1073: Why is Big Business Caving to Trump? (with Andrew Ross Sorkin)

25:53And so - Ooh, very interesting insight. Sure. I think sometimes that money can be a stand-in for value, how valued am I, right? That's certainly true in life. So an attack on them as taxpayers and not paying enough is an attack on them as people, right? So I think that's part of it.

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27:55You've likely seen my videos online or watch me torture Tommy Vitor as part of our series on YouTube. But this week I've got a really exciting episode. I'm interviewing the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama. So if you want to tune in and hear what he's got to say, including a definitive answer as to whether or not aliens are real, Make sure to listen by searching for No Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

28:43believes that this is just an emotional thing, that America's having a psychological issue, basically. We're having like a mental break. And really people just need to be buoyed. But he's the exact worst, even if that were the case, which wasn't, he's the exact wrong person to do it. He's a terrible communicator. Can you talk about both sides of this, right? Like on the one hand, no, this isn't just a mood. There's a huge crisis unfolding that's based in hard numbers. And then if it were a mood, why he was so bad at persuading people or talking to people about what was happening. I'll take the second part first.

29:19He was a terrible orator. I mean, ultimately, that's the truth. He just was he didn't whatever you think the it factor is in politics. He did not have it in that regard. It's sort of surprising that he won the election at all. I think his ability to stir the public the way some of the great presidential presidents who have been great orators have was just not a talent that was in his, you know, in his talent drawer. Like he just didn't – it was not something he had. So I think his ability to – but the other sort of psychological piece of this – and you can even think about it in the most recent decade, even now actually.

30:00So, you know, we had a whole period of time in our country where there was remarkable inflation going on. And President Biden used to tell everybody, like, there isn't inflation. It's fine. I mean, Biden tried to do a little bit of what Hoover was doing. And the people were on TikTok saying, that's not true. Have you seen the price of eggs? I don't understand what you're trying to tell me. By the way, I would say the same thing is happening now with Trump. Yeah. Which is Trump is out there saying the economy is great. And yet if you look at some of the polls and you definitely look at some of the economic data, there's weakness there.

30:36That's real. It's not some of them. I mean, people are furious that he's not paying attention to the rising to prices. People feel like he hasn't fundamentally addressed the main reason he was able to get in a second time. Oh, I don't disagree with you. I'm just wondering. I'm very curious if they actually did some real polls. I've seen only a couple of polls on this where people really talk about how they feel about the economy today and for reasons that I think are inexplicable. So I look at the economic data and what's going on with inflation, and I would say there's some underlying weakness, at least for large pockets of the country.

31:10And you would think that they would be on TikTok screaming the way they were screaming a couple of years ago in the last administration. And I think there's some screaming going on, but I don't think there's nearly the same kind of screaming. And I wonder why that is. Yeah. To the point about Biden and Hoover, there's a point in which in the book we talk about Hoover struggling to communicate in part because he's constitutionally gloomy, just a gloomy guy. And I just think about Biden trying to reassure the country, but his tone certainly by the end had become, when comprehensible, so defensive and so small.

31:47And the parallel that I drew is, you know, Hoover is this person that sees himself as someone perfectly suited to understand and manage a crisis, far more so than Roosevelt, who knew far less about the economy. And yet the country came to view Hoover as someone completely untrustworthy and put all their faith and belief in Roosevelt, believed he was the guy to solve it, even though he really had a pretty superficial understanding. It was really going by gut. and I think the parallels there are pretty obvious now. Very obvious and I'm so glad that you made the parallels. You know, it's funny when I was writing the book, I used to have these big debates with my editor about whether we should actually make the connection for the reader.

32:27So when you read the book, you're hopefully inside this narrative and just listening or reading this almost tale of what happened. But as you're doing that, and I'm not trying to lead you to a place, but I imagine that there are readers who are going to go, oh, well, that's like this and that's like this and that's like this. And that guy's like Elizabeth Warren and that guy is like a little bit like Elon Musk. And so, yes, it's it's I'm glad you didn't. We live in an era where people are afraid of subtext and they don't trust their audience to just make their own conclusions. But great stories.

32:59You don't answer the question. You leave people with a question. One would think that's at least how it used to be. But now you go into now this is this is for another conversation. But you'll like the number of movies where at about two thirds of the way in some character looks at the audience and says here's the thesis of this film it's like out of control it's out of control uh so i love you for saying that let's talk about tariffs stock market right now especially responsive to trump's push and pull with china we saw last week he threatens new tariffs on china the dow plunges 900 points then bounces back the next monday because he basically has a softer energy about it uh uh lots of vibes based market movements these days?

33:36Does that make you nervous? I want to talk about tariffs as a policy, but just in the way the markets have reacted to global tariffs that we haven't seen since the depression, have you been surprised by the lack of reaction? What's your take? I'm no longer surprised because one of the things that I've decided I've learned is that the investor class, whatever that even means anymore, is a group of people who are effectively professional optimists. And the truth is that actually, if you look over time, being a professional optimist or being predisposed to being optimistic has actually been the right choice.

34:22So I remember years ago, you'd hear about a war breaking out in the Middle East or something, The market would falter and go, you know, fall to pieces. And the truth was that if you had bought when that happened, you would have made a small fortune. And I think over time, people have seen that most of the time it works out. The problem is some of the time it doesn't. And so but as a result, I think there's always this predisposition towards there's going to be some semblance of rationality to what will ultimately happen. And so you have President Trump out there making some grand claim about the tariffs.

34:58The market freaks out because they're like, should I believe him? Am I supposed to actually listen to his words? Am I not? I mean, this goes – but this happens every day. Right. And so then you have this sort of back and forth with China. I'm of the view that ultimately – I don't know if it's the taco trade or whatever they call it these days, which is Trump always chickens out. Yeah. And ultimately, I think he's trying to push it as far as he can push it. But the truth, and maybe it's the only governor thus far, actually, on this presidency has actually been the markets, weirdly enough. Right.

35:34So when he announced the tariffs back in April, the sort of big shooting the moon plan, the bond market went crazy and he softened his stance. You know, here we are again. He's trying to figure out what to do with China. He softens his stance. And they're the only people he seems to be willing to listen to. So he does seem responsive to it. And yet, not so responsive as to have a comprehensible policy. You know, you have Besant, Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary, talking about how we need to rally Europe and our other economic partners to unite against China. But how is that supposed to work when you spent the last nine months jerking everybody around?

36:19Like, it all seems idiotic, incomprehensible. From what you're, is there anything beneath the surface that makes logic of it? The through line in my reporting about Trump is simply leverage. It's how can he get leverage over somebody else? It's not about, and the relationship is always going to be transactional. He would argue to you, I think, if we were sitting at this table with the president, that all of these quote unquote relationships, these friendships, these special relationships we've had with European countries was never really a relationship at all. He would say we were actually paying them all off to be our friends, frankly, and that that was our leverage if we had any leverage with them.

37:04And I think now he's saying we have leverage in a different way, which is that we're basically going to tariff them. My only point is that I think what he's looking at are the numbers, not that anybody's doing anything in a kumbaya way for the United States, nor that the United States should be doing kumbaya way things for them. and we will see whether we really have leverage or not. And I think that is the ultimate question. And I do not think we know. And I will say when it comes to China, I think ultimately it's going to be very hard for us to have demonstrable leverage with them given their size and their scale.

37:40And the fact that I think President Xi is just watching this whole thing. And I imagine laughing to some degree because he sees the president come out and announce some crazy tariff number. and then the market goes crazy and what happens? He steps down, steps away from it. So, but then it's like leverage towards what end, right? Like if you really want it, like there's no coherence to what he's doing, right? Because - Well, leverage towards control. Leverage, and look, look at what's going on with the universities in America. Look what's going on with the law firms going on in America. Look what's happening with the companies.

38:17It's all, there's leverage, leverage over somebody else, power over them so that when you need to ask for something there the answer is yes that is basically what i think is going on here and that's what the tariffs over europe does it'll gives him leverage to potentially what remove them so they'll work on china well so that's the yes i would also say they can become and i'm not arguing this is a good strategy no i know and i don't think anyone Just to be clear, this whole thing becomes a chess piece. They're all chess pieces on a board. And I think he thinks to himself, I now have a chess piece over X.

38:59They are paying this tariff now. I'm collecting money from them one way. At some point, if I need them in some other way, maybe I can lower the tariff. By the way, maybe I can raise the tariff on them. Right. Right. And the whole thing is just a sort of grand leverage negotiation. Yeah. With like all of which could be true without first putting them on. Anyway, it's done by the kind of group of fucking goons. So you brought up the way he's sort of using leverage over corporations. And I want to talk about this. I want to start with Charles Mitchell because I think it's relevant. So you mentioned this earlier.

39:41So Carter Glass, this anti-Wall Street segregationist, Charles Mitchell is one of his sort of chief enemies. Charles Mitchell leads Citibank. He is the kind of chief villain of this congressional inquiry that ultimately leads to charges. He is charged for tax fraud. He goes to trial. What happens? We're going to give away the end of the whole story. Oh, so he goes to trial and you won't believe what happens. Yeah. I don't think of it. I mean, I guess I don't think it's a spoiler. I mean, I guess it's history. You can't really spoil history. You can't really spoil history. So Charles Mitchell effectively gets indicted for tax evasion.

40:21By the way, that case brought against him by Roosevelt, effectively signed off by Roosevelt, who had a chip on his shoulder about Mitchell. And that was part of the politics, too. So this gets back to the strange parallels in life, Democrats and Republicans, for better or worse. And he goes to trial. Everybody expects that he's going to be convicted. Everybody thinks he's going to be convicted. He had, by the way, engaged in what was demonstrably a sham tax transaction with his wife. And you get into, I mean, you really get to see what was going on in the moment when he's literally in the room with his wife, you know, planning this whole tax strategy out.

41:04and the jury comes back and finds him not guilty. And this goes to exactly maybe what people thought about after the financial crisis of 2008. Nobody really went to jail. And when people discuss this with the jurors, when you read all of the sort of articles and opinion pieces about this at the time, the view was that he did basically what everybody else just would have done. and they did not consider that to be criminal. Interestingly, he had done it with the blessing of his lawyer, which was also sort of, from a legal perspective, a very sort of interesting defense, which was that he went to the lawyer, got the lawyer to bless it, and there it is.

41:49Well, what's interesting about that is as you make this point in the book, I'm going to paraphrase, but something to the effect of there are criminals and there are frauds and that's a big part of this and in any kind of moment of a bubble, They're people that will take advantage. People are much more careful when times are tight. But you make this point that a lot of these people did what anyone would have done. And you've gotten some shit for saying that, by the way. Yes, I have. That people are like, oh, you're apologizing for these people. But I actually want to take it at face value because how sad it is that this is what people would have done under these circumstances.

42:23And in this moment, you know, Carter Glass is in some sense vindicated. He then writes at great kind of pain to his own health what becomes Glass-Steagall. Roosevelt signs it. It is seen as a bulwark against the excesses of the depression. But even that was a corrupted process. Completely corrupted process. By the way, that was a great lesson for me. I didn't know. I didn't know that. So that was, by the way, one of the great surprises for me as I was going through the letters and archives of this period, which was, I think we all have this impression that this great Bill Glass-Steagall, which broke up the banks, was sort of driven by Carter Glass and this idea that the banks should be broken up and this was to make the system safer.

43:10So that basically that speculation was over here and vanilla savings was over here. Correct. You were dividing the casino from the actual bank. But the truth was that this entire process had been corrupted. And the only reason I would argue this bill even came about was because the Rockefeller family, which effectively owned a big chunk of Chase, which was a major competitor to Citigroup. wanted to break up Citigroup, but also more importantly, wanted to break up J.P. Morgan and that the Rockefeller family had it out for J.P. Morgan. And as a result, they went to Roosevelt, who, by the way, wasn't so excited originally about passing this bill.

43:56This bill had been sitting around for a while and he was slow walking Carter Glass in so many different By the way, interestingly, Roosevelt was not really for the FDIC, which was also a piece of this bill, effectively insuring bank deposits. Roosevelt originally wasn't even for that either. But there was a whole bunch of sort of efforts afoot to put all of these pieces in place to the point where I found a letter that Carter Glass had written that actually walked through the whole thing where he was basically complaining that the bill wasn't really his and had been effectively taken over by the bankers.

44:33And there's a section of the bill that was physically written by the son-in-law of Rockefeller. the Jared Kushner of the day.

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46:23So if you want to tune in and hear what he's got to say, including a definitive answer as to whether or not aliens are real, make sure to listen by searching for No Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

46:39There's a quote from Hoover's Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, in 1929. The quote is, Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High cost of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people. Hoover. He's telling that to Hoover in 1929. There's a little bit of resonance in the way some of the... It's like a Tea Party speech. It's a Tea Party speech. It's also a MAGA industrial policy.

47:17We've got to get back to making things. We've got to get back to using our hands. Carter Glass and the people that were against Wall Street speculation, they are ultimately vindicated because of what happens. But they weren't just predicting the future. They had a moral problem with what was happening in the economy. Clearly, someone like Andrew Mellon, pretty callous about what would happen to farmers who don't, you know, they are people. They don't liquidate as well as, say, dollars do. But there's clearly something about the way the American dream had changed in this era that made people uncomfortable.

47:51Can you talk about that? Well, you know, first of all, Andrew Mellon was a capitalist with a capital C in just every way. You know, if you had great success, God bless you. If you're a great failure, God bless you. He did not – he wasn't there to pick up the pieces in any way, shape, or form. I would argue, by the way, that the American dream shifted in the 1920s. I actually think that the dream that shifted in the 1920s, for better or worse, is the dream that exists today in America here today and I would argue on TikTok and everywhere else. Which is – I think prior to 1920, it really was more of a Horatio Alger kind of story that people were pursuing.

48:26And I think in the 20s, in part because of the stock market and everything else and industrialization and going to big cities and everything else with the sort of elites that they saw, it became about the lottery ticket. It became about – I don't know about a get-rich-quick scheme, but it became about getting rich, getting super – it wasn't just about having a better life than your parents. It was about something else. It was about sort of reaching for the stars in this other way. And that was partially, by the way, a function of the media. You know, this is the first time big magazines were all of a sudden putting CEOs on the cover of these magazines.

49:01You know, they used to have, you know, Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh on the cover. And now Charlie Mitchell is on the cover of these magazines. And so I think that we, as a culture, almost turn these people into heroes. And here we are close to 100 years later, and you're seeing it almost in the exact same way. Yeah. So just for people. So Horatio Alger stories, just for people. So these were stories about kind of hardscrabble, people from hardscrabble roots working their way up, not to like supreme wealth, but to like a classic home life, like a good family life and providing for their family, like a middle-class life.

49:37And then all of a sudden there's the possibility that everybody can get rich. And I was thinking about that. And what I would say the American dream is right now, and in some sense, you're right. It remains this idea of like, oh, you can get rich. But the truth is, I don't know that I would say I've heard anybody really tell me what it is in quite some time. Right. People articulate the old version. But there's something kind of sad about this moment right now, which is. I don't know that people believe they'll get rich. I don't know what people think about it, but I feel like there's an optimism that existed in the bubble.

50:13Right. That I don't know that we have right now. Well, it's interesting because I think the modern conversation about the American dream today often is actually not probably looked back 100 years. It's probably looked back to the 50s. People would call it what I describe as the leave it to beaver American dream. That was a very white dream, but it meant that you could buy a house, you'd have two kids, a dog, and everything would kind of just work out. And by the way, this was a period where unionization was a huge part of the economy. We were protecting labor in a remarkable way. And I think people look back now at that period fondly.

50:52But I also think today, again, in this sort of social media driven universe, you know, everybody wants to be Mr. Beast. They all want to be you, John. I mean, they all want to think so. Do you? I don't think that can be right. I don't think I make this look good. I don't think I make this look good. Well, you know, it's funny because I was thinking about sort of the post-World War II era that follows, you know, the Depression leads into the New Deal and into the World War II and the way that changed the economy. And you had far higher taxes. You had far more egalitarian economic growth. It was a heyday for union jobs.

51:33In some sense, high costs of living and high living did come down. in some sense people did live well at least the a more moral life the version of the american dream that people had aspired to before seemed to in some sense return values did adjust there was a different value set in that we didn't live up to it and a lot of people were kept outside of it to be clear but it wasn't high flying it was a more righteous version of america there was some truth to the idea that there was a version of American capitalism without the high flying. But I have a very unpopular explanation for why that was the case.

52:11All right, let's hear it. And Paul Krugman disagrees with me vehemently about this. So just I want to want to posit that so you can throw your tomatoes if you like. I worry or I'm concerned that this sort of 1950s to call it 1980 period where we had this sort of utopia that we think about. I don't know if it's really utopia because there was all sorts of civil unrest and other things that took place during that period too. But it was also a function of the fact that the US was a monopoly power in the world during that period and was able to effectively charge monopoly rents. So effectively the rest of the world after World War II was out of business.

52:50We were not competing with anybody. We were it. We were the entire game. And so we could charge remarkable amounts of money. There was no competition. And so because this sort of period was taking place, you could charge an extraordinary amount of money. You could afford, if you will, to pay labor what I think we all hope that labor deserves. But it was partially because we didn't – there was not a competitor. It was – in 1980, when you start to see how wages stagnated in America starting in late 70s, early 80s, and you go and you look, all of a sudden, Germany's back. Japan's back. Everybody's now competing against America.

53:32And by the way, that competition is forcing the cost of labor down. It's forcing the cost of everything to go down. And that's what, to some degree, I would argue, breaks the unions or at least makes it much harder from this goes back to capitalism and socialism. But from a capitalistic perspective to compete when you're effectively competing against competitors that have much lower costs. And by the way, we're seeing this now in terms of why the president wants to implement tariffs, because he's looking and saying to himself, look, BYD in China. If we let BYD in China sell cars into America today, we would have no car industry.

54:08We just wouldn't because the cars are better made and cost less. You should take that fucking – that is not true. Don't say that here. These are forts. These are American – how dare you? They are not better. Yeah, my car squeaks a little. Sorry, go on. This is like total deadpan, and for a moment he had me. I'm just saying, whether you want to listen to Elon Musk or not, he's always said, if you do not have these tariffs, that the American car market would be in trouble. And I think there's truth to that. There's truth to that. And we actually, as a country, have to decide, do we want an automobile industry?

54:54I mean, I think these are real questions. And then the question is, if you want an automobile industry, how do you get it? Right? I mean, are tariffs going to help us? I mean, right now, the way the tariffs are structured, I think it's going to become very complicated. But I will say I talked to a CEO of a big U.S. carmaker, and there are not a lot of them, so you can make your guess about who this is. And they said, look, in 10 years from now, given all of the tariffs and everything else, most Americans are going to spend more for less quality cars than much of the rest of the world is likely to get.

55:24And maybe we should be cool with that. Maybe we shouldn't. I don't know. But I think about this stuff. So along with globalization, you also had a shift towards regressive taxation. You had deregulation. You had a whole host of ways in which every policy seemed to be designed to make matters worse for the middle class. And I agree. By the way, that part I agree with you 100 % on too. Just thinking ahead of the comments. In the head of the comments. So let's talk. You talked about what CEOs are saying. Let's talk about what the CEOs are doing here. because this gets into the sort of the moment and sort of the morals of this version of capitalism we have right now.

56:01Tim Cook, smart guy, gay guy. Not central, but it's a fact. He's marching down to the White House, bringing a bauble for Donald Trump. That sucks. That's gotta suck. He's gotta hate doing that. Why is he doing that? What's the logic? How does he defend to himself why you would go down there and kiss the ring and end up standing between Donald Trump and J.D. Vance? Well, I don't even remember now what it was, but it was some like he's standing there between two of them doing some sort of disgusting diatribe. OK, so I am going to I don't know if I'm going to channel him. So do not blame me. Don't blame the messenger.

56:39This is what I think is going on. This is like mind reading inside Tim Cook's head, which is probably unfair to Tim Cook. But I'm going to try. Be so funny if you had a really gay voice. um i i will do keep going i'm sorry trying to lighten it up at the end what i think is going on here is i think that he is somebody and as i think most of these co's i think they are playing trade-offs in their mind this whole thing is a trade-off for them they're saying themselves i could raise my hand right now and say this is all wild and completely nuts and i disagree with everything that's going on here. And if I do that, what's the upside for me to do that?

57:16And what's the downside for me to do that? And I think right now in this moment, the upside in truth is probably not a lot. I think that a lot of people at this table and a lot of listeners would applaud those people, but it's unclear to me unless it's done as a collective that it would have any real impact right now, given what's happening in Washington in terms of the Republican control of the White House, of Congress, of the Senate, having even the business community come out in any meaningful way and say, excuse me, we don't like it this way. It's unclear that that would have some kind of impact.

57:52The downside, I assume, is that you sit there and you say, if I don't do this, or if I raise my hands and say this, is that I'm going to be slaughtered, that that's what's happened in America. And by the way, it depresses me to say this. That's where we are. It's like a mafioso thing. It's like, if I raise my hand and say there's a problem, I will be slaughtered. That's what I think is, I mean, hopefully not literally slaughtered, but that's the, I think that is the calculus. And I think the calculus is all of these people are thinking, I want to be here. I want the company to be here in not just tomorrow, but in two and three and four and five and 10 years from now.

58:31And can I just play this out? Can I just, Can I just stick this out long enough to get to the other side, whatever you think the other side looks like? So there's three parts of this. One is, you mentioned, which is they're not acting collectively, which is not in their instinct. But is there an understanding behind the scenes here that while any one short-term capitulation might be in the interest of an Apple or another major company, that in the long run, you know, a patronage economy, like an Orban-style economy, is not good for business. and that there is a collective interest in finding ways to head that off, especially, as you noted, the one governor of Trump has been the markets and being afraid of sinking them.

59:17Right. So I do think that behind the scenes, there is consternation and anxiety and all sorts of things about what this administration does. No question. I mean, I think one of the reasons they don't speak out is because they're scared. And privately, they will tell you, I am scared. Again, this goes back to it almost doesn't matter how much money you have in your bank account or what's on your business card. Emotionally, you're still in that scared place. And that's terrible that that's the case. And in generosity to them, though perhaps unearned, they are responsible for people's jobs. They have real responsibilities that they feel.

59:52So I think that they think about that. Right. I think they think, and maybe they'll be wrong about this, that if in fact there's sort of a redline moment, and the question is what is that redline moment, that there's going to be some button that they're going to push, that they would push the button if this sort of redline moment happens. Now, there's obviously a lot of people I imagine who are listening to us now saying, hasn't the red line moment already happened? Or if you think the red line moment is coming, don't you need to get in front of it before you ever get there? Because by the time you get to that line, you won't be able to act.

1:00:25You won't even have an opportunity to touch the button because you'll be so far away from it. Yeah. Because somehow you'll be in this sort of terrible place. I don't know the answer. And I think this is what everybody in the business community who does have these worries is grappling with. I think they're sitting there saying, I know there's a red line at some point. I don't know if we've gone over it. I don't know when we're going to get there. And I don't know when we get there, what we're going to do about it. Yeah. Well, it's hard, right? I will say. Yeah. Sorry. I was at a business meeting.

1:00:55I was at a meeting recently with a number of business leaders where a bunch of people said, you know what? We should write down right now what the red line is so that the line doesn't move. That's a smart, that's a good idea because presumably one would think the government demanding 10 % of Intel might have been at least a, you know, a shade of maroon, you know, a light pink line, one would think. So that I think is, by the way, I think it would be very valuable for business leaders today to write down on a piece of paper, have a plan. If you, if you think there's going to be a day you're going to raise your hand and say, I don't like this and we've got a problem.

1:01:37write down what are the parameters and the metrics with which you would actually do that. Because what keeps happening is the line that you thought nobody would cross seems to get crossed almost every day. And we become to some degree a nerd to what's happening. And so I think that's part of the sort of psychological question that we all probably need to face a little. So the first part is why there is a more collective action. And the second part we talked about, which is why they're afraid of Trump, which I think makes sense. Third part. When Tim Cook goes and kisses the ring, when colleges capitulate, when law firms or media companies capitulate, it's not just because they think Trump is scary.

1:02:19It's because they think the people that don't like Trump aren't to be worried about even one little bit. Now, you've had Elizabeth Warren and some other Democrats try to signal, hey, it doesn't matter if all your friends are doing it. these are corrupt deals. In some form, these are bribes. We will come after you once we are in power again. I think that matters. It doesn't seem to matter very much. And then you have moments where Democrats or people that just don't like Trump almost organically cancel Disney Plus. And that's noticed. That seems to be a moment of influence. But for the most part, it feels like if you're a CEO and you're more worried about Trump than you are the opposition to Trump, that's correct.

1:02:59How does that change? Well, it'll be very interesting to see if, in fact, Democrats come into power, how they use that power. And by the way, it's going to be very interesting to see now that we're in this moment where the president's going after Comey and he's going after Bolton and whether every successive presidency, depending on which political party's in place, is going to be sort of using these powers in these different ways and whether that then either puts a stop to the politicization of all of it or whether this just becomes sort of a spiral out of control. I'm very curious to see, but you're right that nobody in the moment right now, especially in the business community, feels pressure from the quote unquote other side.

1:03:44So they always, by the way, they always hated, you know, Elizabeth Warren making comments about their business, trying to raise taxes on them or, you know, implement wealth taxes or other things, But they never really took it seriously. And so here we are. Hey, what's the money saying about Mom Donnie now? Now that it's getting real. Oh, he's going to, I mean, the money says that he's going to be the mayor of New York. No question. And what did like the kind of, he's done something interesting, right? He's gone and met with business executives that would be really skeptical of him. And he's charming them a little bit.

1:04:22What are you hearing behind the scenes about him? So I think that the business leaders dislike him. I mean, they genuinely dislike him. And it's not, by the way, just because they think he's forgetting about being a Democrat, being a socialist or even raising taxes. I actually don't think that that is the thing that has them up in arms, just to be totally transparent with you. I think that they think there's three things that are on their minds. I think they are worried about how he's going to approach policing in the city. I think that's for them a big, big issue. I think there's an anti-Semitic question that is definitely on their minds.

1:05:04And this gets to maybe the democratic socialist piece of it. You know, I think they all believe that we need more affordability in terms of New York City, especially when it comes to rents and real estate and the like. And I think they look at what he's, at least the plan to rent stabilization and say to themselves, at least as classic economists, that that is not really the answer. That the answer ultimately is what Ezra Klein would tell you, which is abundance. We need supply. We need more supply. It has been zero days since we've talked about abundance. Reset the sign back to zero. Continue.

1:05:44And I think that they look at all of that and say, that's a problem. Having said that, they think he's very charming. They recognize that he is likely to be the mayor. And I think you're starting to see a bunch of them, I don't want to say fall in line, but fall in line. And so you're seeing some people come out with sort of more positive comments, hoping, knowing that maybe, you know, if he's the mayor, that if they're friendly early, that he'll be friendly later. I mean, I think that's, and this is fascinating because it's, by the way, this does happen on both sides of the political aisle, right?

1:06:17It's a very interesting moment. So the book is 1929, Inside the Greatest Crash in History and How It Shattered a Nation. Last thoughts on, you know, last thoughts on this, which, you know, you end the book talking about two things, which is humility and resilience. We need a lot of both. We need a lot of both. I'm not interested in resilience right now because I sometimes feel as though we kind of rely on it. And let's say for a moment we're not, let's act as if we aren't. But humility, if we look back on this moment and there is some kind of a crash to come, whether it's around AI investments or crypto or something we can't see coming, that sort of the dark sides of the market finding their way into people's 401ks?

1:07:04What are the obvious signs right now that we'll look back and say, God damn it, we were so fucking stupid. It was staring us in the face. I think the answer is we will look at what's happening in AI, which by the way, I'm super excited about and I think it'll be like the internet. It'll be a massive technological change. But you'll look at the valuations of some of these companies right now and the way they're getting financed and all the debt and leverage in the system. And you'll say, this doesn't make sense. Look at companies that don't have enough money, are not making any money. They're making no money today.

1:07:37They're losing money. And yet they're making massive commitments to buy data centers, to buy all sorts of things that they can't afford to buy on a hope and a prayer and a dream that this will be the future. Some of them will be right and they will be the future. And there will be some of them will be Amazon. But a lot won't be. And we will look around and we will say that was a mistake. Andrew Rostorkin so good to talk to you great conversation thank you everybody do really recommend the book really fascinating and relevant to this moment thanks so much thank you if you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts go to crooked.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack YouTube or Apple Podcasts also please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick Frank, and Saul Rubin.

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