The Cost of Corporate Silence on ICE, Trump's Health, and TikTok USA

21:26Kara Swisher:That's because he confuses them. That makes it easier. That's the trolling of Donald Trump. I get it. He's a culture warrior. He wants to troll everybody. He wants to set all the liberals' hair on fire. I get all of that. But where Tim is sitting there, he's saying to himself, I'm going to give this guy a gold amulet like I did a couple of months ago. I'm going to shove my whole head up his ass because of the situation that's - That's the next season of heated rivalry. Go ahead. No, but I mean, come on. You can barely see Tim's ankles hanging out of Trump's ass, right? I mean, you know that, okay?

22:00Okay, so to me, I'm not their advisor, and they would never take any advice from me, but maybe they would take advice from Mark Carney. Because to me, if you collectively push back on him, he folds like a paper suit. You know, he looked at the letter coming in from Minnesota. He looked at the video. He said, I got to move out Jailhouse Barbie, Christine Noem. I got to get Jailhouse Barbie off the playing field. We're going to take the bribe Honan back on the playing field, the 50 grand in cash.

22:34Kara Swisher:Junkle. I call him Junkle. Okay. All right. I'm going to put him back in. Okay. And I'm going to acquiesce here and I'm going to find a way to exit this disastrous situation. But you see, the real question though, for me, is how are we letting Stephen Miller, who couldn't get confirmed as a dog catcher, forget about anything else. So you explained you were there with him. This evil. Well, I'm going to tell you how, because Stephen Miller bought call ops on the worst day of Trump's political life, which was January 6th, 2021, where Kevin McCarthy said he's finished. McConnell said he's finished.

23:14They told Pelosi, we don't need to impeach him, remove him from office because he's politically finished after what he did. Mr. Miller bought call options on Trump's electoral success in 2024. for. Nobody else bought those call options. And then Miller said, this is fantastic. I'm an evil guy. I hate people and I want to inflict pain on people. And Trump is my empty vessel to get back into the White House. And oh, by the way, we're going to have four years to prepare ourselves to be even more dastardly and more evil and to remove more normal people out of the checks and balances of Trump. One, we're going to have lapdogs in Trump too, like Besant and butt lick or nut lick, whatever the, I mean, the biggest asshole on earth.

24:00We're going to have these people in position. Okay. And then I'm going to rule the roost. I'm writing all the speeches. You know, you can throw the shit through chat, GBT. You say, who does this sound like? It's the writings of Stephen Miller. And so he's writing the speeches. He's promulgating the policy. How is he doing?

24:17Kara Swisher:Because he bought those call options. Does Trump not see that? I mean, he is. Whatever he is, he's like an old crocodile. He's got to see that. The only way Trump will see it is if you start saying Trump is the lapdog of Stephen Miller. The administration's being run by Stephen Miller. Trump will absolutely hate that. Okay. And it's like when they were saying President Bannon, when the President Bannon Time magazine cover came out, he got hit with a ray gun, knocked out of the administration. And so, but Miller is running the administration. He's running domestic policy. He's running international policy.

24:55He's writing the speeches about Venezuela and Greenland. And he is sitting -

25:00Kara Swisher:Does he have any foe internally? Give us one insight into him. You have spent time with him. So give us one insight. Look, I used to fight with the guy - Besides that he looks like a cartoon Nazi villain. You know, him and I were not friends. I used to fight with him left and right. There was one situation in the 2016 campaign where I called him up and read him the riot act because he was treating donors with this like, you know, lack of emotional attention in this sort of caustic, you know, you know, arrogant, supercilious way. So, look, he's a terrible person. I think we can stipulate that just by his behavior and his actions.

25:41But it fits Trump's narrative, OK, because Trump likes hurting people. Trump likes humiliating people. He likes hurting people. He wants to denigrate people and make them feel bad. And then when he gets himself in trouble, he will walk it back like he did with the UK war veterans. He had to send out a missive to Stormer because it was ridiculous the heat that he was getting. but this is what these people are like. And the problem is the waiting it out strategy. If you're a corporate board official and you are on one of these corporate boards, Fortune 500, and you listen to Cara and Scott, let me tell you what you gotta do.

26:23You gotta get your CEO in position to join forces and create alliances with his other CEOs, he or she, and push back on Trump. You cannot wait 1 ,000 days, Cara.

26:37Kara Swisher:No, we've said that. We talked about an economic boycott. You got to get your shit together. You got to get your shit together right now. And on behalf of the American people and channel what those German bureaucrats wanted from Neville Chamberlain. Don't be a Neville Chamberlain and wait the 1 ,000 days too late. There's going to be too much existential damage done to your company and the United States. And by the way, let me tell you, what they do think is the Democrats won't do anything, right? Trump will punish them, Democrats won't. I'm here to tell you, I want to make sure the Democrats punish you all, all you tech executives.

27:12Kara Swisher:I promise that we will, we have long memories, as they say, and I will make certain of that. I will bother these Democrats forever. But let me ask you, what do the Democrats? But the Democrats suck, though. Let me just, hear me after a second. We all agree. You know, the Republicans are evil, okay, so they suck more. but the Democrats suck because they can't get their shit together. If they could get their shit together, they would channel Newt Gindrich. Okay. And hear me out for a second, because you're old enough to remember this. So 1994, Newt Gindrich said, hey, we're going to combat Clinton.

27:45We're going to all unify and we'll get our ducks in an order. Here's our 10 point contract with America. Everybody's signing onto this. And then when we get power, we're going to flex. The Democrats have to have the doppelganger of the 1994 contract with America. And even though they don't like each other and AOC doesn't see eye to eye with Gavin Newsom, get it together, fellas. Get in a room.

28:10Kara Swisher:So they threatened to trigger a partial government shutdown withholding DHS. That's funny. But that's small ball is what you're saying. But not only is that small ball, that's a disaster. You're a capital markets person. Look at where the U.S. dollar is trading. The Japanese yen is trading. Look at where gold and silver is trading. We're in full-on currency debasement. You know, Trump thinks he can get out there and do his reality TV nonsense without consequence. But people are pulling away from the dollar. They're forming unnatural alliances. Carney's going to China. The dollar is weakening. Gold is going up.

28:45People are finding ways to barter with each other outside of the petrodollar system. And Ray Dalio is going to be right, guys. You want to shut the government down. You're going to further weaken the U.S. dollar. Don't do it. That is small ball.

29:00Kara Swisher:What other choice they have? They can't fund DHS, correct? They also can't politically fund them. What's the choice? There is no choice, correct? Cara, there's no choice because we're in accordion, not with each other. But if they shut the government down, I would rather have them fund DHS and have the help of corporate CEOs and law enforcement. You know that local law enforcement is against ICE. Oh, trust me. Get together, people, okay? Develop a communication strategy, fund it, but have an overwhelming group of people push back on it. You don't want to shut the government down when we are facing our own economic peril.

29:44We're sitting on a debt time bomb that's running towards$40 trillion.

29:50Kara Swisher:Doesn't that hurt Trump more? Like you have to sacrifice the village to save the country kind of thing? Well, I don't. It's not going to hurt Trump himself more. It's going to hurt the man on the street more. Correct, yeah. Our dollar has lost 28 % of its value since January of 2020. Okay, if you own assets, Cara, you're fine. But if you're like my dad, my deceased father, who worked an hour and got an hourly wage and had no assets, You took 30 % of his life away from him. We've got three or four things happening in parallel tracks that we can control the card table and we can maintain our mantle of financial services leadership and our mantle of global leadership, but we've got to change the narrative.

30:41And the way you change the narrative is through coordinated opposition. Trump is banking on the fact that the liberals are so self-righteous and so picayune with each other that they'll have internecine fights with each other as opposed to coordinate and go after him. But they could do that. They could go to the cooks. They could go to the CEO of 3M. They could say, OK, listen, this is not good for America. We don't want our people murdered in the street. It's bad for economic innovation. It's bad for capital flows into America. We have to fight back. There are two people, Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, and there's us.

31:21And there's a force majeure of us that can overwhelm them if we coordinate with each other.

31:27Kara Swisher:What's the actual move then? Besides, let's coordinate what, precisely, from a business? Scott and I talked about an economic boycott, et cetera. Yeah, wholly and totally denounce ICE alongside a local law enforcement. Push back on them. You create resistance, civil disobedience, resistance zones, okay, alongside of citizens that are willing to protest. They got to show up unarmed, so there's no excuse to shoot at them. You then have to push the president into a box, and you have to go to the Republicans and say, sorry, no more money for Republicans for re-election. Because all these people really care about, Cara, is the money going into their re-election.

32:06Kara Swisher:So the way to affect those business leaders could be an economic boycott, a really sustained one, for example. We're going to get, the Democrats have to say, we will hurt you also in different ways. I just think, and I heard you guys, and I understand where Scott's coming from, and he's right. It's a very good civil disobedient move. I would like to try something else first before we go there, because that's going to harm the people that we don't want to harm the most. Do you understand what I'm saying? I get it. And I understand what you're saying. You got to burn down the village sometimes to save the whole state.

32:43I get all that, but let's try something different. These are two people. We know this from the schoolyard, the bullies, when you team up against the bully. Yes, we've seen that movie.

32:54Kara Swisher:You knock the bully into next week. All right, last question. Is there anybody in that White House that has control other than Stephen Miller? Susie Wiles doesn't seem to. No, no. She tried to get out, it looked like. Susie Wiles doesn't give a shit. She's looking for her next lobbying gig. You know that. Read the interview. She's like, I'm trying to say this shit about these people so that when I get out on the outside, you think I'm quasi normal. By the way, Susie, we see you. So anyway. Come on. I mean, Mrs. Doubtfire, I mean, this lady ruined herself. Yeah. Anybody? I'm just curious. The only good news here is that just dumb Vance, J.D.

33:33Vance, is so delusional, he thinks he's the heir to Trump and he thinks he's going to be the 48 president. And I'm telling you that J.D. Vance is actually sitting on a bomb that's going to blow up on him. Okay, just give it a year or two and this whole thing is going to blow up on him. He's going to be the poster child for the Trump menagerie of evil. And so that is good news, by the way, because he'll get -

34:01Kara Swisher:Well, I think he doesn't like himself very much. Well, he's going to get knocked out of the game. Okay, so that's very good news. You know, I call him the cyber truck of politicians, but go ahead. Tell me why. Because he repels people. He repels voters. I'm telling you, when you see a cyber truck, you could see people pull back when they see it. Whatever you think of Elon, it's still a repellent vehicle, right? You may like him and you don't like that thing. I was driving a Volkswagen ID Buzz and everybody like runs towards you because it looks like a dinosaur driving down the street, an unhappy dinosaur.

34:38I'm a minor player in all this, but when you used to light my ass up on Twitter, I used to laugh. But I got to tell you, when you're lighting Elon Musk up on Twitter or you're saying this shit about him on the podcast, I don't think he's laughing. Oh, you know what?

34:52Kara Swisher:Inside he is. Oh, I think there's a little boy inside who, who missing the love of his parents. Who's laughing. All right. Well, hopefully, maybe someday. Not that I want to help him at all. If you ever repair your relationship with Elon, I want to be there to smoke a peace pipe with you. Never. I knew that was going to be the answer. You took it well. That's all I'll say. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, what Trump is saying about his health or lack thereof.

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37:56Kara Swisher:anthony we're back with more news there's been speculation about trump's health for months and a new story new york magazine has him going on the record about it trump talks about his father's medical history at one point struggling to come up with the word alzheimer's then insisting he does not have it he also blames women's fingernails and rings for cuts on his hands trump's doctor says he actually didn't did not have an mri but an mri-like scan of his chest and abdomen i don't know what that is. And the results were, quote, perfect. And of course, Trump threatens to sue the ass off New York Magazine if he decides he doesn't like the story.

38:27Kara Swisher:I don't think New York Magazine, as one of the shareholders, gives a shit. So what do you think is really going on here with this? He's got to face the health care stuff, right? Because Biden didn't. He's physically, I mean, listen, you know, it's prima facie. He's unwell. You know, You know, if someone gets busted on a football field and the bone is sticking out of the uniform, you don't have to be an orthopedic surgeon to know that the bone is broken. You know, it's not like that. The guy is unwell, okay? He's unwell physically. He has an unsteady gait. They put the red carpet out for him in Davos.

39:06He wobbled down the carpet like he did in August with Putin. He's got bruises all over his hands, which looks like they're infusion bruises. They're not bumping up against the signing desk when you have that level of contusion on your hand. He looks terrible. If you look at the orange makeup and you contrast it to the polar of his hands, he looks absolutely terrible. I'm not a doctor. I'm just telling you, prima facie, he looks unwell. He's forgetful. He doesn't remember the word Alzheimer's. He doesn't remember people standing in front of him. he's getting interviewed and they say you said the following he said i never said that then they play the recording of him saying it and but he looks like he's telling the truth meaning he's demented in a way he doesn't remember it yeah he's demented the way you could probably pass the lie detector

39:58Kara Swisher:test i mean he's a liar but it seems to me that he doesn't remember it actually yeah i'm sure he's lying knowingly but i think there's also lies coming out of his mouth where he doesn't remember anymore. So also the New York Times reported something which I think is very critical and very similar to Biden. They're managing his schedule for five hours a day. They said it's 12 to 5 and then they pull him out of there. Or if he's got to go late night, they'll start him at 5 and they'll end him at 10. Okay. He's an elderly man. He's about to turn 80. It's arguably the toughest job in the world. He hauls himself around.

40:32Okay. He's moving himself from national football game championships to Davos, back to Florida, back to Washington. He's moving himself around a lot. And that in itself is tiring and dehydrating. And so to me, they're going to lie about it like the Biden people lied about it. Okay. That's just the facts of it. And this is why I'm saying Miller, advantage to Miller. Because if Trump's got five, and again, whatever you think of Trump, I can tell you if you show Trump a video of a guy getting innocently murdered, even his egomaniac narcissism is like, shit, that's not good for me. He's looking at the video.

41:16He may not have any compassion for that man or the man's family, but he's smart enough to know that ain't good for me. Stephen Miller's not smart enough to know that. He's calling the guy an assassin and a domestic terrorist and all this idiocy. But the point about the illness that people should really focus on is that if he's only got five hours a day where he's present, the other 19 hours are going to Stephen Miller. Don't forget that. Okay. Stephen Miller is writing the policy. Stephen Miller's talking to ICE. Stephen Miller's on the phone with Marco Rubio. So, you know, the joke inside the White House is, hey, Stephen, we got a question for you.

41:58We're going to make you a viceroy of Venezuela. But then when you get down there, where are you going to deport the Venezuelans to? Right. That's the joke inside the White House. And of course, Miller looks at them and he's all pissed and he doesn't answer them. Right. But the point is Trump's weakness, there's a vacuum and the void is being - Filled by a very horrible - By a very evil, this MF, he couldn't get dog catcher confirmation, this MF, okay? And he's sitting there. We had a 250-year experiment with a republic with real checks and balances. And this guy, because he was hated in high school and he still wants to take it out on the rest of us, is going to run roughshod over all of us because you have willing accomplices, Kara.

42:49And those willing accomplices are the Republicans. And the secondary willing accomplices are the private sector, smarty pants billionaires that are afraid of Stephen Miller. How could you guys be afraid of Stephen Miller? Are you guys serious? Were you that big of a nerd group in the high school cafeteria to be afraid of Stephen Miller? What are you guys doing?

43:11Kara Swisher:Take on Stephen Miller. Back to his health, what do they do when it becomes... I mean, it is apparent that he's, I've been saying this for a year because I have relatives. I've seen it. Like I've seen friends who had Alzheimer's and the signs are rather significant of some sort of dementia. But what do they do when it gets, what, is there something that could, besides him falling down, which seems inevitable and breaking a hip, what's the next thing if five hours is all you can get? It doesn't matter. They just hold them up like Weekend at Bernie's kind of thing? Do your reporting. and you've got excellent sources.

43:46We know that Vance met with Musk and told Musk, please cool out on America's party. You know, Trump's time is coming. I'm going to be the 48th president, likely by default. And all the tech broligarchs will be in there with me. Drop the America's party. And Musk said, no problem. You know, they're all - They're getting ready. They're all statisticians. They're looking at 1 ,000 days and they're looking at a declining mental acuity of a president. And they're saying, is it a year from now where people look around and say, hey, man, 25th Amendment, in comes Vance. Is it two years from now? Can Trump make it to three years?

44:28I think he'll be alive in three years. But the question is, will he be mentally cognitive to the point where it's not overwhelmingly obvious to everybody how bad it is? And so I don't know the answer to that. But if I'm a betting person, there's a percentage. If you're a tech prologar, you're like, okay, there's a 10 % to 30 % chance that Vance is going to serve out Trump's term and run for re-election in 28. And that's also another reason why they're not fighting as hard as they should be because they're waiting the thing out.

45:04Kara Swisher:Right. Because of, you know, actuarial tables is what you're talking about, essentially. Exactly. As Scott says, biology is undefeated. So let me, it's a terrible choice to have to make, but if you could pick Trump being in office in a disabled way versus Vance becoming president, which one would you choose? Okay, let me get the vomit bag out first. Let me blow chow into the vomit bag. Hold on a second. That game you play. Okay, all right. Now let me tell you what. You got to go with Vance. Okay, let me tell you why, okay? All right. Because Vance has no power. And even if he's president of the United States, he doesn't have a personality cult around him, okay?

45:50And Vance cannot keep that coalition together. He doesn't understand how to do it. Trump kept Nick Fuentes, Ben Shapiro, and Tucker Carlson in the same coalition. Imagine that, okay? Because it's the strength of his personality and the personality cult around him as a political figure. Vance has none of that. Let me give a specific example. When they were fighting over the beef quotas, the Argentinian beef quotas, and they were fighting over the beef coming in from Argentina, they excoriated Vance in the Senate. They would never do that to Donald Trump because they're afraid Donald Trump would send out a tweet and say, I'm now supporting this person to the far right of Bill Cassidy.

46:36I'm no longer supporting Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana.

46:39Kara Swisher:Oh, who found balls recently somehow. Well, thank God. Him and a few others. Very small. Okay. But let's, you know what? When someone finds their balls. I'll take it. Honey. I'll take it. Let's give them a fucking magnifying glass. I'm not one of those leftists that's like, no, you should never come in. I'm like, come on in. Cara, send them a magnifying glass. The balls will look bigger in the fucking scope, okay? Let's go here, okay? But honestly, Vance does not have the power, and they will push back on him, and they will flex on him. Now, the negative to Vance is he's tied to some evildoer broligarchs.

47:14Yeah. Okay? And the negative to Vance is that they're going to pump him with money, and they're going to get executive orders from the society. The problem with this nation's tech broligarchs, they don't give a shit. They only care about themselves and their mission quest to make a trillion dollars. If they were a smarter group of people, they would think about what Henry Ford once said, which is, I'm going to make stuff. My workers are going to make stuff that they can afford. I'm going to pay them enough money so they can afford it. They're going to have a single family house and a good school system so they don't attack me with tiki torches and pitchforks in my Dearborn, Michigan mansion when I'm eating caviar and carving my filet mignon.

47:54And being an anti-Semite, but go ahead. Well, he was a bad guy, but he understood social engineering.

48:01Kara Swisher:I would agree with you. I think I was with one of them. These guys don't. What are you guys doing? I literally was like, you know they're coming to get you if you don't start acting more generous. Like, I literally have had more arguments with them about this. I'm like, you will—I said, look at him. They don't read history. Anthony, they don't read history. It's really kind of fascinating in a lot of ways. They think they're in you. Self-absorption. They'll get in a rocket ship. Anyway, we're going to go on a quick break and we come back. TikTok strikes a U.S. deal. This is really interesting.

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51:44Kara Swisher:Anthony, we're back with more news. TikTok has dodged a potential ban and sealed the deal to create a new American entity with investors like Oracle, 15%, and Silver Lake, also 15%, I believe. In the deal, ByteDance keeps a small stake around 20%, but the algorithm will be retrained on U.S. data to address national security concerns about Chinese control. Oracle's sort of been doing this for a while, by the way. And by Oracle, I mean Larry Ellison. President Trump praised the deal and thanked China's President Xi for approving it, something he hopes to be remembered by TikTok users for making it happen.

52:14Kara Swisher:But the service is enormously buggy in its first couple days out, with users reporting login issues and feed disruptions. Other people see a conspiracy theory in Larry Ellison trying to shut down anti-ice stuff. I am not of that camp. I think it's just buggy and they're having problems. I wouldn't put it past them to do all manner of shitty things. But in this case, I think it's just this shift over. Talk about this because there are also indications that TikTok's user base is declining and that its momentum is declining. Talk a little bit about this because a lot of people are worried about it becoming a propaganda tool.

52:54Kara Swisher:I am less worried because I feel like it has – I know I'm going to get a call from Zenya Mooch in a second, but I feel like it has a MySpace vibe. um, to it, but your thoughts, it's big, it's still enormous, but I don't, I think it, I think meta has the momentum with Instagram and threads, et cetera. Well, well, a couple of things. I mean, they, they've neutered TikTok. Okay. So it'd be like taking your dog to get spayed. You know, the, you know, the, the virility of TikTok is over. Uh, and so, you know, maybe it'll work. Uh, and maybe that's a good investment for these people. I don't know. But here's what I do know.

53:31I do know when I was in the White House for that very short period of time, the intelligence stuff was TikTok was weapons grade intelligence gathering. And it was weapons grade crowd propaganda, crowd propaganda. 30 % of the white males below the age of 21, they don't think the moon landing happened. You know, 15 % of the white males below 30 think Osama bin Laden is a freedom warrior. All this stuff being generated by the algorithm on TikTok and all this stuff of fomenting conspiracy theories, which caused people to doubt and distrust their government and caused them to doubt and distrust the institutions of our democracy.

54:12All of that worked to the point where the court said shut it down. The Biden administration said shut it down and it was getting shut down. But some of the owners of TikTok had a lot of money. They gave the money to Donald Trump and Trump defied the court orders. OK. And he kept TikTok open. And so we're sitting here now where I don't think the secret sauce of TikTok, despite what they're saying, is going to get replicated. OK. It's not going to get transferred. We do know. We do know when the deal, and I believe this is the case because intelligence agencies in this country still have teeth, even though Trump, you know, I guess is uber alice.

54:52But the intelligence agencies are telling us that Bydance is walled off from the information now. They own 19.9 % of the company, and they're not going to get the information from the U.S. anymore. So they have other backdoors, by the way. Chinese intelligence has other backdoors. So I'm not worried about Chinese intelligence gathering. But I think this has been spayed, to use a veterinarian analogy. And I think these guys are going to wake up five years from now. It may not be 100 % MySpace, but it could be like a Yahoo that was like very prominent in 1998. It's still with us in 2026, but really isn't relevant to the way it was once relevant.

55:37Yeah, I think the energy has dragged out. That's my guess with TikTok.

55:41Kara Swisher:Yeah, I would agree. I think the energy has dragged out a bit. And, you know, the question is what's effective as these things. And as much as you know, I have so much disdain for Mark Zuckerberg, although he has an opportunity. See, I was thinking this. Remember when Gates, everyone hated Gates. He was Darth Vader, et cetera. Mark has an opportunity to turn himself around. That's my feeling. With these products that are quite good. Obviously, he had a real fuck up on the metaverse and spent a lot of money and wasted it. Here's one thing I love. This guy spent$56 billion on a mistake. And then all these tech people complain about the government misusing funds.

56:18Kara Swisher:They misuse funds all the time. It's their own money, but that's fine. It's actually shareholder money. If he wanted to, Zuckerberg, to me, especially with Musk behaving like a cartoon villain, has an opportunity, especially with these products, threads and Instagram, etc., to really dominate in a way that he already does. But I don't know. I just I have this notion that there's if he decided to to stop being such a ridiculous figure that he could certainly revive himself. And that's not an opening for him. But I think the hiring of Dina Powell was interesting. I thought, you know, a very smooth operator, as you know, it just is an interesting time.

57:02Kara Swisher:But TikTok, I think, really is. You're right. It's I think it's it's not on the upswing. That's for sure. When these guys are buying it, again, they got it at a discount. So who cares? Well, I'll say something that people, you know, it's a little contrarian, so just hear me out for a second, okay? I think that prima facie, you put Dana White on the board because you think he's a Trump guy, and you're sending a message to Trump that you're no longer going to bash Trump. You put Dina on the board. Her husband's a senator from Pennsylvania. I mean, she was on the board, but you put her in that presidency vice chairman position, sends a message to the right.

57:38But I'm going to say something about both those people. I think they're less Trumpy than people think. Oh, absolutely. Dana has already told people, I'm done with the politics. I'll do the UFC fight with Trump on the 14th of June, but I'm done with the politics. Dana is more of a libertarian, okay? And Dina, if you really follow her life, she is a Trump whisperer today, but she's really more of a garden variety. And so is David, by the way, a Republican. So, you know, there could come a moment here, one, two, three years out, where Zuckerberg is influenced by these people, okay? And you could be right.

58:18And so I think the prima facie look is, oh, he's putting Trump lackeys in place to come No, I don't believe that.

58:24Kara Swisher:I agree with you on that. But they're not Trump lackeys if you really know their personalities. And listen, I don't know Dana. I have friends. I've met Dana a few times. But I know Dina very, very well. David and I know each other very well. Dina and I have worked together. And she was polite enough to call me, give me the heads up the Sunday night before the job was announced. And she's a special person. I like her. And I think that this could be a positive for Zuckerberg. Just interesting choices. I was like, everyone's like, Trump thing. I'm like, that's not what's happening here. It isn't.

58:56Kara Swisher:I mean, just to be clear, Dina left the White House early in the first term. And I think probably Charlottesville and other issues were impactful to her in lots of ways. But I do think it's much more complicated. I thought it was an interesting and probably the best move of Zuckerberg to bring himself back into the light. I guess he wasn't ever in the light. Listen, David Solomon, Lloyd Blankfein, there's a reason why Dina was at the top of the food chain in and around the hoop. She's got good judgment. She's a very smart person. And she also has good diplomacy skills. Okay. And so let's see what happens.

59:34I like her a great deal. And I wish her well with that new job.

59:39Kara Swisher:But the TikTok thing gives, to me, Meta the biggest opportunity here to return itself. I know it's your podcast, but can I ask you a question? The international version of TikTok, in my opinion, is now going to be way more robust than the American algorithm. Absolutely. Okay. And so then the question is, where does the real innovation live? Does it live outside of the United States? In China, along with electric cars, along with all kinds of things. That's important for your viewers and listeners to hear that message. Because for all of our bravado and all the nonsense and jingoism, take a look at the Chinese cars.

1:00:20Take a look at the Chinese algorithm. Take a look at the Chinese AI process that's in place. And the thing that upsets me the most is take a look at the 10, 15, 20, and 25-year plans that China has where the U.S. government has UGOTs. Okay? And you know what that means. Yes. Your viewers can look it up, what it means. Yeah. But we've got who gots because we are playing to the cable news cycle as opposed to a 15, 20 or 30 year plan. But I just think it's very important people to understand that issue, the innovation and the excitement. You agree with me, right?

1:00:58Kara Swisher:Yeah, I put more to the point. I think that Trump has done more damage to the technology industry. They've done it to themselves, let me just say, by their lack of interest in safety. But what's coming for them, they were so scared of Biden, who was toothless, as far as I could tell. Said a lot of things, but and maybe we'll, you know, pull back on crypto a little bit. And that's over, obviously. But writ large, I think Trump is more damaging to the tech industry and his reputation than anything else and has set them back. And I think China has moved into the breach. And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg used to always talk about the challenge from China.

1:01:37Kara Swisher:And in affiliating so tightly with Trump, I think it really creates a backlash that's going to be sustained, especially not doing anything about teen girls, about kids, around chatbots, around everything. I think they are, you know, they're essentially putting themselves as the bad guy, the baddies. And they don't have to be. Like, there's an opportunity for them to, you know, I suppose Carnegie did that, as evil as all those people were. As you said, they moved into a more - No, please oblige. They realized that they had to take care of people. But Carol, let me just say this to you and get you to react to it.

1:02:13If I'm a CEO and I'm spending zero to 15 % of my time thinking about how to handle Trump, zero to 20 % of my time - Any time, yeah. Isn't that less time of me thinking about how to innovate - That's what I mean. And how to create plans?

1:02:27Kara Swisher:Yeah. Do you see the drag on effect of Donald Trump for all these companies? Exactly. That's exactly, except for the sort of true believers who are just terrible people. When this happens, our tech industry has been the leader in terms of the stock market. Where does this go? Because the numbers still stay, even Tesla, with sales numbers, are falling off a cliff. And obviously, that's a meme stock. So there's nothing to be done about that. But what happens with these tech numbers, even as they grow higher? The Fed is going to drive this, in my opinion. So if you're telling me, and I know Rick Reader a long time, if he's going to become the Fed chair and he's a dollar realist, if you read any of his work or look at any of his PowerPoint presentations, but if he's going to cow to Trump in order to get the job and drop rates, stock market's going higher.

1:03:17The stock market is not going higher priced than gold. Stock market is not going higher priced than silver. But a weakening U.S. dollar stock market is going higher. And so I'm worried about the market because of the concentration. I'm worried about the market because Mr. Buffett took$400 billion out of the market when he looks at certain levels of valuation metrics that he looks at. And I'm worried about the market because Trump single-handedly is taking the marginal dollar that used to flow into America's safe and secure markets and liquid markets where rule of law was predictable and people now want to punish America.

1:04:03You talk about a boycott, an economic boycott, I'm talking about a capital boycott. You think the sovereign wealth fund of Norway is like, okay, let me put my incremental dollar into America right now? I'm telling you, they're not. They're like, hey, F you guys, but find other places to go with the money and look at the tourism numbers are down. Look at the flights from Europe. Look at the flights from Canada into Florida.

1:04:27Kara Swisher:Tourism is a bigger industry than manufacturing, everybody. Let's just do that. Exactly. So to me, what I'm worried about is the knock-on effects of Donald Trump. Okay. I think the tech guys are going to be okay probably for the next 12 months because of where race are going. Okay. Unless you're telling me Rick Reader's getting the job and he turns to you and says something that a traditional Fed chairman would say, which is, hey, I'm probably raising rates 50 basis points. Wait, what? Well, gold's at 5 ,000. The dollar is falling. The yen carry trade is FACACTA. And I'm going to raise rates here to put the thing back in equipoise.

1:05:08Okay. So the market is not sensing that. And by the way, Bitcoin is not doing well because for the market, it's not structural. If you told me that this is a structural end to the dollar, then Bitcoin would be wackadoodly rattling. What's happening right now is it's a short-term crisis. And so that's why people are piling into gold and silver. Bitcoin is the next step. That's when people say, okay, full-on currency disbacement. The dollar is now the Zimbabwe dollar. We got to get the hell out of the dollar. I have one of those. Yeah, I got, look, I'm a, hey, you better be nice to me. I am a billionaire in Zimbabwe, I have a$10 billion note in my wallet.

1:05:51But my point is the money is there to drive the market higher for the tech people.

1:05:56Kara Swisher:Yeah, if they behave. Anyway, all right, Anthony, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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1:08:11Kara Swisher:Okay, Anthony, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first. Okay, so you're not going to like this one, but the win of the week is actually Elon Musk, and I'm going to tell you why. He shows up with a haircut. He looks like he lost a little bit of weight. They give him 31 minutes of airtime at the World Economic Forum, a place that he disdained and criticized woefully for a decade. His buddy Larry Fink, who's now the interim chairman, and brings them on stage. And he was articulate. And he explained the vision for these data centers up in space. And he was the normal Elon. And he was the aspirational Elon.

1:08:51And you could like him or dislike him, but that's the win for the week.

1:08:55Kara Swisher:All right. The only thing I'm saying is a lot of his predictions, he makes them up. You know that. Like, you could track them. At this point, he said it so much. I'm going to have robots in your house in a year. And then 10 years goes. I understand that. But I'm talking about imagery. And, you know, the world is about imagery. I think you want, do you want the loss or you want to go for the - All right, go ahead, I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you. Okay, all right, all right. I heard his robots are cool. The loss, the loss. The loss is actually Donald Trump. No, Neil Ferguson said that he won Davos.

1:09:26And he explained this MAGA-esque way that he won Davos, but he actually lost Davos. I agree. Carney won Davos. He would have been number two on the win category for me. Although Carney is going to have a harder time because of where he sits north of the American border. But Donald Trump lost this week. He lost because he looked like an imbecile on Greenland. He lost because the marginal dollar is now moving away from the United States because of his imbecility. And the situation in ICE, the situation, the tragedy in Minnesota, Trump has lost that too because he's smart enough to know that the public opinion, And he's negative 17 on ICE and immigration in the United States.

1:10:11And he's got a 36 % approval rating. But when people ask their friends about Trump, they don't like what's happening to their neighbors. And so Trump is losing right now. And we're not even addressing his health issues. So that's the win and that's the loss. Despite the appearance that Trump, quote unquote, won and all the MAGA people like Butt Lick would say that he won, he did not win. He lost. You call him Nutlik, too. Coward. Coward. I cannot believe it's the same person that I was talking to at Davos 10 years ago. I mean, dude, you lost it, man. And you're never coming back from this, by the way.

1:10:53You're never coming back from this. Never coming back from this.

1:10:55Kara Swisher:All right. My fail. I'm going to do the other side of the Elon thing. The EU regulators are investigating X over sexualized AI images. is any reporter who does not ask him about this in every interview is not doing their jobs. What is happening on X is repulsive. I have four children. You have children. You have many children. Five of them, yep. Five of them. What is the fact that he has not gotten a hold of this on this one issue, I will continue to pound. I hope he gets investigated everywhere over these sexualized AI images because they have to stop. They have to stop. Whether they're non-consensual AI images of women, especially child pornography is what it is.

1:11:36Kara Swisher:To be known as a child pornographer is not the image you want. That's what I would say. So I'm going to take the other side on that. I think it's very—people are sick of this shit, of this, and it's enough. It's enough with them running roughshod over us. They're not going to sexualize our children. And I'm not a QAnon person. It's just so dangerous to do this. My win, you're also not going to like, but I'm going to do it. Zoran Mamdani telling New Yorkers to stay home and read Heat and Rivalry during a snowstorm, I thought was very funny and actually did a good job on his first snowstorm. He did, Anthony, you'll have to say.

1:12:12Kara Swisher:He's focusing in on New Yorkers. Let me tell you, so I am a New Yorker. I am not moving to Florida. I've got my home here in New York. I've been a New Yorker for 62 years. I want them to do well, okay? Honestly, if he does well, it's better for the rest of us. I agree. I think he handled the snowstorm beautifully. He put out great information. He knows what his job is right now, which is making all New Yorkers have a better life. I think that's a really— If he does that, he'll win a real election, and God bless him. I just want the city to be safe for all the obvious reasons. Yeah. I love New York City.

1:12:50Kara Swisher:Anyway, I'm questioning, have you watched Tita Rivalry, Anthony? I haven't, no. Is that something I need to do? You need to do it. Yeah. It might be vaguely uncomfortable for you, but I think you'll like it. No. Why would it be? What do you think? I'm homophobic? No, I don't. But there's a lot of sex happening. Baby, I want everybody to be happy, okay? All right. You should watch Eat a Rivalry, and we'll have a discussion about it. You are a pleasure to talk to. I can't be quiet at this point in my life. It's like my kids say, Dad, you got to speak up because you got to help people speak up. I think what I love about you and Scott is you're helping people speak up.

1:13:26You're providing a little bit of a ceiling for people to come in under.

1:13:30Kara Swisher:Yes, absolutely. God bless you for that. And God bless the people of Minnesota who are doing that. They're not organized protesters. They're not being paid for by George Soros. These are people who are seeing what's happening in their community, and they won't put up with it. Trump would not be responding the way he responded this morning if that were the case, Carol. That's right. Trust me, he would have gone crazy with evidence related to that. He's looking at the situation saying, I'm losing here. I got to pull this back. What a decent group of people and helping their fellow citizens in Minnesota.

1:13:59Kara Swisher:He's actually breathed life into Tim Walz again. I have to tell you, it's incredible. You know, but we'll see. That's one way to look at it. Yeah, well, actually, he's handled himself well. And just so you know, I urge everyone to listen to my Jacob Fry interview. Very interesting interview. Unfortunately, he did predict exactly what was going to happen. And let's hope it doesn't happen again. And my heart goes out to the family of Alex Preddy and also the family of Renee Good and all the families who are subject to brutality in this manner. It's repulsive. Can't have your government killing its own citizens.

1:14:32That is correct. And not form some level of coordinated resistance to that.

1:14:37Kara Swisher:Yep, absolutely. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to send a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Thank you, as always. Never a dull moment. And thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. I will read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Rich Shibley edited the video. Nishat Kuroa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

1:15:09Kara Swisher:Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. 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 later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks, Cara.

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