Charlie Kirk Assassination Aftermath

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: So today we should start very much saying what happened yesterday in Utah was a terrible and tragic situation. I think there's been a lot of anger, a lot of accusations, a lot of really ugly stuff going on. But being able to speak even if you disagree with someone, and as you might imagine, Scott and I have disagreed with Charlie Kirk many times, you can say what you want, but having this happen is probably the most heinous thing that could occur in a country like the United States where we are supposed to be able to say the most horrible things and continue to debate. Scott?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, look, I've been thinking about this a lot, as most people have over the last, whatever, 18 hours. At the end of the day, or the beginning of the end, is the following: A 31-year-old father of two was needlessly murdered. That is a tragedy, full stop. It should not happen. And we should be thinking about tangible actions to make sure it happens less.

Charlie Kirk, in my view, and we said this, and just to be honest, I won't speak for you. In my view, said a lot of divisive, hateful things.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely.

Scott Galloway: At the same time, his format was really powerful and productive. A lot of people on the far left and the far right go into their echo chambers in a studio somewhere behind a mic and only listen to or respond to people who are supporting them. He went on campus and he would have these open mic, challenge me or debate me or prove me I'm wrong. "Prove me I'm wrong," it was called.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I thought that was really productive and courageous because he was subject to a lot of TikToks and videos that made him look bad. A lot of times he would make great points and show that a lot of young people weren't being critical thinkers about their progressive views. And a lot of times young people would show up and say very intelligent things that counteracted in critical thinking and showed that he was wrong. That is a productive dialogue we should have on campus.

Campuses are supposed to be, and this is one of the most upsetting things about a very upsetting thing, university campuses are supposed to be an incredibly safe place physically, but a dangerous place intellectually. And unfortunately, this reduces both. People, I don't know about you, I'm rethinking some of the campus appearances I've committed to. They're supposed to be physically safe spaces, not only for the speakers, but for the students. And I won't even get into some of the high school stuff, but you have to appreciate he was a great businessman at a very young age, a father of two, and his dialogue and his format, I felt, was a productive, brave dialogue. This is a tragedy.

Let me get to some of the second order effects and I want to get your thoughts. It is just so disappointing that universities are becoming a place because of violence in schools. They should be the safest places in the world for discourse. That is just super, super upsetting.

What I find, and this is where as progressives, I feel a pressure to feel the other side. I think the reaction from the far right on this is so fucking bullshit. Every person on the far left has said something along, I don't care if it's Secretary Clinton, Vice President. Everyone has said, basically, we condemn this violence. This is never the solution. Our hearts and prayers go out to Charlie and his family. The far right has had a very similar narrative for half of it. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to Charlie and his family, and this is the fault of the radical left." Political violence only begets political violence.

And Trump, our commander, our divider in chief, immediately goes on, highlights political violence against every Republican, forgetting to mention the violence against Speaker Emerita Pelosi's husband, against the lawmakers who were murdered in their home in Minnesota. He accidentally slips past every Democrat and says political violence has to stop, and then goes on to foment political violence.

Kara Swisher: Yes, I would agree. I was sort of like, what? I was like, okay, good. Yes, no political violence. And then shifting into the radical left thing immediately was shocking, especially because nobody knows, they haven't caught this. It's a guy, apparently. What a shock. But they've got the gun now. They've had videos of the person who did it. They believe it's a college age. I don't know how they know that. But they must have videos of some sort. So the question is, why would you immediately, without any proof, say something like that?

At the worst, now, let me give him one tiny little out. They were very close. And you could be very, very angry and very upset about this incredibly violent death. And unfortunately, it was all over the internet. Extraordinarily, it was an execution, really, was what happened here. And everyone saw what happened. It was murder. And for him to shift to that, the only thing I can give him is, okay, he was a friend, but you are also the president of the United States. That was what I kept thinking, like what in the world would possess you to immediately start with the vengeance? I was sort of shocked myself. And I'm usually never shocked by Donald Trump, but this one was sort of shocking to me.

If you go online right now onto any of these platforms and you see the stuff that's getting 70,000, 80,000 likes, it's someone saying, "That's it. It's war on the fucking radical left." Someone who is understandably outraged and upset, and like, well, okay, do we know the radical left was responsible for this? Are you forgetting what's happened to Democrats?

Scott Galloway: And the far left wants to feel empathy and a call for taking the temperature down. I get it. The far right-

Kara Swisher: Not everybody. Let's be clear. There's some stupid people saying stupid things online about him. I mean, about his death, not about him, about his death.

Scott Galloway: I haven't seen that.

Kara Swisher: No, it's just usually like anonymous, like the right is cherry picking some dumb, stupid asshole.

Scott Galloway: I haven't seen any famous person from the left who has any credibility saying anything but "our hearts go out to the family. Violence is not the answer. This needs to stop." And then you have very famous, very famous right wing hosts saying, "This is it. This is war. And it's the radical left. I laid this at the feet of the radical left." And the president has said this, and that just creates more violence.

The problem is, the solution is the following. We have two very famous people, and people should own their grief. I get upset a lot and emotional on this podcast. I like it when people are vulnerable. But I heard two very famous right-wing pundits yesterday crying over this on air. Fine, I get it. You may have known him personally. You have the right to your own grief and emotions. We don't seem to express the same grief for the people every day that are shot. We didn't seem to be as concerned with the students in Colorado or the students who were shot and murdered while praying.

And if the left and the right are serious about this, I mean, if they're serious, it all comes down to this. I live in the UK. In the next year, in all of the UK, there will be approximately 30 gun deaths. In the United States, in the next six hours, there will be 30 gun deaths. We don't know the motivation of the shooter. We don't know who he is. I'm comfortable saying "he" because let's be honest, it's always a he.

Kara Swisher: The government is saying that just so you know. They're saying it's a man.

Scott Galloway: We also know that this person used a high-powered rifle. And there are too many goddamn guns. Charlie Kirk used to say, you have to pay a price for certain rights. And he said, look, there'll be a certain number of deaths. I buy that in theory. I'm comfortable with an increase in prevalence in crime with protection or certain search and seizure rights. If someone can't show up at my home and just say, "We suspect you." So I get the concept, but it's an issue of scale. At some point, does a total fidelity to gun rights begin to come at such an unbearable cost? And this is an example of this. And I don't hear anyone saying, well, that's not true.

I heard AOC say this. If we're serious about this, we can talk about dialing down the rhetoric. Good luck with that. Jesse Waters was already out yesterday saying this is war. Okay, the rhetoric, good luck with trying to get people to dial down the rhetoric with social media that makes hundreds of billions of dollars by enraging people with their algorithms. If we're serious, we have to have sensible gun control laws.

Kara Swisher: Yep, 100%. So just to update people, as of this recording, and that could change, the manhunt is still underway for the person the government is identifying as a man who shot and killed 31-year-old conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. Officials, as I said, said they've recovered the gun they believe was used in a shooting in the woods nearby, a high-powered bolt-action rifle. Investigators also have video, as we said, of the suspect. They're trying to use facial recognition to identify the person.

The FBI was pretty cloddish at the start. They had fired the head of the Salt Lake City office because she was a Pakistani woman, apparently. And they were very cloddish. They said there were suspects in custody when there weren't. Kash Patel's not really exactly seeming very sharp here, but we'll see. These things are very chaotic. At the same time, the government is not supposed to feel chaotic.

In terms of reactions, as you said, a lot of people did denounce the violence and linking his words to his death. He is not to blame for his death. Let me be clear. I'm sorry people, I know you were angry at some things he said, but just be angry at things he said. That's pretty much where it stops. Although President Trump, as we said, is blaming the radicalist rhetoric and others calling for war. One of the first things out of the gate was Elon Musk saying the left is murderous, essentially. "If they won't leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die." That was possibly one of the worst. Steve Bannon and Jesse Waters, same thing. We're not at war with them. And this is really irresponsible for high-profile people.

Utah's Republican governor, Spencer Cox, took a different approach. Now, it's a little long, but I think it's well worth listening to. So let's listen to what he said.

[Audio clip plays]

Spencer Cox: Our nation is broken. We've had political assassinations recently in Minnesota, we had an attempted assassination on the governor of Pennsylvania, and we had an attempted assassination on a presidential candidate and former president of the United States and now current president of the United States. Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken. Nothing I can say can bring back Charlie Kirk. Our hearts are broken. We mourn with his wife, his children, his family, his friends. We mourn as a nation. If anyone in the sound of my voice celebrated even a little bit at the news of this shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror and to see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere. I don't care what his politics are. I care that he was an American.

[End audio clip]

Kara Swisher: I thought that was so eloquent and actually really just perfectly done. Political speeches are so important at times like this or from leaders, political leaders. And I thought this was just exactly the right sentiment. He was acknowledging the anger. He was acknowledging the difficulties of someone disagreeing with Charlie Kirk on some of the things he said. But he also was pointing out we just have to get beyond this and noted he was a father with children and at the same time talking about assassinations of Democrats essentially and trying to equalize them. I thought it was fantastic. I don't know. And I wish it had gotten more attention. And then it was followed by Trump, which was the opposite of leadership, I thought.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he gave what felt like a presidential speech, right? Acknowledging that was, I think he did exactly what you would expect from a leader. So, kudos to him. And again, the thing that really struck me is someone who's on campus every day. Between people being, conservative voices being shouted down on campus, between intimidating certain students or getting in the way of their learning, between, this is the whole point of a university. We put it outside the city center for a reason such that people could say provocative, upsetting things. And they were allowed to do that. And Charlie Kirk, I think, in my view, one of the most positive things you could say about him was he was endorsing that. And I thought what he was doing on campus, regardless of what you think of the rhetoric, was actually a positive. I liked those videos.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And a lot of people felt, I think the people who were angry at him were angry that we didn't have as strong of voices going on campus and presenting a different viewpoint. He was just very good at what he did.

Kara Swisher: But there is something, the Australian, I think it's a newspaper magazine, kind of summarized and said that there is a real, we're having culturally we are really struggling in the US and it really stains our amazing accomplishments. And this is an example of that, that these places that are supposed to be places of critical thought and free speech, something like this that happens. And also just the fact that we have normalized... There are so many... I am not in any way saying this is less heinous or excusing what happened here. When you are a public figure and you decide to go into politics, I'm going to say Charlie Kirk. When you decide to run for president, the bottom line is one out of three presidents the last 50 years have been shot at. You know there are certain risks. If you're going to school, you don't have a choice. You don't enter into a high risk. These are supposed to be the safest places in the world. There's been 24 shootings on college campuses. And school and high schools and grammar schools. That's just colleges. And we're talking 40,000 people a year, 121 people every day.

Scott Galloway: And I've said this over and over. The free gift with purchase coming to the UK is I no longer have these horror fantasies around getting up in the morning and seeing my kids' high school on CNN.

Kara Swisher: I was thinking, what is this idea of what a college is? I interviewed Jordan Klepper, actually, his recent documentary was about Charlie Kirk, about how he went there. And it was a really interesting discussion because in many ways, he was saying the reason why he was successful is he actually showed up and talked to them, right? That was the thing. Even if they, and that's why he was able to convince them. And he goes, it was sort of a little bit different, but not that much different than people that came to campus and gave out free hats and beers, right? Like, hey, let's, like, whatever had happened, whatever the marketing thing had to be, but he really did market the ideas. And he was, just before he died, he was throwing out hats. He was creating a situation. And I would agree with you. It was, I was always sort of, where was a version of this for Democrats making their case?

And again, let me say, stuff that came out of his mouth was so upsetting to hear for me and many others. I think I kind of stopped, I started ignoring a lot of the stuff he said because I knew he was doing it to get people's goat. But if you were a college student, that would be, I don't want to use the word trigger because it's gotten so abused, but it was not nice, right? Like if you were a gay person, the things he said, or a woman or a black woman or whatever. And yet, there's a sort of Hyde Park corner kind of idea of our world where the idea of the Hyde Park is a park in London where people can say whatever they get on a soapbox and say whatever they want. And some of it's really just heinous. I've been there and it's really like, whoa. What did you just say? And I think we've lost the ability to, it's not not react because you should react and get angry. You should push back. You should be incensed, right? I think all those things are kind of good for the development of minds, right?

Scott Galloway: 100%, that's the whole point.

Kara Swisher: What did they just say? But it's almost like being in a bar. You don't then hit someone. You don't then, you're like, you could even call, you're an asshole when that happens. I mean, it happens a lot, actually. And I just, I don't know what the problem is. And I talked about this, is that I think, I do think online gets it even worse. Like it gets into people's heads in a way that I don't know what would cause you to do this, to like get up, climb yourself on a roof and shoot someone. Like in execution style, like what is the jump? And sometimes I think, this sort of stew of hate speech that's available to people sits in their brain, especially online, especially as it goes viral. What is that leap from, if you said something to me offensive, Scott, I'm not going to use Kirk as an example because he just died. But if you said something terrible to me, why would my first thing be to get a gun and shoot you? Like, what happened? Where's that moment? And I think a lot of the stuff online does get people. You can see it in the notes from shooters. You can see it in the guy who shot the people in Minnesota. There's something that turns with the constant steeping online, especially, and in videos and things like that, that creates that jumping off point. I don't know what it is, but there is a moment where they say, I think what I'll do is get a gun. And that's not a new thing. We've had that happen throughout history, but it seems like just so much of an easier leap than it used to be. Maybe I'm wrong.

Scott Galloway: I think you can disarticulate it down to a few things. One, people are spending more and more time online and that does a couple things. The algorithms have connected engagement with enragement. So if you go online, it tries to figure out if you're conservative or progressive and then take you to the extreme and start making the other side look bad, look evil, look dangerous. And so there's a culture of rage dividing us, being fueled by the deepest pocketed godlike technology with paleolithic institutions to regulate them. That's incredibly well said. Our profit motive in the United States, and 10 companies driving the entire market, have a rage motive that divides us. Maybe they didn't intend to, but that is what's going on.

The social isolation of young men. Too many young men are going into those bubbles getting enraged. And because they're not going into work because of remote work, because they're not getting as many economic opportunities, because they're not doing as well in school, because their prefrontal cortex doesn't develop as fast as a woman's, because they don't have as many romantic opportunities. They're not connecting with friends. They're not connecting with work. They're not connecting with romantic partners or isolating from their family. And when that happens, when those guardrails are no longer present, they don't have the ability to see, "Oh, I just met a Trumper at work. And you know what? He seems like a pretty cool guy." Or he enrages me and I'm not going to talk to him, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But I learned how to deal with it. And I realized that, or my girlfriend, or my mother, or my father says, "What the fuck are you doing and saying? Stop that. No, that's not right." Or they start asking you questions that help illuminate that what you are thinking makes no sense. So we have profit connected to rage. We have the social isolation of young people who have no guardrails and start becoming increasingly prone to irrational behavior that if they were more social, they'd have greater guardrails. And then the kicker is we take an enraged public and young men and men who have no guardrails and are much more prone to irrational thoughts and behavior, and then we make weapons of war easily accessible.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it really is. There have been shooters over all of history, right? There's not, this is not, there's always someone somewhere, but it just feels like that leap is so much smaller for so many people right now. I think, "I take a gun." I just kept thinking what whoever did this was like, "I'm going to take my gun. I'm going to climb up on that roof. I'm going to murder someone." And thinking it was the right choice. You know what I mean? Like, this is your only choice. Why don't you go down there and ask him a fucking question and yell at him? Like, you know what I mean? Like, that to me, it's just, there's, I don't, maybe this person's mentally ill. I don't know.

One of the things that we should talk about very quickly, the offshoot of this is all these conspiracy theories around this guy's death, murder. I'm going to say it's a murder. It is. Which is like, they have, what's incredible is they have all these videos. It looks like they have videos of almost everything. And that's an interesting thing in law enforcement. But now there's all these conspiracy theories of, there's now a video of two guys making hand signals, looking like they're telling the shooter to shoot. Then there's other people talking, saying it's an intelligent ops from Russia or Israel or this and that. And then another person arguing, oh, if it was that, they wouldn't be seen on the roof, which kind of makes sense. If you're really good at what you do, you don't get seen, essentially. And this conspiracy stuff is, in whose interest is it for Charlie Kirk to be dead and move away from the Epstein files, right? And you just sit there and you're like, what? If you were a young, I kept, I'm confused by all this stuff. I'm like, oh, huh. And then I get dragged in and then I'm like, no, no, stop. We don't know anything right now, right? But if you're a young person, boy, is all this post-murder conspiracy theory even worse to have to deal with. I don't, I just find it very upsetting in that regard. And I can't imagine being a young person who's not quite there on judgment on any of this stuff.

Scott Galloway: Well, and we don't have, and I'm a party to this yesterday, we don't have anything resembling fact-checking or anything that's measured. So, again, these socially isolated young people with a profit motive around spreading conspiracy theory. Typically, typically these types of shooters fit a type. Not always, but typically they're young men who are hoping to regain social capital with what they see as a heroic act of violence. They're isolated and feel like people don't respect them, are looking to gain back social capital and think they can get it because they've been convinced this person or this movement is truly demonic and that they would be heroic in killing this person. And oh by the way, dad got a sniper rifle.

I don't know if you felt this way, I felt unnaturally hit in the gut by this. I just thought, oh, fuck, this is just so bad for everyone and everything. And I feel bad for him. I feel bad for his family. I feel bad for the chilling effect on dialogue this is going to have on university campuses. I feel that the dialogue is immediately going to go to be politicized and blaming the radical left, which happened right away.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you can see the whole road ahead. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And, oh, I'm already seeing stuff from like, you know, oh, was it a trans shooter? And I mean, you're already seeing this shit, right?

Kara Swisher: Was it an, I'm seeing now, was it an Epstein shooter? Because he backed off on the Epstein stuff. You know what I mean? Like, and you sit there and it's like, could be anybody, because they're all fucking crazy. We don't know. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, oh, my God. And I think the fact that we, one of the things I hate about this in a weird way is we have so much information and so much of it is bad, right? I have refrained from saying very much about anything online because I'm like, I don't know. I want to wait and see what happens here and then figure out what to do.

Scott Galloway: Where I was going with this is, and I merely took it down, and I need to be more careful. I saw this video of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been, in my opinion, very courageous around all of the Epstein stuff. I saw this video of her coming outside of her office and putting up a picture of that card, right? And putting it on the front of her office and then hitting her hands together. I'm like, wow. And I immediately posted it and said, "I have a lot of mixed emotions looking at this." And then immediately my files were like, "Scott, it's AI." I'm like, "Oh, fuck." And I immediately took it down.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But not before it went out to 1.2 million people.

Kara Swisher: I know. I know. I know. That's why I said I posted very little.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, me too.

Kara Swisher: Except for that Spencer Cox. Can I ask you one more question? We have to move on. But you said you're nervous about appearing on college campuses.

Scott Galloway: I'm not, but I have someone very close to my life who knew I was supposed to speak at a public university. I don't have nearly the footprint and popularity of this guy, so I don't mean to sound, I don't mean to create a false equivalence. But I'm supposed to speak at a university, a big public state university, and someone very close to me is like, "No, you're not going."

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: You know, obviously this evokes an emotional reaction. And this person has said, "Well, yeah, I don't give a shit. You're not going." And comedians who used to be the pushback here, I think a part of the anger from the left from Charlie Kirk was, quite frankly, because he was just more effective. We did not have an equivalent Charlie Kirk going on campus as organized, as youthful. Quite frankly, he was courageous. He was not afraid. He got in front of people. Sometimes he made a great point. Sometimes he looked stupid. He didn't care. He played a huge role in Trump's election. And I think part of the venom from the left around how pissed off they were about Charlie Kirk was, quite frankly, he was just more effective than us.

Kara Swisher: Part of it. Some of the things he said were terrible.

Scott Galloway: 100%.

Kara Swisher: He did it on purpose.

Scott Galloway: Well, he did it on purpose. Like a lot of people, he would say incendiary things to get a reaction and get more YouTube videos, even if, I don't know, maybe he believes this shit, maybe, hopefully he doesn't. But anyways, who used to be on campus doing this was comedians. And now comedians won't go on campus because they're like, "I don't need anyone shouting me down or waving a Palestinian flag in my face, or I just don't need that shit." And so we on the left, I remember UCLA when I was there, everyone from Bill Murray to REM to, you know, I'm dating myself, to Carl Icahn used to show up. And I know a lot of people are like, "I'm not going to fucking campus. Did you hear what happened to my friend on campus?" And by the way, it happens just as much to people on the far right.

Kara Swisher: Far left too.

Scott Galloway: Far left and right. It happens both.

Kara Swisher: It does. Someone's upset and they feel on campus emboldened to interrupt them, try and make them look stupid or worse. Right?

Kara Swisher: And it's really, I mean, we're probably headed to an environment where we're going to have, I would think at some point we might have metal detectors on campus. I don't know. I know. It's depressing in that regard. How would you feel if you were invited to speak at a campus right now in a large crowd, 2,000 or 3,000 people outside in the square like that? How would you feel?

Scott Galloway: Nervous. Because nervous. Just basic areas of disagreement that I, you or I might say strongly, because we're always like making jokes and saying rude things. I mean, we said someone had a micro dick, I forget who it was, you know, stuff like that. We're always, we're always saying that. But I was like who if one crazy fucking online incensed person with a gun shows up yeah I could see it now. And before I could never see it. Like they got mad at one little thing I said. It makes me nervous.

Kara Swisher: It does. It does. Because it's not because I think I don't want people to disagree with me. It's that I think some people have, something's happened to some people online and they have access to a gun. That's, yeah, it's nerve wracking.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Yeah. I could see it. 100%. For a second, definitely think about it.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, very quickly, I want to talk about the political violence on the other side of the world, Nepal, which is really sort of shocking in a lot of ways. The country is now under nationwide curfew after mass protests led by teenagers and young adults turned deadly. The unrest began after the government banned social media, but protesters also were calling out unemployment, corruption, and inequality. It was a bigger thing than just social media, but social media set it off about this sort of culture of elitism, and it sort of manifested itself. And the only reason I'm talking about it is because what I'm hearing from lots of sources is that they're about to announce the TikTok deal. It's probably going to Larry Ellison and a bunch of investors. I noted this online. And one of the things, of course, was it was supposed to be banned, right? And this is supposed to be the solution to it. And I wondered, what if it did get banned? Would something like this happen with young people? Probably not in this country. But I don't know if you have any thoughts on what happened, Paul. It was sort of social media is what set it off. I don't think it was the root cause, but nonetheless.

Scott Galloway: I don't know that much about it other than typically it's young people that start revolutions because young people are more risk aggressive and willing to go to a square and risk getting shot. And but I mean, quite frankly, I'm not trying to obviously loss of life is anywhere as a tragedy. But I just thought they got their Instagram. That's what that was the final straw. They got their Instagram taken away. It just felt like I would not have guessed that. I don't know anything about the Nepalese culture. I don't, but that's what's part of it. Countries not this country use social media as everything. Like it's TV. And so including business, right? That's how they do business. It's basically like shutting down the newspapers and the TV stations when they take away your social media.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So for people that don't understand it, and I think this was a hugely corrupt sort of nepo economy where these people just about had it. And then they were like, now you can't say anything. And so, and it has a culture of free speech, this country. Anyway it just interesting to watch these movements.

Kara Swisher: Yeah but I bet anything you just summarize it. I don't even know what happened and I think I know what happened and that this was the excuse but I bet you anything it a lack of economic opportunity for young people. That was the kindling and them taking away their social media was the spark.

Scott Galloway: Almost if you reverse engineer almost any uprising among youth it's that they get pissed off that there's a group of people sucking oxygen out of the room from them and that that okay we're fed up we don't see we don't see a future for us to to find a family be treated fairly and it's a group of it's a group of old people who are aggregating too much information or i'm sorry too much too much power.

Kara Swisher: Yep exactly. And you know i often don't say this because i do think some speech is indeed hateful and damaging. But the solution to a lot of this is more speech and more dialogue. And I think one thing that really kind of stuck in my craw was that MSNBC let go of Matthew Dowd, who said some very factual things on the air, perhaps not good timing, about Kirk. And he seemed to blame Kirk for his own death. I listened to it. I wasn't really clear if he actually said that.

Scott Galloway: What he was talking about was, you know, what we were just saying is that there's so much hate that he was essentially saying if you put hate out in the world, don't be surprised if you get it back, which is probably not the nicest thing to say at the moment. He said, you raise the temperature like on that, you might get burned, right? I felt like this was, when I saw his comments, I felt that MSNBC was essentially the Democratic Party virtue signaling and kicking at Al Franken. I just thought, okay, good for us. Good for us. I don't... I don't get it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I didn't get that. I wrote that some people there and I was like, I'm sorry. I just like, again, this is whatever you think about Charlie Burke, he was about saying things, right? That's provocative as you want. And I just, I don't find that particularly provocative. And maybe we should be a little nicer, right? When someone dies.

Scott Galloway: Absolutely.

Kara Swisher: But it seemed over, like, it was an overreaction in such a way.

Scott Galloway: Well, the good news is we can trust that no matter what Fox says and falsely accuses Democrats of being responsible, they will not get fired.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: I know that.

Kara Swisher: I was like, Jesse, have you looked over at Jesse Waters? Like, what in the, it's like, we're at war. I'm like, I'm not at war with you, Jesse Waters. What in the hell? Like, what is he talking about? And I know Bannon's just doing it to be Bannon. I didn't get it. When I first saw his clip I thought there must be another clip for why he got fired. I think that was a bullshit move. And I love the leadership over at MSNBC. I think they got this wrong.

Scott Galloway: Yeah me too.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I actually told them this too. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Larry Ellison becomes the richest person in the world as Oracle stocks soars.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Oracle founder Larry Ellison briefly became the world's richest person this week, edging out Elon Musk. His net worth climbed to $393 billion Wednesday after Oracle shares skyrocketed on a blockbuster earnings report, up 42% at one point. Oracle said it won several billion-dollar contracts in the latest quarter, quadrupling bookings from a year before. The company also is forecasting that revenue from its AI-powered cloud business will jump from $18 billion to $144 billion by 2030. On top of all that, OpenAI just signed a deal to purchase $300 billion in computing power from Oracle. And again, I am understanding he's going to get control of TikTok or somehow be the lead person in that. And he's obviously very close to President Trump. And they had been involved with TikTok before, let me be fair. They were part of the last time they were trying to figure out what to do about TikTok. Who knows? We'll talk about that when it happens. But you know this is sort of NVIDIA too. I don't know. This is is now a major AI player. What do you think about this?

Scott Galloway: I think Ellison is a visionary and he doubled down. I think he figured out that okay, there should be one, the most valuable company in the world, NVIDIA. It would be okay to be the second biggest infrastructure company centered around AI. And he made a massive investment, and it's paying off like crazy. Their cloud revenue is projected to increase 77% to 18 billion. They expect their cloud revenue, it was their projections that got the market excited. They project that their cloud revenue will hit 144 billion by 2030. That's a 14-fold increase versus the 10 billion it brought in last year. It said, credibly, the CEO said, we're going to increase our cloud revenue 14x in the next four years. Now, what's interesting here is a great deal of that comes from a deal with OpenAI, who will purchase $300 billion computing in for five years. So get this. Essentially, OpenAI has said, we're going to pay Oracle $60 billion a year for compute, despite the fact we are currently, OpenAI, only making $10 billion a year. They are so confident in their growth that they've just committed to spend $60 billion a year on compute, despite only currently making $10 billion. So he became the richest person in the world for a brief moment, biggest one-day gain in history, 36%. He owns approximately 40% of Oracle. And this is a good bridge to Apple. What he has done is, Larry's gangster move was Oracle was becoming a mature company, very profitable, and they were buying back shares. When the company went public, He owned 34%. Now he owns over 40% because they've used that excess cash flow to buy back shares until two years ago when he said, uh-uh, the future's in AI. It's an arms race. I'm going to massively invest in AI. Who did not do that, Kara? Trivia question.

Kara Swisher: Apple.

Scott Galloway: A hundred percent. Correct for 20. One guy said, it's time to put back on our growth pants, so to speak, and start massively investing in AI. And this was the gangster strategic move, arguably of the last five years, was an old company saying, fuck it.

Kara Swisher: And an old guy.

Scott Galloway: And an old guy in a little company. We need to start dancing again. You may have gotten used to our dividend. You may have gotten used to our share buybacks. Uh I going large because there no number two to NVIDIA but there going to be. And now squarely Oracle has basically put their elbows out and crashed the party and said oh no you may think we're old and dodgy or whatever. We're not. We're hip. Elephants can dance. And now, I mean, this was an incredibly smart, deft move of Larry Ellison. I would never count him out.

Kara Swisher: And also his CEO, Safra Katz, she is really also very sharp. I mean, I think it's really interesting. I think, of course, they did also see the writing on the wall with the Trump administration backing AI. You know, they've been very aggressive at showing up at these AI events. And you remember he showed up at that event with Sam Altman, with the president that pissed off Elon Musk and everything else. And at the same time, he put a big investment into Twitter, and probably he's about to double-cross Elon by owning TikTok, right? Or at least controlling TikTok. So this guy just, whatever it takes. And of course, his son, he funded his son's purchase of Paramount. And so this guy is just very vibrant for an elderly man, I'll say.

Scott Galloway: Okay, well, just in the price increase from yesterday, I mean, 36%, what is that? I don't know what the increase, I'm pretty sure they could buy 30 or 40 Paramounts with just the increase in Ellison's net worth yesterday. I mean, he said to his son, go plan traffic, here's five or $7 billion. I've just increased my net worth by 100 billion, right? So yeah, go have fun with Paramount. I mean, the numbers here are so staggering. It's I mean let's do the math he's worth about 400 billion dollars he he the stock was up 36 percent went up a third so he made 130 billion dollars yesterday.

Kara Swisher: I know.

Scott Galloway: What did they buy Paramount for? Five or seven? Yeah something. So they could go buy 20 Paramounts with his son. He could if he has 20 kids out there which is a possibility given what I know about Larry Ellison he could say to all of them go buy your own Paramount with the gains.

Kara Swisher: I think it'll actually increase the chances. And I know you think it's small ball, Paramount. I know you do, and I think you're right. But I think that it'll increase the chance they might buy Warner. They might, you know, they might do something to, as you say, consolidate and milk. And maybe have some growth somewhere along the lines. It gives them the heft to do so. You're going to see some I think very aggressive moves from Paramount. So you know we see Larry Ellison well done Larry Ellison. There you go. I had the strangest evening with him once. I don't know him at all.

Scott Galloway: Have you had any interviews with him?

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah. I've interviewed him many times. We had him at Code several times.

Scott Galloway: What's he like? I have no sense of him.

Kara Swisher: Oh, he's very funny. I mean, sometimes he's awful sometimes he's funny. He's um i've always i hate to say i enjoy spending time with him but i do i have to say he's really interesting um because some of his views are not my views at all again someone i don't agree with who i really enjoy talking to because he's so smart um and people will fry me for that but i don't care um he he i interviewed him once at several times at Code and All Things D. One was just about his business and it was interesting. And then when Steve Jobs died, we talked about Steve. He was very close friends. He was his best friend, I would say. And one time I said to Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison's your best friend? He's like, yeah, I know. It's so weird. Like, you know, they were very different in their political outlook, et cetera, and were very close friends. They had a very similar upbringing.

Scott Galloway: I know why you like him. You relate to him. He's 81 and he married a 33-year-old. I get it. You guys have double dated. He married a lot of people. He's married a lot of people. You guys have double dated.

Kara Swisher: I know. I'll tell two very quick stories about Larry Ellison. So he was on stage. And then when he was doing the sailing thing, I met him over near where his sailing stuff was in the regatta in the San Francisco Bay. And we spent the evening just, he was talking about his kids, which was really interesting, David and his daughter, Megan. And he was like, they're really actually pretty okay. And it's nothing due to me. It's the mothers. And It was super, super interesting. And I'll tell the, all right, I'm going to tell one more later. I'm sorry. So he had this house in San Francisco that he threw a party at for something or other. And I went, because it was one of these stunning San Francisco Pacific Heights houses. And he didn't live in it, I don't think. I think he just had it for parties. And I like looking at houses. I'm like, I like seeing what they look like. And so whenever I go to a party, I wander around and look at things. Like I shouldn't, I do that. I do that at your apartment, sure.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you do that a lot.

Kara Swisher: I do that a lot. And so I was wandering around, and I think he has Israeli security. I think that's what he has. He's a big supporter of Benjamin, I think Benjamin, not you, and Israel. And they caught me upstairs. They caught me upstairs. And they bring me downstairs to him. And he looked at me. He goes, oh, I knew it would be you. You know what I mean? Like he was wandering around. And he goes, what were you doing? And I said, I was looking for the hooker and stripper room. I just said a joke like that. And he goes, oh, that's in the basement, Kara. And it was like, oops. I just think he's funny. He's a funny guy. He's also awful. He's definitely.

Scott Galloway: Rich.

Kara Swisher: Well, not only that, he became the richest man in the world. Who thought that? Like, who saw that coming?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Anyways.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he also spends the money. You know, he had that house. It looks like he imported it from Japan.

Kara Swisher: Well, why wouldn't he? Yeah, he's a very stylish billionaire. He was always the original billionaire.

Scott Galloway: You know why he spends that kind of money and married a 33-year-old?

Kara Swisher: All right. Why?

Scott Galloway: because he can.

Kara Swisher: Ah, ha, ha. Anyway, anyhow, we'll see what happens. We'll watch for that TikTok thing. Also, obviously, you just talked about Apple. It rolled out its newest iPhones this week, including the iPhone Air, which Tim Cook is calling a game changer. I do not agree with this. It's the thinnest phone ever, about a third slimmer than current models, though there are trade-offs in battery life. Apple also unveiled a new watch model as well as AirPods that can translate foreign languages. That was pretty cool. Meanwhile, AI barely came up with the event, a big shift from last year when Apple Intelligence took center stage. Let me say this iPhone with the bump on the back, I saw it, I ran into Eddie Q at this morning show event, and he showed it to me, and I was like, it has a bump on the back. It's a big bump, it wobbles, like, it's skinny, but then it has this big bump, which I make, people are making, they're making a, people are talking about it online a lot. It's also, it doesn't, I don't want to buy it, I have to say. I don't know why maybe I'll buy the 17, but the skinny one is not attractive because it has the bump. I don't know what to say. Anyway, do you think it's a game changer from what you saw?

Scott Galloway: I'm just sitting here thinking, am I allowed to be crude the day after a murder?

Kara Swisher: Yes, go ahead. Whatever.

Scott Galloway: I mean, okay, the announcement, what Cook called a game changer, I would call a hand job and an Advil. It was like, yeah, all right. I don't, fine. Was anyone begging for a thinner phone? I don't if it was without if it was a thinner phone with capabilities and out the bump sure why not. The most exciting thing and it available on other platforms is real language translation for the AirPods. I think the AirPods are the most underrated tech product of the last 10 years. I think essentially they're not even a tech product. They're the most ubiquitous, expensive, high-margin piece of jewelry in history. People are now roaming around full-time with a pair of earrings called an AirPods that cost $300 and probably $110. I ordered them last night. I just leave them in now. but they're just everywhere. What this signals though, and where they will get scrutiny per our most recent conversation is that over the last decade, essentially, Jobs is a builder. He did not believe in share buybacks. He wanted to amass a huge cash hoard and then such that they were durable and enduring. And if they wanted to, they could take big swings, either acquisitions or go very deep after a certain product development. Tim Cook is an operator. And by the way, you got to give it to Tim Cook. He's taken the company from $300 billion to $3 trillion. The question is, have those $700 or $800 billion in share buybacks to date, they have bought back approximately 40% of their outstanding shares, meaning over a 25-year period, they're effectively taking the company private. The question is, when you have these meh product announcements, have they gotten to a point where they, quite frankly, should be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more promiscuous, and be spending some of that unbelievable cash generation and taking more big swings. Because yesterday, there were no big swings. There was nothing that compelling. And this is the difference. It's easy to play Monday morning quarterback, but let's do it. The difference between what Ellison did was a couple of years ago, he said, oh my God, AI is a once in a lifetime generational tech innovation. I am shifting from being a share buyback company to an R&D company, and I'm going to take a massive swing here, and the stock was up 38% yesterday. Apple has basically said, we are a mature company. And the problem with Apple being a mature company is that its stock right now does not trade as if it's a mature company. It trades as if it's a growth company at a PE of 33. So there will be a lot of second guessing as I'm doing now. Is Tim Cook, quite frankly, not keeping up with his peers because he's decided we're going to go into kind of a rest home. We're gonna continue. ICON started this by putting pressure on them for share buybacks and a dividend. They did both. And unfortunately they aren taking the big swings they used to under the jobs tenure.

Kara Swisher: Yeah this phone I like no like no I mean I wait for the fold phone. I interested in the fold phone that for sure. It kind of becomes an iPad. I'm going to look at that, but it's going to be heavy. Like, I just don't see a compelling need to change my phone with these things. And I like changing phones, by the way. We'll see where it goes. One of the funnier ones was people made, social media was also joking about iKnee pads for Tim Cook, referring to last week's events.

Scott Galloway: Well, here's a stat. Over the last decade, Apple has spent $500 billion more on share buybacks than on R&D.

Kara Swisher: That's crazy.

Scott Galloway: And what do you know? Their products are feeling kind of meh.

Kara Swisher: Meh. I have to say, some people think the bump on the iPhone is presaging some glasses, some sort of glasses thing that's happening next. So it's sort of a signal. What's in there apparently would work quite elegantly apparently with glasses. But we'll see. We'll see. Let's see some products that really wow us, Tim. I have to say this didn't. Next up, let's talk about, very quickly, President Trump's contributions to Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday book. Obviously, the murder of Charlie Cook has sort of pushed that off, but it was getting a lot of attention. As previously reported, there was a letter from Trump to Epstein featuring a cryptic conversation within a hand-drawn woman's body. I would say a teenage girl's body is what it looked like. There was also a photo of an oversized check appearing to be signed by DJ Trump with a note Epstein saying, showed early talents with money and women and had sold a fully depreciated woman to Trump for $22,000. President Trump is calling it a dead issue when asked. You know, I think probably this Charlie Kirk situation is going to push it out of the headlines. But at the same time, I still think this Epstein thing has staying power. They're really Thomas Massey looks like he has the numbers to force a release. And in fact, Kirk, before he sort of went backwards a little bit, had said, there should be, I was watching a speech where he said it should be full and full release of unredacted release to the public. So I don't know what you thought. I thought it just, Trump pretended he didn't draw and then they showed him drawings. He said this birthday book didn't exist. It exists. He said he didn't write a letter. It looks like he wrote a letter. I think the idea that it's fake is kind of ridiculous. Way back then, someone knew he was going to be president and decided to do a fake thing. This seems ridiculous. Um, I think he did it and he should just say he was sorry and you won't do that. Um and they doubling down on hoax and whatever. I still think it very damaging to him. This remains damaging. What did you think?

Scott Galloway: Well the question is is there a red line. We knew he was a rich kid. Okay that a reason not to like him. We knew he was not a very good businessman. We knew he took companies bankrupt. We knew he didn pay subcontractors. We knew that he was accused of sexual assault. We know he an insurrectionist. And now there seems to be evidence everywhere that he was at a minimum cohorting with a known and convicted pedophile. And the notion that this is a forgery is like, well, OK, you mean somebody 21 years ago broke into the Epstein estate and decided to frame the president who at that time was a Democrat thinking when he's president, this will embarrass him. I mean, it's just like the logic, the math ain't mathing here. and I liked what Representative Moskovitz I think said in one of the congressional hearings said you guys this is outrageous let's move to bring in forgery experts and have them opine on this. I mean the whole thing is just sort of at what point are we going to find out the guy is literally the dark lord. Look at the things every time he's suspected of something we find out it's true and it doesn't seem to matter. The question is, is this the red line?

Kara Swisher: And I am convinced that — I'm going on the Times of London radio tonight — I'm convinced the only reason he's supposed to come to the UK, I typed into AI last night, "Name, if I were a president trying to keep Epstein out of the news, please name actions and policies that would push Epstein out of the news cycle every 48 hours." And it gave me a playbook for everything he's doing. Some of which he's already done, some of which I think he's going to do. But he's coming over here to talk about free speech, which I think is ridiculous. But anything that pushes Epstein out of the news cycle is what he's doing.

Scott Galloway: But I don't know. I don't have a — I think this is — it feels like this is the one thing that is sticking to the guy. Because he was a friend of his.

Kara Swisher: Like, what I don't get — now look, I have no idea what happened. I don't have any idea if he's guilty of anything, but why not just say, "Ugh, it was such bad judgment. I'm so sorry. Profane, stupid, locker room talk. Ugh, gross, that was dumb. And I shouldn't have written this. And it was before anybody really knew, and I didn't know. I wasn't paying attention." And just say, "Oh, I'm so sorry. That was so dumb." Like, that's what Gates did. That's what everyone who's been there — Clinton said it. And it doesn't — I mean, it sort of sticks to them, but not like this.

Scott Galloway: Locker room talk. Yeah, that worked last time.

Kara Swisher: This is — I know he's president, but just the drawing was so — I absolutely think he grew that. I looked at it and I was like, yes. When I first saw it, everything about it supposedly being pubic hair, supposed to be an underage girl — I didn't even get it. I looked at it, I'm like — and the thing, the creepiest thing about it is he clearly hired creatives. He organized resources to put this thing together. It wasn't like a stupid note between friends where you have an error in judgment. He gathered creative professionals around and said, "This is what I want. This is what I'm thinking." And then they came back with a subtle image of a prepubescent girl and your signature will be pubic hairs. And he went, "Bingo. That's exactly what I'm trying to get across. Now, laminate it, frame it. Wait, what about this? What kind of paper should we use?" You could tell that there was real thought that went into this. A lot into it.

Scott Galloway: I agree. Scott sent me a similar thing for my birthday, everybody, just so you know.

Kara Swisher: Okay. I agree. Anyway, it's going to stick to you, Donald Trump, no matter what happens. It's going to be on your record no matter what you do. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Kamala Harris's sizzling upcoming book, which is sort of getting lost here with all the news.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with more news. An excerpt from former Vice President Kamala Harris's upcoming book, "107 Days," was published in The Atlantic, and it is spicy. In it, Harris says recklessness allowed President Biden to make the decision to run again. She also said the decision should not have been left to an individual's ego. The former vice president also said the president's staff fueled negative stories about her performance and often refused to defend her. That is true. I saw that in real time. What do you think? I mean, I'm going to interview her at a live event in Washington in a couple of weeks, I think. I'm excited to talk to her. This book was also written with the help of a very good author who's also a friend of mine, Geraldine Brooks, who is a Pulitzer Prize winner. She's sort of going the Agassi route by hiring a really great writer. So thoughts? She really went there. I did not think she would, but there she did.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay. Thanks, Captain Obvious. I feel the same way about Vice President Harris as I feel about all these Republicans who grow testicles after they leave office. We don't need you to decide it's reckless now. Had you demonstrated the leadership capabilities we hope from a president, you should have walked in and said, "I don't think you should run again and I'm not going to support you to run again. Maybe you don't anoint me, fine, but I have an obligation and duty to the country and you should not be president." This is ridiculous. And she was up close and personal. But instead, like a lot of people around him, she decided to whistle past the graveyard.

Kara Swisher: She does talk about it in the thing. It's like, I think there is — when you're in those situations, everyone's like, "Well, it's up to Jill and Joe, right?" Even with Trump, if there's something and no one will do anything — those environments create overly cautious, very reticent people saying, "It's up to him." Even Newsom did it. They all did it.

Scott Galloway: Newsom also did it. So did all the Democrats.

Kara Swisher: Also, someone who probably deserves more credit was Representative Dean Phillips, who very early said, "I'm running because I don't think President Biden is fit to run again." And he got pretty swiftly pilloried and swept away. He didn't get a lot of traction, but he does deserve some credit for coming out early.

Scott Galloway: I'd like to roll with that dude. Representative Phillips. You met him. We met him at the DNC. He came over to us. He came on my pod. He seems like a nice man. Look, if two podcasters can say a year and a half before he's too old, the vice president and the people around him should have enough fidelity to the White House or Democratic ideals to realize it's time for Pop-Pop to get a gold watch and retire.

Kara Swisher: I know. But you can imagine that environment. Everyone engaged in it. You remember the emails we were getting? "Sign up. You don't understand the assignment." I was like, "Oh my goodness. You don't think the world sees this? We need to stop Trump." I'm like, "Not like this. This isn't going to stop Trump. He's going to fall over dead and then we're fucked."

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't — look, I think the vice president, given a UK-style election format in an American environment, she was shortchanged. And President Biden, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senator Feinstein have stained their legacy because they let their narcissism outweigh what was right for the country. Full stop. And for her also, quite frankly, you can't blame an 80-year-old because he's 80 and his family can't see clearly because that's their dad and their husband. But the people around him — Secretary Blinken, Vice President Harris — they all should have sat him down. And finally, to his credit, I think it was Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi. By the way, he didn't exit voluntarily. He's not talking to Pelosi. I think it was Pelosi who did it. Because she went in there and said, "I'm really sorry. We're both old. We both need to go home. And if you don't announce you're getting out of the race every three days, I'm going to have someone, a Democrat, announce they're not supporting you." He didn't want to leave. This was not his decision. Supposedly, he's going through all this rumination and contemplation, but all this rumination and contemplation isn't about how badly he fucked the country. It's about, "Could I have won if I'd stayed in?" The narcissism here of these folks — and again, it goes back to what we were talking about before with the shooter. People need guardrails. What I mean by guardrails is people who have the balls and the credibility to sit in front of you and go, "No, you're wrong. You have to stop this. You're not thinking clearly." I have no doubt that none of them did that, including her.

Kara Swisher: And so what should I ask her? Give me a question for her.

Scott Galloway: In 10 years, if someone could say to you — in 10 years you can be a Supreme Court justice or be drafted to run for president again — doors one or two, what would you rather do?

Kara Swisher: Oh, good one. I like that. That's a good one.

Scott Galloway: And also, quite frankly, did you really let down the country by not having — oh, God, I'll be there in your ear like a producer with Anderson Cooper. You'd never ask her.

Kara Swisher: I have the guts to ask her. You're much nicer in person than me.

Scott Galloway: Am I? You're much nicer in person than me.

Kara Swisher: No, but on stage, I'll ask her. You know I'll ask her.

Scott Galloway: Well, you can get away with it. Everyone's like, "Oh, that's her. There goes that Kara. That sassy Kara. Once again. And isn't she charming?"

Kara Swisher: But yeah, I think the whole establishment did it. But I do like that she wrote it anyway. I'm kind of like, good, just tell us what happened. And then we don't do it again. All right. She didn't have to do this, and she did it. So we'll see if she's running again.

Scott Galloway: They all want to write books. They're all —

Kara Swisher: I know, but I'm telling you, she didn't have to do it this way. Which probably means she wants to be drafted to be president again.

Scott Galloway: They all write books. They get a big — everyone needs to make a living. She got $2 or $3 million advance to write a book, and she wants to make it interesting so people read it. And okay, wow, what a revelation that it was reckless. Okay, no shit. No shit. And now that doesn't help Vice President Harris. Scott's review: "No shit, Sherlock. No shit. Really? Really? It wasn't the right move for him to stay as long as he did? It was reckless. Wow."

Kara Swisher: Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

Scott Galloway: Well, it's the boring stuff that moves the needle, but we have become kind of the master — we are the Messi of own goals. And for those who don't know, Lionel Messi, greatest football player in the history of the game. And the most recent one barely got any coverage, but earlier or last week, I think it was — on September 4th, the Hyundai Motor Group met a plan in America, was raided by ICE. About 475 people were detained, including 300 South Koreans who were here on a B-1 visa, a visitor visa, which don't normally authorize certain types of manual long-term work, but they're used all the time for the type of work they were doing. And legal representatives argue that many workers' contracts had the required specifications. So it's up for debate whether they had the right visa or not. And they're saying that Homeland Security, Georgia State Patrol, that their actions followed a warrant and investigation into unlawful employment practices at the plant. So what happened? These people who are incarcerated — South Korea immediately chartered a plane, has brought them all back to South Korea. And by the way, this factory is part of a — this was going to be a $7.5 billion factory. This is exactly what the president claimed he was going to do, bring manufacturing and greater investment into America. South Korea is a fantastic ally. What if Germany said, "You know, the US, you're just cleaning up with AI. We need some of your great American companies to invest in Germany." And we opened an NVIDIA plant there, and we had people over there under what looks to be a legal visa, and then German police raided it, incarcerated our engineers. How would we respond? So this is how South Korea is going to respond. LG, Samsung, Hyundai — they're going to substantially curtail any plans for capital investment in the United States. This was not only stupid but it's basically going to set us back economically. So this was again, yet again, another own goal.

And then my other one is Russian drones. Russia is — everybody says, you know, Trump was fond of saying, "Oh, Russia would have never done this if I was president." Russia is poking Trump in the eye right now. First, a cyber attack on an EU plane with an EU minister — fine, that's a test. And most recently, they have flown attack drones into Polish airspace to see how we or the EU respond. And I'm not going to get into — my prediction isn't a geopolitical prediction. My prediction is the following: The best stocks for the second half of the year or the last quarter of the year are going to be European defense stocks. Because Russia sending attack drones into Poland — by the way, Poland is protected by Article 5 of NATO, meaning if they're attacked, all 32 member nations of NATO are attacked. What does this mean? Russia is contemplating or toying with military action against NATO. So what is the economic implication of that? You're about to see — Poland has already increased its percentage of GDP going to defense spending. By the way, Poland is an economic miracle. It's going to go to defense. Oh my gosh, you're going to see an increase in defense spending coming out of the EU nations. And they're going to say, "You know what? We're not spending it on Northrop Grumman. We're not going to spend it on Anduril. We're not going to spend it on Boeing. We're going to spend it on European defense companies." And guess what? There aren't that many of them. So the publicly traded — the 10 or 15 publicly traded European defense stocks are about to see the mother of all capital inflows. So the best performing stocks for the last quarter of the year are about to be European defense stocks because of these drones that Putin sent into Polish airspace.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Wow. You're going geopolitical investing. That's really good. I love it. There we go.

[Closing segment with ad reads and credits]