Is Alex Pretti Shooting a Turning Point?

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1:11Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. As AI reshapes professional services, law firms and in-house teams are rethinking how complex work gets done. Harvey AI is an AI platform built specifically for legal practice, helping teams analyze documents, draft with precision, and collaborate securely across matters. Today, more than half of the AM Law 100 use Harvey. Learn more at Harvey.ai.

1:46Kara Swisher:Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

1:51Scott Galloway:And I'm Scott Galloway.

1:53Kara Swisher:This is an emergency pod. We do these from time to time with news, especially if it's breaking. And obviously what's happened over the weekend in Minnesota has been heinous in many ways, in all ways, actually. So we had to jump on here to talk about the situation. Tensions are exploding in reaction to federal agents shooting and killing 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Preddy in Minneapolis on Saturday. This is the second fatal shooting by federal agents this month with Governor Tim Walz calling for Trump to halt ICE operations in the state. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to cast blame on the victim and local Democratic lawmakers.

2:30Kara Swisher:Border Control Command Gregory Bovino appeared on CNN's State of the Union with Dana Bash earlier. And here's what that tiny, horrible man had to say. All of the video that we have seen shows him documenting it with his cell phone, which is a lawful thing to do. And the only time he seemed to interact with law enforcement is when they went after him when he was trying to help an individual who law enforcement pushed down. So where do you have the evidence to show that he was trying to impede that law enforcement operation?

3:04Scott Galloway:Sure, Dan, at first he was there in the scene. He was in the scene actively impeding and assaulting law enforcement to the point.

3:12Kara Swisher:But that's not illegal. He wasn't impeding it. He was filming it, which is a legal thing to do in the United States. Dan, let's don't freeze frame adjudicate this now. Let's freeze frame adjudicate it. Everyone saw it from 100 different angles. There was video everywhere. And this small little Himmler wannabe doesn't seem to understand that. Attorney General Pambani gave Tim Walz three conditions to, quote, restore the rule of law. She wants him to hand over the info about the state's welfare programs, grant access to state voter rolls, and repeal sanctuary policies. Let's focus on the middle one, which we will.

3:46Kara Swisher:They want these voter rolls because of the midterm elections. Let's talk about the Democratic response. Democrats are obviously in an uproar in AOC and others calling for Senate Democrats to block ICE funding this week. Democrats would have to shut down a large portion of government in order to do that. They seem willing to do so. Representative Robin Kelly of Illinois is asking colleagues to sign onto her article's impeachment against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Meanwhile, Megyn Kelly appeared to agree that ICE should get out of Minnesota, but she was just being awful. She tweeted, at Real Don and Trump should pull ICE out of Minnesota today and announced There will be no more immigration enforcement in Minnesota at all.

4:21Kara Swisher:All illegals in the U.S. are encouraged to move there. If any illegal is found outside of Minnesota and gets deported, they will never reply for reentry. She is a cruel and tireless termagant. Hours after this young man was killed, Trump and Melania went ahead with a previously scheduled screening of her new documentary Melania at the White House. Guests included Tim Cook, along with AMD CEO Lisa Su, the CEO of Zoom, and Mike Tyson and Tony Robbins, a strange group of people, but a lot of tech CEOs. Also, Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon. In any case, a really terrible day for the United States of America.

5:00Kara Swisher:Scott, your thoughts?

5:05Scott Galloway:Well, typically you'd have some, you'd want to de-escalate and say, let's wait till there's a full investigation. But unfortunately, the institutions conducting these investigations now are no longer trusted. And with good reason, the American public doesn't believe that these investigations will be fair investigations. So you have to turn to the, you know, kind of the frame adjudication. And what the frame shows is that, one, this individual was clearly exercising just free speech. All free speech is not exempt. You know, if you incite violence, that's not free speech. But it's difficult to see how in any way this individual was inciting violence.

5:46Scott Galloway:He was just filming what was happening. He moved to help protect somebody or comfort them after they had been knocked down. so his first amendment rights were clearly violated to the second amendment is the right to bear arms he was carrying a weapon which he had a legal license for carry for the gun was removed from him he did not take out the gun he did not wave it at anybody it was in his waistband it was taken out and then so his first and second amendment rights were violated in about 15 seconds And then a couple of things that I noticed that were even more disturbing were, one, when a gunshot goes off, these quote unquote trained federal agents scattered.

6:33Scott Galloway:When your gun goes off, you're supposed to make sure the person you think is firing the gun, you look for their hands, you look for the gun. They did none of that. They scattered. And Representative Seth Moulton, who's a veteran and I believe a Marine who served in, I believe it was Iraq, said that if this had happened in the middle of a combat zone and a combatant, enemy combatant who had been disarmed was treated this way, the officers and the enlisted men involved in that murder would be court-martialed. So the rules of engagement are now more reckless and more violent in the suburbs of Minneapolis than they are in Mogadishu during a war.

7:13Scott Galloway:Yep. So this has gone so far. And this notion that this has anything to do with the Constitution, everyone is now ignoring the Constitution. The other word that comes to my mind is cowardice. And that is Trump and Secretary Noem are perpetrating violence under the auspices that it has something to do with immigration. They want a third party that will take the blame or be the shock absorber for this depravity, and that is an agency full of masked secret police. I mean, they're not even taking responsibility for this violence. They're trying to keep it in arms.

7:51Kara Swisher:No, they said the victims were the ICE officers. That's what Gregor Vino said to Dana Bash, who did a terrific job trying to explain to him why he was lying, essentially.

8:03Scott Galloway:What are your thoughts on this, Carol?

8:05Kara Swisher:I just, Scott, it's, this is repulsive in every way, on every aspect of it, what had happened there. I mean, at one point I called these people incompetent and everyone's like, no, they're evil. Evil is incompetent. They're both evil and incompetent. And I don't throw around those things. I don't throw around Nazi terms very easily, but this is, that's what it looks, that's what it is. and especially even the outfit, as Greg, as Governor Newsom pointed out with Greg Bivino, who is completely incompetent and also evil. And I don't use those terms lightly. I really don't. And I find when you throw them about, but this man was using a phone, a phone to take pictures.

8:45Kara Swisher:And that's what he's allowed to do. He was peaceful. He was leaning down to help a woman who was shoved down by police who was doing nothing but exercising her right. They kept calling it today Todd Blanche, another terrible person in the administration and a pedophile protector, let's just note that, was saying that it was a riot. It wasn't by any means a riot. They were blaming the police of Minnesota, and I just interviewed the mayor of Minneapolis. They have 600 officers. There's 3 ,000 ICE members. They can't protect them, especially when they're behaving like thugs and attacking the citizens.

9:27Kara Swisher:They're there to protect the citizens, not the ice, not the ice force, which is enormous. And you can't do that. And they are trying to create violence. It's very obvious what they're trying to do. And then laying the blame on, there's literally, there's nothing, I don't believe we're even arguing that this guy did anything. He didn't. And everyone can see it. And what was really astonishing to me was all the angles and the people and the citizens there putting themselves in harm's way to take these pictures, right? This woman in the pink jacket. There's a woman in a car. There's every angle of this thing.

10:01Kara Swisher:There's a woman in a car, straight on. There's one across the street. There's one in front of him. There's one on the other side. These people don't understand. We see you. We see what you're doing. It is not, and to try to look at it any other way, and especially because he was on the ground. You can absolutely see what happened. And then the guy pulls out the gun and shoots him for no reason. And one of the things which was astonishing, one of the people taking the pictures said, what did you just do? What did you just do? And that is the question. Why in the world would you do that? There were six, seven people on this guy.

10:38Kara Swisher:And I have to tell you one thing, the power of digital is really strong. People see it. I don't understand why these people don't think cell phones exist in this world. The second part is the silence from our business community, the silence from these people. They went to the White House last night. Could they just beg off to go to the Melania screening, which nobody wants to see? Could they say something publicly? The silence of our business people, especially the tech people, and then many people, like Bill Ackman, as usual, because he can't shut his diarrhea mouth, could not help but blame everybody but who shot this man, which were these officers.

11:23Kara Swisher:Obviously, Minnesota has moved this time because they learned from the first, and this is a murder is what this is. They learned from the first one that they tried to take evidence. They scattered, as you said. You can't leave the scene of a shooting like that, a fatal shooting. And then the last thing I would say is the citizens of Minnesota, I'm wearing a Minnesota Star Tribune. I'd have to say the press is doing a great job there. the Minnesota Star Tribune and others. These are citizens that are not going to take this shit. And I know you call for leaders, but we are the leaders, right? Citizens are the leaders, not our politicians.

11:57Kara Swisher:I will say the Democrats had, especially AOC, especially, you know, all of them were very strong about what was going on. The Minnesota people were actually quite under control over what's happening. Governor Walz, I thought, conducted himself really well. The police officers of the state in Minnesota are horrified. You can see that. And they conducted themselves really well. The only people conducting themselves like the thugs and fascists they are are the Trump administration. And they will not outlive. The shame will outlive them of what they've done. And they don't care. So that's the only problem here.

12:36Yeah.

12:36Scott Galloway:And especially last week, there was a lot of talk about, I thought, how can I take my time here make it effective. So I spent a lot of time when I was on these panels talking about how the Islamic Republic is executing people on the street. And my colleague, Catherine Dillon, reminded me, she said, Scott, you realize that our government is executing people on the streets of Minneapolis right now, which was a very puncturing point. And just to, if it's okay with few move to potential ideas around how to counter ice. Timothy Snyder, I always go to his feed and to Heather Cox Richardson to try and find some clarity around this.

13:18Scott Galloway:And Timothy said something really powerfully said, if you're waiting, and this is my thought, I'm always kind of waiting for a democratic Jesus to pop up and lead us like a Mandela to the promised land. And typically, real movement doesn't happen from political parties. It happens from people or citizens. And protest is really powerful. It's very symbolic. But in this instance, I think it's actually quite, I don't want to say it's not effective, but I don't think the administration cares. I don't think that's going to move the needle in the short run and man the medium in the long run. I think what Governor Walz and some politicians have said is more powerful, and that is start making a list, quite frankly, and very publicly saying that the statute of limitations on murder is never.

14:03Scott Galloway:And in exactly two years and 11 months, we're coming for you. I think we have to create new incentives here. And then something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about and trying to get some politicians on board with and some public figures is the following. If you want to look at the fastest political movement in history, it was actually about exactly six years ago, and that was 2020, when the GDP went down 31 % because of COVID. We had the greatest political movement in history in terms of actual move to action. And my fear is that every few years we protest, we make signs, we chant, we gather.

14:47Scott Galloway:It feels good. it looks great on CNN, and then nothing happens. If you want to understand real power and the difference between being right and being effective, stop watching protests and start watching gross-domatic products, specifically GDP. Trump does not respond to outrage. He responds to markets. And that's not cynicism. It's mechanics. I'm not talking about a labor strike. This isn't unions, picket lines, or collective bargaining. I'm talking about something quieter, far more unsettling to the system, and that is an economic strike. A short-term coordinated withdrawal from spending and maybe work.

15:27Scott Galloway:No marching, no slogans, just less.

15:31Kara Swisher:And something we forget - Well, they did that. They did that in Minnesota. They had a day. The business is closed. It can't be a day.

15:36Scott Galloway:A day is annoyance. It needs to be a week or a month, and it needs to be national. The U.S. economy is$27 trillion. That's$74 billion a day. And here's our power, Cara. Our economy is 70 % consumer-driven. Consumers actually have more power, not in signs or in guns or even in their vote right now. They have it in the power of the purse in that a very small change in behavior could have an enormous effect. And that is nothing in modern American history moves policy faster. Not marches, not speeches, just math. And then if you think about what you could do here, if wealthy households took their spending down 10%, and middle class and lower income households, which have a difficult time reducing their spend, took it down 5%, you would take GDP negative almost overnight.

16:28and then it's hard because it requires coordination.

16:33Scott Galloway:It's risky, especially for people living paycheck to paycheck, but that's exactly why it works. And that is power fears withdraw more than resistance because resistance is noisy, but withdrawal is expensive. And it's a question around what actually works. And the history and the data, I believe, are not ambiguous. When nothing moves, everyone listens. And that's not ideology. It's economics in that you don't need permission to opt out. And in a system, capitalism built entirely on participation. The most radical act in capitalism isn't protest. It's non-participation. If you wanted the fastest blue line path, and there might even be a simpler way, I believe if you could convince America, the entire economy now is built on AI.

17:24If you could convince a bunch of Americans to cancel their ChatGPT or OpenAI accounts, and all of a sudden OpenAI had to announce that their subscriptions had fallen off a cliff, that would ripple into

17:39Scott Galloway:NVIDIA. That would ripple into Microsoft. And these are the people that Trump cares about. And this is what the S &P, this is what the economy cares about.

17:48Kara Swisher:I see this point. I don't agree with you about protests. I think they do. It's all part of the same package. It's an aggressive media who follows this and reports on things. It is these protests because I do think people putting their lives on the line in the street matters. I think it does. It has –

18:03Scott Galloway:I don't mean to diminish it. I worry it's more cinematic than effective because I don't think the Trump administration cares.

18:08Kara Swisher:I think it's different in this new environment of video everywhere. I do think it is effective. And I do think it –