Trump's Latest Crackdown on the Press Is Straight Out of "The Autocrat's Handbook"

Scott Galloway 0:00 They build huge companies, they become obsessed with the success of these companies, and as a result, they go from being true ballers to true bitches.

Kara Swisher 0:09 [upbeat music] Hi, everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway 0:20 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher 0:21 First off, I just wanna say I was right again.

Scott Galloway 0:24 That's a shocker.

Kara Swisher 0:26 Paramount has

Kara Swisher 0:27 reached a [laughs] settlement with a coalition of 12 states that sued to block its Warner Bros., uh, Discovery takeover, uh, clearing the biggest remaining hurdle to the deal. Paramount will not have to sell off cable channels as part of the settlement, although the full terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but it looks like very much behavioral remedies and not structural ones as promised by Rob Bonta, who looks like a fool here, actually. A range of concessions reportedly discussed, including a $1.5 billion investment in production in California after threatening to leave, a dingbat editorial board for CNN and CBS to ease concerns over independence, which is completely toothless, a commitment not to sell either studio lot, I'm not sure what that's about, and a potential penalties if Paramount fails to produce 30 movies a year, which they already do. So we'll get to the White House thing that was happening, but, um, y- I wanna talk about this a little bit. I've got some props for you. Is that okay?

Scott Galloway 1:23 Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kara Swisher 1:24 So, you know, I s- I don't know if you know this, but I work for CNN sometimes. This is a CNN logo that I stole from them when I was there.

Scott Galloway 1:31 All right.

Kara Swisher 1:31 Do you like it?

Scott Galloway 1:32 Yeah, it's a cool prop.

Kara Swisher 1:32 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 1:32 Yeah, a logo.

Kara Swisher 1:33 That's going.

Scott Galloway 1:33 [laughs] Okay.

Kara Swisher 1:35 Ugh.

Scott Galloway 1:36 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 1:36 I wanna have some nice coffee here. Let's see. What is that?

Scott Galloway 1:39 Oh, wow.

Kara Swisher 1:39 You like that?

Scott Galloway 1:40 Are you making an announcement? Are you defecting?

Kara Swisher 1:41 No, not an announcement. I have a contract, uh, with, uh... This coffee is delicious. I'm gonna have some in this delightful MSNBC cup. It is, it is kind of old and wretched.

Scott Galloway 1:50 It's not MS- MSNBC. No!

Kara Swisher 1:52 Yeah. [laughs] No! In any case, no, my contr- I was just literally reading my contract today, uh, as you might imagine, when this news struck, 'cause I threatened to leave, and I have asked my agent to get me out of my contract. It, it ends December 31st, so, uh, it's only a few months, right? I'm just... I just can't. I just... I thought, like... I was trying to figure out ways I could work with them in some, like, licensing way, but then I thought, "Fuck these guys. I don't wanna work for them. I just don't." I got too much to do with you, Scott Galloway. I like-

Scott Galloway 2:22 Kara, I, I, I'm, uh, little-

Kara Swisher 2:23 And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me.

Scott Galloway 2:25 Let me give you a little inside scoop here.

Kara Swisher 2:27 Okay. Give me insight. Yeah.

Scott Galloway 2:28 I think there's a decent likelihood when you show up-

Kara Swisher 2:31 Yeah. Yeah

Scott Galloway 2:31 ... to whoever it is you show up to at CNN and say, "I want out of my contract"-

Kara Swisher 2:34 Yeah

Scott Galloway 2:34 ... they jump up and say, "Congratulations. No problem." [laughs]

Kara Swisher 2:36 No, not at all. You're wrong. You're... [laughs] I know you think that. I know you'd like to run me down.

Scott Galloway 2:41 "We'll miss you."

Kara Swisher 2:41 [laughs] No.

Scott Galloway 2:43 "Best of luck."

Kara Swisher 2:43 No. Maybe the Ellisons, that's for sure, but not, uh... No. No, they've been trying to keep me, very nicely been trying to keep me, and I have a lot of regard for the executives there now, and they've been very-

Scott Galloway 2:54 You like Dave, right? That's his name, Dave?

Kara Swisher 2:56 What? I do.

Scott Galloway 2:56 Dave Thompson, yeah.

Kara Swisher 2:56 Mark Thompson. I like Andy Tellis.

Scott Galloway 2:58 Mark Thompson, sorry. Mark Thompson.

Kara Swisher 2:58 Uh, I like Anderson. I like all. K- Kaitlan, I adore. I like all of them, every one of them, and I'm not staying.

Scott Galloway 3:04 Yeah, but we like Rebecca Cutler more.

Kara Swisher 3:06 We do. We like her.

Scott Galloway 3:07 Yeah.

Kara Swisher 3:07 She has not spoken to me-

Scott Galloway 3:09 What?

Kara Swisher 3:09 ... just about this, just for clarity. Uh-

Scott Galloway 3:11 You sound like you're in the midst of a contract and trying to avoid discovery here, in other words.

Kara Swisher 3:15 Uh, well, she hasn't, but that's true. Uh, I don't know if it's MSNBC or any... Like, listen, I'm not staying. Uh, I am not staying. I just don't have any time. I have other things that make more money, that matter more, that have a bigger audience, and I just am-

Scott Galloway 3:28 Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Kara Swisher 3:30 I'm telling you-

Scott Galloway 3:30 Said anyone with the last name Ellison.

Kara Swisher 3:32 No, I'm just saying, I just don't wanna work. What, you know, why is it, why is it they don't want me? I don't want them, and I have been very explicit.

Scott Galloway 3:39 The, I'm breaking up with you.

Kara Swisher 3:40 No, stop it.

Scott Galloway 3:41 [laughs]

Kara Swisher 3:42 Stop it. They, just stop it. They think they have shoddily... I think they are terrible media owners. I'd rather work for Rupert Murdoch.

Scott Galloway 3:49 So what other media firm do they own?

Kara Swisher 3:51 No, they own CBS. Uh, I think-

Scott Galloway 3:52 And you think they're gonna-

Kara Swisher 3:53 So I think they've been-

Scott Galloway 3:54 Oh, okay. Fair point.

Kara Swisher 3:55 Yes. Uh, they-

Scott Galloway 3:56 Fair point. [laughs]

Kara Swisher 3:56 Fair point. They-

Scott Galloway 3:56 I answered my own question before I was done with the question

Kara Swisher 3:58 ... ratings down. Let me say, I think they're terrible media owners.

Scott Galloway 4:00 Gotta love Landman.

Kara Swisher 4:01 Uh, that's fine.

Scott Galloway 4:02 You love Top Gun.

Kara Swisher 4:03 They didn't do that. They, they, they, they did. They, he did. I'd love him to make Top Gun movies the rest of his life. I'd be thrilled to watch them, and I will go to Top Gun 3.

Scott Galloway 4:11 So I'm trying to incorporate a Top Gun metaphor. I worry at MSNBC now-

Kara Swisher 4:15 Yeah, I'm not necessarily going there

Scott Galloway 4:15 ... I worry if you stayed at CNN, that the Ellisons produced, along with Top Gun, you would hit the same glass ceiling as Goose.

Kara Swisher 4:23 [laughs]

Scott Galloway 4:23 You'd hit the same glass ceiling.

Kara Swisher 4:25 Oh, well done.

Scott Galloway 4:26 Yeah, pretty good.

Kara Swisher 4:27 [laughs]

Scott Galloway 4:28 Pretty good.

Kara Swisher 4:29 I love Goose. That was a good character.

Scott Galloway 4:31 Yeah, supposedly in Top Gun 3, uh, Kelly McGillis is returning.

Kara Swisher 4:34 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 4:34 But you know who's not returning?

Kara Swisher 4:35 What?

Scott Galloway 4:36 Goose.

Kara Swisher 4:36 Oh, I know. That's very funny. Anyway, a farewell and adieu. I can't leave yet, but I will leave as soon as I can, as soon as my agent can-

Scott Galloway 4:43 You sound like you're gonna be a great employee.

Kara Swisher 4:44 [laughs]

Scott Galloway 4:45 "I'm out."

Kara Swisher 4:46 [laughs] I'm out.

Scott Galloway 4:48 Until, until I'm legally... I'm, I'm gone the moment I am no longer legally-

Kara Swisher 4:53 No, give me... No, seriously.

Scott Galloway 4:53 Yeah, let's invite her back to... Let's-

Kara Swisher 4:55 You know what?

Scott Galloway 4:56 She'd be great for the culture.

Kara Swisher 4:57 I am much in demand, Scott Galloway, and you know that.

Scott Galloway 4:59 I know you are. You're, you're a baller.

Kara Swisher 4:59 I'm just saying, I'm much in demand.

Scott Galloway 5:01 You're a star.

Kara Swisher 5:01 What would you-

Scott Galloway 5:02 Everyone's afraid of you.

Kara Swisher 5:02 What, okay, give me strategy, what I should do, besides say fuck you.

Scott Galloway 5:06 Strategy?

Kara Swisher 5:06 Yeah, fuck you is my instinct.

Scott Galloway 5:08 Your strategy, Kara, is you invest in your opportunities, not your problems.

Kara Swisher 5:12 That's correct. That's-

Scott Galloway 5:13 Broadcast media is a problem.

Kara Swisher 5:15 Yep.

Scott Galloway 5:15 And you, like many people, have a fetish for it, and think that if you see a CNN or an MSNBC now logo over your head-

Kara Swisher 5:21 Yeah

Scott Galloway 5:21 ... it makes you more credible.

Kara Swisher 5:23 Right.

Scott Galloway 5:23 You've already worked for the most credible brands in the world. You should go direct to consumer. You make more money than you've ever made anywhere else in your life talking to an irreverent frat bro.

Kara Swisher 5:33 Prick. Oops, sorry.

Scott Galloway 5:34 You should invest, you should invest in... You just started something very cool.

Kara Swisher 5:38 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 5:38 And by the way, just so our listeners know, we haven't rehearsed none of this. You started something really cool called Off with Kara Swisher, where you're making all this cultural commentary. Invest in that and invest less time, energy, and effort in an 80-year-old looking for Ari Melber to come on. I just-

Kara Swisher 5:53 Yeah, I get it. I agree with you

Scott Galloway 5:54 ... invest in the opportunity. Go-- I learned how to surf in Hawaii, and I thought, "I'm an amazing surfer. I'm gifted at, at this." And then I tried to surf in Newport, where there's real waves or harder waves, and I found out I am not a very good surfer. Go to where the snow is good and the waves are great.

Kara Swisher 6:10 You know, you are a very wise man.

Scott Galloway 6:11 And that's podcasting and direct-to-consumer. You like, you don't like anyone telling you to do anything. You are a shitty employee.

Kara Swisher 6:18 I am a sh-

Scott Galloway 6:18 And I say that affectionately

Kara Swisher 6:19 As a shitty employee yourself.

Scott Galloway 6:20 I would have made more money if I'd stayed at Morgan Stanley. I was too insecure and self-centered to work for other people. It is a skill. It's not because I'm a baller.

Kara Swisher 6:28 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 6:28 You are that in spades.

Kara Swisher 6:29 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 6:29 Invest in your opportunities, not your problems.

Kara Swisher 6:31 Thank you, Scott Galloway. I think I shall do that. I, I'm gonna focus more. There's so much op podcast opportunity, and I mean the broader podcast stuff, and some other stuff I'm interested in. I, it's so fun to try things, like doing that off with Kara Swisher, and that's gonna go somewhere. I have more stuff to do. I feel like it's right. But l- talk about the deal itself. I mean, this looks like Bonta gave in. I don't know why he was even doing it in the first place. What is your overall feel for this, away from my interests in, in, in the situation?

Scott Galloway 6:58 Sheer regulatory theater. Uh, we decided, as they should have, that two enormous media companies can merge because they need to compete with even more enormous media companies. There was no legal reason to block this merger. And, oh, but they extracted from them a promise to make more movies? That's like letting Goldman and JPMorgan merge if they promise to build more ATMs. This is, regulators started out saying, "This is Godzilla. It's an existential threat to humanity," and they settled by saying, "Well, make more movies about Godzilla."

Kara Swisher 7:36 Yeah, and then keep your studios, keep your real estate in Los Angeles.

Scott Galloway 7:39 This is total weak sauce. This is Rob Bonta deciding he wants to run for governor and giving into populist bullshit. I don't like the concentration of media, but the bottom line is, when you do the math and you look at antitrust law, there was no legal leg to stand on here, other than bothering them and trying to extract their pound of flesh. So, uh, fine, they're gonna get... Oh, and my favorite.

Kara Swisher 8:03 What?

Scott Galloway 8:03 The CNN editorial panel. [chuckles]

Kara Swisher 8:05 I know. I know. You know how I feel about that.

Scott Galloway 8:07 That's my favorite.

Kara Swisher 8:08 I, I sent you what I thought about it.

Scott Galloway 8:09 That's when, that's like when the WGA, the worst-run union in the world, extracted agreement from the studios to discuss AI. That's my favorite. We ha- you have to have a conversation with us about AI. Oh, yeah, that'll save you.

Kara Swisher 8:25 Yeah, exactly, and the editorial board's just-- I'm gonna read you something I wrote because I just think it's such a dingbat nonsense to do that. Um, this is what I wrote. Um, "A history lesson. Do you remember the 2007 five-member special editorial oversight board that Rupert Murdoch agreed to form when he bought Dow Jones to prevent meddling by him? I do, and thought it was inane then. Within a year, Uncle Satan, my nickname for Rupert, had put his minions in place, moved out Marcus Broccoli, and installed longtime factotum Robert Thompson, whom I nicknamed the Naughty Vicar, so no one was there who might complain to the board. Utterly predictable and painfully stupid. The committe- committee publicly said as much, pointing out the obvious: they were powerless. The Columbia Journalism Review aptly called it the Committee of the Absurd, and since then, repeat after me, kids, ownership equals control. If Rob Bonta thinks a toot- such a toothless entity will be effective, he is a knucklehead. Between, by the way, Murdoch had done the same tricks earlier when he bought the Times and The Sunday Times in London, both boards are nonexistent today, thus it will be with the Ellisons." I would, as I said, I'd rather work for Murdoch, but he did the same game on these people, and they're far less able owners of CBS, um, who've put in incompetent management so far, don't seem capable, it s- seem capable of controlling the media very nicely. That's what they're good at. I just think these boards-

Scott Galloway 9:43 Yeah, but-

Kara Swisher 9:44 Why don't, why don't you be on the board? Cause some trouble.

Scott Galloway 9:46 I just committed to a board that meets six times a year in California. I'm over that.

Kara Swisher 9:49 I know. You are on a good board. You're on an actually good board.

Scott Galloway 9:51 So look, this is a good merger because [chuckles] in media, media plays a really important role, especially news media. And unfortunately, news media, unless it's elevating conspiracy theory or that mRNA vaccines alter your DNA and getting content produced for free and then using AI to addict you and serve you the exact right Nissan ad at the exact right moment, it's become too expensive to do good journalism. And unless you have a benign billionaire or someone with deep pockets who sees an economic motive in funding this for ego reasons or otherwise, these things are gonna go away. Now, CBS, Paramount w- was gonna go away faster. If this merger didn't go through, that company-

Kara Swisher 10:37 Yeah

Scott Galloway 10:38 ... was really-

Kara Swisher 10:39 Trouble. Fucked

Scott Galloway 10:40 ... gonna struggle.

Kara Swisher 10:40 Fucked.

Scott Galloway 10:41 It is subscale.

Kara Swisher 10:42 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 10:42 Warner would stay in business. It just would go sideways and probably be a shitty place to work or invest. Even they're subscale. Together, they got a fighting shot. I don't think the Ellisons are as... I think the Ellisons like money more than they do Republican politics.

Kara Swisher 10:57 Oh, that's not true of Larry. It may be true of David. I think David was sort of more Democratic-y.

Scott Galloway 11:02 Ellison is on the hook personally-

Kara Swisher 11:05 Yeah, I get it, but I'm telling you, he is

Scott Galloway 11:06 ... for about $50 billion in debt.

Kara Swisher 11:08 He is very political.

Scott Galloway 11:09 He's gotta make this work-

Kara Swisher 11:11 Yeah, doesn't

Scott Galloway 11:11 ... economically.

Kara Swisher 11:12 I know. He's gonna-

Scott Galloway 11:12 And CNN, I just don't, I just don't think it's, I don't think overnight you're gonna have the ghost of Lou Dobbs on CNN. I don't know where I got that.

Kara Swisher 11:21 I don't know. The stuff they've done at CBS is pretty grotesque. But, but let me just say, let me relate it to related

Kara Swisher 11:26 news. The five major TV networks are suspending their rotating White House pool coverage after Trump administration refused to allow CNN to serve as a pool representative. This comes shortly after President Trump banned CNN, msnow, and Politico from the White House, saying media outlets shouldn't be able to report fictions and lies. Actually, they are allowed to do that, Donald Trump. Reporters from all three outlets were turned away Saturday with their White House press passes deactivated or confiscated. Trump said there was no single story that prompted the ban, calling the result of the years of negative coverage and warning that other outlets could be next. Apparently, Natalie Harp fed him all manner of negative clips from msnow. All three outlets are set to sue the administration. They have an excellent lawyer, Ted Boutrous, asking a federal judge to reverse the ban, which it probably will be, 'cause it's Con-- government shall make no law restricting the freedom of the press. Um, so, uh, they'll probably restore access. He might restore it for the Ellisons, I guess. And, but the whole, but everyone's banding together. This is important because, you know, I think it's the last gasp of an autocrat here, what he's doing, and maybe he was up late with Natalie, you know, shooting the shit. Um, but, but it is related, like who owns these things and who has the guts to stand up to this kind of nonsense.

Scott Galloway 12:39 I watched Real Time with Bill Maher because Jess was on, and there was a guy, David Gruff, Bruff? Anyway, um, and he said that he was defending First Amendment and said that Robert Kraft, who owns the Gillette Stadium in Boston, should allow Macklemore to play, and the president should allow, uh, all of these media outlets in for the White House press briefings. And I find that that's a false analogy.

Kara Swisher 13:04 Okay.

Scott Galloway 13:04 Robert Kraft owns Gillette Stadium.

Kara Swisher 13:07 He's a private person, yeah.

Scott Galloway 13:08 It's a private-- I get to decide who's in my house, and if they offend me for whatever reason, I can say, "Fuck you, you're not welcome in my home." I get to say that. If Robert Kraft feels that Macklemore is a raging anti-Semite, of which I would agree, he can say, "Yeah, I'd rather, I'd rather him just not be in my house." He gets to make that, he gets to make that assessment. The White House is our house. It's the definition of a public space. And we have decided, like, that the most important thing that we put, let me think, three, four, number one in terms of our amendments, that it's important that media has a check on government. But net-net, this ultimately ends up being a distraction because these White House press briefings, Donald Trump's ego is gonna result in him restoring it. Because he'd rather have a raucous party where occasionally someone offends him, than have a sad party that no one shows up to. And the media, even Fox, is like, "Okay, this is wrong." And as the media does, and this is a wonderful thing about the media, they do look out for each other.

Kara Swisher 14:08 Finally, yeah. I, I was waiting. I was waiting. I was like, "Is Fox gonna..." 'Cause the, uh, Fox News person is head of the White House Correspondents Association, and she's been very suck-uppy to Trump. But she did make strong statements, you gotta give her credit. Um, you remember I was so against that stupid White House Correspondents' Dinner 'cause-

Scott Galloway 14:25 Well, what happens when the Biden or the, the Har- or the Newsom administration blocks Fox? I mean-

Kara Swisher 14:30 Should not. Should not.

Scott Galloway 14:32 Agree, but my point is, they all realize we're next. I mean, uh, we can't have this. We've gotta have... Anyways, this, I think this ends up, uh, uh, you're in this business and have a better gut for it. My thesis, another distraction. Ultimately-

Kara Swisher 14:49 Of course

Scott Galloway 14:49 ... everyone's back in the room.

Kara Swisher 14:50 Yes, but-

Scott Galloway 14:51 Your thoughts

Kara Swisher 14:51 ... it, it is another distraction. You're absolutely right. I think he's, you know, he got ginned up by Natalie at night, um, and not in the ways that are fun. Um, and I think-

Scott Galloway 14:59 We don't know that. Could be a lot of fun going on there

Kara Swisher 15:00 ... she is the most influential per- And I, I doubt it. Uh, she's the most influential member of this administration, by the way. Um, 'cause they, 'cause Susie Wiles was away, and that's when this stuff dropped, um, from what the reporting. Um, I think it's, um, it is a distraction, but boy, Scott, it's terrifying. You know what I mean? Like, this is e-

Scott Galloway 15:21 The autocrat's handbook?

Kara Swisher 15:22 I, yes. I think he's on the last vestiges of an autocrat situation, and I think it'll be like what happened in Hungary, uh, you know, with Orbán, et cetera. Uh, uh, it's still disturbing in the United States of America. Hungary doesn't have the First Amendment. We do. And it's so dead clear here. And it does matter who owns these things, which is why the Ellisons are ill-equipped to do it. I don't think they have any backbone. They'll suck up to anyone that, that'll matter. I think they're gonna get a buzz saw from the Democrats if things change in November. Um, and I think that's another thing that's gonna happen and hurt that company quite a bit. That said, they have to, like, know what... Media ownership requires a certain amount of backbone. It really, these days. Um, and, and, and I fear they don't have it. Um, I, again, as I said, like, Murdoch's actually, his newspapers, whether it's the Journal or some others, have been very good reporting, like really strong. I wouldn't call it anti-Trump reporting. It just is really tough on the corruption of the Trump administration. Um, and you need tho- you need those, those things. And so it, it's, it, it is a distraction, but it's also incredibly worrisome that he does this. Also 'cause I think he's by himself late at night with this young, stupid woman. I think that what's incredible to watch a lot of these cabinet members, and we're gonna, g- we have a very interesting quote right now. Um, but there's all these cabinet members, uh, you know, just jumped on the thing, of course, 'cause they don't say things. The worst of them was Scott Bessent, who, m- the Gray Poupon man is working my last nerve at this point. But the press cares more about press than anything else after the White House correspond-

Scott Galloway 17:02 Well, CNN is platforming him, Kara.

Kara Swisher 17:04 I, uh, you know, he is the Treasury Secretary, but, like-

Scott Galloway 17:07 Oh, I'm sorry. I was thinking of Scott Jennings.

Kara Swisher 17:09 Oh, Scott Jennings.

Scott Galloway 17:09 I withdraw the comment. Sorry.

Kara Swisher 17:10 Oh, I'm sure he'll get a raise in the new Ellison administration. Uh, good, he can take my money. Um, uh, but y- Scott, they, they all backed him. And so when we're on this topic, this idea of quislings and cowards and people that enable, Trump is clearly off his rocker, and he, he loves the press and hates them. It's the same old story. But let's hear a clip from Jake Weisberg, who has a book out on all of the people and institutions who have failed to stand up to Trump called Profiles in Cowardice. Let's listen.

Speaker 17:38 The biggest coward in America today is Jeff Bezos. The President of the United States is attacking the free press. He has banned several news organizations from entering the White House. He's taken their press badges away. And what is the owner of one of the most important newspapers in the United States doing? Nothing. What's he saying? Nothing publicly, and I suspect nothing privately. And what makes Bezos such a coward is that he didn't used to be this way. In Trump One, he was a stalwart owner of The Washington Post. He stood up to Trump's bullying. He said and did all the right things. So what's happened? I think the answer has to do with his competition with Elon Musk in space. That's the thing he cares about. It's the thing he cares about more than the free press. It's the thing he cares about more than American democracy. I used to think that when you had a billion dollars, that was the ultimate "fuck you" money, pardon the expression. But it turns out it's "I'm fucked" money, because it gives Trump power over you. He can come after your assets. He can take away what you have. And people, in a way, who are vastly wealthy seem to be more threatened in terms of what their ambitions are, what they have to lose, than people who have a lot less.

Kara Swisher 18:52 Anyway, it, it is interesting what's gonna happen to this class of cowards. Um, I don't know how you look at it. I mean, I get going along with a president, but at some point, not to defend the F- First Amendment, and which was all over, whether it was Mike Waltz, that guy, or any of these Congress people, it's really s- That's what worries me, Scott. That's what really gets me, is they're like, "Huh, good point. They're really mean to you."

Scott Galloway 19:17 I've been thinking about this a lot, and that is I, I think you and I, the, uh, have both thought you want just the right amount of money. I have some friends who I would argue have exactly the wrong amount of money, and that is they've made enough money so they feel no impetus to take a job, and no job meets the bar they have for what they should do. And they wake up two, three, five years later and they've done fuck all. But they don't have enough money to retire or live the life they wanna lead for the rest of their lives. They have exactly the wrong amount of money. There's something to having a right amount of money where you don't let perfect be the enemy of good and you just get on starting, like, making your career and making progress. It's great to not have economic anxiety. We have the right amount of money in the sense I was thinking about that, a- and that is we have given enough m- We, we have enough economic security, and this is a wonderful thing, where we have independence. And what it appears is that when you have billions, it creates interdependence.

Kara Swisher 20:12 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 20:13 You start becoming dependent upon the government for contracts, and that is-

Kara Swisher 20:17 Yep

Scott Galloway 20:17 ... fuck you money turns into wealth that gives you more to protect. And w- uh, we were told billionaires w- would be value add because they'd be uniquely independent and no one could buy them, and it turns out the opposite may be true, that they may have more soft tissue. Rockets need government contracts, banks need regulators, media company mergers need approvals. So kinda the bigger the empire, the more windows somebody-

Kara Swisher 20:45 Yeah

Scott Galloway 20:45 ... can throw a brick through.

Kara Swisher 20:48 Yep.

Scott Galloway 20:48 And I, I used to m- always get angry at these guys and say, "What's the point-

Kara Swisher 20:51 What the heck

Scott Galloway 20:51 ... of having all this money?"

Kara Swisher 20:52 Right.

Scott Galloway 20:53 But what I'm more empathetic to is that they build huge companies with a lot of people depending on their shareholder value. They become obsessed with the success of these companies. They don't wanna be the guy that, like, Amazon or Blue Origin or the, uh, whatever it is. And as a result, they go from being true ballers to true bitches.

Kara Swisher 21:15 Right.

Scott Galloway 21:15 Uh, uh, so-

Kara Swisher 21:16 [laughs]

Scott Galloway 21:19 ... uh, uh, is, they be-

Kara Swisher 21:19 Ballers to bitches

Scott Galloway 21:20 ... ballers to bitches. So there's... Anyways, I, I came up with this insight last night under the influence of edibles. There's a curve of the right amount of money.

Kara Swisher 21:29 Oh, a curve. What is that number? Do you have a number? Depends on who you are.

Scott Galloway 21:33 I think about this, I think about this way too much.

Kara Swisher 21:34 'Cause you need a lot of more edibles than I do, for example.

Scott Galloway 21:37 Yeah, I, I have a, I have an equation for this and I wrote a book about it. Times your annual burn, including how much money you'd like to give away, take that number, times it by 25, and once you have that number, realize that money is ink in your pen and it can write news stories, but it's no longer your story, and you should be totally focused on relationships and enjoying your life. A- and beyond that, money becomes another thing you need to manage, and also there becomes a fear of losing it.

Kara Swisher 22:09 Right. That is exactly right. That's exactly right, Scott. I think you're right. That's what I was thinking after I heard this. I was like, "Oh my God, no. I just don't wanna even figure it out. I just, I just wanna walk away and make something as, that's mine." That's all I felt like. You know what I mean? Like, that I own, that I control. You're a lot easier to manage than all these people. [laughs] And totally enjoyable, let me say. Totally.

Scott Galloway 22:31 Thank you for saying that.

Kara Swisher 22:32 Even, even when we-

Scott Galloway 22:33 That may be the nicest thing you've ever said

Kara Swisher 22:34 ... even when we argue. Y- you know, by the way, there is an issue around Robert Kraft. We're not gonna get into it, but it is a little scary. Uh, the, the issue I have with Robert Kraft is, like, he lets Kanye in and not this guy. Like, if you're gonna do this, be consistent. I didn't like him colluding with everybody.

Scott Galloway 22:49 You don't have to be consistent. You can have whoever you want over for dinner.

Kara Swisher 22:51 I get it, but the colluding among all of them was mm, mm, hmm, hmm.

Scott Galloway 22:56 Who? I, see, I don't know that part. Who was colluding?

Kara Swisher 22:58 Yeah. He, all the, he, he ta- he called all the other stadium owners, all the rich guys, and they, and that, to me, that's collusion. I'm sorry. It's just kind of, oh, wow, that's kinda scary.

Scott Galloway 23:06 Well, that's a little mean girls, but you're allowed to do it.

Kara Swisher 23:08 I know, but it's not make, doesn't make me happy. I think it's just... I think-

Scott Galloway 23:11 There you go

Kara Swisher 23:12 ... I think we should let everybody say what they wanna say. That's what I say. Anyway.

Scott Galloway 23:15 Uh, you wanna come to my house-

Kara Swisher 23:17 Yeah

Scott Galloway 23:17 ... at, with, with a, with a-

Kara Swisher 23:18 I'm now becoming the free speaker

Scott Galloway 23:18 ... with a free nose and make fun of Jews? You're not coming to my house.

Kara Swisher 23:21 I n- uh, yes, I agree.

Scott Galloway 23:22 You don't have First Amendment rights in my house.

Kara Swisher 23:23 I, I would never do that, by the way.

Scott Galloway 23:25 Well, I know. I'm not saying you would.

Kara Swisher 23:26 Yeah, yeah.

Scott Galloway 23:26 I'm just trying to make a point. I don't-

Kara Swisher 23:28 Yes, I get it. I get it. It's very, it's complicated.

Scott Galloway 23:29 I think that whatever his name is, Macklemore, has a right to go on Broadway with a microphone dressed up however he wants and say very offensive things. Uh, uh, public space, have at it, brother.

Kara Swisher 23:39 Yeah, yeah.

Scott Galloway 23:40 But-

Kara Swisher 23:40 In this case, what he said wasn't as offensive. It was the past stuff, I think, that they were reacting to, some of the past behaviors and dress-ups and stuff like that. Uh, that said-

Scott Galloway 23:49 It's pretty ugly

Kara Swisher 23:49 ... Ed Sheeran looks pretty... [laughs]

Scott Galloway 23:50 It's pretty ugly.

Kara Swisher 23:52 Ed... Oh, I didn't believe I have to think about Ed Sheeran.

Scott Galloway 23:53 Poor Ed Sheeran.

Kara Swisher 23:54 Oh, poor Ed Sheeran.

Scott Galloway 23:55 Poor little Ed Sheeran.

Kara Swisher 23:56 These celebrities try so hard not to get involved, and they just get, getting dragged in.

Scott Galloway 24:00 Yeah, he kinda woke up and like-

Kara Swisher 24:01 Oh

Scott Galloway 24:01 ... "What the fuck?"

Kara Swisher 24:02 Yeah, he then, of course, did a little virtue signaling at his concert. Anyway-

Scott Galloway 24:06 What did he say?

Kara Swisher 24:06 I don't care about it

Scott Galloway 24:07 ... I, I haven't been following that.

Kara Swisher 24:07 Oh, he's like, "The people in Gaza are suffering," that kinda stuff. He did one of those speeches.

Scott Galloway 24:11 Oh, wow.

Kara Swisher 24:11 I was like-

Scott Galloway 24:11 You're really going on a limb there.

Kara Swisher 24:13 Yeah, I know, exactly. Um, he just, I just don't wanna think about Ed Sheeran. I, I don't like him, so it [laughs] doesn't matter about him.

Scott Galloway 24:18 You don't like his music?

Kara Swisher 24:19 No, he's just stupid. It's like Taylor Swift music to me.

Scott Galloway 24:22 Well, that, that is anti-Palestine.

Kara Swisher 24:24 Yeah. I know it is. [laughs]

Scott Galloway 24:24 Oh my God. You must like Taylor... Oh my God.

Kara Swisher 24:27 [laughs] I love her.

Scott Galloway 24:29 You don't like his music?

Kara Swisher 24:30 I don't. I hate it. Um, in any case, here's the last thing I would say about this whole thing is where is Elon Musk the free speech warrior on all this?

Scott Galloway 24:39 Oh, God. Come on.

Kara Swisher 24:39 Nowhere to be seen. This, these people, as Amanda, my wife, says, were pretending. All these free speech warriors were pretending.

Scott Galloway 24:47 Yeah, no, it's all bullshit.

Kara Swisher 24:48 And they're... It's all bullshit. Anyway, let's get back to the tech of it all. Uh, when we get back on after a quick break, we get ready for Amazon blocks Meta AI's assistant, Muse. [gentle music] Support for this show comes from Granola. Sometimes in a meeting, you can get so focused on writing down every word that you realize you're not actually listening or contributing to the conversation. That's where Granola can help. Granola is an AI-powered notepad that makes your meeting notes useful. It captures what happens in your meeting, and it turns it into clean, structured notes with decisions and action items pulled out and made easy to find. It transforms a long, complicated call into something you can actually reference weeks later. Your notes become searchable, organized, and actionable. That way, you can get better notes in a central place while you actually stay present in your meeting. There's no cumbersome setup either. Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into video conferencing tools you already use. It's just your normal meeting with superpowers. Once you try it on a first meeting, it's hard to go without. You can try it totally free. Head to granola.ai/pivot. That's granola.ai/pivot to get your time back. Go to granola.ai/pivot and try it on your next call. [gentle music] Support for this show comes from Upwork. The most successful business owners don't do it all themselves. They delegate. Upwork lets you build a team of highly skilled specialists for every function your business needs, so you can focus on what you do best and let the experts handle the rest. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across more than 125 categories. Find talent and start filling those skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. You can browse profiles, review people's past work, and get help scoping the role. It's time to hire confidently while sticking to your timeline. Upwork also has Business Plus, which lets you access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. With AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. Upwork can also take care of operational stuff like contracts and payment, so you don't have to worry about it. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, upwork.com. [gentle music] Scott, we're back. It's time for some AI news 'cause, you know, it's not killing us this week, but they're just, they're just beefing with each other. First

Kara Swisher 27:19 up, Amazon has blocked Meta's new Muse AI assistant from shopping on Amazon, saying Meta didn't get permission for letting the agent access its store. Amazon says Muse raises security and privacy concerns 'cause it can access cons- customer accounts and order histories, and it doesn't identify itself as an AI agent while browsing. It's interesting 'cause you have... I just downloaded Muse, and I d- gave Mark Zuckerberg almost zero access to anything, including my Amazon. It wanted to go buy something for me on Amazon, and I said, "No." I didn't give it the access to it. Um, i, uh, but if I give it the access, it's none of Amazon's fucking business if I want this thing to shop for me, not that I would let it. I didn't let Muse have my, um, mail. It's probably gonna be very ineffective. Or my access to my Gmail or access to my calendar or access to my... Some people are giving their financial stuff, not giving it acc- I just wanna see how it does on lots of little things. Like I'm-

Scott Galloway 28:11 Right

Kara Swisher 28:11 ... going to Vienna tomorrow. What's a good walk? That kind of stuff. Um, what do you think about this push, pushing them, um, uh, pushing back Amazon? This is gonna happen a lot, right? Correct? 'Cause they're gonna want you to use their Amazon AI, presumably, which I use, by the way, when I use the service.

Scott Galloway 28:30 I, I like your take, and I'm just sort of processing this real time because, for example, if you use a VPN-

Kara Swisher 28:36 Mm-hmm

Scott Galloway 28:36 ... and you do it at 2:00 in the morning, or you fool... You say you dial into United Airlines-

Kara Swisher 28:44 Yeah

Scott Galloway 28:44 ... or JetBlue-

Kara Swisher 28:44 Yeah

Scott Galloway 28:45 ... from a different country at a different time, it'll give you a lower fare.

Kara Swisher 28:48 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 28:48 Because it discriminates.

Kara Swisher 28:50 Right.

Scott Galloway 28:50 And so the airlines wanna block VPNs. A- actually, I don't know if that's true, but I would imagine they have an economic incentive. And Amazon has said, "We don't want people super smart," or, "We don't want thousands of agents coordinating f- trying to figure out the lowest price and when to buy," and they're blocking it. My initial reaction was, I think this is an incredible product app opportunity for Amazon, and I want the same Amazon toll booth gate governor to be deployed across every content creator such that-

Kara Swisher 29:21 Hmm

Scott Galloway 29:22 ... when any AI or crawler comes for any of my IP-

Kara Swisher 29:26 Yeah

Scott Galloway 29:26 ... I set the parameters on whether I want it done.

Kara Swisher 29:30 Mm-hmm.

Scott Galloway 29:30 I wanna charge for it, and then the bot decides if it wants to come in, if it wants to pay the toll.

Kara Swisher 29:33 Yeah, that's actually really smart. That's a great business opportunity.

Scott Galloway 29:36 Because the model here is pretty basic. People say, well, AI, AI is effectively ingesting every piece of human IP ever created, strip mining it, and selling it back to the people who it's putting out of work. There's a real legitimate concern there, and the model is very basic. When you listen to KROQ 106.7, Rock of the '80s in Los Angeles, which is the greatest radio station in history, and you see, you listen to the B-52s, at the end of the year, KROQ play, uh, pays the recording artist, whatever, call it-

Kara Swisher 30:11 Yeah, RIAA-

Scott Galloway 30:11 They pay them-

Kara Swisher 30:12 ... I think it is. Whatever, yeah.

Scott Galloway 30:13 They pay them, call it, a million bucks 'cause all of the artists have agreed to license their music, and then the rights association distributes it out. And then they go, "Okay, KROQ, you are 1% of our playlist," and they send $10,000 to Warner Brothers, who represents the B-52s. I think we need the same technology here. I'm all for AI having access to data. I would like AI to have access to my data. I like it when people say, "Write something in the voice of Scott Galloway," or, "What, what is the lesson on sweating and economic security from algebra?" I just wanna be either compensated for it or I wanna-

Kara Swisher 30:47 A- actually, it's a smarter way to get co- actually, now that you... 'Cause it used to be you sort of get a vig if they got, you pay pennies, and that was always so confusing. It is a smart way to get paid for content. I think the issue here is these two beasts fighting, AI beasts fighting each other. AI A- Amazon ha- has a ton of AI in it. So I use Amazon a lot, uh, much to my chagrin and my wife's chagrin. Uh, but it's really effective, and I'm not quite... I have to sort of stack rank the people I'm offended with in tech. Um, and it's m- I'm focused on Andy Jassy, not Jeff Bezos in this situation, um, which is a stupid excuse, I know. Um, but, uh, but they use a ton of AI, and I find myself using it more and more. Does this... Like, I just bought, it sounds silly, but I want my washers and dryers to move out so I could clean behind them 'cause I'm anal retentive. And I said, "Oh, does this hold this much weight?" Or, "What about this kind of washing machine I had?" And it answered me. It was like instead of me searching around, or, "How high is it off the ground?" And instead of me... I could have found it, but you'd have to sort of sort out, you know, scroll, scroll, scroll, click, click, click, essentially. And in this case, it answered in seconds. Um, the same thing with Muse. Have you downloaded Muse yet or not? You're the most promiscuous person on Earth on these things. Did you not download it yet?

Scott Galloway 32:03 That was a lot of meaning. Um, I haven't, but it's number one in the App Store, and I actually, I, I'm not sure, and I'm, I'm gonna think this through more. I wouldn't be surprised if Muse ends up being the biggest player in AI.

Kara Swisher 32:15 I would agree. I would agree. There's another company called Instinct, which is a smaller company that also gets... I was looking at the... Someone sent me a, a list of how good these things are, and Muse and Instinct rate at the top compared to all of them. Um, although I think you're gonna use AIs separately. Like, the Amazon AIs, I don't think Muse will be as helpful as the Amazon AI on what I'm buying, right? It might be okay, but com- I c- I get better information from Amazon. But it will be a race to see which AI you tend to use as a utility going forward. I just don't wanna give Mark Zuckerberg access to my email. I worry, what if I have an email i- in there that something about him that I'm working on? Or who knows? Like, I don't... I c- I can just imagine it, and that's my worry is who do you trust? Do you trust Apple? I don't trust Apple as much as I used to, that's for sure.

Scott Galloway 33:04 You shouldn't have to trust companies. You should trust regulators to make laws.

Kara Swisher 33:06 Right. But, and, and I, I was looking at it very carefully, and I suspect it's easy to hack. That's one of the things. But you do have to give permission, and it has less... The m- more permission you give it to access your stuff, the better it is for you as an assistant. I called my assistant on Muse Mark, by the way, and then I've now ordered it to look like Mark Zuckerberg, so I can order Mark Zuckerberg around. Um, but it's a really interesting... I, I would recommend you trying that, and I'm trying Instinct too, um, just to try it. But again, it's not as much efficacy without stuff. But these guys are gonna, these, Amazon, uh, Apple, uh, Facebook, uh, Meta are gonna battle it out over who your assistant is at this point, and I guess Microsoft. I don't know. I think, I think Facebook could win here quite handily.

Scott Galloway 33:56 The, the brightest mind in business is Mark Zuckerberg, and unfortunately, most good CEOs verge on sociopathy. He verges on psychopathy.

Kara Swisher 34:07 [laughs]

Scott Galloway 34:07 And, uh, so-

Kara Swisher 34:09 He'll do well

Scott Galloway 34:10 ... but think about how brilliant he is. He finds an incredibly-

Kara Swisher 34:12 He makes a good product

Scott Galloway 34:13 ... he finds an incredibly attractive person to serve as heat shield and be the comms person and says to him, "For 10, 50, $100 million, use Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg," and who's the latest heat shield that's reputation is gonna be in tatters in about 36 months?

Kara Swisher 34:25 D- D- Dina Powell.

Scott Galloway 34:26 Yeah, Dina's about to become the new face of awful, but she's, she knows it. She's a smart woman, and she can surround herself with a lot of people who like her and a lotta, a lotta, a lot of Vaseline on the lens.

Kara Swisher 34:36 Well, she is charming.

Scott Galloway 34:38 There... Sheryl Sandberg was one of those, like-

Kara Swisher 34:40 [laughs]

Scott Galloway 34:40 The only argument about Sheryl Sandberg was, was she g- was she gonna be California governor and president until we figured out she, she invented a business model that where 15-year-old girls were cutting themselves and then tried to cover it up. And then Nick Clegg with his charming British accent. Okay. All right, Nick, you're lying too. The latest highest paid liar in history who's... He, he's so good at this. He finds these incredibly attractive people. I bet the conversation is very straightforward. "Your reputation is about to be ruined for the rest of your life."

Kara Swisher 35:09 Yeah, but you get to sit on that sweet, sweet dough.

Scott Galloway 35:11 But you'll be... But you can-

Kara Swisher 35:12 But you wouldn't do it

Scott Galloway 35:13 ... you can console yourself in your villa in St. Barts and on your private jet.

Kara Swisher 35:17 Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Galloway 35:18 Uh, uh, he's... And not only that, his ability to go w- to, to, to skate to where the puck is. And here's the thing, AI, loosely speaking, in terms of who wins, the three legs of the stool are the compute, the model itself, how sophisticated it is, your access to GPUs or infrastructure for inference and compute, and then the raw material is the data or the input. I would argue that the part that gets commodified is the actual technology or the LLM itself. Everyone can buy the GPUs as, as long as you kiss Jensen's ass long enough and you can find the money.

Kara Swisher 35:56 Well, he's getting tiresome.

Scott Galloway 35:57 The point of differentiation will be your access to first-party data. Who has more access to first-party data than anyone in the world?

Kara Swisher 36:04 Meta. I agree with you. I agree with you.

Scott Galloway 36:04 Meta.

Kara Swisher 36:05 I think it's, it's between Meta and Apple, and Apple's really slow on this.

Scott Galloway 36:07 Well, I don't think Apple wants to be... I think they're gonna outsource it. I think they're gonna outsource it.

Kara Swisher 36:09 As an agent, like creating an agent for you. Like, Siri has been such a fucking disaster. Anyway, it'll be an interesting fight between companies like Amazon keeping people out, 'cause they're not gonna want Muse up in their grill, right? That's the thing. And that's, and it's, it is powerful. But I have to say, if I give Muse permission to look at my Amazon data, fuck you, Amazon. But I'm not going to Amazon, but-

Scott Galloway 36:30 But, but you just said something, access. The biggest on... People always ask me, "What do, what do you do with AI?" And I say, "I use it to edit stuff. I look for data." But the biggest unlock was I gave Claude Pro or CoWork, whatever it's called, these companies have terrible brands, so rather... Anyways, permission to look at my email Oh my God. I, I'm like-

Kara Swisher 36:48 Yeah, I know

Scott Galloway 36:49 ... I, I read about a company I invested in eight years ago, and I have no idea. I can d- please look at my emails, see how many shares I own, then look at the web and see what those shares are worth in the secondary market.

Kara Swisher 36:58 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 36:58 And it comes back and says, "You've lost 80% of your value."

Kara Swisher 37:01 Right.

Scott Galloway 37:01 But at least I know.

Kara Swisher 37:02 Yeah. [laughs] Now you know.

Scott Galloway 37:03 It's like that South Park episode. Cartman goes into a bank. He got, he got a bond from his grandfather, and he's like, "I'm here to invest $50." And like, "Okay," dun, dun-dun, dun, "And it's gone."

Kara Swisher 37:12 [laughs] That's true. What a great show that is-

Scott Galloway 37:14 And it's gone

Kara Swisher 37:14 ... I have to say. In other AI news, just, this is interesting. Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX,

Kara Swisher 37:19 uh, AI, and Google are being sued by a group of AI subscribers who claim the companies illegally agreed to slow down AI development. The plaintiffs argue that a coordinated slowdown would hurt consumers by making products improve more slowly while subscribers keep paying the same price. It's, it, this is an innovative way to do this. Um, y- you know, th- th- they're facing heat everywhere. What, you slow down, speed up. We need, we are paying money for this stuff, good, good money for this stuff. Uh, it's gonna kill us, that kind of stuff. And in related news, uh, Donald

Kara Swisher 37:49 Trump says he's creating an AI force modeled on the Space Force while d- dismissing concerns about AI as a hoax. He's offered few details about his AI force. I think he just made it up in the middle of the night. It's unclear whether it would be military, civilian agency, how it would operate, or where funding would come from. Trump also says he'll name a new czar soon, a position previously held by David Sacks. And grift watch alert, as Trump pushes back on the calls for AI slowdown, he and his family are profiting from the AI boom, what a surprise, according to The Washington Post. By the way, even if Jeff Bezos is a coward, the Post news section is doing a great job. Trump's investment accounts have disclosed nearly 30,000 security transactions since his return to White House. Transactions include buying and selling shares in companies that provide the chip servers and energy powering AI. The White House says the investments are handled by independent managers. I'm sure he's in li- I'm sure it's the same, the same feeling of paying back the Russian, uh, person who paid for, uh, Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding. So talk a little bit of this. You've got the political part. You've got the lawsuits that go all kinds of ways. There's obviously the political elements of, of what's happening. Um, and then over in California, Gavin Newsom just issued an executive order to speed up two AI safety laws and explore required AI, requiring AI companies to build a kill switch. Talk about the, the, all this sort of shifting forces all over the place, whether it's legal, political, state.

Scott Galloway 39:10 Uh, so a lot here. I, I think, I think they've mislabeled this. I don't think they should refer to it as a kill switch. I think we need circuit breakers, and there's just never been a need or a bigger wide space for a regulatory body to come in and have subpoena power, testing, and approval requirements, hold periods, the equivalent of the NTSB, that every inci- every incident you have to report immediately. We can absolute... I, I believe we can absolutely handle it. Um, uh, you know, so every CEO can believe AI is dangerous and still be rationally compelled to accelerate because this is, what is, this is, is the prisoner's dilemma, and I don't think a pause is realistic. I think the incentives are against that, and also, there are some really wonderful things happening with AI acceleration, including trying to address climate change. So the strange thing about the industry, the, the people building the bomb are also the ones telling us the bombs scare the shit out of them while investors ask for another $100 billion to build a bigger bomb before the other guy does, and that's why voluntary coordination just doesn't work here. It's economically unstable and why coordination would instantly create antitrust questions. The biggest opportunity for the Trump administration, which I think they'll miss, is a really thoughtful administration would've already had several hundred diplomats, economists, technologists on, from China and the US holed up somewhere in Alaska or in South Korea outlining a memo of understanding around cooperation around AI.

Kara Swisher 40:52 But what about this Space Force? He loves to have a Space Force or an AI force and a czar and this and that. This is a, this requires an enormous, as you said, coordination both domestically and internationally, and instead, he wants to have some guy in charge. Like, "This is my AI guy."

Scott Galloway 41:09 Some dude.

Kara Swisher 41:09 Like-

Scott Galloway 41:09 Yeah, that's loyal to me

Kara Swisher 41:10 ... loyal to me, and is, like-

Scott Galloway 41:11 And that's gonna give me a good jacket and a good photo op

Kara Swisher 41:12 ... so self-interested, like David Sacks has been. And then he himself is buying and selling stocks in this area. I mean, the fact, you know, the, the, the, the, um, crypto bill collapsed. The CLARITY Act just ab- There was a great story in, I think, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal about the collapse of it, largely 'cause, one, Brian Armstrong, who was leading it at Coinbase, is a, is a horse's ass. That's one. And two, um, they couldn't, you know, the grift of Trump was so massive that it, that it gave Democrats an in to, like, torpedo it, and, and rightfully so because they wouldn't do the correct, um, you know, stopping, you know, this, this grifter family from taking things, and they're doing the exact same thing over in, um, over in, uh, in, uh, AI investments.

Scott Galloway 41:58 Yeah. So there's two things here. There's space, and there's, there's corruption. I think one of the biggest opportunities... So amongst the many existential threats facing Americans right now, I, I harken back to the days when the elevators were gonna stop and Y2K or Greek sovereign debt was supposedly gonna affect all of Europe and take the global economy down.

Kara Swisher 42:18 Yeah. Remember Greek debt?

Scott Galloway 42:19 I, I, I long for the days of-

Kara Swisher 42:21 This is bigger

Scott Galloway 42:21 ... of just people dying from COVID.

Kara Swisher 42:23 Yeah. Right.

Scott Galloway 42:23 It just-

Kara Swisher 42:23 Oh, God. Don't say that. God.

Scott Galloway 42:25 This is... Yeah, but I mean, think about this. E- every day it's a, a mass extinction event. And well, but one of those existential crises is, in fact, our debt, and I'm writing a lot about this right now. A third rail, everyone talks about the third rail of, of entitlements. We need to have a serious conversation around our military spending. And there is a big opportunity to take the one word that defines the Ukrainian and the war in Iran, and that is asymmetry, and figure out a way to partner with companies like Anduril and say, "Okay, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, i-i... There's just been so much creep." When you have a weapons program for a plane, which is a great plane, that's gonna cost $1.5 trillion, and the Pentagon hasn't passed an audit, let's think big. How could we take, how could we turn our, our military into the most lethal fighting force ever that costs $500 billion a year instead of $1.5 trillion? 'Cause the problem is, we associate that number with macho.

Kara Swisher 43:34 Right.

Scott Galloway 43:34 And every Democrat is afraid-

Kara Swisher 43:36 Right

Scott Galloway 43:36 ... to say, "Let's take it down to 1.49 'cause that means I don't have testicles."

Kara Swisher 43:41 Right. But, you know, it's, it's, it's Hegseth that's trying to integrate AI into it. It's just that he's a moron, and it's not the person you wanna be doing something so critic-

Scott Galloway 43:49 Well, that's a competence issue.

Kara Swisher 43:50 Right, yeah.

Scott Galloway 43:50 But there is something about asymmetric warfare that leverages our unique advantage about our ability to haul stuff into space, our ability around connectivity, the fact that we have the best universities in the world looking at this stuff. And also, also, it might make sense to partner with the EU, Canada-

Kara Swisher 44:09 Oh, that would be nice

Scott Galloway 44:10 ... and possibly, possibly-

Kara Swisher 44:13 Ukraine

Scott Galloway 44:14 ... China.

Kara Swisher 44:15 Also, also Ukraine. Do you see what they're doing, blowing up all manner of things in Russia, which Trump is trying to get them to stop?

Scott Galloway 44:20 On, on-

Kara Swisher 44:22 Unbelievable

Scott Galloway 44:22 ... what, an $80 billion milit-

Kara Swisher 44:24 Unbelievable what this country is doing

Scott Galloway 44:25 ... So the, the most successful fighting force in the world is doing it on a budget of 80 billion-

Kara Swisher 44:29 Yeah

Scott Galloway 44:29 ... and we're losing a war in Iran on $1.5 trillion? How do we have [laughs] five times the fighting force and lethality of the Ukrainian army for $400 billion or $500 billion instead of $1.5 trillion, where we have, we have literally $1 billion bombers-

Kara Swisher 44:42 May I make a historical point? Uh, most of the people that fought the Roman Empire had equal amounts of... There was not a lot of innovation in weaponry. Equal amounts of weapons, same weapons. They did it through organization, discipline, and, and s- strategy really, right? And, and in this case, y- it's not, it's not necessarily the weapons. It's that how do you, how do you deploy it? And we should be able to do this. It is kind of shocking, um, how, how much Ukraine is doing with very little money. And of course, Trump is trying to stop them for, because he's Putin's bitch. Anyway, um, th- this is the last thing.

Kara Swisher 45:18 Anthropic is reportedly pushing its IPO from October to November. Investors are talking about a potential $2 trillion valuation. Anthropic's expected to reach more than $100 billion in a- a- billion dollars in annualized revenue by the end of the year, up from 65 billion as of July. The company could publicly release financial documents about the offering as soon as a couple weeks from now. I'm sure you'll be poring over them. Those, those sources tell the Wall Street Journal the decision to aim for November was made before the former Anthropic researcher warned that AI companies are moving too fast. Give us some predictions. Will Anthropic's IPO really happen this year? Will it be bigger than SpaceX? It would be if that's the case. And also, there is... People feel like the latest version of ChatGPT is getting some real traction. I forget what it's called. They all have new fucking names. It drives me crazy. Um, but, uh, do you feel... What do you, how do you look at this? This is a shift, and it was, again, before this hair on fire stuff around, uh, this researcher. Let me just make one note. It's incred- I'm working on a book right now that, and I went back and found some old speeches of Sam Altman. 2015, he said virtually the same thing this researcher said. So it's, this is not new, a lot of these worries. He wrote an essay, the first sentence of which is essentially, "AI will kill all of humanity," or could kill all of humanity. Anyway, uh, what do you think about the Anthropic IPO? But let's buy some stocks, Scott. What do you think about it?

Scott Galloway 46:38 Well, so a $2 trillion valuation is what they're saying, and $100 billion run rate by the year, end of the year. It's not a company going public. It's a country's GDP going public, and that's why Trump has been so compromised. He wants a piece of it, and he sees it as more important. So he's like, "Distinctive extinction risk, existential risk, go baby, go." I doubt it gets done by the end of the year because of all of the different... Well, th- [sighs] I think they have to. I, to a certain extent, I don't wanna say I feel sorry for these guys, but they have their Series A, B, C, D, E, and F investors. Think, there, there are probably no less than 50 VCs who managed to get into the B or C round of Anthropic who are sitting on a septic tank of shit that just didn't work. And the difference between them raising Fund III and being a hero and being the guy who started a VC fund and it didn't work is whether this thing gets public at the valuation. So he's got... In addition, he probably has thousands of people who've put a down payment on a ridiculously overpriced house in San Francisco who borrowed from their in-laws saying, "Oh, it's gonna go public in three months and I'm gonna have $11 million." There are a lot of incentives for this guy to get public. At the same time, not having, not having put in place guardrails, not having put in place or understanding the regulatory framework. I mean, there's a lot of things that just say maybe a pause to slow down that gives them a chance to maybe kind of check back on the CapEx and report a quarter of increased, or gives people greater visibility into where they... They, they released one of these ridiculous WeWork-like EBITDA statements saying, "Well, if you don't look, if you take out inference and compute, we're profitable." It's like what, when WeWork tried to calculate EBITDA-

Kara Swisher 48:29 If you take out the flour, the bread is really, yeah.

Scott Galloway 48:31 Take out the, take out...

Kara Swisher 48:33 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 48:33 It's kind of like, uh, profits before any costs.

Kara Swisher 48:36 Yeah, yeah.

Scott Galloway 48:37 I mean, it's just so stupid.

Kara Swisher 48:38 Yep.

Scott Galloway 48:38 Right? So it feels to me like he's got a lot on his plate to get a public offering done.

Kara Swisher 48:46 So you think a push, a push?

Scott Galloway 48:48 I, I gotta think that if it happens, it's gonna be Q1. This-

Kara Swisher 48:52 Do they do January-

Scott Galloway 48:52 We're running out of time

Kara Swisher 48:53 ... Do they do January IPOs? I, I don't recall a lot, Jimmy

Scott Galloway 48:57 I don't see why not.

Kara Swisher 48:59 Well, I know, but I don't recall a lot. Like, is it more March, or?

Scott Galloway 49:04 I don't, I don't-- I-- The, the honest answer, Kara, is I don't know. Um

Kara Swisher 49:06 I mean, that's a lot of pent-up... That could really be bad if-- especially if the stock market blows, which, you know. A lot of the stock people feel like they're calling for these slowdowns in order to catch up, right? Like, that it's all a feint versus-

Scott Galloway 49:20 I think they've got a... I, I just, uh... Going public in the midst of insecurity about a mass extinction event?

Kara Swisher 49:27 Yeah, I agree. It's kinda-

Scott Galloway 49:28 It feels-- I mean, let me put it this way. You know what I'm really excited? I'm really excited to read a section in the S1 called "Risks."

Kara Swisher 49:35 "Risks." [laughs]

Scott Galloway 49:36 I mean, how are they gonna, how are they gonna outline this risk?

Kara Swisher 49:41 Well, um, the thing is, both Altman and Amodei have so much... I, I've just been digging into stuff from 10 years ago. Uh, 'cause I had said, uh, on the stage at Atlantic this week, I was at The Atlantic Conference, which was an excellent conference, by the way, um, that, like, I was at dinner parties where they were all saying these things, like, very clearly. Like, everyone-- I was like, "I don't know why this, this young researcher suddenly got to everyone," but these guys were saying it. And then I went and found a lot of their early writings, and it, it literally says, "Probably it'll kill us. This is how much it'll kill us. The thing we'll probably die from is this." Like, they have so much history of this that it's really... You know, I just wanna make sure I was... I mean, I remember these dinner parties. Um, but at the time it was speculative, right? Bef- and now they, I guess, are seeing some proof, whether it's Google jumping out of the sandbox or them jumping out of the sandbox. They haven't yet gotten to a missile silo, but it's only five minutes till that. So it'll be interesting. So, so you think it's gonna push till next... Will it be that big? Will be there-- Will there be a lot of demand for this?

Scott Galloway 50:45 Oh, God, yes. I mean, I keep hearing the numbers are doubling every month, and I'm going back to this big-

Kara Swisher 50:51 You'll buy it.

Scott Galloway 50:52 If I could get on the IPO-

Kara Swisher 50:54 Mm-hmm

Scott Galloway 50:54 ... I would buy it and then flip it on the first trade, yeah.

Kara Swisher 50:56 Flip it, see? Buy it, flip it, is what you-

Scott Galloway 50:58 Yeah, no doubt. I mean, this is gonna be-- This will be the most anticipated IPO in history, more so. But just going back to the metaphor or the analogy you used around cooperation, an IPO requires the cooperation of, of hundreds, if not thousands, of entities and, and people. Trying to be the first IPO while claiming the moral high ground-

Kara Swisher 51:21 I know, while saying you might kill everybody. Yeah, it's complicated.

Scott Galloway 51:24 Yeah, it, they... Anthropic doesn't need, doesn't wanna be first. It just needs, it just, it's just that going first also happens to serve the safety narrative and the balance sheet at the same time. Nature doesn't, nature, nature doesn't ask the coral and the fish if they love each other, but there's go- there's going to have to be some sort of cooperation and détente and reasonable sense of safety as-

Kara Swisher 51:49 That people feel

Scott Galloway 51:50 ... arbitrated, I would think-

Kara Swisher 51:51 By regulation

Scott Galloway 51:52 ... by a regulator.

Kara Swisher 51:52 By regula- They, they should have s- they shouldn't have this stupid AI force. There should be significant regulation. They should back it. Um, you know, they're always worried about it in a way. They, they-- This would help them. You're absolutely right. All right, uh, by the way, I had heard from someone that they didn't think that OpenAI would go out at all, which was interesting. That's another topic. Um, all right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, with Chinese President Xi coming to the US, American automakers have a warning for Donald Trump.

Scott Galloway 52:20 [gentle music] Support for the show comes from ShipStation. Business owners are always looking for ways to be more efficient, both with their time and with their money, and the one thing that most businesses overpay for? Shipping. That's why ShipStation exists, to not only make shipping easier, but to help you save money while you do it. Here's how. ShipStation automatically compares rates across UPS, USPS, and FedEx on every one of your orders, with savings up to 90%. Their end-to-end order fulfillment platform is built for e-commerce businesses. It can handle your entire shipping workflow so your team can focus on growth. ShipStation centralizes everything into one platform, order management, inventory, and returns, and it connects to more than 200 online marketplaces and the accounting and CRM tools you're already using. That means no rebuilding and no disruption. You can join over one million businesses who leveled up their shipping game with ShipStation. The sooner you switch, the sooner you start saving time and money. Get started with ShipStation today and get 60 days free at shipstation.com with code pivot. That's shipstation.com, code pivot. Shipstation.com, code pivot. Taxes and fees apply.

Kara Swisher 53:22 [gentle music] Support for this show comes from Vanta. AI adoption is everywhere you look and growing. At the same time, so are your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but if your team isn't getting any bigger, you can start to feel the strain. So then you turn to compliance tools that promise automation. But for a lot of those tools, you end up stuck doing all the work by hand anyway, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. Vanta's agentic trust platform is built to scale with you, not to slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round. It can cut your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools like Claude or Cursor. Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Writer, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. You can join them today. Learn more at vanta.com/pivot. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A.com/pivot. Scott, we're back as Donald Trump

Kara Swisher 54:35 gets ready to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in DC this week. A coalition of automakers and dealers is asking him to keep Chinese cars out of the country. That's a damn shame, 'cause they're adorable. The group urged Trump in a letter to keep the door firmly shut to Chinese automakers, raising concerns about job loss and national security. They should be concerned. Again, these models are fantastic. Trump recently said he'd be open to Chinese companies building cars here as long as they hire American workers, which they've done, many foreign countries have done before. One more wrinkle, Xi is expected to bring a group of Chinese business leaders with him to the US, and might include the founder of Chinese EV giant BYD. Of course he would. Thoughts about this? Uh, do you think it's, um- What do you think is gonna happen here? I don't think there's gonna be a discussion of, say, AI safety is my guess, or it's not gonna be a significant one.

Scott Galloway 55:22 Yeah, I think he'll be more focused on claiming stupid shit like, "I've got more tariffs, and we're gonna give people 5,000 bucks back." I, I, I'm... Like, Detroit wants to summon its diplomatic cooperation, right? They want some sort of a stable truth, or they want protection. And asking Xi to show up as a bonobo and negotiate as a chimp, so to speak, I don't... Look, I hate to say this. I b- when I was in a BYD in, in Brazil-

Kara Swisher 55:55 Mm-hmm. They're everywhere

Scott Galloway 55:56 ... and, and I got in, and I thought, "Oh, this is a Model Y," or whatever. He says, "No, it's a BYD." And I said, "How much is it?" And he s- he said, he figured out, and it was, like, 14 or $16,000. I'm like, "We're fucked." And just as we-

Kara Swisher 56:07 I f- thought the same thing when I saw them

Scott Galloway 56:08 ... [laughs] my first big consulting, this was the best engagement in the world. When, when I was right out of business school, I met a guy named Warren Hellman, and he said, "I've got a great assignment for you. I want you to come to every Levi Strauss & Company board meeting. I don't want you to sit next to anybody. I don't want you to talk to anybody. I want you to listen for two days, and then I want you to stand up and tell us exactly what you think." I was 27.

Kara Swisher 56:27 Wow.

Scott Galloway 56:28 This was the, this was the best consulting engagement in history.

Kara Swisher 56:31 [laughs] That's why-

Scott Galloway 56:32 And-

Kara Swisher 56:32 ... you're the way that you are. Go ahead

Scott Galloway 56:33 ... that's why I'm the way that I am. I remember this. We were in Singapore, and they were having this big debate about continuing to manufacture Levi's in the South. And I said, "Uh, okay, all this is is a transfer of wealth from your shareholders to the good people in those factories." But I said, "I know how this story ends. In 10 years, you're not gonna be manufacturing denim in the United States because you will eventually opt for shareholder value and reinvest in places with higher paid jobs and grow your company." I, for the first time, I'm beginning to believe that American cars are Levi's. I don't know if we're gonna be manufacturing them in 20 years. When I look at the cars coming out of China, and the... They have cars now that can go 600 miles without a charge.

Kara Swisher 57:18 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 57:18 Are 0 to 60 in two and a half seconds. And-

Kara Swisher 57:22 All manner of gee-gaws on them that are fun. Like, all manner of fun features

Scott Galloway 57:26 ... and cost, uh, uh, cost $40,000, and they're the equivalent, right?

Kara Swisher 57:30 And there are some that are, that are six and 7,000. Remember, I bought my-

Scott Galloway 57:33 But-

Kara Swisher 57:33 I don't know what your first car cost, but I had a Honda Civic for $6,000, 7,000. I f- something like that. Real cheap.

Scott Galloway 57:39 Oh, God, I've had so many bad cars.

Kara Swisher 57:40 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 57:41 I had a Volkswagen Rabbit. Then I had a Renault Le Car.

Kara Swisher 57:43 I had a Rabbit.

Scott Galloway 57:43 Then I had a Chevy g- Chevelle Malib-

Kara Swisher 57:45 Rabais. I had a Rabais

Scott Galloway 57:46 ... Convertible. Then I had a BMW 318i.

Kara Swisher 57:49 Wow, you moved up. I, well, I went down.

Scott Galloway 57:51 Anyways, I kept-

Kara Swisher 57:51 You went up, and I [laughs] went down

Scott Galloway 57:53 ... I kept going, I, I kept going up and up the food chain.

Kara Swisher 57:55 Chevrolet. [laughs]

Scott Galloway 57:55 Anyways-

Kara Swisher 57:56 Kia

Scott Galloway 57:56 ... but my last car was a Range Rover.

Kara Swisher 57:59 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 57:59 120 grand. It's a cooler brand than what they're producing in China, but China is effectively making a better r- SUV for 40 grand, and I just don't think we can compete.

Kara Swisher 58:10 Yeah. So what should happen at this summit? Like, there's not gonna be any AI stuff. I doubt it. I don't think it's within his ability unless he's gonna get a gimme.

Scott Galloway 58:18 I don't know. I can just hope that the political move that could restore... If, if they were truly focused on what would be best for them, America, and quite frankly, in the midterms, would be to announce a profou- have somebody on the, in the administration who's smart say, "We have been negotiating behind the scenes for several months on AI."

Kara Swisher 58:37 They haven't.

Scott Galloway 58:37 "And we've come to an understanding on the following important things around weapons-"

Kara Swisher 58:41 They haven't.

Scott Galloway 58:42 "... around privacy-"

Kara Swisher 58:43 They haven't.

Scott Galloway 58:43 "... around..." Here, here's what AI is at the end of the day. Good AI, a small rural hospital in Alabama can incorporate the same AI best practices or best practices using AI to reduce sepsis as they're doing-

Kara Swisher 58:58 Great use

Scott Galloway 58:58 ... at the University of California, San Francisco, which is the best hospital in the world. It levels up. It can help, it can help people treat-

Kara Swisher 59:06 Level up. Level up

Scott Galloway 59:07 ... It's a leveler up. Like, whether you're in Lagos, Lagos-

Kara Swisher 59:10 Right

Scott Galloway 59:10 ... or in Lausanne, Switzerland, this is an opportunity to bring middle powers up. That's the good AI. The bad fucking AI is that right now only n- nine nations can produce a nuclear bomb. We might be at 149 nations in six months. That's the bad AI. It's a leveler for, for good intentions. There are cybercriminal, cyber, cybercrime organizations of two, 300 people. There's a feeling with AI you can start the same cybercrime organization with one person now.

Kara Swisher 59:41 Right. Yep.

Scott Galloway 59:42 Unless we get together and cooperate, specifically with China, you're gonna see a leveling up in very bad ways.

Kara Swisher 59:50 Bad people. You're right.

Scott Galloway 59:51 And these guys, I mean, this is basically, uh, the equivalent of a cybercrime organization, which supposedly is costing the, uh, global economy trillions of dollars, is about to go from two or 300 people in Russia or Ukraine to one person with a Cloud Pro subscription. So these guys getting together and saying, "We are starting the most effective, transparent, multilateral enforcement and regulator agency. We don't want our kids killing themselves."

Kara Swisher 1:00:17 And the chances of this, Scott?

Scott Galloway 1:00:19 I, I, I, I, [laughs] this is the opportunity for a Democrat. We're gonna go the other way.

Kara Swisher 1:00:25 Yes. Yes.

Scott Galloway 1:00:25 We're gonna create a free trading zone, a non-tariff zone, cooperation around military and AI, the likes of which you have never seen, and we're gonna unlock so much fucking economic growth and reduce the existential risk here because democracies and China, which deserves a seat at the table 'cause whether you like it or not, they're number two, and they have brought 500 me- pe- million people out of poverty. We are going to, on a different level, cooperate with them, but we're gonna create an indomitable entity of democracies and capitalist societies around e- around economics that will result in massive deflation, prosperity, shared best practices, force people to respect their borders. China's not invading anybody.

Kara Swisher 1:01:07 I love all this, but you know what? It's really important to keep Kaitlan Collins out of the White House. That should be our focus, okay? 'Cause she never smiles. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails. Support for this show comes from Quince. Do you have a favorite thing in your closet? The thing you look forward to breaking out every year? Maybe it's your favorite sweater, the jeans that go with everything, or the bag that goes wherever you do. Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe, and that's exactly what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and washable silk. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. It's also affordable, too. All of their items are priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Plus, they work directly with top factories, cutting out the middlemen. That way, you're only paying for exceptional quality and not brand markup. I just got a set of not clothes, but Quince sheets. I was very surprised how soft they were. They're made of organic cotton. They feel expensive, and they aren't, and that's what I liked about them. No scratchiness. I slept like a baby in them, and I was really happy, and I'm gonna buy more sets 'cause they're some of the best sheets I have slept on. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com/pivot. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E .com/pivot. Support for the show comes from Attio. There are sales teams out there who never seem to stop moving, always a step ahead, always on the number, working with a level of precision that doesn't seem normal. It's no secret. They're on Attio, the agentic CRM. Attio runs the work behind every win. It's built for humans and agents with the guardrails of human software and the scale of agentic infrastructure. Every customer signal your team needs is captured in high resolution, always current and always compounding. Then watch Attio's agents and workflow go to work, building pipeline, chasing every buying signal, and moving deals forward 24/7. And whether you're in your browser, Slack, Claude, or in your inbox, Attio meets you wherever you are. This is the frontier of go-to-market. Teams like Parallel, TurboPuffer, and Wordsmith are already turning Attio to set the pace. Now it's your turn. Try Attio for free by going to attio.com/pivot. That's A-T-T-I-O .com/pivot. Okay, Scott, wins and fails. I'm gonna go first. I have a lot of fails. I'm gonna do them all at once. I have one win, which is that party. Just a really-- I know people have issues with The New York Times, all manner of issues, but what an amazing media organization, and congratulations on your birthday. And thank you for letting me hear Janelle Monáe up close. That was really cool. Um, and, uh, and it was, it was a really fun party, so congratulations. That's my win. The fails are so many, I don't know where to count. First, why did

Kara Swisher 1:04:03 Amazon cancel Ride or Die, uh, with Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer? It was their number one show. Someone buy it. Apple, I don't care. It's such a good show, and it was-- Like, ladies with guns are my favorite thing. That was a fail. Another fail was, uh, obviously all the quislings that went along with Trump on the First Amendment stuff. If you, y-you know, you better like the First Amendment 'cause it's coming for you if you don't protect it. That's the number one amendment, and you should protect it above all things. Of, of the many rights we have, it's the m- one of the m- that First Amendment, with lots of stuff in there, is the most important of all of them. Um, and the last one is this insane fucking... I live in Washington. I'm getting a little sick of this, President Trump. You're making a mess of everything, but your planned 250-foot triumphal arch that is gonna be on my way to the airport, which I already have to see your big-ass golden, uh, horses, which is irritating enough, will now double as a military complex 'cause nothing says democracy like housing drone snipers and large amounts of ammunition in your monuments. I just don't know what to say. This is insane if we let him build this. Um, I hope we stop him. Same thing with the Kennedy Center. There was a lot of people... Uh, just the, the whole manner of things is just a massive fail here. Um, and so I just... I, I don't know what to say about it, but I hope there's enough legal moves to stop him from doing all these manners of things 'cause it really is, again, working my last nerve. Scott?

Scott Galloway 1:05:30 I have two wins and a fail. My first win is New York. I spent the entire weekend here, did my favorite thing, roamed around. Jack's wife, Frida. Bought T-shirts at, at James Perse, sunglasses at Warby Parker, shoes at On. Uh, uh, went to Blank Street Coffee and mocked all the, all the Gen Z'ers or whoever they're called, waiting in line two hours for, for, for yogurt at this weird place called Mimi's.

Kara Swisher 1:05:56 Mixu.

Scott Galloway 1:05:57 New York or nowhere-

Kara Swisher 1:05:58 Mixu

Scott Galloway 1:05:58 ... has a line of an hour. I'm telling you, Kara.

Kara Swisher 1:06:00 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 1:06:01 You don't recognize you're in a golden age when you're in it.

Kara Swisher 1:06:03 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 1:06:03 This is a golden age in New York.

Kara Swisher 1:06:04 Really packed.

Scott Galloway 1:06:05 It is-

Kara Swisher 1:06:05 I was there too

Scott Galloway 1:06:05 ... packed.

Kara Swisher 1:06:06 Crazy packed.

Scott Galloway 1:06:08 Packed.

Kara Swisher 1:06:08 Everywhere.

Scott Galloway 1:06:10 Last year-

Kara Swisher 1:06:11 Everywhere

Scott Galloway 1:06:11 ... last year, 65 million people visited New York, $80 billion in economic activity. It supports 400,000 jobs. It used to be 54% of New York's economy. Now it's 60%. Uh, we've created one, 1 million jobs since COVID. There's always an asterisk. Most of those jobs are healthcare, so most of the jobs are looking after old people. But wow, has this... I went to, I went to Sartiano's. I went to, as usual, Zero Bond and Chez Margaux. Everything is packed. Everyone is friendly. No one's at home planning the extinction of the human species. People are not at home gambling on whether the Fed raises interest rates.

Kara Swisher 1:06:47 Also, neighborhoods that are usually quiet are down near the, um, the memorial. I was down there. Tons of people.

Scott Galloway 1:06:54 We had that festival, San Geronimo, whatever the fuck it is. I, I went there, and I bought baked oysters. I mean, it just... It, it-- Or fried oysters. The, the city, the city, uh, uh, the Disneyland of democracy and capitalism right now is New York.

Kara Swisher 1:07:09 Mom Dani.

Scott Galloway 1:07:09 And it is wonderful.

Kara Swisher 1:07:10 He's-- Trump is visiting his, his best friend.

Scott Galloway 1:07:12 It's, it's got absolutely to do with nothing with Mom Dani.

Kara Swisher 1:07:15 No, I know it doesn't, but I'm just saying he gets the credit.

Scott Galloway 1:07:17 Um-

Kara Swisher 1:07:17 He'll get the credit for it.

Scott Galloway 1:07:18 Well, okay, fine. He d- uh, he'll get the credit.

Kara Swisher 1:07:20 He's doing a good job.

Scott Galloway 1:07:20 But if you were gonna, if you were gonna credit anybody, it would be Eric Adams. And after Mom Dani's outta off... A- anyway, there's a lag period in government. That's my whole point.

Kara Swisher 1:07:27 Fine. He's still getting the credit.

Scott Galloway 1:07:30 But he's-

Kara Swisher 1:07:30 'Cause he fills the potholes

Scott Galloway 1:07:31 ... I agree he, I agree he will get the credit. Uh, uh, New... My point is, New York is just-

Kara Swisher 1:07:36 Killing it

Scott Galloway 1:07:36 ... on fire right now.

Kara Swisher 1:07:38 I would agree.

Scott Galloway 1:07:38 It, and, and the bad news is our inflation is 4.6% versus 3.4. W- it's sort of a metaphor for America, and that is if you're at the right place at the right time, you are just killing it. If you're the kind of person that shows up for jury duty, your rent's going up too much, and you're incurring inflation. But anyways, always has to be an asterisk. My second win, I stumbled on what I think is the coolest nonprofit in the world, and I DM'd them, and I haven't heard back, and there's some virtue signaling here, but I'm gonna do it anyways.

Kara Swisher 1:08:02 Okay.

Scott Galloway 1:08:03 I have finally found the nonprofit that I was born to support.

Kara Swisher 1:08:08 Which is?

Scott Galloway 1:08:09 It's called Giving Words, and it's a Virginia nonprofit organization that fixes up donated used cars and then gives them away to single mothers. And one of the biggest barriers to economic independence for single mothers is they can't afford to get to job interviews. It takes them, they have to take public transportation. In rural, rural areas, there is no public transportation. It is a huge barrier to economic independence.

Kara Swisher 1:08:33 This isn't 1-800-CARS-4-KIDS, right? That song? It's not this, that one.

Scott Galloway 1:08:37 No, this is not that. This is not that. This is, this is, uh, Eddie Brown, the, these two, this husband and wife, Eddie Brown and Ginny, established the charity in 2018 after identifying reliable transportation as a critical obstacle for single mothers trying to access employment, education, and healthcare. This is, you're gonna love this. They partner with the local high schools. The organization partners with the Automative Technology program at Luis- at Louisa County High School in Mineral, Virginia, where students gains hands-on vocational experience repairing the donated vehicles, and then they refurbish and donate, uh, and they've refurbished and donated more than 60 free vehicles to families in need. So, uh, uh, Eddie and Ginny, reach out to me. I'd like to be supportive. This is about single moms. It's about economic opportunity. It's about teaching young men vocational skills. I, I just, I read this, and I thought [laughs] oh, my God.

Kara Swisher 1:09:33 Oh, my God, it was designed for Scott. Single mom. Hi.

Scott Galloway 1:09:35 I feel like, I'm like-

Kara Swisher 1:09:37 I am a single mom

Scott Galloway 1:09:37 ... I wish I'd thought of this.

Kara Swisher 1:09:38 I had a-

Scott Galloway 1:09:38 I wish I'd thought of this.

Kara Swisher 1:09:40 All right. All right.

Scott Galloway 1:09:40 Anyways, my second win, and I'm serious-

Kara Swisher 1:09:42 Do you have a fail?

Scott Galloway 1:09:43 ... Eddie and Ginny, reach out to me.

Kara Swisher 1:09:44 Yeah.

Scott Galloway 1:09:44 Uh, uh, if you Google me, you get, uh, way too much information and can reach out to me. To, oh, my loss or my fail is there's all this scuttlebutt and reporting about Democratic elders trying to talk Vice President Harris out of running, uh, for president. Uh, Vice President Harris, outstanding senator. I think she'd be an outstanding justice. I thought she was a lousy presidential candidate. She didn't make it even to Iowa in 2020. I thought she, she was given a raw deal in 2024, and I will give her this, I thought she had one of the most outstanding political performances of the last 50 years in her debate with Donald Trump. I can't imagine the pressure on her. I do not think she's a good candidate. The poll sure is number one right now. I think that's mostly name recognition. The majority of people who take those polls just say, "Oh, I've heard of her, and I've heard of that handsome guy in California." I don't think she will make it very far this time, but let her cook.

Kara Swisher 1:10:40 That's correct.

Scott Galloway 1:10:41 When-

Kara Swisher 1:10:41 Thank you, Scott. I thought you'd say, "Yeah, that's a good idea." I hate when elders visit people.

Scott Galloway 1:10:45 So-

Kara Swisher 1:10:45 I hate it

Scott Galloway 1:10:46 ... when the Democratic or the Republic machine pick a candidate or try to get Bernie out or say, "McCain, you're the right person," it never works. Let me give you who the people polling number one were in the Republican, uh, presidential elections at this moment. At this moment, polling number one was Rudy Giuliani. At this moment, polling number one was Herman Cain. At this moment, polling number one was, oh, this is my favorite, Fred Thompson from Law & Order. He was actually polling number one.

Kara Swisher 1:11:15 Oh, he was a, he was good on Law & Order.

Scott Galloway 1:11:17 The Democrat, the full body contact violence of the primary process not only surfaces the right person, but for the right person for the moment. Nobody thought Nixon had any business running for president again, again, and again, and he won. So while I personally don't think Vice President Harris would make a good president, let her cook.

Kara Swisher 1:11:37 She might make a good president. She might, she doesn't make a good candidate, right? I mean, she might make a good president.

Scott Galloway 1:11:42 Who knows? And guess what?

Kara Swisher 1:11:43 Are you kidding? Such a low fucking bar at this point, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway 1:11:46 The, uh, uh, the, the primary process is like Navy SEALs training. It produces a fucking warrior when you let it run.

Kara Swisher 1:11:54 Agree, Scott Galloway. I love that.

Scott Galloway 1:11:56 And, and-

Kara Swisher 1:11:57 I thought you'd say go with the elders

Scott Galloway 1:11:58 ... and the Democratic Party, Democratic Party elders don't have a great track record here.

Kara Swisher 1:12:03 Do you know who was at that party? Chuck Schumer.

Scott Galloway 1:12:05 He actually looked good. He looks good for 131.

Kara Swisher 1:12:08 He looks great. Let me just say, he's like, "Oh, I'm very excited. What should we do?" And I, and I, I, I, I almost said, "You need to retire," and I didn't do it. I was being polite.

Scott Galloway 1:12:17 No, I can't do it.

Kara Swisher 1:12:18 I can't-

Scott Galloway 1:12:18 Yeah, yeah.

Kara Swisher 1:12:19 I was super close to saying, "You need to retire." A good, good job.

Scott Galloway 1:12:22 No, I gotta give it to him. He, he looks good for 131.

Kara Swisher 1:12:24 He looks good. He looked good. I, I would agree with you. He's, he's got his wheat. He's going.

Scott Galloway 1:12:28 The only thing the Democratic elders should be doing right now is saying, "How can I help? Have at it."

Kara Swisher 1:12:34 Also, they should be saying-

Scott Galloway 1:12:35 Have at it

Kara Swisher 1:12:35 ... "I'm gonna select a retirement community now and move along."

Scott Galloway 1:12:39 There you go.

Kara Swisher 1:12:39 Anyway, we wanna hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, that is the show. What a good show this has been. Uh, thanks for listening to Pid- Pivot, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Hey, Stephanie Ruhle and Rachel Maddow. See you soon. [upbeat music]