Crypto Pardon, Amazon Automation, and Reagan Tariff Ad

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Before it was Pivot, it was just an idea. And the place where my ideas could take flight was always on my Mac. I've been using a Mac for everything since I started using computers. And of course, an iPhone. I got one of the first ones. You know, I use my Mac all the time when I'm doing podcasts. especially when I was traveling, but I used it in the very beginning of doing podcasts when I did remote stuff.

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You're going to be good. I'm going to let you talk and talk and talk, so you'll have a good time. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and I'm still in Korea.

Are you enjoying yourself? Yeah, I am. You're already at home. I'm not a big traveler. I'm not a big traveler. I like home. You're not a big traveler. You travel all the time. I know, but I like home if I had to pick, if that makes sense. Does that make sense? Well, that's... I assume you're not. It would be somewhat distressing if Amanda was listening and said, yeah, I just, I like to be away from home.

Well, she's been great. Whether that's true or not, that's the right thing to say. I miss home. I miss home, wherever it happens to be. I can't stand my kids, and then about an hour into the drive to the airport, I start missing them. Oh, really? I can't stand my kids. I miss them a lot.

Well, you're a much better parent than me. I am. You get my point. Do you want me to parent your kids if you'd like? No? Your wife is great. You could use the help. So what's the coolest thing you did in Korea? Well, today I was a robot. There's some new stuff around robotics and stuff that will help you walk and things like that. People wearing ectoskeletons, that was pretty cool.

I'm trying to think what else. I forget what I did like five hours ago. This is where I am. It'll be interesting, the jet lag coming back. Explain to me, Mr. World Traveler, because I don't travel throughout the world like you do. What is the trick for jet lag? a gulf stream okay okay barring that what's uh well okay so the basics are a ton of hydration try not to drink alcohol which you don't

I try to, and I don't always do this, but I try, once I'm on the ground somewhere, I try to get some exercise, go outside, get some natural sunlight or some fresh air. I try to sweat. I'll hit the gym, you know, right when I get there if I'm disciplined. I try to... Try to avoid alcohol and really salty foods. But, and then also it's not organic. I take sleep aids with me. I think it's really important that you get some sleep. So if I can't sleep, I'll take a, you know.

a Lunesta or something. I think the risk of quote-unquote pharmaceuticals outweighed by the risk of not getting sleep when you're on the road. I think if there's anything, you know, I'm pretty focused on health.

you know not not lifespan but healthspan travel has taken 10 years off my life for about 20 30 years i was literally molesting the planet and i remember with my partner at l2 on wednesday night of thanksgiving we take the overnight to europe because we're like europe's open thursday and friday and this is an opportunity for us to

lap our competition and i would hit the ground shower at the airport work a 12 or 14 hour day get five or six hours sleep start over the next day and then bomb to the airport and come home and that that just takes a toll on you so you know there's

There's a few basics, but there's no, I don't think there's any silver bullet. Yeah, thank God my skin looks fantastic from Korea. It does. Looks like a baby's bottle. I had something called, oh, I can't remember, School Sonic or something. Anyway, I did the non-invasive stuff, which I thought was interesting. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm not. They suggested Botox right here, but I'm not doing it. For the 11s? The 11s, yeah.

I'm going to leave the 11s for now. It's my favorite. Yeah, I'm about to go get, I'm looking a little bit like the Bride of Frankenstein. I'm about to go see, I'm going to New York on. Wednesday, and I'll see Dr. Analik, who does a few things to me and then charges me $6,000. Is this for your upcoming book tour, may I just say? Well, I do need to sell a lot of books. I know you do. We're going to help you do that.

I appreciate that. Yeah, I see them about once every two or three months. I get Botox and I get a laser. A laser. Well, you would have liked this. There was a laser type thing that was like in my face, which was interesting. It didn't leave any, I'll tell you, it wasn't red or anything else, but they were lovely. The thing is, everyone, actually, so many people have beautiful skin here all over the place, so it's kind of interesting. Koreans have beautiful skin?

Yeah, they really, I mean, the skin care. Is it an absence of sun or just genetics or? I don't know. I just think it's just a priority on health care. They really do compared to here. You know, Trump's coming here and I'm leaving. That's one of my favorite parts of this trip. He's going to Korea? Yeah. I bet he'll run up to the DMZ.

I purposely decided to avoid the news because I find now that watching the news is like being awake during surgery. It's just not very pleasant. Yeah, it's tough. As the news people fall one after the next. kiss-assery to the Trump people, but whatever. I'm going to get back to timing here. The weird thing is I leave at 10 in the morning and then I get back at 10 in the morning or nearby. Oh, because you're going to cross the date line.

So will you sleep tonight or just stay up and then get on the plane? I'll sleep on the plane. Let's see. I'll get up at 10. I'll want to sleep right away because I'm tired right now. But I don't know. I don't know. I guess I will. I sleep when I sleep. That's the person I am.

like if i'm tired i'll sleep or else i'll just watch on this and i'm fascinated with airline route you go is there a direct soul to dc yes there is there's one oh that's awesome i know yeah so and it's so it'll be and i have a lie down thing so i think it'll be fine i'll think it'll be fine and then i watch a lot of dumb movies and stuff so one of my first memories of you was we were dying i think it was right after we'd started pivot

and i got invited to some conference to speak with you i don't think we'd met in person or maybe we had once like a dld or something And this very friendly woman comes running up to me and she's like, hi, I don't know, I'm Tammy Haddad. And I'm like, oh, hi, Tammy. I had no idea where she was.

And we were backstage and there were makeup artists and sound people and all this stuff. And there was an eight-year-old boy asleep on the couch. And I thought, that's kind of cute and kind of disturbing that someone brings their kid and then puts the kid to sleep on this couch. And it wasn't an eight-year-old boy, it was you. You had just decided to lay down on the couch and grab a couple Zs in the middle of all this. You can sleep. I can sleep anywhere.

I really can. It's a real talent. Anyway, I like it a lot. I like Korea a lot. I hope to come back. And are you coming here? Let me just say for everybody, Scott's book comes out what day? November 3rd? Yeah, it comes out. November, I think it's November the 4th. Is that right? Notes on being a woman. Yes. There you go. That's your next book. That's what people are looking for for me.

But it's coming out, and you're coming on my podcast. We're going to talk this week. That's right. I just saw that on my calendar. I'm going on with Kara Swisher. I feel like that's like... I have never stayed at your house. That's what this feels like. It feels very uncomfortable. I'm excited. It's pretty high up now. It's up in the top of the...

The chart's getting up there. So I hope they'll sell books. But I'm excited to hear. I'm going to read the book. Oh, I have it on the plane. I'm going to read it on the plane. That's what I'll do. That's one of the things. That'll put me to sleep. No, I just want to know what it's like to be a man. It'll be great. Someone asked me what my body count was, so I started counting and I fell asleep. Get it? Like counting sheep? I see. All right.

You'll get there. You're a little gelag, but you'll get there. I am a little gelag. No, I'm just tired. It just was a long day because I have to say the crews here and the people have been amazing. That's the one thing that really lovely people. Hopefully it'll turn out okay. TV always makes me, there's a lot of waiting in television. I'm kind of glad to be done with the taping. I was thinking about going to.

Korea for a scrotum lift, I think of it as low-hanging fruit. Oh, my God. All right. We're going to stop. Speaking of plastic surgery, which you love, did you hear about this? The tech bros are all getting plastic surgery. They're following in your footsteps.

Some surgeons have seen five-fold increases in demand for men in tech in the last five years. Not a surprise, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. I don't think it's just men in tech, but apparently there's a lot of them. Procedures, mini facelifts, neck lifts, that deep plane thing, eyelid lifts to stay looking youthful in a competitive job market. I didn't have any work done.

It's, you know, I'm not surprised. Do you think you're surprised? Um, no. I mean, I get, I've had, I get Botox and I'm sure at some point I'll go into the knife. I think that, like, we're in a... We're in an ageist culture. I think some of that is good. And people want to feel youthful. And I think the standards... in the benchmark, there are so many people out there now. I don't know if you've noticed, have you noticed this? It seems like every young person is hot.

between working out and skin treatments. In New York, all the young people are hot. I think the tunnels have some sort of x-ray or security posts where if you're not hot, you're not allowed into New York. But my sense is that the aesthetic and the benchmark has gotten so... Especially for men. Right, for men, which is more common here, or Brazil, or a different place, or Brazil, I think. But I've noticed a lot younger and a lot just the way they were in some other countries.

a lot younger and a lot more men. Well, that's the growth part, is that women have always been... Look, men are disproportionately and unfairly evaluated on their economic viability, women on their aesthetics. So there's always been an emphasis, and women have always spent a disproportionate amount of time and money.

on aesthetics what's the the delta or the change or the uplift in surgery is mostly coming from men because a lot of It used to be men had to retire at 65, and now they say, no, I want to come back and bend the knee to Donald Trump and fuck up Disney, and I'm 74, but I want to look 73, so I get surgery.

so guys everywhere are getting if you have the bottom line is the surgical techniques have gotten much better and and if why look 65 if you can look 57 and if you have money and it's not that big a risk any longer the question i have is why wouldn't you and some people say well i don't care do do you really do you really not care what you look like yeah

yeah those neck things were men looked better with the neck i hate to say it but i'm not a big i don't like a lot of surgery although they you know it's it's gotten better and better i mean that deep plane thing but um the thing around the neck with the guy eyes I thought was really interesting is, you know, they look kind of jowly and then they don't. It's a lower facelift. Yeah, I have less jowls, I was told, by the skin people.

jowls are coming of course or the the the thing around your eyes sort of the eye sockets and the double folds and this and that um or the triple folds the heavy eyelid Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, good. Well, I didn't have any while I was here, but maybe you could when you come.

Anyway. I'm for it. I'm a huge fan of it. So speaking of Trump being here, he is actually coming Thursday. He's been in Asia striking all manner of deals, which we'll talk about in a second. He's pulling terrorists off, it looks like. or putting striking deals, but he said he's putting a 10% tariff on imports from Canada after already canceling trade talks, all because of a TV ad that had audio, accurate audio of Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs.

Trump called the ad, which was sponsored by the government of Ontario, that would be Doug Ford, a fraud and a hostile act. The spot features excerpts from a 1987 Ronald Reagan radio address on foreign trade. The audio is authentic, though it is slightly different order from the original speech. But it's what he said. The Reagan Presidential Foundation said the ad misrepresents Reagan words, but as unexplained was misrepresented. I went back and listened to the original.

It was the intent, so I guess they shouldn't have rearranged it. But let's listen to some of this ad. When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing. by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time. But over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker.

and consumer. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. Then the worst happens. Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. I'll tell you, it was nice hearing a president who actually spoke in full sentences.

A Republican one. Ontario's premier pulled the ad, but it did air in major U.S. markets over the weekend, including during the World Series. Talk about this from a market. This is this Doug Ford, this conservative, who's somewhat... pro-Trump, as I recall, and now is sort of like, you know, smacking them around up there, up north. Talk about from a marketing perspective, not so much the essence of these, because this is what Reagan thought, actually.

but about doing this kind of things and why trump is reacting like this well like i think canada's never looked stronger it's just strange to be rooting for the blue jays when they're playing my home team the dodgers it's just Canada, the U.S.'s strategy looks performative, faux masculinity, sclerotic. They're dictating trade policy off of commercials that antagonize the president. It's just...

And Canada, I believe, is our biggest trading partner. Some people would say it depends on how you can, and it should be Mexico. But, I mean, one of the biggest problems we have in the United States is housing. And unfortunately, because of nimbyism and incumbents who control the government, we're fond of regulations that make it harder for the entrance to buy a home. And so we've let homes go from 290 to 410.

you know two of the largest inputs are gypsum drywall which comes from mexico and lumber which comes from canada so we're going to make homes more expensive unnecessarily And Canada just looks more consistent and unafraid. And I think this has bolstered the brand of Canada. I think they will end up...

This will absolutely impact their economy negatively for three or four years. They will figure out different trade routes. Which they are trying, of course. Kearney's headed to Asia as we speak. And there's no shortage of... other export nations that'll say you know what we have really good products here too and we're going to do it at zero tariff and let's strengthen the relationship between canada and asia and latin america and then those relationships will be really hard to undo

The next administration, and I'm trying to manifest this, is going to have to go on essentially a 48-month apology tour, and regardless of how... Effective that is, there's no way we're going to be able to compensate for the destruction to these 80-year trade alliances that has taken place over the last 10 months. This is just, no one likes to be insulted or have economic warfare.

Why this is just so incredibly stupid is, I'll just use an example, the Kentucky bourbon industry is basically going to be wiped off the map if they're not careful. So they have stopped buying Jack Daniels. Do you know the margins? The margins on lumber are probably like 10 to 30 percent. The operating margins are probably high single digits. Those companies don't trade a big multiple. So public traded lumber companies, if there are any.

Whereas alcohol trades at 90, alcohol commands 90 points of margin. The majority of restaurants, kind of the ugly secret of restaurants, is they try to break even on the food and they make all their money on the alcohol. Because they'll charge you 14 bucks for a Maker's Mark and ginger ale and it costs them about 60 cents. And so that's where they make all their margin. And we have some of the best alcohol brands in the world. And when we import them into Canada and they say no.

It's not tit for tat. If we reduce our exports by a dollar by declaring trade war and they reduce their exports go down a dollar, it's not dollar for dollar because our margins on our products tend to be higher.

One of the things that's interesting to me is, from a marketing perspective, Reagan used to be the gold standard of Republicans, right? And we're showing our age. We remember the age of Reagan, which wasn't as great as... People are now making out to be, although some of these speeches are terrific, especially the immigration one, which is one of his last speeches. But, you know, the marketing strength of Ronald Reagan is...

over Mr. Morning in America, which is very different from Make America Great Again, right? That was some marketing expertise, the Reagan administration. But it doesn't work, I guess, except to irritate Donald Trump. I mean, he was an actor and he was very handsome. And regardless of some of his policies, I mean, I like Ronald Reagan and it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but he refused to use the word AIDS.

And in a period where, anyways, we have a tendency to decide people in history are either very, very good or very, very bad. And because history is sort of a crude blunt instrument. But I mean, if you think about. There are no more Republicans. Yeah, he was brand Republican forever, right? But that's, what is that? It's fiscal responsibility.

Okay, that's gone out the windows. $7 trillion in deficits from George Washington and George Bush. Since then, it's been $30 trillion. And a Republican tried to convince us, and we believed him. that we could go to war and cut taxes at the same time. That was W. And since then, Democrats and Republican administrations since then have said to the children that are the United States voter right now, no, you can stay up till 2 a.m.

and eat sugar and not have dinner and you don't have to go to school tomorrow and nothing bad will ever happen. So Americans have gotten used to spending $7 trillion on $5 trillion and believing that everything We'll be okay. So fiscal responsibility was a touchstone of Republican administrations. That's gone. A low involvement or less involvement, not overarching government combined with personal liberty.

And that was, you get to make these decisions and government should not be in your life. And we now have a government, which is essentially a cross between socialism. and cronyism, and that is the government is very involved in corporate decisions, but it's based on who he likes or doesn't like, who curries favor with him or doesn't. That could not be more. That could not be more non-Republican.

I mean, it's the Democrats who on economic policy and individual rights appear to be more Republican. If I could go back in time. And the Canadians. The Canadians. Well, look, Teddy Roosevelt was all about the environment. Everything is upside down right now. An embrace of foreign relationships, non-protectionism was a very... Yeah.

Republican. Well, speaking of which, on the other tariff front, though, U.S. and Chinese officials have reached yet another framework of a deal of 100% tariffs that Trump threatened to impose. Taco Trump. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who really is. Sort of lost a, it seems to be undignified now. Also said on Face the Nation that Trump and Xi are set to finalize a TikTok deal this week. Let's listen to how he talked about this.

We reached a final deal on TikTok. We reached one in Madrid, and I believe that... As of today, all the details are ironed out and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea. I'm getting the hell out of Korea before consummation. Let's hope not. So there's that happening, which I think is something you talked about needing to happen, the Chinese to come to terms with China. Yeah, but I don't.

I don't know what that means. What if they have a commercial that pisses them off on the way over? In the 100% tariff? I think that China definitely has its own problems. I mean, when you're establishing or trying to understand a battle and doing our game theory, you've got to look at the strengths they have that you don't have. And China has the advantages of an authoritarian government where the autocrat has established power for the next 10, 20, 30 years. He's consolidated power. They have.

The CCP, I don't know if it's unpopular or popular, but I don't think it's very unpopular. The economy there has struggles, but the Chinese... The Chinese, to a certain extent, have the same advantage that the Russians have in Ukraine, and that is their willingness to endure and inflict pain on their populace for long-term interests.

You know, if AWS goes out and Netflix goes down, the whole nation freaks out. China is absolutely willing to put companies out of business. It's willing to decrease their prosperity. But it's not going to be pushed around by America. And also, we have a tendency to think, this administration anyways, that it's the biggest customer rolling up to the bar.

We're the third largest trading partner. They do more trading. They do Association for Southeast Asian Nations as their largest trading partner. The second largest, they do more trade with the EU than they do with the U.S. And they have already vastly decreased the percentage of trade going to the U.S. So he shows up. And again, this is just such a common error in judgment and in strategy. He shows up thinking he has cards he doesn't have.

And Americans, if inflation pops to 5% or 6% here, Americans are going to freak out. They could go to 15% in China and the people. The Chinese government has killed tens of millions of its own people or let them starve for what they perceive to be national interests. So to think that he can show up and muscle them around, he is totally miscalculating and misappraising his adversary over there. So I don't trust him nor any of his team to get a deal done.

Or, you know, quote, unquote, a framework. Right. Framework of a deal. Yet another. Well, wasn't it what's happening with TikTok? I mean, I don't know. Well, they said it's consummated or going to consummate it or whatever. They're going to fuck each other. I don't know why he used that word. But. But presumably it's going to Larry Ellison, as is everything. It's apparently in media. This is the most important element of Ellison's burgeoning media empire, of course.

You know, what's going to happen here? But I don't know what it means. I guess they're just decided, give it to them. What's the difference? Right? Like, we don't need this.

And if we can get everything else. I mean, there was an interesting, I've read a lot of the analysis of this, and basically what they've decided to do, as every other leader, including leader of Japan, is to flatter him, to compliment him, and then... get what you want right essentially and and which is kind of depressing like they just figured figured them out pretty easily um and uh we'll see the chinese you're absolutely right are in it for the long haul so we'll see what they have to say um

The TikTok thing is what I'll be paying attention to, but we'll see if they do something. What I think Trump is trying to do, it's so interesting because presidents all start out locally and end up... in foreign places doing these trips. And I think Trump is very comfortable acting like he's a big BMOC across the world, essentially. And so these leaders have

figure out a way to please him. It's kind of sad. It's like pleasing an old man. Let's pet him and this and that. So we'll see. We'll see what happens here. Here's my prediction. He's going to go up to the DMZ and go visit his friend.

uh in north korea so we'll see he's so close i can't imagine he would you know he keeps talking about him he talks about him in a nicer way than he talks about other americans which is really kind of depressing given he's a dictator and not just an autocrat even worse than that those are his role models he's very much about strength and again he's conflates he conflates strength with coarseness and cruelty and authoritarianism and that's not it's just a terrible it's a terrible um

And the problem is he's been successful in the short term at it. He's won the presidency twice. Everybody's falling in line behind him. And it's out of the authoritarian playbook. Reward. reward the people who are loyal to you, punish severely the people who aren't loyal to you. And the 53 Republican senators are all going along with it, as are the majority of the House of Representatives. There's been a few notable breaks. Senator Paul is questioning.

us bombing boats. We spend a trillion dollars on our military that's supposed to be so lethal, and yet we're not pushing back on a murderous autocrat. In Europe, we've decided to bomb fishing boats. Anyway, we're going to go on a quick break. When we come back, this is a story that I think is not getting nearly enough attention. We'll discuss the latest crypto pardon.

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Scott, we're back. President Trump has pardoned Shangpeng. Zhao, better known as CZ, the founder of the crypto exchange Binance, CZ pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws and served four months in a federal prison while Binance paid $4.3 billion to settle with the Justice Department.

CZ has been working on a pardon for months. There seems to be a playbook here with the Trump people, hiring lobbyists with ties to Trump and making podcast appearances, praising the president. Binance is also a key backer of the Trump families. This is the key one, crypto venture.

World Liberty Financial and helped launch its stablecoin earlier this year. In a post on X, CZ said he was grateful to Trump and pledged to help make America the capital of crypto. I assume Sam Bankman-Fried is next. What do you think of this? Because we've been talking a lot about how... this focus on crypto with his family sort of larding itself over in money and just money, really. I think it's important to understand why CZ was incarcerated.

And he was incarcerated because Binance was found guilty of laundering money. And that sounds somewhat innocuous, but according to the Department of Treasury, Binance failed to report the following. transactions associated with terrorist groups including al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, millions of dollars in ransomware transactions.

Benance is one of the largest receivers of ransomware proceeds. Transactions associated with child sexual abuse materials. So people hear about sextortation and think that is the most heinous crime ever. Well, folks, there's a technological infrastructure.

behind it. And money laundering with funds that can't be tracked is part of it. And then transactions associated with drugs, fraud, and other illegal contraband. His official charges were again around money laundering, and he'd served four months, and Binance was barred from operating the US, but here's what they did.

Binance received a $2 billion investment from the Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX, and then Binance decided to accept the investment via World Liberty Financial USD1 stablecoin, which, by the way, was controlled and still and and um the majority stake is still connected in world liberty financial usd1 is still connected to the financial wealth and buttressing the financial wealth of the trump

of trump and his family which owns 38 of world liberty financial so put another way make me richer and i will let the person that a judge and jury and our institutions decided to incarcerate because he was facilitating transactions to terrorists and people engaged in child sex exploitation. I'm letting that person out.

if you agreed to make me and my family richer. And because this feels very circular and complicated, and we're so busy watching stupid fucking videos of a construction project at Pennsylvania Avenue. We take our eye off the ball. There's going to be more kids who are going to be in scams.

naked pictures of themselves and then be extorted and then potentially engage in self-harm because the people on the other end can find a means of transacting these payments and this exploitation. You know, if you're watching a Bond movie, CZ's the one he ends up... golfing in the end like he's the money laundering

you know, mogul, essentially. And so, this was a criminal act, this guy. There were bombing fishing boats. Most people in crypto think this too, by the way, FYI. So, it's sort of a, you know, they've just decided crypto good, no matter what. what and it's like saying banking good or whatever there's there's all kinds of bankers that are culpable in these kind of things, by the way. It's not just limited to crypto. But this was such a straight line.

It's just like absolutely out in the open. Everything's out in the open. I agree with you with all the hand waving around the White House thing, which I'll talk about later. It's really, this one really deserves more attention, especially for what this company did, you know, this company did. And I assume Sam Bankman-Fried is next, who is comparatively minor compared to this guy, right?

That was just your basic, I made a mess, I didn't realize that that was his excuse. But there's a whole way to get a pardon from Trump. Yeah, but he doesn't have the power right now. FTX doesn't have the platform.

or the power to make the trumps rich this is to a certain extent there's sort of i don't want to call it low calorie corruption but when eric goes over and says build a hotel and give me better financing terms and finance it. Somebody still has to build the hotel. There is some risk. It's corruption. But what they found is if we're going to be corrupt, let's just figure out a way to pump up a synthetic.

currency that has no value underlying utility and then we don't even have to report when we sell it and nobody has to operate it and we don't even have to pretend that we know how to be in the hospitality business we don't have to build it we just get people to basically funnel money into it massively inflate the market we sell nobody even knows we've sold and boom this is the like most elegant clean frictionless form of corruption so they're like they're like okay

Nancy Pelosi that does insider trading, but you have to report those trades. Okay. Trump, who gets a 747. We actually see the 747. He's got to fly it around. He's got to justify it. No, this is easier. Nobody even really, there's no records of this. They, as far as we know, we think they've made three to five billion dollars off these crypto scans, but it's even hard to tell how much money they've made. We don't know how to connect it to.

We know when the Qatari government says, give us NATO-like protection, after giving the president a $400 million plane, we can connect the dots. But when he launches a meme coin and someone calls him and says, FYI, tomorrow I'm going to buy a billion dollars or a hundred million dollars worth of Trump coin, which will take the price up. And if you want to sell some, that's your business, Mr. President.

But in addition, would you mind not shipping Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for a while? We're not able to connect those dots. There's no public filing disclosure. Well, you know what? Actually, I've heard from a lot of people. A lot of people in crypto don't love... all this stuff because agreed the hammer is going to come down on this industry again i thought the bite administration was too slow to to embrace some of the good parts of it i would i talked to a lot of crypto people

And the reason was because it has such a proclivity towards what you were just talking about, money laundering and sexual abuse and terrorism. payoffs and stuff like that in terms of the ability to disappear a lot of these transactions. But it was on its way, you know, and Biden was unnecessary. Biden administration was unnecessarily harsh on this group of people.

I think an abundance of caution. I don't think it was a particular hostility to it. It was just more of the worries about the downside versus the upside. And I just feel like the hammer will come down on this industry after this is all over. And the second part is, I've been told by a lot of tech people that there are people.

monitoring what is happening here and there are ways to follow the money. There's always ways and quietly they're doing that and eventually some of these people are going to pay.

I will see. But, you know, just all you have to do is pay this guy off to get out. And speaking of which, the one that also troubled me was the tech and business leaders are getting credit for coordinated effort to stop Trump from sending troops to San Francisco. Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Poorly worked with Sam Altman, Jensen Wang, Mark Benioff, and others to get the president to reconsider. Trump acknowledged the law being in a true social post, saying he got calls from friends of mine that decided not to surge San Francisco, as he put it. I find this repulsive, this strategy is that, you know, I'm not, you know, I've been in touch with Benioff recently about. this whole thing with the troops. And he knows what I think, which is that he should have never called for them.

None of you get a thank you for telling a bully not to do something that's stupid, right? I don't want my democracy to be run because these guys can call him up or go to a dinner or give him money. But this was the wrong thing to do for all these cities, including San Francisco. And the fact that the only way it gets saved is these guys call him.

Like, what in the world? No one's making decisions based on the right thing to do. It's based on these incredibly powerful people who have access. And then the regular Americans don't have access to make their argument one way or the other. But this is a... I find this truly disturbing. And, you know, none of them has said, you should thank me, Kara, because I'd be like, go fuck yourself. Like, how dare you that this is the way things are done? I just, I find it.

something quite vague, just disturbing about this. This is how it's done, done, done, as they say in K-pop demon hunters. But Mayor Lurie trying to enlist local business people to lobby the president to not send in the National Guard and create disruption and terrorize local residents.

Kudos to him. I think that's the right thing to do. The problem is they're operating in a context that's illegal and non-American. And that is. That's right. Barry Goldwater said this. He said we're. we're placing too much power in the office of the presidency the whole point of a democracy is you have a diffuse sense of power such that there's checks and balances and that unfortunately you don't go as fast but it prevents the tragedy of the commons and when

If you're going to send in the National Guard into cities, there needs to be some sort of oversight or there needs to be some sort of legal justification or systemic laws that say this is when the National Guard can be sent into a city and what its mission is, not...

oh, I don't like the mayor here, I don't like the governor here, or Epstein's starting to creep back into the news, I need to launch the National Guard or pulse the National Guard into a city. This is, I mean, it's just so... i i can't imagine and i don't know how much of it i'm convinced now that you know i've said this before we're just going to be so angry at the mind control that these algorithms have over us and we don't even realize how much

The most upsetting things I see, I think, is all of that footage of ICE agents. I just find it, the idea that these guys are in masks, the idea... There's a basic principle that is so core to our democracy and what is wonderful about America, and that we target and reward people based on their behavior, not their identity. And that is we say, okay, if you're a gay woman and you're great at what you do and you take risks, you can make a lot of money and have a nice life here.

And we aren't going to start rounding up people or asking them, are you born here, which the ICE agents are doing, because they're brown. When they're on their way inside to Kroger's. Yeah, every one of these agents seems like a brute, right? I feel like I'm in some... like Steven Seagal movie with bad people like you know the way they're talking to people and how the masks and the

They look like they've had way too many steroids, every one of them. Like, it feels so villainous. And it's either villainous or you got to be a rich guy to get through. And it does feel un-American. When I heard that. That Sam Altman had to call him to call him off. That's our line of defense. I just was like, this is ridiculous. Well, it kind of goes to the same thing now where because of the government shutdown.

Rather than saying, okay, there's a government shutdown, you need to negotiate with a co-equal branch of government. It's like, no, I'll just get my rich friend to pay the military and the people I like in the government. This is not how you're supposed to run a government where individuals... where the president gets to decide who in the government gets paid and who doesn't, and he can call someone and say, hey, I look really bad here.

Can you give me $100 million? And by the way, wink, wink, I'll make it up to you with a series of laws that transfer wealth from small and medium-sized businesses and your competitors to you. That is, and over the...

It might even not impact the economy that much in the short run because the economy turns on. But what it does over the long term is a lot of people don't want to invest here. A lot of people don't want to immigrate here. A lot of people don't want to start businesses because they're worried that they're not going to be protected by the rule.

fair play and law. I don't think Americans realize how many really talented people come here and how much capital comes here because they feel that there is a rule of fair play here. That their business, there isn't going to be a phone call. I met a guy, I met this Russian kid who came over here and he'd started one of those home delivery companies and he made a bunch of money. He was a successful entrepreneur in Russia.

It was wonderful. I said, why did you move here? He said, you live in fear in Russia that someone you don't even know makes a call and your business is done the next day. And you don't even know who made the call.

And that's what's effectively, we're headed that way. Right, I know. I just, for some reason, this just stuck in my craw. Thank God Benioff didn't text me like, you want to say thank you. I'd be like, go fuck yourself. I don't mean that, Mark. But honestly, seriously, this is not the way it should be done. Speaking of things that are interesting, speaking of robots, which I'm seeing a lot of robot companies here, by the way.

Amazon executives believe the company can replace more than half a million warehouse jobs with robots because this is where it's heading. I'll go into it in a second. With robots over the next several years, according to internal documents obtained by the New York Times, documents show Amazon's robotics team has an ultimate goal to automate 75% of its operations. I bet it's even higher. They reveal Amazon is...

Planning to manage public backlash by promoting, quote, good corporate citizen image, participating in community events like parades and toy drives. Executives also discussed ditching words like automation and AI instead using advanced technology and co-bots. collaborative robots. Amazon says the documents viewed at the Times were incomplete and did not reflect its overall hiring strategy.

Let me tell you, years and years ago, and I was looking for the pictures, I was going to show it to some people here, after Amazon bought Kiva, which was, I thought, a critical purchase at the time. It was a logistics, it was a robotic, it moved. things around the factory and Amazon for some reason invited me in to see the factory.

I went to see it and watched these Kiva, I think they were Kiva powered robots moving stuff around. And they had people in the factory, but a lot of it was automated, obviously. And it's pretty cool when you see them put on labels and put on. Whatever, it was quite an automated factory. And I guess publicly I said, they're moving towards no people in these warehouses. This was about 10 years ago. You could see.

They're so smart. You could see what they were doing, right? And I remember one of the Kennedys who was representing Massachusetts, I can't remember which one it was. was saying, oh, they're going to put an Amazon warehouse in my district. I'm like, they're not going to have people in it.

And I remember Amazon calling me and saying, don't be saying that. And I'm like, but it seems so obvious to me. And so this is where they're going with these. There will be no people in Amazon warehouses or very few people. pretending otherwise seems kind of ridiculous because they're really quite good at it. And they're a logistics company more than a commerce company. And here in Korea, I was just in a thing called Robot Valley.

Robotics do not get enough attention compared to AI, but AI combined with robotics is really one of these amazing and also terrifying breakthroughs for humanity, it seems to me.

I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, I agree with you. It's a similar issue to all these data centers that Congress people are excited to get in their district. But the reality is you could turn the lights off during the day because there's nobody working there. There's some labor involved in building these things. but once they're up and running they're just a huge draw on the local electric or power supply and they don't create a lot of jobs i think robots and automation are in many ways

It's always the shit you're not expecting that impacts you to the upside and the downside. I actually think the more important technology over the next 24 months that would be the best bet for America is not GPT-5. I think it's GLP-1. I think that would be a better bet for America if they put GLP-1 in the hands of every obese person in a low-income home. And I think robotics, to your point, are in some ways more important than AI because...

I think that Jeff Bezos and Dara Khosrowshahi dream of a lack of drivers and factory workers. I think they think, okay. Think about the majority of the bad press that Amazon has probably received in the last 10 years. A lot of it is stories of these delivery men in vans who have pee bottles and aren't paid well. Or in the warehouses. And have to hit quotas and have health insurance.

And I got to be honest, I'm here for it. I would love to see AI pilots in planes. If you look at the majority of, and it won't happen because of psychological reasons, but if you look at the majority of plane crashes, and there's very few, they're almost always pilot error. And so there will be job creation, though. There will be people that have to program and build these things and service them. It'll be a higher wage.

job but the story of america is that the low-wage low-value add production jobs slowly but surely get screened out as we move from an agrarian to a manufacturing to a services to a quote-unquote innovation economy I think it's a good thing. The problem with America is that we're not very good at retraining and supporting the people on the wrong end of that trade. We're very much winners and losers. Like, sorry, boss, it's the Hunger Games here. But I think it'll be.

america actually if you look at the economy right now it's a giant bet on ai but there has been some real investment in manufacturing of our industrial base And I think the only way we compete with China is to have these types of factories. Oh, China's way ahead on this stuff. I mean, all of Asia is in a lot of ways. And again, AI gets all the attention, but AI combined with robotics is really, there can be, let me say. There's sort of a thing called human-centric robots where it's not.

replace not just getting our coffee and this it's called a sex doll okay that's right where you go to but i'm talking what i the stuff i was the exoskeletons to help people walk better to help the elderly like eventually there there's all manner and one of the things i

had a really interesting discussion with Alex, who is a mechanical engineering student. And he's like, why do robotics have, like, Elon Musk is, they laugh at Elon Musk here in Korea, I have to tell you. Because he's like going, I'm going to make optimists, going to make these, you know, humanoid robots, they don't have to look like humans.

The real changes are in places like what Amazon has done, which is they're robots. They're just not the robots you think of from science fiction. You know, doing a hand, like Alice was like, why does a dog walking robot have to look like a person? in fact that's hard they fall over the hand it's funny like it can look at like automation is a very and i think actually automation's not a

is the right word, right? That's actually, instead of calling it advanced technology, it's automation. But there's all kinds of ways robotics are going to affect us, and especially when it's now, like this one thing I was wearing. It uses AI to collect data in real time about my body movements, which would then calculate how these robots should be adjusted per person in real time. And it used to be they'd have to be adjusted.

individually, but they don't have to anymore. Same thing with cars, same thing. So the combination is really both deadly to jobs and at the same time breathtaking in terms of savings, like what it's going to do.

So each year, and this is a thinly veiled ad, I do my predictions deck. And that is sometime in November, I put together a deck and I say, these are my predictions for the oncoming year in society, stock market, technology.

And each year, I pick one of the big 10 companies, one of the magnificent 10, or one of the big four, actually, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Alphabet. And I say, this will be the best performing stock, and this is why. Last year, I picked Alphabet. It's up 60% in the last year. Well done.

Thank you. Pat myself on the back. This year, my pick is probably going to be Amazon. And that is it hasn't, it actually hasn't performed very well the last couple of years. But traditionally, Their margin expansion has been powered by AWS and the unsung hero of the business, and that is Amazon Media Group, running the ads on the platform, and they force retailers to run ads, and it's very high margin.

Now the margin expansion is happening in retail. For over a decade, the fulfillment and shipping costs ballooned more quickly than sales. decreasing margins and then that reversed two years ago and retail sales are now growing faster than shipping costs that's because they got everyone to use prime right they got everybody in on

on it. They were losing money on Prime, I would assume. But also because robotics and the huge investment they've made in robotics is finally delivering operational leverage. Amazon expects to save about I think about $13 billion from 2025 to 2027 as a result of automation and assuming no change in Amazon's enterprise-valued EBITDA multiple. As you can tell, I know a lot of work on this.

That translates to roughly $200 billion extra in enterprise value. Plus, it expects to sell twice as many products by 2033. I think all the investments they've made in automation coupled with robotics and AI, they're about to get huge leverage. So whereas ads in AWS have added all the margin, I actually think retail is about to be where they expand their margins. That's interesting. I think it's going to go across the entire...

country, actually. One time I was visiting Kentucky and they were talking about Silicon Holler and all this stuff and bringing back coal. Remember, Trump was bringing back coal. I stood up and I said, they're going to bring it by robots. What do they need you for? You get sick. It's bad for you to be mining coal. And again, I was cut off. Don't say that. I'm like.

Well, of course they're going to use robots or whatever, automation. I don't care what word you use. But what's astonishing is how good. Korea and China and all these countries are, and they're really making investments in robotics. And you're absolutely right. Amazon has been far ahead of any other. There are lots of manufacturing. That's how we return with manufacturing.

But it's not going to be with people at all. But I would describe the last few years in terms of robotics as it relates to the retail as the investment phase. And it hasn't delivered. It's been expensive and hasn't delivered the leverage yet, but I think that's pivoting and switching. And the stock, even though it's up 20% in the last year, it's underperformed its competitors. Amazon typically trades at a five-year average P.E. multiple of 60.

And right now it's trading at 34. Anyways, I think that leverage, the fact that it's reasonably priced, anyways, I'm excited about... I'm excited about Amazon over the next 12 months. Oh, I'm glad you've been focused on this. This is interesting. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about Argentina's election results.

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Scott, we're back with more news. The payoff of Donald Trump to help the Argentinian economy has helped Argentina's president. Javier Malay's party swept the country's midterm elections, winning 40% of the votes. They had to get above 35, compared with around 24% for the main oppositions, which are the Peronists, who had been running Argentina.

badly for many years. President Trump endorsed Malay earlier this month and said a $20 billion currency swap bailout from the U.S. was contingent on his midterm success. Trump took Truth Social to congratulate Malay, saying he's making us all look good. And don't worry about the cost of the bailout. Let's listen to the comforting words of Treasury, the thirstiest Treasury Secretary I've ever seen, Scott Besant, on Meet the Press this weekend.

It is America first because we are supporting a U.S. ally. There will be no taxpayer losses. This is a swap line. This is not a bailout. Well, this is working. I mean, this helped, I think, quite a bit in the thing. And there's been a lot of pain in what he's doing, some of which is... Should have happened because Argentina has had like enormous inflation and things like that. But he's doing it in sort of this incredibly...

brutal way. So talk about this. Explain what Besant was saying here, this is a swap line, this is not a bailout. well i believe we're just exchanging dollars for pesos but the peso has has a habit of totally crashing and devaluing it has been a fucking disaster despite an incredible blessing of natural resources really good universities an amazing culture great natural resources

They have just been fucked over and over by kind of socialist corrupt governments. The country has entered into IMF rescue programs. 23 times since 1956 more than any other nation this nation has been has been bailed out more times than any other nation by the imf the most recent major imf loan to Argentina was for $57 billion in 2018, and it failed to stabilize the economy and led to a default just two years later.

Over the past 50 years, Argentina has defaulted nine times. So basically every five and a half years, this country defaults, which has resulted in constant hyperinflation and pace of devaluation. In the past year alone, The peso has fallen more than 350% against the U.S. dollar. I guess the way to say that is the U.S. dollar has increased 350% against the peso.

For what it is, this is Trump bailing out one of his friends. Yeah, same thing. Same thing. But it's not even about Malay. It's about Rob Citrone, a longtime associate of Treasury Secretary Bessent, who runs a hedge fund and has significant exposure to Argentine bonds and stocks. And what does it do? Again, this is about fucking corruption. The bailout props up these prices, offering a crucial window or exit to mark up the investments of his buddy.

Who will make a huge donation to the Trump campaign? Stan Druckenmiller, Besant's former mentor at Soros Fund Management, is also involved. His Duquesne family office was recently disclosed. As the second largest investor in Argentina's main exchange traded fund, Citron, meanwhile, has made Argentina his biggest bet in Latin America. This is just, you're, you're, this is literally an.

Orgy of corruption. It really is. And we're the ones that get like a $5 tip and have been fucked so many ways. And we just leave the party. you know you know naked and like abused and that's basically anyone that doesn't get to hang out in the mansion who's not willing to fillet the big fat man i mean it's just

To think that this isn't going to cost other hedge funds looking for true alpha and looking for investments, to think that somehow we're not going to end up bailing them out again. And to think about how just moronic this is. We put a tariff. on China, which makes no sense. They're smart. They go, I know, I'm going to go for your heart and lungs. I'm going to go after the red states and the people who voted for you four to one, the farmers, and we're going to stop buying all of your soybeans.

Those farmers go out of business, right? And who do the Chinese get their soybeans from now? Argentina, where we're... Soybean farmer. we're getting i mean did you see that besant calling himself a soybean yeah he's a soybean he's worth a half a billion dollars yeah he's literally

You are my wife. Goodbye, city life. Anyone who's not real old like us doesn't get that. That's Green Acres. Yeah, doesn't get that. By the way, that guy, that guy, what was his name? Eddie Albert. He was a very successful spy. a true patriot. That guy led a very impressive life. And yet he ended up on Green Acres is the place to be. Farm living is the life for me. That was right before the Beverly Hillbillies. Oh my God.

I had that whole song in my fucking head. Anyway, go ahead. Anyway, so what we were talking about, the orgy of corruption. We're bailing out, we're punishing farmers with sclerotic trade policy and then taking money and sending it to the new supplier of soybeans, Argentina. That money... It's unlikely. Argentina needs structural reform. To Malay's credit, he is implementing structural reform. He is. I think he's kind of exactly what Argentina needed. He would have won without Trump.

But because of Trump, I think he got more seats, more total power. And I think you can pretty much write off a prediction. You can write off 30 of that $40 billion. It's gone. Nothing's going to get in the way of the pace of devaluation over the short term. this is an economy of structural issues i hope they come out of it i was an investor in a company that used to hire these amazing engineers from the cordova university or university in cordova argentina and the funniest thing was

We had a down quarter and we were cutting the budget. It was kind of called Olapik, which we ended up selling. It was a big win. Great. Three really super intelligent guys, two Spaniards, one Argentinian guy. And the Argentinian guy was in charge of the engineering team. And we could get great engineers for like 40 grand instead of 140 or 240 outside of Cordoba. And the only line item that we could never cut. was the asado budget that was beef every friday

They had asado, they had beef for all of the engineers, and that was like the only thing you were never allowed to touch. This was the key to the entire culture, was their beef. Well, you know, when I was looking at that before this happened, besides the Trump payoff, I think it did help them. I think it absolutely did.

the money that he was getting from Trump. But one of the things was, everyone was like, oh, he's going to lose. I'm like, but the choices, the Peronists were terrible. Like, 80 years of shitty... management, I don't see that being the option. So he was the only option in a lot of ways, even though it's taking its toll. He's also crazy.

Like, it seems insane. But, you know, there you go. There you have it. We'll see what happens there. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans.

Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. The holidays have arrived at the Home Depot, and we're here to help bring the excitement with decor for every part of your home. Check out our wide assortment of easy-to-assemble pre-lit trees so you can spend less time setting up and more time celebrating.

and bring your holiday spirit outdoors with unique decor like one of our Santa inflatables. Whatever your style, find the right pieces at the right prices this holiday season at the Home Depot. Hi, everyone. This is Kara Swisher. This week on my podcast, On with Kara Swisher, I interview Bernie Sanders. The senator from Vermont is fiery and pugnacious, just like you'd expect.

And we talk about everything from his fight against Trumpism to tech billionaires, the shutdown, artificial intelligence and the future of the progressive populist movement. Have a listen. I think Trump has his mental issues. I think he's unstable. I think his agenda for America is horrific. But he understands the system is broken. And what if the democratic establishment says, well...

You know, I think if you make $48,392, we will be able to provide you with a program that gets you 14% help on your health care. That's not what the American people want to hear. So Trump is tough. Democrats got to be tough, too. They got to take on the goddamn oligarchy. That's what they got to do. The full conversation is now out. So go listen to On with Kara Swisher wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Well, my fail, it's a specific issue of a much larger trend that has become the zeitgeist in our economy, and that is the NBA gambling scandal. Oh, yeah. So Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, I believe his name is, and Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups were among 30 arrested in an FBI investigation that uncovered a poker rigging in a legal betting ring.

Many politicians, as well as the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, have increased calls to Congress to tighten regulations around sports gambling. Since the 2018 Supreme Court decision overturning a federal law that prohibits sports betting outside of Nevada, 38 states have legalized gambling on sports. By the way, the first thing that happens when you legalize betting in a state is bankruptcies go up 20 to 30 percent. Wagers on sports.

hit $160 million last year, making it larger than the lottery. One in four adults say they personally bet money on sports. And by the way, last year, one in two men just bet on the Super Bowl. And one in 10 U.S. adults have placed a bet using an online sports book. Despite the proliferation, Americans see betting as a bad thing. 43% of U.S. adults agree that legal sports betting is a bad thing for society compared to just 34% who agreed.

three years ago. And this, it preys on, and I don't want to infantilize young men, but they're more risk aggressive. And when you put a DOPA hit and betting in their pocket, it is in godlike technology and basically every ad now when you turn on this tv to watch premier league is 10 pounds free when you sign up for 25 pounds and folks

They make it impossible to win over the long term. If you're good at it, they basically don't let you bet anymore. And the newest trend in sports betting, which will probably have the greatest appreciation of market cap in private companies, is predictions markets. Right.

And currently, a case is making its way through the court to decide the future of sports betting on prediction markets. And prediction market weekly volume is about $2 billion, with about a fifth of the coming from sports betting, the highest category volume.

Anyways, but on a bigger level, a meta level, it essentially is more indicative of our economy, and that is we're… the economy now resembles Vegas and that the house... Yeah, it's not a thing. It's just betting. It's like crypto. It's not a thing. It's not a making a thing. It's a...

It's something else. What would you call it? It's an economic activity. It's just not productive. Well, the houses always win. And the machines are narrative. Platforms, hot tech, IPOs, meme coins, dudes in hoodies pitching the next big thing. Oh, this is your new one.

It's value, our value in the economy now is not derived from character or hard work. It's from attention and speculation rather than goods and services. And then the traditional levers of power, business innovation, labor productivity, real estate growth. they all recede and young people no longer aspire. So empty calories is what you're saying. Yeah, and they don't develop the means, they don't develop the will, and they don't develop the patience for enduring value. Scammy.

Why actually figure out a way to get through all the regulations and build a building when you can go get it financed from Qatar by monetizing the White House? Or why even do that when you can just launch a mean coin? it means the winners get you know the winners a small group of people who can owner control or monetize healthcare monetize the government win and the losers get stuck with the odds so

We have godlike technology in gambling that's the DOPA hit. For the majority of our time on this planet, we haven't had access to free, safe play and gaming. So when we have it, We go crazy with it. Also, there's people telling us we can be rich and we can be popular and we can get women and they hit you at exactly the wrong time when you're most vulnerable.

And you're just seeing more and more people have their lives ruined by this shit. And then the broader loss is that our economy is becoming about synthetic risk-taking, not enduring value. Not the hard work, the labor to build a company, to invest in relationships. You get a quick hit from this kind of gambling or casino-like economy. And I think it's creating...

I think it's just creating the wrong values, and it's an erosion in the character of long-term thinking. Yeah. No, we're a casino. Okay, so what's your win? What is my win? You go first. I've got to think of one.

You know, I have so many fails happening at this time, at this moment, but probably Jamaica and Haiti and Cuba with the hurricanes. our way we're gonna have a lot more hurricanes um and it sounds like it's gonna as category five is gonna hit this place so my thoughts are with the people there i it seems very dire uh what's happening there and of course we've cut back on

all kinds of really important things we do monitor. I just feel a sense of unease for them and also our own country, which will get hit by all kinds of weather. mishaps that are highly avoidable in terms of saving lives that you can't you know we certainly have climate change issues that are making this worse but at the same time we should be able to protect and save people. So I just worry for those right now, it's happening right now actually.

My other real fail, they're both real fails, but this is all this, which you're talking about, these empty calories, these pathways to corruption that are everywhere. You saw the media do it a bunch of times this week, whether it was... comcast putting money into the ballroom i must have really been difficult for brian roberts but he did it because he's on the outs with trump so give him some money for the stupid ballroom um and and when i think about that the way it could have been done

Look, the White House is not that attractive a thing of our many things. I think the main part is. But the East Wing is not necessarily a winner. But the way to have redone it. could have been so fantastic and bipartisan. And there could have been a contest. It could have been everyone involved. It could have been interesting the way we, you know, with the people who are both.

pearl clutching and then attacking the pearl clutchers. I don't think they're pearl clutchers. I think they really are sorry that happened that way. It could have been done in such a great way. Let's update the White House. Let's do something, a bit of contest. You could have kids involved.

and a whole thing that would have united us versus this bullshit, which is he just does what he wants, and then the people get upset about him doing what he wants, and it goes back and forth. It was such a missed opportunity. And it feels like that all over the place. Whoever gets to do what they want to do is not American. It just feels very un-American, a lot of these things.

And then a win, you know, speaking of Brian Roberts, Taylor Sheridan, who's a really important producer, there's always a producer of the moment, he happens to be that. He's behind Yellowstone and Landman. He has signed a deal to join NBCUniversal. It's not for a few years, but when his Paramount deal is up, it's not good for Ellison and Paramount, but it doesn't matter because Ellison is... essentially a Nepo baby son of Larry Ellison, so he'll get his TikTok this week or he'll get his

deal to buy Warner and everyone will fall into line. But I thought that was an interesting situation for Taylor. I thought it was a win for NBC. But who knows, who knows how much more Sheridan will keep.

you know having the hits but still an interesting shift but i think if we were or what i want to what i'm going to start doing is it's no longer what are they calling it i mean i know it's called the east wing it's supposed to be called the ballroom now or the grand ball i'm not calling it that but go ahead whatever well anyway it's just a ballroom from from this point forward we should

we should call it what it is and this is the epstein bedroom there's the lincoln bedroom this is the epstein bedroom because all this is is another attempt to distract us from jeffrey epstein and the release of the epstein files so

And he won't seat, Mike Johnson won't seat that representative. Yeah, but the bottom line is, it really isn't, quite frankly, I don't think this is that big a deal. Obama had renovations. Okay, I don't like the way he's going about it. This is massive. This is different than... I do not think this is that meaningful.

I really don't. I don't, but the way he did, I think it's more like this wasn't American. Like, this is what I'm saying. The guy's calling him to call off the San Francisco thing. Let's just tear it down without consultation. Agreed. Like, that is un-American. It is just not.

I guess maybe it is American. I don't know. Anyways, the win. So the win is, and just a reminder, there is for all this performative masculinity around taking a trillion dollar a year expenditure and. having missile strikes, which may be quite frankly extraditional murder at this point, which is just so performative, in my opinion, stupid. There is a real war taking place with real lethal force.

in Ukraine. And according to, I think it's Pateri Orpo, Finland's prime minister, Ukrainian forces do appear to have halted major Russian advances on some fronts. With help by Europe. Yes, that's right. And Ukraine's capacity striking its targets inside Russia has improved. I do hope we provide them with the long-range missiles and the Tomahawk, which is an incredible weapon to target the refining capabilities.

an opinion piece in the guardian reports that ukrainians moved in kiev is more confident now than a year ago though the situation is still grave there's much it still feels Like the mood is upbeat, there's greater resolve. Discussions are advancing around using frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine's reconstruction and defense, which is on its own a sign of growing international alignment. So anyways, my...

My win and reminder is the real fight here, the real lethality that is proving, you know, is upholding our freedom and our democracy is taking place. It's not off the shores of Venezuela. It's in Ukraine right now, where the Ukrainian army does continue to punch well above their weight class. So anyway.

That's my win. That's a good one. Because, you know, that's speaking of economic value. Think about the windfalls that's going to happen there as we rebuild that very vibrant and innovative culture. Right. This is like an opportunity, again, an opportunity for the United States to build. real things versus this nonsense.

You know, all the different people that have to suck up to Trump. It's grotesque to watch them one after the next, you know, sucking up to them. But there's no economic value there. It's just a grift. It's just one long grift. And that's not how you make things, right? You get to get ahead. because you fluff a billionaire? Stop it. It has no economic value. Whether you like us being involved in other countries or not.

The best thing would be to have a peaceful Ukraine that will then innovate and create a better, I don't know. It just seems like it's not, none of this is economic. It's just drift. And so it's very disappointing. I'll tell you that.

Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. And elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on On with Kara Swisher, which Scott... Galloway is going to be on soon for his new book. I spoke with writer, director, and producer Judd Apatow. Let's listen to a clip. There are definitely ways that technology can help people. If you can...

go on a computer and make it look like deep space and it doesn't cost $3 million. It costs 40 grand. Well, clearly in some ways that will help people. It will decimate the people that made space, but it seems like. We're not going to be able to stop that when it gets cheaper. But the writing and the directing will always wind up generic because it's scraped and it's just copying other things. Oh, we'll see about that, Judd. But he's really, I mean, that guy has got a history of really amazing.

work in comedy. Anyway, he actually, you know... He's just really sharp about what's happening. I thought it was a great talk. Yeah, smart guy, impressive guy. He really is. But you're going to be even more impressive. Oh, yeah, go on. You're going to be good. I'm going to let you talk and talk and talk, so you'll have a good time.

Reminder, which I already do here. We're going to go on tour. We'll be going to Toronto, Boston, New York, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and L.A. Scott and I are going to be together so much. We're sold out in Toronto and San Francisco, and the other cities are very close. But visit PivotTour.com, especially UChicago. We've got extra large venue there. Come and see us. We also got some surprises there, some good big names coming.

Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. And make sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out. Today's show is produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Nurtad engineered this episode. Ronnie Polidoro edited the video. Additional support from Kate Gallagher and Brad Sylvester. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Mr. Verio, and Dan Chalon. Nishat Kerouaz, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform.

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