Kara Swisher Slams Tech CEOs’ “Grotesque” Dinner with Trump | Pivot

It was particularly gross, and especially Zuckerberg, who tried to explain himself, looked like a real toady in a room full of todies.

I thought they made sex work look dignified.

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Well, hello, Scott. Do you have your shirt on today?

You know, why not?

You know-

Why not?

... that people seemed to like that quite a bit, and then some people didn't. But a lot of people did, more than they, they think they're used to at this point.

I think it's quite polarizing.

Is it?

I think it gives people hope when they're 80 they can look 79.

We've got a lot to get to today, including Trump's dinner with the tech bros and Tesla offering Elon a massive new pay package. But first, uh, Trump is rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War, restoring a name last used in the 1940s. Let's listen to him explain the rebrand in the Oval Office last week.

So we won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between, and then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense. So, we're going Department of War.

That's fucking ridiculous, but Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, a- as we're now being asked to call him, which I refuse, took it further. Let's listen.

We're gonna go on offense, not just on defense, maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We're gonna raise up warriors, not just defenders.

Oh my God. I, I don't even know what to say. He has such a small penis. All right, I'll note now, the Department of War is just a secondary title for the Defense Department. Official name change would require an act of Congress, and while Trump is downplaying the price tag of his name change, reports suggest it could, rebrand could cost billions, just even changing, like, all the, the logos and stuff like that. Um, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Um, and then over the weekend, Trump posted a very controversial thing, "Chicago's about to find out why it's called the Department of War." So he's always using a name that was incredibly violent to a U.S. city that's done nothing to him. Um, this idea of maximum lethality, violent effect, offense not defense, going woke? I- I mean, the whole thing is just insane, I think, but I don't know. What do you think, from a branding perspective?

Well, it's just not accurate. Um, first off, the- there's, they're trying to solve a problem that doesn't need solving. The U.S. Defense Department and our... Th- th- there is no one more lethal than the United States Marine SEALs, Special Ops, CIA. I mean, we can deliver more lethality anywhere in the world than any entity in history. So the notion somehow that it needs some sort of rebranding to, to give this performative, um, you know, masculine weirdness. No, that's not masculinity, that's little dick weirdness. And this, unfortunately this attempt to create some sort of illusion of machoness is making us less safe, because one of the things they're doing is saying to transgender people who have served our nation proudly and competently, "We're just gonna kick you out in some attempt to show that we're tough." It's also not accurate. The- the- the- we changed the name for a reason, and that is, conquest was in fact a way you developed economic security and prosperity back in the 15th, 16th, 17th century and before that. When the nation's largest powers developed (laughs) the bomb, it was clear that trying to invade Russia or Russia trying to invade a democratic nation could result in nuclear Armageddon, so we reconfigured our, our policies around the military and we accurately and justifiably changed the name to Defense. And modern warfare, the reality of modern warfare is the following. It's about cyber and space domains, it's about information warfare, it's about economic sanctions, and it's about diplomacy, and-