Middle East Messaging, Microsoft's $69B Deal, and Guest Rick Wilson

24:31There's some oil ones. Well, Exxon just took out Pioneer, I think it was, for$60 billion. Yeah, the shale something. Yeah. Yeah. That was a big one. I would think you're going to see more M &A activity in the space. Yeah. All right. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back. the pressure and risks for companies to weigh in on the Israeli Hamas war. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Rick Wilson, about the race for speaker and more.

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26:00Scott, we're back. Speak out or stay quiet. It's a question many corporations and institutions are wrestling with as the Israeli Hamas war enters its second week. And the Washington Post put it this weekend, in a moment this heavy with emotion and rage, few moves are safe. So do companies have an obligation to weigh in here? A number of CEOs and companies have spoken out already condemning Hamas, expressing support for Israel and calling out anti-Semitism to their employees and publicly on social media. But not as many as people had hoped for sure as in other situations like Black Lives Matter and Me Too.

26:3541 % of Americans say in general businesses should take a stance on current events, according to a Gallup and Bentley University survey. That's down from 48 % last year, but that's a lot of people. That Gallup survey was conducted last May while the light backlash was still happening. What advice would you give to companies and CEOs trying to figure out the right move if there is such a thing? The right move is to be quiet. Unless you're directly involved or you have a large employee or customer base that is very emotionally invested in the issue, on a risk-adjusted basis, you're better off just listening.

27:12Because you've been very outspoken against. It's interesting, but go ahead. Outspoken against? Hamas and everything. You've been emotional yourself. And we talked about it last week, and I was like, I think people should just say it's a heinous attack. and then let's calm down a little bit from everything else and stuff like that. But a lot of companies have been very, I know there's been a lot of debates within companies. It's not, for the most part, a corporation is there to be a platform to help people develop economic security for them and their families. They do have an obligation to the community.

27:46They do have an obligation as a global citizen. But the power of listening is underrated and it's across all dimensions. Oh, interesting. And that is, on a risk-adjusted basis on an issue like this, you got to ask yourself a couple questions. One, do you need to say something? And because of these social media platforms that encourage you and create incentives and help you believe that as a DJ, you should weigh in on what's happening in Israel. Yeah. Not everyone needs to hear from you. And if you're a company, on a risk-adjusted basis, what I tell people on boards is, let's absolutely stay out of this.

28:25Why do we have unique insight? Do we have, you know, why would we do this? We're not a social commentary company. We sell shoes or we sell people chicken cup salad sandwich. Or, you know, why do we feel a need to weigh in here? I think a lot of it is narcissism. I think people will go online and try and put pressure on you to say something. And I don't— Is there a risk to saying nothing at all, though? Well, it depends who you are. It's situational. If it's Black Lives Matter and 88 % of your endorsed athletes in the United States are people of color, you should probably have a viewpoint. Or, you know, I get it.

29:07But in terms of what's happening in the Middle East, I would argue unless you have domain expertise. Palantir puts out this big statement. I mean, just six months ago, you can find Joe Lonsdale saying the company should be apolitical. Yeah, I know that. It's so funny. A lot of the virtue signalers are people who hate woke people, which is really interesting. I kept saying over the weekend, I saw a bunch of tech bros, particularly, going on and on. First, I said, you don't know what you're talking about, so you look like an idiot. And secondly, you're doing precisely what you complained about. And then third, just sit down, Joe, sit down, sit down, whoever you happen to be, and stop talking because you should not talk so much.

29:51Well, there's a few things here. One, and I think about this dependent upon the stakeholders. When Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who's a hero of mine, a professor of leadership at Yale, started putting pressure on companies to withdraw from Russia, he used public shaming. And these companies, rather than putting out Instagram posts of Ukrainian flag, he got them to actually pull their business. That was more meaningful. And in general, I think that there's a lesson here. And that is, and this is something I didn't learn as a young man until much later in life. As a leader, really good leaders, they have a tendency to listen and ask a lot of questions and then make decisions.

30:31I used to think as a young man and as a young CEO, that leadership was coming up really quickly with an opinion and then advocating for that opinion tirelessly and winning and arguing. And my opinion's the right one. No, in relationships. I think that a lot of times the solution to a relationship or when your partner is upset with you is your instincts are to counter them and defend yourself. It's just to listen and to show some empathy and concern. When my friends would call me for advice as a younger man, I would get a quick assessment of what I thought, and then I'd immediately bust into advice.

31:08And now what you realize is most people are just going to do what they were going to do anyways. What they're looking for is someone to ask thoughtful questions and suss out some thinking that they're thinking and just to be really supportive. Yep, I would agree. I can't believe I agree with you on this, but I actually do. I was thinking about this the other day. I was sort of like, take a seat. I think about take a seat to myself a lot more than I used to. Like, I'm going to take a seat here. And it works a lot better. And let me just say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in one interview, my favorite interview with her, someone asked her why her marriage was so successful.

31:45Be deaf sometimes. Be deaf. Sometimes it's really good to be a little bit deaf. And I think more she meant is listen, is what she was actually saying. But in the case of this instance, what I think is, first off, do you have any real domain expertise here? Do you really feel, and I don't want to, you don't want to squatch anyone's field, do you really feel passionate about this? And if you really feel passionate, ask yourself, what am I actually doing versus saying? Am I sending money? Am I trying to be supportive by doing actually something? Or do I just want to go on Instagram and virtue signal or express anger and emotion?

32:22And if the answer is the latter, then, I mean, I don't want to call it soul searching, but I thought I immediately have a tendency to go, oh, I need to weigh in on any big world situation with something thoughtful or interesting. And I thought, no, I shouldn't. I should get Ian Bremmer and Fareed Zakaria to come on and talk about it, because that's how people are going to learn. But do you have domain expertise? Are you adding anything to the dialogue? Otherwise, what you want to figure out as a friend, as a spouse, as a leader, a vastly underrated skill in an environment that has convinced you that your opinion matters on everything is just to fucking listen.

33:01Yeah. Yeah, agreed, Scott. Speaking of which, we talked last week about what's happening at Harvard and other colleges. We're hearing more about donors getting involved when they don't agree with students and administrators. The New York Times published a piece saying the violence in Israel ripped open a chasm between donors and students and administrators and their largesse. The Times had conversations with a dozen donors who felt they had a right and obligation to weigh in, though. So it's generational, though. And it's also, I mean, the bottom line is, is that the majority of alumni of Harvard are older and whiter, which over time has, they have grown up in a history and in a context where America was always very pro-Israel.

33:41And the current student body at Harvard is 51 % non-white. And I would say goodwill, justified or not, towards Israel has declined and has increased towards Palestinians. And so you have a generational divide that's coming out here. And then, so, but going back to your question around who should say something, I think the leadership of these universities, and they're in a tough spot, in my view, I think once you get to a certain point, you know, you go to the basics, right? We want to be empathetic. Any violence anywhere is bad. We have empathy. We're going to give people the opportunity to help.

34:29There's all sorts of wonderful charities or whatever it is. Yeah, but nothing you say is right. We got some emails of people saying, you didn't condemn Hamas. I'm like, yes, we did. Like, you're not telling us what to say. Oh, I've got a lot of emails. I know, but I was like, yes, we did. Do better, Scott. Learn about the genocide against the people of Gaza. And go live in an open-air prison before you make your Zionist comments. I mean, but just to return to, I had a university president call me and ask me for advice around, and his question was the following, should I say something around this?

35:01And I said, well, one, do you have domain expertise? It's for some reason you're a university at the middle of this controversy. I think you go to what is a university at the end of the day? A university is a place where we're supposed to help catalyze a dialogue and bring people into the light in terms of learning such that they can stretch, damage the muscle in between their ears such that it grows back stronger and then they can go into society and help craft better solutions to make for a better world. And I think your go-to here should be protecting, A, protecting kids' rights to say what they want, but also encouraging them to be thoughtful, recognizing their words have ramifications.

35:41But also tell your alumni to sit the fuck down that, okay, remember all the shit you did in college? And here's what, here's the thing. When you were in college, everything wasn't being going on your permanent record of 24 by seven. Look at that. I mean, when I look at the shit we were saying in college, as like literally fraternity brothers, thank God we didn't have social media. Oh, yeah, I agree. And so it's like you got to encourage alumni and kids to be thoughtful, a little bit more measured, research the topic and be generous with one another and be more forgiving, right? I would agree. On the other side, I got the same thing, which was really interesting.

36:25Let me just, we got to get to our next thing, but before we go, someone who was getting praise for saying the right thing. Oddly enough, Pete Davidson on SNL this weekend, Davidson explained in the show's opener why it made sense for him to actually speak out. When I was seven years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack. So I know something about what that's like. I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering, Israeli children and Palestinian children. And it took me back to a really horrible, horrible place. And, you know, no one in this world deserves to suffer like that, you know, especially not kids, you know.

37:06He went on to make the point that laughter was healing for him at the time and made a very funny joke about not being funny. And it was an unexpectedly powerful moment. I was not expecting that from Pete Davidson of all people. It was very powerful. I thought that was, I thought that was, I thought it was very strong. Anyway, let's bring in a friend of Pivot.

37:31Rick Wilson is a former Republican strategist, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project and author of the bestselling book, Everything Trump Touches Dies. Welcome, Rick. So let's start with the Speaker of the House mess. Where is it right now? It's going to change by the time this lands, which is tomorrow. What is ultimately going to happen here? You've got a very small group of Republicans, some in the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus, some who are just like relatively sane. And I use the phrase relatively. Those folks are really, really, really, really fighting against Jim Jordan. They understand that Jim Jordan is electoral poison, an election denier, a madman, a weirdo, and someone who will lead them down into a path where the entertainment wing of the Republican Party will be very happy, but their electoral prospects will dwindle dramatically.

38:25Their chances of holding the majority will fall off dramatically. So they're trying to find a way to do everything they can except the one thing they should, which is to support Hakeem Jeffries for speaker. Make a deal, cut a deal where they get a couple of committees. and Hakeem Jeffries agrees not to bring anything hyper-progressive in the crazy, like, edge-of-the-party stuff to the floor until next November or after next November, where they basically run a coalition government where we get the bills paid, we keep the lights turned on, people keep getting their Social Security checks and all that.

39:05And look, I think it would be great for the country, but I don't think that even these so-called moderates have the political guts to do it. They know they'll all catch a primary. They know most of them will lose their primaries if they do this. But once in a while, a sacrifice of your personal ambition and your sense of security is probably a good thing for the country. But what will probably happen is they will all, in the end, sort of grump and groan and say, well, I had to support Jim Jordan. Otherwise, communism would be here. And they'd seize the means of production or whatever crazy excuse they make up for themselves.

39:36So you think it's a possibility that he's going to strong arm? It was like there was a story in The Times about he's basically bullying them into his speakership, which he's good at. And over the weekend, you know, we saw the stories about Hannity calling people. I heard over the weekend Don Jr. was calling people. You know, all the sort of grandees of Trump world have decided they're going to make Jim Jordan their boy. And why wouldn't you? He's an election denier. He's going to run the spurious impeachments of Joe Biden. He's going to spend a billion hours of TV time in Hunter Biden's laptop.

40:09So, you know, I think there's a pathway for him. It won't be easy. And, you know, again, even if Jim Jordan gets the nomination and becomes speaker, he still is going to face the suicide bombers of Matt Gaetz if he decides to bring a spending bill to the floor to keep the government open. so it's it's even if he gets the job it still is is contingent upon upon keeping that crazy faction of the the nihilist caucus alive and happy so rick always good to see you um it's i can't imagine and you have your finger much more on the pollster i can't imagine the republicans would ever acknowledge an inability to pick a leader and agree to jeffries i just don't see that as a reality.

40:59But how does it play? Where do you think the good money is that Jim Jordan is the front runner? He gets the speakership and then play it out. What do you think happens the next 12 months? Here's the thing. Washington has a really bad time getting out of the old paradigm. There are two parties. They're both sort of kind of the same. Jim Jordan represents something very, very different and something very, very, frankly, dark about American politics today. And what I'm concerned about right now is, look, the scenario I laid out is the righteous scenario they should follow, not the one they will follow.

41:39I sort of gave up on heroes in the Republican Party a long time ago. But the difficulty, and you asked where the good money is. There's actually a really interesting question here. There are a lot of people who fund the Republican Party who did it under Kevin McCarthy, you know, as I like to say, Kevin could wear normie drag and go out to a boardroom or a golf course or, you know, some wealthy person's home and talk a good game about the old Republican Party. It's still there. Don't worry. We're going to play around with the edges of Trumpism, but that's just to get elected. That's not the case if you have Jim Jordan.

42:13He's a true believer. He's a full on new kind of Republican that doesn't represent any of its old values. So a lot of the folks that I talk to in private equity and the donor community, they're really worried right now. They're really, really worried because they think that Mitch McConnell is the last thin reed holding the world together. And even McConnell's not going to be that brave when it comes down to whether he wants things to happen or not. When the House is sending him these crazy bills, he'll still kill a few of them, but a lot of them are going to get through. So realistically, so first off, one, you keep hearing about this Washington Post expose in this George Clooney documentary, which it's not going to be good for Representative Jordan.

43:01I mean, it's either it's going to go from bad to disastrous. It's just whether it'll be bad or disastrous. And so who is and I've got to believe that they're looking at that going, that's not a good look. who within the Republican Party could potentially be a number two here? I mean, it sounds like all reads are alluding to Jordan right now. Right now, they are. The next person in the docket is, and by the way, it's ironic that Steve Scalise was not conservative enough for the current Republican Party. Steve Scalise, who was somewhere out past the orbit of Pluto in the right-winger world was not enough.

43:42Elise Stefanik from New York would love to have her turn at bat. She can't quite put it together. She may end up being one of the compromised candidates, but she is in the minds of a lot of the MAGA folks tainted as too establishment, too old party, or she worked for George W. Bush in the White House. She's from an elite institution. She went to Harvard. So there's a lot of suspicion about Elisa's, you know, maga bona fides that would probably keep her out of it. But, you know, the other sort of fantasy baseball scenario is you end up with the support of the Democrats and enough Republicans. You put a moderate Republican in there as speaker.

44:20I don't see how that happens either. I think that's just as unlikely. But they're going to grind through this thing. In Poland, they just had an election where the centrists won. Surprise. It's not a surprise. I think there's like you're seeing a lot of elections in this country where, oh, my God, Kansas went for Democrats. Or, you know, I was like everyone was surprised by polling. I'm like, should they have been actually? Because this nationalist rhetoric is really disturbing to most people, I think, most average people. I think there's a thing about authoritarianism that it's always sort of trying to press into the door, creep inside.

44:55but it's hard to scale it without a really charismatic leader. And look, Trump was a, love him or hate him, was a charismatic leader to a certain segment of Americans. And in Poland, they didn't quite have that. So you saw this coalition of center and center-right parties and moderate parties over the weekend because you do end up with a sense of exhaustion. And that's one of the things that I think Republicans, if you have a Speaker Jordan, they're already getting exhausted by watching this monkey show that they're putting on right now. But if you have a Speaker Jordan, it will drive the country to this edge.

45:30They're going to want to switch off the Republican message completely because all it will be is dick pics on Hunter Biden's laptop and crazy conspiracy theories and impeachment palooza and January 6th revisionist history. None of those things are what Americans are looking for right now. Not a single poll out there says, wow, I need more crazy Jim Jordan in my life, even among Republicans. We think at Lincoln, it could expand the available pool of persuadable Republican voters if you end up with a Jordan putting on this kind of crazy performative politics for half a year. Rick, is there an opportunity, I didn't know this till recently, but the Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House of Representatives.

46:11Is there, if we were to just try and be creative here and think out of the box, is there an individual that they could find and resurrect and say, hey, can you come back for a year and just, and you're sort of palatable to most of the parties here? Who is not Trump, who is the other name raised, of course. Right, who's not Trump. Well, look, there's a mini boomlet of Liz Cheney fans out there who say she is undeniably a conservative in every possible dimension. She's not a Trump person. She is a institutionalist. And maybe you could end up with a situation where enough Democrats could pull over.

46:50And it would also vex the Republican crazies to a degree that would be astounding. There's an argument you could get there. I don't quite see that. I can't quite make the count work. You would want to think about perhaps a Republican from the old school. Eric Cantor's name has been mentioned. Paul Ryan's name has been mentioned. It would make no one happy, but it would be a compromise that maybe enough moderate Republicans and enough Democrats would say, we can keep the tide of insanity back for another year, operate the government, keep the lights on, keep paying VA benefits and things like that.

47:31it's a tough assignment though. There's no easy answer for, for an outside person who would meet all the qualifications. You know, John Boehner is not doing much, but golfing and drinking wine right now. And he's affable. Everybody loves John. And there are some people who talked about, you know, do you bring in some business executives to try to do this? I don't know where, I don't know how that person would be successful because being a speaker of the house is a complex procedural job where there's a lot of parliamentary alchemy going on all the time. So it's hard to just, it's hard to apply a skill set from outside of politics to jump into that job and be successful.

48:11Well, speaking of business person, Donald Trump's name, of course, has come up. And of course, he's been crazier than ever, it feels like. You called him unhinged last week, noting the utter depravity, the barking lunacy, the void of sense, reason, and empathy set records, which is, you know, it's a high bar. It's a very high bar. And you said the speech where, among other things, Trump called Hezbollah very smart, which most voters haven't heard, but a lot of the inside the Beltway people certainly heard it loud and clear. Look, I am, for better or for worse, I'm the anthropologist of Trump for the last eight years.

48:47I've written two books about the guy. I've fought against him for eight years now. And I, modestly speaking, understand him better than most people in politics because I don't have any biases anymore. I don't have any, I don't have any, like, I'm not trying to sell a client the idea, oh, don't worry, it can be normal, we can just work around it. You can't work around it. He's this protean force in the Republican world. And it's why all of this primary stuff is just joke. It's just risible. and yet the more he becomes obviously unhinged, the more he becomes threatening to people, the more he becomes, you know, I'm your retribution, the more the Republican Party base likes him.

49:32Yes, there are Republicans splitting away from him. That started to happen with Dobbs on January 6th, but they're still a fairly small fraction. They're about 11 % in the best case scenario of the Republican Party is never Trump. But no, he's actually gained political standing among Republicans given the course of all of his legal problems, given the sort of failed Republican primary, the failure to launch primary. And you can't underestimate the ability of him to win the presidency if he becomes the nominee because of the way the electoral college is structured and because, you know, Donald Trump has an appeal among 65-year-old white voters that is—and you've never seen it before in politics.

50:21It's unbelievably powerful with them. What about—let's handicap Biden being the nominee. Is it 99 %? Is it a—or do you think there's a 20 or a 30 % chance? Or— Yeah, short of some externality, some of medical externality, Biden's going to be the nominee. Yeah, you're not going to see, I mean, this Phillips guy, he's a clown. He's a guy chasing the news cycle. He'll get 1%. Now, he could be sort of a Pat Buchanan figure. And if he does that. Explain who he is for people who don't know. He is a one-term or two-term congressman from Michigan. He's a backbencher of backbenchers. He's surrounded by some people who apparently have been telling him, hey, you made some money in business, so therefore you'd be really good at being president.

51:19and he really has an ego on him. He's got a colossal ego and he believes that he should take the bet that Biden will have heart attack or Biden will fall or something will happen and he'll be the inevitable heir apparent. It is a really bad bet. As old as Biden is and as old as he looks these days, and he does look old. He's old. He's old. He's an old guy. You can't get away from it. I would argue he's done a credible job as president in some very difficult moments. I think his leadership in the foreign policy space as an old Republican, it has shocked me how strong he has been as a foreign policy leader, because the cliche is that Democrats are weak.

52:06So I don't think there's any scenario where where and look, I've I've talked to everybody around those sort of, you know, the the the the circle. Gavin Newsom's not going to run for president this time. Folks, stop. Stop dreaming. Gretchen Whitmer is not going to run for president this time. It's just not going to happen. You know, Pete Buttigieg is in the administration pulling the oar every day for Biden. Running a primary against an incumbent president is almost always a suicide mission. Well, you have Robert Kennedy Jr. Yeah, what about RFK Jr.? What impact, if any, will he have? Well, here's the great thing about RFK Jr.

52:43And I say that, you know, sort of in shock, honestly. In the Democratic primary, I was a little worried that the Kennedy name would have a knock-on effect, especially with the much older voters, older boomers, silent generation folks, my parents' age. But now that he's going to run as an independent, if you look at the profile, what is the profile? Now, crypto, anti-vax, conspiracy theories, social media censorship, wokeism. He basically now, I mean, Steve Bannon and Joe Rogan and the rest of these people who elevated RFK Jr. when they thought he was an Elon, when they thought he was a Democrat.

53:21Now, with him running as an independent, there's a real possibility that he's going to end up siphoning more Republican-leaning independents away from Trump than he would have ever been able to harm Biden as a Democrat. Which is why they're attacking him. Trump is attacking him. Which is why you notice Trump kept absolutely silent or was – he actually said a couple of vaguely friendly things about him in the very beginning. But they discovered that the monster that was hatched in Steve Bannon's laboratory has escaped and is trying to kill them all. So I'm delighted to see Robert Kennedy in the racist and independent now because it will draw from Trump.

54:02It will hurt Trump. I have one last question. The Lincoln Project was formed with a goal of defeating Trump in 2020. Good job. You're still at it in 2024. You said he has a distinct possibility of winning. Explain the stakes for us. And does the war in Israel factor in or is it too early? The war in Israel does factor in, Kara. It is one of these moments where, to their credit, the Democratic Party got on message right away. They understood that Hamas and the Palestinians had to be bifurcated in the messaging. They got that quickly. The Republicans have tried to conflate the two, and it's a really difficult position for them to be in right now because they've loved the position for years.

54:49We are the Israel Party. We are the Israel Party. And they can't quite hold that with Joe Biden being so staunch about it, planning a trip over there, apparently, as the reporting has out today, and really standing up and really taking a leadership role as he's done in Europe with Ukraine, as he's done in the Pacific. And again, this one, as an ex-Republican and foreign policy guy, I've been extraordinarily happy about that. But look, you know, we, on election day of 2020, I really wanted to go write more books and watch my kids have kids and do anything else but worry about Donald Trump every day because I'd done it for a long time at that point.

55:31And we saw he was going to resist the legitimate results of the election. And then on 1-6, when we saw the attack on the Capitol, it made me understand that the mission of defeating Trump had been one part of it, but defeating his movement and this authoritarian nationalism was not going to go away quickly or easily or smoothly. And you had to stay in the fight. And so we won a lot of races in 22 on pro-democracy grounds. We went after candidates who were going to make a big difference, secretaries of state and governors who could change the battlefield in 24 if they were in Republican hands. And now we're full on.

56:10Once again, this is this is my final campaign. One way or the other. This is it for me. And I and believe me, I want to be done and I want to beat him again. So a thesis and then a question. And the thesis is that 45 states have already voted. 159 million people voted in 2020. this election of the most powerful man in the world is going to come down to 50 ,000 people, mostly women, small number of counties in four to five states. That's our theory of the case, Scott. Between six and nine states are on our target list, including places you can imagine, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.

56:50We at the Lincoln Project, we make great media, we make great ads, but we have a really smart targeting operation underneath it all with very, very bright math people. And it's called the game of small numbers. We're not trying to move a million voters in Wisconsin. I'm trying to move 80 ,000 Republican Dobbs-related women in Brown County. I'm not trying to win all millions of Arizonans. I'm trying to shift about 35 ,000 people in Maricopa County, mostly women trending slightly younger in Arizona. We have a model to pursue. And you're absolutely right, Scott, it is going to come down. It's going to be close again.

57:29It's going to be the last minute again. And it is going to be a fight to the very, very, very finish. And how does it look right now amongst that smaller group of people? I realize that the media has to run national polls to try and pretend it matters. It doesn't. Across that small niche of voters, how does it look here and now? The good news is that in 2020, when we modeled this sort of same targeting system, between three and eight percent of these voters were persuadable. These Republican voters were persuadable away from Trump after Dobbs and after January six, the number grew between seven and 11 percent, depending on the states.

58:12So we have a much bigger pool to tap this time. The voter intensity on the right is is very high. That concerns me. Democrats are still a little bit scattered, and they're still like this mumbling about if the primary or Joe Biden quitting, none of that's going to happen. But they still have to settle down for what the real fight is going to be. They didn't want another Biden-Trump fight, but that's what they're going to have to fight. So it's going to be a hard race. It is interesting that Carrie Lake has suddenly calmed down quite a bit, her election denier. Isn't that interesting? She backed up.

58:45Well, even Ron DeSantis has backed up on abortion. They understand the dog caught the car on Dobbs and it has been a disaster for them politically. Yeah, it's interesting. Just to update, Jim Jordan has won over several key skeptics in the conference. I think you were 100 percent right. Mike Rogers, Ken Calvert, and now Ann Wagner of Missouri, who called Jordan a nonstarter for speaker last week, said she would support him. So it looks like, yes. Well, somebody got a committee. Yeah. Well, then we'll leave it at that. But he's doing it. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you, Rick. Thanks for your good work.

59:21We really appreciate it. And we'll check back in with you as we move along in the system since this is your last campaign. Happy to join you anytime. All right. Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Rick. Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Kara. A quick note on Rick. I think personally, Rick has the best Twitter feed in politics. I find that his ability to just puncture to the right kind of the heart of the issue is incredible with humor. And I was on Rick's podcast, The Enemy's List, and we were just talking and sort of we started talking about our youth. And I didn't know this about him. When he was in high school, his father was in a terrible car accident and was in and out of a coma for several years.

1:00:08and he went on to talk about how all of this these men kind of came out of the woodwork his father's partners neighbors and were just there for him and he got very emotional and it was such a lovely moment this guy who's like you know rick's been so successful and he's such a power player he's such a player and he was you know you could just see him go back to the age of 16 i think He's a really decent man. Yeah. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for your prediction.

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1:01:42Okay, Scott, let's hear your fantastic prediction. My prediction. So, I don't know if you saw, but an activist investor starboard showed up at News Corp. Yeah, News Corp. I'm curious. These assets have now declined to the point where they're in distressed territory, but they still have really amazing cash flows. The third shoe is about to drop. You're going to see an activist, I think, in the next 30 to 90 days. Ooh, Scott, what do you know? I feel like you know something. No, I don't. But the best way to predict the future is to make it. I think you're going to see an activist at Warner Brothers Discovery.

1:02:19The stock is now down to a point where I think there's a lot of upside as Zaslav to his credit is reducing debt and the assets here are trading at about even including the debt about half of what they paid AT &T for the asset. So I think that there's blood in the water. People see these assets have declined to a level where there's a decent amount of upside with not too much downside. Anyways, activist investor takes a large position and advocates for board seats and for Warner Brothers to be more stringent around cost-cutting. And you got to give Zaslav credit. He has done a good job cost-cutting, but also to more specifically get rid of the melting ice cube, which is the cable assets, sooner rather than later.

1:03:05So activist investor in the next 30 to 90 days at Warner Brothers Discovery. So what happens? Because they do have control. What happens? I don't think they do. Fox is 39 % of the voting shares are controlled by the family, which basically means they have control. Yeah, News Corp. News Corp. News Corp, yeah. I've learned the hard way. Banging your head against a wall with a company that has dual class shareholder, and the same is true of News Corp. However, at Warner Brothers Discovery, something that Stanky basically, now I'm getting really into the weeds here, was basically the Newhouse family, which owned preferred shares in, I think it was A &E or a component of the Warner Brothers Discovery, windup of Discovery, extracted an additional payment because Stanky, to his credit, realized that if he went single class of shares, the stock would likely be worth more because it would be, quote unquote, you could put it into play.

1:04:06Anyways, it is about to be put into play because somebody with a couple billion dollars, and I have a few names in mind, is going to show up and say, there's 40 to 60 % of upside here in the next 12 months with probably 10 to 20 % downside, the stocks at about 1050. And as they continue to decrease the debt through cost cuts, which the activists will encourage greater cost cuts, the equity value will go up. Anyways, a long-winded way of saying activist investor shows up at Warner Brothers Discovery in the next 30 to 90 days. Okay. All right. Wow. Okay. And also, but, and what happens to Murdoch?

1:04:41Nothing? No, this is what happens. The way you, the way you foment change at a company is one, you can make, you can make a, you can do a proxy or you can bid for the whole company. No one wants to show up with that check right now. And two, the other way is you show up at the annual meeting and you try and present a new slate of directors and you get board seats. And the problem is the voting shares. They have 39 % of the voting shares. And when you have 39, and in an annual election, only 80 % of the shares show up. People don't send in their votes. So they're sitting under, they're sitting in some trust somewhere.

1:05:20So about 80 % of the shares show up, which means that all you need is 40 % to win. They've already won. So this is a lot of finger pointing and anger. Well, the only thing is he didn't do that merger that he wanted to do because of pressure from shareholders. He had, when he wanted to merge News Corp and Fox last year or earlier this year. Yeah, that's a fair point. He gave it up in January. That's a fair point. So he didn't get to do what he wanted there. Yep. I don't know. I bet I would have thought the next one. I'm shocked. When I saw Activist, I thought, oh, finally, Warner Brothers. And I saw it was News Corp.

1:05:57I'm like, News Corp? Or Fox? All right. Okay. You think Warner Brothers. Interesting. Okay. Well, that's a good prediction. You did a little shifteroo on me there. Anyway, I like it. 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. Scott, that's the show. My voice will be back by Thursday, I promise, because I know how much it annoys you to even question possibilities of illness or sickness. And we'll be back on Friday for more. But by the way, I'm going to outlast you no matter what, even though I'm older than you.

1:06:31Let's be clear about that. Anyway, please read us out. Today's show was produced by Laren Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Andretot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Miel Severio, and Gaddy McBain. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. we'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Cara, have a great rest of the week.