MBS at The White House, A ‘Joyless’ AI Boom, & MTV’s Legacy 11/19/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. The world's most valuable company set to report what NVIDIA will tell us about the economy, the artificial intelligence boom, the markets. But there is a renewed sense of anticipation, excitement. I think it matters. I think it's important. And it's more circular deals, partnering with Microsoft to invest in startup Anthropic. A little bit of like a vendor financing kind of scenario. Tech these days, it's not the boom of the past. We were all happy in 1999. We were all going to party like it's 1999, right? The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ipp on tech revolutions, joyful and joyless.

0:48Yeah, it was kind of crazy and the bubble did burst, but the mood was very upbeat. And I don't feel that now. I mean, I feel that, you know, unless you're like Sam Altman. Plus, MTV co-founder Tom Freston, the veteran media exec on the music channel's legacy from the 80s all the way to modern social media. It kind of brought in sort of a new visual vocabulary and style to television, new way of editing and moving things along on a sort of nonlinear basis. And the rest of today's news that got us squawking. Who started this? Trump started this. It's Wednesday, November 19th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now.

1:26Expand Andrew Bay in 3, 2, 1, cue Andrew. Good morning. Welcome to Scroak Box right here on CNBC. We're live at the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. It is just the boys this morning. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin, along with Joe Kern. And Becky's off today. Now, the Dow and S &P, of course, on four-day losing streaks. It's the S &P's longest downturn since August. The Nasdaq seeing its fifth negative session now in six. and big names like Microsoft and NVIDIA closing in the red ahead of NVIDIA's earnings today. And it feels like everything is going to key off whatever we hear tonight. It's been a long time.

2:04It's been a long time. No, since I've actually been doing this a long time. A lot of earnings. How many earnings have we reported on in 35 years? And you're saying this is the first time you... No, not the first time. But there is a renewed sense of anticipation, excitement. I think it matters. I think it's important. And, you know, I've been we've got an analyst. We've got it. We've got it didn't matter. It's just as the articles being written today are, is the market ready to pull back 10 percent and have a full fledged correction? If it pulls back 10, you know what people think. Is it going to pull back 20?

2:43I don't know. So that's out there. The notion that we might be in some type of extended pullback. And I think this this matters tonight. It matters a lot for NVIDIA. And the whole AI thing is, I need you, you know, you write books, you do all this stuff. I need a flow chart of who's involved with whom and who's funding what. Because now Microsoft, aren't they really tight with open AI? But now they're doing stuff with Anthropic. And all the money's going around. Is it the same money? Is it real? Is it new? It all starts with a T. Well, so the latest deal with Anthropic, which is fascinating, because it, first of all, puts them in business with a competitor to OpenAI.

3:29But by the way, they had already gotten in. I figured that out. You figured that one out. I did. They had already gotten involved with XAI. So they have XAI on their platform as well. Okay. And, you know, the initial thought is they want to be involved with all of these folks so these folks can pay them fees to use their cloud Azure service. That's the impetus for Microsoft. Okay. So there's a lot of, they're not even frenemies. They're just, they're keeping all their bases covered. So Microsoft's now keeping all its bases covered. Before it was all in with OpenAI. Not all the AI. Some are good at coding.

4:02Some are good at this. So there could be some. Could be different approaches. There could be a lot of survivors. Anthropic is being used right now by a lot of the coding and enterprises. Businesses like Anthropic, OpenAI, ChatGPT has become sort of the consumer choice for most folks. And then what's happened here in this Anthropic deal, which is a little bit like some of the other deals we've seen with NVIDIA and other things. Microsoft is basically making an investment in Anthropic. And Anthropic is then, of course, saying, well, we will now use your services. You with me on where the money goes?

4:38I'm going to ask AI to explain. Who should I use? We're a little, oh, I was saying this is still in the vendor, a little bit of like a vendor financing kind of scenario. There's a lot of that. Except that these guys are going to get a little bit of equity for their vendor financing. Okay. If that makes any sense. I think we better, have you ever seen Eamon? Like, I wouldn't say he's a prima donna, but when he's waiting for us to go to him, he just, he gets furious. I mean, the guy has been sleeping in his tuxedo since last night, I think. He gets absolutely furious. I'm having my coffee here this morning.

5:13Eamon, in case you didn't realize, business and diplomacy were both on the agenda during a White House meeting between President Trump and Saudi Crown Prince MBS Mohammed bin Salman. Eamon Jevers joins us now with the headlines and a recap of the menu. Yeah. Good morning, Joe. President Trump welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House with literal open arms on Tuesday, treating him to a South Lawn arrival ceremony with a military band, mounted honor guard and fighter jet flyover. Then in the East Room last night, the president toasted the de facto Saudi ruler with an elegant dinner and glittering guest list, including Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, NVIDIA's Jensen Wang, investor Bill Ackman and global soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.

6:03Now, the president said he was officially designating Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally of the United States, putting that Arab nation in the same category as Australia, Japan and South Korea, among others. And in his toast, the president highlighted the major investment deals he said the Saudis had committed to. Saudi Arabia announced that it will invest an incredible$600 billion. That means jobs. That means jobs. It's also good for your companies, but I'm only interested in the jobs for your country. I'm not interested in the profits, but I guess the profits are there, too. But$600 billion in the United States.

6:41And today I said, anyway, you can up that. And he said, I am going to up that to$1 trillion. So he's investing$1 trillion into the United States. Now, the evening marked a return to full diplomatic standing for the Saudi leader, who had become an international pariah for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. A killing the CIA concluded was ordered by Bin Salman himself. President Trump disputed that in the Oval Office on Tuesday, arguing that Bin Salman knew nothing about the murder. Things happen, President Trump said. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.

7:23Today, we're expecting the president to attend the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center and continue to highlight the deep financial ties between the two countries. And guys, they have an all-star list of business executives coming to that Kennedy Center event today. So we'll watch for any news out of that one throughout the day. Back over to you. Same crew from last night, for the most part? Yeah. Yeah. Elon will be there. Jensen will be there. And a lot of the big names, plus a whole bunch of Saudi officials, some oil and gas executives. I mean, it is a star-studded day. over at the Kennedy Center.

7:58And as I said, we do expect the president to make a trip over there in the beast and give some remarks as well. Who, I was, you know, they had all that footage last night and it looked like Elon was having dinner or talking to, was it Albert Berla he was sitting with? It looked like that to me. I couldn't quite tell in the VO that we were able to see. Yes, he's turned away a little bit there. That's Albert's back there, his head there, I think. You recognize the left ear? Yeah, well, who's between Albert Berla? And I didn't see who that was sitting. Yeah. In between. Yeah, I was just going to say that I didn't see who it was sitting exactly next to Elon Musk.

8:32But so much drama in that storyline. Right. I mean, as Elon Musk had that public falling out with President Trump, accused him of being in the Epstein files earlier this year. The two men were done with each other months ago. Now, Elon Musk reappearing at the White House, not necessarily at the president's side, but certainly in the president's good graces or semi good graces. at least having a seat at the table. So a fascinating moment there. And you see that pat on the arm there from President Trump to Elon Musk. All right. A lot of things to talk about. I did a little bit of, I don't like doing things like that.

9:09A little bit of background because it reminded me, Eamon, a lot of eyebrows raised when the president came down on MBS's side about whether he knew about the Khashoggi assassination, which for me hearkened back to the president in that interaction with Putin. I think it was about 2016 or 2018, where he sided with Putin on whether Russia had interfered in the election. He later said that he misspoke about that and accepted what the CIA said. But then he said that he just didn't think it influenced the election. So the CIA and other agencies highly confident that MBS either knew or at least approved and even maybe ordered what happened to Khashoggi.

10:01But no smoking gun. It's pointed out by The Washington Post and others that there's no document that says where he signed the order to have him killed. but the people that did it based on his control over the kingdom the involvement of his inner circle and in the way that it operated cia was highly confident that that so what is so what do we glean from that sorkin that money or amen it's it's the real world the other thing the president said a trillion dollars speaks very loudly i i mean it's is this the way we do things or I think that's the conclusion, Joe. The world is not black or white. A trillion dollars is a trillion dollars, right?

10:43Right. And we'll see whether those commitments are real. The president there, you know, saying that he talked Bin Salman up from 600 billion. He sort of jawboned him in the Oval Office, talked him up to a trillion. We'll see, you know, whether we get details underpinning that. But you go back to the murder. Yeah, can I ask a question about that, by the way? And what the president said in the Oval Office yesterday. Sure, go ahead. Guys, just about the trillion dollars. Some of it's jets. So Saudi's entire GDP on an annual basis is a trillion dollars. Right. Right. I'm just putting this in context.

11:17Well, he's hoping that it's done during his term. It might not even be done in the next four years. So it's... So are we talking about$100 billion over 10 years? Who knows? Are we talking about over 20 years? He hopes it's this year. He hopes it's... He didn't put out any details on it at all. He hopes it's in his term. No, I know, but that would... In his term, there's two and a half years left. It means that they would have to give half of their GDP each year to the United States. I know you wish there were only two and a half. I think it was like three years left, isn't it? Three years? Three years.

11:47You'd like six months. But I know you're— Maybe this is over the seven-year period that he's still going to be the president? No, but— That you're expecting? Your buddy, you know, Vance, is waiting in the wings. I know, you know, Gavin will put up a good fight. The point I'm making is if the whole country does it, does a trillion dollars a year. OK, you never believe these numbers. Did you did you see Besson said it's 20 trillion now? It seems a stretch. Besson said, in fact, though, when Besson, when they asked Besson how much total, because I think in the I think Trump was saying in the entire Biden presidency, it was a trillion.

12:24And that was 250 billion in the last year. And he's saying it's 20 so far. And when they asked Besant what the number is, he says, well, the president says it's 20 trillion. Scott, Treasury Secretary, doesn't exactly. I mean, he says the president says it's 20. He doesn't say it's not 20, but that's the president's number. Is it 20? Have you been adding it up? Eamon, you got a calculator? Yeah. I mean, you know, the question is, over how many out years, how many of these commitments do you believe? How much was already promised? Yeah, and what the president's adding up there is sort of the overall economic impact of tariffs in terms of his negotiations and all of the interaction between the United States and these other economies.

13:09You know, and you kind of throw up your hands at that point in trying to calculate that. I mean, you could just sort of attribute the entire economic relationship between these countries for decades and say, well, that's the result of tariffs. All right, Eamon. It's a real quandary. I mean, we just had the Syrian leader, who used to be basically, you know, a terrorist, basically. We have, we deal with China, which, you know, what goes on with the Uyghurs. We deal with Russia, which, not that much. But so, I mean, in his defense, Trump's defense, if it's all about American jobs and making life better for Americans, are you okay?

13:53with whitewashing, what happened in... Well, my question is slightly different. Why can't you just answer that? Are you okay with this? I'm not okay with the whitewashing part. What I don't understand is actually you could say exactly what you just said. Really? That's a first. No, which is... You're agreeing with that. Which is there's a practical reality, which is that we'd want jobs and we think that's good for our economy. Right. And we want them to be our allies. Right. The question I have is slightly different. Can you thread a needle where you effectively say, I want all of those things and therefore I'm willing to work with you.

14:31And I'm also prepared to condemn what took place now seven years ago. I mean, if Russia totally. And I think you probably could. I think that is the thing that I would say is the mistake. If I if I was going to say there's a mistake here, the mistake is that I think you can hold both ideas in your head at the same time. I don't think you have to actually, quote unquote, whitewash something. I think you could literally just say, look, we put this behind us. But it de facto is. Well, no, no, I don't think it has to be. I don't think every time you see him, you have to repeat that he did this. But when the question is asked to you, you could say, look, the CIA said what it said.

15:10This happened seven years ago. I care deeply about American jobs. And that's where my focus is right now. You know, I condemn the killing of anybody for free speech or other purposes, and I'm going to leave it there. And I think it's different to turn the thing and say, this didn't happen. OK, how about this? Just one more, and then we're going to go. Those results are out. The sanctions work on Russia. He stops. We get some type of, you know, you keep this, we keep that. do we ever have full diplomatic relations with Russia again after the atrocities with Putin? I don't know what full diplomatic relations mean.

15:51Do we, how could you ever, not forgive and forget, but how do you ever have normal relations? That one's a hard one to get to. How do you ever do that with Russia at this point? You probably never get fully there. No, we would. In the real world, we would. Probably, right? I don't know about that. I mean, that would be, I think, Not to say that we should, but look, we're great friends with Vietnam, which isn't crazy, right? Yeah, but there's a different leader. No, I know. It's a different, I know, I know, but maybe we should be talking Putin, not necessarily Russia. Right, I think we're, yes.

16:27Do I think we could have relations with Russia? Sure. Do I think we could have relations with Putin as long as he's running the country in that way? I think it would be hard to do it in the same way.

16:39What about this? We haven't talked about this. Was this Lena Kahn? Who started this? Trump started this. No, no. Let's put this whole thing on the table. This was a Trump case originally. He's come around on tape. Hold on. Well, it was a Trump case originally. Okay. Then taken on by Lena Kahn. Okay. Then retaken on by Trump. Okay. Okay? Who did he not like? Someone made him mad. And guess who undid this? An Obama-appointed judge, my friend. No kidding. So amazing. Take that to the bank. Amazing. The Texas judge that did the gerrymandering was a Trump appointee of those three. Metta winning a high profile and long running antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission.

17:24The government had accused the company of holding a monopoly in social networking. The case was filed five years ago. Five years. Yeah. OK. And focused on Metta's acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. I don't think I say, but Mark Zuckerberg has courted some favor, right? Does that help? I don't think that helped with this. It was an Obama-appointed judge. We have some news we've got to get to because this is just crossing. A statement now from Larry Summers. In line with my announcement to step away from my public commitments, I have also now decided to resign from the board of OpenAI. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have served.

18:07excited about the potential of the company and look forward to following their progress. Of course, Larry Summers has been involved and came out in some of these emails. I think we've known for quite some time that he was involved in some way with Jeffrey Epstein. More of the details became apparent as these as these files have emerged. I looked into him yesterday. Some of them are. How do I get horizontal with he's married at the time? And Epstein said, it was pretty funny, said, Larry, your chances of getting horizontal with this woman are zero. He, interestingly, you know, joined the board of OpenAI after what was.

18:462018 he was. No, I understand that. He joined. I just want to talk about the implications for OpenAI, because what happened at OpenAI, as you know, was there was an insurrection. If you remember. A what? An insurrection. Oh, OK. Its own insurrection, similar to the one that happened on your birthday in Washington. But there was an insurrection on the board, if you recall, where they tried to push Sam Altman out and all the other board members then left. As part of that, they were looking at the time for somebody that they thought could be sort of a Switzerland kind of individual who had great ethics and was seen as sort of a.

19:28They thought Larry was neutral. No, no. And so they brought Larry, Larry Summers in. Look, Larry Summers, whatever you think of this is. I was watching for a lot. Is brilliant. Obviously, you can hold two ideas in your mind. He was brilliant with terrible personal judgment. He's extremely partisan and not neutral. I've seen him speak many times, seen him speak in private. Sure. I mean, he was a Democrat. Right. And all of his opinions were informed by that. And he was wrong most of the time. I don't know about that. But as a, first of all, if you recall, you were quoting him left and right when he was criticizing Janet Yellen.

20:05Now you're saying that I was. Republicans were. Republicans were. Don't just. And you thought he was right. You thought he was right. You thought he was right when I do that. I thought he was right. I also thought he was right when he said that, you know, talked about the Fed and criticized the Fed. Right. So my only point is you are seeing a channel Marjorie Taylor Greene now. So don't don't he was the point I was trying to make is he was seen as somebody who could step into this role in what was a chaotic situation at OpenAI and help settle things down. And, of course, now he has roiled that himself with his own personal problems.

20:40And now, of course, they're going to have to find somebody else to join that board. He's still going to teach at Harvard. And the person that was talking yesterday was saying there's no way you can stay. She was with the legal. Look, I think there's a real question. And I think right now there's a lot going on behind the scenes from what I understand in terms of reporting about whether that's going to continue or not. Yeah. Up next on Squawk Pod, what The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip calls a joyless revolution in artificial intelligence, especially compared to the dot-com bubble of the 90s. You just don't see that kind of optimism.

21:17It feels more like resignation, anxiety. And from some people, I've even heard dread about what AI means for them, for society. Public suspicion of technology and the AI companies pushing it forward anyway, right after this break.

21:36Welcome back to Squawk Pod. You're watching Squawk Box on CNBC. I'm Joe Kerner along with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Becky is off today. Several recent deals, including yesterday's news that NVIDIA and Microsoft will pour$15 billion into Anthropic, renewing concerns of an AI bubble. Join us now, Greg Ip, Deputy Economics Editor and Chief Economics Commentator for The Wall Street Journal. The title of his latest piece, The Most Joyless Tech Revolution Ever, AI is Making Us Rich and Unhappy. I'm always happy, Greg, when I wake up and everything and feel okay, but I guess I kind of get what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing because we were all happy in 1999.

22:22We were all going to party like it's 1999, right? Maybe this skepticism that we have now is actually the wall of worry that allows us to not be like 1999 because we're unhappy about it or skeptical. Well, I don't know about that, Joe. I mean, notwithstanding the unhappiness among the general public, it doesn't seem to be bothering Wall Street. I don't see any wall of worry there. But like, yeah, let's go back to the 90s because, I mean, I covered that period, you know, as a journalist in the finance section at the Wall Street Journal. And I feel a real difference in just the overall atmosphere between then and now.

22:56I mean, that period was one. It was really kind of exciting and crazy, right? I mean, remember the sock puppet and the tow truck driver who got rich and bought his own island by trading Internet stocks? There was sort of a playfulness to that whole era. And they were like, everybody was quitting their day job to go start a dot com. So, yeah, it was kind of crazy. And the bubble did burst. But the mood was very upbeat. And I don't feel that now. I mean, I feel that, you know, unless you're like Sam Altman, you know, or Satya Nadella, I just feel or you just don't see that kind of optimism. It feels more like resignation, anxiety.

23:31And from some people, I've even heard dread about what AI means for them, for society and for the availability of jobs. Are you sure that doesn't mean we're in the early innings of this and that what you're talking about finally happens? But if you're early, it's got a long way to go, maybe. Sure. So it's just like 1995 versus 2000 on dot com equivalent. Right. I think that's what you're sort of asking. Look, I mean, one thing we know from history is that as people get used more used to a technology, they become more comfortable with it. So kind of, you know, in the early days of Internet and email, people worried about loss of privacy and so on.

24:06but they eventually got used to it, and that did not stop the rollout. But again, I would be hesitant to draw parallels between past technologies and this technology. I looked at a survey from 1995. Are you comfortable or uncomfortable with the Internet? Two to one, people were comfortable. Then I looked at a survey that you at CNBC did in the summer. Exact opposite with AI. Two to one, uncomfortable. And I also think, Joe, this has something to do with the overall sort of bad mood the country has, It's not just about AI, but in general, right? I mean, Trump is very frustrated that he's got low approval ratings on the economy, even though he thinks he's doing a lot for it, which is a lot of what is similar to what Joe Biden was going through in the last year of his presidency.

24:46And I think it's because there are so many things that are weighing down on people right now. It's like the cost of living under Joe Biden. It was the border. And I think now that AI is kind of like going in with that mixture, too. So if you're asking the question, why is there a disconnect between numbers that say the economy is good, but people's moods are so lousy? I think that AI is a piece of that story. It might be social media puts everyone in a bad mood because it's poisonous. And we just had a government shutdown. And you see the political rhetoric because of the social media on both sides of the aisle is so cancerous at this point that everybody is in a bad mood.