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When the haters get in their head, just win. Go to Nike.com to learn more and see their So Win collection. This week on Net Worth and Chill, we're tackling the uncertain economic times we are all living in and how you can recession-proof your finances. It's Financial Doomsday 101.
In this practical episode, we break down what a recession actually is and review concrete steps to protect and potentially grow your wealth during economic downturns. From building a proper emergency fund to identifying recession resistant assets. You're going to walk away with a clear roadmap for financial stability, regardless of market conditions. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff. Scientists find weird kinds of life all the time.
And normally they can run experiments. If I hypothesize, life can live in bleach. Well, I can get bleach and see if life lives in it. But what if the weird thing about the life they find is that it lives for millions of years? Time. I don't have any control over that. I can literally do nothing with time. This week on Unexplainable, intraterrestrials. Aliens on Earth, deep beneath the seafloor.
Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday. Yeah, lesbians know what penises look like. We know what they look like. That's partly the way you figure out you're a lesbian. That's correct. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm the very nasty and openly lesbian Kara Swisher. That's according to my number one fan, Megyn Kelly.
Scott is off today, but in his place, I brought in someone who Megyn Kelly might also take issue with, and obviously will, the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save America and love it or leave it, John Lovett. Welcome, John. Hi, good to see you. Good. Did you see Megan trying to flirt with me online? Did you see that situation? Yes. You know, dipping your pigtails in ink. For sure. Seriously, what is the deal? Did you understand I like LGB but not T?
oh of course of course they're they're trying to divide the t off from the lgb they that's what they've done i don't think she knows what q is or plus what is plus what is q I don't think they know what the Q is. They certainly don't know what the IA is. They're not into any of these letters, but they're mostly focused on trying to, they want the T off of the flag. And we have to keep the T on the flag.
Yeah. I didn't make a response to the New York Post when they called me for one. I felt that was the right way to go, didn't you think? It seems as though this is, is it just drumming up a misunderstanding from years ago? to find a way to talk about you? Is that what this is? I called her a rage machine last week on the show because she is. She just yells at everybody. I hate to say it, talking about Elon Musk, they weren't exactly like this then. And so it's kind of a shock. What happened is...
She had canceled on the show and we had back and forth, back and forth. And I think I wrote sort of to the staff and her person like, when are we going to do this thing? And then the person said, our sister died. And then I wrote, I'm really sorry. So the whole thing is. i didn't know right and then it was ridiculous of course i'm sorry your sister died it's just very strange i think it was just an excuse to yell at me for a little while but yeah that's what it seems that's what it seems like
Yeah, she has a podcast network like you guys. Did you know that? Well, the reason I know about it is because she called you a bitchy lesbian or whatever she said. I mean, that's the whole purpose. There's a cycle to this, right? Like, you know, she picks these fights.
It generates a page six story. It gets attention. Who do you beef with? Who beefs at you from the right? Well, John got in a fight with J.D. Vance on Twitter. Yeah, I saw that. Which it's just incredible that the vice president... Explain that for the people, what it was about.
it was about the fact that the trump administration is i don't even want to call it deporting it is kidnapping people and dispatching them to a gulag in el salvador and we have increasing evidence that they're making mistakes as they do this And now the administration is claiming once you've been sent to this mega prison in El Salvador, they don't have the ability to bring you back.
So no mistakes. So there's no due process to catch mistakes in advance and no way to rectify mistakes once they've happened, which is obviously wrong, even if you are getting it right. But now we see that they are getting it wrong. And Vance was defensive and dissembling and lying about what the record said. about one example right he was in m13 or whatever that he was ms13 excuse me and then and then he wasn't right it was just like nonsense well that we have no idea
other than there is no evidence for it, right? And the evidence, there's no- Which you want. Well, of course, there's certainly, yes. They have provided no evidence that this person- was in ms ms13 vance claimed he was convicted as as far as we can tell this person has never been convicted in the U.S. of a crime, right? And the evidence he cited wasn't there. Similarly, we have this for other examples of people that seem to have been rounded up because they had
tattoos that rubbed an ICE officer the wrong way, including a tattoo for autism awareness. Yeah. That guy, that was the gay barber? Was that the gay barber? No, the gay barber had a... crown that said mom and a crown that said dad yeah i mean it's ridiculous it's just ridiculous it's evil It's evil. Well, good for John. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. It's really kind of a dark time at the same time. It's tons of material for us to talk about and tons of things to get.
up in arms about what's going on. And we've got a lot to get to today, including Trump giving the middle finger to the rest of the world via tariffs. with these sweeping new tariffs, which seem ridiculous. And every economist on all sides is pretty perplexed about the whole thing. And plus, what's next for TikTok? But first, President Trump is probably told his inner circle that Elon Musk will be transitioning out of his administration in the coming years. weeks, according to Politico.
The White House is denying the report with Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt calling it garbage in a post on X. Elon also waited on X saying it's fake news. We'll get to Elon's role in Wisconsin election in a bit, but the big picture of Elon is indeed beginning to step back. What do you think about the move and the timing, the 130-day tenure as special government employees do to end in late May, early June, whatever that is? It might be time for him to...
Focus back on Tesla, the company shared its dramatic numbers this week, dramatically bad. Sales plunged 13% in the first three months of the year, the largest drop of deliveries in history. Nobody wants it. Obviously, these protests are counting, but also the fact they don't have any innovative cars. From your perspective, what's going on here with their communications? And then what happens when he's not in his orbit?
and stops the day-to-day government business that he's doing and what will happen to Doge when that happens. In Scott's absence, just to finish it up, I'll note he predicted Elon's exit and the end of Doge just a few weeks ago. Let's listen. I think he's basically going to pull a Vivek and just slowly fade away. And I think Doge is going to die a quiet death because it looks as if his power has been emasculated. And two, he's just... losing so much money right now.
So talk a little bit about this. What do you imagine is happening here? So I think, first of all, we should dispense with the idea that this is because the 130-day window is up. Because as we all know, Trump has nothing but respect for arcane... rules governing when people can and cannot serve. So that's ridiculous. I think it is probably too pat and too convenient for all of us that have.
found the way that Elon Musk has sort of rampaged through the government to be obviously disgraceful, but also politically. unpalatable to say ah look what's happening we'll talk about wisconsin but uh he's deeply unpopular doge uh is bringing negative attention to trump trump put elon out there as a shield he took all of these hits and now because he's unpopular trump's moving him aside i i don't think it's
unreasonable for them to say this was always basically the plan that he was going to come for a few months, get this thing rolling and then step back. That said, Elon Musk. has drawn so much negative attention to what could have been a far more boring endeavor that that he has brought so much negative attention to. the kinds of cuts that they might have wanted to make, but probably not with this much fanfare and probably without this much chaos. What is unclear is, A,
How much of this can go on without Elon as this singular aggressive figure? And B, how much of what he's already done is so damaging and so complete? that really they've gotten what they wanted to get out of doge and now they break everything which is break everything right fire everybody you know i have a i have a friend at the va and He was talking about how, yeah, you know, the surgeries are continuing.
But a bunch of people lost their access to the computer system because they were fired and then unfired, but they haven't gotten it back. So they're not really able to work. Right. Like a lot of the chaos. it leaves the headlines but it's ongoing right these agencies have been hobbled in ways that we know about in a lot of ways that we don't know about so uh it doesn't surprise me that he'd be stepping back and i also Trump can't possibly...
be enjoying how much blowback this is getting and how much is coming on to him. Yeah, I had talked about the idea of a heat shield, that he does, like, he wants to do these things and not get blamed. It is interesting that Elon has such bad negatives. I think Harry Anton... CNN said he's political poison for anybody who's near him. And we'll talk about Wisconsin in a second. But Trump has less negatives, even though he's his.
boss, presumable boss. So peach yields are not the worst thing in the world. You know, someone, as you said, rampaging through the government. And I think one of the things I had said, you know, when these reports came out and when the Wisconsin thing happened, they were like, okay, that's it. I'm like, no, no, he's not, he doesn't care about a failure. He'll just keep, he'll make it not a failure. He'll pretend it's not, which he did here. And then he'll move on to his next.
disastrous kind of mess, and he doesn't care. I think the issue is making a nuisance of himself, making himself the center. And in Wisconsin, he was by himself, right? Trump didn't. wasn't physically present there the way he often is. And he wasn't. And so with Elon as the center of attention, wearing that cheese head, it was kind of like Dukakis and the tank. remember when he had that picture or any of those unfortunate pictures or around DeSantis in the boots or things like that.
So let's talk about the Wisconsin election, where despite spending $25 million, Elon was unable to buy a state Supreme Court seat. You can buy a presidency for $200 million, but you cannot buy a state Supreme Court seat for a tenth of that.
Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford handily beat her conservative opponent Brad Schimmel, maintaining the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She's replacing another justice who is a liberal justice. In terms of the other elections this week, Republicans did keep... Those House seats in Florida replaced Matt Gaetz and Mike Walz through margins were significantly narrower than in the last election.
The strategy of making Elon the enemy was effective in the Wisconsin race. I think he's just irritating. And though he didn't help himself, as I said, with the cheese head hat. What is the playbook? Because he's not always going to be there to beat up on. And of course, on Sunday, he said the entire death. and if you may be hung on this race, but he later said, I expected to lose. There is a value to losing a piece for positional gain, which I'm calling downward facing doge.
What is happening here? Because I'm trying to sort of like, is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Like, I'm always quite wary, even when these people lose, of how much they actually lose.
Oh, it's it's a very good thing that he lost. He got nothing for that money. They lost the other statewide races as well. I was in Wisconsin in the run up and I. went knocking on doors and obviously that's anecdotal but we talked to went to 150 doors and elon had made himself the main character it was what's on people's minds one example we were just walking down the street
and someone in the neighborhood was like well what are you guys what are you knocking on doors for we said oh we're trying to make sure everybody gets out to vote for susan crawford and They said, can you believe what's going on with Elon? They're setting the test list on fire. He's spending 25 million or spending millions of dollars in the state. And I think, again, like I would love to say that.
Oh, Elon, this is proof that Elon Musk is political poison. I don't know that. I think what you can say is that in this environment, and this is very good news, no amount of money can overcome the political fundamentals. And Elon Musk is not a persuasive figure to the kinds of voters that Republicans need.
The independence. Yeah, he seems to be. I call him repellent. He's repellent to voters. He is. He's toxic. Why is that? Why is it? Obviously, rich guy, rockets, this and that. What has happened here? Look, I think there's the... the obvious answer which he has a terrible personality and uh so we're getting to know him more meaning yeah he and he's and he's abusing his wealth without respect
for our democracy and i don't mean even you know look he puts out this announcement saying basically he's gonna buy votes in wisconsin uh it's based a lot of blowback he's accused of
committing crimes. He changes the language on it so that it's more legally permissible. So he's no longer giving you money for votes. He's giving you money for signing a petition, whatever it may be. But fundamentally, he's flying in to Wisconsin on a private jet to throw money down in front of the populace, like a grand vizier visiting the colonies.
And we are he is cutting in this chaotic and destructive way parts of the government. They may not be they may they may be the parts where they view it as as the weakest.
for democrats to defend places like usaid but uh they're also shuttering social security offices they're coming after medicaid it's a small i don't believe most people are seeing this but but i do think it's important that this figure who has taken on this vast amount of power basically bought his way into this role does it with so little respect for the tens of millions of people that are skeptical of him or don't like him, that he...
that if he is if somebody is protesting him, they're Soros backed. Democrats oppose him only because they are evil and they want to send Social Security checks to undocumented. immigrants that when people are critical of Doge, he claims, oh, it is because they're not being specific. Have you noticed they don't offer any specifics? This they offer there. There has been there's never been more valid, specific.
clear, focused criticism. Meet David Farenthold. Are you kidding me? You are cutting billions across or claiming to cut billions across this government. We are pointing to specific container ships. holding specific amounts of food to get you to release it. So there's a total lack of respect for anyone who is not MAGA, right? That's one of his tricks, by the way. He does that in interviews all the time. Show me a specific example and then I...
10 and then he goes show me a specific it's just it's exhausting and so like the the the so so he is he is basically he's not acting democratically in any way that a person would you can imagine a version of of this whole process unfolding where he says, you know what, I'm going to all these agencies, I'm going to listen to some of the people there and I'm going to go to the heads of these various departments and I'm going to say, oh, you have three months, two months, three weeks.
to give me cuts. And these are the amount of cuts you have to give me. And if you don't give me this amount of cuts, I'm going to do it for you. And you can imagine him engaging with people on the actual substance of these criticisms. But he can't do that. He has no aptitude or willingness to do that. And we don't know with Elon when he goes in front of a crowd and says, this is a grand scheme to bring in immigrants to turn them into voters. We don't know if he believes that.
Or if he just believes that's an advantageous argument to make in front of the people for whom he has no respect. He burns PR people like you can't believe. And he had some good ones many years ago, right? But obviously PR is critically important to him. He wants to be seen as the center.
attention you know when he seems like a nuisance and anything he pretends to be funny when the only person is funny is his his daughter vivian right who's actually funny um i will just can i just i will say though i i do think the most important like just stepping back from
his sort of repellent qualities. Repellent. Isn't that a good word? Very good word. Here's what I think we've learned. And I think this is what's most important, even if you don't. For Democrats. For Democrats and Republicans. Even if you can't totally, you can't tease the correlation from the causation. We learned that $25 million in Wisconsin did not change the outcome of these races.
And Crawford overperformed against other statewide races. And then we learned in Florida, in these special House races, that Democrats overperformed by roughly whatever, 15 to 17 points. And what does that tell you? It tells you that there are a bunch of vulnerable Republicans that are whose margins of victory were well below 15 points who are looking at this and saying, hold on.
I have a terribly controversial vote coming my way for reconciliation that involves tax cuts for the wealthy and Medicaid cuts. Elon's money cannot protect me from the general. So is it now the choice? Do I side with Elon, prevent a primary and hope his money protects me in the fall? Or do I side with my constituents, brace for a primary, get through it?
and hope my voters reward me for not going along with the Trump agenda. Like that choice just got a lot harder for some of these Republicans. It is. And I think one of the things. that I heard one Republican making is they don't have any game below Donald Trump because I think he's still popular with the people he's popular with.
period. And I do, you know, I think that if he's not present, their bench gets real thin and really irritating. Like, you've got the charmless J.D. Vance, you've got the sad, soulful Marco Rubio, who looks like a loser. you've got like there's no game and then a crazy Howard Lutnick like you know
He seems like crazy Eddie from the old days. And it just it doesn't have if Trump's not present, it's really hard, like for them to do anything. And at some point, he's not going to be present. Interestingly, in contrast, as New Jersey Senator. Booker invigorated Democrats this week with a 25-hour speech in Congress against the Trump administration. Booker is now in the record books for the longest speech in Senate history surpassing Strom Thurmond's stand against Civil Rights Act.
1957. I have a serious question for you, but first let's listen to Senator Booker explain how he managed not to go to the bathroom for the 25 hours. Talked to a lot of people. I copied some of the things we did for 15 hours. So I fasted for days into it. I stopped drinking water a long time ago. I think that had good and bad benefits. I definitely started cramping up from lack of water. So if some of you really drink nothing, at the end I was...
just trying to do something to stop my muscles from cramping. So there's just a lot of tactics I was using to try to make sure that I could stand for that long. So a progressive accomplishment of not peeing. But why do people like this? It's got a huge following. Lots of people watched it. I was sort of surprised by those numbers. It had a, you know, Mr. Smith goes to Washington quality to it.
why do this? Because sometimes, I'll be honest, Booker does a lot of stunts that I'm like, oh, a stunt. But this was a good stunt, I feel like, in some ways. And I don't mean to minimize it by saying stunt, but, you know. It is what it is. He's trying to garner attention and get focus. Yeah, it's a good stunt. I too was, I thought it was a good idea. I was glad he was doing it. I'm glad to see when anybody is basically trying things to try to.
grab attention in this chaotic media environment. But I was like blown away by the number of people watching it. the amount of clips that were circulating because of it. And it just speaks to the fact that there is a huge hunger among the majority of the country that does not support Donald Trump. that are looking for people who are going to fight that just are gonna
respond to the moment, to the scale of what we're facing with a sense that this is a different time and we're going to need to treat this differently. And we can't just go along with business as usual, that you can't.
uh you know the plan can't be to uh vote for the continuing resolution and then go on your book tour like that's just not the world we're living in this is a dangerous moment and you want to see leaders that reflect that and this is a look it it is a stunt right because ultimately it doesn't have any impact but It does draw people's eye to what is happening in our political system. And he is doing something that required.
him to sacrifice and to and to go through like some sounds like a fair amount of pain and good for him for doing that. And I think a lot of people will see moments from it, see his passion in it, hear some of the different.
arguments he was making. I thought he did a great job talking about Social Security and Medicaid. And, you know, look, I think a lot of times, you know, Democrats are skittish about how to Thread the needle because on the one hand They they view Trump as an existential threat to democracy, but in the other They hear from the consultants and the polls and genuinely believe that where their best argument is day to day is on the ways Trump is going after Social Security, Medicaid.
healthcare, the basics, the services and programs people rely on. And I thought he did a really great job of articulating both of those arguments, specifically around Look at all the chaos. Look at all the destruction he's bringing to our democracy. What are we getting for it? Right. What are we getting? Does that raise his profile as a presidential candidate going forward? I mean, he's always been.
bandied about is that i'm sure it does i don't i'm sure it does everybody is he running for president Is there any senator that isn't in their minds in some way running for president? Yeah. It was interesting. When I was in Michigan, a lot of the students were asking me who was going to run. It was sort of a surprise. I'm like, oh, I don't know.
like and then maybe go through the various and sundry people it was interesting they certainly are interested um in looking over the democratic party in that regard he definitely raised his profile i sort of it's funny like even as you ask that like I'm such a political fiend. And for whatever reason, I have just no appetite for that right now. First of all, because it feels so far away. And also, like, I don't.
I don't really think there's much you can do to kind of handicap this race right now. Anybody who wants to be president has got to be somebody, and Cory Booker did this, great, has to be somewhere, someone out there in the fight. showing that they understand the politics of this moment, that they have a passion and a rage in them to protect the country. And... That's sort of that's what I'm looking for. My one my one my one sort of feeling about it is I am so not interested in the kinds of.
planning and maneuvers that are about building a profile and carefully managing the rollout. That is from another era, and I'm just completely not interested in it. The book, the this, the that, the peer at Harvard. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what works. Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, it's Trump against the world with these new tariffs.
Last week, we at Today Explained brought you an episode titled, The Joe Rogan of the Left. The Joe Rogan of the Left was in quotations. It was mostly about a guy named Hassan Piker, who some say is the Joe Rogan of the Left. But enough about Joe. We made an episode about Hassan because the Democrats are really courting this dude. So Hassan Piker is...
Really the only major prominent leftist on Twitch, at least the only one who talks about politics all day. What's going on, everybody? I hope everyone's having a fantastic evening, afternoon, pre-new, no matter where you are. They want his co-sign. They want his endorsement because he's young and he reaches millions. Yeah, I was listening on stream and you guys were like, hey, you should come on the show if you're listening. I was like, oops, caught. You're a listener.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, I am. Yeah. Thank you for listening. Head over to the Today Explained feed to hear Hassan Piker explain himself. The Nintendo Switch 2 is basically guaranteed to be the most interesting gadget of 2025. And we learned a lot of new stuff about it this last week or so.
some of the games that are coming out, some of the specs of the new device, and the fact that it's going to cost $449.99. Except maybe it's not, because the other thing going on right now is tariffs, and tariffs threaten to change. Just about everything about tech. What it is, how it's made, where it comes from, and crucially, how much we have to pay for it. So that's what we're talking about on The Vergecast all week, wherever you get podcasts.
John, we're back and recording on the day after Liberation Day. Do you feel liberated? Yeah, so this is liberated. This is a boxing day for Liberation Day. President Trump unveiled his latest tariffs, the most expansive yet, at the White House on Wednesday with the help of a giant poster board. He's imposing a 10% tariff on all U.S. trading partners as well as double digits.
He's calling them a reciprocal terrorist. They're not, just so you know, about the worst offenders. He seems to, nobody thinks these are good things. The math is like nuts. The EU faced 20% tariffs, Japan 24%, South Korea 26%, and China additional 34% on top of existing tariffs of, I think, 20%. Russia conveniently didn't make the cut. Trump also...
slapping terrorists on unexpected places like some uninhabited islands in the Antarctic where only penguins live. People are having a good time with that. The EU, China and others are already planning retaliation. He's been very flip floppy on terror, sort of red light green light, which caused chaos. And now he just dropped.
the bomb. He really did essentially drop the mic. The markets opened just a little while ago. The S&P dropped 3.4%. The Dow fell 1,200 points, more than 2%. The Nasdaq is down 3.8%. Big numbers. A number of sectors are getting hit, but in terms of tech specifically, things are looking rough right now for tech, particularly because they're so invested across the world. Apple's down over 9%, Amazon down 8%, Nvidia down 6%, Alphabet down 4%, U.S. tech companies.
They're becoming collateral damage when it comes to retaliation, getting hit with fines, restrictions, and new taxes by major markets worldwide. They also have obviously interconnected with so many different markets. What do you think of this rollout? Peter Navarro is back, my friend. He's back and he's... Crazier than ever. Trump's building a wall and we're all going to pay for it is, I think, what's happening. Larry Summers posted.
And he's the famous economist and former Treasury secretary and somebody who is not hyperbolic saying that. A crude estimate of Trump's tariffs puts the projected loss at $20 trillion or well over $200,000 per family of four. And then he walks through how he reaches that very conservative estimate. of the damage. They're not reciprocal tariffs. People were baffled by the number. I'm not an economist, but but.
People are looking at this, they're sort of scratching their heads trying to figure out what this number is. And they realize that it's not based on the tariffs of these other countries. It's a crude calculation based on the trade deficit. with these other countries and not the trade deficit on goods and services, but just the trade deficit on goods. Even the administration itself admitted that it was too hard to actually calculate.
for every country what the reciprocal tariffs would be. And so they came up with this ridiculous formula. The hope has to be that these fake numbers are just an opening bid in a negotiation. That he's trying to do it. Chris Murphy had that in his, I'm going to read from some of it. Chris Murphy, who's been very vocal, just like Cory Booker, the senator. Those trying to understand these terrorists or economic policies are dangerously naive.
or a tool to collapse our democracy, a means to comply and loyalty with every business that will need to petition Trump for relief, which many people are. And what he was saying essentially is that this gives him... And the reason he can is because he's taking control of spending and taxation into his own hands and rewarding loyalty and punishing dissent.
Our own revolution was spurred by the king's use of heavy taxation on the colonies to punish our push for self-governance. The king's message was simple. Stop protesting and I'll stop taxing. What do you think is happening here? Even Scott Bessent looked like an idiot, and I don't feel like he is. I think Trump has believed since... the 80s, the last time you formed any new ideas, that tariffs are good and that we have trade deficits because other countries are taking advantage of us.
He has been he has been pushing and pushing and pushing to do sweeping tariffs. He was stopped in the first term by cooler heads. Like there's many ways in which what Trump what we're seeing with Trump is a. the kind of extreme, bizarro version of a normal pattern with first and second term presidents, which is in the first term, presidents work for the White House. In the second term, the White House works for the president. Presidents figure out.
where they can get more control. They feel more confident in exercising the power. They feel like they belong there. They no longer feel like they're imposters. And so all the people that would have stopped Trump from doing this. They're gone. Right. It's a different set of people, but he has more responsible people. I mean, I think they're all they all look like fucking idiots today, but he is more responsible people on.
on economics than he does, say, running around the FBI or HHS. But Trump wanted to do this and nobody could stop him. They put together this half baked. cockamamie plan involving ridiculous calculation to create these charts. Nobody is really crossing the T's and dotting the I's, which is why we're taxing penguins. And the end result is this. Chaos. That said, I think the point that Chris Murphy is making is a really important one. He has a lot of grand language there. Trump knows.
Trump likes using his power. He likes the way it feels to exercise power. Congress has given way too much authority to the president on tariffs. He puts these tariffs in place. And all of a sudden, Republican House members are lobbying him. businesses are lobbying him for relief countries are lobbying him for relief and even if you view it even if you take the most generous version of it right which is not that he's doing this to destroy democracy but doing this to create leverage
The question is, what does he do with it? Right. And can he use these tariffs, say, on agriculture or to provide relief for these tariffs on agriculture to to rally votes for. a bill for example and so i do think this is about power i do think this is about control but i also think he genuinely believes that tariffs
are good. Implications right now, right at the beginning of this, obviously the stock market's down, obviously Wall Street's screaming, so are farmers, so are everybody screaming essentially. I think we just don't know. It's interesting because we talked about this on Pod Save America on Monday. And look, there's a lot of like hyperbolic.
partisans talking about how the markets are crashing, the markets are crashing. And they weren't. They actually weren't. They were down. They were, of course, down. But year over year, they were up.
and the question was why and it seems like what we've learned today is nobody really believed it would be as bad as what they announced and i still don't think we know and what we have to watch unfold is are we seeing the beginning of a truly disastrous long-term tariff policy Or is this a extreme version of what we saw when he first put in place the Canada and Mexico tariffs, which is he talks a big game, but if he gets.
concessions in quotes or pushback or just fake concessions like a fentanyl czar or a press conference in which the Mexican president announces policies she had already put in place months earlier. Will he lower them? Right. Like. What what does he want to reduce these numbers? The hope has to be that because these figures are so ridiculous, right? Like he's calling them reciprocal tariffs. Like how does Vietnam.
They're being asked to reduce their tariffs that don't exist below. You know, this is about a trade deficit. No, I think the one thing that's not being noticed is service tariffs, service issues, because that's. tech companies. And we are in a, not a deficit, we're in quite the opposite, where we have the advantage there by, I think, $300 billion. We're in a surplus in that regard. And now Europe is going to target.
You know, the McKinsey's of the world, the cloud business of whoever, Microsoft and whatever. And so we have a real vulnerability in the service, which is why you're seeing the tech companies get so whacked here. Well, look at just the Canada example.
right uh trump rails against this they're taking advantage of us this this trade deficit this trade deficit if you take away fossil fuels if you don't if you don't look at oil and gas we have a trade surplus with canada they're our biggest customer right this is supposed to be to help domestic manufacturing domestic manufacturers a lot of their customers are around the world
They're going to take a huge hit because of this. The other big problem here is even on Trump's own terms, the fact that nobody truly believes or can know whether these will be upheld consistently. How is anybody? going to plan to build in America? How is that possible? Why would you build a factory? Why on earth would you build a factory when you know that, A, when you don't know that these tariffs are going to stay in place? And even if they do, you know that America...
is going to be isolated from the rest of the world. It's actually just another example of just the chaos and incompetence makes them fail even on their own terms, even though on their own terms, right? Doge is going to end up costing the government money.
right because of how ham-fistedly and stupidly they've done this getting rid of the igs getting rid of the parts of the government that figure out what's effective and what's not right firing the best and the brightest, the new and excited people that have just been hired, the people that were just promoted, the lawsuits that will inevitably come that will cost the government.
millions and millions and millions of dollars billions of dollars who knows uh same same here yeah i think i think we know now how he bankrupted I just feel like we have such insight into why his businesses are so shitty at the same time. I'm going to move on really quickly because one of the things, another podcaster, Joe Rogan, thinks the Trump administration's deportations are horrific.
Because now even the thing that he pulls strongest on, which is immigration, some of he's starting to get pushed back there. Let's listen. You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting like. lassoed up and deported and sent to like El Salvador prisons this is kind of
Crazy that that could be possible. That's horrific. And that's again That's bad for the cause like the cause is let's get the gang members out everybody agrees But what's not innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs and then like how long before that guy can get out?
Can we figure out how to get him out? Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake? Sounding somewhat reasonable for Joe Rogan, although, you know, you watch the penny drop slowly with this guy.
The administration has acknowledged a deported man, for example, with protected status to El Salvador because of an administrative error and says they can't get him back. They can invade Greenland, but they can't get him back from people who are paying. Again, same thing, haphazard. People do not like the haphazard nature of a lot of these things, the tariffs, this, the rollout on things that he actually polls well on immigration, for example. Yeah, look, I mean, it's...
Forget the politics. What they are doing is despicable. It is despicable. It is despicable. It doesn't serve public safety. It doesn't serve... uh the goal of immigration enforcement border security as rogan points out it doesn't serve their own agenda it's just cruel it's just evil
And there's just not been enough. Like Rogan has had more moral clarity than a lot of Democrats on this who have scared themselves into believing that if they're talking about immigration, they're falling into a trap as if the American people cannot handle. a position as simple as we believe in enforcing our immigration laws, but we have to have due process because government makes mistakes and everybody has rights, right? Like that's not that complicated an argument.
The other part of this and, you know, Liberation Day is now kind of obviously we're glib about it. And they've mostly used it to mean tariffs, but they don't just mean tariffs. Right. Stephen Miller has used it to refer to immigration as well. Do we believe that the administration is.
going to ramp down deportations? Do we believe the administration is going to maintain this level of deportations? They are building. They are building towards greater and greater deportations. Do we believe the number of mistakes will go down as they do this more? Of course not. Of course not. And the judge, one of the judges that was looking at this said that the Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act in World War Two.
because she points out uh you could accidentally sweep up somebody who's here legally who's a citizen they would have no ability to seek recourse. They end up in a gulag in El Salvador, and now they can't get out. Now the government is claiming they don't have the ability to bring them home.
It's just like a movie. I keep feel like a Sylvester Stallone movie. I feel like I've seen these, you know, I'm an aficionado of all these kind of movies where someone's in a prison for the wrong reason or they get swept up into something silly and then they're stuck. I mean, look, look, this this example, right, like that. They keep saying, oh, you know, we were deporting the most dangerous members of Tren de Aragua. This the the Andres, the gay hairdresser, he was not.
being held when they he he came for an appointment, an asylum appointment. He thought he was going to be deported until he found himself in this nightmarish situation. The he has not spoken to his family. He doesn't know that right now there are people anger and angry and fighting for him. He is in a he is in a nightmare. He is in a night. He's in a country that's not his own. Think about it. His head has been shaved. He's been there for weeks.
He is. There's no outside. It's torture. We're torturing these people. This is not a deportation. This is a kidnapping. The government has kidnapped these people. And then meanwhile, Kristi Noem poses and kind of like. torture porn, essentially. Her outfits are strange. In her Rolex. Not just the Rolex, the outfits themselves.
the super shiny shoes i'm like what are you doing modified nazi what's happening what's the fashion think about the inhumanity that is required to stand in front of a group of people that are forced to be there to film this kind of Yeah, fascist porn. Are you surprised in any way? I am surprised, actually. I'll admit to being I'll be admit to being. Well, when I saw it, it was surprising. I couldn't believe that they were doing it. I believe.
I believe there are a lot of people who like it. I'm not surprised that there are a lot of people who liked it, but I am surprised by how quickly we've gotten. this low to have the Secretary of Homeland Security basically making Viet Cong style propaganda. Do you remember the movie Network? Of course I remember the movie Network. I mean, this reminds me of this. Like, this is, you know. Can you believe Network is 50 years old? It's completely pertinent.
Everything on there, we've done. It's unbelievable. Right. It's unbelievable how good network is. They're going to start broadcasting executions. That's what I see. Like, you know, that kind of thing. You know, we talk, that's sort of a sci-fi trope, the idea of a national, you know, broadcast.
executions this was one step in that direction absolutely and and it's it's just the whole the whole nine yards of it is and they they won't fix it because they're incompetent also they're incompetent and cruel which makes it different well think about think about the yes they are incompetent and cruel and the most the most dangerous force in in any society
is an incompetent, cruel bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that doesn't know what it's doing and doesn't care who it hurts. In history, it is the most dangerous force. And it starts it starts with these unsavory gang members. and and the next step is a wider roundup that gets that gets a bunch of people that that they'll point to as being awful human beings who are glad to get out of the country, who how dare Democrats try to protect while meanwhile, as part of these sweep ups, you end up.
with legal residents, visa holders, students, citizens. citizens who don't look like a norman rockwell painting who have tattoos have accents maybe don't speak english uh as well as they would like who look like the kind of immigrants they want to look like yeah yeah yeah yeah that's where we're heading And and and as they're doing that, as they're doing that, they're accusing people that do vandalism of being domestic terrorists. Right. Exactly. Do you.
imagine that it's from, you have to think about it from political, is there a good political point of view? Because people can, can feel it, right? People are like, wait a minute, that could happen to me. I think that's really what gets it. That seems strange. And people have that trope in their heads of people being unjustly grabbed and sent somewhere. It's very familiar from movies.
you know history and things like that do you think it's an effective tool for democrats to push in on so we have increasing evidence that donald trump maybe not only outperformed among recent immigrants, but maybe won recent immigrants. There are more and more stories of people who can't believe that their family members...
are being impacted by this. That's not the kind of immigrants I thought Trump would, not my wife, not my husband, I thought they were going to go against. The leopard ate your face kind of thing. Right, right. And I hope people see that. and feel that in the same way people voted for trump uh and some of his positions on trade pull well in the run-up to an election and then they watch tariffs unfold and people hate it they don't like it they learn through the nut through the public debate
and come to a new point of view, right? Public debates still do manage somehow, despite ourselves, to educate people about the substance of issues. My deeper hope is, you know, you see a lot of... a lot of sort of hand-wringing coverage about how Trump's turning us into Russia and Trump's turning us into Hungary. But that we have an advantage, which is that America is still filled with Americans and that we are an individualistic.
rambunctious, rebellious, freedom-loving group. And even after years of anti-immigration propaganda and misinformation and caravans, Americans still largely are against. uh draconian immigration policies if you look at the polling people want sensible that you it depends on how you ask if people still want those positions people still obviously believe in due process
and people believe in the Constitution. And so we just have to figure out we just have to make this real for people. And it is unfortunate that it does. require playing defense and watching Trump do these things and then using those as examples to make it real for people. Right.
Right. Well, I think it's that it could happen to you. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, that was a trope. A friend of mine was in local news. And I said, well, how do you like your marketing is so interesting, like on everything? And he goes, oh, it's the it could happen to you trope. that they do in local news, no matter what it is, killer bees, it could happen to you.
mold, it could happen to you. And it was very effective in getting people to listen to things. So that's what I thought, it could happen to you. And I think people then, and that's what Joe Rogan was doing, wait a minute, I have tattoos, just a second here. All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the latest in the bid for TikTok. I know you're fascinated with TikTok, John. I am.
John, we're back with more news. President Trump is reportedly reviewing proposals for TikTok this week. Obviously, the administration is said to be considering bids from Blackstone, Oracle, and Marc Andreessen. Amazon threw in a last-minute bid. It actually makes sense. It's probably not a lot.
intended, but Walmart was in the last go around here. Oracle was too. The TikTok ban requires no more than 20% of TikTok or its parent companies owned by foreign adversary countries. So they're thinking about letting ByteDance stay in for 19% apparently. I'd love to know.
You use TikTok a lot, correct? Well, I'd love to do a day in the life of your For You page. But what do you think is going to happen here? And there was an interesting story, which I think there's sort of a poll that's been cast over for... tiktok on this like where it's going who's going to own it a lot of people feel that if they don't get the algorithm it's not going to be as good
As a product, it's lagged a little bit recently. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it feels like it a little bit, that people aren't, creators aren't putting their shoulders into it the same way. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But how do you imagine it's going to happen here? I thought Elon might. get a hold of it. Maybe not a good idea to give it to Elon right now from a perceptible point of view. He seems busy. I haven't noticed any change in the actual use of the app. It is interesting.
how much this has become Trump's decision, right? Like this. the the how how far down the road we've come we talk about how he wants to be the main decider on tariffs and wants people to come kind of kiss the ring that's what we're seeing here right this presumably should be bite dances decision right well china has to cooperate here and now with these tariffs and not so sure they're feeling cooperative but trump isn't right well that's and that's that that uh
There was some hope apparently on the part of the Chinese that TikTok was a bit of leverage in the terrified, but that doesn't appear to have gotten them anything. I don't know what happens with TikTok. I was pretty upset. about the way this all went down. The law itself. The law itself, because there was very little public debate or explanation about why TikTok was so dangerous. And a lot of the explanations were about the harm it does to people, but people didn't seem to mind.
that harm was being done to Americans by Americans. Instagram is awful for young people. I think TikTok can be really awful for young people. So why is it a good thing if Americans do it to each other, but a bad thing if a foreign country does it to us? Why do our own billionaires running rampage through our minds, why is that acceptable?
And so I never thought they made the public case, which is why when all of a sudden they caught the car and TikTok was about to be banned, they did this ridiculous save TikTok. Thank you, President Trump bullshit. And it worked. So I really don't like the way this. went down. The law itself.
Right. That it should. They didn't make the case. Many people argue that. They didn't make the case at all. They didn't. They didn't. They're just always a national security threat. Excuse me. Excuse me. Like my for you page. Show me your homework. Show me. Right. My for you page is, you know. recipes and old clips of Conan. A lot of recipes. Gotta make the viral Turkish pasta, Kara. Really?
Your recipes and Conan O'Brien? Just, you know, among other things. Hot guys, hot guys doing new kinds of exercises, teaching me ways to lift weights. You know, that's Scott Galloway's favorites, too, just so you know. I think that there's a big overlap between fit, middle-aged men. and gay guys. There's a big overlap in what they're seeing, which are just handsome men rocking their delts. Rocking their delts. What do you imagine is online? I don't use TikTok that much, but what do you imagine?
Oh, I think there'd be, hmm, I think we'd see, you know, lesbian talk and gay talk are so separate. They're so distinct. They're such distinct universes. I don't know what we'd see with you. Woodworking, clips of Brandi Carlile, that kind of thing. No, you'll be surprised. ASMR. ASMR, ASMR. I love ASMR. And cooking. I like watching people cook. Okay.
I like watching people. I don't want to do recipes. I just like watching people. Especially, there's one on threads called food porn that I love. Do you cook? I don't. I do. I'm a good cook, but I don't do it very often as much as I should. But I like watching other people cook. That's weird. But I used to watch The Galloping Gourmet when I was a kid. I'm not going to go into a job. Okay. You remember him?
And then he drank at the end, drank himself. I want to look up the Galloping Gourmet. Galloping Gourmet. It was a guy who seemed gay, but wasn't. Oh, the Galloping Gourmet. Look at that. Yeah, yeah. He was like Julia Child, but funnier. I used to watch him cook all the time. Then he'd always drink a bottle of wine by the end of it. And it was very amusing to an eight-year-old. When I was a kid, the Food Network launched. Yeah. And...
Everyone was like, that's got to be a joke. How can you fill a whole network with food content? And the answer was you can. And it's great. It was ahead of its time. But I used to watch the Food Network with my mom. I bet you like Paula Deen. I bet you secretly like Paula Deen. You know, I was a Jeffrey Weingarten. Remember Jeffrey Weingarten? Of course. Yeah.
I remember he said, my mother and I used to joke about this for years because he said, fava beans are very in right now. And that's just something we said to each other for years. Fava beans are very in right now. They are never in. They've never been in. Anyway, what do you think the resolution's gonna be? Make a prediction.
I think one of these deals is going to be the deal and it's going to basically look the same at the other side of it and the user experience will roughly be the same, but there'll be this sort of change in ownership. It's a nothing burger.
You know, it's owned by a lot of U.S. people. U.S. people own a lot of this thing. And then it's not going to be any more protected if there are problems with China. And I, unlike you, believe there are indeed abuses by the Chinese and they're a little different. I believe that. I believe that. I agree. Mark Zuckerberg is dangerous.
But I don't really want the Chinese government also up in our grill in this way because they have different goals besides just fucking us. They want to fuck us and beat us kind of thing. But I think that it's going to be more dangerous than ever.
in those regards from national security point of view and they won't solve the problem and then everyone will make money. The people that, the same people you're complaining about, but we'll see. I don't think Elon will be part of this, but maybe he will, maybe he'll. He's such a nuisance, he'll probably try to get in there. All right, John, one more quick break. When we come back, we'll be doing some predictions.
OK, John, let's hear a prediction. Do you have a prediction for us? I do have a prediction. I'm actually re-upping a prediction that I made before the election, but I want to make it here because I want it on the record, which is I said this last year. which is that if Donald Trump won, Eric Adams would end up in the cabinet. And I just want to just lay that down once again, that I believe that that is the end result of...
Because he'll lose the mayoral election. He just announced today he's going to be an independent. And he's already he's already started the suck up process with Trump. I just what what what job will he get? I guess who are they going to take out Kash Patel? Well, I always I thought he was always I thought he was a natural for Homeland Security. Oh, Kristi Noem. Hip chicken Kristi Noem. That's a natural fit for him, but I could see him at FBI too. We'll see.
We'll see. Depends on what the, since how long Christine Oan lasts. Oh my God, they're all moving here. Speaking of moving here, I'll tell you what, I'm pretty pissed about. Supposedly Elon's leaving. I don't think he is. I think he'll, he's such a nuisance. He's going to stay. Apparently Mark Zuckerberg is.
bought a $23 million mansion in DC. So he's here too. I moved here, John, and they followed me here. The stalkers that they are, they're all here. You got to get close to the king. And it's all the bad ones. The ones I liked are not here.
the bad ones are. If America's going to go from having a democracy to a court, you've got to be near the court. That's true. I get it. I get it. Honestly. Although $23 million seems cheap for a house and water, like one of the big ones. But he was supposedly lobbying Trump to avoid.
the antitrust trial, I'm not so sure that's going to work. Because ultimately, as dislikable as Elon has become, Mark Zuckerberg has always been dislikable. And I think he polls, you know, all those polls show they still don't like him at the White House. They still don't like him. But anyway, he's here. I'm so excited to see him at brunch or over drinks at Cafe Moana.
Do these people leave the compound? Are you going to see them at the restaurants? They just don't leave their houses, right? They're not going to leave their houses. I mean, unless there's some MMA fighting or something happening, he'll not be. going anywhere, but we'll see. I just don't want them here. I'd like them to leave. Already, I'm not thrilled to be here, but here I am, and I actually live here. You're not thrilled to be there? I like it. I like it. You should try a lot.
I love LA. I love California. I cannot get my wife to move us back to California. Let me put me in. Put me into this debate. Put me in. I'll make the case. I really want to be part of that. I have this beautiful new studio you're seeing behind me. I like DC very much. It's very lovely. And you've spent a lot of time here. But I really miss California so much. Just for you, right? Los Angeles.
I love Los Angeles. It's so beautiful. Despite all the problems you've been having lately, I was just in San Francisco. It was gorgeous. It's wonderful. So anyway, I will not go on about that. John, one thing before we go, is there something you're watching or reading that you love lately? I mean, everyone's talking about White Lotus, obviously, or Severance. Is there anything else? I'll tell you. I've gone back to the beginning of Real Housewives of New York.
And it is a joy. Look, when the world is- Are you watching it? Okay. I'm starting from, I never watched it before. So I'm going back to the very first season of Real Housewives of New York. I have been resistant. I think from a kind of snootiness to Real Housewives for years. I've always said to myself, I don't like the reality shows. I like competitive reality shows, but I don't like the true bravo. Right. And in hindsight, that was I was hurting my own viewing.
The Real Housewives are incredible. And I do believe it is hard to understand Trump. Right. People call up, talk about him being a reality show because of The Apprentice. But that was a competitive show. You really need to understand Real Housewives now that I see it. It is a great way to understand how Trump operates and the way these women use conflict to draw attention to themselves. You love it. It's a joy.
That's interesting. So go rewatch that. I'm going to give the recommendation Hacks is about to come back. And I love Jean Smart and Hannah Einbender. Yeah, they're amazing. It looks hysterical. And I think they're the best pair of like, speaking of conflict, the two, the most fantastic pair that I never expected. So I'm very excited.
for that to come back online. Anyway. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week with more. And Scott will be back from his college tour. Just so you know, he hung out with my... my son and his frat yesterday. And I can't wait to hear that story. But thank you so much, John. You can hear John on Podsafe America and love it or leave it every week, wherever you listen to podcasts. They're wonderful podcasts.
I will read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Anderjot engineered this episode. Jim McIll edited this video. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. And John, thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.