Elon's Big Loss, Trump's Stock Trades, and OpenAI vs. Apple

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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Karis Wisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. So you finally put a picture of me on your wall of your New York studio. You know, I had an X to my bed and I decided to put it in real office. Big one like that.

Thank you for putting me up there. I appreciate it. It shows a commitment to our relationship that I worry about sometimes. I'll be honest with you. I like keeping the other person a little bit on their heels. I feel that. Yeah. Is that how you get your relationships? Yeah. And then they break up with me. Yeah. Well, that's probably how we're going to go

here. Yeah. There we go. Anyway, as I'm movie last night, I went and saw ladies first with Roseman Pike and Sasha Baron Cohen. Oh, was it good? Yeah. I was shocked how much I enjoyed it. It's a little cliche. It's a little. It's based on a French film that felt like it

“should have been played in the 90s. But it sort of an LG to London and I think Sasha”

Baron Cohen is actually a very strong actor and he's sort of a leading man. He's actually quite handsome. And I think Roseman Pike is one of the great talents. She is. I saw, I've had a lot of those when Pike, I went and saw her play on Friday.

It's basically a one woman show and it's incredible. It's about a judge who son is accused

of rape and the conflict she goes through. I think she's an incredible talent. Yes, I like her and Rebecca Ferguson. Recorded is my favorite. That genre of actor. You know what I saw this weekend? Speaking of handsome people. Sheep detective. Same or I don't know. It's a movie called Sheep Detail. It's essentially, as my wife says, knives out, but was cheap and Julie's life has placed the principal Sheep detective.

But Hugh Jackman is in it. He plays a guy who's a who's a shepherd and there's a murder mystery and it's really good. It's shockingly good. He's very good, too, Hugh Jackman. Yeah. Anyway, it's about this bunch of sheets that solves a mystery and the Greg from succession. I forget his name was in there. He plays the police person and it's just delightful. It's a delight and Emma Thompson is in it and it's one fucking delightful movie about Sheep

Detection. Yeah, I was out in the Cotswaltz and I ran into a guy who was carrying two sheep under each arm and I said, you're sharing and you said, nope, I'm going to fuck both of them myself. No, my god. I knew you'd come up with a sexual remark. Oh my god. Anyway, I recommend it.

“I'm this one. When is this other movie coming to the United States? Is it open or not?”

Oh, I'm a sense. I don't know. I've never heard of it. I like serious such a barren color. Is he serious?

Because I think he's quite nice. He plays an executive who comes back, who hits his head and comes back as a woman and deals with, I mean, it's sort of the social commentary. I actually think feminists are going to hate it because it's the same kind of a man who's the cat goes through on a hero's journey and he's deep down. He's a good guy and discovers he's a good guy. I think the story is somewhat a little bit passey and trite now dated. Well, Mel Gibson wasn't that movie

you remember? He had a sad. Yeah, we had to wax and everything. Yeah. But the chemistry between Sasha and Rosamund and the production values and also they just do such a hilarious job of all the little Easter eggs like instead of five guys, it's five gals instead of its Victor secret. It's like you realize every single ad is about essentially objective fine women or about or praising men. It's it's actually pretty clever. Well, what would happen if you hit your head with you come back?

You know what happened. What? I got a contest playing soccer and um is that what's still ongoing?

call someone who transports cheap? What? Sex trafficker. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Do you what I did this week? And I took really personally power-washed everything from the winter. My whole

“dad home and I had it. Okay, now I gotta tell that's me, Joe. All right, go ahead. What do you call a lesbian dinosaur? What?”

Oh, it looks a lot of plus. Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. Is that bad? You asked for it. You were just setting me up. I love my power-washed for so much. I got rid of all the winter grit and then I had a barbecue with my nice friend, Audie Corn. You're so performative in your lesbianism. I love my well. I'm sorry. I love it. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to power-washed you next summer. You come if you can. I could use it. I could use it. Are you going to come to any of the property markets live

to us? Yes. Yes. I will come to at least one. Can I run on the stage and make it and run off? That could happen. You can absolutely run on the stage. I want you to answer our question or something. I will bring you out. I will do something fun. All right. Well, let's get straight to the breaking news of the day. Elon Musk just lost his high stakes lawsuit against Sam Altman and Open AI, which alleged Open AI had violated a promise to remain a non-profit after deliberating

less than two hours, which means they didn't get the free lunch. A federal jury ruled unanimously 90-0 that Altman and Open AI did not betray their nonprofit founding missions. There was a

“statute of limitations, technicality. But I think they're basically saying Elon, you giant adult”

toddler too bad. Scott, we've been saying this all along that this would happen. Check it out. I think this jury can't possibly sell them. I mean, ultimately, I don't think they proved anything. And it's a sort of he said he said kind of thing, and Elon's the most low sum of the pair, right, by far, by country miles. So I think Elon's made a spectacle of himself. If he wins, it would be something else. I'll tell you that. But I can't imagine the jury thinks this guy got a short

end of the stick, or that he's stupid and didn't know what was happening. The judge backed the verdict and dismissed all claims, including one against Microsoft, both men are racing towards massive IPOs,

with Open AI valued at over $850 billion in SpaceX. He's expected to go public very soon after

merging with Musk's XAI, which has been pretty much of a failure in the AI department, possibly one of the reasons for this lawsuit. Thoughts? Look, as predicted, I thought this was an easy one, and I thought this was a Messiah complex, and sellers regret caused playing a legal argument.

“The only thing that came out of this entire case was that Musk was fucking a board member”

and that she nor he disclosed it after he had left. I mean, well, if they did it that way, let's be, we don't know how it happened. Okay. All right. Okay. You're saying, she, she is immaculate, immaculate, and said, "No, because there's, let's not get into it." But they're dramatically involved now. Okay. Got it. Okay. Okay. This was a law fair, and this was, again,

I am turning, so I think we now need alternative minimum taxes of 60 or 70 percent on anything

over a billion dollars for an individual, because these individuals are under the impression that they are not subject to the standards of a Western society, decency, or the law. The fact that they would even, he would even bring this case. nonsense, waste of time, is okay. You don't have a legal argument, but I'm Elon Musk, and non-profits are allowed to convert to for-profits. They do it all the time. He tried to convince them to become a for-profit

that he would control. And when they said, "No, he left and started his own for-profit AI company." And then six years later, decided to give a ball-ownership and governance

of that now there was where to $850 billion dollars. He wanted some of that, or he wanted to

at least slow it down for his failing LLM. We've made a lot of predictions. We get some wrong. This was, this was a fucking layup. There was. I have to say, one of the things that people look first of all, it's a waste of our legal time. It's a waste of those nine jurors' time. It was ridiculous. Let me tell you, all of them came off badly, right? Sam Altman doesn't look good. Chivalzilla is the alleged person girlfriend thing. No, she is the girlfriend, I guess.

I don't know. I don't care. But Greg Brockman, the only person who came off like an adult, is Sachin Adela, who's the CEO of Microsoft, right? He looks like he did the right thing. He handled it well. All his texts are fine. The rest of them look like fucking babies and unhappy and just

between them personal dramas and it's a waste of our legal systems time. It's just the judge

seemed perplexed as to what it was doing there. And again, it does come down to Elon Musk and sour grapes. He is the sourous grapes on the planet, even though he's about to become the richest person on the planet, right? In history of the planet. The other thing is that both of them are sucking wind while Gemini and anthropic are lapping them, right? So all this waste of time and energy over companies that have problematic real problems, right, in their own thing. And it's just

“the whole thing is just I just and I think the fault lies of course with Elon Musk who just can't”

like lose. He's a sour, he's a sour winner is what he is. I don't know what else and he's a bad loser essentially. And you know, would you think it'll affect their IPOs or positions in the overall AI race? Because I don't see anyone coming off well except for Gemini and anthropic in this deal essentially. Well Gemini and anthropic wind by just pure virtue of the fact that this is a big distraction for a non-competitor XAI and a real competitor, open AI. The only nuance I would add

to your comments is one, there's a small fraction of people us included, very small that we're tracking the nuance and the details of the case. Generally speaking, the majority of people will will read this today and it distills down to a very basic thing, Musk Loss and Altman One. So I actually think Altman comes out of this as a win. There, that's fair. Because the majority of us didn't listen to the testimony and just how petty and childish and weird these people are. So it's like the

“remember one thing about this. Oh, Musk Loss and Altman One. And I don't, I think the prediction”

markets, I don't know what they were, at one point it had Musk at 50% which was a great bet. But the thing I looked at was the secondary market and I didn't see shares in open AI decline in value. So I think this, I think this gives new, not new win but existing wind in the sales of the open AI IPO and also I don't think it had to be fair. I don't think it hurts must IPO because I think people are so intoxicated for many good reasons by the IPO of SpaceX. This was, the, the most

interesting thing I saw on the CNN article that we just pulled up was the judge almost appears

to be wallpapering over why they didn't dismiss it in the first place, why that they even let

this get the trial. Because the judge was saying that she, you know, one of the reasons I was thinking of dismissing, you're going to have legal scholars, look at this and go, how the fuck did this ever go to trial? Yeah, because of a technicality, because of the statute of limitations, correct? Was that it? Yeah, well, statute of limitations and also, there is a certain, there is a certain benchmark for what actually proceeds to a jury trial. Yeah, new sense lawsuit.

Yeah, so like, I think this will go down as, as, I don't want to call it a nothing burger but something that was distracting for them, that people, the TMZ of the tech community loves reading the testimony and all that, but at the end of the day, this is a, this is a speed bump, 90 to speed bump, a bump for both firms, but the distillation is the following. Our court system still works. Muscle lost, Altman won, but bigger picture, neither of their IPOs is threatened

by this. Yeah, who the fuck cares is what I thought. The whole thing was such it like, I do think, I agree with you about the nuance. I think you're absolutely right. No,

“I don't remember that, but boy, did I get an insight to what a bunch of fucking babies these”

people are? Really, truly. I thought that, and now I'm like, on confirmed, and like a lot of the stuff, like that I had heard about Zillus not telling the board about the pregnancy, the twins, and stuff. I heard that, and I was like, "That can't be," and then it was like, like a lot of and a great Brockman's journal, and I know that's sort of like, we're interested in it, or I am at least, but it does, like, really does. I was like, I thought they were babies, and indeed, in court,

they were babies. And so I- I'll tell you about my pregnancy story, conflict. No, what is it? Do you do? You don't want to bring this back to me? I'm trying to bring it to me. I'm trying to bring it to me. You ought to bring it. You know, stranger things have happened.

Okay, so, uh, you got to tell me you want the story first, though. I want the story,

I got to have it really briefly, though. Okay. That's, that's Scott briefly as an oxymoron. Um, so, I'm a professor. I'm just getting traction at Stern. It's like 2000 and I'm, I should know this, 2000 and 7. Finally, I'm finally getting traction as a professor, and, and my dean calls me and says,

right away." It's either very good or very bad news. So I roll up there and you guys, you guys, okay.

So there's a rumor, and you guys, there's a second year who looks like she's about to give

birth. I mean, she's clearly very, very pregnant, a second year student, and there's a rumor that you're the father. What? Yeah, true story. You guys, there's a rumor that you're the father, and I go, "Well, I've got good news and bad news, and he literally put his head in his hands and he went, "Oh, fuck." And I said, "The bad news is I am the father." And I said, "The good news is we've been having sex for several years. We disclose in her application that we were living together and

“in a relationship together." I think for you. But we didn't pivot. We didn't tell anyone,”

especially students, and I didn't tell any of my colleagues. I just disclosed it when she was applying to the school, and that was, I had knocked up a student who was walking around. Oh, no. Oh, God. Okay. All right. On that note, I had a lovely pregnancy, and it was all an opening eye. Open eye eye. And then I went, and then I went on to the I feel of red envelope,

but a market cap of 108 million. Oh, God, that ended badly. Okay. I did end by the way. The legal

stuff is in over moving on to more open eye legal news. The company is reportedly weighing possible legal action against Apple over how chatGPT has been integrated into devices and apps through just waiting for this trial to end. And here we are. This deal that open eye thought would bring billions of dollars in subscriptions has not turned out that way. Open eye believes Apple failed to give chatGPT prominent placement in Siri and iOS, and didn't significantly promote

“the integration Apple has its own concerns about open eye, as they should, questions around privacy”

and the company's push into hardware and devices. They did hire Johnny Iver, but it's company. Another sign of the freeing relationship Apple is playing to let users choose between multiple AI models the way they do with search, even though they favor Google, including Gemini from Google and Claude from Anthropica Cross itself. We're later this year. Maybe they'll sell the poll position to one of them, but supposedly it was supposed to be open eye thoughts here.

I don't know what the contract is, but it kind of goes to the notion that even one of the most

powerful companies in AI, it's all about placement in distribution. Absolutely. Even going as far

back as when I was running a strategy for my way of working for Levi's, they initially decided they needed to go vertical because JC Penis would put their own Arizona brand at the front. I mean, distribution just has so much power. Even something as powerful as Open AI, if you put them at the bottom, they're not going to get as much, but I've said for a long time, I thought Apple was going to continue to be the arbiter and basically say, unless you pass a lot of money,

we're not going to go at the top, especially a company like Open AI, but I don't know what the contract, I don't know if it's an actual, I don't know if it's an actual formal breach of contract, but I would argue that, like the Disney Soros one that you had called out as possibly being a nothing burner. I just, I wonder, do you really want to piss off the premiere means of distribution with the kind of access to cheap capital that Open AI has? And Sam Alman's a smart man,

regardless of what you think of them, I don't see, I would be trying to figure out a way to cut a deal similar to what Google did. We're going to pay a shit ton of money and we're going to be here to fall day eye. So I don't, I'm going after them legally, I don't. I don't know. The Apple doesn't want them to be default day eye, maybe Apple does. I don't know anything about you know anything about the legal velocity of the case. I don't know, I mean, they obviously

the deal doesn't, like they struck all these very high-profile deals, whether it was Disney, which became a nothing burner, it was an experiment, didn't really go anywhere. They, you know, they did a lot of like, that's all kind of things, and this is the biggest one of them. And then they turned around and did the Johnny Eye thing, right, which has got a chap Tim Cook's ass, like on some humble, right, even though he's going to be stepping down. And at the same time,

they would have questions about what they want to do. Now, of course, Apple is a pay-to-play kind of company, too, by giving Google, probably Google maps are very good. There's were very good. There were other players. They didn't give search to, they gave search to Google because they paid them out. So they, they are, they will take your money and Google certainly has issues around all manner of issues. So they, they sort of overlook those. So I don't know, I just, I feel like they'll

“be, I think letting people choose between the multiple models is the best way to go. I don't”

love this place, pay-to-play kind of stuff, because it doesn't, it may give you a good version, but it doesn't give you necessarily the one you want. So it seems to me that people should be able to choose their AI model since Apple's not going to be deploying that themselves. You know, if you want to use cloud, you should be able to use cloud, and whoever

due to, they just default use Google maps or Google search. I think they, they play on the inertia of consumers. And that is, they're essentially basically, my understanding is with Google searching that are fault on iOS, they make it easier for you to use Google search than use Bing.

“Oh, it comes with it. You have to go deep into the thing to change it, like to any of them.”

Just, it's like six, it's like a lot of steps. I mean, this is the same across all of big tech. Amazon, if you want to be in the golden buy box, or you know, if you want to be top of search results, you have to pay. And the way they extract payment is that you have to use Amazon, media group, you have to use their fulfillment. And then the algorithm solely, but surely it puts you towards the top or deep prioritizes you. And it's like, it's like having

a store on Mars, just because you're an Amazon unless you figure out a way to do pay for play. I've said for a long time, I think eventually it'll move from these companies getting paid by Apple to Apple extracting a lot of payments from them. I think with OpenAI, they're now Google pays Apple for those things, right? They do get paid from maps. I thought Apple paid Google $1 billion a year for access to a custom Gemini model. So Google pays Apple to be the default search,

but yes, Apple is paying Google around a billion dollars for Gemini. That will possibly switch. But in this case, they did this deal with OpenAI, right, to to get make them the favorite nation. At the time, they did it. We thought that was pretty smart of OpenA had a move in there. On Gemini. And at the time, Claude was not that big a player, right? So it was sort of a move on Gemini. And so in here, it didn't work out. And I bet Apple has all kinds of problems with their privacy

issues and the sort of image around Sam, everything else. You know what I mean? Like,

“that's what it feels like to me. It's like, it's a regretful link or something and maybe they”

aren't doing what it takes. But a lawsuit is not great for pretty high as soon, correct or not. Doesn't matter for Apple. Well, the fear is, I'm like, so OpenAI is this hands Google's Gemini, the keys to the Apple universe. And that's the same keys they've possessed with search for two decades, right? And Apple roots a series queries through its private cloud computer framework,

claiming user data is never stored or used to train Google's models. And Apple evaluated or

claims they evaluated OpenAI and anthropic before choosing Google. I got to think there's 20 billion reasons why Apple wants to maintain a good relationship with Alphabet. Also, that could be a court case and a future democratic administration too, right? Like, they're not, it they've already been in trouble for those deals. That's been always been part of the thing. Well, that's 20 million dollars accounts for about 20% of Apple's annual services revenue. So it's real. I mean,

that is real. That's a, that's a very, that strikes me is the, the perfect relationship that Fox consumers. Yes, they do get paid. Apple will be the pay here. They're not going to pay Google. No, no, no, no. They control the distribution. They control the interface. They control custody the consumer. And it's the age-old argument of who's more important. The distribution of the

manufacturers brand. And there's, there's always an argument. And that, and then the companies

they get really, really have extraordinary shareholder value, always either reverse engineer into creating their own brands and controlling and taking advantage. Everyone goes vertical at some point. Or they forward integrate and start opening, you know, original Levi's stores. They start opening their own stores. But in the case of Apple, they've done a great job of deciding what they're going to go vertical on and what they should just extract a lump of flesh for it. And I would,

“again, I've said this before. I think Apple smart move in, as far as I can tell, their strategy”

is to decide that around AI, they're going to be the toll booth and, and let whoever the highest bidder is be the default AI. Yeah. It'll be questionable if they, as we talked about last week about whether they do this with Siri, right? Because Siri just sucks, or they're going to make

Siri better, or use someone else's, Siri has never been intuitive. I, I spend more time

arguing with Siri than anything else. What I think, I think Oculus and Siri are arguably, arguably two of the worst brands in tech over the last 10 years. I think they've become total clichés for a shit that doesn't work or that doesn't live up to it's, it's potential. Because a lot of the AI interface is going to be talking, right? Like, hey, like, like you're on the, like you're in Iron Man. So who does that? And Scarly Hansen will be her, right? Yeah. Right.

But who does, who is that company? Are they going to, is Apple going to default that? Or is that going to be their thing? Because they, I wish someone would do, like, a really deep dive into what happened with Siri, why it's so bad and why it is under resource store. I don't, I don't even know, but it seems to me, like, that's going to be the real interface. Is the voice, but maybe not. I don't know. No, I think you're right. I think what, I think we're shaping up one of the big,

the under appreciated or insights is that from a sensory perception, I think AI is going to be

function. And again, the Apple will control the distribution with their airports. Well, you're saying

is what will the brand of voice be or will it be branded? I guess you'll have to say, hey, something to prompt it. Is it part of who runs it? Where was the back anyway? I feel like there's a

“huge opportunity here for one of these AI companies. Because that's what, you know, as if anyone who's”

done a, a chatbot like this, it's really, it's the, it's the way to communicate. It's much faster. You don't have to type things in. It's much better. Anyway, what, speaking of, you may not get there because as these companies fight, Americans are pushing back on data centers, pairing all of it. All, especially the AI, according to new Gallup polling, seven intent Americans oppose constructing data centers in their local area. That's, well, no, Trump just had new polling.

It's he's down even further, but they don't like Trump. They don't like data centers. The opposition cuts across every major demographic and political group, although Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to strongly oppose these data centers. But Republicans don't like a meter. Like, let's be clear. It's pretty interesting that it's something that's quite bipartisan. You know, a lot of people think this is going to be the biggest I do to, when you hear from people,

especially as Elon, like runs rough shot over the Tennessee town with his methane engines or whatever, with these colossus. It just creates this feeling of, I don't know what it is. It's like these rich fuckers are fucking with our environment now, right, and not to our benefit, essentially,

“but your thoughts on this. I think it's the same reason that all these commencement speakers got”

booed when they mentioned AI. I mean, first off, no one is using AI more than college students.

And there's also some evidence that it's not the demand on the electricity or the environmental concerns that, I mean, some people will argue quite frankly, that has been exaggerated. I would like to see the scientific evidence on that, but there's just no getting around it. What this represents is the following, whether you're booing, Eric Schmidt, or rallying against it, data center. American see their prices going up, and they're not participating in the wealth creation of AI.

And it's just a proxy for income inequality that, okay, I hear about, you know, anthropic is worth a trillion dollars. San Francisco real estate prices are booming, jet sales are booming. There are 28 year olds who are lucky enough to get a job in coding

at open AI who are selling 7, 10, 15 million dollars in stock. And I can't afford detergent.

I can't, I'm worried about food costs. And so when I hear a data center is going up 40 miles for me in Utah, I show up to the protest whether or not I see direct evidence of it hurting me or not. This is a way of saying AI has become indicative of income inequality. And so when anyone anyone shows up at a commencement speech and starts lecturing them on AI, where they hear about a data

“center, I think this is essentially a vessel of people just filling it. And I don't want to,”

I don't want to diminish their concerns. I think there are some real questions that need to be answered around these data centers. But I feel mostly this is a vessel for people's rage around. It seems like everyone is doing well except for me. And that America's giant bet on AI is paying off for small group of people. And I'm not part of that group. Why, why not the companies themselves and why these because I guess data centers are physical, right? They're here. They're there. They can just

somewhere to go protest. It's also dystopian, right? They're field dystopian. They feel like they're probably not going to have a lot of people running them. It's not going to provide the jobs. They're going around local governments to try to like pay off people to put them in the way others. There are worries about the energy costs that are going up in these areas. There's like some real things. And then there's the pollution aspect. And I think Elon's as usual been like the

poster child for abuse of poor people, right? These are usually in poor areas. Also, I think it's just even beyond the worries about things. It's more of a creeping worry about what tech is. Again, more villainous. We don't assume the best of these people ever. Nor should we. That kind of thing. Well, the one being planned in Utah that's sort of been the lighting rod or it kind of embodies this one. They have the wrong spokesperson, Kevin O'Leary has seen a someone who's not that empathetic and old

like I who just doesn't he does not appeal to this this cohort. It's going to be two and a half times the envisioned a data center is going to be two and a half times the size of Manhattan. They have not figured out a way to communicate the economic benefits. And you're right. There's notion that you can turn the lights off on these things during the day because there's so few

if you look at history, when we have spent more than 3% of GDP on any infrastructure buildout, whether it's the railroads where I think we got up to 10%. We did two big buildouts, whether it's the electrification and the highways, remember the telco infrastructure build out of the late 90s. Whenever we do that and go over about 3% in three years, there's a crash. And because and what might make this crash especially severe is that railroads

need upgrading every 50 years, telco every 20 years, a data center is basically obsolete in four

or five years. So I think there I think obviously need to look at environmental concerns,

“you need to look at energy costs. But I would imagine there's so much money on the line here that”

these companies and these city councils would be able to come to some sort of accommodation around how do we ensure the local populist does not see its electricity costs just go through the roof. One would imagine, I know the Trump administration has been trying to do that. I think the hiring of Dina Powell was the reason for that is she's very, yes president of meta. I think that's probably going to be a lot of her jobs. These data centers worldwide, by the way. It's not just, it's also in

the Middle East. It's also because they want to have big data centers there and they have much more control over their populists. But I do think it's sort of the last play of these governments not to put up with this. You know it's a really interesting dynamic of people who are sort of years ago, one of the Joe Kennedy Jr. I think I've said this came, I hadn't went to his office and he was talking about Amazon putting in a warehouse into his district and he goes,

"What did this is probably good for people?" I said, "Oh no, it's not going to be good for people."

“They're not here to help. They're here to help themselves. I think people at their very core”

understand as you were saying that this is not for them. This is for others to benefit and it's not to help them in any way. So why should we give up environmental stuff or more energy prices more than environmental? The curb or the retail story or the cover story is where we're worried about environmental and demands on the grid. I think what's really going on here is this is rage in a quality and big tech and the data center is the manifestation and that we can see it and

protest against it. I think this is, I think whenever we get to these levels of income inequality, we have war famine or revolution. I would argue we have all three of those, but revolution

always takes on a different complexion. I think what we have now is this series of small revolutions

and they're going after people they, generally speaking, big tech, old people, white people, rich people. Okay, tell me, tell me you're involved in a data center without telling me you're involved in a data center. Yeah, I think Kevin earlier shows up with this multimeter. He's literally the worst spokesperson in the world for this shit. He did set out that he was worrying. I was like, "Oh my God, you literally look like the monopoly man." That's where he looked like the monopoly man.

Like it just is not. I'm not a fan of the mischief. Yeah, it's only a matter of days before you see AOC and Bernie Sanders at these sites whipping people up into a friend. It'll be like, it'll be like the modern day equivalent when Bob Barker used to go to animal shelters and just go crazy. Yeah, yeah, we'll see where it goes. And now speaking of this, which I think is getting people furious too, and I do think this is. The new financial discloser showed Trump or his investment advisors made

more than 3,700 stock trades in the first quarter of 20, 26 involving hundreds and millions of

dollars. The filing show major vise and companies like Nvidia Boeing Intel Microsoft and Oracle many of which are directly affected by Trump administration policy decisions as the FCC chairperson, Anagom is called billionaire buddy deals. In the case of Palantir Trump made at least seven purchases of the stock, totaling as much as $530,000 in March. Then just happen to praise the company on true social after sheer suffered their worst week and a year, the following month.

I mean, what does it actually take to have consequences here? And does it all end up with Trump or is it permanently changed? What Americans will tolerate from Presidentist? Because this is like, there's a group. I literally feel like he's going to start taking milk money from kids,

“like at some point, if you remember that expression. I just, this is like, is there anywhere”

he doesn't cheat and advantage himself in a way that's like really obvious griffed, like obvious and really kind of upsetting griffed? Well, I think you asked exactly the correct question and that is, what can be done about it? I'm just, I'm, I want to move past the Democrats into nation and constantly bitching about it, but no real ideas on how to stop it. And so let's set the table here to your point about a level of griff that is just absolutely unprecedented.

He has executed more than 3700 trades in the first quarter of 2026. He's doing 40 trades a day

And this is just him, you know, Trump being Trumpy. He usually didn't make this many trades in a year.

“And all of a sudden, he has access to influence around these companies and he's decided to start trading”

stocks. Trump bought 500,000 a million dollars in a video stock one week before his commerce department

approved in video chip sales to China. He bought some of between one and five million the week before they announced a major deal with meta. He's, he bought Dell stock before he started carving up TikTok and giving it to wait for it. Michael Dell, the same with Oracle. And we have unfortunately relied on a series of norms that is resulted in every president since LBJ using a blind trust. Obama did index funds and treasury bills. Everyone else has put their stuff into a blind trust.

He claims his trust is blindish because his sons operated who are the same people roaming around extracting a pound of flesh. And on the trips to China, just here to support dad, give me a fuck break. So look, insider trading or the veil or the appearance of insider trading has essentially

“defined Trump's second term. Just before a liberation day, more than a dozen government officials”

made well-timed stock sales. What a coincidence. So his, his meme coin hit a $27 billion market

cap or inauguration week with 58 anonymous wallets making over a billion dollars dumping it. Well, 800,000 retail investors lost $2 billion combined. 15 minutes before Trump announced in Ron P. stocks, $500 million in oil futures and one in half billion in S&P futures traded hands. Cal fee trading. It's all, it's absolutely, so let's be clear. There appears to be an unprecedented pattern of information that seems to be only available from Trump, Trump, for people surrounding

him, engaging in what feels like, you know, mark a manipulation or what could classically be to find is insider trading. And the damage there as it's not only a conflict of interest in skewing their decisions, it creates a lack of trust in the markets where people think, if I don't have insider information, I shouldn't buy stocks because the person buying or selling stock has more information than me. And you start to see Russia, which has a total stock market value of what

our stock market trades about every seven seconds. And you lose access to cheap capital and your whole economy starts to decline because companies can't find pools of capital that are formed

“based on a certain rule of law and fair play. The question is, okay, great. Now what do we do about it?”

And this is where I think the Democrats again have fallen short. And that is where long on the indignation, but we're short on ideas. And I believe that someone running for President should

say, one of my first acts is I'm going to work with the following states, AGs. I think there's

been insider trading. I think they'll have to discord in a minimum their profits, including Democrats, including Democrats who've engaged in insider trading. I think there has been wire fraud. I think there has been effectively what announced to defense concerns or violations of the emoluments clause. I'm going to go after cabinet members. I'm going to go after their sons to the letter of the law. And the key here is I'm going to do it with the following state AGs

such that this legal action is not exempted or protected by a presidential pardon. But somebody needs to lay this shit out. We are, I mean, well, Ron manual has, or others have some several have. Ron, Ron is the only one. He just laid it out in the room. Ron is the only one who's actually moved to the ideas part of if I worry, we are going to be in for a rude awakening. If we think we're going to win just based on indignance and hating Trump, it's got to be, all right, what are you going

to do about it? And the way you get legitimacy here is one by saying, any Democrat that's engaged in this bullshit, which they have, we're going after as well. And also, don't think a presidential pardon is going to get you out of this folks, because this comes down to incentives. And until these belief people believe they could be subject to something on January 21st of 2028, or just in me, 2029, they're going to continue to engage in it. Right, because these are these cases are

much easier to win. There's digital proof everywhere. That's right. I, I, I, I, I have told you this, but there is a group of people, technologists who are saving crypto, but things for later, like so later when it happens, like when it, when you can do something like this, they'll be. Yeah, they're prints on the threads. Yes, they've been watching it, they've been collecting it, and they're holding it. And so there are, there's an ability to track this stuff

folks, and you're absolutely right. This is, this griff to the Scott to be, they're not going to, some of them are going to look, Trump probably is going to walk away. Let's be clear. Unfortunately, getting our hands on him is going to be pointless anger filled. Let biology take care of him. Let him, he's old. Like, he is not going to be gotten, but the sons of these people, and the

all these kids are, like, swanning around. I can tell you, they're swanning around Washington,

“and there is dumb and dumb, or it doesn't even begin to describe them. And they are just,”

they're just, they're just on the make, and it's grotesque. It's just grotesque, what's going on here. And let me tell you, the people who are mad about data centers, they're also taking advantage of everywhere else. And so, fuck you is there, fuck, how to fuck you is there, is there operating principle, and they can do it in a short cut way without working at it? That's their favorite way. And so, I agree with you, this is what any Democratic person wants to come and talk to us.

We will give you a speech for you to do this. Anyway, we have to go on a quick break when we come back. Elon Musk planned to make sure no one can fire him from SpaceX, another monarchy. Support with a show comes from Vanta. If you're a business owner, you might have noticed that risk and regulation are on the rise. Customers now want proof of security before they

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and check out deleteme.com/pivot code Pivot. Scott, we're back with more news, SpaceX is expected to file for its IPO this week, which will be interesting. I'm excited for you to read it and tell me all about it. At a valuation of roughly $2 trillion aiming to go public June 12 on NASDAQ, we're also learning about more about the government structure, no surprise CEO Elon Musk would control a supermajority of class B stock with 10 times the voting power of ordinary shares. This

is not in common Google and other companies have this meta, things like a reversion of this.

election and removal of directors as long as he holds his stake. Investors are warned this will

“limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters. It's already in place right now,”

by the way, but come on, of course he's going to do this. And there's another yet another

incentive for Elon if SpaceX reaches a $7.5 trillion valuation and it establishes a 1 million

person colony on Mars. He could receive up to 200 million in shares. Let's talk about the board membership, Scott, because you've been an investor, you've been a board member. Elon defended on X-riding. I need to make sure SpaceX stays focused on making life multi-planetary and extending consciousness to the stars, not pandering to someone's bullshit quarterly earnings bonus. In other words, he doesn't want to have a public company, but he wants the benefits of a public company.

Only thing I will say here, he truly does believe in this multi-planetary extending consciousness. It's not, this is not marketing on his behalf. He has a demented, loony idea that humanity will die and he should be the god of Mars. So, and speaking of war, but your thoughts on this entire thing besides monarchy and god-like feelings that he has? Well, just a brief history of dual-class shareholder companies. They were originally invented by media companies who claimed

they wanted to pursue journalism without the vague or even time. Well, yeah, a bunch of them, actually. Almost a lot of them said, and there was some legitimacy that these families said, "We don't want someone who hates us to show up and start dictating editorial control so we want to maintain control." Whether you believe that or not, fine. But then, the first tech company need to do that was the Google guy. They said, "We want two classes of shares." And what's interesting

is, in the late '90s, there was a rumor that Sequoia was trying to sell its shares in a private Google because they really clashed with Sergei and Larry, who demanded two classes of shares. And that was so unusual. And Sequoia's thought was, "You're not going to be able to get public. You're not a newspaper company. You're not a journalism company or a tech company." And basically, Google then, everybody else has followed in Google's footsteps. Now, to be fair to

Musk, you know, when I went on the board of the New York Times and was the largest shareholder, I, all I really was, was heckling from the cheap seats and effectively an advisory board because the family, which now gets 10 seats and everybody else gets five seats. So while you get some sort of representation, you really don't have, at the end of the day, the family decides what they're going to do over Thanksgiving dinner. The Ford families, the same way they own very few shares,

but they control the company and tech has figured this out. So this is nothing new and to be fair, most of the academic studies have shown the dual-class shareholder companies have not vastly underperformed single share company. Yeah, I don't think that's the issue. It's a camp that's fired. He isn't charged, and not only that, but I mean, this is where the shit will get crazy, and I can't wait to read the S1, you know, Adam Newman wanted his kids to inherit the company. And Musk is saying,

so, but the reality is shareholders have a choice around whether they want to buy shares.

And what you do with the tool-class shareholder company is eventually you get a bad king. And, too, you take out a premium of a possible takeover. And that is Warner Brothers Discovery. When AT&T spun Warner Brothers, they demanded a single class share stock, such that the company could be put into play. And whenever a company is a single share, a class share company, usually trades theoretically at a bit of a premium because someone could come in and buy it.

“So this is, this is just, you have to decide whether you”

believe in Musk, and to be also just the market says, not people are not only willing to put up into the dual-class shareholder company, they're willing to buy at what are air-entapp normal, extraordinary valuations because of Musk's involvement. But this is these super-voting shares started with media companies and newspaper companies then leaked into tech. And now, air almost everyone is doing it when they go public.

Right. That, that I don't fault him on. Like, of course, and he, by the way, he's been running Tesla like that anyway without having this kind of thing, right? It doesn't matter. The, the board has, has, has, has, had, does whatever he wants. It's like, it's a completely

bought and paid for board essentially. And so he gets that shares and he always threatens to leave

and he throws a fit and it just didn't work it open AI. That's what happened there. They're like,

“yeah, we'll be fine without you and they were for a time. So I think it is not an unusual thing”

and you do have to realize he's not going to, he is a key man here. It's just like one bad night in Austin and you know, that's the problem with all this up. Or he loses interest like he's done it Tesla. Now, the shares of state up because it's a meme stock, but the company's not head

is these single monarchies, same thing with with with Zuckerberg. He happens to be vibrant right now.

But boys, he made a series of idiototic move that would have gotten other people fired and he won't be fired. And it is part of a mentality of I am the king. I am the god that you have got to buy into. But it has enormous risk because it's all based on predicated on one person. And sometimes that's good, but sometimes that's not so good. Like, I just feel like that can be fair. Beware, essentially.

“You do well. I think the mosque, I think there's no way to build a company like SpaceX or Tesla”

without having a ton of good people around him. The reason why the Messiah complex comes into effect in that is no one is allowed to get near. I'm pretty sure the fastest way to get fired at Tesla or SpaceX is to ever say anything out of Mike. Only Elon is allowed to talk. This is all about Elon. He's the genius. We don't. There is no Ruth Perat. You know, there is no Tim Marm strong. There is no correct. There's no one else. Anyone's allowed. You're locked in the basement.

Can I just interject when I want to do do you win shot? Well, years and years ago at one of my code conferences, they said only Elon will speak to you. Like, I was like, what are you talking about?

She's obviously doing an amazing job. Like, I really wanted to know all about Elon. Only Elon.

And I was like, I remember the time being like, well, that's fucked up because she deserves.

“Like, I want to hear from her. Anyway. But what I would suggest investors do when the”

S1 comes out and I'm going to spend some time on this is not focused on the dual-class shareholder structure, but simple basic boring stuff or the boring knitting evaluation. And that is the following. At some point in amazing companies is a shitty investment. If it gets too expensive and at some point a shitty company is an amazing investment. If it gets cheap enough. And let's just talk about the evaluation here. Google IPO trading at about 10 times trailing revenue. And it was growing revenues

240% before the IPO. So 10 times trailing revenue growing 240% a year. Meta IPO at 28 times trailing revenue growing revenues at 88% a year before the IPO. Saudi around co, five times trailing revenue, growing revenue is 41% a year. SpaceX will IPO at 109 times trailing revenue growing revenues at 20% a year. And to be clear, space is the ultimate addressable market. They have modes the size of the Amazon. But it's going out at 10 times the valuation on a multiple basis as Google did with a

tenth of the growth. And then if you just want to look at valuations, Amazon went public at 900 million Microsoft at 2.3 billion Apple at 7 billion and Google at 40 billion. And what SpaceX is

“targeting 2 trillion. So all I have to say is is SpaceX an amazing company or is it massively overvalued?”

The answer is yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, we'll see. And you can still do well. Okay, moving on very

quickly, Louisiana Center Bill Cassie lost his Republican primary after President Trump targeted him in retaliation for voting to convict him in his impeachment trial five years ago. Trump backed representative Julia let low who finished ahead with about 45% of the vote on true social Trump celebrated the loss thing that Cassidy's disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now part of legend. And it's nice to see that his political careers over Cassie took a swipe at Trump during his

concession speech. Just listen to a clip. And when you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn't turn out the way you want it to. But you don't pal. You don't mind. You don't claim the election was stolen. You don't find a reason why. You don't manufacture some excuse. You think the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you've found out privilege. So interestingly, also just in related stories, Supreme Court blocked an effort

to revive democratic back Virginia congressional map that could have flipped several GOP. House seats the map had been approved by voters, but struck down by Virginia Supreme Court and Supreme Court did not give a reason for denying the emergency appeal in the order. They usually don't metal with Supreme Court. It's really just what I'm told. So there's some worry that Democrats should worry about the political. And by the others feel

know that it's not the case that it was it was a good thing to have, but not a must have. I mean, this Cassie thing is interesting, because suddenly again, like Tom Tillis, he's found his balls. And he does have until January to do something about it. He's the one that backed RFK. And even though he knew better, he did a lot. He voted yes for Pete Egg's death. Shouldn't have done it. Now, can be regretful of it. I know Tillis

took a really big slap at Hegg's death this week. These two could make trouble for Trump

So what do you think about this? I mean, democracy is democracy and Trump has power in these states.

So thoughts about both things. I'm torn because I understand, I'm sympathetic to the notion that you can do good if you don't get elected. And this is no longer the Republican party. It's maga. It puts these people in a very difficult position. I also think there's some legitimacy to the argument that Bill Castes should lose his medical license because to be, well, he was the swing vote. I know that. I did God. I believe it. They got a RFK. I mean, I've said this before.

No one is doing more damage abroad than Secretary Hegg's death. No one is doing more damage to children domestically than RFK junior. Measles is on the rise. I mean, it's repulsive. He's a murderer.

He's a murderer. And this is the doctor. He took a hypocrite oath. And he confirmed a guy

he knew was was creating fear and insecurity around our medical, great medical institutions and around and demonizing vaccines. And he's a fucking doctor. I mean, so I want to feel some glee here, but here's the problem. It was good to have a doctor on many of these panels. He was about as reasonable as they came. The person that's probably going to replace him is going to be worse. So this is just one of those things. It's like shavings of shit on a shit salad. And it's

“fun to be gleeful about it and say Senator Cassidy or, you know, the only thing I know that's going”

to come of this is, oh, my God, wait and see the testicles that this Senator is suddenly about to find he has. He just did just watching on Bill Mar her. All of a sudden, he's going to turn into a

truth teller. I can't wait to see what he says about RFK now. And the problem is folks, that's not

when we need your testicles. That's correct. That doesn't. That's not when we need you to be a leader. So I, I just think this is, you look left. You look right. And this is shit Avenue because he was a reasonable guy. You do need medical professionals on these panels to say, okay, one of us is a doctor. Everyone else shut the fuck up. I think that training does pay off. I believe in expertise. I believe in credentials. I believe in peer reviewed research. I believe in science

and so should America. We need more doctors. I think in, in Congress, the person who replaces them. And he must be pissed off because quite frankly, while their singing came in third, he actually barely lost because he got 25. The other candidate who was anti-Trump or not a Trumpy got 28. So if he had just gotten 28 or 29, he might have won in the general. I got to be honest. So you know what I'm so excited to see. What? Oh, my God. He's going after a village,

idiot, Lauren Bobert. Oh, he's going after Lauren Bobert. And I just, I just want to say, I'm going to post a fundraiser for, for Bobert. And it's going to be whoever wins.

“She has to go on a date with your 17 year old son. I think she is the best date for a high school.”

Oh, my God. She'll let you grow. I'm going to get her moving on. She goes to Beetlejuice. All right. Where were you when I was 17 represented at Bobert? No, you didn't say anything about the Democratic thing in Virginia briefly because we got a move on. But I said this last week. We're hoping that the redistricting is beat by vibes. I just don't think there's any way to polish this. This is bad for Democrats. Yeah. I think I think he can't deny polling.

Polling is polling and everywhere it happens. You got to win by win in the votes. That's the way you got to do it. Well, but, but I take the other side of that. If you cherry mandarin enough, you can win, you can win more than you deserve. I still think it's an overwhelming. It's going to be a train. I hope that you're right. All right. Let's see. We'll see. We'll see. And by the way, another, another talking point, Pete, Pete, or wrong. This is my grid. I took a grid. It's, it's my, my

eight year old did it. You know, Pete has little kids. He draw, he drew eight lines. Exactly equidestine horizontally. And he put it on top of the US map. And this is what I'm kind of proposed for congressional districts. I'm going to de-chering mandarin the United States.

“I think that is a great talking point right now. That's another good one. Let's go in a quick break.”

We come back, the reality star in the LA mayoral race. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder? With it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odo, it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

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including a way, Patrick Todd, and Dollar Shave Club, already growing with Clavio. The autonomous beta CCRM. Get started at KLavio.com. Scott, we're back with more news. This one. Oh my god, you could have run for mayor of Los Angeles at this point. Spencer Pratt, formerly a reality show of the hills, and a generally awful person is unexpectedly emerging as a contender in Los Angeles mayors race a month, so Clavio

is going to win, but he's got the mo. Despite his lack of political experience, Pratt has gained traction through viral social media campaigning and support from figures like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, of course, Elon Musk. Pratt has built his campaign around frustration with the cost of living in the city's response to wildfires, which destroyed his own home. Lot of reporting by Harvey Levin has shown most of the stuff he's saying to be nonsense.

Thank God for TMZ at this point. He signed up, of course, an unscripted series following his bid to be mayor and going into mayor, of course, because this is all a scam with Spencer Pratt. And elsewhere in California politics, which seems insane, this particular juncture, California, gubernatorial candidate, Tom Steyer's under investigation after his campaign paid influencers to post favorable content without clearly disclosing its sponsor. California requires paid political

content to include disclaimers as it should, and state regulation now looking into whether those rules will violate it, both Democratic Republican groups are putty spent millions of this type of endorsement over the past. You can paint cycles. It's very, it's propaganda. So, reality stars, influencers, of course, it's California, Spencer fucking Pratt, like, what in the buckety fuck? And a lot of people donate to him, by the way, don't live in Los Angeles,

but that's neither here nor there. Thoughts? I had a friend called me and asked me to have him on the raging moderate spot, and like a reality TV star, he lost his house in the palace, said, it's very good on camera,

“I understand social media. He's got a lot of momentum. He's running against what I think is a”

weak candidate and a frustrated populace. L.A. has become a little bit like I would describe it as Cape Town. There are some areas of Cape Town. I think this is a nicest place in the world, and then if you venture a few minutes outside of them, it gets really ugly, really fast. And the homeless problem, I think it's fair for people to say, I'm paying some of the highest taxes in the nation, and I have to walk this way to my kids to school, so they don't see a homeless

man masturbating or shitting in the streets. That, you can understand the amount of bureaucracy trying to deal with the fires. A lot of people don't like the way the fires. This is ripe for somebody to challenge Karen Maribass. Where I land on the fall is the following. Spencer Bratt, embraced Alex Jones, said, 9/11 was an inside job and brought up about Sandy Hook. Go fuck yourself.

run. One is one of the great cities in the world. So this guy is evidence again of revolution

and people so angry and so upset. I hope, and it's also evidence of just how hard it is to find reasonably competent people to run for office. Like where Theresa was supposed to challenge her. Yeah, Rick, Rick would have been great. I'm trying to get my friend Jamie Patrickov to run. He's

“nice. He loves LA. He has the money which is important. He's pragmatic. He's a business person.”

None of these people want to put their family or themselves through this bullshit. Right. Also, somebody has to come in and take on many of the special interest groups, including unions, including entrenched Democrats. And it is a, a lot of people will say people really thoughtful go. LA, like California has become nearly ungovernable. And that is the special interest groups are so entrenched and so hard to overcome. There's so much bureaucracy. It's so hard to find

talented people to try and do this. Everybody wants theirs and that it's become a very

difficult but Spencer Pratt. I know. It's just amazing that some people are backing this guy

just guy. And by the way, I'm not kidding about Harvey Love and he actually showed how much he was living at the ballet or hotel and was pretending to, anyway, look, there's frustration over everything. A lot of stuff that he's talking about is not the responsibility of bass, but there's anger at

“bass about how she handled that. No question. There's anger and frustration about homelessness.”

There's anger and frustration. But your, your choice is not to go with Spencer fucking Pratt, by the way, who's just one con after another. He really is. He really is. And lie and con after another. There's another council member who's also showing some some a little bit, not momentum, but some numbers who had backed bass and now is running against bass. Probably should

I hate to say this, but probably strike some sort of deal with bass step down. Yeah, he will

probably win. Bass, because there's no peep, no Latinos or black people are voting for Spencer Pratt. And it's all outside money. It's all people who have like very little interest in it. But he is articulating an anger, even if he's the worst vessel possibly. That's exactly right. But this guy makes Trump look like a genius. Like, let me just say, this is not even close. It's it will be such an embarrassment for this to happen. In San Francisco, you get Daniel Lurry, someone who's

a really, who's doing a good job. And by the way, I still don't think Lena Reed did the worst job of all. It just was she had a lot of stuff that got piled up on top of her and didn't have the tools because of different legal things that's got past later that you couldn't deal with the homeless issue there. But now Lurry can. You need someone like Lurry, like find someone like that, like who is going to be like, maybe a little more centrist than the left once, maybe a little

not as conservative as others want, right? Someone who's going to try to solve problems. And at least make an attempt to do so. And instead, this laughable, like con man is the person you're picking and full of constant lies. It will be a disaster for Los Angeles. This was one of the most beautiful places on earth. And if they could, now Los Angeles compared to San Francisco, is a quantum level of difficulty of running. It just is, like, let's be clear. And but this is

“not what you want. I think Bass has started to acknowledge the problems, is just saying all the”

right things. It's likely to win, but the momentum for this fucking clown, especially let me tell you, anyone who calls me from Los Angeles and several have that say they're looking at them, we are no longer friends, like sorry. Just sorry. Like if there was no looking at them quite frankly, you're being very generous to Mayor Bass. Right. I am. I agree. I think she's, I just has not been great, but this is the choice you have, right? This is fair enough, but there's a couple takeaways here,

Mayor Lurry and Democrats, especially Democrats in executive roles, not legislative roles. There's a difference. Governor and Mayor, it's an executive role. And what Mayor Lurry is doing in every Democratic mayor needs to take a lesson, a note for out of this page book and governor, because if if Democratic governors and mayor's can't figure out a way to not make their cities come across as shitholes, it is going to be very hard for them to run. They've got to show they have the ability

to say no to special interest groups and be about blocking and tackling such that they focus on quality of life issues. And what Mayor Lurry has done that is so impressive is if you ask them about Israel, if you ask them about Ukraine, if you ask him even about a national issue, bodily autonomy that doesn't directly affect right now, San Francisco and so have access to family planning, he says, I'm not going to talk about it. That's not why I'm here. Every

mayor and governor in the United States thinks that their mayor or their governor's ship is a kickoff campaign for them to run for president. Yeah. No, get the sublaced to run on fucking time. Figure out the way the trash gets picked up. Figure out a way to strike a deal with the unions if you're dealing

40 years. In retirement. Stop talking about national and international issues. No one gives a fuck where you think. Run the city and that is exactly what Mayor Lurry is doing and he's very popular and he's getting a lot of support and he's getting shit done and he's making hard decisions around homelessness and around municipal transportation. The other thing I want to say that will be

Tom Stuyer has basically been accused of astroturfing. I mean, that's effectively what it is.

You're paying for people who endorse you, who don't disclose their endorsement. Okay. So is everyone else. Right. When Mundani was running and I said anything about the mayor all race, hundreds of comments from bots. You're going to tell me they somehow weren't connected to money and his campaign. No, it's a part of modern political life. And so if Tom Stuyer doesn't astroturf, then good for him and he's going to lose. This is now the world we live in unless the

platforms figure out an airtight way to get rid of anonymous accounts and unless they start going after agencies that claim to be PR and comms firms, you are let me go further. You're stupid not

to astroturf back because everyone's doing it to you. It is. It's just that there's got to be a

way to solve this because it's such like it's so noisy. The platforms have to do it. No, absolutely. It's so noisy. We can't hear what people are saying. In that case, it looks like probably basero looks like he's searching ahead at this point. But that whole California race has been insane. Like all of them that got to someone needs to knock heads there but no one could knock heads anymore, right? So it's sort of a race to be an influencer or something or some version of

cheap and dirty. And that's a real shame. It really is. You know, California is an important state and should be governed by serious people. Both cities are important cities. They've led the

way on innovation, whether they have troubles now, that's a different issue. But you know, it's taking

“governance for as a joke. And that's what's that's the real ugliness of the Trump administration”

creating everything like a grift in a joke. Happened to anger. Great social media. He's playing you folks. And you know, you're gonna have to, I wish there was an alternative to vast that was serious. And I, you know, I get why you would want to be behind it. But this, you're doing this. There's something wrong with you. There's something real wrong with you. Anyway, we'll see what happens. We'll see. He may just fade just because he seems like such a village idiot. But we'll see.

And if he wins, watch out. I've watched some of his stuff. I'll give him the, I think he's actually, he's got some of that Trump charisma. He thinks he's got some of that. That's why he was a successful anger and outrage tapping into. Again, this all comes back to the same thing. People, people are getting 110 notifications on their phone that everyone's making bank and has a hot boyfriend or girlfriend, except them. Everyone feels as if they're falling behind. And when you're falling

behind in your angry chaos is your preferred candidate. That's correct. You're absolutely right. Anyway, well, we'll see what happens there. I hadn't been interested. Don't have Spencer Pratt

“on. If you don't like it. If you can, but you have to whack his shit out of him. No, it just said,”

just said, if we do that, we have to have Mayor Basson. And I'm like, I don't, I'm not gonna platform anyone who said 9/11, is it with an inside job and is, and is shared the stage with Alex Jones. And other than saying, my heart goes out to the victims of Sandy Hook, that's just disqualifying. I'm doing a lot of virtue signaling right now, but those are red lines. Those are red lines from those are good virtues. I would say they're not virtue signaling. It's virtues. They're virtuous.

What virtues? Those are good virtues. There are some good virtues these days. Anyway, one more quick break, we'll be back for wins and fails. Whatever your thing, it could be anything. Canva helps you make that thing a thing. Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our Magic AI tool things. You can social media your thing. Generate images or videos of your thing. Make decks or

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Okay, let's do some wins and fails. Should I go first? You go first. Okay. I'm going to put it

as a win in a film boat. Now, I love Stephen Colbert, right? I love him. I think he's a really funny. I think he's going to have an enormous career after he leaves. I think they're overdoing it on the goodbye tour. I have to say it's a place I hate to agree with people, but it's like it's like a woman's birthday party that turns into a Jubilee coronation for two fucking years. Come on, we get it, please. It's the five white guys. I was like this, you're not making yourself

feel like you're not. I get it. I'm pissed myself about the apparent mistake over. I am too. But I'm not going to like go on, but that said when they what I did love is when they bring

“letter him back, I love when he's mad. Like I love a letterman anger, and I think it's really”

funny. And that was sort of his brand, a sort of dispepted anger, and they threw the burniture, and then they threw the melons, and they threw the birthday cake off the roof. I thought that was so funny and just exactly all I needed. So that was my win and failed at the same time. And when he says, "Good night and good luck, Motherfuckers." That made me laugh hysterically. Like do it in humor, but it's getting like, it's getting a little much. I got a

completely mugging Kelly set as a version of this, and I hate to agree with her, but and I love Stephen Colbert, and I think he's got, I think they're not telling the truth about what happened here. I do know that these shows are declining, and this is the way it goes. They could have done a lot of other things, but just stick with the funny, and we all know you got fucked. Like I

“got it, but just go on and do great things. That's what I would say. I just am feeling a little bit like”

okay boys, you know, there are lots of people that get fucked. So let's let's do something about it as you say. All right, you're a win and fail. People are going mad at me, but I love Stephen Colbert anyway. Well, I have a fail in a prediction, and okay, so my fail is Nicholas Christoff, and what I believe is a breakdown at standards of the New York Times, and his piece on Palestinian prisoners, I think is my fail, and not because the subject isn't serious, and not because it's not,

it's an important issue. I believe that our military operations and Western societies and democracies

need to be held to a higher standard, and whether it's a second strike on a on a boat, not a

navy vessel with survivors, and not giving them quarter, or the abusive Palestinian prisoners, I think that the IDF should be held to a higher standard than any military in the Middle East. So it's not that it's not an important issue, but there's a line in the piece suggesting that dogs were trained to rape prisoners. That's an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require a level of evidence that was not met here. Not vibes, not here say, not someone said,

if you're going to publish something that incendiary, you need airtight sourcing, multiple corroborated on the record confirmations, or clear documentation, and if someone who has a background or experience with Belgian malign laws and has come very close to adopting a canine dog, the notion that a dog can be trained to physically rape somebody, it's just fucking ridiculous. And I feel that they're not informing the public,

they're injecting a narrative accelerant into one of the most volatile conflicts on the planet. And here's the bigger problem. When legacy media outlets, especially one that has the prestige, the reputation, the talent of the New York time, runs with claims like that that aren't bulletproofed, they're not risking being wrong. They're risking a further erosion and trust and everything else that's true. And they hand ammunition to people who wanted to dismiss all reporting as bias

War is where truth goes to die on both sides, which means journalism needs to be really disciplined.

And if you lower the bar because the story aligns with your priors,

“you're no longer doing journalism, you're doing advocacy with a by-line. And I think that these”

abuses, the ones that can be proven, get discounted because the media couldn't resist the most shocking version of the story. This reminds me of all those stories about child soldiers, they really upset people for the right reason. You take something innocent and talk about killing, taking dogs and combining it with rape. I read it and I thought this is just over the fucking top for the New York Times. Well, look, can I just, I'm not going to push back because I think

there's a lot of controversy around the story that it was in the opinion section that in this case, it probably the New York Times reporters on the scene should have written a follow-up story or something to talk about this. Now, Christoph is known as an excellent journalist, has done

amazing work. He's not just that, he's not just because he won the Pulitzer Prize, but like

amazing work on all sorts of abuses across the world. And he's been accurate as he's a very good reporter too. But this was an opinion section piece, as you know. And the New York Times has been very supportive of him, but I think in this case, this should have been also reported because of the nature of it. You've got to have like extensive reporting on this, even if it because it's so incendiary. And I think probably, I don't know what happened and they need to talk about it,

but the New York Times is backing his reporting. The question is, should they do more reporting, right? And if this was the same allegations on the Israeli side, as Ben has been, I mean, on the

Hamas side of the same sexual uses, same thing, right? Like allegations, same thing. And so that's

“what's important here is to do, as I think you double report stuff like this, triple report and”

quadruper report. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out because the Times has been backing him on this stuff. And he is citing a lot of UN stuff, he's citing a lot of reports on the scene, he's reciting a lot of stuff. But it requires extra, extra reporting, as much as, you know, that may seem offensive to some. I think I do agree with you here. They've got to really button it up in a way that because of the incendiary nature and where it is at the same time.

Even if you, you who have a side and you feel like, you know, that war does result in terrible abuses of the citizenry. Yeah, I'm going to defer to you on journalists' standards. I just read it and thought, I have trouble. This seems so unbelievable that it required more than more evidence and better reporting than I felt was evident in the article. And then on something

“that is so important in terms of how we in the West. And I do consider to Israel, Israel isn't”

ally in part of the West. The standards they should be held to are really important and deserve they deserve scrutiny. I mean, I get it. People who, when people claim, I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm anti-Israel. I say to them, you know, I can relate to that because I don't like Netanyahu, but I care so much about Israel that I would like to see Netanyahu vote it out of office, because I don't think they have acquitted themselves well in terms of many of the ways they have

approached this conflict. I get it. But when you reduce the veracity of your reporting on this key issue and other ones buys as someone, I don't feel like I have domain expertise around how persons are treated. I have some domain expertise around dogs quite frankly. And I decide, okay, I have, I can't even, this is unimaginable for me for someone who has spent a lot of time around Belgian melon was for them to say that. And then I'm like, where's the evidence,

where's the proof, where's the double, the corroboration, the further investigation, and it wasn't there. And I thought it reminded me of when you see those in this unthinkable pictures. At the end of the war, Americans were really horrified by what they saw in concentration camps. They were almost as horrified by the Germans enlisting 14 year olds and sending them to the front lines. Because you took children, something innocent, and you collided it with something heinous, killing other people.

And this, this wreaked of that to me. Let's find the most innocent creatures in the world, dogs, and let's combine it with rape. Well, let, let me just read that for just for this for people to know. It'll, we'll see where it zeroes out. But I'm assuming there's gonna, they're going to do further reporting. It would be my guess internally. And there's a lot of people saying they're going to, they're going to retract it. This is, Christoph is said, this is not true. This is the,

Nicholas Christoph is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has reported on sexual violence for decades. And it's widely regarded as one of the best, the world's best on ground reporters documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse experience by women and men in war and complex zones. He traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of Palestinians who suffered abuse and this article collects accounts of the victims own words backed by independent

study. So we'll see, this has another chapter happening because they're getting such put back and including from Netanyahu. So I, I do hate to say like you have to do extra reporting on certain topics,

“but I think there's, you have to anticipate even if it's Netanyahu or whoever it happens to be”

and have everything locked up tight, I would agree with you on that. Anyway, we'll see where it goes. I thought that was a relatively conversation, I appreciate it. Yes, no problem. So people are going to be mad any way, no matter what, but there's no talking about this without everyone going to their corner. Yeah. And, and getting very upset and I understand that. Look, my, this is, I'm not supposed to do a prediction, but I couldn't help it. It just struck

me as fairly obvious. You're going to see an invasion of some of the islands off the coast of China.

Well, let me back up. Basically, my prediction is Kinmen and Matsu Islands are going to be invaded

in the next 24 months or seized. And you're going to have what my colleagues. Yeah, you'll probably have an economic blockade. You can't have, I don't think an amphibious assault of Taiwan is feasible.

“And I think China after seeing what's happened in Ukraine and Iran. And the fact there isn't a single”

single person in the Chinese military who is any combat experience, I don't think they want to get an amphibious landing in Taiwan is unthinkable. However, the streets of Taiwan are where 50% of all shipping goes through. I think a soft economic blockade is coming for the following reasons. I'd show it down my spine when on Air Force One Trump was asked if he would support and defend Taiwan. And he said, I'm not going to let anybody know that. What is clear to me and the fact

pattern is just so obvious here is the Trump is concerned with one thing. And that is becoming the wealthiest man in the world. And I believe he sold out Taiwan in a private meeting at that summit. And evidence of that was for the first time an American president has said, well, I'm not going to say anything about how I feel about America's continued support of Taiwan. And it's not only turning our back on a democratic ally, but the basic, the basic counterbalance counterbalances

amongst between US senior relations is the following. They control 90% of the processing of rare earth materials. We control 90% of the most advanced chips because of our tight relationship with Taiwan. You have China gets access to those Taiwanese chips, which is another reason they wouldn't do an amphibious invasion because they don't want to destroy those factories. But if they use their economic cloud to do what is effectively a soft creeping takeover of Taiwan and we're

not there to support them, China has won. On 100%, it's the move, it's the move.

“I think Trump, I don't think Trump gives a shit about geopolitics, the decline of US negotiating”

leverage. I think he cares about them. I think he cares about one thing. I think she, if I were she, I would have said the following, you realize I'm super interested in your coin. And with just a fraction of our budget, I can use offshore accounts to take the Trump coin. I think I can get

a worth. Here's my math guy here. I think I can get a worth to be two 300 billion because price

discoveries at the margins. I think I can take it there within say 90 days, six months before your presidency ends and then you'll have 90 days to divest of your holdings. And by the way, is there any way can move out a higher class submarines from all the states of Taiwan? And by the way, I think economic reintegration of Taiwan into the great nation of China would make sense without any bloodshed. What do you think? I think that conversation has already happened and I think

evidence of it was what he said on Air Force One. And again, another talking point for a Democrat, we will back Taiwan, economically and militarily if necessary, because ships are the future. Don't don't don't be back into a corner about threatening another forever war. Say,

ships are the future folks. And Taiwan is an amazing ally of ours. And the only reason that we have

control over 90% of what is the new oil in an information economy, and that's ships,

What I would do on top of that, I would make Johnson-Wan move to Taiwan.

See how he feels about that, like with the Chinese block it. Like, let's have some, these selling ships to the Chinese is such a mistake. It is such an advantage. We have your

“100, I love this prediction. Scott, you should be mayor of Los Angeles. That's why you should run.”

I'd run on the internet on the internet, on the internet, I'll take it in and out for your take it. Yeah, we could run. Hollywood's top advisor in speech. I like it, I'm in. I'm in. Okay, anyway, Scott, that is really smart. That is really, you're absolutely right. That's exactly

how they're going to do it. And Trump has sold out a critical critical part of our security.

And calling David Sanger, by the way, can I just just last thing? David Sanger, speaking of great New York Times reporters, is one of the top reporters on this area, calling the trader,

“is one of the more, there's so many heinous things, Trump says. But just, just absolutely,”

as I always say, every accusation is a confession. He's the trader. Anyway, we want to hear from you, send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind, go to nmymag.com/pivot. submit a question for the show or call 85551. Pivot? Okay, that's the show. Thank you for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. This show is supported by Atio, the AI CRM. Atio is the AI CRM that turns every customer signal

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