The Newsom-Trump Beef Heats Up

24:43Instead of all this manic, he confuses, there's an expression I use with people. I use it when I was a manager, and I'm not a manager anymore, but that people that confuse activity with productivity, right? Like, people that are manic and move around a lot, they look like they're doing things. It's sort of like, look busy, Jesus is coming kind of thing. this guy confuses activity with productivity and none of this is productive whatsoever and it makes us look stupider and it gives an enormous amount of tells to all kinds of people whether it's Europeans or Chinese or whoever we're dealing with everyone can tell what's going to happen here you know, world's worst poker player of all time like really, the sucker when you don't know who the sucker in the room is it is, as it's turned out, Trump but it just I find this just ridiculous waste of our time and not good for the US economy okay Scott let's go on a quick break we come back Elon's caving continues what a surprise

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27:55Scott, we're back. Elon Musk says he regrets some, only some, of his recent posts. He didn't say which ones about President Trump writing in an ex-post at 3 a.m. this week that, quote, they went too far, although he didn't exactly say which posts or what he meant and which ones. The public groveling comes after a private phone call with Elon reaching out to Trump late Monday, according to The New York Times. Vice President J.D. Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles were reportedly the peacemakers pushing Elon to repair his relation with Trump. When asked about Elon's post, Trump told The New York Post, I thought it was very nice that he did that.

28:30I don't know what to say. I don't think he can hold on if Trump does some things he doesn't like. I think he'll have another 3 a.m. something else happening, but we'll see. He's trying to turn his attention to Tesla, hyping the robo-taxi launch in Austin next week. He says it could slide because Tesla is being super paranoid about safety. Also, we'll talk about this advertising thing in a second, but talk about this apology. I mean, it's just Trump's never letting him back. That's what I read from it. And Susie Wiles has played this beautifully in jacking this guy out of the picture. By the way, speaking of polling, his polling is even worse than Trump's.

29:10Yeah, I think right now he looks like a dog roaming around with one of those domes. It's like, okay. I'm going to give you one of those. I've just been neutered. And I look stupid and I'm upset and depressed. I think he's just walking around with his dog dome right now. The president is more powerful than Elon. And I think he was under the impression that I'm invincible. I'm Rocketman. I'm Ironman. And he gets into a fight. It's a giant fucking distraction. He's not going to get anywhere near the West Lawn again unless it's highly catered and manicured. And I just thought it was so funny listening to all these Fox people talk about how sad it was the fight was.

29:55And they're like, I don't seem to be worried about Ukraine or Gaza. They just don't. But they're just so like heartbroken over the breakup of Musk and Trump. It all turned on Musk in a second after being his biggest cheerleaders, which was hysterical to see. Yeah. Again, another, I don't know. I know. It's sad. Another distraction. Who cares? Yeah. And his robo-taxi thing. I mean, it's incredible how many people are using Waymo, even though some of them got destroyed in Los Angeles. But we'll see if he catches up. You're not going to the launch event? I mean, I was looking at it last night. 2015, he said it was going to be two years.

30:35And then every year since 2016, he said self-driving is going to come within the - Every interview I've ever done with him, he's like, well, next year when we have full self-driving - It's going to come within the year. One of my interviews was in a lawsuit where he lied about it. And then he said the interview was fake. It was just crazy. He said it so many times. And it got comical after a while. It's like, oh, this year? This year? Is it going to be this year? And of course, we'll see. I'm sure they'll get them out on the streets because other people are deploying them so he can just copy them but i feel like i i don't think this is going to be the winning move for him and also for people who don't know they're the the the optimist robot thing is the other thing they're trying to do a tesla and the person who ran it just left there's all these people leaving tesla um i think it's in i think it's in a spiral well he needs it's going to be interesting because he has a launch event which they delayed another couple of weeks, it's being done in a geo-fenced area of Austin to try and control it.

31:33But even he said Tesla is either going to be worth a lot more with self-autonomous and Cathie Wood's out there saying that autonomous is the future and putting a$1 ,000 price target on Tesla, or he said, or it's going to be worth next to zero. And if you were to value Tesla as just an automobile company and say, all right, that looks like they are losing slash lost the autonomous race, and you valued every Tesla at the same market cap as BYD, which is generous because BYD is doing better and it seems to have a better car for less money. But if you gave Tesla the benefit of the doubt and said, okay, it's at least a BYD-like brand and gave them the same market cap per vehicle that BYD commands, it would mean that Tesla stock would decline by 95%.

32:20It's such a brand destruction. You know, I honestly, Scott, when I see them on the street, I don't let them in. I don't know why. I just hate the brand now. And I like the brand. I really did like the Tesla brand. But I just don't like people in them. And I know that's unfair. I feel like a jerk for doing that. First time in a while I saw the Cybertruck in D.C. There were a bunch of them here at the beginning of the Trump era. And I saw one and I hadn't seen one in a while. And having seen it not in a while, I was like, oh, what a terrible. Who didn't stop him and say, you can't do this? You cannot release this truck.

32:57Yeah, but just some compensation for that is it's good to know that right now there are more National Guard troops and Marines in L.A. than there are stationed in Syria or Iraq combined. That's correct. I mean, talk about if you're the president, for me, it always comes back to management. What is a manager supposed to do? You're supposed to deploy capital to a greater return to your competitive set. And this is how he is deploying the military capital. He's taking it down in Syria and Iraq. He's not using his sway and power to force Israel to announce a multinational Arab force into Gaza and stop the destruction there.

33:31He's not figuring out a bipartisan legislation which he could get to put more teeth into the sanctions against Russia to get them to the table. He's sending in the National Guard to fucking Paramount Boulevard, to like Culver City. I mean, he does not know how to allocate capital. I just don't. And at the end of the day, the president, folks, who you want as a president? is someone you don't hear about. And it's just a very good manager. And yeah, and knows how to allocate more capital than any capital allocator in history. And this guy is just a terrible capital allocator. Oh, he never did. Come on, he was such a shitty business person.

34:08One of the things that my favorite part of, we'll go back to this LA thing, is all these people posting pictures of like having lunch in LA. And like, it's terrible here. There is a lot of AI slop, by the way. I grew up in LA. I've texted all my friends and I said, what's going on there? How is it? And they're like, you're watching the same thing I am. That's not. I mean, granted, a lot of my friends are pretty privileged. They're not living in downtown L.A., but we haven't seen anything. Yeah. I have friends all over L.A. and they're like, this is fucking ridiculous. But anyway, there's a lot of AI slop out there showing much worse than it is.

34:42It's just not true. A lot of the imagery that's being used. And Fox, of course, it's like it's Armageddon there. I feel like they're using clips from that movie, Escape from L.A., or something like that. Anyway, the second thing, this is interesting, because we're headed off to France for Cannes Lions, and it's the, or is it Cannes? I don't know. It's called Cannes. I know it's called Cannes. Cannes Lions, whatever. Cannes Lions. We're going to France, underpants. And advertising is the big deal here, but this was an interesting story, and I don't know if Linda Yaccarina is going to be there, but I hope not to see her.

35:17Elon Musk's ex has made a habit of threatening advertisers with legal actions if they don't spend. I love that. Advertise with us or we'll sue your ass. Sue your ass. Ex is bringing these threats of lawsuits. This is a Wall Street Journal story. It was really interesting. Everybody, I've heard this from a lot of people. So to secure at least six large advertisers that pressure campaigns targeted advertisers like Amazon, Verizon, Pinterest, Ralph Lauren, including some of the illegally, including accusing of illegally colluding in an ad boycott after Musk take over the platform and the threats were an empty.

35:48Pinterest declined to increase ad spending on X and found itself added to the ad boycott suit, which they're going to lose. And as the world goes these days, the FTC is investigating whether antitrust laws were violated by coordinated boycotts of advertisers. So I think this is probably going to go away. What in the actual fuck? You have to take my ads if I don't think it's a safe... I'm sure they've tried to make safety improvements on that platform, but it's not working. It's not a safe place to advertise so easily. It's so clearly not a safe place to advertise. What do you think about this?

36:24This is nuts. I mean, I know very little about X now. I got off it two years ago, but NBC did a study and they found that over 150 verified premium accounts, I guess that's the blue check ones, have all posted or amplified pro-Nazi content. And I think the easiest way to get fired in media is to buy ads on X. Because if you buy ads on X, it's like going to work for the mob. There's no getting out. It's like you're not allowed to leave. And what basically is happening here is there's a non-zero probability. If you begin advertising on X, if you decide to stop, you might end up in a lawsuit. They might sue you.

37:00I can't think that's a good business strategy. I can't imagine how hard it must be to be, generally speaking, ad salespeople that end up at can, they're either former athletes or hot women because that's who media buyers want to hang out with. And they're generally like 105 IQ, 135 EQ people. They're the fraternity rush chairman. They weren't the president. They weren't scholars. They're super social, super likable, nice people. And they make good money. Their colleagues hate them because they're the most overcompensated relative to their IQ and their work ethic. But they're really attractive and they're nice people to hang out with.

37:39That job at X must be the worst job in the world right now. 100. Threatening them. They don't like being threatened. Well, and I imagine most of the salespeople at X are not threatening people. They're not. They're probably just trying to sell fucking ear cleaner ads. Whatever it is, they're doing their best to get L 'Oreal to test again on this platform that doesn't work. And then I would imagine a lot of advertisers who have no shortage of places to spend their precious ad dollars are like, boss, why would I advertise with you? Is someone going to call me and threaten to sue me if I decide to pause my campaign?

38:13I don't need that shit. Yeah. I think, listen, Lindy Ackerman used to have a great reputation in speak of this cadre of people. She's never going to work in this business again. Will she need to though? My guess is he's, they're not dumb. He probably promised her enough fucking money. But you know how that works with him. People who work for him don't always end up in the best place. But it must be, just realistically, Kara, he's been able to attract so many talented people to run different companies for him. I don't believe that his compensation system must be very generous. Possibly. Well, I've heard different things.

38:49I've heard mixed things. A lot of people couldn't get out fast enough and then they didn't get what they were paid. He does a combination of things. In this case, it is an embarrassment that someone who was a well-regulated advertising person is resorting to lawsuits in order to sell ads. And in a paranoid fashion, I've heard from lots of people that she truly believes that there was a conspiracy. And because she's in that world, she's sort of a Trumper and everything else. But it's just, it's an embarrassment, Linda. You used to be, I worked with her. She was good. This is an embarrassment. And she should be ashamed of herself, what she's doing.

39:26Anyway, she was good. She was the top one or one of the top people. She worked at NBC, is that right? She did. I worked with her. And she was an ad person, right? You know that type. I sure do. And good at it. Those are the people I hang out with. I like them. Yeah, and good at it. But this is just, you have covered yourself in shame. And let me tell you, all your old friends say that to me. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about OpenAI's Google deal.

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41:37Scott, we're back with more news. OpenAI plans to use Google Cloud Service to meet its computing needs. The deal doesn't replace OpenAI's need for Microsoft's Azure, which used to be the company's exclusive partner. Google is not yet delivering compute to OpenAI, but the deal was reportedly signed last night. It's important. They need more compute. In a similar story, Facebook is working with Scale AI, this very talented guy who's the founder of it in trying to reboot their AI. The llama stuff wasn't going as well as Mark Zuckerberg expected, and he's now shook the trees there and is redoing it, which is good.

42:14He's good that way to do those things. And on the AI news front, OpenAI has delayed the release of its first open model in years, which is really expected this month. But it's pulling away. Even I've talked to meta people and other people, and they're like, OpenAI is pulling away in terms of features, constant features. So it's still a real race going on here. Google's extended voluntary buyouts, by the way, to U.S. employees in multiple divisions, cost-cutting measures to help fund for AI spending. And they're all rejiggering. Even at Google, there's new people. They're reassessing who should be running this and what their focus should be, each of these companies.

42:49but they're all doing a lot. And this new eye research lab that Meta is doing is gonna be dedicated to pursuing super intelligence. There's just a lot going on in the sector. Yeah, I thought the both announcements, the announcement that OpenAI was gonna work with Google, the Google Cloud kind of blew my mind because I would have thought that Microsoft would have captured all of that business. And I don't know if it's a falling out and OpenAI wanting to diversify their compute supply chain, or if according to Microsoft, Microsoft is saying we just don't even have enough given how amazing and how dominant OpenAI is and we need more than one source of compute.

43:32It just kind of blew my mind when I heard that. The other thing that was really interesting is that Google is now a newspaper company. I remember at the New York Times, we were constantly sending out letters saying, a voluntary buyout. Google just sent out voluntary buyout letters to a ton of people and basically saying that these are the jobs that are most vulnerable to AI. And typically the way it waterfalls is that, all right, we offer you a buyout. And if you don't take this buyout of X, if you get fired in three months, you only get 0.5X. Now, the problem with these types of buyouts is the people, the best people leave.

44:06And the way you usually do these buyouts is you go to your top 10 % and you say, FYI, you're on the inside. We're doing a buyout, buyout slash layoff, trying to encourage people to leave, but you're doing really well here. You're about to get promoted. Just ignore the letter. That's the smart kind of buyout move is you go to the people who don't want to leave. The other thing they're doing is everyone talks about quiet quitting. The new quiet firing is back to work mandates. And if you'll notice on the same day, Google announced a return to work mandate because they know they'll lose 10, 20, 30 % of people who got really used to walking their dog in Prospect Park every afternoon.

44:43And so a lot of people will leave. But what's interesting is Google, which has got the greatest concentration of IP around AI, has real insight into the world where the economy and jobs have said AI is going to eliminate a lot of these jobs. Which we've heard from a lot of companies, you know. We've heard from a lot. Even when we're together, we were with, I forget who it was, Diller or someone else. He was talking about it. All these companies have been talking about this and are on the front end. I think it's actually a good thing that Google does this. I think it's a good thing that Mark, everyone was sort of writing, oh, Meta's AI thing got shook up.

45:20I'm like, good. They're doing it quickly, right? They're adding and subtracting people. Mark is a going for it kind of guy, right? Right. He always like met is not working, gone, like that kind of thing. And that's that's his superpower, I think, is his control. And speaking of good managers, he is a good manager. And so it's interesting that people look at it as a bad thing. I don't think any of this is a bad thing. I think it shows that people are sort of adjusting as they're extending, if that makes sense. Yep. Yeah. You know, it makes sense to do this. And the more these companies do this, the stronger they're going to be.

45:57But I do pretty much everyone at the other companies I've been talking to a lot of these other companies do acknowledge that OpenAI has been running away with it in terms of features moving faster, getting things done. Obviously, one of the worries at Meta is that ChatGPT has become the Kleenex, right? just like Google became the word for search, that ChatGPT is now the word for this. And so can you catch up if one company represents, you know, that's what people think of when they think of AI. From a marketing point of view, it's an interesting moment, I think. I agree. I have nothing to add.

46:36Yeah, but I mean, it depends on how important it will be to them. When have you heard that from me? I know. Yeah, they're the Kleenex. Everyone thinks it's interesting. All right, last thing. These two interesting little stories, which I thought we should talk about very briefly. ABC News has parted ways with senior national correspondent Terry Moran after he called President Trump and Stephen Miller world-class haters on X. If you remember, Moran was the one who did that testy MS-13 interview with Trump who kept pretending a Photoshop thing was real. The network announced it would not renew Moran's contract after a 28-year stint calling the X-Post a clear violation of policies.

47:09As a reminder, ABC paid$60 million to settle a case over comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos last year. Morant seems okay. He's already told followers. He did a really delightful video. It'll be on Substack shortly. He's sort of taking it well. Any thoughts on this? He shouldn't have posted that, largely because he was a beat reporter and was covering the White House. He probably, even if he thought that, he should have kept it to himself. He could have done it in a different way by pointing to polls or things they've done or videos or other people talking about it. He shouldn't have done that.

47:44Yeah, but Dan Rather and Peter Jennings did much worse. But when the market was booming, they didn't fire people for this. They just called them in and said, hey, boss, sex with a grownup, don't do this again. So he wasn't fired by ABC. He was fired by Alphabet and Meta, who are sucking so much oxygen out of the room of cable ad-supported news that these guys are looking for reasons to fire people. and I think this is, quite frankly, I think this is bullshit. I don't think this is how you treat people. The guy worked there 28 years. He was the kind of guy that in my mind sort of did the work and was good at what he did.

48:18So what you do is you call him and you say, you know what, you made life hard for us. Business sucks. You need to announce that. I don't know Terry. I mean, I know Terry. I don't know him well. I think he was looking for his next gig. ABC needs to cut costs. There's a way they could have done this without publicly shaming the guy and pretending to have fucking virtue. If the company was going, if the company's revenues were increasing 10 or 15 % a year, they would have called him in and said, boss, you can't do this again. He would have said, fine. And they would have wink, wink, see at the country club.

48:49But now they're all looking to cut costs. So they pretend to be virtuous and have these journalistic standards. If Terry had been anchoring a news program where they had more and more opioid-induced constipation ads that were increasing the ad rates faster than inflation, they would have found all - Sky Rizzy. It's Sky Rizzy is the ask, but go ahead. But they, Mark Zuckerberg fired him, not ABC. ABC is looking for any reason it can to lay off people and then pretend they're journalists. Meanwhile, they're about to get fucked in the ass by, in a bad way, not the pleasurable way, by a fascist. And bend the knee like every other media company that's scared to death of this guy right now trying to stay out of his crosshairs.

49:29So, yeah, fine. When people work for you for 28 years, they're given do-overs. I agree. Scott, I think he's a talented bride, but he did put himself in a— given the history here recently, not a smart move on his part. I agree. He should have been just taken off for a little while, talked to, and then he would have— I would have had him say— Remember when Dan Rather walked off set and CBS went to black for, what was it, six minutes? Yes, I remember. He left the air. But they found excuses to keep Big Dan around. Until he did that lawsuit that didn't work out so well. They definitely. I agree. I agree.

50:08When I saw it, I was like, oh, no, no, no. All these companies talk about how we're a family and a team. You don't need a family or a team when you're doing well. You need them when you fuck up. They should have treated him. He was there 28 years doing the work. You show the guy a little bit more grace. And if at the first false move that you fuck up, you get ceremoniously drawn and quartered, guess what? All of us are going to be unceremoniously fired at some point. Well, except now he's not because he's on his own. I'm like, welcome to the do whatever the fuck you want. I hope he does well. Yeah, I think he will.

50:39What's his sub stack? Let's promote it. Do you know what it's called? Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to bring him on Scott Free August. Oh, I like that. Oh, that's a great idea. I'm going to bring all troublemakers, bringing in Scaramucci. I'm making troublemakers for you. I really like Terry because more than anything, he's very handsome. He's very handsome. He's a handsome man. In any case, I agree with you. Given this environment, I mean, he shouldn't have done that. He should have known. Oh, ABC, you're so righteous. No, here's$10 million, dear fascist, dear leader. Oh, ABC. Good for you, Bobby Iger.

51:06You're a man of principles. Here's the thing. I have never thought of anywhere I worked as my family. Have you? I've never had been under that delusion. You have a much more romantic version of companies, don't you? Yeah, but my companies are smaller, and I get very strong paternal reward from my companies because it's a bunch of young people. So I get very, I'm very rapacious the first year, two years. I'm like, you got it. This is like the Navy SEALs. Anyone can try out, but most of you aren't going to be here in a year. But the people I've worked with, I mean, you know my people. I've been working with my people for like 10, 20 years.

51:42I had 20 years of saying people working for code. I get it. I get that. And I never would have treated them like this. But it's a really interesting thing is that a lot of these, I kind of would rather the Google thing. Like, okay, it's not working. We're shifting. It sort of feels cleaner to me in a lot of ways. And not be offended by it. But Terry Moran is a very talented broadcaster. And we wish him incredible wealth and health and whatever the heck. And don't feel bad, Terry. Don't worry about it. Fuck them if they can't take a joke. Anyway, you'll like it better on the outside. It's much more fun.

52:17That's right. Come on in. The water's fine. Independent, well, you're an independent journalist. Independent like whatever it is I do. Yeah. You're going to enjoy it. It's fun. Yeah, it's true. You're not a journalist, but you're something. I don't know what you are. I'm something. You're a turducken. You're a turducken of some sort. I'm not alien from Close Encounters. It's like, we don't understand him, but we think he's nice. Yeah. In other Disney news, this is interesting, though. Disney and Universal have sued AI image generator MidJourney, which is a, people really don't like MidJourney for copyright infringement.

52:46The lawsuit alleges MidJourney helped itself to countless copyrighted works to train some of its software while news organizations, record leaders, and others have filed similar suits. This marks the first suit by a major Hollywood studio. This is a good move on their part. Just like this, you know, doing shit with Mickey is not cool for whatever. Mickey's out of, maybe he's out of copyright, but I think it's parts of him is, parts of Mickey is. But what do you think about this? When I was in the fraternity, one of my fraternity brothers or one of my close friends was the head of campus events at UCLA or involved in campus events.

53:24And he ran this ad that showed for Simba, they were doing a screening of the Lion King, and he showed Mickey Mouse riding Simba in the Daily Bruin. And we got a call from, I think it was Disney's lawyer saying, hi, just FYI, you'll be served a subpoena. We wanted to give you some forward notices of courtesy, but you're not allowed to do this. And I'm like thinking I can solve every problem. And so of course we did like three bong loads. And then I said, I know Michael Ovitz was president of our fraternity. He was president of ZBT UCLA. We'll call him. We know these powerful people. I know how to solve this, right?

54:03I think I can fix any problem. Total, total arrogant douchebag, American male. And I'm like, but first we need to get high. So we call the lawyer and we say, look, we apologize. This was clearly wrong. We won't do it again. But we were fraternity brothers with Michael Ovitz thinking that would carry real weight. And we won't do it again. And we apologize. We're just a bunch of college kids. And the general counsel was like, oh, my daughter goes to UCLA. We know her. We had a nice conversation, da-da-da. He's like, anyways, guys, he goes like, back to the lawsuit. He's like, he's like, he's like, guys, I'll see you in court.

54:42You don't fuck with the mouse. And then he hung up. And what happened? You took it down, right? And, and here's the bottom line. The best companies, uh, uh, usually invest a lot, have good people. And they're also rapacious about the defense of our IP. And as I go full circle for my fraternity in this situation. This is a moment for content creators to absolutely rally together and not do one-off deals, but to get someone really mean and really angry and a lot of law firms and charge everyone a certain amount of money and go after all these guys and say, okay, if we see you're crawling our books, our content, our songs, our speeches, anything, we're coming for you.

55:28And you gathered all similar to what the artists do around the rights labels, where they say you can, and then we'll license it to you. We're going to make a lot of money or you guys are making a lot of money. That's fine. If you want to use all of Penguin Portfolio Random House's archive of every single book they have, fine. And then we're going to figure out a deal with our authors. We're going to do this for all artists. We're going to, by the way, I met one of my, I literally met my favorite artists last night. We'll come back to that because I know you're dying to talk more about me. But this is a moment.

55:55We passed that moment about 20 years ago, letting Google crawl our shit, and now it's too late. This is that moment in AI. All of these guys should be binding together. Everyone from Axel Springer to News Corp to the Royal Academy of Arts to everyone that has intellectual property should be coming. That's what Diller said a year ago, a year and a half ago. A hundred percent. And I said it a year and a month ago. Thank you very much. But they need one. One, they need to speak with one voice, and they need to be very aggressive in the pushback here. They don't fuck with the mouse. All these little efforts pushing back.

56:28Reddit filed a lawsuit last week. They all need to come together. They do. Anyway. You're 100 % right. 100 % right. Well, we'll see if they do. So the mouse, we like this move, which you did to Terry. Not great. You didn't want to hear about my favorite artist? Oh, who's your favorite artist? Very quickly. So I went to this very, very fancy event last night. I went to the Royal Academy of Arts, like summer gala last night. You know, I don't like to go out. Did you wear spats? I was forced to go out. And I only own one piece of art. I don't buy wine or art because all my friends, as they got rich, started buying art and wine.

57:01And I'm like, I'm just not that guy. But someone very important to me when I was in Istanbul with them took me to see this exhibition and said, I know you'll just love this guy, even though he knows I'm not into art. And it was a guy named Grayson Perry. And his art, he has, do you know that big orange? You probably know better than I do. You know that big orange sketch etching I have in my living room? And it's called Map of a Politician. And I just fell in love with it. And then this person for my birthday bought it for me. And it was the only piece of art I own. And he's a really interesting dude.

57:31Did you buy any? Oh, no, I didn't. No, I literally own one. I own two pieces. I own one piece of art and one photograph. The piece of art makes me feel closer to the person who bought it for me. And I love it. I have a photograph of Otto Frank and returning to where his family was. And whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself, I just go look at that photograph. But anyways, he was there last night and I got to meet him. And that was really exciting. He's a really lovely man. But anyways, I got to meet the artist of the One Piece of Art Island. Oh, that's nice. That's simply Scott. You are just evolving into such a lesbian.

58:02It's fantastic. By the time I'm 90, I'm going to be like, I'm going to have manners. I'm going to be able to read the room on my 100th birthday. The journey of Scott Galloway. There you go. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. He's a human boy.

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59:53Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. I sort of had kid gloves around this, but well, that one prediction. What was that noise? Do that noise again. What is that? Why did you just make that noise? I don't know. I have a prostate exam later today and I'm just practicing. Okay. Elbows on the table. Elbows on the table. Cough. That's all I know. Yeah. Run your run your hands to my hair. Yeah. Yeah. I think Gavin Newsom is now coming out of this the de facto leader of the Democratic Party. And that was a void the size of the frickin Grand Canyon. You as you've noted now, should he declare first presidency?

1:00:33I was thinking this. I almost texted him and said you should declare. He has. He has. He has. He has. And then start making pronouncements. No, probably not yet, because it would warrant. But he's already he's the people who should declare presidency, the people that nobody knows because they'll get a ton of he he is already the de facto candidate by virtue of what's happened this week. And he should start. And he's also and I said this a few months ago, him bringing Charlie Kirk on and Newt Gingrich on his podcast. As much as the Taliban of the left hates that, that was the right move. It was just a bad interview, Scott.

1:01:05I don't have a problem with him having it on. It just he didn't do a good job. But go ahead. I think he's the de facto leader of the Democratic Party right now coming out of this, too. Can I ask? Can I add something? Who do you think if he was running? I was thinking if he ran, his vice president should either be Pete Buttigieg or someone I saw the other night, Gina Raimondo. Anyway, those are my ideas. I think she's fantastic. She is amazing. She was she's as sharp as a friggin tack. If you want someone that's good for the economy and just does the work, she's she's that person. It's a question.

1:01:34She may run for president, by the way. A woman will not be the Democratic nominee, and nor should she be. If we have another woman lose for the third time, Carrie, you're not going to have a female president for 50 years. I thought she would, as much as I think she is utterly capable of being president, I thought she should be the vice president for Gavin Newsom. That would be a really interesting— Let me be luxus and sexist in one fell swoop. I can guarantee you not one person—the Democratic nominee will not be under 5 '10". No president in the last 100 years has been under 5 '10". Well, he's a big—he's a handsome man.

1:02:03He's a handsome— That's my point. I hate to say it. What a handsome man. We will have a female president. She will be a Republican. And the key attribute she will bring is a reputation that if your family runs a stop sign, she'll drone your ass. She will be the first female president of the U.S. Will have to be someone so fucking scary. She'll drone your ass. Well, that would have been Liz Cheney, right? That would have been in the old days. Liz is probably the closest we could have had to an electable female president. Someone else will come along. She would drone your ass. Anyways, it's not going to be a Democrat.

1:02:32And the Democrats are not going to take their chances on a gay man. They're not going to take their chances on a woman. They're not going to take their chances on someone who's less than 5 '10". I'm sorry. That's the bottom line. Anyways, as VP, that's a really good one. Just play that game for a second. I'd probably macho it up and bring in like a former military person. I don't know. Mark Kelly. There's a lot. There's so many good VP candidates. I think, yeah. I don't know they'll figure out what states they need help in who do you like? I think there's a lot of interesting people I don't know yet because I think Wes Moore is always talked about and most feared by the right that's for sure he's very good I still like in my life a Michael Bennett would be such a good president I always think of who'd be a good president of course that doesn't matter anymore celebrity matters probably I think when I ran into Gina Rondo the other day I was like she's so fucking impressive she's so fucking impressive You know who we just had on the Raging Moderates party yesterday was Richie Torres.

1:03:36Oh, I'm not a fan. What? Not a fan. Sorry. Oh, my God. I love that guy. I think he's so performative. I still keep thinking. I agree with you. Raised by a single mother. Struggled with depression. I don't like him. Oh, he's really good. Let me say, by the way, our producers are saying there have been presidents under 5 '10". In the last 100 years? Who? Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy was 5 '10"? Under, I guess, yeah. Must have been. That's what our producers did today. What did you do? 59.5. 59.5. I don't know how tall Harry Truman was. Okay. 1.7. That wasn't a particularly successful presidency, even though he had a great post-presidency.

1:04:16Harry Truman, 5 '9". And he came to office because the president died. So, different. 5 '9". Jimmy Carter was 5 '10". All right. He says 9.5. All right. Well, whatever. He's that tall. He wasn't tall. Whatever. All that matters is I'm eight inches. Oh, my God. Okay. I won't tell you my nickname in the fraternity. I won't tell you my nickname in the fraternity. Don't force me to tell you my nickname in the fraternity, Cara. It's tripod. So you've already told me. God, we're like an old couple. I know we are. Give me the Republican candidate then. I think it's going to be J.D. Vance. I do not think that.

1:04:53No? Go ahead. It's either going to be Marco Rubio or like a Glenn Youngkin. That's my feeling. Yunkin's the guy who would win. Well, I'm just saying. Although he hasn't had the most spectacular Virginia situation. But Trump's going to have so much power that he'll basically, unless he has a huge erosion in his base, he'll be able to pick the person. I think it'll be, I don't think it'll be, I think, oh shit, I don't know. I think he likes Vance. I don't think he likes Vance. You don't think he likes Vance? Vance is unlikable. He really is. He's just, he repels voters. They need an interesting looking person.

1:05:26It's got to be like a Yunkin or, and Trump wants to keep it there. So it's not going to be his son who forget that. I mean, he knows he's a loser. Probably, it's got to be Rubio or something like that. Something like that. I think Rubio is too short. All right. Okay. Anyway, he's also somewhat charmless too. Also, that's true. When he said little Marco, I thought, mm-hmm, that is correct. Oh, wait. So my actual prediction is that the worst, I think probably the worst acquisition of the last decade in terms of value destruction or overpaying happened last week. OpenAI's acquisition of the design firm, I think it's called IO.

1:06:05Oh, yes, Johnny Ives. I think Johnny Ives is fantastic. Just to be clear, a company with no products gets acquired for six and a half billion dollars for a guy who is a genius designer. He deserves all is due. Sorry, boss, that's not worth$6.5 billion. Maybe he's cosplaying Steve Jobs. This thing will be written down by, let me be clear, iconic, legendary designer, maybe even worth like$100 million, which means a$6.4 billion write-down. And in addition, OpenAI is going to find that designing products, they'd be much better off. Let me save them some time. Partner with hardware firms. Right. Absolutely.

1:06:49Hardware is hard. I mean, you thinking that you're going to bring in this Guy Ritchie-like genius who dresses incredibly well and rightfully is considered one of the great designers of all time, is going to figure out a way for you to get into products? No. A very charming guy. He is. He was the last speaker at Code along with Lorraine Powell Jobs and Tim Cook. Yeah. By the way, amazing. I'm not, I'm not this, I'm not, the whole thing when the two of them did this promo video on the acquisition and it was so much like, I'm just a billionaire standing in front of a billionaire wanting to be trillionaires.

1:07:23I mean, it was just so like. It was, it was strange. Oh God. Whatever, let's give it to them. They've done a nice job. All right. 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. Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe this week on Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with Catherine Ann Edwards, PhD economist and columnist for Bloomberg News. She weighs in on the latest jobs data and unpacks how the economy has reacted to Trump's policies. Let's listen to a clip. What we are seeing is the effect of uncertainty.

1:08:02And uncertainty is all about idling. I'm not going to move much in either direction until I know which way the wind is blowing. So I'm not going to hire that many people. I'm not going to fire that many people. I'm not going to make massive investments, but I'm not going to pull back from the ones that I have. I'm just waiting in place to understand what the world is going to look like. And that has been the economy really since September. Really? Very absolutely true. No one knows what to do because he's crazy. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

1:08:34Scott will be back next week from France, where I will be charging things to Scott's room very soon, very, very soon, overpriced, whatever it happens to be. But that will be the charge there, Scott. We'll be back next week from France. In fact, Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie and her Todd interviewed this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Saverio, and Dan Chalon. Dishak Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine, Vox Media.

1:09:08You can subscribe to the magazine and onwymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. This is not leadership. It's fascist foreplay and history will not be kind.

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