0:01

This episode is brought to you

0:03

by On Investing, an original podcast from

0:05

Charles Schwab. Each week hosts Lizanne Saunders,

0:07

Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Kathy Jones,

0:10

Schwab's chief fixed income strategist, bring you

0:12

fresh insights on what's happening in the

0:14

markets and why, and what the implications

0:17

might be for your portfolio. Join

0:19

Kathy and Lizanne as they explore questions like

0:21

how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look

0:24

interesting? And what sectors are on the move

0:26

right now? Download the

0:28

latest episode and subscribe at

0:30

schwab.com slash on investing or wherever

0:32

you get your podcasts. Support

0:38

for the show comes from HubSpot, more to

0:40

do's, less time and an infinite number of

0:42

tools to keep track of. Sometimes

0:44

doing business has never felt harder, but you

0:46

don't need a miracle to hit your goals.

0:48

You can just use HubSpot because they're all

0:51

in one customer platform to make growing your

0:53

business infinitely easier. And more

0:55

than this, high quality leads, fast

0:57

closing deals, wildly happy customers, and

0:59

more benchmark breaking quarters. It's not

1:02

a miracle, it's HubSpot. Visit

1:04

hubspot.com to get started today. Hi

1:13

everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and

1:15

the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And

1:18

I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, I'm very

1:20

tired. We're moving this week. Why

1:23

do you do this to yourself? I don't know. I've

1:26

reached the point of no return on moving. I have

1:28

so much stuff. I was having a Marie Kondo moment.

1:30

I know she's gone back a little bit on that

1:32

stuff, but I would like the original Marie Kondo back.

1:35

I've got the ultimate hack for moving. Burning

1:37

my house down. No, the

1:39

week you're moving, you come up with a business reason

1:42

that you need to leave town. Oh, well I am.

1:44

I'm going out of town. You

1:46

saddle your spouse with it. I am a little

1:48

bit. I feel bad. I did a lot. I

1:50

am a packing Olympic hero, I have

1:52

to say. I'm really good at it. But it just

1:54

gives you that idea of how much stuff you have,

1:57

right? And you're sort of like. That's crazy. You know

1:59

what I mean? Oh, God. Everywhere.

2:01

Yeah, we're renovating the house. But you didn't

2:03

ask my question. Why are you moving? Do

2:05

you need more space? No, we're renovating. Yes,

2:07

we're renovating the house. And so the whole bottom

2:10

half of the house is gone. I got in

2:12

Scott mode now. And the whole

2:14

bottom half of the house, and they need this upper part

2:16

of the house because all the floors, they tip to the

2:18

center. It's really like you put a marble on one end

2:20

of it. And we want- I've

2:23

been pulling you to the center. Right. No,

2:26

you haven't. And then it needs insulation. We need

2:28

a family room. We need a place for you

2:30

to stay when you come. That's nice. I

2:33

only stay in hotels. I know that. I'm not

2:35

going to have you at my home. I'm not having you at my

2:37

home ever. You would not do it. I would stay at your home at

2:39

any point. I am. So I could show

2:41

up on meth at 4 a.m. and you'd

2:43

have to let me in after the hotel

2:46

galloway. You have checked into about 11 million

2:48

times. I know. I would let

2:50

you in in a second. You would just hate it. It's

2:52

so noisy. There's kids. There's a cat. No,

2:54

no, no. I

2:57

never stay with friends. I always stay in a hotel. I'm

2:59

more than welcome to stay at my house. I just

3:01

know it would end our relationship. I

3:03

know. So the other thing is, anyway,

3:06

it's just a lot. It's just a lot. And

3:08

we're moving into this really cool modern building,

3:10

apartment building. So we have about half as

3:13

much space there during the six months of

3:15

the renovation. And so we... You

3:17

got to do this again. You're going to have to move back. Oh, yeah. Oh,

3:20

yeah. What do you have to take everything out and you

3:22

put everything back? Yeah, that's right. Especially with kids. Yeah,

3:24

exactly. So anyway, it has a pool. That's nice.

3:27

You're again welcome to stay there too, although

3:29

it's even smaller and there's a cat inside.

3:31

So anyhow, that was my weekend. That was

3:33

my whole weekend of exhaustion. Apartment with pool. That

3:35

sounds like hot interns. Yeah. Daddy might

3:37

have to swing by. Yeah, you can come for... You can do

3:40

that actually. You know what? You're going to

3:42

come down at the end of June if you're around

3:44

Washington because Mike Birbiglia wrote me. He has a new

3:46

show he's testing out. And we're going

3:48

to throw him a dinner. You should come because you like that

3:50

Mike Birbiglia. We're going to be in Cannes together. I know. Later.

3:54

End of June. No. I'm

3:56

going to be in Cannes for the Euro

3:58

Nationals, whatever they call it. I did.

4:00

By the way I saw the weight

4:02

of finals. I saw Real Madrid, the

4:05

Dortmund sadness com As an irony in

4:07

Atlanta as Lamanna be in Germany watching

4:09

football, hell I the that's soccer right?

4:11

In America? That A Soccer or football.

4:13

Or well, in any case, you're invited.

4:15

See, You're right. it's I invited you

4:18

to my basement apartment and anxiety. To as

4:20

as a years As you figure this out I like to invite

4:22

it. I decide to it than a year indicted. In the

4:24

i'll make you eggs I'll make delicious eggs

4:26

and nick very than slow eggs slam. Anyway

4:28

we have a lot to talk the there's

4:30

so much going on since we met last

4:32

oh my gods like Google dealing with the

4:35

whole host of issues including a major document

4:37

league and a problematic a I search to

4:39

say the least at Tesla. Pull that all

4:41

the stops is shareholders prepare to vote on

4:43

reinstating aeons, pay taxes I think probably going

4:45

to happen but maybe not People are against

4:48

it's an he has a lot of enablers

4:50

helping and now and and will be joined

4:52

by friend of said it. Cnn. C Legal

4:54

analyst L. E. honing his New York

4:56

Magazine column about the Trump verdict has

4:59

a lot of people talking that first

5:01

Paramount and Science have agreed to a

5:03

merger. The eight billion dollar deal is

5:05

waiting. Sign off. From controlling shareholder

5:08

Sherry Redstone. As we take Science

5:10

and Red Birds it's private equity backer

5:12

of look into that one point five

5:14

billion dollars to help reduce Paramount's dad,

5:16

Apollo, and Sony and also expressed interest

5:18

in acquiring Tarmac for twenty six dalliance

5:21

on that Siri read and favorite the

5:23

deal that with Paramount to gather they

5:25

were hundred sharp enough for pieces else

5:27

you've been back and forth back and

5:29

forty. This means the return of Just

5:31

Soccer and Just Shell from Nbc the

5:34

team I think they're gonna be either

5:36

involved and Redbirds all kinds of interesting.

5:39

Michigan us happening here. I tell me

5:41

what you think. Are armed glad

5:43

it's over? Or or wanted browns

5:45

to survive? Or even Siri wanted.

5:48

To. For alert of the reasons I

5:50

just wanted to maintain it as a whole

5:52

not have a be sold off parts. I

5:54

think how the steel rod done if I

5:56

read between the lines I think what was

5:58

happening assad the initial deal. proposed

6:01

by Skydance, recognized that Sherry kind of held the

6:03

keys and was offering her a premium on her

6:05

shares, which is kind of a no-no on corporate

6:07

governance. See, if one class of shares a bigger

6:09

price than the other, just because they can hold

6:11

out and the board

6:14

acting as fiduciary said, and the other shareholders

6:16

said, we're going to block this deal because

6:19

we'll have the courts on our side. And

6:21

it sounds like what they did was they figured out a

6:23

construct that gets the non-voting

6:25

or non-redstone shareholders almost to the same

6:28

point as her. And so they accepted

6:30

it and then they can roll their

6:32

shares and they're not going to need

6:34

shareholder approval. That's interesting. In other words...

6:37

Explain that for people who don't understand why

6:39

that's the case. Well, my understanding here is

6:41

this doesn't trigger a shareholder vote, that they

6:43

can basically get this deal done without shareholder

6:45

approval. And this,

6:48

in my sense of this deal is that the bankers have

6:50

really earned their money here. The margin,

6:53

the amount of dysfunction, dealing

6:55

with a billionaire who has a controlling

6:57

stake, shareholders threatening a

6:59

lawsuit, board members resigning, CEO resigning.

7:02

I mean, this was the bankers can't be paid

7:04

enough here. But

7:06

just to give you a sense of this, so I think

7:11

today, Nvidia

7:14

is going to increase their market cap by

7:16

90 billion or 10 paramounts.

7:19

And it just goes to show you

7:21

there's economic value and then there's soap

7:23

operas. This is a soap opera. Yeah.

7:26

Although they're way ahead of their skis and what

7:28

they could possibly earn to go into that valuation,

7:31

but still nonetheless. Yeah, but my point is we

7:34

just get a sense, this is an

7:36

interesting story as far as

7:38

the economy. It's a nothing order. And Nvidia will

7:40

lose or gain the value of this company in

7:43

120 seconds in a trading day. Yeah.

7:46

And we're talking about if we were going to

7:48

talk about economic value and impact on the world,

7:51

we just have a podcast on technology. This stuff

7:53

is fun to talk about because people love Top

7:56

Gun and MTV. Yeah. I

7:58

listen to Barry Redstone. That's

8:00

right. It's a soap opera. It's

8:03

the Kardashians of business. You can't turn away,

8:05

but it really is unimportant. It really is

8:07

meaningless. I think you're right. I think you're right. It's still

8:09

it'll be interesting to see Jeff Zucker coming

8:12

back and doing something with CBS.

8:15

Could be interesting. There's where

8:17

he started. Wait, where did he start? He started the

8:19

Today Show. Today Show, NBC. Yeah. He's been

8:21

trying to find his footing in a

8:23

broadcast medium. We'll see what happens here. Yeah,

8:26

we'll see what happens here. And also Jeff Shell,

8:28

who got fired from NBC for

8:31

affairs and stuff. And so

8:34

he's kind of back and so also

8:36

talented. But anyway, it'll be interesting

8:38

to see. It'll get a lot of attention because

8:40

of the principles. You're right. And David Ellison is

8:42

interesting. Anyway, speaking

8:45

of dysfunction, the editor of The

8:47

Washington Post, Sally Busby, will leave her

8:50

role. She joined the Post in 2021. Matt

8:52

Murray, a former editor-in-chief of

8:54

The Wall Street Journal, who also lost his

8:57

job, will take Busby's place through the presidential

8:59

election. I know Matt. I know him very

9:01

well from a long time. Very

9:03

nice guy. But still, I think the staff

9:05

of The Washington Post is shell-shocked by this.

9:08

It came suddenly under- They

9:10

look like they're not going through a move. Right.

9:12

Yeah. My poor wife works for The Washington

9:14

Post and she's going through a move. So

9:16

have a good day, Amanda. I

9:18

think it was a shock to a lot of people.

9:21

I think she was shocked last night when she got

9:23

the news. And so I got texts from lots of

9:25

Post people. You know,

9:27

Busby had just won a bunch of really, fields.

9:29

There's some really fine stories. But

9:32

obviously, she wasn't to the liking of Will Lewis,

9:34

who is the new CEO. And

9:36

he has worked with Matt at The Wall

9:38

Street Journal. And actually, interestingly enough,

9:40

we'll get to what the loss is there and

9:42

everything else because it's a mess there. But

9:45

at the meeting that they had today, I've gotten,

9:47

it was a shit show for

9:50

many people that

9:52

they were- He was asked why

9:54

he now- The Post is now

9:56

run by essentially four

9:58

white guys who are all black. buddies of Will

10:01

Lewis. And he said, it is what it is,

10:03

essentially. That's what he apparently said. You'll see the

10:05

reporting on this. It's pretty, it was a pretty

10:07

testy meeting. And what he

10:10

did was he said, well, yes, it is what

10:12

it is. But, and I

10:14

guess I should do more about diversity,

10:16

essentially. But this is one of

10:19

the most prominent women who did a very good

10:21

job in terms of a very bad

10:23

hand that was dealt to her by its former CEO,

10:26

Fred Ryan. In any case, she's

10:28

she pays the price. In the

10:30

town hall, he said, Tolstap, the

10:32

post had lost over $70 million in

10:34

2023 and had half his audience.

10:37

He said he repeated that today.

10:39

His plan is to improve revenue,

10:41

including premium subscription products, a service

10:43

division of the newsroom targeting non-traditional

10:46

news consumers, and some nonsensical social

10:48

media stuff that I didn't understand.

10:51

To me, the way to

10:53

make turn this around is to make products

10:55

people like with costs lower than revenues, but

10:57

they don't seem to be able to do

10:59

that here and the time certainly does. I

11:02

don't know. What are you, any thoughts? I feel like

11:04

we've gone from the Kardashians to Sarah Palin to

11:06

Alaska. I feel like this isn't even less important

11:09

story, but it's a trend, Scott. It's a trend

11:11

among media. I'm going to try and relate this

11:13

to something unreliable. 70% of

11:15

divorce filings are filed by

11:18

women and people think, oh, it's

11:20

a lack of shared values or infidelity. Oftentimes, it's

11:22

usually- What happens when it's a lesbian? But go ahead,

11:27

move on. Sorry. Anyways, so many

11:29

retorts running through

11:33

my mind and my judgment is saying,

11:36

just don't do it. Oh, please, just

11:38

watch. Just watch. No, say, who gets

11:40

the German shepherd? That's the biggest question.

11:42

How can you split a baroque?

11:44

Anyways- I like baroque, but go ahead.

11:48

I like that. But here's the

11:50

bottom. You know what? If

11:53

you are married and your upper income, your

11:55

chances of staying married are much higher despite

11:57

all the fun clickbait of Rich

11:59

Baby. getting married. Marriage is becoming a

12:01

luxury item because in a capitalist society, an

12:04

absence of money puts stress on

12:06

everything. And this is a series

12:08

of relationships that will have

12:11

a tremendous amount of undue stress because

12:13

this company is going through financial strain. And

12:16

what I tell young people is try

12:18

and find an industry that is growing.

12:20

Because here's the thing, growth is

12:23

creates so much opportunity, so many

12:26

good times, it wallpapers over so

12:28

much dysfunction. And when a company is shrinking and

12:30

hasn't come to grips with the fact that it's

12:33

shrinking, and they will still convince themselves that it's

12:35

a great brand and meaningful and there's all sorts

12:37

of opportunities for new products, and I'm not saying

12:39

there isn't, but generally speaking, every

12:42

day a little bit of oxygen gets

12:44

sucked out of this room and everybody

12:46

gets a little moodier and everyone gets

12:48

a little bit less patient. That's a

12:50

good, shockingly good analogy, I agree.

12:53

And people who would ordinarily get along are

12:55

going to stop getting along. People are going

12:57

to be insecure about their jobs. People are

13:00

going to feel like they haven't been made

13:02

good on promises. They're going to start getting

13:04

weird emails on weird decisions from people they

13:06

don't even know who made these decisions. Being

13:09

at a shrinking company is painful. It's

13:11

being in a household that is under

13:13

economic stress. Yeah,

13:15

well here's the thing. I don't think he's doing himself any

13:18

favors. I've met him a number of

13:20

times. He's a very, the British, he's got that

13:22

British way. I think today probably was a day

13:24

he could have been a little less dickish, and

13:26

I think he was full dick from what I

13:28

can tell. I'm going to

13:31

his dinner at Cannes though. Want to come with me? We should go.

13:33

We should go make trouble. I

13:36

think it's such a weird

13:38

situation at the Post. And

13:41

let me be clear, I'm speaking, Amanda has nothing to do with

13:44

this because I worked there for many, many years, as you know.

13:47

And I was there and it's Ben Bradley days

13:49

and it's salad days. But you

13:51

could sense the things coming. I kept warning

13:53

about digital stuff. You could feel it and

13:55

they didn't really pay attention like a lot

13:57

of companies until it was too late. But

14:00

one of the things is the Post was always, and also ran

14:03

to the New York Times always, you know what I mean, no

14:05

matter, especially in the political people, there

14:07

was always that ceiling. And

14:09

then it had the pull of being a local

14:11

newspaper too, like the Los Angeles

14:13

Times or Miami Herald or

14:15

whatever. And I think

14:18

it's always had that sort of insecurity,

14:20

no matter how you slice it. And

14:23

now it's owned by a billionaire, a multi-billionaire

14:25

owner who you don't know what he wants,

14:27

why he has it, right? He

14:30

wants to not own it. Yeah, I think so. He's

14:32

like every other billionaire. He regrets buying it. It's like

14:34

buying a boat. Yeah. Yeah, it's just

14:36

like a boat. Do you think Lorraine Powell,

14:38

do you think any of these people are happy about

14:40

purchasing this shit? I think she is a

14:42

little bit, she's pretty proud of the stuff they make.

14:45

I think she's a more media interested person. And

14:48

they did really well this year. Unless

14:51

that thing shows up with a thong, he wishes he had

14:53

nothing to do with it. In any

14:55

case, I think that's it. So that adds confusion.

14:57

And so then you have these people he's appointed

14:59

who are just, it

15:03

feels like Amazon. I know it sounds dumb, but

15:05

it's got the arrogance, the staff has the arrogance

15:07

of Amazon. So he does. And

15:09

he's got to really, I understand,

15:12

you don't tell people you presided

15:15

over a cutting audience. Well, the cutting audience

15:17

had to do with the previous CEO that

15:19

Jeff Bezos picked and not the excellent work

15:21

of both Marty Barron and Sally Busby. So

15:25

I think it should be put squarely in Jeff

15:27

Bezos' camp. And instead of haranguing

15:29

the staff, he should be haranguing

15:31

Jeff Bezos, but he's not going to do

15:33

that. Anyway, you're right. I stopped

15:35

listening like two minutes ago. Why do they

15:38

give Bilbo Baggins Viagra on his deathbed? Oh,

15:40

no, what? Why? Because

15:42

old hobbits die hard. Okay.

15:45

I'm going to be wrong. I like that. It doesn't

15:47

matter to a lot of people. I like that. Anyway.

15:51

I will say, one thing I will say

15:53

is despite all the dysfunction and tier C

15:55

off, off Broadway soap opera here, which no

15:58

one but 11. of

16:00

our listeners care about, you wouldn't know

16:02

it because they continue to produce a great product.

16:04

They do. That's what a dangerous

16:06

strategy is. The opinion section is great. They

16:08

do it great. Anyway, I think they have,

16:10

they, they, it could be great and they could

16:13

make money. I think they could. Anyway, it's New

16:15

York Times. Let's buy it. Let's buy

16:17

it together. It would be so good if we ran a newspaper. Anyway,

16:19

speaking, not everyone's doing well in

16:21

tech. Salesforce is reeling from a disastrous trading

16:23

day and its worst performance since 2004. Salesforce

16:26

for the company closed down 20% last

16:28

Thursday after the first quarter earnings

16:31

missed Wall Street's estimates. Revenue for the quarter rose

16:33

by a record low 10%. Projecting

16:35

growth for the current period is 7%. It's

16:37

starting to feel like a media company. Salesforce

16:40

isn't alone. Eight of the 10 largest cloud

16:42

software providers have seen their stock shrink by an average of

16:44

9% after the latest earnings. You

16:46

know, they could invest in AI, but AI is going

16:49

to have a big impact on these businesses at the

16:51

same time. There's been a lot of stories about how

16:53

most AI investments are going to be zipped. It's

16:55

not going to, as we've talked about, way

16:58

too much investment for the revenue and

17:00

the profits as yet. So

17:02

any thoughts on this? Tech is

17:04

not immune. You know what? I

17:06

think it's income inequality even among the

17:09

rich. And that is SaaS

17:11

companies are trading at six times revenues. You

17:13

know, consumer companies traded at 0.5 to two

17:15

times revenue. SaaS, which is the business we

17:17

all wanted to... When I started

17:19

L2, I immediately moved to the subscription model because I

17:22

thought, the last strategy firm I started,

17:24

I sold for 2.8 times revenue. I'm

17:26

going to sell this one for eight times. So

17:29

I needed to look like a SaaS

17:31

company, you know, have subscription, recurring revenue,

17:33

churn, all those. I

17:35

needed to get in front of investors and make it

17:37

look, feel, and smell like a SaaS company. SaaS

17:40

now... But even among the software companies,

17:42

there's now income inequality because when one

17:45

company increases its market cap, two thirds

17:47

of a trillion dollars in

17:49

one calendar month, that's

17:52

not all money piling into the market.

17:54

That's money coming from somewhere. So

17:57

now there's income inequality among the

17:59

most... income inequality

18:01

within income inequality. And that is, I

18:03

believe investors are taking money out of

18:05

tech firms that are not

18:07

hardcore, that are two blast zones away

18:10

from AI. So Dell's just got the

18:12

shit kicked out of it. Salesforce,

18:14

why? Because everyone is taking money and saying, we

18:17

got to go to the ground zero. It's going

18:19

to be a problem for the economy. We're going

18:21

to see, do you realize

18:23

that some crazy percentage of,

18:28

I think it's 60% of the market's gains,

18:30

either 40 or 60% of the S&P's

18:32

gains are basically from AI.

18:34

And so even if you're

18:37

Salesforce and you're an incredible software company, they

18:39

can't claim to be sitting on top of

18:41

massive amounts of compute. They can leverage AI,

18:43

but they're going to have to rent it

18:45

from someone else. Everything, it's

18:47

like- Yeah, it's taking me to that story, who's

18:49

sort of the winners and losers, and there's not

18:51

any real winners yet, even among the winners, right?

18:54

There's not massive profits

18:56

for giving the investment. So it's

18:58

a fun career. If all

19:01

these shareholders are piling into Nvidia so much that

19:03

it's become a zero-sum game and it's coming out

19:05

of somewhere, who are the likely

19:07

investors in Nvidia? Is it people pulling money

19:09

out of P&G? No, it's people pulling money

19:11

out of Dell and Salesforce. Because

19:13

if you look at Salesforce's numbers,

19:15

they weren't that bad. They did

19:18

announce their first single-digit growth. It's

19:20

always been double-digit, but they actually

19:22

beat expectations, but it is

19:24

getting hammered. In some, anything

19:26

that's not in Nvidia or

19:28

off-or-compute is suffering.

19:31

So what would one do? Elect people that

19:33

will go into the FTC and DOJ and

19:35

break these companies. Oh, okay. All right. Okay.

19:37

I mean, okay. And talk about as an

19:39

investor. We're going to see, we'll see a

19:41

flow back. The rivers will reverse again. The

19:43

first time a major

19:46

customer announces they're scaling

19:48

back their AI efforts because they realize that

19:50

Chick-fil-A can't leverage AI to the extent they

19:52

thought, I think you're going

19:54

to see the AI ecosystem get cut in

19:56

half. Okay, good. That's a bit of a

19:58

prediction. I like that. that. Anyway, speaking

20:01

of which, let's get to our

20:03

first big story. Google

20:08

is dealing with a fallout from a massive leak after

20:10

2500 pages of documents from

20:12

inside its search division were shared by

20:14

SEO experts. The documents detail the data

20:17

that Google collects from websites and users.

20:19

They offer an unprecedented look

20:21

at the search process and

20:23

how content is ranked. Google

20:26

is saying, of course, that these

20:28

are out of context. The

20:31

documents suggest that Google might have misled the

20:33

public in terms of ranking content. It

20:36

denied in the past that users click

20:38

play a role in ranking websites, but

20:41

leaked documents indicate otherwise they're saying, actually,

20:43

it's not what it says. It's

20:46

not the best thing. At

20:48

the same time, it has an AI problem

20:50

on its hands. Speaking of the current days,

20:52

that's our sole business. The company is scaling

20:55

back on the new AI overviews feature, the

20:57

one that put some wildly incorrect

20:59

AI generated answers at the top of search

21:01

results. Some are correct, let's be fair. Some

21:04

of the major reported errors included users being told

21:06

to put glue on pizza. That was the famous one

21:08

in a claim that John F. Kennedy graduated from college in

21:10

1993. Wow,

21:13

there's a lot going on at Google. They're

21:16

going to disable the misleading advice, limiting

21:19

the answers from some sites. They

21:22

had a similar problem with their image tool, if you remember,

21:24

it was too woke, whatever. These

21:28

things work themselves out. My issue

21:30

with these companies is, away from

21:32

the leaked documents, is they're always

21:35

beta testing on users without putting

21:37

out products that are fully baked. That's always

21:39

been my experience with Silicon Valley. I

21:42

don't think this is a good look for Google. It makes

21:44

it look like they're not competitive with Microsoft, OpenAI, and

21:46

Meta. Thoughts? Well,

21:49

I'll turn it back to you. My

21:51

only observation, because I think you know more

21:53

about this than I do, my only observation

21:55

is that it feels from observations of a

21:57

bystander that Google got caught

21:59

full. flat-footed and their investors and the entire

22:01

world said, let me get this. It was

22:04

invented here and everyone's making trillions but us.

22:07

And I think that the ultimate like hurry

22:09

up and catch up, like you better hurry

22:11

up has resulted in kind of

22:14

a ready fire aim mentality that's

22:16

haunting them a little bit because I think

22:18

they feel real pressure to catch

22:20

up. They do. People internally have told me

22:22

this, but go ahead. I just can't imagine that QA

22:24

hasn't been a little bit more promiscuous here because

22:27

they need to show their investors that

22:29

they are catching up. But you know this

22:31

so much better than I do. I know nothing about this.

22:33

Well, you know, these leaks, these search leaks, Google has always

22:35

sort of been such a performative company in terms of we're

22:37

the better people, we're the, you know, don't be

22:39

evil. They always had that nonsense when you knew,

22:41

you know, they were doing

22:44

all kinds of stuff behind the scenes that weren't

22:46

in line with what they said they were doing.

22:49

This search leak is interesting and it's an

22:51

important and big deal that they had been

22:53

sort of doing search in a different way. Now again,

22:55

it's only 2,500 pages. They're

22:58

older, some of them. The

23:01

fact that they were doing whether user

23:03

clicks played a role in ranking websites,

23:07

they had insisted they were giving you the best

23:09

things versus what was most popular as I recall.

23:12

I'm not sure if the leak is that damaging,

23:14

but it does suggest, you know, that

23:16

they weren't being fully honest

23:18

with people, which is I think a disease

23:20

of all these companies, completely disease of all

23:23

these companies. I'm not so much focused on

23:25

that, although it is interesting. But

23:27

you're right, this is this, they have been

23:30

slow, slow, slow and I think a lot

23:32

of people are complaining about CEO Sundar Pichai

23:34

as being indecisive. I think that's been a

23:36

take on him for many years now and

23:39

not being fast enough. And I've had that experience

23:41

when he, when they were very slow to cloud,

23:44

I had lunch with him. I'm

23:46

like, why exactly are you laying AWS

23:48

dominate when you have much, this is your

23:50

area, you know? Well,

23:53

you know, he's a very considered person and I

23:55

think in this case, they shouldn't be putting out

23:57

products that are embarrassing because they're

23:59

a worldwide. I mean, they're the

24:01

most consumer-facing of all these companies,

24:04

more than Microsoft, Meta, I

24:06

suppose. But they're

24:08

the most consumer-facing, and they're known. What

24:11

I thought was amazing is this is

24:13

a company known for searching and getting

24:15

you the answer you want by pointing

24:17

you to the answer. Then

24:19

they give you the answer, and it's wrong. It

24:21

ruins the brand in seconds, right? Isn't that their

24:24

whole promise of being correct or being helpful? I

24:27

don't know. From a brand perspective, I think

24:30

it's disastrous. Yeah, but narratives have momentum, and

24:32

the momentum is against Sundar and Alphabet right

24:34

now. They're seen as being

24:37

disrupted in the classic case of the innovator's

24:39

dilemma, where they didn't want to challenge this

24:42

billion-dollar toll booth called Search and

24:44

let other people come around them and disrupt it. The

24:49

narrative is negative, and some of the things you

24:51

were talking about where he quote unquote

24:53

doesn't make decisions quickly, if the narrative is positive,

24:55

everyone would be saying that he's a thoughtful, mature

24:57

business leader that the world needs right now. Because

25:00

if you look at the numbers, the actual numbers, the

25:03

stock is up 37% in the last 12 months.

25:07

The company continues to perform. It's

25:09

touching ... I think the stock

25:11

is at an all-time high. It's

25:13

outperformed even the S&P. Quite

25:17

frankly, I think these stories are a little bit bullshit. I

25:19

think they make for a clickbait. I think they're embarrassing. You're

25:23

right, it might impact the brand because the media picks

25:26

up on it because they're funny and it's like seeing

25:28

... They are funny. It's tabloid. But

25:30

the reality is they continue to perform. This

25:32

was my big tech stock pick for 2024. They

25:37

have not given up any ground on Search. Their

25:40

cloud business is firing on all 12,000

25:42

cylinders. YouTube is

25:44

the most dominant video platform among

25:46

young people, and they

25:48

are trying fast to catch up in AI. The

25:52

narrative right now is bad

25:55

and momentum is against them, but the

25:57

data gets in the way of the narrative here. This company is ...

26:00

performing really well. Yeah, that's a fair point.

26:02

That's a fair point. I just don't think a thing like this

26:04

leak comes out when they're under the Justice

26:06

Department scrutiny and this idea, it works well

26:08

for the people that are trying to slow

26:11

them down for definitely for the Justice Department,

26:13

right? It shows

26:15

them, you know, saying

26:17

one thing and doing another. I think

26:19

it's someone, the guy who, one

26:22

of the people who leaked this information, I think,

26:24

or he had this information, where's this guy's name?

26:26

Fishkin, I think is his name. Fishkin is a

26:28

veteran search engine optimization industry. He told the Verge,

26:32

you know, here's the last part

26:35

which I thought was important. Journalists

26:37

and publishers of information about SEO and Google

26:39

search need to stop uncritically repeating Google's public

26:41

statements and take a much harsher, more adversarial

26:43

view of the search giants' representatives. When publications repeat

26:45

Google's claims as though they were a fact, they're

26:48

hoping Google will spin a story that's a

26:50

lease to accompany and not to practitioners, users,

26:52

or public. The reason why that is important

26:54

is because everybody, that is a black box.

26:56

Nobody gets to see the inside of and

26:58

they're just starting to see it, right? And

27:00

that's, you know, it's not what they were told.

27:02

Or did a lot of people get those sort

27:04

of erroneous answers? I mean, how many consumers were actually

27:06

exposed to that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't

27:09

know. It's just, I don't know. In this

27:11

case, this is about the leaked documents. I

27:13

think it's just, it's not a

27:15

great public image for a company in the middle of a Justice

27:18

Department thing. So we'll see where it goes. But

27:20

you're right, it's performing well. I do think there

27:22

is a sense, though, from people who work there,

27:24

and I ran into a bunch last week in Silicon

27:26

Valley of they're the slow-footed

27:28

company right now, even if

27:30

they're, you know, it's like sort of being

27:33

in the newspaper business in the salad days before everything

27:35

went to hell. Anyway, let's

27:37

go on a quick break. We come back.

27:39

Tesla shareholders are getting ready to vote on

27:41

Elon's pay package. And we'll speak with a

27:43

friend of Pivot, CNN legal analyst, Ellie Honig,

27:45

about what he thinks people are getting wrong

27:47

about the Trump verdict. Thanks

27:54

for the show comes from Mercury. Financial

27:57

operations are needlessly complex. Startups

27:59

have to come. together a patchwork with tools

28:01

to reconcile transactions from different sources

28:04

and struggle to glean answers from

28:06

platforms that speak different languages. Simplicity

28:08

can transform your business operations. That's why

28:10

Mercury powers your financial workflows from the

28:13

bank account so you can pay bills

28:15

faster, stay in control of company spending

28:17

and speed up reconciliation. Apply in minutes

28:19

at mercury.com and join over 100,000 ambitious

28:23

startups that trust Mercury, not just

28:25

for banking and credit cards, but for

28:27

the precision control and focus they need

28:29

to transform their financial workflows and perform

28:31

at their best. Mercury, the art of

28:34

simplified sciences. Apply in minutes

28:36

at mercury.com. Mercury is a

28:38

financial technology company, not a

28:40

bank. Banking services provided by

28:42

Choice Financial Group and Evolve

28:44

Bank and Trust members FDIC.

28:54

Support for pivot comes from Hestens. Since

28:56

1852 and over six generations,

28:58

Hestens beds have been renowned for their

29:00

craftsmanship and use of high quality natural

29:03

materials to ensure your body temperature stays

29:05

regulated while you sleep. Hestens offers a

29:07

range of firmness options to suit different

29:09

preferences and body types, ensuring personalized comfort.

29:11

Their beds also feature advanced pocket spring

29:13

systems that provide targeted support and minimized

29:15

motion transfer, enhancing sleep quality. Plus, their

29:18

use of unique materials, including horse hair,

29:20

that you didn't know that one, helps

29:22

ensure your body temperature stays regulated while

29:24

you sleep. The team visited a Hestens

29:26

sleep spa for an in-person immersive experience

29:28

of trout and beds and found them

29:30

to be incredibly comfy. And for side

29:32

sleepers, there were specific pillows that were

29:34

particularly user friendly. Hestens wants to ensure

29:37

that you wake up feeling refreshed and

29:39

rejuvenated, ready to tackle the day. You

29:41

can wake up energized, and

29:43

joyful with Hestens. You can visit one of

29:45

their stores or go to hestens.com to

29:47

book a personalized bed test or order a

29:49

catalog to learn more. Support

29:55

for the show comes from ServiceNow,

29:57

the AI platform for business transformation.

30:00

Heard the big hype around AI? The truth

30:02

is, AI is only as powerful

30:04

as a platform it's built into.

30:06

ServiceNow is the platform that puts

30:08

AI to work for people across

30:10

your business, removing friction and frustration

30:13

for your employees. Supercharging productivity for

30:15

your developers, providing intelligent tools for

30:17

your service agents to make customers

30:19

happier. AI built into a single

30:21

platform you can use right now.

30:23

That's why the world works with

30:25

ServiceNow. Visit servicenow.com/AI for people to

30:27

learn more. Scott,

30:36

we're back. Tesla shareholders are a vote

30:38

on whether to reinstate Elon Musk's multi-billion

30:41

dollar pay package in just over a

30:43

week. Tesla has been busy

30:45

rallying investors in a series of paid ads

30:47

on Google and X. Elon's also

30:49

offering a private tour of the Tesla factory

30:52

to 15 shareholders who vote yes on the

30:54

pay package. Oh, good heavens. Meanwhile,

30:56

we should absolutely buy shares to

30:58

do that. Meanwhile, at least two

31:00

advisory firms have urged shareholders to

31:02

vote no. The big

31:04

ones raising concerns about Elon's various side projects and

31:07

saying the package would dilute shareholder value. How

31:09

do you think this will shake out? Tesla

31:12

is already firing back at one of these

31:14

advisory firms, Glass Lewis, big firm, accusing the

31:16

firm of scaremongering and faulty reasoning. Elon is

31:18

referring to shareholders who vote against his pay

31:20

package as oathbreakers. OK, maybe

31:23

they just like to make money, Elon. He

31:26

also got accused of insider trading in

31:28

a lawsuit filed by a Tesla shareholder last week with

31:30

suit claims he sold over $7.5 billion of shares in

31:32

2022 before

31:35

Tesla announced some delivery expectations would not

31:37

be met. So what do

31:39

you think? What do you think about this? I think

31:41

the investor lawsuit is bullshit. The SEC is the

31:44

one charged with bringing people up on insider trading

31:46

charges. That's just a distraction. So

31:49

just a little bit of background here. I

31:51

have a lot of experience with ISS and Glass

31:53

Lewis. And what happens is the following. Corporate governance

31:55

is supposed to mimic traditional democratic

31:57

governance. And that is instead of. one

32:00

person, one vote, it's one share, one vote. And

32:02

then when they have big issues, such as whether

32:04

there should be a merger or to reject pay

32:06

package, whatever it might be, or

32:08

certain conditions or operations of the

32:10

company to divest from wherever, the

32:13

shareholders get to show up on election

32:15

day and vote for different resolutions. Now,

32:18

because shareholders don't want to get cross-haired

32:20

with management and or they own 400

32:23

different positions because they're a hedge fund, an

32:26

industry emerged called advisory firms.

32:28

Proxy were basically these firms,

32:30

the two biggest Glass-Lewis and institutional shareholders

32:32

services, ISS, their job is to look

32:34

at these issues and make a recommendation.

32:37

That way, Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab

32:39

can say, management, this isn't a

32:41

statement on you. We're just taking their recommendation. They have

32:43

the time to do this. We want to outsource responsibility

32:45

for this. When I was ran a proxy fight

32:47

at Red Envelope and tried to sweep out the entire

32:50

board, I flew to Washington DC

32:52

and said, this is my board. This is why they're

32:54

better. This is why the current board sucks. And they

32:56

put out a statement saying, Scott is crazy. He should

32:58

not go back on the board, but he is

33:00

one of his nominees. Bob Perkowitz should go on the

33:02

board because the current board is not living up to

33:04

its fiduciary duty. And most people

33:06

vote that way. What I, why I

33:09

believe this pay package will probably be

33:11

refuted or turned down. It's

33:14

because both ISS and Glass-Lewis

33:16

have said, no, I've never seen something go

33:18

through over the objections of both shareholder

33:21

service, shareholder advisory companies.

33:23

What's unusual here in their argument

33:26

is that distinctive is pay package. He's

33:29

already vested. And I go back to another experience when

33:31

I've been on the board, when I've been the CEO

33:33

of a venture back company and I've stopped vesting shares

33:35

and I've said, I want more. Typically

33:37

what I have heard back is, Scott,

33:40

you own so much of this company. You're

33:42

already vested. We don't need to give you

33:44

more. You already are incented to do the

33:46

right thing. And that's what they're saying here.

33:49

Right. So you think it might refute it.

33:51

People do think, I know they're, the chairman,

33:53

what's her name? Robin Denholm, who's just such

33:55

an enabler of Elon Musk. It's crazy. He

33:58

is is

34:01

pushing very hard. And this idea of

34:03

oathbreakers, it's just noise, correct? I mean,

34:05

but he always does take things on

34:07

that others haven't, right? So he loves

34:09

this fight. The argument in favor

34:11

of this is that the headline number

34:14

of $40 billion or whatever it is,

34:16

is misleading, because when they made the

34:18

award, the stock was dramatically lower, and

34:21

the award, because it was options, was

34:23

worth dramatically less. And that, if

34:26

someone showed up, if Tim Cook

34:28

said to Apple shareholders, I

34:31

want a trillion dollars, but I'm going to add

34:33

10 trillion in value over the next five years,

34:36

the majority of shareholders would probably say, sure, have

34:38

at it. That's the argument they'll make. That's not a

34:40

$46 billion pay package. It's

34:42

single billions based on the value of the options

34:45

when the stock was much lower and he lived

34:47

up to his end of the agreement. Now shareholders

34:49

need to live up to theirs. However,

34:51

I have never seen something go through that

34:53

has both advisory firms going against it. I've

34:55

never seen that. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens.

34:57

I wonder what he'll do if he does. Maybe he'll get into

35:00

media. We talked last week about him getting

35:02

political. Now we're hearing more about his plans.

35:04

X is really teaming up with News Nation

35:07

to host a live town hall with Donald

35:09

Trump, as well as one with RFK Jr.

35:11

The Biden campaign also invited participate in a

35:13

town hall or debate. They declined. They're

35:17

obviously the tech stuff they tried with

35:19

Don Ronda Santos. Hopefully it'll work. What

35:22

do you think about these town halls? Do they matter? I

35:24

don't know if they matter so much. Most people will

35:27

watch the CNN one because it's a debate, but for

35:29

the most part it's early and possibly

35:32

noisy. I think the next few ones are

35:34

going to be really interesting just to see

35:36

how the public

35:38

and media and how the candidate

35:40

deals with a post felon candidate.

35:44

Is it a speed bump that he just rolls

35:46

right over or does it become this poltergeist that

35:48

he can't shake? I think we're

35:50

going to get a sense for that in the next

35:53

town hall. I actually think this one's pretty important. It'll

35:55

be interesting to see how he behaves because he

35:57

did an interview with Fox, but they edited it

35:59

quite heavily. So they edited out

36:01

the crazy, I think, is what happened. And

36:04

so he tends, if you saw that press conference,

36:06

that was one wackadoo press conference. And

36:09

I think he has a tendency to just

36:11

spin in this

36:13

really unusual way, which

36:16

many people are used to, but it also

36:18

seems crazier than ever. And so it'll

36:21

be interesting if it's unfettered, it could

36:23

be fascinating, you know, if we see

36:25

it. There are some reporters, I

36:27

assume Chris Cuomo will be part of it, for

36:31

example, at News Nation. But you know, as

36:34

we said over and over again, Elon Musk wanted to be

36:36

a media mogul, and now he is one. This

36:38

is when he likes this influence, peddling. He

36:41

likes all the bells and whistles of being a

36:43

media company, and so he's behaving like that.

36:47

I think it's probably good for Biden not to participate,

36:49

but I'm not sure. Does it matter? I

36:52

fire word Biden. Oh, God,

36:54

this is such a tough one. I

36:57

think he should do. I'm not sure I would get

36:59

on the stage with Trump. I just think he's so

37:01

unpredictable, so strange. The

37:04

whole thing just makes me so fucking nervous. I

37:07

personally just couldn't even watch it. I would just be

37:09

like... I think maybe that's the night I take mushrooms

37:11

for the first time. The

37:13

debate night. Anyway, let's bring in our

37:15

friend of Pivot. Ellie

37:22

Honig is CNN's chief legal analyst and

37:24

a former federal and state prosecutor. He's

37:26

also written a column for New York

37:28

Magazine about the Trump verdict in which

37:30

he says, victory is a great deodorant,

37:32

but a guilty verdict doesn't make it

37:34

all pure and right. What a nice

37:36

metaphor. Ellie, welcome. Good.

37:38

Thank you for having me. It's great

37:40

to be on the show. I'm fans of both of yours, so this is... Thank

37:43

you. We ran each other in the green room, as

37:45

CNN told Scott. And you

37:48

were getting a lot of buzz from this piece you did

37:50

for New York Magazine. And you would

37:52

think that prosecutors essentially contoured to the law to

37:54

get Trump. You say

37:56

the DA's charges were, quote, obscure and

37:58

nearly entirely... unprecedented and just to be

38:01

clear as you note in the piece

38:03

both DA Alvin Bragg and Trump's leader

38:05

Todd Blanche are former colleagues of yours.

38:07

So make your case here because people

38:09

were surprised. You

38:11

tend to, Michael Cohen thinks you're contrarian

38:14

for contrarian's sake, but talk about what

38:16

you were saying here. So

38:18

I think it's really important to draw distinction

38:20

here and I do this in the piece

38:22

between the jury's verdict on the one hand,

38:24

but the prosecutorial and to an extent judicial

38:26

decision making that led up to it on

38:29

the other hand, I have no problem with

38:31

the jury's verdict. I lead off the article

38:33

by talking about how as a prosecutor, I

38:35

was taught the jury's verdict is sacrosanct. That's

38:37

not to say you can never disagree with

38:39

the jury's verdict, but you have to respect

38:41

it. And the way I

38:43

look at this case is given what the jury was

38:45

given and the way they were given this verdict

38:48

is completely reasonable. It's within the very

38:50

broad swath of criminal cases where reasonable

38:52

fact finders could go either way. They're

38:55

the ones in the courtroom. I have no qualm

38:57

with what they did. In fact, as I say in

38:59

the piece, they deserve credit. They did a very tough

39:01

job here, apparently very well. Now my

39:03

criticism is in the way that Alvin Bragg,

39:05

again, as you say, a former colleague and

39:08

a friend of mine brought this case, charged

39:10

it and prosecuted it. And to

39:12

a lesser extent with the way the judge handled it. I

39:15

guess I'll start with the sort of

39:17

underlying parts that I have a problem

39:19

with. One is that Alvin Bragg, when

39:21

he was running for office, no pun

39:24

intended, bragged about the fact that he would

39:26

go after Trump. I mean, we've seen this

39:28

repeatedly. Letitia James did the same thing. Other

39:30

elected prosecutors in other areas have

39:32

done the same. But Alvin at one point said, during

39:35

an interview during his campaign, that he had stewed

39:38

Donald Trump over a hundred times, which is

39:40

bizarre because Alvin's not a liar. That's not

39:42

true, though. I have a

39:44

problem generally with elected prosecutors running for

39:47

office on the basis of, vote for

39:49

me and I will get this specific

39:51

person. I think that's broadly problematic. Okay.

39:54

But not uncommon. But go ahead. Not uncommon

39:56

at all. Very common. The incentives

39:59

are obvious, right? I

40:01

have I believe Judge Mershon should have recused

40:03

himself. We could argue about whether he had

40:05

to he got an ethics opinion saying he

40:07

didn't have to but I think have

40:09

to and should have her different things he gave me $35

40:13

yeah a very silly small

40:15

amount that he gave to explicitly

40:18

Pro-biden explicitly resist Donald

40:21

Trump acts blue

40:24

not charities, but you know And

40:27

the problem with that is one judges aren't allowed

40:29

to give anything it's clear under the judicial rules

40:31

You're not allowed to donate anything to a political

40:33

cause and to just think of the flip side

40:35

What if a judge on one of the other

40:37

Trump cases had given 35 bucks to

40:40

MAGA forever Donald Trump 2020 or 2024 resist Joe

40:43

Biden, I think people would have a problem with that

40:45

and I think right now people think that judge

40:47

Eileen Cannon is gonna Get paid later, but go

40:50

ahead maybe maybe but my point is like let's

40:52

make it There's 49 other judges in that courthouse

40:54

who have not donated recusal doesn't mean the case

40:56

goes way recusal Just means a judge with no

40:58

issues handles it. I think judge Mershon by the

41:00

way, and again, there's a nuance I think he

41:02

did a generally good job running this case But

41:04

I think he has a conflict of interest now

41:06

as to the charges themselves, you know You will

41:08

hear the DA's office and it's flax I don't

41:11

mean that in a negative sense, but there's spokespeople

41:13

say well this kind of charges the bread and

41:15

butter It's what we do every day The

41:18

problem is that is only true if you draw

41:20

your definition of lines so broadly that they're

41:22

meaningless and The

41:24

the more salient point to me is

41:26

this is the first time in US

41:28

history that we have seen state or

41:30

in this case County level prosecutors bring

41:33

a charge that is based entirely or in

41:35

some part on violation of federal campaign

41:37

finance law and that wouldn't apply to only presidential

41:40

candidates that apply to The hundreds

41:42

or thousands of not hundreds of hundreds

41:44

or thousands of people who've run for

41:46

house and Senate seats over our history

41:48

Nobody's ever been charged in a state

41:50

court with anything based on federal campaign

41:53

finance crime So I think

41:55

that's a problem and I think it suggests well also

41:57

if you look at the way they charge this case

41:59

It's It's as I argue in the

42:01

article, it's not just unusual.

42:03

It's unique to Donald Trump. It's bespoke.

42:06

And let me just quickly run through

42:08

the way they charge this case. It's

42:10

a three layer sandwich here. Layer one

42:13

is a falsification of business records misdemeanor

42:15

which was expired under the statute of

42:17

limitations. They added on top of that,

42:20

a New York state election law violation

42:22

for using unlawful means, which is also

42:24

a misdemeanor, which somehow you add two

42:26

misdemeanors together and they become a felony

42:29

under this alchemy of New York

42:31

law. And then what were the unlawful

42:33

means? They offered up three menu options,

42:35

which they didn't even specify until very

42:37

late in the trial, federal election law,

42:39

tax, which was never explained, and then

42:41

falsification of business records again. So it's

42:43

sort of circular. It's a bizarre, unusual

42:45

sort of tortured charge that they brought.

42:48

So they still won. They still won and the

42:50

jurors bought it, whoever, however you want

42:52

to put it. So I assume this is what Trump's

42:54

choice will bring up in the appeals process. Who do

42:56

you think will be successful? Yeah, I think the best

42:58

argument they have is the one I just

43:00

laid out, that you cannot take an area

43:02

that's dedicated to federal enforcement, immigration as one

43:04

example. And we have this going on in

43:07

Texas right now. They're passing state laws about

43:09

immigration. I've said those are doomed because that's

43:11

a federal area for enforcement, not states. Federal

43:14

election law, I think probably falls in the

43:16

same category. So I think you have a

43:18

problem constitutionally when you have states charging and

43:21

enforcing it. The other appeal arguments I've heard

43:23

people talk about don't

43:25

strike me as winning arguments necessarily.

43:28

They should have changed the venue out of Manhattan. I

43:31

don't think, while I believe the judge should have recused, I

43:33

don't think that's gonna get this case reversed. Admission

43:36

of the salacious Stormy Daniels and other stuff, that's

43:38

standard appeals fodder that we'll probably lose. And by

43:40

the way, I don't think it's more likely than

43:42

not that Trump wins his appeal. That's very hard

43:44

for any defendant to win. But I think he's got

43:47

a better shot and a better argument than your average

43:49

defendant. Nice to meet you, Ellie.

43:52

So it doesn't mean you're wrong, my sense

43:54

is you're in the minority of legal scholars,

43:57

the majority of scholarship.

44:00

I've read so far post the decision is

44:02

that the judge was very buttoned up and

44:04

that most avenues of appeal look pretty scant.

44:08

But anyway, that's not my question. My question is

44:10

around sentencing. And my understanding is that about 90%

44:13

of the time on this level

44:15

of charge of conviction, there is not

44:17

a prison sentence. At the same time,

44:19

a big component of the judge's discretion

44:22

around whether to imprison someone is

44:24

the level of contrition or in this case,

44:27

just blatant, historic, singular,

44:30

non-contrition, slandering people,

44:33

refusing gag orders, mocking the

44:36

judge, making... I mean, just so

44:39

you know, Ellie, I always managed to bring everything back

44:41

to me. I was on a board call a few

44:44

months ago and I remember saying to the CEO, I

44:46

feel like you're begging us or daring us to fire

44:48

you. And I

44:50

feel as if Trump is daring the

44:52

judge to sentence him to prison. How

44:54

would you handicap the sentencing here? I

44:56

put the sentencing at 50-50. I

44:58

know that's not an exciting answer, but it's actually a little

45:00

bit of an unusual answer because if you... But it's on

45:03

90-10. You think he might

45:05

get sentenced to prison. I do, right, because I've said

45:07

on air, if you look at the universe of this

45:09

statute, 50 of your

45:11

New York class E felony falsification of business

45:14

records, it's the lowest of five levels, A

45:16

through E, somewhere in the range

45:18

of 70 to 90% of people convicted

45:20

of that get no jail time, probation. But for

45:22

exactly the reasons you say, Scott, I think not

45:24

only the judge is 50-50 likely to

45:27

give him prison time, but would be justified in

45:29

it. And I think what you've articulated is exactly

45:32

what the prosecutors will ask for. I'm actually really

45:34

interested to see what does the DA ask for

45:36

because they've got to make the first move here.

45:38

They're going to have to say, judge, here's what

45:40

we want. Now, he may or may not agree, but

45:42

are they... I think the DA will ask for

45:44

prison time. I think it's hard to justify bringing

45:46

this case. And then as a prosecutor

45:49

saying to the judge, very serious

45:51

case, DA's argues it impacted the

45:53

2016 election and we're fine with

45:55

probation. Sentencing is entirely up

45:57

to the judge. This one strikes me as a real close call. And

45:59

Scott, just to... your first point, just to be clear, I

46:02

agree. I don't think that the judge did

46:04

anything that strikes me as reversible

46:06

on appeal aside from the federal state campaign issue.

46:08

And again, I think Judge Rashad did a good

46:11

job overseeing and running this case, but being conflicted

46:13

is not the same thing as whether you're a

46:15

good or bad effective or ineffective judge. So I

46:17

don't know that there's that much disagreeing. And there

46:20

was the issues of his daughter, which I think

46:22

is sort of nonsense. Yeah, I don't care about

46:24

that. I agree. Yeah, most people don't because most

46:26

people didn't point to work. They did. Explain

46:29

where the appeals process is going

46:31

now and what Trump is doing

46:33

to effect it because he

46:36

obviously uses social media really heavily. He

46:38

had the whole crew, his little crew

46:40

out yelling about it and saying it's

46:42

the worst travesty of justice in the

46:44

history of the world kind of stuff.

46:47

Is that effective on these appeals judges?

46:49

Is this correct

46:51

by women of color? Is that

46:54

correct? So for all

46:56

of the things that Donald Trump has been

46:58

saying before, during, and after this trial up

47:01

to now are counterproductive and self-destructive. And if

47:03

I was his lawyer, I would be begging

47:05

him to stop it. It will hurt him

47:07

on sentencing for the reason Scott just laid

47:10

out. It will hurt him when it comes

47:12

to appeal potentially. If you say things that

47:14

are inconsistent with what you're arguing, what you've

47:16

argued before, that can be used against you.

47:19

No judge in the world, I think, no

47:21

decent good faith judge will be remotely persuaded

47:23

in favor of any litigant who's out there

47:25

making inflammatory statements. Okay, how

47:27

is the appeal going to work? Unfortunately for

47:30

Speaker Mike Johnson, there's no such thing

47:32

as the Supreme Court, quote unquote, stepping

47:34

in as he has urged them to

47:36

do. The profit today, right? Trump asked for

47:38

them to step in. Yeah, that's not that they

47:40

can't reach down and just pluck out whatever case

47:42

they want. They don't do that. They can't do

47:44

that. Here's what's going to happen as you allude

47:47

to, Kara. The next layer of appeals. So we're

47:49

in New York state court here. We're not in

47:51

federal court is going to be to the New

47:53

York appellate division. And to your question about the

47:55

five languages, women of color.

47:57

So there are 21. judges

48:00

on that appeals circuit more or

48:03

less. Five or more

48:05

of them are black or Hispanic women, but

48:07

we don't know who of them, who of

48:09

the 21 are going to be put on

48:11

this panel. Typically it's five. Typically

48:14

they are chosen at random. Twenty

48:16

of the 21, I should note, were appointed

48:18

by Democratic governors. I mean, New York State

48:20

has had since Pataki, I guess, almost all

48:22

Democratic governors. That picture

48:25

that's been going around, I think, is making the

48:27

point that there are a good number of minority

48:29

female judges, but that's not to say they will

48:31

be the panel. By the way, they'll do a

48:33

good job. I think the point was this is

48:35

someone he's been hostile to. Yeah, yeah, sure. And

48:38

then if, let's assume Trump loses there, and I

48:40

think he's likely to lose there, he's not

48:43

over 50% to win there, then

48:45

he can ask the highest court

48:47

in New York State, which confusingly

48:50

is called the Court of Appeals, they

48:53

call their trial court, the Supreme Court, whatever.

48:55

They call it the top court in New York State.

48:57

He can ask them to take the case, and

48:59

like our US Supreme Court, they don't have

49:01

to, but they might. Seven judges sit on

49:04

that, all of whom were appointed by Democratic

49:06

governors, though it's a little more of a

49:08

complex process. And look, they just threw out

49:10

the Harvey Weinstein case, so they will surprise.

49:13

Again, I don't think they're particularly likely to

49:15

throw this case out, but when Trump is

49:17

done with the whole state-level appeals process, wherever

49:19

that ends, only then, and

49:22

we're talking a year and change

49:24

out from now, only then

49:26

can he ask the US Supreme Court to take the case.

49:28

And by the way, the US Supreme Court can

49:30

and should, well, historically, they only take a case

49:33

if there's a federal interest in it. So if

49:35

it's like, well, we should have moved the case

49:37

from Manhattan to Staten Island, that's not a federal

49:39

question. That's why I'm focused on

49:41

the federal state election issue. There certainly is a

49:43

federal issue there. So we're a long ways away

49:46

from this being done and knowing what's going on.

49:48

And he would have to go to jail if

49:50

they immediately, right? So

49:52

very important point. His sentencing

49:54

is currently scheduled for July 11th. If

49:57

the judge sentences him to prison, do you

49:59

have any questions? Trump will certainly ask for, and

50:01

I think is 95% likely

50:03

to get what we call bail pending appeal.

50:05

Meaning you get to stay out of prison

50:07

or you don't have to start serving your

50:09

sentence, whatever it may be, until all of

50:11

your appeals are done, which is why in

50:13

my view there's no way he's locked up

50:16

before the 2024 election. But

50:18

yeah, he will likely, if he's sentenced the prison

50:20

or whatever he's sentenced to, he will almost certainly

50:22

be given bail pending appeal. And

50:24

then if the Supreme Court, he

50:26

loses there, he loses everywhere, he

50:29

goes to jail if he's president. Well, so

50:32

there's the other X factor, does he win

50:34

the election? Obviously, if he loses the election,

50:36

sure. He goes to jail. Right. If he

50:38

wins, you know, that is in an area

50:40

that we've never had to confront yet another

50:42

of the hypotheticals Donald Trump makes come to

50:45

life. My unsophisticated constitutional view

50:47

is it just can't be. It just

50:49

can't be that our system would permit

50:51

the commander in chief to be locked

50:53

up at Rikers or in a state

50:55

penitentiary. How that is executed,

50:57

how that decision comes down, whether it's from

51:00

the state saying we aren't going to try

51:02

to lock up the sitting president or the

51:04

federal court somehow getting involved. I don't I

51:06

can't tell you, but I just can't see

51:08

as a practical matter or scenario where the

51:10

sitting president, the sitting commander in chief is

51:12

behind bars. So I have two more questions.

51:14

Do you think it has an effect on the election?

51:17

Is this helpful to him? But, you know, these legal

51:19

antics are things he's known for. He tried it in

51:21

the E. Jean Carroll case. It didn't work. He tried

51:23

it in the New York State case. He didn't

51:25

it didn't work. He keeps

51:27

losing legally. Talk a

51:30

little bit about that and what impact does because

51:32

he obviously raises money on these

51:34

things. He's raised unprecedented amounts of

51:36

money and become the victim of

51:38

using victimization as a tool here.

51:40

He's pretty good at using victimization as a

51:43

tool politically, I'm saying. And you're right, Kara,

51:45

to note that Trump has now been hit

51:47

with three or four really, you

51:49

know, serious verdicts

51:51

in a row between the civil cases you just

51:53

mentioned. This is a big deal. Like, I don't

51:55

want to downplay this. I don't intend to downplay

51:57

this when a former president is convicted of. That's

52:00

a huge deal, and I'll leave it

52:02

to you all to sort of decide

52:04

where the political angles sit. But the

52:07

big one thing that I do think

52:09

is happening here is we all collectively

52:11

have paid so much attention to this

52:13

case rightly. But hasn't it really obscured

52:15

and almost pushed to the backpack burner,

52:17

the January 6 cases, the classified documents

52:19

case, which to me are so much

52:21

more important. And

52:24

the concern I think that people have, a

52:26

legitimate concern is given

52:29

what I already argue, and I think a good amount of

52:31

people, I've heard from, seen and heard from a lot of

52:33

people across the spectrum who agree with my criticisms of the

52:35

way this case was brought. In

52:38

a way it undermines the seriousness and the integrity

52:40

of the bigger cases that are to come. And

52:42

let me say, Alvin Bragg at least has recognized that his case

52:45

is less important than those because there was a moment when it

52:47

looked like they were all going to collide on the calendar. And

52:50

Alvin said publicly, if I'm at the same time as

52:52

those federal cases, I will step back. And I think

52:54

that was the right move. So I

52:56

would be worried in the bigger sense

52:58

that the questions, I believe legitimate questions

53:00

about this case, the way it was

53:02

charged, could undermine, could

53:04

lend fuel to Trump's largely

53:07

bogus claims of victimization. Right.

53:09

So, but still, those are moving at a

53:11

glacial pace. Scott, last question? Well, you've

53:14

sort of answered it. You're obviously, you

53:16

have domain expertise around legal matters, but

53:18

you're also on CNN and you understand

53:20

how the media responds. The

53:23

doomsday, or the really terrible outcome I think a

53:25

lot of us were worried about was that it

53:28

gets convicted and it helps him be

53:30

elected president. So

53:32

far, and granted, sort of the morning after,

53:34

but I think we're all sort of really

53:37

wondering what impact this has. Do you have

53:39

any sense for at least how

53:41

the media is shaping a narrative around this? Do you think

53:43

that, do you think this is going to, negative,

53:46

neutral, or actually, none of us

53:49

want to admit this. This could end up

53:51

being, this is a non-zero probability. This could

53:53

end up being a positive in terms of

53:55

his chances of being elected. What do you

53:58

sense so far? The same rational... maybe

54:00

former prosecutor part of me thinks the

54:02

most obvious answer is how could it

54:04

possibly be a good thing to be

54:06

a convicted felon, right? And even if

54:08

it peels away 1.2% of his support.

54:12

The Pacific Game Show host was elected

54:14

president. Right, I mean, wouldn't that be

54:16

decisive if he lost 1% of

54:18

the populace net because of this? On the other

54:20

hand, Scott, you're right, that there is polling showing

54:22

that it could actually have the opposite effect. I

54:25

do want to flag to your point in looking

54:27

ahead, the sentencing is going to be

54:29

so interesting because you know what Donald Trump's going to

54:31

say either way, right? Think about it. All right, July 11th,

54:33

he's got the convention in four days, even if it gets

54:35

pushed out a little bit, he'll be in the heart. All

54:38

right. If he gets sentenced to prison by

54:40

Judge Marchand, you know what he'll do. He'll stand up and

54:42

go, folks, this is no longer

54:44

hypothetical. They want to put me in a

54:46

cage. If he does not get sentenced to

54:48

prison, you know what he's going to say,

54:50

right? He's going to go, what a joke,

54:52

folks. Oh, the DA brings this big case

54:55

first ever. And even the judge, even the

54:57

Democratic donor judge thought that it was so

54:59

petty that he gave me probation and pick

55:01

up garbage in the park. So he's already

55:03

angled. The sentencing, I think,

55:05

is going to be politically charged

55:07

either way. You

55:09

both know as well as I do, he's so good

55:11

at building in these defenses,

55:13

making himself what my mom used to

55:15

call perfectly defended. She would say, don't

55:17

be perfectly defended. You're fine either way.

55:20

And he's going to

55:22

manipulate those. And- And you became

55:24

a lawyer. What a shocker. Your

55:26

mom said, don't be perfectly defended. Well, listen, can

55:28

I defend my mom? Is your mom a lawyer?

55:30

My mom, let me defend my mom. She's a

55:33

social worker. She used to place poor

55:35

kids for adoption, but my dad's a lawyer. Okay.

55:37

All right. Can I ask you one last question? If

55:39

you were his lawyer right now, what

55:41

would you advise him to do? Because

55:43

he obviously does control most

55:46

of these proceedings. Todd Blanche was

55:48

trying his best, much more

55:50

appealing when he wasn't sitting next

55:52

to Trump on TV, I was

55:54

noticing. But what would you do

55:57

now as a lawyer for him? I mean, my

55:59

first piece of advice- him is the same as

56:01

it would always be, which he would not listen

56:03

to, which is shut the blank up. I mean,

56:05

he just, there is no good to be done

56:07

in this, but how do you tell, how does

56:09

Donald Trump listen to that? I mean, and you're

56:12

right, Cara, Donald Trump, by all appearances and given

56:14

the reporting, really undermined his own defense at this

56:16

trial. All the things that were reported that he

56:18

made Todd do, focus on Stormy Daniels and argue

56:20

that the sex never happened. Completely

56:24

counterproductive in a tactical

56:26

setting. I would beg of him,

56:29

shut up, let me do this appeal.

56:31

Let me focus on the actual appeal issues we

56:33

have a chance on, not the issues that are

56:35

up your butt and worrying you and keeping you

56:38

up at night. Those aren't the ones that are

56:40

going to give us

56:42

a chance on appeal. And look, the right

56:44

strategy with the other cases, exactly as you

56:46

said, exactly what he's been doing. Just

56:49

raise every argument, try to push them out past

56:51

the election. Two of the three are gone already.

56:53

I mean, the Fulton County case is not going

56:55

to happen before the election. The classified documents case

56:57

is not just one more thing for everyone to

56:59

watch. The moment, the biggest moment of this

57:01

summer will be when we hear

57:03

from the US Supreme Court, probably end

57:05

of June, end of June-ish on

57:07

the immunity case. Because if this, look, I don't

57:10

think Trump's going to ultimately prevail in immunity. I

57:12

think the Supreme Court may well say there is

57:14

such thing as criminal immunity. We actually don't know.

57:16

And here are the parameters. Ultimately, Trump's obviously got

57:18

to be outside whatever the parameters are. It's not

57:20

part of the job. If

57:22

the Supreme Court cleanly rejects immunity and says,

57:24

you lose Trump, that's it, it'll go back

57:27

to Judge Chukin. And I am, as certain

57:29

as I've ever been, she will put a

57:31

trial on the calendar for August,

57:33

September into October. I don't think she cares about

57:36

the election. We can argue about whether she should or not.

57:38

But we will see that case happening

57:40

in this scenario and it will

57:43

be playing out September, October. But

57:45

if the Supreme Court says there is such thing as

57:47

immunity, we're not, you know, it's the first time, here's

57:49

the parameters and back to Judge Chukin. You have to

57:51

hold the hearing and do fact finding and tell us

57:54

whether he's inside or outside the scope. Then it gets

57:56

appealed up the line again, then it's gone until after

57:58

the election. That's the most important thing. the one. All

58:01

right. Oh, well, good to know. All right. We

58:04

will be watching that. And it's the full, I called it,

58:06

I told it to Ellie, it's the full lawyer employment with

58:08

Donald Trump. So it really

58:10

is. You guys, there's lawyers crawling all over

58:12

CNN, Scott. It's like crazy. And they're all

58:15

like duking it out. They're all like, no,

58:17

the norm eyes and what are you talking

58:19

about, Ellie? That's a pretty good norm. Yeah.

58:22

Yeah. What are you talking

58:24

about? Anyway, I urge you to read the column at

58:26

New York Magazine. You do it regularly. You do legal

58:29

columns regularly for them. Every Friday for New York Magazine. Every Friday,

58:31

which is great. All right, Ellie Honig, thank you

58:33

so much for coming on. Thank you

58:35

both. Nice to meet you, Ellie. Appreciate it.

58:38

One more quick break and we'll be back for

58:40

wins and fails. Support

58:46

for Pivot comes from Vanta. When it

58:48

comes to ensuring your company has top-notch

58:50

security practices, things can get complicated fast.

58:53

With Vanta, you can automate compliance for SOC 2,

58:55

ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more. Vanta's

59:01

market-leading trust management platform can help

59:03

you unify security program management with

59:06

built-in risk register plus reporting and

59:08

also streamline security reviews with AI-powered

59:11

security questionnaires. Over 7,000 fast-growing companies

59:13

like Atlassian, Flow Health, and Quora

59:15

use Vanta to manage risk and

59:18

prove security in real time. You

59:21

can watch Vanta's on-demand demo at

59:23

vanta.com slash pivot to learn more.

59:26

That's vanta.com/pivot.

59:33

Support for Pivot comes from Fiverr. When

59:35

you're launching your business, it's easy to feel like

59:37

you should do everything yourself. But

59:39

doing it all is just not sustainable, especially

59:41

when it comes to the hassle of onboarding

59:44

and hiring new talent. Enter Fiverr Pro. Fiverr's

59:46

latest offering is designed to connect you with

59:48

top freelancers in just a few clicks. With

59:50

Fiverr Pro, you can have an instant team

59:52

of experts at your fingertips plus seamless collaboration

59:54

tools to manage projects and budget with ease.

59:57

And for more complex projects, Fiverr Pro's exciting.

59:59

Your experienced project manager team can select

1:00:01

the best team of freelancers for your

1:00:03

needs and budget, manage deadlines, and keep

1:00:06

everything on track for you. You can

1:00:08

find AI specialists, digital marketing experts, and

1:00:10

anything in between. With Fiverr Pro, you

1:00:12

get the simplicity of getting things done

1:00:14

combined with the rigor and expertise needed

1:00:16

for your most important business projects. Now

1:00:18

is the time to tap into the

1:00:20

best freelance talent and accelerate your growth

1:00:22

for your business with Fiverr Pro. Visit

1:00:24

pro.fiverr.com to sign up and use code

1:00:26

PIVOT for 15% off any service. pro.fiverr.com

1:00:34

and use offer code PIVOT. FFX

1:00:54

is the most cursed team in

1:00:56

the league, starring Lawrence Fishburne, Jackie

1:00:58

Weaver, Cleopatra Coleman, and Ed O'Neill.

1:01:02

FFX is clipped, streaming June

1:01:04

4th, only on Hulu. Okay,

1:01:13

Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you

1:01:15

like to go first today? You

1:01:18

go first, Kara. What do you got? I

1:01:20

think my – it's

1:01:22

a win-fail. Well, no, it's a fail. This

1:01:26

Trump – tech investors doing this

1:01:29

Trump fundraiser, tech has gotten very,

1:01:31

very right-wing. There is pushback

1:01:33

from people like Reid Hoffman and others, but the

1:01:36

real momentum is on the side of sort

1:01:38

of the Jimath Palihapitiya and

1:01:41

David Sacks, who are doing this

1:01:43

fundraiser. Palihapitiya

1:01:47

was a former Democratic donor

1:01:49

who then – we've talked about him a number of

1:01:51

times in not a nice way, but one of

1:01:53

the things that I liked was a piece by

1:01:55

a guy named Paul Carr, who's a very good

1:01:58

writer. It was around for the tech thing. And

1:02:02

I like it so much. He's not a fan of Kara

1:02:04

Swisher's, but that's okay. He wrote a great piece about this

1:02:06

fundraiser. And he wrote this one section.

1:02:08

I'm just going to read it. The

1:02:10

optics of the fundraiser are already particularly

1:02:12

challenging for Saks. Longtime tech

1:02:15

followers might recall that the Yammer founder has

1:02:17

spent years trying to distance himself from a

1:02:19

book he published in college with his pal

1:02:21

Peter Thiel, in which he described date rape

1:02:23

as, quote, belated regret. In

1:02:26

2016, Saks explained to

1:02:28

Who Else, Kara Swisher, that the outcry

1:02:30

was all just a big misunderstanding.

1:02:33

The book, quote, does not represent who

1:02:35

I am or what I believe today.

1:02:37

Saks insisted, I'm embarrassed by

1:02:39

some of my former views and regret

1:02:41

writing them because nothing says I no

1:02:44

longer defend rapists like hosting a half

1:02:46

million dollar fundraiser for Donald Trump. I

1:02:48

love that writing. Good job, Paul Carr.

1:02:52

I got to say, that was exactly right. It's

1:02:54

sort of shocking. And

1:02:56

I suppose that was my positive because I

1:02:58

like this piece and I think everybody should go

1:03:01

read it. My negative is

1:03:03

the continued swirl

1:03:06

around media companies. It is getting sad

1:03:08

to me. I know

1:03:10

you said I'm not paying attention, but there's

1:03:12

some amazing work that The Washington Post did

1:03:14

under Sally Busby and she deserves full credit

1:03:16

for that work. They won Pulitzer Prizes. And

1:03:18

that's not just the reason you should do

1:03:20

it, but really good, especially in feature work

1:03:22

and some really deep work about what's going

1:03:25

on in our country, which I've really enjoyed.

1:03:28

And so it's sad to see, you

1:03:30

know, what's happening at Paramount and The Post and stuff

1:03:32

like that. And I wish they would come up

1:03:34

with a way to figure out how to make it work because

1:03:37

their product remains excellent

1:03:40

in many forms, especially in the news section, which

1:03:43

she ran. So that's it. All

1:03:46

right. I'll start

1:03:48

with my fail. My fail is, I don't know if it's

1:03:51

an inability to come to some sort of resolution

1:03:53

or that we no longer want to rally around

1:03:55

the truth, but because

1:03:57

every day everybody has a new

1:04:00

need for some reason to put their

1:04:02

views out on everything. And because you

1:04:04

go on your friends Facebook or Instagram

1:04:06

and you, we have such

1:04:08

an intolerance that if they don't line up perfectly

1:04:11

for my orthodoxy, that's it. One strike you're out.

1:04:13

We don't like them. And

1:04:16

I remember back to, I was, when I first moved

1:04:18

to New York and I was dating, I don't

1:04:20

think of all the women I dated, I

1:04:23

could even tell you what their politics were. We didn't, it

1:04:26

was sort of like a more innocent time where, is

1:04:29

this person fun? Is this person nice? Am

1:04:31

I attracted to this person? And

1:04:33

it feels like the politicization and

1:04:36

these issues that everyone feels the

1:04:38

need to vomit all over every

1:04:41

platform they're on. It's just further

1:04:43

and further dividing us. And one of the outputs

1:04:45

of that is that we refuse

1:04:47

to have any sort of resolution or come together

1:04:49

around any sort of truth and or

1:04:52

acknowledge that at some point there has to be

1:04:54

a decision model where we agree to come together

1:04:56

around a decision. So I saw a

1:04:59

lot of stuff around the deep state around this

1:05:01

trial. And what people need to remember

1:05:04

is that this wasn't Alvin

1:05:06

Bragg, it wasn't a DOJ. It was 12 jurors

1:05:09

who gave up time with family

1:05:12

who if based on the demographics of

1:05:14

New York were probably seven Democrats and

1:05:16

five Republicans who have to unanimously decide

1:05:18

on all 34 accounts,

1:05:21

I thought this was a shitty case. I

1:05:23

didn't like it, but the

1:05:26

closest we have to some sort of

1:05:28

resolution that we're supposed to all come

1:05:30

together around are juries and science. And

1:05:33

I'll use a personal example. When I first heard

1:05:35

about gender affirmation therapy,

1:05:38

I thought that makes no sense. Kids

1:05:41

are stupid and they shouldn't be trusted

1:05:43

with this type of irreversible decision. And

1:05:45

then the American

1:05:47

Pediatric Association, which

1:05:49

is filled with people who know more about

1:05:52

this than I do, have much deeper domain

1:05:54

expertise, do tons of peer reviewed research, said

1:05:56

that with the following protocols, we

1:05:58

approve this. And

1:06:01

I say, okay, if people have

1:06:03

taken more time to examine the

1:06:05

issue, have a different view than

1:06:07

mine, I'm going to defer to

1:06:09

their decision. And

1:06:11

there's absolutely no deference anymore. There's

1:06:14

no respect for institutions. There's no

1:06:16

respect for domain expertise. I

1:06:18

think part of living in a society and part

1:06:21

of being a threat in that fabric is that

1:06:23

you have to at some point have deference to

1:06:26

the institutions and people who have the credibility

1:06:28

and have been earned with the charge to

1:06:30

make these decisions. And

1:06:32

there's a total lack of deference in our

1:06:35

society now. No one wants to come together.

1:06:37

It used to be in Congress, when

1:06:39

the numbers came in, you would

1:06:41

compliment the president on a good quarter of

1:06:43

GDP. It used to

1:06:45

be when the unemployment numbers came in,

1:06:48

everybody waited and said, okay, this is

1:06:50

working or not working. And instead, there

1:06:52

is nothing that anyone defers

1:06:54

to anymore. So anyways, a

1:06:56

total loss of deference across

1:06:58

people who have just

1:07:00

seemed to just never want to say,

1:07:02

okay, people have taken the

1:07:05

time, no more about this than me have weighed in,

1:07:07

so I'm going to defer to their decision. My

1:07:11

win is a straight, not

1:07:13

a strange one, but just a personal

1:07:17

privilege here. My ex-wife's father,

1:07:19

Ken Spencer, passed away at

1:07:21

the age of 95. He

1:07:24

was born on a farm in Kansas.

1:07:27

He worked on the farm, joined the Air

1:07:29

Force after four years of service. He attended

1:07:31

college in the GI Bill, graduated from Kansas

1:07:34

State, or

1:07:36

he graduated electrical engineering. He married

1:07:38

Barbara Coulter, my former mother-in-law. They

1:07:40

were together 67 years. He

1:07:43

joined Lockheed in aerospace as

1:07:45

an electrical engineer. He worked on the L-1011.

1:07:47

He worked on submarines, the P-38.

1:07:50

He spent the last 20 years of his career focusing

1:07:52

on the L-1011. He used to have models of the

1:07:54

L-1011 in his house. But this

1:07:57

guy was literally ground zero for what it means to

1:07:59

be an American. and he was a Cub Scout

1:08:01

leader, an Indian guide chief.

1:08:04

He had an interest and a passion in

1:08:06

the American West history and art. He was

1:08:08

a docent at the William S. Hart mansion.

1:08:11

He was on the board at the local park. He

1:08:14

was a trustee at Santa Clarita

1:08:16

United Methodist Church. This guy just reeked

1:08:18

of America. And he had

1:08:20

a really wonderful life, married for 67 years,

1:08:23

four kids. Anyway,

1:08:25

Ken Spencer, really a great

1:08:27

American life. Oh, Scott, tearing

1:08:30

up, that was lovely. That

1:08:32

was so nice. Such a nice man. I mean, it's really a

1:08:34

shame. One of the

1:08:36

terrible things, one of

1:08:38

the many terrible things about divorce is you lose

1:08:40

touch with a really nice family. And

1:08:42

anyways, my heart goes out to the Spencer family.

1:08:45

It was very lovely, Scott. That's lovely. I like

1:08:47

experts, speaking of expertise, by the way, I

1:08:50

defer to you on Tina's jokes, just so you

1:08:52

know. There you go. That's who's gonna do that.

1:08:54

I appreciate that. What is long and hard and

1:08:56

has semen in it? What is long and hard

1:08:58

and has semen in it? I don't know. A

1:09:00

submarine. A submarine. Oh,

1:09:02

God. That's good. That's

1:09:05

bad. That's good. All right, I think that means

1:09:07

it's time for me to read us out. No, not yet.

1:09:09

We wanna hear from you. Send us your

1:09:11

questions about Business Deck or whatever's on your

1:09:14

minds. Go to nymag.com/pivot, submit a question for

1:09:16

the show, or call 85551Pivot. Some

1:09:19

programming notes coming up on our other

1:09:21

podcast. Scott talks to Jess Tarloff. I

1:09:24

can't believe she gets it going. She's

1:09:26

not allowed on my podcast. I love

1:09:28

it. Do you know that? You're not allowed. I have

1:09:30

access to something you don't have access to. Me too.

1:09:32

That is so unusual. They will not let me the

1:09:34

Fox News people. By the way, happy wedding

1:09:36

for Rupert Murdoch. Number five, you got it,

1:09:39

sir. You got it. Anyway,

1:09:41

good luck, sir. I'm sure this time it'll work

1:09:43

out. Anyway, Jess Tarloff talks

1:09:45

about the Trump verdict on a special episode

1:09:47

of Prof. G dropping later today. And then

1:09:49

on with Kara Swisher. I'm talking

1:09:52

to AOC later this week, so that'll be

1:09:54

up. You got AOC? Yeah, I did. I

1:09:57

love AOC. I know. Oh my God, I've

1:09:59

got such a cry. on her. Yeah. Okay.

1:10:03

In any case, I will be also at the Tribeca Film

1:10:05

Festival next week, June 11th, 530 for taping

1:10:08

the Slate podcast, Death, Sex

1:10:10

and Money with Anna Sale,

1:10:12

who I love. You

1:10:14

can get tickets

1:10:17

at tribecafilm.com/deathsexmoney. So

1:10:19

please come and see me if you want,

1:10:22

and we will be talking about death, sex

1:10:24

and money. Mostly I will be recycling Scott

1:10:26

jokes hopefully the whole time. Anyway,

1:10:28

Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on

1:10:31

Friday for more. Today's show is produced

1:10:33

by Larry Naaman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin.

1:10:35

Ernie Dertat engineered this episode. Thanks also to

1:10:37

Drew Broughs and Neil Savario. Ashat

1:10:39

Khurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

1:10:41

Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever

1:10:44

you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to

1:10:46

Pivot from New York

1:10:48

Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to

1:10:50

the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back later

1:10:52

this week for another breakdown of all things

1:10:55

tech and business. And at Spencer,

1:10:57

rest in peace.