Signalgate, Auto Tariffs, and Trump's Crypto Empire

25:24It's sort of when Trump always goes, I've never met Maggie Haberman or I've never, you know, I don't know that person who worked with me for five, 10 years. A really easy prediction. This is my prediction. A really easy prediction. At a very big D.C. event in the next 30 to 90 days, Jeffrey Goldberg and his wife are going to walk in somewhere. There's going to be a pause and he is going to get a standing ovation. Yeah. He really if there's a winner here, it's journalism and it's Jeffrey Goldberg. We are so annoying. Journalists are so fantastically annoying these days. I love it. But this guy just did the right thing.

26:01He just he he resisted the temptation to just continue listening in because he understands, you know, defense and security protocols. He didn't release it till after the attack. He's been he has handled this perfectly. Perfectly. Perfectly. We'll see if it matters. Actually, the snap polls are people are like, what in the act? Because one thing that it does, I do think it's more, this is a real crisis, is because everyone understands this. It's very easily understandable what they did because everyone has been. The one thing they're telling the truth is everyone has been in these things. And they're like, you did what?

26:36You did, you know what I mean? Like this is something understandable to the average citizen of incompetence. Like, even my mother at first, and of course, my mother immediately went when she didn't know about it because Fox wasn't covering it properly. And then I explained it. She was like, well, that's not good. And I was like, no, it's not. And she goes, but Hillary did it. And I'm like, mm-hmm, that's where you go. I was like, not really. And then Biden did it, but that's where they're going. Here's one of my, let me just finish this by one proposal. I was thinking about what do you do about this?

27:07Like, this shit has been going back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, this leakage of information, right, in this highly informational age. I think we just decide from this day forward, everyone else before this, you get off the hook for it. The government is sloppy around everyone in the government, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, have been arguably sloppy around communications and especially classified communications. Everyone gets a pass. From now on, if you do it again, if you've sideloaded shit or you're using your personal phone, you're going down. From now on, we're going.

27:43Everybody, nobody gets a pass from, it's not going to happen in the Trump administration. But let's just clear the playing field. And from now on, these are the rules. And if you break them, you're going to jail. That's what I would do. What do you think? Yeah, I like it. But I think it runs deeper than that. I think these guys, look, we like to think that you can put people, I mean, for God's sakes, we got a Fox host, his defense secretary. And we're surprised that there's amateur errors. I mean, so it's not, OK, you can have protocols and fine, put them in jail. That's not the problem. The problem is an environment where you have an autocrat who values loyalty and fealty over competence.

28:24The other thing I think they were doing, and I think people haven't talked about it enough, is they're on Signal because they're trying to avoid accountability. And they don't want people to see these things. And so what they're doing is they're – all this stuff, just for people who don't know, the government is supposed to preserve all their communications on things like this. And they're trying not to preserve them. And the only last thing I would say Walz did that was astonishing to me, on Signal you can have disappearing – this stuff can disappear. And usually people set it to an hour or a day.

28:52He had four-week disappearance. I was like, are you an idiot? Like, if you're going to disappear, disappear it right away. But I think what they were trying to do was avoid accountability. It's disorganized crime. That's correct. They're not even competent criminals. But at the heart of it, they were trying to abrogate their responsibility to preserve accountability. And I think that's why they were on that chain. And so they were hiding. They were hiding, and then they got caught, essentially. The U.S. military, our ability, our near monopoly power on the ability to deliver violence all over the world in a lethally devastating, expert competent way.

29:30I don't think, especially people on the left, I don't think they realize how much prosperity that delivers to us. That fear when the attacks of October 7th happen and Hamas is hoping to inspire a multi-front war on Israel, Biden sends these amazing things called U.S. carrier strike forces that literally take a city to run and massive, massive capital expenditure and skills and 5 ,000 sailors who are just so highly trained, so committed, so willing to put themselves. and he parks them off the coast of the Mediterranean and says to Iran, sit the fuck down. And we don't have a multi-front war and we don't have a nuclear power backed into a corner, Israel.

30:17America doesn't realize, it doesn't miss what it doesn't have. And that is a level of, it has so much prosperity, so many freedoms that they don't recognize are a function of a military that trusts each other, that trusts that the people back in Langley, Virginia will not accidentally share who I am and I will be tortured and then murdered, that if I am flying with a package of armaments and a cache to deliver, that I have the right coordinates and the air defense systems haven't gotten ahead. And the Russians don't know it and the Chinese don't know it and the Iranians don't know it. This is so, it's just moronic.

30:52It's moronic and they're liars and they're trying to hide at the same time. Anyway, okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump unveils his latest tariffs.

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32:34Scott, we're back. President Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts. Let's listen. This is the beginning of Liberation Day in America. And we're going to take back just some of the money that has been taken from us by people sitting behind this desk or another desk that's not quite as nice, but they have their choice of seven, as you know. And we're going to charge countries for doing business in our country and taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things that they've been taking over the years. They've taken so much out of our country. He's so obsessed with, first of all, his digressions are so strange about the deaths, but his obsession with we're getting cheated is really, it's becoming like, what's your fucking problem, dude?

33:28Everyone's not trying to cheat you all the time. And again, every accusation is a confession. He's a cheater. And so he focuses in on cheaters and takers and things like that. And that's exactly what he is. The terrorists will go into effect on April 2nd and will apply to finished vehicles shipped into the U.S., including from American brands that assemble outside the country. Almost half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. are imported. But lo and behold, Tesla will be spared while the Musk company does import parts that makes vehicles in the U.S. However, Elon posted on X saying, important to know that Tesla is not unscathed here.

33:59The tariff impact on Tesla is still significant. No, it is not. Again, a lie. Do you think Trump will pull these back? And what does he keep doing here? Because it really spooked the markets. We're covering a tiny bit. and then they didn't. So any thoughts on this? Well, I had a few thoughts listening to the speech. That's the first time that I have, in my view, or that I've really noticed cognitive decline. That's the first time I thought, oh, wow, it's getting old. And you've been saying it for a while. That's the first time I really saw evidence of it. He just sounds not flight of foot, so to speak.

34:34Look, and also his speech writer clearly is mimicking what Nigel Farage said about Brexit, claimed that it was, this is our independence day. And it's like, well, folks, you realize that people declare independence from Britain, not Britain doesn't declare independence, like declaring independence from who? But we've just said this all along. If you were looking for the most elegant, clear blue line path to increasing prices and reducing the competitiveness of our products overseas as reciprocal tariffs are implemented, there's no more elegant way to reduce prosperity in economic history probably than tariffs.

35:10And it comes down to, so I teach strategy. And if you try to distill strategy down to a few basic tenets, two of them would be the following. In strategy, you're trying to answer one question. What can we do that's really hard? Either with spending$18 billion a year on content is really hard, but we have access to cheap capital. Okay, we're Netflix. Building the most robust supply chain in the world because of access to cheap capital is really hard. Hi, we're Amazon. What can we do that is really hard? And then the second thing is the biggest mistake people make in strategy organizations is believing that they're boxing against a speed bag or that they're in that twilight zone where when they move, they stop time and no one else responds.

35:56And the strategic here is so basic, and that is he's under the impression the U.S. is so powerful and superior that we can just levy tariffs errantly without any rationale and that they won't respond and levy reciprocal tariffs. As a matter of fact, you want to talk about people who are doing it strategically. Canada and Europe have said, not only are we going to implement reciprocal tariffs, we're going to be especially hard on the tariffs affecting red states. We're going after your heart and lungs, President Trump. I mean, they're being quite strategic about it. And it's this basic area. I see companies make this all the time.

36:40We're going to do this one, this one, and this one. Okay, you realize that Adidas and on will do the same thing. I mean, they will respond. And that is the biggest strategic error is assuming that you are operating in a vacuum of strength and that your competitors aren't going to respond. And every nation has levied reciprocal tariffs. No one has said, President Trump, you're so big and bad and America is so amazing. I think there's an argument that you could say we have unfairly subsidized a military umbrella for the second and third largest economies in the world, specifically Japan and Germany and maybe most of Europe.

37:14I think that's a real, I think that's a valid argument. But the notion that we don't get the better end or as good a deal on any trade agreement, on any business relationship is just not true. I have done business in every large Western nation, and there is a brand halo by rule of law, innovation, the fact that we are willing to enforce laws, the fact that we don't take shit from anyone, that we attract to the best and the brightest. When you walk into a room, even as a small firm, I ran small strategy firms, you benefit from the halo of the American brand. And to think somehow that people were taking advantage of us, it's just, it's this weird victim complex.

37:54It's this weird notion of, again, I make decisions in isolation, no one will respond, and somehow I'm the victim. It's incredibly immature and it lacks all what I call forward-leaning thinking or real kind of blue flame thinking around strategy and game theory. Well, it's just – I think it's just moronic. I don't know what else to say. It's just – Or that. Or that. Trump's crypto venture, Liberty Financial, has announced plans to launch a stablecoin. This guy is just literally – he's like octopus. He goes everywhere. He's like a handsy guy who's everywhere at once. Stable coins are tied to assets to maintain more stable prices.

38:36USD1, as it will be called, will be pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. That's what stable coins often are pegged to. GOP lawmakers, that means they have to hold a dollar for every coin. Anyway, GOP lawmakers are currently working on legislation to regulate stable coins. World Liberty Financial said it has brought in over$500 million from previous coin sales. Trump Media also announced a partnership with Crypto.com this week to launch a series of ETFs. I know there's a fire hose of news every day, but what in the actual fuck? Speaking of what in the actual, there's so many what in the actual fucks, but he should not be doing crypto.

39:11He should not be doing crypto and his family shouldn't be doing crypto. And they're doing crypto, which is such an opaque area. Thoughts, very brief thoughts? It's grift. And when you're trying to chase down or respond to national security breaches of incompetence and recklessness, it kind of unfortunately wallpapers over the fact that he's engaging in a level of grift for his kids that if Obama did it, there might have been a move to impeach him and some Democrats would have voted to impeach him. I mean, the standards have just been lowered so dramatically. I was thinking about when I remember going to China a few times with a group of American businessmen and we would or they would bring up the notion of human rights.

39:59Can you imagine us even having the gall or the gumption to bring up human rights violations now when we go abroad? We can't. I mean, or to accuse them of grift and corruption. It's just we have lost all moral authority. High horse. All the high horses are gone. We're down off the high horse. This is just ridiculous. He should not be doing this. And people should look into this. There's no power to look into it, but this is just grift, pure and simple. And especially in an area that is about to be—GOP lawmakers are working on legislation. This is so—he shouldn't even sign the frigging thing. He won't do it.

40:39And then it's open for so much fraud for regular consumers. Just buyer beware in many ways. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about whether Disney's Trump donation is paying off in the newest podcast network.

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43:29Scott, we're back. The FCC plans to investigate Disney's DEI practices. They just are moving from company to company doing this. Disney shareholders rejected an anti-DEI proposal earlier this year. By the way, Apple and I think it was Costco also did. Last fall, Disney settled the defamation lawsuit with Trump. And after the election, agreed to pay$15 million donation to Trump's presidential library. I mean, the sucking up to Trump isn't even paying off. Right. That just isn't working. I don't know what to say. They're going to go to every DEI thing and just keep litigating one after the other, whether it's law firms who are against Trump or whatever they happen to do, whether it's DEI or just pure revenge.

44:08They're going to keep doing this shakedown. It feels like I'm in the middle of the early scenes from The Godfather movie with Robert De Niro wandering from Italian owned store to Italian owned store. I don't know what to say. Well, there's two things here. There's the policy around whether DEI practices should be legal or illegal. That's in their current form. That's a valid argument. But the problem here, and you introduced this word to me, is systemic change versus non-systemic change. and that is when the president goes after Colombia, it tickles my senses. I like that. I think that the Ivy League has tolerated a level of anti-Semitism they would not tolerate across any other special interest group.

44:50But the way you address it is you pass laws that affect everybody. You don't decide who you dislike the most and start going, or who you like the most and host, hi, I'm Cal Worthington, 10 % off your Tesla right now. You're supposed to pass laws that show a lack of favoritism because there's no way to implement targets or enemies or favoritism for your allies without it just becoming an autocracy and corrupt. So before we even start here, when he starts targeting individual firms or the head of the Department of Justice calls out or the attorney general calls out Disney by name, if he were to say the media is going to not have certain protections around certain slander, and it's true for everyone, okay, you might disagree.

45:41You might think that puts a chill. But when they start going after specific universities and specific companies - Law firms. Then all you're trying to do is say, okay, we're Paul Weiss, or we're Perkins, or we're Skadden Arbs, or Latham Watkins. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to work for their kids for free on this new Trump stable coin thing, because then we'll stay out of his crosshairs. and you end up in a downward spiral of corruption where, and for corruption folks, that's the biggest tax because people get unfair advantage and it's taxed on everyone else that doesn't have proximity to the president or isn't willing to pay him.

46:16And we talked about this on CNN. There is a domino of cowardice. Bob Iger, your cowardice inspired Paul Weiss' partner to say, okay, we'll pay or we'll settle rather than fight. Your cowardice inspires Jeff Bezos to go, the quickest way for me to get to 110 to 150 billion is to get rid of the opinion section of the Washington Post. Until one of these guys, and let's be honest, they're all guys, says, fuck you. And the public and shareholders in business rally around this person. This is just going to continue. He's just going to have these one-offs and everyone's going to go, I don't want to be in this crosshair.

46:55So just give him a couple million bucks for his inauguration. or come out and say you'll work for the stable coin or you'll buy, wink, wink. The thing about these crypto coins is effectively what the family has done. They have, under our watch, opened a Swiss bank account and anyone could put money in and Trump gets to know who's putting money in, but no one else knows. It is such incredible, like, grift. And I don't think it's an accident they announce it and decide to move forward when it's like, oh, wait, we've had a national security. How do we turn lemons into lemonade? Everyone's going to be focused on Hegseth.

47:32So let's announce the stable coin with it. Can you imagine Sasha, Malia, Obama, and Chelsea Clinton launching a crypto coin? I mean, everyone would be going fucking crazy, right? This is, and here's the thing, it's not their fault. It's our fault. And the way we got to get back to this is to be brave for companies to stand up to them. and we need to begin immediately pushing back, being fearless. And also, 2026 is not that far away. Yeah, exactly. Let me give you an excellent example of what The Atlantic is doing. And by the way, they are fucking bad asses. Carolyn Levitt, Tracy Flick, lying again on the stand at the White House goes, the mainstream media continues to be focused on a sensationalized story from the failing Atlantic magazine that is falling apart by the hour, which is not true.

48:20Literally, everything comes out of her mouth as a lie. fact check, Nick Thompson, who's the CEO of Atlantic, which is doing really well. We have more subscribers than ever before. Ads are up. We're profitable. We're expanding print issues and podcasts. We publish everything that is new to reading. We're hiring more and more great journalists to cover you fairly. And then he put fist, flag, and the fire symbol, which is what, I think it was Mike Walls who used those emojis, you know, in terms of the attack. It's just, pushing back is the best way to go here with these people. You have to both be factual and you have to also punch back at this nonsense.

48:55And what is really interesting is they can't get this story out of this news cycle. And it's day five and he hasn't been able to change the subject by all manner of diversions. So don't let him change the subject kind of thing. And so we'll see where it goes. But Disney should stand up. All these companies should stand up and find whatever you want to say, their backbone or their set. So very quickly, Megan Kelly is launching a podcast network. Lots of people are doing this. MK Media launching next month. We'll have shows from Mark Halperin, Maureen Callahan, and Link Lauren. I think the company she's worked with was sold to Fox, the red whatever you call it.

49:35Let's listen to what Megan has to say about this. I'm so excited about these three. Aren't these a great three to launch with? They cover the gamut, right? It's like Link has got such a following amongst young sort of right-leaning people or independent-minded people who have just had it with the weird left. Anyway, her podcast, which launched in 2020, I was one of the first people to talk to her about doing a podcast. As I've said before, it's consistently one of the most popular news podcasts in the country. I don't know if it's news exactly. You're kinder to her than her. I think she's just a rage machine and she has a little act that she takes on the road and screams at women, a lot of women.

50:13But the idea of what's happening here is a bigger thing, is there's a lot of really interesting independent companies being created, whether they're conservative or liberal. And it really is this idea of doing these podcast networks is going to be really interesting in how you do them and keep them entrepreneurial. I know Scott and I have talked about it, especially the voices on the weird left like ourselves. What is wrong with her? Anyway, it's really, it's an interesting time for this idea of industrialization of podcasting and some of these other things as they move into video. Any quick thoughts?

50:46First off, I just, White House spokesperson Levitt married a 59-year-old when she was 27, so I'm kind of a fan. But it gives me, I think it means I have a shot with AOC. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. You so don't have a shot with AOC. It's crazy. Well, you know my criteria for every spouse I've had. It's very simple. No, I didn't want to hear this. Okay. No? Okay, never mind. Okay, go ahead. What is it? Go ahead. It's simple. Two things. A badass with a great ass. Okay. We're going to hear it on that one. Okay, I kind of like that. We're going to hear it in the comments on that. Okay, I like that.

51:17I hate that. I hate myself. All right, just talk about the podcast network. I'd rather not talk about Megan Kelly because I think she's a rage machine and hateful, but go ahead. Megan is very talented. And you've got to separate the person and their talent from their political views. She's a very— No, it's not political views. It's performative rage. But go ahead. Go ahead. Fine. Fine. Whatever. She's very talented. And, okay, so one of my big predictions in October of 24 was 25. I have tech of the year, media of the year, stock of the year, that the media of the year, hands down, podcasts. And it happened on election day.

51:48And that is so much money pours into local news stations because old people supposedly determine elections and old people still want to get the weather on their local news stations. So local news stations are hemorrhage money for 22 months, and then for two months every two years, they jack up their rates by sevenfold and they sell out because the local guy running for Congress just plows money into it. That typically is a 60-year-old, the average person is a 60-year-old white woman watching cable news or listening to local television. Local television is probably even older. Trump realized he zagged when everyone zigged, went on the Manosphere, went into podcasts, went on every fucking testosterone-laden podcast, and it was brilliant.

52:30And the average listener to a podcast is a 34-year-old male. And a 34-year-old male is Latin for swing voter because they care about economics. And who is seen as better on the economy is dynamic. Sometimes it's Democrats when they realize, oh, they've created 50 million jobs in the last four decades and Republicans have created 1 million. And sometimes it's people go, oh, Republicans are acknowledging inflation. They're speaking more. They're business people. Trump's a businessman. So it goes back and forth. So they're the swing voter. In addition, you're seeing a flood of advertising into this young male demographic because, by the way, those people are the great white rhino of advertisers because they're stupid.

53:12They spend money on things like shoes and watches and coffee and they're decision makers and they're companies around technology. They buy high margin products and you can't reach them because they're watching Netflix and Spotify. So where do you reach a 34-year-old male? You reach him on podcasts. Reaching a young, male, wealthy audience is an advertiser's dream, and you can't reach him anywhere else. In addition, 50 % of people have said they listen to at least one podcast a month. The medium is growing faster than Alphabet or Meta right now in terms of ad revenue. In addition, there's a built-in moat, and that moat is the following.

53:50Because we started seven years ago, we have a huge subscriber base on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube, and anything we drop gets downloaded when you subscribe. And advertisers base their advertising and CPMs based on your built-in installed base. So if you have been in the podcasting game for a while, you almost have a natural moat around you because advertisers will only advertise on pods who have a certain amount of scale. So the little guys, the 699 ,000 podcasts that aren't in the top 1 ,000, it is difficult for them to make it out of the crib. So you have a plethora, you have a tectonic shift in the flows of rivers of advertising capital into this new medium.

54:41And you actually, strangely enough, despite the fact there's low barriers of entry and 700 ,000 podcasts put out something every week, there's really only 500 or 600 of them that have the scale that advertisers want. Meaning like almost every other medium where digitization comes in, it's become a winner take most if not all environment. What's interesting about podcasting is the two newer platforms are YouTube. More people listen to podcasts on YouTube now than on Spotify or Apple. 20 % of my listens at Prop G, because the Prop G market is very visual, is on TVs. It's on YouTube that people airplay to their TV.

55:20You're seeing our revenues here at Pivot are comping up for the last seven years, probably 28 or 30 % a year. So this is attracting a ton of talent, a ton of capital, big growth up a small base. And Megan – oh, and by the way, I forgot. You know who's just decided they're getting into the podcasting game? Netflix. Yeah. So if they put Steve Bartlett or Pivot or On With Kara Swisher on their front page for a hot minute in front of 300 million people, that podcast is going to go into the top 10. They're getting into the game. So you're going to see advertisers switch to the small number of companies that have scale.

55:58You're going to see a dramatic increase in advertising spend. You're going to see some multi, some nine figure plus deals in podcasting. You're going to see some really, really big deals. This is the medium of 2026. Let me ask you a question. So I was just thinking about this, like things were on par with advertising to do really well this year. And now this tariff thing that Trump's doing is fucking with everybody's business and ads. They're showing a little bit. Now they're like, oh, maybe not so much because things were really sort of the juice was going for a minute there. But they're noticing that when people pull, they're going to pull from this.

56:35Is that a worry? Okay. In the short term, yes, it hurts everybody because people go on to a standstill and we've seen this and they say, just cool your jet stand down until we figure out what's going on. However, if you look at the shifts in mediums, everyone knew people were shifting money and ad spend from traditional media into search-based media or social-based media. We all knew that. But what happens is whenever there's an economic shock and media planners and big agencies are forced to rethink their budgets, they typically take everyone down, but then they come back in the new mediums. Exogenous shocks give a company pause to rethink their entire media strategy, and that almost benefits the new guys.

57:22So actually in recessions and in economic shocks, in the short term, it hurts everybody. But in the medium term, it massively expedites the transition that was sort of already happening at a low speed. It expedites it in Google and Meta. When they take their advertising budgets back, it gives them a chance to think, should we be spending this much on newspapers or broadcast television? Maybe not. Let's go. We know we're going back into TikTok and Meta and Alphabet. But so while we will absolutely, with these tariffs, see a reduction in our growth. It's not going to be there first. When the economy comes back, it's going to expedite the disruption.

57:59The shift. Yeah. People are thinking, you're right. OK, I wanted to understand that. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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1:00:19Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. Look, the Chinese see this void. We had spent decades and$70 to$80 billion a year on USAID helping fund a hospital in Cambodia. Tremendous goodwill in Cambodia. Set up this infrastructure. It was working well. money was being put to good use. We just cut it off. You know who showed up literally the next week? And this is a true story, the Chinese. And they are taking advantage of all the good work that's been done to usurp soft power. And I believe this goes back to the notion that we have a monopoly on our ability to deliver violence. We have, I think, 700 bases in 70 or 80 nations.

1:01:00I think China has two or three. You're going to see a dramatic increase in the number of Chinese military bases on foreign soil because they are filling our shoes and getting massive benefit from the organizations, the relationships in the NGO sector that we were funding. And they'll just slip into those shoes and say, no, no, no, you don't need to close the hospital. The good guys are here. And nothing's for free. The next time they show up in a year, two years, three years and say, look, we'd like to have a naval base here. We'd like to be able to refuel our planes here and we'll pay for the revenue.

1:01:35And by the way, how's the hospital coming? Is it still working? Great. So we're going to see for the first time a dramatic increase in Chinese military bases overseas, which to date the U.S. really has had a monopoly on. This soft power translates to hard power. And people don't realize, again, these people don't think long term. They're morons. Well, the whole basis of an elected official at the end of the day, it goes back to strategy. What are you what are you supposed to do that's really hard? What are you supposed to do that's really hard? You're supposed to prevent a tragedy of the commons over the medium and the long term.

1:02:14Can I make an interjection here? Because there's just a new story from New York Times today that Trump administration abruptly cuts billions from state health services. This is across our country. States have been told they can no longer use grants that were funding infectious disease management and addiction services. They've cut$12 billion in federal grants to states who are being used to track infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment, and other urgent health issues. That means these state health departments were already underfunded or in real trouble. They received notices Monday that the funds, which were allocated, are being terminated.

1:02:47And let me just say, in Lubbock, Texas, public health officials, this is not to, these are red states, just so you know, red state people. They're leopards about to eat your face. Public health officials have received orders to stop work supported by these three grants that helped fund the response to the whiting measles outbreak there, according to Catherine Wells. On Tuesday, some health departments were preparing to lay off dozens of epidemiologists and data scientists. This is the same thing. This is goodwill and the things that the government does that are effective for people. And it's going to be the same issue in this country.

1:03:18The question is who's going to come into the breach, right? Which is what you're talking about with the Chinese doing that. I don't know if you'd like to link those. I like that. No, I think that makes sense. It's the same attitude across this country and it will have repercussions. But the people or the entities that will fill the void abroad are foreign nations, some of which do not have our best interests at heart. I don't think of China as an enemy. I think of them as a competitor, maybe even an adversary. The organizations that will fill the void in the U.S. are for-profit organizations that over the medium and the long term will probably demand margin.

1:03:55So what happens when the government vacates from these services, and this is what they want. They want private enterprise running all prisons. They want to privatize Social Security because then corporations will insert themselves in the middle. In some ways, they're more innovative. In some ways, they're more productive. In some ways, they're just interested in making money. That's what they do. Yeah, I know. And that's not good for the public comment. They'll get monopoly power on the jails and whatever, this part of the county or this part of the state. They will slowly raise the rates and we will end up paying more for less.

1:04:29There are certain things that should be delivered at scale. The electricity in a city needs a monopoly. And in order to have monopolies, you have to have regulators such that they don't enact monopoly pricing power. So this is abroad. Our adversaries will fill the void domestically with these businesses that they're cutting. You'll see private enterprise move in and over the medium and the long term, the consumer will lose. Lesser services. Exactly. All right. Elsewhere in the Scott and Kara universe this week on Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with Karsten Brazeski, a chief Eurozone economist for ING.

1:05:05Scott's been talking a lot about Europe, what's going on in Europe. Let's listen to a clip. Debt means the same as guilt. And I think that is not the only language, but that is an important one. So somehow debt, like government debt, always had a negative connotation. So Germany was clearly the fiscally frugal country, which could tell the southern European economies to also do austerity. So interesting discussion about what's happening there. I thought it was. I listened to it. Yeah, I'm convinced if my co-host on Property Markets was German, we just wouldn't be successful. Yeah, let's look. Let's talk about AI and the markets.

1:05:47It just doesn't have the same ring as when a British guy is talking about it. It's a good German joke. But the thing he was talking about, I don't think he got it fully across. The German word for debt translates to guilt in English. Isn't that interesting? And they're about to kind of unchain their fiscal strength for infrastructure spending and military spending, which I think is going to be a big deal. But anyway. Yeah. You know, and you've been talking about the European. Now suddenly I'm seeing stories in the Wall Street Journal how the place you should invest in is Germany. What was my stock pick for 2025, Cara?

1:06:23You were great. European value stocks. Just for people who don't speak German, which I do, Schuld is debt, the debt, S-C-H-U-L-D. It also means blame, guilt, fault, liability, trespasses. So, schuld, you know? And when you say, excuse me, unschuldigen, or something like that. Something like that. My favorite German is farfenugen. You love that word. Oh, it's the best. All right. That's our show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

1:06:57Ernie Inertod engineered this episode. Ronnie Polidaro edited this video. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Severo, and Dan Shallan. Nishak Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks 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. That's right. A whiskey emoji dancing and a limp dig. The dog is in the chat.

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