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You can just use HubSpot because they're all in one customer platform to make growing your business infinitely easier. Imagine this, high quality leads, fast closing deals, wildly happy customers, and more benchmark breaking quarters. It's not a miracle, it's HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com to get started today. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher, and I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, I'm very tired. We're moving this week.
Why do you do this to your sales? I don't know. I've reached the point of no return on moving. I have so much stuff. I was having a Marie Kondo moment. I know she's gone back a little bit on that stuff, but I would like the original Marie Kondo back. I've got the ultimate hack for moving. Burning my house. What? No, the week you're moving, you come up with a business reason that you need to leave town. Oh, well I am. I'm going to tell you. You saddle your spouse with it. I am a little bit.
I feel bad. I did a lot. I am a packing Olympic hero. I have to say I'm really good at it. It just gives you that idea of how much stuff you have, right? And you're sort of like, it's crazy. You know what I mean? Like, oh, God. Everywhere. Yeah, we're renovating the house. Well, but I'm, we didn't ask my question. Why are you moving? Do you need more space? No, we're renovating the house. And so the whole bottom of the house is gone. I've gotten in Scott mode now.
And the whole bottom of the house, and they need this upper part of the house because all the floors, they tip to the center. It's really like you put a marble on one end of it. And we want. I've been pulling you to the center. Right. No, you haven't. And then it needs a solution. We need a family room. We need a place for you to stay when you come. Nice. I only stay in hotels. I know that. I'm not going to have you at my home. I'm not having you at my home ever. You would not do it.
I would stay at your home at any time. I am so, I could show up on meth at 4 AM and you'd have to let me in after the hotel gallow where you have checked into about 11 million times. I know. I would let you in in a second. You would just hate it. It's so noisy. I'm not going to get a cat. No, no, no. I like to yell at people when my breakfast isn't there. I don't I never stay with friends. I always stay in a room. Let me just say you are more than welcome to stay at my house.
I just know it would end our relationship. So the other thing is, anyways, just a lot. It's just a lot. And we're moving into this really cool modern building, apartment buildings. We have about half as much space there during the six months of the renovation. And so you got to do this again. You're going to have to be back. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What do you have to take everything out and you put everything back? Yeah, that's right. Special to the kids. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, it has a pool.
That's nice. And you're again welcome to stay there too, although it's even smaller and there's a cat inside. So anyhow, that was my weekend. That was my whole weekend of exhausted and that little apartment with pool. That sounds like hot interns. Daddy might have to swing by. Yeah, you can come for you can do that. Actually, you know what? You're going to come down at the end of June if you're around Washington because Mike Brobigley eroded me. He has a new show. He's testing out.
And we're going to throw him a dinner. You should come because you like that Mike Brobigley. We're going to be on candy, other. I know later end of June. No, I'm going to Germany for the European, for the, wait, the Euros, the Euro Nationals, whatever they call it. I just, by the way, I saw the wave of finals. I saw Real Madrid be Dortmund. Okay. Anyway, I'm going to be in Germany watching football. Oh, all right. That's soccer, right? In American. Data soccer. No, it's called football.
All right. Well, in any case, you're invited. See, you're invited. I invited you to my basement apartment and I invited you to. It's on the air. So you figured this out. I just don't like to attend. Okay. You're invited. No, I'll make you eggs. I'll make you delicious eggs. I make very good slow eggs. That's a lot of fun. Anyway, we have a lot to talk to. There's so much going on since we met last.
Oh my God. But Google dealing with the whole host of issues, including a major document leak and a problematic AI search to say the least. Tesla pulls out all the stops. The shareholders prepare to vote on reinstating Elon's pay package. I think it's probably going to happen, but maybe not. People are against it. He has a lot of enablers helping him, though. And we'll be joined by friend of Pivot, CNN chief legal analyst, Ellie Honeig.
His New York magazine column about the Trump verdict has a lot of people talking. But first, Paramount and Skynance have agreed to emerge. The $8 billion deal is waiting sign off from controlling shareholders, Sherry Redstone, as we take. Skynance and Redbird. Its private equity backer will contribute $1.5 billion to help reduce Paramount's debt. Apollo and Sony had also expressed interest in acquiring Paramount for $26 billion.
But Sherry Redstone favored the deal that would keep Paramount together. They were going to chop it up for pieces. Now, you've been back and forth and back and forth here. This means the return of Jeff Zucker and Jeff Shell from NBC, the team. I think they're going to be either involved in Redbird. All kinds of interesting mishagas happening here. Tell me what you think. I'm just glad it's over. I want these brands to survive. I think Sherry wanted it for legacy reasons, I guess.
I just wanted to maintain it as a whole, not to have it be sold off for parts. I think how this deal got done, if I read between the lines, I think what was happening is that the initial deals proposed by Skynance recognized that Sherry kind of held the keys and was offering her a premium on her shares, which is kind of a no-no incorporate governance. See, one class of shares is a bigger price than the other just because they can hold out.
The board acting its fiduciary said, and the other shareholders said, we're going to block the steel because we have, we'll have the courts on our side. It sounds like what they did was they figured out a construct that gets the non-voting or non-redstone shareholders almost to the same point as her. They accepted it and then they can roll their shares and they're not going to need Sherry holder approval. They're approval. That's interesting.
Explain that for people who don't understand why that's the case. My understanding here is this doesn't trigger a shareholder vote that they can basically get the steel done without Sherry holder approval. My sense of the steel is that the bankers have really earned their money here. I can't imagine the amount of dysfunction dealing with a billionaires who has a controlling stake, Sherry holder setting a lawsuit, board members resigning, CEO resigning.
This was, the bankers can't be paid enough here. What just to give you a sense of this, I think today, Nvidia is going to increase their market cap by 90 billion or 10 paramounts. It just goes to show you, there's economic value and then there's soap operas. This is a soap opera. Yeah, although they're way ahead of their skis and what they could possibly earn to grow into that valuation, but still nonetheless. My point is we just get a sense. This is an interesting story as far as the economy.
It's a not so good order. Nvidia will lose or gain the value of this company in 120 seconds in a trading day. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about, if we were going to talk about economic value and impact on the world, we just have a podcast on technology. This stuff is fun to talk about because people love top-down and MTV. I listen to Sherry Redstone. That's right. Crazy depth. It's a soap opera. It is. It's the Kardashians of business. You can't turn away, but it really is unimportant.
It really is me. I think you're right. I think you're right. It's still, it'll be interesting to see Jeff Zucker coming back and doing something with CBS could be interesting. Where did he start? He started at the Today Show. Today show NBC. Yeah. He's trying, he's been trying to find his footing in a broadcast medium. We'll see what happens here. Tell us their guy. Yeah. We'll see what happens here. And also Jeff Shell, who got fired from NBC for affairs and stuff.
So he's cut it back and so also talented. But anyway, it'll be interesting to see. It'll get a lot of attention because of the principles you're right. And David Ellison is interesting. Anyway, speaking of dysfunction, the editor of the Washington Post, Sally Busby will leave her role. She joined the post in 2021, Matt Murray, a former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal who also lost his job. Will take Busby's place through the presidential election.
I know Matt. I know him very well from a long time. Very nice guy, but still I think the staff of the Washington Post is shell shocked by this. It came suddenly under. It looks like he's not going to move. Right. Yeah. My poor wife works in the Washington Post and she's going through a move. So have a good day, Amanda. I think it was a shock to a lot of people. I think she was shocked last night when she got the news. And so did I got texts from lots of post people.
Busby had just won a bunch of really fields or some really fine stories. But obviously she wasn't to the liking of Will Lewis, who is the new CEO. And he has worked with Matt at the Wall Street Journal. And actually interestingly enough, we'll get to what the loss is there and everything else because it's a mess there. But at the meeting that they had today, I've gotten it was a shit show for many people that they were.
He was asked why he now the post is now run by essentially four white guys who are all buddies of Will Lewis. And he said it is what it is. Essentially, that's what he apparently said. You'll see the reporting on this. It's pretty. It was a pretty testy meeting. And what he did was he said, well, yes, it is what it is. But I guess I should do more about diversity, essentially.
But this is one of the most prominent women who did a very good job in terms of a very bad hand that was dealt to her by its former CEO, Fred Ryan. In any case, she pays the price. In the town hall, he said, told staff the post had lost over $70 million in 2023 and had half to its audience. He said he repeated that today.
His plan is to improve revenue, including premium subscription products, a service division of the newsroom targeting non-traditional news consumers and some nonsensical social media stuff that I didn't understand. To me, the way to make turn this around is to make products people like with costs lower than revenues, but they don't seem to be able to do that here. And the time certainly does. I don't know. What are you, any thoughts? I've gone from the Kardashians to Sarah Palin to Alaska.
I feel like this isn't even less important story. It's a trend, Scott. It's a trend among media. I'm going to try and relate this to something unreliable. 70% of divorce filings are followed by women. People that go, it's lack of shared values or infidelity. Oftentimes, it's usually the lesbian. But go ahead, move on. Sorry. Anyways, the... You're laughing. Oh, God, so many, so many retorts running through my mind and my judgment is saying, just don't do it. Oh, please, just one.
Just don't say it. Who gets the German Shepherd? That's the biggest question. How can you split a Subaru? Anyways, let's go ahead. Let's try like that. But here's the... You know what? If you are married and you're upper income, your chances of staying married are much higher. You've got all the fun clickbait of rich people getting married. Marriage is becoming a luxury item because in a capital society, an absence of money puts stress on everything.
And this is a series of relationships that will have a tremendous amount of undue stress because this company is going through financial strain. And what I tell young people is try and find an industry that is growing because here's the thing. Growth is... So much opportunity, so many good times, it wallpapers over so much dysfunction.
And when a company is shrinking and hasn't come to grips with the fact that it's shrinking and they will still convince themselves that it's a great brand and meaningful and there's all sorts of opportunities for new products. And I'm not saying there isn't. But generally speaking, every day a little bit of oxygen gets sucked out of this room and everybody gets a little moodier and everyone gets a little bit less patient. That is a good, shockingly good analogy. I agree.
And people who would ordinarily get along are going to stop getting along. People are going to be insecure about their jobs. People are going to feel like they haven't been made good on promises. They're going to start getting weird emails on weird decisions from people they don't even know who made these decisions. Being at a shrinking company is painful. It's being in a household that is under economic stress. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I don't think he's doing himself any favors by...
You know, I've met him a number of times. He's a very... The British, he's got that British way. You know, I think today probably was a day he could have been a little less sickish. And I think he was full dick from what I can tell. I'm going to his dinner at Khan though. Want to come with me? We should go. We should go make trouble. I think it's just... It's such a weird situation at the post. And let me be clear. I'm speaking.
Amanda has nothing to do with this because I worked there for many, many years, as you know. And I was there and it's been Bradley Days and it's, you know, salad days. You could sense the things coming. I kept warning about digital stuff. You know, you could feel it and they didn't really pay attention like a lot of companies till it was too late. But one of the things as a post was always and also ran to the New York Times always. You know what I mean?
No matter, especially in the political people, there was always that feeling. And then it had the pull of being a local newspaper too, like just like the Los Angeles Times or Miami-Herald or whatever. And I think it's always had that sort of insecurity, no matter how you slice it. And now it's owned by a billionaire, a multi-billionaire owner who you don't know what he wants, why he has it, right? And then he puts... He wants to not own it. Yeah, I think so. He's like every other billionaire.
He regrets buying it. It's like buying a boat. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like a boat. Do you think Lorraine Powell-Jogged? Do you think any of these people are happy about purchasing this ship? I think she is a little bit... Can she's pretty proud of the stuff they make? I think she's a more media-interested person. And they did really well this year. Unless that thing shows up with a thong, he wishes he had nothing to do with it. In any case, I think that's... So that adds confusion.
And so then you have these people who he's appointed who are just... It feels like Amazon. I know it sounds dumb, but it's got the air... The staff has the arrogance of Amazon that it's a tough... So he does. And he's got to really... I understand. You don't tell people... You've provided over a cutting audience. Well, the cutting audience had to do with its previous CEO that Jeff Bezos picked. And not the excellent work of both Marty Barron and Sally Busby.
So I think it should be put squarely in Jeff Bezos' camp. And instead of haranging the staff, he should be haranging Jeff Bezos. But he's not going to do that. Anyway, you're right. I stopped listening like two minutes ago. Why do they give Bilbo Baggins Viagra on his deathbed? Oh, no. Why? Because old hobbits die hard. I'm going to leave it for you. It does matter to a lot of people. It's very, very newspaper.
Anyway, what I'll say, one thing I will say is despite all the dysfunction and tear-seeing off-off Broadway soap opera here, which no one but... Okay. ...11 of our listeners care about. You wouldn't know it because they continue to produce a great process. They do. That's from San Cristiano. It's great. They do it great. Anyway, I think... You're a great child. They could be great and they could make money. I think they could. Anyway, it's New York Times. Let's buy it. Let's buy it together.
It was so good if we ran a newspaper. Anyway. Hey, not everyone's doing well in tech. Sales Force is reeling from a disastrous trading day in its worst performance since 2004. Shares for the company closed down 20% last Thursday after the first quarter earnings missed Wall Street's estimates. Revenue for the quarter rose by a record low 10% of projected growth for the current period is 7%. It's starting to feel like a media company. Sales Force is an alone aid of the 10 largest cloud software.
It's either stocks shrink by an average of 9% after the latest earnings. They could invest in AI, but AI is going to have a big impact on these business at the same time. There's been a lot of stories about how most AI investments are going to be zipped. It's not going to... As we've talked about, way too much investment for the revenue and the profits as yet. Any thoughts on this? Tech is not immune. You know what? I think it's income inequality even among the rich.
That is, SaaS companies are trading at six times revenues. Consumer companies trade at 0.5 to two times revenue. SaaS, which is the business we all wanted to... When I started L2, I immediately moved to subscription model because I thought, all right, the last strategy for my started, I sold for 2.8 times revenue. I want to sell this one for eight times. So I needed to look like a SaaS company.
You know, have subscription, recurring revenue, churn, all those... I needed to get in front of investors and make it look, feel and smell like a SaaS company. It lacks now. But even among the software companies, there's now income inequality because when one company increases its market cap, two thirds of a trillion dollars in one calendar month, that's not all money piling into the market. That's money coming from somewhere. So now there's income inequality among the most...
You know, income inequality within income inequality. And that is, I believe investors are taking money out of tech firms that are not hardcore, that are two... There are two blast zones away from AI. So Dell just got the shit kicked out of it. Sales force, why? Because everyone is taking money and saying, we got to go to the ground zero. It's going to be a problem for the economy. We're going to see...
Do you realize that... I mean, some crazy percentage of... I think it's 60% of the market gains. Either 40 or 60% of the S&P's gains are basically from AI. And so even if your sales force and your incredible software company, they can't claim to be sitting on top of massive amounts of compute. They can leverage AI, but they're going to have to rent it from someone else. Everything...
Yeah, that story, who's the sort of the winners and losers, and there's not any real winners yet, even among the winners, right? There's not massive profits for giving the investment. So it's unclear. If all these shareholders are piling into Nvidia so much that it's become a zero-sum game and it's coming out of somewhere, who are the likely investors in Nvidia? Is it people pulling money out of PNG? No, it's people pulling money out of Dell and Salesforce.
Yeah. Because if you look at Salesforce's numbers, they weren't that bad. They did announce their first single digit growth. It's always been double digit, but they actually beat expectations, but it is getting hammered in some. Anything that's not in video or offer compute is suffering. So what would one do? Like people that will go into the FTC and DOJ and break these companies. Oh, okay. All right. Okay. I mean, we're going to see... We'll see a flow back. The Rivers World reverse again.
The first time a major customer announces their scaling back, their AI efforts, because they realize that Chick-fil-A can't leverage AI to the extent they thought, I think you're going to see the AI ecosystem get cut in half. Okay, good. That's a bit of a prediction. I like that. Anyway, speaking of which, let's get to our first big story.
Google is dealing with a fallout from a massive leak after 2,500 pages of documents from inside its search division were shared by SEO experts, the documents detail, the data that Google collects from websites and users. They offer an unprecedented look at the search process and how content is ranked. Google is saying, of course, that these are out of context, the documents suggest that Google might have misled the public in terms of ranking content.
It denied in the past that users click, click, play a role in ranking websites, but leak documents indicate otherwise they're saying, actually, it's not what it says. It's not the best thing at the same time. It has an AI problem on it's hands, speaking of the current days. So it's old business, the company is scaling back on the new AI overviews feature, the one that put some wildly incorrect AI generated answers at the top of search results. Some are correct. Let's be fair.
Some of the major reported errors included users being told to put glue on pizza. That was the famous one that claimed that John F. Kennedy graduated from college in 1993. Wow, there's a lot going on at Google. They're going to disable the misleading advice, limiting the answers from some sites. They had a similar problem with their image tool if you remember. It was too woke, whatever. These things work themselves out.
My issue with these companies is, away from the leak documents, is they're always beta testing on users without putting out products that are fully baked. That's always been my experience with Silicon Valley. I don't think this is a good look for Google. It makes it look like they're not competitive with Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta thoughts.
Well, I'll turn it back to you, my only observation is that it feels from an observation of a bystander, that Google got caught flat-footed and their investors and the entire world said, let me get this. It was invented here and everyone's making trillions but us. I think that the ultimate hurry up and catch up, like you better hurry up, has resulted in a ready fire aim mentality that's haunting them a little bit. I think they feel real pressure to catch up. They do.
People internally have told me this, but go ahead. I just can't imagine that QA hasn't been a little bit more promiscuous here because they need to show their investors that they are catching up. You know there's so much better than I do. These leaks, these search leaks, Google has always been such a performative company in terms of where the better people, where the don't be evil.
They always had that nonsense when you knew they were doing all kinds of stuff behind the scenes that weren't in line with what they said. They were doing. This search leak is interesting and it's an important and big deal that they had been sort of doing search in a different way. Now again, it's only 2500 pages. They're older or some of them.
The fact that they were doing whether user clicks played a role in ranking websites, they had insisted they were giving you the best things versus what was most popular as I recall. I'm not sure if the leak is that damaging, but it does suggest that they weren't being fully honest with people, which is I think a disease of all these companies, completely disease of all these companies. I'm not so much focused on that, although it is interesting.
But you're right, they have been slow, slow, slow, and I think a lot of people are complaining about CEO Sundar Pachaya as being indecisive. I think that's been a take on him for many years now and not being fast enough. I've had that experience when they were very slow to cloud. I had lunch with them. Why exactly are you laying at AWS, dominate when you have much, this is your area? He was like, well, he's a very considered person.
I think in this case, they shouldn't be putting out products that are embarrassing because they're the most consumer facing of all these companies, more than Microsoft meta, I suppose. They're the most consumer facing and they're known. What I thought was amazing is this is a company known for searching and getting you the answer you want by pointing you to the answer. Then they give you the answer and it's wrong.
It ruins the brand in seconds, isn't that their whole promise of being correct or being helpful? I don't know. From a brand perspective, I think it's disastrous. Yeah, but narratives have momentum and the momentum is against Sundar and Alphabet right now. Their scene is being disrupted and the classic case of the innovators dilemma where they didn't want to challenge this billion dollar toll booth called search and let other people come around them and disrupt it.
The narrative is negative and some of the things you were talking about where he's, he quote unquote, doesn't make decisions quickly. If the narrative is positive, everyone would be saying that he's a thoughtful, mature business leader that the world needs right now because if you look at the numbers, the actual numbers, the stock is up 37% in the last 12 months. The company continues to perform. It's touching. I think the stock is at an all time high. It's outperformed even the S&P.
I think these stories are a little bit bullshit. I think they make for a clickbait. I think they're embarrassing. But in my impact, the brand, because the media picks up on it because they're funny and it's like seeing, they are funny. It's tabloid. But the reality is they continue to perform. This was my big tech stock pick for 2024. They are firing on, they have not given up any ground on search. Their cloud business is firing on all 12,000 cylinders.
YouTube is the most dominant video platform among young people. They are trying fast to catch up an AI. The narrative right now is bad and momentum is against them. But the data gets in the way of the narrative here. This company is performing really well. Yeah. That's a fair point. I think this leak comes out when they're under the Justice Department scrutiny and this idea. It works well for the people that are trying to slow them down. Definitely for the Justice Department, right?
It shows them saying one thing and doing another. I think it's some of the guy who, one of the people who leaked this information, I think he had this information, Morrisis guy's name, Fishkin, I think his name. Fishkin is a veteran search engine optimization industry told the, the, the verge. You know, here's the last part which I thought was important.
Journalists and publishers of information about SEO and Google search need to stop uncritically repeating Google's public statements and take a much faster and more adversarial view of the search science representatives. When publications repeat Google's claims that as though they're a fact, they're helping Google spin a story that's only used for the company and not to practitioners, users or public.
The reason why that is important is because everybody, that is a black box, nobody gets to see the inside of and they're just starting to see it, right? And that's, and it, you know, it's not what they were told. Or did a lot of people get those sort of erroneous answers? I mean, how many consumers were actually exposed to that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's just, I don't know. And in this case, this is about the leak documents.
I think it's just, it's not, it's not a great public image for a company in the middle of a, of a Justice Department thing. So we'll say where it goes, but you're right. It's performing well. I do think there is a sense though from people who work there and I ran into a bunch last week in Silicon Valley of, they're the slow-footed company right now. Even if they're, you know, it's like sort of being in the newspaper business in the salad days before everything went to hell.
Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back, Tesla shareholders are getting ready to vote on Elon's pay package and we'll speak with a friend of pivot, CNN legal analyst, Ellie Honeck. I'd about what he thinks people are getting wrong about the Trump verdict. Start for the show comes from Mercury. Financial operations are needlessly complex.
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Scott, we're back. Tesla shareholders are vote on whether to reinstate Elon Musk's multi-billion dollar pay package in just over a week. Tesla has been busy rallying investors in a series of paid ads on Google and X. Elon's also offering a private tour of the Tesla factory to 15 shareholders to vote yes on the paid package. Good heavens. Meanwhile, we should absolutely buy shares to do that.
Meanwhile, at least two advisory firms have urged shareholders to vote no. Be the big ones, raising concerns about Elon's various side projects and saying the package would dilute shareholder value. I had to think this will shake out. Tesla is already firing back at one of these advisory firms, Glass Lewis, big firm accused in the firm of scare mongering and faulty reasoning. Elon is referring to shareholders to vote against his pay package as oath breakers.
Okay. Maybe they just like to make money, Elon. He also got accused of insider trading in a lawsuit filed by a Tesla shareholder last week with sued claims he sold over $7.5 billion as shares in 2022 before Tesla announced some delivery expectations would not be met. What do you think? What do you think about this? I think the investor lawsuit is bullshit. The SEC is the one charged with bringing people up on insider trading charges. That's just a distraction.
Just a little bit of background here. I have a lot of experience with ISS and Glass Lewis and what happens is the following corporate governance is supposed to mimic traditional democratic governance. That is instead of one person one vote, it's one share one vote.
When they have big issues such as whether there should be a merger or to reject pay package, whatever it might be, or certain conditions or operations of the company to digest from wherever the shareholders get to show up on election day and vote for different resolutions. Now, because shareholders don't want to get cross-haired with management and or they own 400 different positions because they're a hedge fund. An industry emerged called advisory firms.
We're basically these firms, the two biggest Glass Lewis and Institutional Shares Services ISS. Their job is to look at these issues and make a recommendation. That way Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab can say, management, this isn't a statement on you. We're just taking their recommendation. They have the time to do this. We want outsourced responsibility for this.
When I was ran a proxy fight at Red Ambelow and tried to sweep out the entire board, I flew to Washington DC and said, this is my board, this is why they're better, this is why the current board sucks. They put out a statement saying, Scott is crazy, he should not go back on the board, but he is one of his nominees, Bob Perkowitz, who go on the board because the current board is not living up to its fiduciary duty. Most people vote that way.
Why I believe this pay package will probably be refuted or turned down is because both ISS and Glass Lewis have said no. I've never seen something go through over the objections of both shareholders service, shareholders advisory companies. What's unusual here in their argument is that distinctive as pay package, he's already vested and I go back to another experience.
When I've been on the board, when I've been the CEO of a venture back company and I've stopped testing shares and I've said I want more, typically what I have heard back is Scott, you own so much of this company, you're already vested. We don't need to give you more. You already are incented to do the right thing and that's what they're saying here. Right. So you think it might refute it.
People do think I know the chairman, what's her name, Robin Denholm, who's just such an enabler of Elon Musk, it's crazy, is pushing very hard. And this idea of oath breakers, it's just noise correct. I mean, but he always does take things on that others haven't. So he loves this fight.
The argument in favor of this is that the headline number of 40 billion or whatever it is is misleading because when they made the award, the stock was dramatically lower and the award because it was options was worth dramatically less. And that if someone showed up, if Tim Cook said to Apple shareholders, I want a trillion dollars, but I'm going to add 10 trillion in value over the next five years, the majority of shareholders are probably saying sure have added.
That's the argument they'll make that it's not a $46 billion pay package. It's single billions based on the value of the options when the stock was much lower and he lived up to his end of the agreement. Now shareholders need to live up to theirs. However, I have never seen something go through that has both advisory firms going against it. I've never seen that. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens. I wonder what he'll do if he does. So obviously, maybe he'll get into media.
We talked last week about him getting political. Now we're hearing more about his plans. He's really teaming up with news nation to host a live town hall with Donald Trump as well as one with RFK Jr. The Biden campaign also invited participants in a town hall or debate. They declined. They're obviously the tech stuff they tried with Don Rondes Santos. Hopefully it'll work. What do you think about these town halls? Do they matter? I don't know if they matter so much.
Most people will watch the CNN one. Does it sub eight? But for the most part, it's early and possibly noisy. I think the next few ones are going to be really interesting just to see how the public and media and how the candidate deals with a post-Fellon candidate. Is it a speed bump that he just rolls right over or does it become this polter guy city can't shake? I think we're going to get a sense for that in the next town hall. I actually think this one's pretty important.
Well, it would be interesting to see how he behaves because he did an interview with Fox, but they edited it quite heavily, apparently. They edited out the crazy, I think, is what happened. And so he tends, if you saw that press conference, that was one whack-a-do press conference. And I think he has a tendency to just spin in this really unusual way, which many people are used to, but it also seems crazier than ever. And so it'll be interesting if it's unfettered, it could be fascinating.
If we see it and there's some reporters, I assume Chris Cuomo will be part of it. For example, at News Nation, but as we've said over and over again, Elon Musk wanted to be a media mogul. And now he is one. This is what he likes. This influence, pedaling. He likes all the bells and whistles of being a media company. And so he's behaving like that. I think it's probably good for Biden not to participate, but I'm not sure. Does it matter? I, if I were Biden, oh God, this is such a tough one.
I don't, I think he should do. I'm not sure I would get on the stage with Trump. I just think he's so unpredictable, so strange. The whole thing just makes me so fucking nervous. I personally just couldn't even watch it. I would just be like, I think maybe that's the night I take mushrooms for the first time than debate night. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of pivot. Ellie Honeig is CNN's chief legal analyst and a former federal and state prosecutor.
He's also written a column for New York magazine about the Trump verdict in which he says victory is a great deodorant, but a guilty verdict doesn't make it all pure and right. What a nice metaphor. Ellie, welcome. Good. Thank you for having me. It's great to be on the show. I'm fans of both of yours. So this is what you're doing. Thank you. We ran each other in the green room.
And CNN, I told the Scott and you had you had you were you were getting a lot of buzz from this piece you did for New York magazine. And you would think the prosecutors essentially contorted the law to get Trump. You say the DA's charges were quote obscure and nearly entirely unprecedented and just to be clear, as you note in the piece, both DA Alvin Bragg and Trump's lawyer Todd Blanch are former colleagues of yours. So make your case here because people were surprised.
You tend to Michael Cohen thinks you're contraire and for contraire and sake, but talk about what you were saying here. So I think it's really important to draw distinction here and I do this in the piece between the jury's verdict on the one hand, but the prosecutorial and to an extent judicial decision making that led up to it on the other hand. I have no problem with the jury's verdict. I lead off the article by talking about how as a prosecutor, I was taught the jury's verdict is saccharine.
That's not to say you can never disagree with the jury's verdict, but you have to respect it. And the way I look at this case is given what the jury was given and the way they were given. It is completely reasonable. It's within the very broad swath of criminal cases where reasonable fact finders could go either way. They're the ones in the courtroom. I have no qualm with what they did. In fact, you know, as I say in the piece, they deserve credit.
They did a very tough job here, apparently very well. Now my criticism is in the way that Alvin Bragg, again, as you say, former colleague and a friend of mine, brought this case, charged it and prosecuted it and to a lesser extent with the way the judge handled it. I guess I'll start with the sort of underlying parts that I have a problem with. One is that Alvin Bragg, when he was running for office, no pun intended, bragged about the fact that he would go after Trump.
I mean, we've seen this repeatedly. Letitia James did the same thing. Other elected prosecutors and other areas have done the same. But Alvin at one point said, in during an interview during his campaign, that he had stewed Donald Trump over 100 times, which is bizarre because Alvin's not a liar. That's not true, though. I have a problem generally with elected prosecutors running for office on the basis of vote for me and I will get this specific person. I think that's broadly problematic.
Okay. I believe not uncommon, but go ahead. Not uncommon at all. Very common. The incentives are obvious, right? I believe Judge Mershawne should have recused himself. We could argue about whether he had to. He got an ethics opinion saying he didn't have to, but I think have to and should have her different things. He gave me 35 dollars. Yeah. A very silly small amount that he gave to explicitly provide and explicitly resist Donald Trump act blue, not charities, but movements.
And the problem with that is one, judges aren't allowed to give anything. It's clear under the judicial rules, you're not allowed to donate anything to a political cause. And two, just think of the flip side. What if a judge on one of the other Trump cases had given 35 bucks to Maga Forever, Donald Trump 2020 or 2024, resist Joe Biden? I think people would have a problem with that. Sure. I mean, right now people think that Judge Eileen Cannon is going to get paid later, but go ahead.
Yeah, maybe, maybe. But my point is like, let's make it. There's 49 other judges in that courthouse who have not donated. Recuse it doesn't mean the case goes, wait, recuse it just means a judge with no issues handles it. I think Judge Mershawne, by the way, and again, there's a nuance. I think he did a generally good job running this case, but I think he has a conflict of interest. Now, as to the charges themselves, you know, you will hear the DA's office and its flags.
I don't mean that in a negative sense, but there's spokespeople say, well, this kind of charge is the bread and butter. It's what we do every day. The problem is that is only true if you draw your definition of lines so broadly that they're meaningless. And the more salient point to me is this is the first time in US history that we have seen state or in this case, county level prosecutors bring a charge that is based entirely or in some part on violation of federal campaign finance law.
And that wouldn't apply to only presidential candidates that apply to the hundreds or thousands of not hundreds of hundreds or thousands of people who've run for house and senate seats over our history. Nobody's ever been charged in a state court with anything based on federal campaign finance crimes. So I think that's a problem. And I think it's a good, well, also if you look at the way they charge this case, it's it's as I argue in the article, it's not just unusual.
It's unique to Donald Trump. It's bespoke. It just quickly run through the way they charge this case. It's a three layer sandwich here. Layer one is a falsification of business records, misdemeanor, which was expired under the statute of limitations. They added on top of that a New York state election law violation for using unlawful means, which is also a misdemeanor, which somehow you add two misdemeanors together and they become a felony under this alchemy of New York law.
And then what were the unlawful means? They offered up three menu options, which they didn't even specify until very late in the trial. Federal election law tax, which was never explained. And then falsification of business records again. So it's sort of circular. It's a bizarre, unusual sort of tortured charge that they brought. So they still won. They still won. And the jurors bought it. Whoever, however you want to put it.
So I assume this is what Trump soils will bring up in the appeals process. Do you think will be successful? Yeah. I think the best argument they have is the one I just laid out that you cannot take an area that's dedicated to federal enforcement. Immigration as one example, and we have this going on in Texas right now. They're passing state laws about immigration. I've said those are doomed because that's a federal area for enforcement, not states.
Federal election law, I think probably falls in the same category. So I think you have a problem constitutionally when you have states charging and enforcing it. The other appeal arguments I've heard people talk about don't, uh, don't strike me as winning arguments necessarily. Then, you know, they should have changed the venue out of Manhattan. Um, I don't think I, while I believe the judge should have recused, I don't think that's going to get this case reversed.
Um, you know, admission of the salacious stormy Daniels and other stuff. That's standard appeals fodder that will probably lose. And by the way, I don't think it's more likely than not that Trump wins this appeal. It's very hard for any defendant to win. But I think he's got a better shot and a better argument than your average defendant. Nice to meet you, Ellie. Um, so it doesn't mean you're wrong, but your, my sense is what you're in the minority of legal scholars.
The majority of, uh, scholarship, I've read so far post the decision is that the judge was very buttoned up and that most avenues of appeal are pretty, pretty scant. Um, but anyway, that's not my question. My question is around sentencing.
And my understanding is that about 90% of the time on this level of charge or conviction, there is not a prison sentence at the same time, a big component of the judge's discretion around whether to imprison someone is the level of contrition or in this case, just blatant, historic, singular, non-contrition, slandering people, refusing gag orders, mocking the judge, making, I mean, I was, just, you know, Ellie, I was managing everything back to me. I was on a board call a few months ago.
And I remember saying to the CEO, I feel like you're begging us or daring us to fire you. And I feel as if Trump is daring the judge to sentence him to prison. What, how would you handicap the sentencing here? I put the sentencing at 50, 50. I know it's not an exciting answer, but it's actually a little bit of an unusual answer because if you, but it's not 90, 10, you think he might get sent to prison, right?
Because I've said on air, if you look at the universe of this statute, 50, you know, of your New York class E felony falsification of business records, it's the lowest of five levels, A through E, somewhere in the range of 70 to 90% of people convicted of that, get no jail time probation. But for exactly the reasons you say, Scott, I think not only the judge is 50, 50 likely to give him prison time, but would be justified in it.
I think what you've articulated is exactly what the prosecutors will ask for. I'm actually really interested to see what is the DA asked for because they've got to make the first move here. They're going to have to say, Judge, here's what we want. Now he may or may not agree. But are they, I think the DA will ask for prison time. I think it's hard to justify bringing this case. And then as a prosecutor saying to the judge, very serious case, DA's argues that impacted the 2016 election.
And we're fine with probation. The thing is entirely up to the judge. This one strikes me as a real close call in Scott, just to your first point, just to be clear, I agree. I don't think that the judge did anything that strikes me as reversible on appeal aside from the federal state campaign issue. And again, I think Judge Bush not did a good job overseeing and running this case, but being conflicted is not the same thing as whether you're a good or bad, effective or ineffective judge.
So I don't know that there's that much disagree with that. And there was an issue. There was a daughter, which I think is sort of nonsense. Yeah, I don't care about that. I agree. I don't because most people can point to work. They did, but we're to explain where the appeals process is going now. And what Trump is doing to affect it, because they obviously use his social media really heavily.
He had the whole crew, the his little crew out yelling about it and saying it's the worst travesty of justice in the history of the world, kind of stuff. Is that effective on these appeals judges, which are, is this correct? By women of color? Is that correct? So all of the things that Donald Trump has been saying before, during and after this trial up to now are counterproductive and self destructive. And if I was his lawyer, I would be begging him to stop it.
It will hurt him on sentencing for the reason Scott just laid out. It will hurt him when it comes to appeal potentially. If you say things that that are inconsistent with what you're arguing, what you've argued before, that can be used against you. No judge in the world, I think no decent good faith judge will be remotely persuaded in favor of any litigant who's out there making inflammatory statements. Um, okay, how is the appeal going to work?
Unfortunately for Speaker Mike Johnson, there's no such thing as the Supreme Court quote unquote stepping in as he has urged him to do the process today, right? Trump asked for them to step in. Yeah. That doesn't they can't reach down and just pluck out whatever case they want. They don't do that. They can't do that. Here's what's going to happen as you alluded to care. The next layer of appeals.
So we're a New York state court here, we're not in federal court is going to be to the New York appellate division and to your question about the five judges women of color. So there are 21 judges on that appeals circuit more or less. Um, five or more of them are black or Hispanic women, but we don't know who or who of them, who of the 21 are going to be put on this panel. Typically it's five. Typically they are chosen at random.
Many of the 21 I should know were appointed by Democratic governors. New York state has had since Pataki, I guess almost, you know, all Democratic governors. That picture that's been going around, I think, is is making the point that there are a good number of minority female judges, but that's not to say they will be. By the way, they'll do a good job. I think the point was this is someone he's been hostile to. Yeah, yeah, sure.
And then if let's assume Trump loses there, and I think he's likely to lose there. You know, not he's not over 50% to win there. And he can ask the highest court in a peat in New York City, New York state, excuse me, which confusingly is called the court of appeals. They call their trial court, the Supreme Court, whatever. The top court in New York state, he can ask them to take the case.
And like our US Supreme Court, they don't have to, but they might seven judges sit on that, all of whom were appointed by Democratic governors. Though it's a little more of a complex process. And look, they just throw out the Harvey Weinstein case. So they will surprise. Again, I don't think they're particularly likely to throw this case out.
But when Trump is done with the whole state level appeals process, wherever that ends, only then, and we're talking a year and change out from now, only then can he ask the US Supreme Court to take the case. And by the way, the US Supreme Court can and should it, well, historically, they only take a case if there's a federal interest in it. So if it's like, well, we should have moved the case from Manhattan to Staten Island, that's not a federal question.
That's why I focused on the federal state election issue. There certainly is a federal issue there. So we're a long ways away from this being done. And he would have to go to jail if they get immediately, right? So very important point. His sentencing is currently scheduled for July 11th.
If the judge sentences him to prison, Trump will certainly ask for and I think is 95% likely to get what we call bail pending appeal, meaning you get to stay out of prison or you don't have to start serving your sentence, whatever it may be, until all of your appeals are done, which is why in my view, there's no way he's locked up before the 2024 election. But yeah, he will likely, if he's sentenced to prison or whatever he sentenced to, he will almost certainly be given bail pending appeal.
And then if the Supreme Court loses, he loses there, he loses everywhere. He goes to jail if he's president. Well, so there's the other X factor. Does he win the election? Obviously, if he loses the election, sure, he goes to jail. Right. If he wins, you know, that is in an area that we've never had to confront yet another of the hypotheticals, Donald Trump makes come to life. My unsophisticated constitutional view is it just can't be.
It just can't be that our system would permit the commander in chief to be locked up at writers or in a state penitentiary. How that is executed, how that decision comes down, whether it's from the state saying we aren't going to try to lock up the sitting president or the federal court somehow getting involved. I don't, I can't tell you. I just can't see as a practical matter scenario where the sitting president, the sitting commander in chief is behind bars. So I have two more questions.
Do you think it has an effect on the election? Is this helpful to him? But you know, these legal antics are things he's known for. He tried it in the E. Jean Carroll case. It didn't work. He tried it in the New York state case. He didn't, it didn't work. He keeps losing legally. Talk a little bit about that and what impact that's because he obviously raises money on these things. He's unprecedented amounts of money and, and become the victim, the using victimization as the tool here.
He's pretty good at using victimization as a tool politically, I'm saying. And you're right, Cara, to note that Trump has now been hit with three or four really, you know, serious verdicts in a row between the civil cases you just mentioned. This is a big deal. Like, I don't want to downplay this. I don't intend to downplay this when a former president is convicted of a felony. It's a huge deal and I'll leave it to you all to sort of decide where the political angles sit.
But you know, the big one, one thing that I do think is happening here is we, we all collectively have paid so much attention to this case rightly. But hasn't it really obscured and almost pushed to the back, back burner, the January six cases, the classified documents case, which to me are so much more important.
And you know, the concern I think that people have a legitimate concern is given what, what I argue, and I think a good amount of people I've heard from seeing and heard from a lot of people across the spectrum who agree with my criticisms of the way this case was brought. In a way, it undermines the seriousness and the integrity of the bigger cases that are to come.
And let me say Alvin Bragg at least has recognized that his case is less important than those because there was a moment when it looked like they were all going to collide on the calendar. And Alvin said publicly, if I'm at the same time as those federal cases, I will step back. And I think that was the right move.
So I would be worried in the bigger sense that the questions, I believe legitimate questions about this case, the way it was charged, could undermine, could, could lend fuel to Trump's largely bogus claims of victimization. Right. So but still those are moving at a glacial pace. Scott, last question. Well, you've sort of answered it. You're obviously you have domain expertise around legal matters, but you're also on CNN and you understand how the media responds.
The doomsday or the really terrible outcome, I think a lot of us were worried about was that it gets convicted and it helps them be elected president so far and granted sort of the morning after. But I think we're all sort of really wondering what impact this has. Do you have any sense for at least how the media is shaping a narrative around this? Do you think that do you think this is going to negative neutral or actually none of us want to admit this?
Could end up being a non zero probability that's going to end up being a positive in terms of as of as chances of being elected. What do you sense so far? The same rational maybe former prosecutor part of me thinks the most obvious answer is how could it possibly be a good thing to be a convicted felon? Right. And even if it peels away 1.2% of his support. It's a game show host was elected president. Right.
I mean, couldn't that be wouldn't that be decisive if he lost 1% of the populist net because of this on the other hand, Scott, you're right that there is pulling showing that it could actually have the opposite effect. I do want to flag to to your point and looking ahead. The sentencing is going to be so interesting because you know what Donald Trump's going to say either way, right? Think about it. All right.
July 11th, he's got the convention in four days, even if it gets pushed out a little bit, he'll be in the heart. All right. If he gets sentenced to prison by Judge Mershant, he you know what it'll do. He'll stand up and go, folks, they this is no longer hypothetical. They want to put me in a cage. If he does not get sentenced to prison, you know what he's going to say, right? He's going to go, what a joke, folks. Oh, the day brings us big case first ever.
And even the judge, even the Democratic donor judge thought that it was so petty that he gave me probation and pick up garbage in the park. So like he's already angled the sentencing, I think, is going to be politically charged. Either way, he's he's you, you both know as well as I do. He's so good at building in these defenses, making himself what my mom used to call perfectly defended. She would say, you don't be perfectly defended like you're fine either way.
And and he's going to manipulate those and and and you became a lawyer. What a shocker. Your mom said, don't be perfectly defended. Well, listen, can I defend my mom? Is your mom a lawyer? Yeah, I defend. Let me defend my mom. She's a social worker. She used to place, place poor kids for adoption, put my dad's a lawyer. Okay. All right. Can I ask you one last question? If you were his lawyer right now, what would you advise him to do? He obviously didn't does control most of these proceedings.
And Todd Blanche was trying his best, much more appealing when he wasn't sitting next to Trump on TV. I was noticing. But what is what is what what would you do now as a lawyer for him? I mean, my first piece of advice him is the same as it would always be, which he would not listen to, which is shut the blank up. I mean, he just there is no good to be done at this. But how do you tell how does Donald Trump listen to that?
I mean, and you're right, Karen, Donald Trump, by all appearances and given the reporting, really undermine his own defense at this trial. The all the things that were reported that he made Todd do focus on stormy Daniels and arguing that the sex never happened. Never. Completely counterproductive in a tactical setting. I would, I would beg of him, shut up. Let me do this appeal. Let me focus on the actual appeal issues.
We have a chance on not the issues that are up your butt and worrying you and, you know, keeping you up in night. Let the ones that are going to give us a chance on appeal and looked at the right strategy with the other cases exactly as you said, exactly who has been doing just raise every argument, try to push them out past the election. Two of the three are gone already. I mean, the Fulton County case is not going to happen before the election.
The classified documents case is not just one more thing for everyone to watch. The moment, the biggest moment of this summer will be when we hear from the US Supreme Court probably end of June, end of June-ish on the immunity case because if this, look, I don't think Trump's going to ultimately prevail in immunity. I think the Supreme Court may well say there is such thing as criminal immunity. We actually don't know. And here are the parameters.
Ultimately, Trump's obviously got to be outside whatever the parameters are. It's not part of the job. If the Supreme Court cleanly rejects immunity and says you lose, Trump, that's it. It'll go back to Judge Chuck and I am as certain as I've ever been. We will put a trial on the calendar for August, September into October. I don't think she cares about the election. We can argue about whether she should or not.
But we will see that case happening in this scenario and it will be playing out September October. But if the Supreme Court says there is such thing as immunity where it, you know, it's the first time. Here's the parameters and back to Judge Chuck and you have to hold the hearing and do fact-finding and tell us whether he's inside or outside the scope. Then it gets appealed up the line again. Then it's gone until after the election. That's the most important thing to watch. All right.
Well, good to know. We will be watching that. I called it to Ellie. It's the full lawyer employment with Donald Trump. It sure is. It really is. You guys, there's lawyers crawling all over CNN's God. It's crazy and they're all like duking it out. They're all like, no, that's not my son. What are you talking about, Ellie? That's a pretty good norm. Yeah. What are you talking about? Anyway, I urge you to read the column in New York magazine. You do it regularly. You do legal columns regularly.
For Friday, for New York. Every Friday, which is great. All right. Ellie Honeig, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you both. Nice to meet you, Ellie. Appreciate it. One more quick break and we'll be back for wins and fails. Support for Pivot comes from Vanta. When it comes to ensuring your company has top-notch security practices, things can get complicated, fast. With Vanta, you can automate compliance for SOC2, ISO 27001. Vanta and more.
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These next few weeks on Switched On Pop, we're going to be looking at the making of these summer hits specifically. Billy Eilish's new record and Charlie Pooz's new single. Should he be a bigger artist, we think so. Find out live with him in the studio. Join me, Charlie Harding, co-host of Switched On Pop for a making of a summer hit series sponsored by Method. You can find Switched On Pop anywhere you get podcasts. Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first today?
You go first, Carol, what do you got? I think my, it's a win fail. It's a fail. This Trump tech investor is doing this Trump fundraiser. Tech has gotten very, very bright wing. There is push back from people like Reed Hoffman and others, but the, but the real momentum is on the side of sort of the Chimath Polyhapatia and David Sacks who are doing this, doing this fundraiser. Polyhapatia was a former Democratic donor who then we've talked about him a number of times in a not a nice way.
But one of the things that I liked was a piece by a guy named Paul Carr, who's a very good writer, was on around for the tech thing. And I like it so much. He's not a fan of Cara Swissers, but that's okay. He wrote a great piece about this fundraiser and he wrote this one section. I'm just going to read it. The optics of the fundraiser are already particularly challenging for Sacks.
Long time tech followers might recall that the Yammer founder has spent years trying to distance himself from a book he published in college with his pal Peter Teal in which he described date rape as quote belated regret. In 2016 Sacks explained to who else Cara Swisser that the outcry was all just a big misunderstanding. The book quote does not represent who I am or what I believe today. Sacks insisted.
I'm embarrassed by some of my former views and regret writing them because nothing says I no longer defend rapists like hosting a half million dollar fundraiser for Donald Trump. I love that writing. Good job Paul Carr. I got to say that was exactly right. That's sort of shocking. I suppose that was my positive because I like this piece and I think you should everybody should go read it. My negative is the continued swirl around media companies. It is getting sad to me.
I know you said I'm not paying attention, but there's some amazing work that the Washington Post did under Sally Busby and she deserves full credit for that work. They want to give us prizes and that's not just the reason you should do it, but really good, especially in feature work and some really deep work about what's going on in our country, which I've really enjoyed. It's sad to see what's happening at Paramount and the Post and stuff like that.
I wish they would come up with a way to figure out how to make it work because their product remains excellent in many forms, especially in the news section which she ran. That's it. All right. I'll start with my fail.
My fail is not on of its inability to come to some sort of resolution or that we know a long run, a rally around the truth, but because every day everybody has a need for some reason to put their views out on everything and because you go on your friend's Facebook or Instagram and you we have such an intolerance that if they don't line up perfectly for my orthodoxy, that's it. Once dried you're out, we don't like them. I remember back to when I first moved to New York and I was dating.
I don't think of all the women I dated. I could even tell you what their politics were. We did. It was sort of like a more innocent timer. Is this person fun? Is this person nice in my attract? Is this person? It feels like the politicization and these issues that everyone feels a need to vomit all over every platform they're on. It's just further and further dividing us.
One of the outputs of that is that we refuse to have any sort of resolution or come together around any sort of truth or acknowledge that at some point there has to be a decision model where we agreed to come together around a decision. I saw a lot of stuff around the deep state around this trial and what people need to remember is that this wasn't Alvin Bragg, it wasn't a DOJ.
It was 12 jurors who gave up time with family who if based on the demographics of New York were probably seven Democrats and five Republicans who have to unanimously decide on all 34 accounts. I thought this was a shitty case. I didn't like it. But the closest we have to some sort of resolution that was supposed to all come together around are juries and science. I'll use a personal example. When I first heard about gender affirmation therapy, I thought that makes no sense.
People are stupid and they shouldn't be trusted with this type of irreversible decision. Then the American Pediatric Association, which is filled with people who know more about this than I do, have much deeper domain expertise. Do tons of peer reviewed research said that with the following protocols, we approve this. I say, okay, if people have taken more time to examine the issue, have a different view than mine, I'm going to defer to their decision. There's absolutely no difference anymore.
There's no respect for institutions. There's no respect for domain expertise. I think part of living in a society and part of being a threat in that fabric is that you have to at some point have deference to the institutions and people who have the credibility and have been earned with the charge to make these decisions. There's a total lack of difference in our society now. No one wants to come together.
They used to be in Congress when the numbers came in, you would compliment the president on a good quarter of GDP. When the unemployment numbers came in, everybody waited and said, okay, this is working or not working. Instead, there is nothing that anyone differs to anymore. Anyways, a total loss of deference across people who just seemed to never want to say, okay, people have taken the time. No more about this than me have weighed in, so I'm going to defer to their decision.
My win is a straight, not a strange one, but just a personal privilege here. My ex-wife's father, Ken Spencer, passed away at the age of 95. He was born on a farm in Kansas. He worked on the farm, joined the Air Force after four years of service. He attended college on the GI Bill, graduating from Kansas State, or he graduated electrical engineering. He married Barbara Coulter, my former mother-in-law. They were together 67 years. He joined Lockheed in aerospace as an electrical engineer.
He worked on the L10-11. He worked on submarines, P38. He spent the last 20 years of his career focusing on the L10-11. He used to have models, the L10-11 in his house. But this guy was literally ground zero for what it means to be an American. He was a Cub Scout leader, an Indian guide, chief. He had an interest in a passion in the American West history and art. He was a docent at the William S. Hart mansion. He was on the board at the local park.
He was a trustee at Santa Clarita United Methodist Service. This guy just reaped of America. He had a really wonderful life married for 67 years, four kids. It was Ken Spencer, a really great American life. You know, all Scott tearing up, that was lovely. That was so cool. Such a nice man. It's really a shame. One of the terrible things, one of the many terrible things about divorce is you lose touch with a really nice family. Anyways, my heart goes out to the Spencer family.
It's very lovely, Scott. That's lovely. I like expert speaking of expertise. By the way, I defer to you on penis jokes just so you know. There you go. I appreciate that. What is long and hard in a seaman in it? I don't know. A submarine. A submarine. Oh, God. That's good. That's bad. That's good. I think that means it's time for me to read us out. No, not yet. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech or whatever is on your minds. Go to nymag.com slash pivot.
Just a minute question for the show or call 85551 pivot. Some programming notes coming up on our other podcast. Scott talks to Jess Tarlov. I can't believe she gets to go on your... She's not allowed on my podcast. I love it. Do you know that? I have access to something you don't have access to. That is so unusual. That is so unusual. That is the Fox News people. By the way, happy wedding for Murdoch. Number five, you got it. Sorry, you got it. Anyway, good luck, sir.
I'm sure this time it will work out. Anyway, Jess Tarlov talks about the Trump verdict on a special episode of Proff G. Dropping Later today. And on with Cara Swisher, I'm talking to AOC later this week. So that will be up. You got AOC? Yeah. I love AOC. I know. Oh my God. I got such a crush on her. Yeah. Okay. Any in any case, I will be also at the Tribeca Film Festival next week. June 11th, 530 for a taping of the Slate podcast, Death, Sex and Money with Anna Sale. Who I love.
You can get tickets at Tribecafilm.com slash Death, Sex, Money. So please come and see me if you want. And we will be talking about Death, Sex and Money. I will be recycling Scott jokes, I hope to late the whole time. Anyway, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Today's show is produced by Larry Namens doing markets and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Dirtat, Engineer of this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Milseverio. The shot Cara is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.
Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine of Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things. Tech and business, Kenneth Spencer, Rest in Peace. Support for this show comes from HubSpot. More to do's, less time, and an infinite number of tools to keep track of. Doing business has never felt harder.
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