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Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, we are launching our much-anticipated book club, and we're doing it with Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle, who will introduce their upcoming book, We Can Do Hard Things, Answers to Life's 20 Questions. Plus, we've got some fun and important updates from the W and the NWSL. And of course, we've got a new Are You a Megan or Are You a Sue? Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
It was a crisis, a fast-moving crisis. And so it's not surprising in retrospect that the debate was truncated. surprising the extent to which the decisions that were made in the early going of the pandemic departed from conventional wisdom about how to handle a pandemic. This week on The Gray Air. We're talking about tough decisions that were made during the pandemic. New Gray Area episodes drop every Monday, available everywhere.
Cheech and Chong, what is the likelihood someone's going to spark up? I'm going to get a whole bag of weed. That's what I'm going to do. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. I flew all night, and boy are my arms tired. I did a joke, Scott. Where did you come in from? D.C. to San Francisco. D.C. to San Francisco. Oh, you're in your favorite place, San Francisco. Yes, indeed.
I'm so excited. And you're collecting a bunch of awards and you're also, look what I'm wearing. I know, you're wearing the Bill Maher thing. It's very attractive. I'm wearing a Bill Maher shirt because I know you're going on Bill Maher. I am. It's hugely jelly. And I'm also wearing... my Beverly Hills hotel hat, and I need you
to go down to the pool, go to the polo lounge, have a few makers and gingers, say hello to Jorge, the concierge there. And any Russian woman that gives you eye contact, return her eye contact. You go down to the counter for breakfast, go to the pool, put on a big pair of black sunglasses and any modestly attractive woman that walks by and put an unlit cigarette in your mouth and go.
Jackie, marry me. I make you very happy, woman. I am doing none of this. I am in and out. I am in and out. I come back to San Francisco because I have to get a second award on San Francisco. And also do a charity. Stop it. I am. I'm doing charity. So, by the way.
Cheech and Chong and Kara Swisher. That was not the crossover I was expecting. Oh, they're the main guests. Yeah. And then Kevin McCarthy and I are on the panel. Kevin McCarthy. Well, at least one of you has a dick and it's not the former speaker. What? I don't even know. I don't.
It's fine. Whatever. I'm saying that you bring more masculine energy. Exactly. Kevin McCarthy. That's what I don't. Lacks a bad backbone and testicles that produce testosterone, which make you more risk aggressive and have certain leadership skills, which he brought none of. Yeah, I know. I don't know why.
I don't know why. And it really paid off for the guy. All that ass kissing really paid off. If he doesn't ass kiss the way the Trump cabinet did yesterday to him, the suck uppery. It was like, you know, Ann Coulter even was like, it was like Kim Jong Il. But she's getting paid. They all find their backbone when they're out of his orbit, which does us no fucking good. You watch tomorrow or Friday, he'll be really reasonable.
Because they all find sanity and all realize, I want to be a guest on MSNBC. I want a corporate board to hire me and realize I'm not as fucking crazy than when it actually mattered when I'm supposed to be sane. I don't know. I think these people sound like they believe it. They do. They were such suck-ups. And then crazy RFK Jr., you noted that. The whole thing about child trafficking? Oh, the guy who said that when he was a child.
There were no kids with diabetes. My favorite one was that the Spanish flu was a vaccine-induced pandemic. And then the whole child trafficking thing? What was he talking about?
What on earth? They must sit there and be like... that's like one of the it's so weird it is like jim kim it's like north korea it was crazy and then himself with the dolls nobody can have any dolls you can you can't have two dolls oh yeah but let me ask you this do you think there's any veracity to the notion that Trump says
All right, I want people to look away from the fact that I'm crashing the economy and deporting four-year-olds with stage four cancer. So just be as fucking crazy as you want. If people want to have their hair on fire about the stupid shit you say, have at it. Anything that distracts them from the fact.
I am crashing the global economy. The U.S. is literally going to be like an estate sale where there's no will and people just show up and fight over mom's sub-zero refrigerator. Every country in the world is now saying. Oh, we want that part of your trade. Oh, we want your PhD students. It was something. It was something. And we'll talk about it more.
Seriously, it was so like, I've never seen, I mean, you're supposed to be sort of peppy at those cabinet meetings, but not like that. It was like, ew. And the thing is, Donald Trump was the craziest of them. And I was like, this is like they were competing for crazy. And once again, he wins.
He wins the prize. In this case, like when he's always saying he wins at the golf club, this time he won on that particular. Praising himself. He kept adding to their praise. Oh, don't forget the firemen. Don't forget the this. I don't know. I'm excited to see you with. Speaker McCarthy, he reminds me of my dog, and that is when I ask him to speak, he will, but it doesn't mean fucking anything. That was a joke. You didn't even give me a laugh on that? No, I didn't. Sorry, say it again.
Speaker McCarthy is similar to my dog. And that is when I ask him to speak, he will. but it doesn't mean anything. I think that's really good. I think that's really good. I expected a laugh from you. I need your affirmation, Kara Swisher. By the way, I want to go to that. Bill Maher after party. But Cheech and Chong, what is the likelihood someone's going to spark up? I'm going to get a whole bag of weed. That's what I'm going to do.
Listen, they invited you, speaking of weed, they invited you to Club Random. They want you in that little, you should go for your book tour. That intimidates me. No, it's like up in the hills at this beautiful house. No, no, no, but they get high. Bill gets smarter when he gets high. If I got high, he'd want to talk about transhumanism. I'd be like, dude, you got any frozen snicker bars? I just don't.
I get dumber. No, no. It's comfortable. You'd like it. You can have drinking. You don't have to get high. You don't have to get high. Yeah, he intimidates me. I don't really know the guy. He doesn't hang out. He hangs out with everyone after the show but me. Yeah. And I don't really know. I mean, it kind of intimidates me. Scott, everything happened to you in high school and it continues to this day.
Oh, you think? I think. What, you think? You think Amy Atkins not letting me French kiss her and then going to the prom with some other guy that was three years older? You think I still remember that? You think that still makes me insecure? Do you think the four women I asked a prom who said no, do you think that doesn't have resonance?
I told you I went to four proms each year, but I'm not going to go into it. Here we fucking go. Here we go. In between collecting awards and having sex with straight men. And I'm not even gay. I'm straight, but go ahead. Sorry. That was my problem. I'm way too straight. How awesome a gay man would I make? Oh, my God. It's like my ex used to say, gay by day, straight by night. Okay.
Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. A little slow because it's early here in California. Beautiful sunrise happening right now. Lots going on. Microsoft and Meta's latest earnings. Wow, those were pretty impressive. And Donald Trump getting pissed with Amazon. And then when they kissed his ass, it was fine.
But first, Tesla's board was reportedly looking for a successor to Elon Musk last month, according to The Wall Street Journal. The journal says the board got frustrated with falling sales in Musk's DC focus, you think, and told Elon he needed to publicly announce it. He would spend more time on Tesla. Tesla's board chair, Robin Denholm, denies the reports. She has almost no credibility. She just backs up her back, her trunk, and they fill it with money.
posting on X that they're absolutely false, not just false, but... Absolutely false. Meanwhile, Musk said goodbye to President Trump's cabinet on Wednesday, claiming Doge has so far saved $160 billion. It's pathetic, actually, and most people think that number is not even accurate. He did so wearing not one, but two Trump hats. It was so... so, so painful. Let's listen to the goodbye.
You know, they say I wear a lot of hats. And as you can see, it's true. Even my hat has a hat. You know, the American people voted for secure borders. safe cities, and sensible spending. And that's what they've gotten. A tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first 100 days. As everyone has said, it's more than has been accomplished in any administration before ever, period. I do agree that more has been accomplished. It's just how you would define accomplished.
100 days, the entire world economy is being reshaped around. I mean, the kind of post-World War II order has absolutely been... is being reshaped. And you're going to see, I mean, first off, Prime Minister Carney was elected because of Trump. And you're about to see the same thing happen in Australia, because the other party has become associated with
You know, the other party went on kind of this DEI. They were trying to take a page out of Trump's notebook and they realized, oh, this isn't working out well. Yeah. Even though, you know, they would do well there. They were Murdoch there and stuff like that. So the Tesla, the hat thing, I just, it's so painful. He's worn several, remember he wore the big hat and then he had the gothic.
Like, it's sad. He's 53 years old. And we talk about him as if he's a teenager. He's about to start getting AARP mail. Honestly. Tell me about the Tesla board thing. Now, they're denying it, but it makes sense. They have got to be open to lawsuits and everything else, even if Elon runs the place. But the numbers don't lie. I mean, gravity is a thing. I believe they were looking for a CEO, or I believe they told him he needed to publicly say he's going to spend more time at Tesla.
Yeah, I don't. Obviously, we don't know if this is true or not. And if it is true, it reflects a couple of things. One, there's someone leaking it. Two, it probably means the stock is, and this isn't financial advice, is a really great short right now because it means that... They're going to cut this guy a lot of slack because he's built an incredible company and they've all made a shit ton of money because of Elon Musk.
And so there's got to be a ton of goodwill just based on what they've put up with so far. They have put up with more aberrant... unacceptable behavior from a CEO than any board in history. And so for them to cross the line means that there's absolutely nothing in the product. pipeline that is going to stop this company from crashing. Sometimes it's darkest before it's pitch black. It feels like...
If they are, in fact, looking for taking the bold step of looking for a CEO, it means that they look at this company like, wow, we are in really big trouble. I mean, it just, but the thing I didn't agree with is that people said who would take that job. A lot of people would take that job. Oh, okay. Before I get to that, tell me, you've been on boards. I have not. Give me the strategy of... leaking something like this. I think the journal has been right about the drug use.
It was right about, they did a lot of board stuff, so they know that board that has been very accurate, has turned out to be accurate. They even did a story about him sleeping with Sergey Brin's wife at the time. The vice presidential candidate? Yeah, right, her. Anyway, I just feel like they wouldn't write this if they didn't have it. I have a lot of regard for the journal.
Someone on that board was telling them, or more than one person, or there was some messaging happening here to Elon himself. So if you're on a board, how does this look? Leaks usually are... Okay, our stock's getting... So on a meta level, it is amazing how much boards will put up with when the stock is going up. And it's amazing how much unfair blame they'll put on the CEO when the stock is going down.
There's notion that boards, this bullshit virtue signaling narrative that they adopted and the odds that it's about stakeholder value. It's not. It's about shareholder value. If the shares are going up in price. You know, he can be banging his assistant and her dog and we'll find reasons to, you know, say you. You're going to rehab, but it's better now. And we'll figure out a reason to bring you back and maintain you're the CEO and call you chairman. When the stock's going down.
you're in trouble. You're on the green mile all the time, at least for two or three years. A new CEO gets two to three years. And a lot of CEOs that are there for a long time will populate the board with their golf buddies. and the board becomes ineffective. In terms of actual leaks, Sometimes it's a board level thing where they say, all right, there's a narrative out there that we're an irresponsible board.
and that we need to find a new CEO. And so let's leak it that we're looking for a new CEO. I don't think he would have wanted this message to be leaked because it makes him look bad. When you have, I've been on boards where there's leaks, where there's a proxy fight and the board is at each other's throat and then one or more people start leaking shit.
That's when boards start to really digress and dissolve into chaos because nobody trusts each other. Everyone's like, okay, who the fuck here is leaking? And most of the boards I have been on, generally speaking, they don't leak. They don't. They realize it's bad for the governance. It creates tremendous distrust within and among board members. They don't want to work with each other.
There's two board meetings, one of the people on X side, one on Y side. So I'm confused a little bit by this because... They don't want to announce this until they have a new CEO. So someone leaking this. I don't think it's on the board. I don't think it came from the board. You don't. Okay. So who would be the CEO? You said that. I mean, who would do this? And more to the point, if he's running it, what does he do?
What does he do? Except go on and on and try to do this hypnotic thing. And by the way, Henry Blodgett wrote a piece about my idea and likes it, the idea of merging Tesla with XAI, FYI. I said I rendered you speechless, which I did. I did, which isn't easy to do. So who would be the CEO or what should Elon do as CEO? Should they replace him? And if they don't, and he is the CEO and he stays.
What should he do? Because he seems entirely uninterested in the business or pretending it's another business. this is a data company, or we're going to have robo-taxis, none of which exist. No products exist. It feels like a cyber truck part two, essentially, which was a huge dud, by the way. Who should run it? So first off, he shouldn't have been CEO two or three years ago when he started committing securities fraud.
and started getting really awful accusations and decided that he wanted to be CEO of three or four companies who shouldn't have been CEO. They should have said, all right. He has many hats in case you're interested. If you want to do this, you can be chairman and have huge input, but we need to bring in a full-time person who's CEO and has. the license to make decisions and has accountability for these decisions.
In terms of who should be CEO, I think it needs to be someone from the automobile sector. And there are a lot of great leaders in the automobile sector. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being someone from outside of the U.S. I think that person in their contract says, I have total support of the board. And if something goes wrong and you fire me because I'm not getting along with Elon, I'm getting the most ridiculous fucking severance package because.
This guy's going to need, or gal, is going to need the mother of all kind of parachutes. They could go more design or more cool product or something around manufacturing, pick someone from the cloud or something. But I think the automobile sector is so much about... I think it's such a unique industry and so complicated and so much about supply chain.
that I think they would want someone from the automobile sector. This is a long-winded way of saying I don't know. And what if he stays? Very briefly, what if he stays? What should he do? Because he keeps... He's the only one who can do his flimflammery around the robots. He should do what you're suggesting. He should do a sleight of hand and merge it. with XAI and pretend that it's not an automobile company to get people to look away from the fact that his
automobile sale, his pipeline is weak and his sales are crashing. Yeah. Okay. We'll see. We'll see what happens. He looks like unhappy to be back working on that. He seems entirely unexcited by it, which is hard to do. I understand that feeling of you don't want to keep doing the same thing. But he made a disaster at Doge, so he's going to make another disaster here because he's uninterested. Speaking of flimflammery, President Trump sat down for a contentious interview marking 100 days.
In office with ABC News, Terry Moran, who he's never heard of apparently. It was so ridiculous. Some highlights, I gave you this chance, Terry, and you fucked me. In regards to Pete Hegseth, the president remained optimistic, but when asked, he wouldn't say he had 100 percent confidence in him calling it a stupid question, which is his go-to. Trump dismissed backlash to tariffs, saying they were just what people voted for and everyone's going to be.
Just fine. When discussing the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, this was a whopper, when the administration, whom the administration sent to El Salvador in error, Trump referred to a photoshopped image of MS-13 on Garcia's knuckles. Let's listen. And you'll pick out one man, but even the man that you picked out, he said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked, and on his knuckles, he had MS-13. There's a dispute over that. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
he had ms13 on his knuckles we had some tattoos that are interpreted that way but let's move on wait a minute hey terry terry he did not have the letter ms13 it says ms13 that was photoshop That was Photoshop, Terry. You can do that. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you're doing the interview. I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay.
Oh my God, he's such a negger. It's so amazing. Like, neg, neg, neg. But let me say, it was Photoshopped. He doesn't know that that was... trying to say the tattoos on there represented MS-13, and someone put those to give reference. And he's insisting that MS-13 was actually on there. total addlement like I or just
Just lying almost continually. Everything he does, he breathes, he lies. Any thoughts on that interview? The thing that struck out for me was, first off, Terry Moran is a world-class journalist. He's been covering the Supreme Court and, I believe, the White House for a while. I thought he put on a master class, and I think the big winner here was Terry. This is an impossible position. You have to maintain some decorum and dignity and respect for the office.
And so when the president says, no, you got to trust me on this, it's this. It's hard. It's really hard to push back. And he was forceful yet dignified. attempted to show grace and not just say, okay, Mr. President, stop fucking lying. Stop lying, please. See, that's what I would have done. I would have had the picture. But that's why you'll never interview the president. That's correct.
These people have to walk a very fine line, and that is they get criticized if they don't push back on obvious lies. At the same time, they have to maintain a certain decorum that respects the office. Terry, thread that needle perfectly. It reminded me of that interview on CNBC with Deidre Bolson and Keith Rebaugh, where basically Keith committed securities fraud over and over and over.
about Open Door claiming it was profitable, and she real-time fact-checked him in a very kind of dignified, non-combative way. By the way, I think that stock's off like 70% or 90% since he went on. Journalists who... want to give people the benefit of the doubt, want to show some decorum, and you have to show the president a certain amount of grace. Otherwise, you're...
Here, I'm going to push back on you because I'm an interviewer. So I feel like in that case, the constant lying, this is Biden's GDP drop, this is this. It's just, you cannot let him continue to make things up. Although, what I got the vibe was as an old person, it literally brought me to an argument I had with my mom. Like, no, it's this. No, it's absolutely this. And I was like, it's not. Yeah, but he got, don't you think Terry made it clear to anyone with an IQ over, I don't know, 40?
Did he is lying or uninformed? He did. He did. I was going back and forth on it. I think he should have pulled the picture out and said, Mr. President, these numbers were put on by Photoshop to indicate. and been polite that way. This was not actually on his fingers. Here's the picture of his actual fingers. It's so interesting. It's interesting what the media focuses on. The media is focusing on that. I thought by far the most interesting and damning part of the interview.
was when he asked him what the Declaration of Independence meant to him. Desi Lydic made fun of it. And it was hilarious. And the look that Terry Moran gave was the same look. And Desi Lydic said this thing. When a school teacher decides a kid needs to see an adolescent psychotherapist, it was the look he was like, he's like, oh my God, we're in worse trouble than I thought. This person needs help. Break glass. This is an emergency.
Yeah, because he said the Declaration of Defense was about unity. That is the only thing it wasn't about. What's interesting, though, is that I just call some of balls and strikes here. The people around Biden clearly knew. He was cognitively impaired, and they hid him from the media. I think the people around Trump would probably or anyone smart would like to say, let's let's pull back on the media appearances. But there's no way he thinks he's doing great. I think.
You know, with Biden, they said, no, don't go on, Jon Stewart. We're just going to reheat your soup. And Nana's coming home. And he listened. I told you the well-behaved guy in the old folks home, and Trump's the one that's like, where's the soup? I ordered soup. No, he's the guy leading water aerobics. Joe's leading water aerobics today in regarding the stories of Korea.
Yeah, and how he fought a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He does think he's doing great. It's really something. No, he thinks he's killing it. He thinks he's killing it. He feels really old. I don't get that. I think he feels crazy. I don't see the physical impairment you see. No, but it's like, well, you don't have an elderly parent. who's absolutely certain they didn't block Amanda on the phone. I did not. She blocks my son. She pushes somebody.
It's the longest running argument we ever have. I'm like, you did it. No, I did not. The phone did it. That's what it feels like. Anyway, I'm not going to go into it, but that was a long argument. And I don't know why I have to be right. I should be like Terry Moore and like, okay, let's move on.
Let's move on. Just again, shout out. Terry Moran was fantastic. He handled a very difficult situation very well, I thought. Yeah. Anyway, lastly, a federal judge dismantling Apple's control of the App Store in ruling said the Apple violated orders in a five-year antitrust case bought by Epic Games. In a previous ruling, the judge ordered Apple to allow apps to use external payments to avoid 30% commission charges. The judge accused executives of lying saying Apple created a new system.
forcing external sales to be charged 27% commission. Now the judge says Apple may no longer take commissions from sales. outside the App Store. Let me just say, I do not understand this because Apple won almost everything except this one thing. and they did not follow it along. Now, the App Store is a large part of Apple's $100 billion annual services revenue. I don't imagine it's an enormous flow because it's difficult to do those outside external sales.
But it seemed like a real error on Apple's part here to do something like petulant like this, given how much they won. The biggest toll booths in the world are Google and arguably Apple's App Store. And to think your buddy, Barry Diller, summarized it perfectly. This is like a credit card company. The App Store provides infrastructure. Payment technology, security, safety, a certain level of assurance that if something goes wrong, they vet the stores, they vet the consumers.
Credit card companies charge between 1.8% and 3%. Apple charges 30 or 15, I think, if it's recurring revenue. But they have such a lot. Even though they have, I think, about 40% or 50% market share in the U.S., I think they have closer to 80% or 90% of actual revenue volume because anyone with any money has an iOS or people with most money have an iOS. So I've been saying this for a while. The best way is to oxygenate the economy.
would be to, one, for China and the U.S. to kiss and make up because everything would get 10% cheaper around the world, but two, to basically bust up these toll booths and have other toll roads or other players. I mean, I don't know if you saw, in the wake... of just monster earnings from Meta and Alphabet. We'll talk about that in a minute, but go ahead. Pinterest and Snap are just dying a slow death. No one can compete with their scale. So in the app store is just another example.
I mean, you could easily break a great company in terms of a breakup would be Apple services, which would probably be the app store or their media. So why would they do this given they really did sort of. win in this case except for this one. I don't understand. What do you think? You know them better than I do. I have no idea. It seems like, well, they just don't want to do it. They just don't want to do it. They're going to just challenge it.
And now, of course, the judge is saying, well, they'll appeal it. These people know how to appeal, I guess. I assume that's what they're going to do. Anyway, it seems to be a real unusual error on their part to do something petulant. I can see petulance from Mark Zuckerberg. or Bezos or any of them, but not Tim Cook, but here we are. A real winner, though, and a player in this, and I've been investing in them, is Epic.
I don't know if they're moving Minecraft. It's one of the highest grossing movies killing it. FYI, it's one of the highest grossing movies in history. And who would have thought the Minecraft movie? My kids were obsessed with it. Yeah, and they went up against it. I don't know if you'd say they won, but they didn't back down. And it doesn't appear... They didn't really win. It was more in Apple's favor, but in this case, now they're able to do what they want. We'll see.
how much that sticks. I mean, I think Apple's playing the very long game with Trump and everything else, the quiet long game. Anyway, okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break, go and get back. Microsoft met earnings, which we will discuss because they were pretty fantastic, and why Trump is getting compared to the Grinch.
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stores that let you do you at a starting price of around $34,995. Equinox EV, a vehicle you know valued you'd expect and a dealer right down the street. You can go EV without changing a thing. Learn more at chevy.com forward slash Equinox EV. Based on latest competitive data, the manufacturer's suggested retail price excludes tax, title license, dealer fees, and optional equipment. Dealer sets final price. Mmm. Not just a thing from Game of Thrones. Not just Jon Snow's best.
Dire wolves walked the Americas for millennia up until about 14,000 years ago when maybe their primary food source dried up or humans hunted them to extinction. No one was taking notes, but we know they were a bit bigger than gray wolves. They ate a lot of meat and their bite could crush bones. And now we know that apparently dire wolves are back.
A startup called Colossal says they've brought these pups back from extinction. They say they've got three of them, but are these dire wolves they brought back actually dire wolves? And whether they are or aren't, should we be trying to bring... direwolves back, like why? Join us for answers over at Today Explained. Have you ever gotten a medical bill and thought, how am I ever going to pay for this?
This week on Net Worth and Chill, we're tackling the financial emergency that is the American healthcare system. From navigating insurance nightmares to making sure your emergency fund actually covers those emergencies. We're diving deep into the hidden healthcare costs that no one warns you about. Most hospitals in the U.S. are actually nonprofits, which means...
They have to have financial assistance or charity care policies. So essentially, if you make below a certain amount, the hospital legally has. You're rich BFF. Scott, we're back. Microsoft and Metashares are up both after companies reported quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street expectations on Wednesday. And how? Microsoft sales surpassed $70 billion, up 13% from a year ago. The company's Azure Cloud unit posted a 33% revenue gain. Meta sales grew by 16% year over year.
to $42 billion net income with $16 billion. The company isn't slowing down on CapEx spending either, boosting its forecast as high as $72 billion. This is mostly around AI. Of course, the weak spot continues to be that first shift that Mark made. Meta reported $4.2 billion in losses from its Reality Labs division. That's why they call themselves Meta. It also announced the launch of Meta AI this week. It's a standalone AI app, sort of to compete with ChatGPG. Makes sense.
So far, the companies have avoided getting dragged down by tariff chaos, which is interesting. We'll see if it goes on. Mark Zuckerberg addressed the concerns about tariff impact in his earliest call, saying, I think we're well positioned to weather the economic uncertainty. I think advertising is an open question.
Just for people to know, Amazon and Apple earnings coming after we record, so we'll dig into those next week. But talk a little bit about these earnings, each company. Let's start with Microsoft. Staggering. You know, revenues on a big base up 13%. Their cloud revenue is up 20%. And what you have here, and also Microsoft is probably, I don't want to say it's a defensive stock, but it's leased.
It's kind of most recession-proof, and also it doesn't seem to be subject to real damage other than a slowdown in the economy from... from these tariffs. And keep in mind, the majority of their biggest customers are global. So even if the U.S. gets hit, they're pretty well insulated. You know, Apple is going to take a hit. If the tariffs continue to escalate, Amazon will absolutely take a hit.
Microsoft Meta and Alphabet are more insulated because they're digital marketing. But Microsoft has exposure to the cloud. It's a very diversified, robust business. It's really well managed. Can I just say with Microsoft, Chachanadella, I think. Even though he's the quietest of them. And by the way, if you've noticed, he hasn't sucked up to Trump. He's just doing his job, like, kind of thing. And of course, his job doesn't have that much.
The interaction they have has to do around national security and everything else. And they do have, let me tell you, that's where their big weakness is around security issues, around their software, etc. But I have to say he deserves much more credit than almost any CEO in terms of really making this company shine. I'm always impressed with him and especially how he handles things.
He manages not to lose his soul every five minutes. But go ahead on Meta, which I think is hugely impressive. Mark Zuckerberg really knows how to run a company. He really does. Oh, revenue increased 16% and even, I think, even more impressive. their price per ad was up 10%. If you're looking for how AI is impacting our economy, their ability to talk, I mean, don't you increasingly have more of those moments where you're thinking,
My shoulders have been bothering me. And all of a sudden on reels, I'm getting served ads for bands to help with my shoulders. I'm like, how the fuck did they figure that out? And the amount of time in terms of serving you up. incredible ads. Their recommendation engine is contributed to a 35% increase in time spent on threads, a 7% increase in time spent on Facebook, 6% on Instagram.
He predicted, or Zuck predicted, AI would be able to handle half of Meta's developer work. So he's able to maintain, you know, other than CapEx around data storage and AI, their human capital costs. have decelerated and aren't growing nearly as fast as their top-line revenues, meaning that quote-unquote earnings are going to explode. And just to give you a sense, I do this deck on AI. I think the AI company at 2025 is meta because...
First off, if you look at it, 80% of people in the world outside of China. But can I just know something? It's the best data. Like think about Twitter data. It's not good data. Like, you know, it's kind of all noisy, but this is all people moving and using.
relatively behaving. I mean, there's all kinds of problems on this platform, obviously, but go ahead. Well, the peanut butter and chocolate or chocolate and peanut butter of AI is, loosely speaking, the chips of processing power. They're the second biggest purchaser of chips. They're in line with the second biggest purchase order of NVIDIA chips. And then the chocolate is the actual data, the input, the coal in the furnace, whatever you want to call it, right? Grist to the mill.
And just to give you a sense of just how much data is produced on meta platforms, Reddit, which is... Unbelievably accelerated, has the fifth most traffic of anyone in the U.S., any site in the U.S. Reddit is the source of roughly 1.3 trillion tokens of text, right? 1.3 trillion tokens of text. 180 trillion tokens. So Metta has more coal to throw into the furnace to process and learn from. And they're going to have the second most.
In addition, they not only get the benefit of saying, all right, we're going to use that to have a consumer-facing product. Instead, or in addition to, we're going to use AI to give advertisers... Such extraordinary targeting at the right time for the right person in the right place that advertisers are going to be helpless not to just reallocate more and more of their budget.
Look, we all have our issues with Mark Zuckerberg, and it's deserved, but man, can he run? He's like a Gatesian figure, no matter how well Bill Gates ran or he was many years. Brilliant businessman. Brilliant business person. He wore those glasses everywhere, the metaglasses, which are popular. I don't think they're an enormous business for them, but he does the walk. I mean, he looked, he didn't look, he wore them everywhere this week, which was.
Smart. It was smart that he did it. He didn't look as dumb as Elon looks in a hat. But I would agree. I think it's really astonishing what's happening. Like you were noting, and I was thinking about it the rest of the week, was Google has so many good businesses. you know, within this company, so does Facebook, right? And I like threads. I do, I do. I like it for, it feels like Instagram a little bit easier, like essentially.
And I'm on Blue Sky. I like Blue Sky too, by the way. But there's so many good products in this term. I think the two dings on them obviously will be their deleterious effect on the entire world. And this trial, we'll see a lot of people, you know, I've been talking to a lot of people, most people, and I agree, think it's a relatively weak case that they have competition now and they're just doing very well with the competition. But a lot of other people think they're going to lose.
And it's going to be like Microsoft, right? It's not going to really matter. And they won't spin stuff off, but we'll see if they have to spin things off like an Instagram or a... a WhatsApp. It would certainly be interesting if they did, as you and I have talked about.
Anyway, good job, Mark Zuckerberg. We have to give it to you. And again, we'll talk about Amazon and Apple earnings. We both think they're going to get hit. There's only just one thing in the Microsoft earnings that I thought were interesting in the earnings call. and that is their data storage expenditures coming down. And I wonder if some of them are thinking, the deep seek, maybe there's an opportunity or maybe the...
Maybe the data storage and the power consumption won't be as great as initially forecast. I think a lot of them are looking at the deep seek innovation and thinking, how does this impact our CapEx moving forward? You're probably going to see in the back half of the year, even more staggering earnings because it feels like they have so much momentum on the top line. And yet on the expense side, I think they're going to maintain.
I think their CapEx is going to go flat or maybe even down, which is just going to be like nitrone glycerin for their earnings. Yeah, we'll see about that. It'll be interesting. And it'll be interesting to compare Amazon and Apple with them. But speaking of economic uncertainty, President Trump is blaming former President Biden for the U.S. economy contracting in the first quarter of 2025.
suggesting in this cabinet, this ridiculous cabinet, meaning that Q2 will also be tied to Biden. He's going to blame Biden. He mentioned Biden like 912 times, or not that many, but a lot. He's taking the same stance on markets, writing on True Social on Wednesday. This is Biden's stock market, not Trump's, even though he claimed it was Trump. stock market back in 2024 when he wasn't present the market was doing well he was calling it trump stock market
He's also telling Americans to be patient but acknowledge there will be some consequences from his terror. So let's get to the doll situation. you know somebody said oh the shelves are going to be open well maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dollars you know and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally
Oh my God, it's true. Whoever said that? This idea that, I mean, look, that may be true. I agree. I have too many fucking toys in my house and I wish I had like many less. But it's none of his business if people want $30. Americans are used to products on the shelves and open, whatever open means empty is the word he's looking for. Toy manufacturers are already warning about a Christmas toy shortage. Factories in China produce nearly 80% of all toys and 90% of Christmas goods sold in the U.S.
He's making a point, yes, we shouldn't consume as much. The man who consumes more than anybody, who's just like a giant maw of consumption, is lecturing people. administration is doing this they're very on message well you don't need that stuff you don't need it
But how do you think it's going to hit with people, especially if there are empty shelves, not open shelves, but empty shelves? From a guy that golfs every third day and bangs porn stars? He's talking to us about consumption. I know, and then shows off his gold in that Terry Moran interview, by the way. He showed off. American.
We are the most conspicuous consumers in history. America is sort of, you'd argue, an insurance company with a military, but really what it is, it's a platform for prosperity where people get material and hopefully emotional. you know, gains from an incredible operating system. You could argue that Biden was kicked out of office because the price of eggs went too high, but he doesn't think people are going to notice. 90% of America is on a fixed budget.
And if toys go up in price 30, 40, 50 percent, that means a third to a half fewer toys. You don't think that's going to hit home emotionally? When the kids start noticing, wait, you know, that just really hits you hard. It hits on an emotion where... When you feel like you're not providing for your kids on key moments, it really rips at your soul. And people are going to get angry. Just the notion that, oh, Americans, that these people, that him with his... With his tacky, retrofitted 757.
that somehow Americans, you know, don't need all this stuff. Well, okay, folks, Americans love their stuff. America is the land of stuff. We love our shit. There's nothing wrong with it, our Nespresso, our Netflix. We love stuff. And loosely speaking, actually, if you were to pick one thing that impacts the majority of elections in America for the last 50 years. It's kind of your safety and security around your ability to buy more stuff. It's the economy.
And so that's just a ridiculous statement. So why did he make it? I mean, and then it was echoed by all his people. And then blaming Biden, obviously, he's going to use Biden as, you know, 10 years from now, he's going to say Biden was the reason. What is, I mean, I don't think people are thinking of Biden anymore, you know, or mentioning, although his voters have a very astonishing, they are now echoing this. There was a lot of interviews I saw where they're like,
Yeah, we got to buck up like we're in the middle of the war, too, and the Nazis are headed our way like that kind of mood of something like that. There is some truth to the notion. So GDP was off, first negative quarter since I think 2022, first in three years. We had a contraction. I don't think it's fair to lay that at the feet of the Trump administration. GDP is a lagging indicator. The surge in imports because of these ridiculous tariffs.
took, you know, took a large portion of the GDP down. Consumption is down, too. They're both things together, but go ahead. Next quarter, there's just no excuses. He owns it. And you're going to see a contraction. I don't like GDP. I don't think it's a good measure, but you're going to see the economy contract and it's on its way. I'm doing a lot or a decent amount of, I have a lot of friends who are impacted by the tariffs.
And essentially, like business has come to a standstill and they're sitting around trying to guess. Do we try to move? Do we go to our bank, borrow a shit ton of money, cut 20, 30 percent of our workforce and spend the next three years trying to reroute our supply chain through?
Vietnam or Indonesia? Or do we hope this guy pops up, wakes up tomorrow morning and goes, just kidding. But in the meantime, they're in a state of paralysis. They have stopped all shipments from most of my friends from China. Shipping volume is off anywhere, depending on how you account for, between 35% and 65%. The port of Los Angeles.
is less crowded than it's been in recent memory, and it's the largest port in the Western Hemisphere. And there's a lag effect, but when the ships coming into the port are empty or they're not coming in, that means... In about four to 12 weeks, the stores are going to be empty. And also you're going to start to see layoffs. Yeah, because I just interviewed Wes Moore, who's he's the governor of Maryland.
And a very handsome man, as you would say. Westmore, he's going to be a presidential candidate. And he was talking about the knock-on effects in Baltimore in terms of, like, truckers, unloaders. people around it, restaurants around it. It's just going to reverberate all over these economies in California and Maryland.
New York, you know, of course these are all blue states, but still it will have so much reverberations around the country and then it just keeps having knock-on and knock-on effects. Anyway, I don't think he can keep blaming. I agree with you. He can blame him for a short time, but this is just nonsense lecturing people on how many dolls they should have. I agree.
that we shouldn't have so many choices. But that's my personal opinion. And he's the president of the United States. It's none of his business to tell people what to buy. It's like that Borat film, you know, 33 different types of cheeses. That's just who we are. The weird thing is, just going back to the earnings for a moment, you're probably going to see an increased bifurcation between the Magnuson 7 and the rest of the economy because...
These firms, so Amazon is the most subject to this trade war than anyone because two-thirds of their business comes within the U.S. and a lot of their products are subject to tariff. A company like Meta gets only one-third of its business from the U.S., and the majority of its products are not subject to tariffs. Apple, two-thirds from outside the U.S. A company like Microsoft, half their business comes from outside the U.S. So these companies...
I don't want to say they're insulated, but the big guys and the big tech companies are much more insulated. A, most of the vast majority of the products are not subject to tariffs. And B, the majority of their business comes from outside of the U.S. So who's going to get really hard here are kind of the mainline traditional. Mainline firms. Yeah. Absolutely. The Main Street economy is really going to get hit hard. You're absolutely right.
All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. Speaking of Amazon, when we get back, we'll talk about Jeff Bezos bending the knee once again. It's not the first time to Trump. The regular season is in the rear view, and now it's time for the games that matter the most. This is Kenny Beecham, and playoff basketball is finally here. On Small Ball, we're diving deep into every series, every crunch time finish.
Every coaching adjustment that can make or break a championship run. Who's building for a 16-win marathon? Which superstar was... to become a household name with so many fascinating first round matchups will the west be the bloodbath we anticipate? Will the East be as predictable as we think? Can the Celtics defend their title? Can Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard push the young teams at the top?
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Scott, we're back. President Trump is calling Jeff Bezos very nice and a good guy after phoning Bezos to complain about a report that Amazon was going to show how much of an item's cost comes from tariffs. The White House initial reaction was... Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt, also known as Tracy Flake, calling Amazon's plan for a hostile and political act. And while Amazon first said the pricing plan was only being considered for its budget site, Amazon Hall,
In a subsequent statement, the company knew the plan was never approved and it was not going to happen. They kept changing their story. Trump later told reporters that Bezos solved the problem very quickly, so it clearly was on deck to happen who knows where and which part of Amazon.
Their credibility has declined rather significantly with this incident. Bezos has, of course, been making nice with Trump for a while now. Back in December at the Times' deal summit, he said he was optimistic about Trump's behavior in his second term. and completely wrong. Let's listen. calmer than he was first time and more confident, more settled. I guess he wants him to go to his fancy wedding in Venice in June, I guess.
What do you think of this? Obviously, he's going to do it. You predicted the Fortune 500 CEOs and businesses were going to start standing up to Trump. This is not what happened here. And it looks like Paramount is going to do the same thing, Sherry Redstone. to settle a ridiculous baseless lawsuit in order to make nice to get that merger through. Was the initial Amazon plan a good idea? Should companies be transparent about these prices and put them on? Some companies are doing this.
And there's an antitrust trial coming up, obviously, for Amazon. It didn't work so well for Mark to kiss up because it's still going forward. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Bezos on Wednesday asking whether he received any promises or favors from Trump in exchange for scrapping Amazon's plan. Thoughts? Well, when the White House press secretary, she immediately said this was a hostile and political act, and why didn't they?
put what the prices were because of the Biden inflation. I mean, that's just such a ridiculous statement. One, In terms of Biden and inflation, that's so intellectually dishonest because of all the G7 countries, our inflation was the lowest. There was tremendous supply chain shocks from... the invasion of Ukraine and COVID. And two, these guys all claim they're such free speech warriors. Putting what the terror...
Airbnb and Amazon have all come under criticism for not putting on... When I order from Caviar, which I love in New York... It used to piss me off that I wouldn't see up front how much delivery, charge, and service fee and all that. Airbnb came under fire, so Airbnb said, okay, we're going to put the true cost, and they started breaking it out. That's transparency, and it's also free speech.
It is entirely reasonable for Amazon to say, all right, this is how much the tariffs are costing. It is a bit of a political statement. It's also called free speech. And two, when you start having... Biden came under fire for having one-off conversations with Metta about misinformation around COVID. And he got huge criticism. And there's some veracity to the notion that the president...
should not be having one-off conversations and putting pressure on individual companies. It's supposed to have systemic solutions and laws that impact the whole industry. Otherwise, it just ends up being corruption as it is now. Where I don't know if you saw the latest, auto companies are now going to be exempt from a lot of these tariffs.
So if you're a big company that's on his lunch calendar or you have a popular brand or you're gigantic or you get to have lunch with them, you get exemption from this ridiculous behavior. And the problem is that small and medium-sized business, which account for 98% of the companies that depend upon export and import, are shit out of luck because they can't afford lobbyists and they're never going to go to Mar-a-Lago. So these individual one-off conversations.
are corrupt. You're not supposed to have them. And also, you saw me. I was so excited about Bezos. I went out with all these threads saying, Good for him. Good on him. Yeah, you did. And I was so excited. And then you texted me and you're like, he caved. And he caved. And I'm like, oh, fuck. And I had to go back and say, well, false alarm. You know. No way. He's such a caver. He's a caver. He wants all the Trumps to be at his wedding. Like, are you kidding? He's gone.
Jeff Bezos never was there, but he's gone now. He's down the Mar-a-Lago highway and he's living down there. You know, much more so even than Elon, I think. Yeah, I don't know. I'm actually excited and we'll talk about it maybe next week, but I'm excited about... He's about to put a competitor into space. Yeah. I'm good with his blank slate. I'm good with the rocket stuff that he's competing with.
Whatever. They never fail to disappoint these people. They really don't. They just don't. I just expect disappointment. You're like that, this time. You're like, this time my boyfriend's going to behave and show up and pick me up. He's changed.
He sent an Uber for me. He sent an Uber. He sent an Uber for me. The stripper loves me. I swear. I swear she loves me. You can go to a strip club, Scott, but she doesn't. Yeah, I haven't been to a strip club in 20 years. I don't like strip clubs. We should go. No, we shouldn't. We should do a tour. We should do pivot, live pivots in the strip club. No, I'm not into strip clubs. All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions, Scott. So have a good one.
Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction and listen up. Time for something new. We want to hear your predictions. Send us your predictions, 30 seconds or less, and we'll play them on the show if they're good. And, well, if they're dirty, we'll probably play them too. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a prediction for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. I wanted to create some competition for Scott. So, Scott, up your game today. Let's go.
I don't know if mine's very good, but basically one of the wonderful things about our economy is once a company establishes something resembling or supposedly monopoly power and can... start implementing those rents on consumers. There's so much profits that that's like chum in the water and other sharks show up. That's the basis of competition. And hopefully...
If a company gets too far ahead of another, the FTC and the DOJ move in, break it up such that it can inspire more competition, lower prices, more innovation, etc. Competition really is one of the secrets to America's success. And my internet went out in London. I have to have crazy fast broadband. And I spent... I'm not exaggerating. I think I spent $50,000 or $60,000 to have fiber run across Regent's Park.
to get the kind of broadband I need. And it went out. You're that guy. Yeah, I'm that guy. I went out. I don't have satellites. It went out this weekend. And so everyone's scrambling, including Drew, to try and figure out a solve. And they went out and they bought one of those portable Starlink.
And they set it up in about four hours. It's an incredible service. I've used Starlink on a plane before. You can do FaceTime. It really is an amazing product. I think now close to two-thirds of the lower satellites are owned by... Starlink or SpaceX, I guess it's Starlink. And it really is an incredible product. And I'm just thrilled to see, and I think another reason why I think Amazon's going to continue probably.
to outperform is that they launched their first, I don't even know how you pronounce it. Is it cupper? Cooper. I think it's Cooper. Yeah, I've met with the CEOs. They've been at it the same way they've been at the rocket stuff, but Cooper. Yeah, Cooper. So the first batch of a planned 3,300 Cooper satellites launched from Florida. The mission kicks off a race to rival SpaceX's massive Starlink network. And Amazon can launch five more Cooper missions this year.
I think the promise of that is going to take their stock up because such an incredible company that essentially has monopoly power right now. Yeah, that was run. I forget who used to run that company. I met with them several times. They've been trying it, like everyone's trying to catch Starlink, obviously, and it's a great opportunity to do so. Anyways, the brand, we talk a lot about... In brand strategy, the first kind of kiosk in brand strategy is awareness. About 98% of our purchases...
At least until, is that true recently? I'd like to redo this data. But up until the social graph, 98% of your purchases are from brands you've heard of before. Just think about it. You're just less inclined to return the email of someone you don't know. Just having heard of somebody or having heard of a brand makes you much more, your purchase inclination or your purchase consideration goes up exponentially.
And so I would often say the first step in any brand is just to be known. And unfortunately, we live in a society is... The philosopher, Italian philosopher Umberto Eco said that being famous and having awareness is more important than what you're famous or have awareness for. So awareness is enormous and it's a decent proxy for future value to be monetized. And I think the brand that's about to go from zero to 100 in the next six months.
because it's a $10 billion project that was unveiled in 2019. It's had a lot of delays. And it's finally starting to get its kind of mojo. And I think you're going to see, they're going to start doing a good job of showing real-time footage of every launch. And then when you think about if Amazon can offer a Starlink-like service with their interface, I mean, at some point, you know what they're going to do? They're going to roll it into Prime. Anyways.
Cooper from Prime is about to become one of the biggest brands and also be the most formidable competitor to the most valuable private company in the world, I think, right now, which is SpaceX. So anyways, my prediction is the brand you haven't heard of as of May 1. 2025 is going to be ubiquitous in the investment and consumer landscape by the end of the year. And that is Project Cooper, which is a $10 billion.
satellite effort from the good folks at Amazon. You know what? I've touched a Cooper. They brought one to show it to me. That was in high school, right? I touched it. Oh, wait. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And then he decided, no, not for me. Interesting, but not for me. But as usual with Tesla, same thing. People are coming in and they're going to give him a run. And if he's not on his game, Elon Musk.
He's got a lot of competitors headed his way because he's shown the way. And just because you're shown the way. Elon, the planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers, as everybody well knows. Oh, Starlink, to be fair, Starlink's an amazing product. It's an amazing product. It is, but I'm just saying, so was Tesla three years ago, right? Sure enough.
That's the media competition. That's why, folks, we need an FTC and a DOJ to break companies up. You need these small, scrappy stars. Anyway, Project Cooper. That's correct. You can't take your eye off the ball. He's lucky. In that company, he has a good CEO, Gwen Chotwell, who is also.
It's much too obsequious to him, but nonetheless, she really runs that show, and that shows the good idea to have a good CEO in place. Oh, and I think you're going to be outstanding on Bill Maher. Thank you. That's a good prediction. I think that'll be— I could crash and burn, but I hope not.
I think I will. He likes me slapping him around a little bit, just like you do. Anyway, as I said, people, give your predictions. We want to hear your predictions. Send in the predictions. 30 seconds or less. We'll play them on the show, as I said. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit this prediction for the show and beat.
Professor Galloway, or call 855-51-PIVOT. And elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, this week on Prof G Conversations, Scott spoke with David Brooks. Okay, okay for you. I love, how can you, don't, don't. I do, I do. He's wonderful. Okay. How can you not love David Brooke? So many people don't. Are you not paying attention on the internet? Spiritual, smart.
Big talk, community. I'm glad. He's very smart. You're right. He's fantastic. I'm just not a fan. I'm sorry. I can be not a fan of David Brooks. I think he's just a lot. He's a writer also at The Atlantic, too. Let's listen to a clip. And when I look at the Trump administration, I see a massive attempt to return us to the life of dog-eat-dog, the life of nasty British and short, the life where gangsters have maximum freedom to do what they want to do.
And that is the evisceration of all the values of civilization that conservatism is supposed to transmit and preserve. And I think the raw lust for power that Donald Trump embodies has not only eviscerated conservatism, it's eviscerated Christianity.
That's a very thoughtful thought. He's right. He's right. He's right. I'm excited. I'll listen to it, I promise. I really enjoyed my conversation with him. I found him to be very spiritual. By the way, when you're out there with Bill Maher, say hello to my favorite. Bill doesn't hang out with me, but the executive producers do. Sheila Griffiths, I think, and Mark Gurvitz and Dean Johnson. They're literally Friday Night Lights parents.
They're like handsome people. It's a great team. They're handsome people, like good-looking people in their 40s who feel like... If I ever have a big problem, I'm just calling them and saying, can you just pretend to be my parent right now? And they are so nice. I'll say that. into that little green room, and they're like, we're so happy to have you, and they're so nice. Yeah.
I get nice emails from them. Good swag, too. Good food, good swag. And beer. I shotgunned a beer before the last one because I got so fucking nervous. Oh, you're kidding. I'm not going to do that. I think that's called alcoholism. And also my Sherpa there is a woman named Susan Bennett. She's wonderful. Yes, Susan's amazing. She's so lovely. I have to say.
Bill Maher has a staff that stayed with him for a very long time. And it's a good reflection on him, even if you don't like Bill Maher. Greatness is in the agency of others. And that is a... He has a team. Same thing with Scott. 100%. Scott has a team that's been with him. The key to success is the ability to attract and retain people more talented than yourself. That is it. Full stop. Full stop. And having a big cooper. And having a really big cooper.
My code team at All Things C team was with me for 20 years, the conference team. They were all, for the most part. That's funny. The pivot team is nodding right now. They feel nice. Nodding. They're hoping. They're hoping. We'll see. We've changed. There we go. Okay, Scott. That's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out. We'll be back next week for another breakdown. all things tech and business. Tune in to see Cheech and Chong, Speaker McCarthy, and Kara Swisher.