this. And doesn't it kind of soften his image? to leave the existing younger wonky woman as chair of the FDC? Yeah, I don't know. I have to do more reporting on it to find out.

49:39But I mean, a lot of these tech companies are hoping that's what will happen and these will go away. They should be kicked out. Yeah. Yeah, but he's, it's really, I'm curious what your thought is. Yeah, there's competing forces here. Right. Vance particularly, and Matt Gaetz, he's still here with us, unfortunately. You know, those people are quite fans of them I mean, they don't trust big tech. They have to kowtow to Elon now, but I think in general, they're not tech fans. But if he's just playing poker and thinking about leverage, why wouldn't he let these antitrust actions and trials continue?

50:13And then right when it gets to the eve, when he has real power, maybe call him and say, I want this and I'll kill it. I don't know. Why wouldn't he play poker and continue to turn the screws on him? Yeah, it's cool. And he loves it. Someone, you know, that two dogs in a box thing. He likes that. He does that all the time in his other company. A knife fight in a closet? Yeah, something like that. Let's move on to the DOJ, which is suing Apple for monopolizing the smartphone market. Then there are the two Google anti-monopoly cases, the one over ad tech and the other over search. The search one was originally launched by Trump's DOJ.

50:46The district court judge ruled this summer that Google has an illegal monopoly over search, but remedies won't get decided until the summer. I'm not so sure he has control over this at this point. He seemed to switch gears on breaking up Google, saying, if you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What can you do without breaking it up to make sure it's more fair? Again, same thing. I'm not sure he has as much control over this as that because the case has already been decided. But certainly, you know, we'll see what happens. There'll be another antitrust person. It'll be interesting to see who he picks.

51:19That'll matter rather than John Cantor. This is a guy that supposedly every person that presented to him was coached by the people who knew Trump. Just a few words and pictures. So I think anything that's complicated and exhausting, like the nuance of a DOJ trial, I think ultimately he just moves on and forgets about it. I don't. Yeah. These are going forward, I think. I don't think he's that. I think he's like a cat chasing, like, oh, look over here, a cat chasing a red dot. So I think this stuff, my guess would be this stuff to explain why we're not doing it, bringing someone new, all the meetings required, all the economists needs to talk to.

52:05I think he'll just get exhausted by it and say, oh, fuck it. Just let him do it. Well, they may try to slip it by him, right? That's, I don't know. I feel like advance will be important here. That's a good point. He could insert himself in this. We'll see. He might give that work to advance. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, but obviously everyone is focusing on TikTok. Trump is the first president to own his own social network, as shitty as it is. He tried to roll back portions of Section 230 during his first term rather cloddishly. Didn't work. He wanted to ban TikTok in his first term. Back in September, he wanted to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail.

52:42He seemed to change his mind on TikTok. Do you think the ban is off the table? It's been passed, though, by Congress. So where does this go, this case? There's so many moving parts here that we're not privy to. One of his biggest donors is this guy, Yas. Jeff Yas. Jeff Yas, whose biggest position is in TikTok. He has a lot of probably people who are big investors. Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic Partners, are in TikTok. He claims that he's angry at Meta and TikTok is a threat to Meta. he could get on the phone with Xi and say, okay, stop this bullshit around tariffs. You do this, I'll do this.

53:18And they come to some sort of agreement. Or he could decide, you know, to let them continue to do their work. And maybe Ellison calls him and says, if you ban it, I'm going to buy it. I mean, there's so many moving parts in backroom dealing that's going to happen here that I think it's very hard to predict. But Congress did pass the ban. So the ban, it's not a maybe thing. It's a they have till this time to do something. Can he reverse it, though? I don't think so. By executive order? Could he extend the stay? I don't think so. We have to find out. I don't believe he can. The honest answer is I don't know.

53:53Yeah. But where do you imagine he'll go? And talk a little bit about Meadow when he threatened to put Mark Zuckerberg, who's kissing his ass now, in jail. I don't think he's going to go there. I mean, I'm turning into one of these people. I don't want to be one of these people that finds his threats cute or, oh, he's not going to actually do that. I think it would be very difficult. And I think if Mark Zuckerberg – I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is very powerful. If Mark Zuckerberg actually believes he might go to jail, you want to see someone put their thumb on the scale of certain types of content.

54:26If someone was coming for me for jail, I would very elegantly, quietly and in a disciplined fashion put that whole ridiculous governance board, shove them to the side and say, I'm going to show you what it's like when you threaten to put me in jail. And you know what? People aren't even going to know what's going on because I control two-thirds of their news feed. And if you think the CCP has turned up polarization and division within America amongst our youth, wait and see what I do to you, boss. Well, I don't think he has the set to do it, but okay. That Zuckerberg has the set to do it? Yeah.

55:04I don't know. I think jail is pretty fucking scary. I think the prospect of jail, or let me put it this way, the opportunity to stay out of jail, if this guy really starts threatening you with what I'm sure Mark believes is illegal incarceration, he's going to say, all right, all right, bitch, you want to dance? Let's dance. Because people forget Mark Zuckerberg is hands down one of the most powerful people in the world. When you control, back to what you're saying about misinformation, more Republicans were worried about the peaceful transfer of power than Democrats. If anything brings home to you the power of social media, it's that.

55:45And to think that Mark Zuckerberg could make life very difficult for Donald Trump is not to acknowledge the fact that two-thirds of Americans are now getting their news from Meta. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because Elon's explicitly aggressive and Mark certainly could be. It's not his style to be threatening, I would think. Anyway, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to see who they try to go after. You know, I was joking with Mark Cuban that we're going to share a jail cell and we can call ourselves the Menendez brothers, except with 100 percent less murder. But I don't think he's going to— Who wears the wig?

56:21And who has—who starts dating that? Who starts eyeing the hot guy in the shower? That's what I want to know. Boy, that guy's a tall drink of lemonade. Have you been watching that? He's very sexy. He's very sexy. Now, the last thing, what do you think it means for content moderation in general? They're not going to do it. They're tired. They're not going to do it anymore. No, it's a fucking Wild West now. I mean, if there's a lack of content moderation got him elected. Republicans are worried about the peaceful transfer of power and democracy. Thank you, misinformation. Yep, exactly. They now know they don't have to do anything.

56:55And I think, again, we're going to be studying this in 10 years. The propaganda is such an important part of what happened here. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Thank you.

57:12Scott, we're back. We're going to do wins today. Only wins. We're going to skip fails because there's a lot of them and focus on the positive. Why don't you go first? So I have one about the election and one just more about economics. So I have two wins. I think one way to feel if you're feeling bad about this is, and I want to highlight, I think a lot of people should feel some consolation because I know so many people who just left it all on the field, so to speak. My friends, Robert May, my partner at Prop G Media, Catherine Dillon, her husband, Jeffrey, Liz Plank showed up at a rally in Philadelphia.

57:57My friend, Whitney Tilson. These are people who got on planes from L.A. or trains from D.C. They went to Philadelphia and started knocking on doors. And while I imagine they're devastated, they can feel like I showed up, I tried. I think there are so many people that really tried hard. So my win is people who left, quote unquote, left it on the field. The other win is I really do believe that we're about to see disruption amongst local television stations who got about, I mean, just hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, actually three to one from the Harris campaign towards the end, thinking that old people decide elections and they can find them all on local news, which I describe as a depiction of what stupid people did today.

58:44Oh, two people in a car in a bad part of town got robbed today. I mean, anyways, you're going to see most of that money not even go to digital. It's going to go to podcast, Cara. This was the election of the Manosphere as brought to you by podcasters. And you're going to see, and when you think about it, when's the last time we had a political ad? We haven't. Right. You're about to see a disruption in the local news broadcast television advertising market. And all of that money is going to go to podcasts. And if you look at graphs of attention versus revenue, 20 years ago, it was the Internet is a third of time and 8 % of revenue.

59:29And newspapers were 8 % of time and a third of revenue. And it flipped. Money always follows attention and attention is skyrocketing. In 2025, we're going to see podcast revenue accelerate faster than TikTok, Meta, or Alphabet. And then in 26, we're going to see a massive disruption in transfer of advertising dollars from local news stations to podcasts because that's where voters are hanging out. This was no—amongst seniors, yeah, they voted. And actually, interestingly enough, seniors was the only age group that went more Harris, where Harris actually picked up votes versus 2020. But what they're going to find is the swingiest of swing voters are young people.

1:00:09They're the ones that are most impressionable and most up for grabs. And guess what? Where's their medium? Podcast. I can't agree with you more. I'm already talking to people who are well-known. Like, here's what we're going to do. We're taking advantage of this and building our own. If there's a bro sphere, there's another sphere, right, that you can really do well on and motivate and excite people, right? and not a bubble, but really bring people together in a really interesting—I think it's an opportunity. I've been thinking of podcast ideas all day. I agree with you. In two years— Do you have a second one?

1:00:41In two years, our advertisers—in not two years, 22 months from now, it's not going to be ZipRecruiter or Athletic Greens or LinkedIn. We like them. We love them. It's going to be so-and-so candidate for Senate or Congress or President. You watch. You're about to see billions of dollars flushed into the system, and economics always end up catching up to attention and attention is scoured. And not only that, the great white rhino of advertisers is the individual they no longer can reach, and that's a young, wealthy male. Where are they? Podcasts. Yeah. I'm just saying it doesn't have to be just bros.

1:01:22The bro sphere isn't the only sphere, and there's other spheres. That's all I'm saying. Prof G is 80 % male, pivot is 70%, average household income$150 ,000. That's called an advertiser's dream because those people are stupid and spend money on high margin products like watches and cars and supplements and all this crazy high margin shit. They're all on the demographic. The average age of a viewer on MSNBC is 70 years old. The average podcast listener is 34, which means for every person my age, there's someone who just became a voter. So, and those people spend a lot of money on high margin irrational products, which is Latin for advertisers love those people.

1:02:08I think all the moons are lining up for - What you're telling me is you're going to turn into a Joe Rogan suddenly over the next couple of years and I'll have to kill you, right? Well, I hope we both turn into Joe Rogan in terms of our reach and our money. Reach is different than our attitude. You're talking to the guy who pulled his podcast down from Spotify because of vaccine misinformation. I know. I know. I'm just watching. I have to watch. I watch you because sometimes it's invasion of the body snatchers. I've had several friends who've turned in ways I really can't abide, I have to say. So it's an invasion of the body snatchers.

1:02:37Don't fall asleep, Scott. Don't fall asleep. What? You never saw invasion of the body snatchers? Donald Sutherland. If you fall asleep, you become snatched. You get snatched. What was that name? That was one of my first crutches. Who was the female lead in that? Oh, Brooke. Brooke. Oh, very good. Brooke something. Ah, we're not going to. She was amazing. What happened to her? She was amazing. Like all female actresses, she hit 40 and couldn't find another job. Brooke Adams. She was amazing. Brooke Adams. Oh, so good. Yeah, Brooke Adams. She was very good. Actually, Jeff Goldblum was in that. God, is that funny?

1:03:10Was he? How? What really? My guess is his agent called the director and got him in it. Leonard Nimoy was in it. Oh, my gosh. Well, let's go back and watch that together. then we'll wear our pajamas. All right, so here's mine. I know everyone's feeling bad, and I do, and I wrote a very, as I said, a long thread that, like, I was walking, and, like, at least 50 people hugged me for my thread, which was fascinating to me. But one of the things that you, they're always, like, I got a lot of right-wing people's, like, now you see we're right. I'm like, you're not that right. It was 50%, and they really want you to, like, feel bad about feeling the way you do.

1:03:48Your opinions are just as good as anybody else's if you have them, if you feel abortion's important, if you feel that whatever you think is important is important because it's what you think about it. And so don't give in to the now we have to understand them. They don't want to understand us either. And I don't mean not to get along, but everyone's going to try to bring you to heel now. And don't. We don't have to like it. You don't have to cooperate. I think a lot of what Trump was appealing to was rancor and selfishness. Fine. I get it. But you don't have to be easy. You can resist. You can say no.

1:04:24Don't feel the need to be nice. In fact, be disrespectful. They do it and work for them. And I don't mean all the time. Be the person you are. And also lose people who tell you to accept this. If you are not on the same plain lose them. I'm sorry. It's okay to feel angry, fed up, disappointed. It's required. And so I just, I'm not going to, just like they don't apologize, I'm not apologizing. And so I feel like there's always moments where you can get together and understand and listen to each other 100 fucking percent. But you do not have to agree. You do not have to knuckle under and, and you just, just fight for what you believe in and listen to what they have and try to build coalitions in that regard.

1:05:09But we are never, this election said anything is we do not agree. So how do we figure out a way to get somewhere where we're all moving forward? That's my feeling. Thank you very much. That's my speech. I like that. And just to add on to that, something also very important is that we talk about Brooke Adams' filmography. She was not only in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. She was so good. She was in what I believe is one of the most underrated films from one of the greatest authors in history, Stephen King's The Dead Zone, who's starring Christopher Walken. And also Martin Sheen. That is a fantastic film.

1:05:46And a quick fun fact here, she is married to Tony Shalhoub of Monk fame. What an interesting couple. What? Oh, my God. Brooke Adams. Wait, she is? Yeah, since they've been married for 32 years. Okay, then I just met her because he came up to me in Nantucket and said he loved the podcast. Really? Yes. That guy's a real talent. He's really good. Yes, the guy who was Monk. Yeah, and then he was on Marvelous Miss Maisel. Oh, my God. She was with him. I didn't know that. See, that's a victory for every guy. She was standing next to him. I didn't recognize her. That's a victory for every guy who's not that attractive but is very talented and funny.

1:06:24He is attractive. Not so. Very hot woman. Very hot. Are you kidding? He's totally attractive. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Then I actually met her and I didn't know it. This is nuts. What an interesting couple. I love you, Brooke Adams. Let me just say, I love you, Tony Shalhoub, too. Anyway, let's move on from the Brooke Adams love fest. Go back and watch her movies. They're great. I want to also mention that on the latest episode of On with Kara Swisher, I spoke with two presidential historians today to get some perspective. It was really helpful to all of us as we try to anticipate what's ahead.

1:06:58One of those historians. Oh, stop it. No, these things doing amazingly well on the podcast. I'm sorry to tell you, Scott, they do well. Lindsay Chervinsky offered a helpful reminder of how people can take action. And then Grover Cleveland said to the secretary of interior.

1:07:16She works. She does George Washington. The other guy does Nixon. Let's listen. Quiet, Scott Galloway. There are still ways that even if Trump can't always be held accountable, the people around him can be, whether it is through the rule of law, through our court system, through public accountability. And we have to continue to try and use every mechanism of accountability possible, which is, I think, the legal side or the public side of the don't obey in advance. But the best and most long lasting way to combat authoritarianism is through accountability. And so we just have to keep trying because the most pernicious thing will be if we do give up hope.

1:07:57So we cannot give up and we have to keep trying to hold people to account. That's perfect. And the word you're looking for is, oh, no, you didn't. Anyway, it was a good interview. You should listen to it. We do incredibly well with those historians. I also had a presidential historian on property markets, and I'll let you guess who it was. He cited the following fact about presidents from George Washington to George Bush. Total deficits,$7 trillion in four years with Donald Trump,$8 trillion. Guess who that presidential historian was? Beschloss. Anthony Scaramucci, who is shockingly knowledgeable about history.

1:08:35He is. He is. He's a funny guy. I love that. You know, when you were gone in August, that show, when we had him on, did incredibly well, by the way. He does well wherever he goes. He literally is the fan favorite of any podcast he goes on. Yeah, he's very funny. He's much, I think people are expecting him not to be quite as sharp. I don't know why, but they do because of that time in the White House. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Before we go, I want to share a clip from Amazon's election night special with Brian Williams, where, as you mentioned, you made an appearance.

1:09:15Brian had some fun with a classic Scott Galloway catchphrase at the end of your segment. And I think our loyal listeners will enjoy. Let's listen. Those of you playing our home game, that was the first mention of champagne and cocaine for the evening. And the circle gets the square. It goes to Scott Galloway in London. Thanks for that. I didn't know you were going to do that. That's nice. Yes. Champagne and cocaine. Did you watch any of it on Amazon? I did not. Oh, it's really good. I still think CNN did the best job, but Amazon was really, it was really slick. I went to sleep. Really beautiful.

1:09:50I told you I went to sleep. No. Really beautiful. No. But champagne and cocaine. There you go. That's the next four years. I think, you know, I think that kind of says it all. Champagne and cocaine. Splashing the cash, flinging the bling. Champagne and cocaine. Oh, I can't believe you have to look at that son of a bitch for four more years. I have to say. Oh, the ridiculous hands, the tiny hands, the whole thing. I thought that was gone. Oh, it's not. Okay, here we are. Stuck in the middle with each other. Stuck in the middle with each other. I know, we have each other. We have each other to deal with small hands and bad makeup.

1:10:25All right, we'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Christine Driscoll. Ernie Dritton engineered this episode. But thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Averio, and Dan Shulon. Nishat Karwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

1:10:55Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. But sometimes it is.

1:11:06Thank you.