World Cup Controversy, Trump Accounts, and DOGE Farewell

18:44Kara Swisher:Yeah. Any thoughts on who that would be? None of the current lunatics. They don't have the riz, Kara Swisher. It would have to be a young lunatic that we don't know right now. Not Tucker Carlson. I've never asked you about Tucker Carlson. How do you look at him? Tucker is a typical dweeb in the high school. I wasn't a clique guy in high school. My uncle owned a motorcycle shop, so I did have a leather jacket, but I was also the captain of the football team. So I was not into the whole clique thing. But Tucker would have been that kid that was like a sneaky bully. And so a sneaky bully is no one's looking.

19:20I'm going to poke Kara in the eye. Okay. No one's looking. I'm going to do something devious or pranksterish to somebody that's weaker than me due to my insecurities. Right. So Tucker wasn't the out and out bully because I mean, you saw that guy, you just walk off to him, punch him in the face and make him go away. And so what Tucker does, he's like a dodgeball bully. Okay. So hear me out of that. You remember when you were in elementary school, you were probably the You were probably the smart kid in the back lurking with the ball. I was too small to hit.

19:47Kara Swisher:I was always the last kid before to get hit at that dodgeball. Of course, and you were always waiting for the big jock to hit the other jock, and then you snuck up and hit the big jock, and you won. Correct. Thank you. Okay, but Tucker is a dodgeball bully. Okay, he's been sneaking around bullying and terrorizing people, okay, for his adult life. And now he's got a very big, broad podcast that he can do this on. My buddy, Chris Cuomo, people should go look at the tape. He took a karate chop to Tucker's Adams app ball as he was spouting his BS about Russia. Okay. And, you know, and Chris doesn't give a shit, just took him to the ground.

20:27And so I say to myself, number one, is he on the take from Russia? I don't know. So I'm not going to say yes or no, but he uses Russian talking points when he talks. He does. Yeah. Number two, he's all of a sudden anti-Israel. And we can debate that. I'm not saying Israel's got a great brand right now. I think they've had a lot of mishaps. But you went from pro-Israel hanging out with Huckabee to now you're anti-Israel. And I'm like, what are you doing exactly? And you know what he's doing? He's feeding the ducks of his audience. Okay, so he's a dodgeball bully who feeds the ducks of his audience.

21:02Kara Swisher:Does that give him a chance or not? No, no, he's got no chance. And I think he's a complete tool. Also, if Trump is alive when he announces his candidacy, Trump is going to send like orange maned cruise missiles up to Maine and blow Tucker out of the water. because one thing about Trump, he knows the Achilles heel of people like Tucker. So, and I predict Tucker won't run because, listen, that is a big boy sport, as you know. It's not podcasting. It's not hanging around waiting for your next massage. It's like, okay, we got to get on the road. And you can hate Donald Trump, but Donald Trump is a grinder.

21:44I watched him, you know, eight in the morning till midnight. Let's grind this thing out. Tucker doesn't strike me, is that?

21:51Kara Swisher:I see. Pass me the nail file. I'm about to get a mani-pedi Tucker Carlson, the dodgeball pull in. Can I ask you one last question on this? So what's Trump's move? We've got July, August, everything's quiet. What does he have? He doesn't have much time until the midterms, besides trying to stop the election itself. What does he do now? How does he get attention? What is he going to do? Well, we have more revulsion coming. So on July 19th, he'll be in the Meadowlands. He'll be at the New Jersey, New York stadium, handing the trophy to somebody who has won the World Cup because Infantino, Sica Fantino is going to let him do that.

22:28So that's going to be a big day for him. Lots of attention on him. He'll have billions of people watching. He'll be very happy about that. Right. Exactly. And he's announced his grift to the public. Okay. So if you ever thought that he hasn't learned from the KGB, he has actually. Because what does the KGB do? They spy out in the open. Right. Remember John LeCarre would explain to you that the person shows up, they look like a KGB spy, they act like a KGB spy. So you don't think they're a KGB spy, but guess what? They are one. And so Trump is like, let me announce to you my grift. Okay. And so here's all the different things that I'm doing.

23:02He even put the$15 ,000 of Infantino tickets that were given to him on his financial disclosure, the FIFA tickets that were given to him. So what he's going to do is he knows he doesn't give a shit about his party. He doesn't care who wins the election. As long as he's not overly investigated, he's going to pardon himself and his family. He's going to try to make$10 billion over the next two years.

23:27Kara Swisher:All right. Well, that'll get us into it. So that's what he's working on,$10 billion. That's what he's going to do. Yeah. He's about glory, self-aggrandizement, and moolah. That's the holy trinity inside his brain. All right. Okay. Well, we'll talk about that because we're going to talk about something that you know a lot about, which is cryptocurrency. Okay, Anthony, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, millions of investors lost billions on Trump's meme coin.

24:13moving companies including Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey to ensure they're always audit ready. And now, Vanta is helping companies like yours watch the risks that show up between audits across your vendors, your AI tools, and your whole environment. How? The Vanta agent works like a 24-7 GRC engineer in the background, finding issues, drafting fixes for you, and cutting vendor assessment time by up to 50%. Whether you're a fast-growing startup or a global enterprise, Vanta is here to help you automate your security and compliance and earn improved trust. Get started today at vanta.com slash pivot. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash pivot.

24:55This is advertiser content from Harvey AI. We have a choice over who we work with and who we don't, specifically who we allow to advertise and who we don't. And for those of you who watch my content, I am not an AI catastrophist. I'm an AI optimist. I think it's going to create more jobs than it destroys. And I think our job as professionals is to figure out how to leverage these tools. AI, more than almost anything I do in terms of what I could point to for real economic leverage and savings, is 100 % in the legal fields. Harvey is the AI designed specifically for legal work, trusted by leading law firms and enterprise legal teams.

25:30All right, so now I'm looking at their demo. It plugs into tools that lawyers already work with, LexisNexis, Microsoft. And this is a key, and I do this internally with my LLMs. With permissions, it lets you look at the firm's own files and databases. So here it's answering a question, reads the complaint, pulls the relevant terms, checks the web, weighs the evidence, and drafts a response. But it also can do this in a shared workspace between the firm and the client, so they both have visibility into the work being done and can both add value to it. I think this space is clearly sort of hand in glove for AI.

26:12So there's no doubt about it. This, I think, is going to be super helpful, not only for law firms themselves, but internally for general counsels and companies. Harvey is AI tailored for law. You can learn more at Harvey.ai.

26:32Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has an easy answer and when you're working through something complicated It helps to have a thought partner to kick ideas around with and uncover what's really going on beneath the surface That's where Claude comes in. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter Plus, Cloud's research capabilities can have comprehensive, reliable analysis and citations turning hours of research into minutes.

27:07And Cowork brings Cloud's codegentic power to your desktop. No terminal required. Just point it to a folder on your computer and add connectors, including Google Drive and Gmail. Describe what you need, and it handles the rest. You just queue up tasks and come back to find finished work. For problems worth solving, get started with Cloud today at cloud.ai slash pivot. That's cloud.ai slash pivot. And check out Cloud Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Cloud.ai slash pivot.

27:41Kara Swisher:Anthony, we're back. Nearly 1 million people who bought President Trump's meme coin have lost a combined$3.8 billion. Guess where it went? At the same time, Trump disclosed earnings of$636 million from the meme coin in 2025. Trump profited whether the coin price rose or fell, collecting fees every time the token was traded, which he just called a VIG, which he often prompted his followers on True Social to do. Meanwhile, Michael Saylor's strategy has abandoned its famous never sell Bitcoin. Wasn't a holder anymore mantra. The company is launching a$1.25 billion monetization program to raise capital with Bitcoin sales already sold 216 million.

28:20Kara Swisher:And Trump's disclosure, by the way, showed active trading of strategy shares. You know, for people who don't understand what's happening, we talked about this last week. He made several billion dollars largely related to crypto, very small amount in real estate, similar to what he always makes in real estate, essentially. Nothing more or less. But there's a lot of, you know, and of course, the kids have their own grifts going on and Jared and Ivanka have their own grift. So talk about how we should be thinking about crypto now and what happened here with Trump. Well, I mean, it's important that people understand how dramatic this grift was.

28:56I mean, he needs an Academy Award or a FIFA World Cup trophy. Maybe FIFA will give him the grifter, you know, prize. We gave you the FIFA Peace Prize, but the grifting has been so good. Here's the FIFA grifter prize, because this is unbelievable. Just to put it into context for everybody, all of the publicly traded crypto companies combined made less than Donald Trump did in crypto. Just so everybody knows, he made more money than Coinbase, Kraken, put them all together. Kraken's not public, but you get my point. They do disclose their financials. And remember this, okay? Trump's disclosure was 927 pages.

29:35Barack Obama, his was eight pages, okay? So this guy filed a phone book. He didn't file a disclosure. But the crypto stuff is so bad. It is so egregious. So many people lost money. And the differential of$3.8 billion losing and him making$800 is just, to me, insidious. But I'm going to say this to you, and I know you get this. The Emirati royal family bought$500 million stake in his company before the inauguration. Right. Okay. So, I don't know. You tell me that was just a, hey, that's a nice gesture. Hey, Cara, how are you doing? You know, there's a Cara Swisher. It looks like it's from your longevity documentary behind you.

30:21I'd like to buy that from you for$500 million just because, you know, you're a nice person, Cara. Is that how the Emirati royal family treated that situation? Right. So to me, it's again, I'm taking the money. And by the way, you stupid crypto bros, what did you think was going to happen? Oh, you thought I was supporting you? No, no, no. This Clarity Act, which everybody would like to get passed, that can't happen because my opposition hates me and they're going to vote against it despite me. And oh, by the way, that spites you. But ha ha. Guess what? I didn't care about you. I didn't care about your industry.

30:58Kara Swisher:Right. So what happens to the crypto? What is happening? Like what Saylor has done, obviously, he's been super aggressive and you've been deep into crypto and Bitcoin particularly. Does this hurt the Bitcoin business? Because it was actually improving, allegedly, under Trump with all these, you know, Gensler was gone, everything else. Where does this leave crypto now? Because it then has this taint, as the World Cup has, of Trump's finger, dirty fingers all over it. Yeah. So nobody likes me in the crypto community for saying this, but I'm going to continue to say this. Gary Gensler was a pain in the ass to the industry.

31:37But you know what Gary Gensler did? He blocked a lot of the lowlifes and a lot of the people, a lot of the scammers out of the industry. Trump has opened up the floodgates and became the scammer in chief in the industry. So people said, oh, this is going to be great for the industry. It's not great for the industry. You would want the mama bear. You would want propitious and ordinary, transparent crypto regulation with a defense system against scumbaggery. We didn't get that. So when Trump announced that meme coin, Cara, I was at the World Economic Forum with Brian Armstrong on a panel. And I said, this is going to be very bad for the industry because this makes us look terrible.

32:18and his opposition. There are young Democrats that would probably support the cryptocurrency industry that are looking around saying, I can't do it now because of what Trump has done. And so to me, I think it's a big issue. You mentioned sailors. We might as well bring him up. Michael's got to be careful because he's an absolutist and he's an extremist. So he said at one side of his mouth, I'm never selling my Bitcoin. You should sell one of your kidneys to buy and hold Bitcoin. but he's got pressure on him and he's got a cash imbalance. And so guess what he's doing? He's starting to sell his Bitcoin.

32:55Michael's not going to take advice from me and I like Michael, but I would say, Michael, you become part of the story. Go on your yacht, sail off into Sicily somewhere, stop tweeting about Bitcoin, get out of the story-making business. Because what happens in a situation like this is like a fighter squadron, let's say we got B-17s about to strafe Berlin, and one has engine trouble and is lagging behind the others in the squadron, what are the Messerschmitts going to take out first? They're going to take out that one. And this is Michael right now. So get out of the story. I wouldn't sell any more Bitcoin, by the way.

33:31Your job is to have Bitcoin go back up. And you getting out of the story will probably help that. I'm long-term bullish on Bitcoin. I think we're in the typical four-year cycle where we've corrected 50%. We could correct more. But I think the long-term bias for Bitcoin is up. And I think if you hold it for five years, you're going to be well-situated.

33:53Kara Swisher:Here you have Trump sort of dirtying up the industry in ways. What needs to happen from a bipartisan? How can it return to a way where you don't have, you know, too much regulation? And at the same time, you zero out all the scammers. So I think there's only one thing, and that is time and demographies. So I think if you're above the age of 60 and you're in the Democratic Party, you hate crypto. I think if you're below the age, if you're in the 50 to 60, you're crypto-bicurious, but you're like crypto-skeptic. If you're below the age of 50, you're generally like, okay, I get this. And there should be an ecosystem allowing us for tokenization and for general improvements at the financial services slash fintech community.

34:43And so I think he set the industry back. I think it'll be three, four, five years before we see the right type of regulation. I want to be wrong. You know, Cynthia Loomis, Tim Scott are saying that the Clarity Act is going to get passed. If you go to the poly markets. Explain what the Clarity Act is. OK, so the Clarity Act in the most simple elevator pitch is exactly that. We're going to offer you clarity on regulation associated with crypto. where is Bitcoin going to be regulated at the CFTC or the SEC? Where are these other coins going to be regulated? What's going to be allowed in the industry?

35:21How are we going to deal with stable coins? Are they going to be able to pay interest on the balances that you put at a stable coin company? What will the banks be able to do? Will we charge the banks on their balance sheet, which they would do right now? If I held my Bitcoin, I can't hold it at JP Morgan, but if I was able to, they hit them with an overcharge on their capital account. But let's say they could segment it out. Will the money center banks eventually be able to custodian Bitcoin? And so why are we calling it clarity? Because the pendulum has been swinging back and forth between the administrations.

35:56You get hard left-leaning regulation from the SEC, then it swings back to hard right-leaning regulation. We were having regulation by enforcement under Gensler. Now we're having light touch regulation. This would provide a clear signal to Democrats and Republicans, here are the laws as legislated by the Congress, signed by the president. And so this is the interpretation bandwidth you have now, as opposed to this, you know, this wider bandwidth.

36:28Kara Swisher:It feels like grift again. That's what it has more of a nervousness around it because the Trumps are - Well, let me explain why it does, though, because all Gillibrand and these people are asking for is, okay, we don't want the president's family to steal another couple billion dollars of crypto. So can we at least legislate or create a rules-based system that's ethically guided? And the White House said, no, we like when the president steals. Scott Bessent said that the$2.4 billion that he took is a sign of U.S. innovation, is what he said in an interview. This guy, I mean, you know, I mean, you got to be kidding me.

37:09I mean, this is literally unbelievable. This guy, Jesus. But you know what it is? It's like a sock puppet at this point. It's like that used to be a person, you know, like Prince, formerly known as Prince. That used to be a person formerly known as Scott Bessent. he's now a sock puppet for Caroline Levitt and Donald Trump. Okay, and you're saying that with a straight face and an interview guy? I mean, come on.

37:33Kara Swisher:Yeah, I know. I agree. So, small thing, July 4th officially marked the end of the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE. In a post on X, the agency said, well, the formal mission of DOGE has come to an end. The mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse will continue. Good stewardship of taxpayer dollars and accountable government are not temporary initiatives. As researchers estimate Doge's cuts to USAID and humanitarian aid contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. Doge claims it saved taxpayers about$215 billion through spending cuts. The original goal was$2 trillion.

38:03Kara Swisher:Many people feel it costs the United States, actually. One thing we won't be getting is a final assessment of what actually accomplished. Budget director Russell Vogt recently told Congress, we have no plans to publish a closing Doge report. Of course not, because if they did a good job, they would tell you. I think this was just, as it turned out, as I said it would, it was a nothing burger of massive proportions and actually led to death of people around the globe, especially children. So any final thoughts on Doge? Just another waste of time. I mean, again, there was a Doge. It was the Clinton-Gore reinventing government.

38:41That's right. I just want to remind everybody, we took 426 ,000 jobs and we eliminated them over eight years through attrition and buyouts and process redesign. And what I never can understand for the life of me is I think I'm a reasonably smart guy, but I know I'm stupid in a lot of areas. But if I had a B next to my name, you have to explain this to me, Carol, because you hang out with these people more than I do. So I've got billionaires that troll me on Twitter because they're smarter than me, and they know more about everything than I could possibly know. And I understand that. Yes, you know more about neurology than neurologists and more about the military than the military.

39:23Yes, you have a billion dollars. You're the smartest. I understand that. But why wouldn't you have gone to 25-year veterans of the GAO, the government administration office, and said, okay, where are the worms in the system? How can I plug a few holes? I'm not going to save a trillion dollars or$2 trillion, but you know from an engineering perspective, the structural design and the embedded costs of the government, what could we do to stop some of the bleeding and how could we do that gradually? And they didn't want to do that because why?

39:57Kara Swisher:Because they wanted to please Elon and let him jump all over the place. I don't know. I think he just was to please Elon. I think Elon felt like this was important, and that's where they had the falling out over the tax bill when he started to show what he really was made of, which was spending more government money. And I just think it was just all an act. I thought it was all nonsense and idiotic and possibly gave Elon and his minions access to lots of secure government data. I always thought it was about the data, but that's just me. Well, it was definitely a missed opportunity because we could have gone back to pay-as-you-go legislation that got us to the budget surplus during the Clinton era.

40:40Sure was, yeah. We could have gone with a Clinton-esque, Doge-like system that was bipartisan. We could have said to our fellow Americans, hey, we're not going to fix the problem in 10 years. But you know what? Over a 20-year period of time. We need to deal with this. We could get the spend in line with where the GDP is. And we didn't do that. And you know what's going to happen? And you know this, and I know this. My buddy Ray Dalio knows this. You're going to have an American president in 2036, 2040, dealing with a$55 trillion budget deficit. And they're going to be sitting there saying, okay, the money's not worth anything anymore because the only way we can pay for this, guys, remember, unfunded.

41:26Tax liability is what a deficit is. That's what Milton Friedman said. All deficit spending, unfunded tax liability. And guess how we're paying for it? We're using the most pernicious and most regressive form of taxation because we're cowards. We're using inflation. And so we're going to blow out your bank account. You think you got$1 ,000 in your account. It only has$750 worth of purchasing power because that's our way of monetizing our debt. And that's a problem. And that's one of the reasons why I am long gold and one of the reasons why I'm long Bitcoin, because I do think that these will be part of the, as we reinvent ourselves once again, they will be part of the answer to the way the monetary system works in the future.

42:12Kara Swisher:Yeah, this was a missed opportunity and it was all performative. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back, the pros and cons of Trump accounts.

42:25Support for the show comes from NPR. Is social media bad for your mental health? Are we spending too much on other people's weddings? Why is hetero-pessimism trending? If the culture is asking it, NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast is talking about it. It's Been a Minute stands for your right to be curious, one big question at a time. Four days a week, host Brittany Lewis breaks down the ideas, trends, and conversation shaping the culture. She goes beyond the obvious takes, talking with creators, critics, and cultural voices who help you see things differently. You'll hear dialogues with both up-and-comers and cultural icons.

42:59I love NPR. I've been listening to it for my entire life. They do a great job. You know, try to hit it straight down the middle. Fantastic production values. It's been a minute. Those cultural trends don't happen by accident. It's not just what's trending, it's why it's trending and what that says about us. Britney and her guests dig into the latest means to unpack how they got into your feed in the first place and why they're stealing our attention. These are the conversations you want to have and the ones you'll be bringing up later. Follow NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast and indulge your cultural curiosity.

43:34Is Donald Trump still cool? Well, at first, there's what he was promising to America. He was promising change. Yeah, promising a big change. Has he lived up to that? No. No, I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't say so. I'm disappointed. We're in Washington, D.C. for one of the events that Donald Trump is throwing for America's 250th anniversary, and it's UFC night. Proud to be American. We got free tickets. It's just going to be a great time. That's about it. It's an opportunity to talk to a group that was central in the 2024 election, young men. Why do we think Trump and men seem to have a connection?

44:06I feel like he just knows how to advertise himself for the younger proud. It aligns with masculinity, I feel like, to a certain extent. But if they don't like Donald Trump, what do they prefer politically otherwise? I care about my family. I care about my country. I want people to be safe and happy where they live. I care about my wallet too, man. I'm Estet Herndon, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. One, two, three. I'm stand-up comedian John Marcos Cerezi. And I'm actor-penis model Russell Daniels. The Downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are.

44:45Because let's face it, things are not getting better. Every episode, we talk about what's wrong with our lives, our guests' lives, the world, but in a fun way. Bottom line is you're going to walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Huron. Busy Phillips. Stavros Halkias. Laverne Cox. Hassan Piker. Alana Glazer. I promise you're going to have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is The Downside.

45:19Kara Swisher:Anthony, we're back. Speaking of trying to make money for American citizens, Trump accounts, which I hope the name will be changed after he leaves, the new investment accounts for children have officially launched. Trump marked the occasion by ringing the bell to open the markets from the Oval Office on Monday morning. Six million Trump accounts have already been open for children under 18, according to the Treasury Department, a fraction of eligible kids. That's a small amount, actually. Babies born during Trump's term between 2025 and 2028 will receive a$1 ,000 deposit of seed money in these accounts.

45:49Kara Swisher:The Social Security Administration is introducing a process for parents to enroll their babies in these Trump accounts at the hospital as they register for Social Security numbers. We've seen a number of individual and corporate donors to these accounts, including Michael Dell, and as you mentioned, Ray Dalio. The latest is SpaceX ex-president Gwynne Shotwell, who just announced she's donating company stock. What do you think about these accounts? I'm not necessarily against them. I feel like grift will happen because Trump's involved with it. And at the same time, I feel like maybe we should just have, you know, child care.

46:23Kara Swisher:Maybe we should just have health care. Maybe she would just have these kind of things that cost people. I don't mind forced savings, which essentially this is. And I have accounts for my own kids for college and things like that. And everyone should be able to avail themselves to them in a tax-free basis. And at the same time, relying on the stock market is problematic from my perspective. But go ahead. Let's hear. Well, I want to listen. I have to say this one straight for me as a Wall Street person. I like this because even if it's going to be 6 million people, that's what it looks like right now.

47:00getting these people auto-enrolled in the stock market and the idea that they have some investment, which means they're technically invested in something. And if it could spark some aspiration, if it could spark some interest in long-term thinking and saving and investing, I like those things. You know, listen, Michael Dell, I think gave six and a quarter billion dollars. I know he's a very wealthy man, but I think it's a very generous statement that he's trying to make. I don't like the Trump name on it, but of course, anything that Trump does, he's going to have to put his name on it. He's trying to get his signature on your money.

47:37He's trying to get his face in your passport. He cannot help himself. But here's the thing I would say about this, and people should really be concerned about this number. Forty percent of the Americans own nothing in a retirement account. And I want you to think of the pressure on that. And so that also, we do know this, and we don't teach it in school, and perhaps we should. we know we have a lot of financially illiterate people in the country. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're financially literate, don't look down on those people. Figure out a way to educate those people because more educated people and more financially literate people will mean there'll be more self-sustaining people, okay?

48:16And there'll be people seeking their aspirations. So I do like this one. Trump is taking more credit for it than he deserves. This was an idea that was proposed 10 years ago. Lots of people blocked it. I think, believe it or not, Vice President Harris, if she was president, would have accepted this at this point in our culture. You're making a different point, though, and I would just say not to conjoin those. The point that you're making, which I agree with, we need a platform of good food in the school so the kid doesn't go to school unhealthy or hungry. We need some sustainable educational ideas.

48:52And we need some health care for these kids. That's more important than putting$1 ,000 in their savings. I accept that. But I would just say to you, Cara, and people listening in, you got to deal with the world the way it is, not the way it should be and not the way we want it to be. And so this one I like. And I would like to see more billionaires. I'd like to see more people do this.

49:14Kara Swisher:Giving money. So is this like, although some people feel like OpenAI doing it as a way to get a bailout at some point, or you give him the money and he takes credit for it and then you get some sort of break of something else, that giving money these things gives you something else? Well, that's been the case with Donald Trump. I mean, we've learned that. You give him money, you buy a documentary from his family, you get more rocket contracts, you line up behind him, he takes care of you. You know, you've got people that have given him money or given money to his PAC. And Howard Butlick has written him out of certain tariffs and has gotten them an exemption on certain things.

49:54So, yes, we know that there's a pay-per-play system going on. And so, yeah, there's people thinking, you know what, I'm going to give this, I'm going to get the tax cut, and Trump's got two and a half years left. I may need a favor from him, and he's the guy that pays for play, and I can get in there and ask for that favor, and probably we'll get it done. You know, there's a queue of people, and I'd be very interested. I'm not an investigative reporter, but I would love somebody to work on this. there's a queue of people that are lined up for pardons. And I know it's in the tens of millions of dollars is being paid to get these pardons.

50:32They're hiring lobbyists. They're hiring attorneys. They're buying, I don't know, fragrances from the family.

50:39Kara Swisher:All manner of Kellyanne Conway's. Yeah, they're buying meme coins. I don't know what the hell they're doing. But I'm sure there's a legion of people. They're like, hey, we got a two and a half ear window. We broke a lot of laws, but this guy could pardon my ass. And this is Trump's personality. Rather than using the norms in the system, he breaks the norms and then he brags about it. And only I, only I could have gotten our player back on the field. Only I could take in billions of dollars for myself. These other presidents were stupid. They could have made billions of dollars for themselves. I'm the genius.

51:14You see what I mean? And it's very Very corruptive. And let me tell you what it does, which pisses me off the most, if you don't mind, because we grew up similarly. When I was a kid growing up, maybe Richard Nixon was corrupt, but he wasn't so corrupt that I thought the system was broken and unfair. I looked up at the system. I said, all right, the guy's probably corrupt. But you know what? If I go to a good school and work my ass off, I can move classes in this country. This guy is putting a suppression on middle and lower income people. They're like, holy shit. There's a two-tier justice system.

51:46You're either one of the president's crony friends or you're not. And if you're not, you're not going to make it. And I'm going to do way less economically than my parents did. And I don't have any hope and I don't have any chance. That's what the corruption does in a society. And that's what pisses me off the most.

52:05Kara Swisher:Yep, I would agree. I would agree. So we're both sort of for these things, but it just seems like I'd love to get the Trump name off of it. I almost signed up for one. I almost did. But then I was like, I have enough stock holdings. So last thing, very briefly. So Mark Zuckerberg told Meta employees the company's AI agents aren't advancing as quickly as expected. Like a lot of corporate people, Zuckerberg said Meta's AI reorganization hasn't delivered the results the company had hoped for, though he expects progress over the next three to six months. In May, Meta laid off around 8 ,000 employees and reassigned about 7 ,000 to AI-focused teams.

52:36Kara Swisher:Zuckerberg said this move is not as clean as it should have been. Meta is expected to spend as much as$145 billion on AI infrastructure this year. Everybody's a little worried about it. Even Palantir, the Palantir, even though he said it in a crazy way, was making a lot of sense around the high price of tokens, the effectiveness, the safety of your data, whether you want to hand it over to these things. all signs of possible highs of this spending. Do you think how much impact, how much patience do investors have if companies keep saying progress is slower than hope, including the center companies in this?

53:14Yeah, well, I mean, you know the answer to that. I know the answer to that. They have patience until, bam, they don't have patience. And this is very reminiscent of Global Crossing and very reminiscent of Cisco. And you and I are old enough to remember Web 1, where we were building the infrastructure. We're putting all the switches in. We have all these transatlantic, transpacific cables. We've got cables coming down the Persian Gulf all the way into the Strait of Hormuz. And we are going to electrify and globalize everything. And they overspent. And they had too much leverage in the system as a result of which, like a real estate speculation, the system got built, but it collapsed.

53:55and the people that were owning the equity and were buying the hopium at that time actually got crushed. And so what I'm fearful is also the way this stuff is booked, right? Because if you're spending on the R &D and then someone else is booking a profit at the same time, to me, you've artificially stimulated some people's earnings, okay, particularly the data centers and things like that. And so I'm worried about that because that's exactly what happened in web one and you and I are old enough to remember that movie and that movie ended in tears yeah that

54:29Kara Swisher:wasn't a happy Hollywood ending although then there was Google then there was meta then there was you know yeah well well that's the bet so now you've got your cards you're playing this hand you got to hopefully you can close your position out before the thing blows up and then you wait for whatever replaces it right you know you know listen Alta Vista ask ask Jeeves yeah okay we could You remember the search engines, right? Remember Internet Capital Group? Scott and I were reminiscing about that. Remember Internet Capital Group? Remember the boom in Internet Capital Group? They named the Patriots.

55:03I knew it was over when they named the Patriots Stadium the Internet Capital Group Stadium or whatever the holding company was. And so to me, what I'm worried about here, and I think it's fair to be worried about this, is this is a great technology. I think it'll add to productivity. It'll boost things. The internet certainly did that. But as we invest, there were pockets in the railroad industry that blew up, pockets in telecom that blew up. And there's going to be pockets here that blow up.

55:35Kara Swisher:Do you expect to blow up? Because a lot of economists are suddenly sounding alarms. Now, it took years before that happened in the one you were talking, Global Crossing and everything else. It took several years before it broke, essentially. Well, you got to tell me where rates are going. You tell me where the rates are going, and I'll tell you where the fuse is. Because if we manage to stave off despite the economic data and the specter of current inflation, and remember, we've had 100 basis point differential on rate expectation. So if you and I were doing this podcast January 1, Anthony, what are you expecting?

56:09Three 25 basis cuts this year. What is it now? We flipped it over to one 25 basis point hike. So that did affect a large part of the markets. It did affect crypto and obviously gold also sold off as a result of that. But if you're telling me we have a 50 basis point, 75 basis point rate increase due to the quagmire in Iran, all the assortment of different things, you're going to shorten that fuse. Somebody could say, hey, I'm going to miss a bond payment here. Sorry. I think it's very telling, Cara, that Facebook, which means money, and Google, that means money. I think they combined went out to raise in bond market activity something like$140 billion in the last six weeks.

56:55And so that's telling you something. They're like, holy shit, we're spending so much money. We better get another hundred or so billion dollars in reserve here to protect ourselves and to create a layer of protection on the interest rates that we're going to be paying.

57:10Kara Swisher:We're going to be paying. So we'll see where that goes. Anyway, one more Quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

57:43reimagining how businesses grow or don't for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show. It's a marketing show. Creator destroys the show that argues. They've always been the same thing. From the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

58:10Kara Swisher:Okay, Anthony, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first. Well, listen, I mean, we talked about it. I think the win of the week is the Trump accounts, actually. I don't like to call them that. But I want Americans to get into the saving and the investing mindset. And certainly, if you can get children into the saving, investing mindset, it could be a life changer. So I think that's the clearest win for me. The second clearest win, which is obscure to people, but I think it's meaningful, is the birthright citizenship. And we talked a little bit about that last week on my show. I think that is the big message.

58:46I said, sorry, you pushed and shoved us around. We are afraid of you here at the court. But you know what? It was a 6-3 decision, and we're going to stick with the Constitution over the orange maniac. And I think those are two big wins. All right, so losses for me are FIFA and Sicafantino. I think this is a big loss for him. And I think weirdly, you know, and sadly, I think he's hurt the game. And I think it sucks because the World Cup to me is about togetherness. You know, when you want to love people and you want to love the world, I think of the World Cup. I'm like, all right, look at all these people.

59:25You know, the happiness and the sadness is based on a sporting event. It's not based on a war. I love the whole environment. I love the whole carnivale of it. And I just think the notion that this guy poisoned that too, it's like he won't stop at anything. Yeah, he won't stop at anything. So those are the wins and those are the losses.

59:43Kara Swisher:That sort of goes into my fail is the continued sucking up of people like Besant and others about like, yes, there's plenty of people behind me. The cultism is so strange. And it's so, at some point, when are you going to say the emperor has no clothes? That's, that kind of, which I don't want to see Donald Trump naked necessarily, but this. Have you ever thought about it though? No, no, please don't. Is it ever like, because you're an imaginative person? Has it ever just gone into the brain? I have a sense of what it looks like and it's not good. It's like an open spam can. Like you just opened a spam can and there he is.

1:00:19Kara Swisher:There he is, open spam can with a penis, with a bent penis. Well, you don't know. Yeah, we haven't confirmed or denied that. It just could be an open spam. I believe this. I believe porn stars is what I do. But the sycophancy is just astonishing. And Douglas Burgum, in particular, with the whole thing around the reflecting pool. I mean, first of all, everything like that fair. Nobody was there and they were pretending they were there. That was hysterical. But he was going on and on about these cuts and without any proof. And then when the why are you media people? Why don't you just accept this?

1:00:51Kara Swisher:And they're like, because you're a liar, Doug Burgum. Like, to me, he seemed to be, even though he's an obvious suck up, obvious suck up, but the level of suck uppery is really. And I'm like, you're not stupid and you're sucking up. And that to me was really a fail. I thought that I just can't believe it's going to continue. I just don't know when it's going to stop. And I'm sort of waiting for the moment where somebody points to him and says you're naked, essentially. My win is, so over the holiday, I went to see Supergirl because everyone didn't want to see it, right? Because it's, you know, it's this big disaster for Warner and people aren't going to see it.

1:01:27Kara Swisher:And I have to tell you, it's a pretty good movie. It's a pretty good movie. I know it's not going to win. I see the numbers. I can see why it would be hard to get a man to go to it. It's pretty woman-focused. There's a sex trafficking thematic. It's dark. but I do think this actor who's in it Millie I think it's Alcock is amazing was amazing and I think it's a lovely I think it's a good it's a really solid it wouldn't there's been some bad movies in this genre in the superhero genre and lots of bad ones this is not one of them and I'm sorry it's not doing better I bet it has a life outside of this time later it'll become a cult favorite I think because it's really interesting and strange movie I'll definitely go see look I'm a big Superman aficionado and I love Supergirl.

1:02:13Kara Swisher:Yeah, she's really interesting. It's dark, but it's dark and I can see why people wouldn't necessarily go to it. So I get it. I get it. I get it. Anyway, and of course, the biggest win of the week is Taylor Swift. Congratulations with you and Travis getting married. It's just two crazy kids. You two crazy kids. Come on. I hope for the best. I hope you can make it, both of you. It's great. But you know, if guys, I would like to be, if you're probably not going to have another wedding, but if there's an anniversary party, Karen, I would like to be invited. We will go. We will sing for you. You may have invited me to this, but I may have just missed it in the mail, but I would like to be invited.

1:02:45Kara Swisher:Agree, we will be there for you. Anyway, Anthony, I really appreciate it. Just for people to know, 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. Submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, that is the show. Thank you, Anthony. As always, people can check out your book, All the Wrong Moves this fall. It's a really terrific book. Thank you for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Again, Anthony, thank you so much. It's always great to be on with you, Cara.

1:03:16Thank you, guys.

1:03:17Kara Swisher:Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman. Ernie Andergett engineered this episode. Thanks also to Kate Gallagher and Brad Sylvester. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. And hello, Scott, whatever yacht you're sailing on in whatever fancy sea, we miss you.