Disney's "Epic" Deal, Biden's Memory, and Guests Zoë Schiffer and Kurt Wagner

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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: Scott, where are you now? You're somewhere else.

Scott Galloway: I'll give you a hint. I'm drinking a Tiger beer. Actually, that's not much of a hint. I'm somewhere off the southwest coast of India. I'm in the Maldives.

Kara Swisher: Maldives. It's very nice. What is it? This is like a geographic thing. You're just hop-scotching across the globe, correct? Is that what's happening?

Scott Galloway: You know, Kara, I'm going to be dead soon.

Kara Swisher: When?

Scott Galloway: And I finally have some economic security and I want to literally devour life and do a bunch of crazy shit. I only have my kids for a few more years, so I'm yes to pretty much anything.

Kara Swisher: Oh, cool. Is there a date that you're dying that I could be dialed in on?

Scott Galloway: Sure. Sooner than I'd like. But I mean, if you think about how fast I get a lot of strength and perspective from my atheism, I think this is I don't think this is a dress rehearsal. So while I'm still modestly healthy and have a bunch of people I enjoy spending time with and I'm blessed with resources and I don't take that for granted. And I like to think that I recognize my blessings. But yeah, I'm going to go to the Maldives. I'm a yes.

Kara Swisher: Okay, all right. Well, that's good. You know, we never talk about religion. It's interesting. I'm agnostic actually. And honestly, I do feel the pull of having been raised Catholic of religion. I don't get pulled in by it, but I do definitely feel differently than you about that issue.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you've always talked about, I mean, I joke that atheists or agnostics are just closeted atheists. I think there's more atheists out there than people think because it's somehow seen as a negative. You're seen as less, not only less spiritual, but less holy and less righteous if you don't believe in a superman. And I think about this a lot because my kids have had absolutely no exposure to religion. And I think they've probably lost something because I was exposed to a lot of different religions. I know you were exposed to religion. And I think that the highlight reel on religion right now is pretty negative, right? It's kind of central to, you know, when you have good people do good things, bad people do bad things, but when you have good people doing a lot of really hideous things, usually religion is involved. And so it has a bad brand right now. But my experience, and I think yours, and I'll ask you if you have the same experience, I won't put words in your mouth, but I was exposed to, I went to temple, I went to church, I went to Presbyterian church. When your dad's married four times, you go to a lot of different religious institutions. And it was a positive in my life. And I never bought into the lineage. I never bought that there was an invisible friend in the room with us. But on the whole, it was just a bunch of good people trying to share something and feel connected. I found they were very patriotic, wanted to help each other. And I have some people in my life, religion plays a really positive role.

Kara Swisher: Well, like a lot of things, the best of it is terrific. The worst of it is absolutely the worst. You know, If Invisible Friend, there's a new movie coming out Ryan Reynolds is doing called If which is about actual invisible friends that kids have. But I don't think it's a super being thing that I have. It's just that I do feel energy. I know I'm not sounding like a California person, but I've been to places where I have felt something, you know what I mean? And it may be myself. It may be, I do feel a pull to it. And I don't know why that is. And I don't explore it at all. I'm not interested in exploring because the hatefulness of so many religions towards gay people or women or, you know what I mean? I just can't do it. But I certainly have hopes that there's something beyond us. I guess that's why I'm a real agnostic. I really am. I don't know. I didn't expose my kids to religion at all. We went to a lot of different synagogues and Unitarian stuff but we never pressed it. And they're certainly not faithful in any way in that regard, as I was, because my grandmother and stuff. Anyway, it's interesting. It's interesting. When you think about it, it actually leads into what we're going to talk about in a minute, which is the Super Bowl ads. There was a Jesus one that I actually liked quite a bit.

Scott Galloway: I was wondering how we were going to do that segue.

Kara Swisher: Well, I know, but there was, it was actually, I mean, it came on at first. My wife is Jewish. It was like, oh no, the Jesus one. And there was also one that was, there was a bunch of controversial ones, but that one I thought was well done. It was about Jesus washing feet. And I thought it was very, I love all the stories of Jesus. I really do. I think they're wonderful. Love the poor. That's a good place to start. Love the poor. Do onto your neighbors. I mean, there's a lot of good lessons in there.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, there are.

Kara Swisher: So that's what I liked. I thought they did that really well. Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about today, including the Super Bowl, including a debate over Biden's mental fitness after special counsel report, Disney's big move in the world of gaming. Big deal. Plus, we'll talk to two friends of Pivot, Platformer's Zoë Schiffer and Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner, who have new books out about Elon Musk and Twitter, who just tweeted a boob joke, which, okay, fine. But let's talk about a Taylor Swift game. I heard her boyfriend won the Super Bowl. That was a Hillary Clinton joke, actually, who put it up. A lot of people are enjoying tweeting and stuff like that, and not just tweeting, but threading and putting Instagram and things like that. Social media is at its best at fun things like this. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-22. I felt bad because I'm from San Francisco, but I still was happy. Taylor Swift's boyfriend won. It was a very close game. Both teams played incredibly well. At the last minute, Patrick Mahomes really did push it out, like really showed more energy and stuff. But that Brock Purdy was amazing. I think he was the last player drafted in a draft. They call him Mr. Irrelevant.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, nice story.

Kara Swisher: He was. It was great. Nobody played badly. It was a great game. But Taylor created a brand value of more than $330 million for the Chiefs in the NFL, according to data from Apex Marketing Group. She was chugging beer. She was slamming beer. She wasn't just chugging. She was slamming them with Blake Lively and Ice Spice, which was very funny to watch. But they didn't pull away to her too much. And she was quite respectful at the end. When he came out after he gave a crazy speech, he was like, ah! He had that sort of screamy, fantastic speech at the end. And she was very deferential to the mother, which I kind of liked as a mother. I was like, if my son won this, well, he hugs me first before the billionaire famous person behind me. And she did that well. But it was a good game. Tech was well represented. Elon Musk was there. Tim Cook. Jack Dorsey for some reason. They kept saying Beyonce and Jay-Z and some guy. And he was wearing a Satoshi thing. He was there. He obviously works at Tidal with them. This year's Super Bowl ads cost $7 million per 30 seconds, with female NFL viewership increasing 11% between July and December because of Taylor Swift. I think more women-centric brands like NYX Cosmetics and CeraVe, which had very funny ads, appeared in the Super Bowl commercials. Michael Cera is very funny in these ads. And of course, President Biden released a video on social surrounding the Super Bowl. He's gotten onto TikTok. He criticized food companies for shrinkflation, calling it a ripoff. But he also had a really funny TikTok ad about his choice is game or halftime. It was good. They're quite good on social media. The person running Biden's social media is really good and the TikTok stuff looks like a good start. So it was all over, I think, a positive. It was sort of like the Grammys, quite good. What do you think? And do you have a favorite ad? I'll talk about mine in a minute, but love your thoughts.

Scott Galloway: You know, I didn't see the ads. I had to wake up at 7 a.m. here to see the fourth quarter, and I woke my boys up, and we then watched the replay where you just see the plays. I mean, you can watch the whole game in like 30 minutes if you just see the play. So I didn't see the ads. Look, I think Taylor Swift showed up and a game broke out. I think Taylor Swift is the story here. And whether you're sick of hearing about it or you think it's hurt the game, which it is not, she did what diaper changing tables and bathrooms could not do. She did what having Janet Jackson and female performers could not do. She increased female viewership and increased the value of every sports franchise in the NFL, probably by 10 or 20 percent by virtue of this romance, which by all, through all angles in my viewpoint, feels like a very healthy, loving, supportive, great romance. And anytime you see positive role models for dating, I think it's wonderful.

Kara Swisher: And he dresses so well. Did you see that outfit he had on?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they're both lovely people, and she's a phenomenon, and she has increased economic value of these things. So I think it was all about her. The other thing that got less reporting, that's the downside of this, is that now that sports betting is legal, get this, 26% of America bet on the Super Bowl. In addition to all the addictions, gambling has the highest suicide rate. Because if you're addicted to alcohol or meth or cocaine, people notice and will try and intervene. And sometimes they're successful and sometimes they're not, but oftentimes they are. You can mortgage your house, spend your kids' tuition money, lose everything, and nobody around you has any idea. And you feel as if there's no way out except one way out. So, you know, I'm worried about this.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, way to bring it down, Scott. But yes, you're right. Taylor Swift. I would agree. I think we have to get our arms around gambling. I would agree. I think it's something that, something like the Super Bowl, I guess you're not going to avoid it. It was happening behind the scenes anyway. In front of the scenes, I'd rather have it there, so we were aware of it. You know, there has always been betting at every sporting event, especially this one.

Scott Galloway: A quarter of America.

Kara Swisher: I know. But I suspect it was pretty high before. We didn't see it. And I don't want to totally infantilize people. I think people, if you can raise your hand and go and fight for your country or decide to drink yourself to death, I think you should be able to gamble. But I think we need more financial literacy in high schools that teaches people about basics of financial literacy, especially among young men.

Scott Galloway: Explain to them biology and neurobiology and that they are more pre-wired to be prone to risk-aggressive behavior, including gambling. I mean, there's an adjacent story here about the stock market. There's $3.5 trillion in transactions in the markets every year in the NASDAQ and the NYSE, and about $300 billion of it is IPOs and secondary offerings, which is what the markets are supposed to exist for. The markets are basically supposed to be there to raise capital for companies so they could grow. So about 80, 90% of transactions in the stock market are really just speculation, which is a fancy word for gambling. Gambling is a real issue. And I'm not going to infantilize men. They should be able to do what they want, but they need to be made aware of these risks. And my fear is that there's a lot of young men who think that trading Solano is somehow investing. It's not. It's gambling. And gambling is a lot of fun. I love it. I do it a lot. I think it's a ton of fun. But it's consumption. And 90% of people who do it are going to lose everything. And I don't think they're taught that at an early enough age.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would agree. Okay, bummer. I'm going to talk about the ads because they were so good. Speaking of selling a shit. I'm sorry. I hijacked the conversation. Ads have not been as good in the past recently, but these ads, spectacular. Really good. What was your favorite?

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God, all of them. The Dunkin' Donuts one with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and J-Lo and Tom Brady. Hysterical. Dunk Kings. Go see it. It's called Dunk Kings. And Ben Affleck allowed himself to be seen feckless. And J-Lo's looks were fantastic. And stupid little things like she had a diamond encrusted Dunkin' Donuts thing. I thought it was brilliant and funny. They're all brilliant and funny, all of them. The Beyonce ad for Verizon where she's trying to break the internet was she never jokes. And she joked. And they had the guy from Veep who was really funny, really making fun of herself about lemonade and everything. It just was, she made fun of herself in a really fantastic, funny, witty way. I thought where Jason Momoa was with the guys from Scrubs and they did a flash dance thing was hysterically funny. I didn't know Jason Momoa could sing. And at the end, a friend of mine, Jennifer Beals, is there. I was hoping she would be, and she was, and they did it exactly perfectly. Just there was a lot. They're all good. I didn't see one I didn't think was clever.

Kara Swisher: But that was T-Mobile. That was a T-Mobile ad. That was really, really good. What about, I just read about the one of the guy who's angry at the self-driving technology at Tesla?

Scott Galloway: Oh yeah, he put that in again. I like that.

Kara Swisher: It was a bad ad. I was like, can't you make it better? But it was a bad ad. He did that last year, I think. Strange, no? I think it's strange.

Scott Galloway: I guess, whatever. You got the money, have fun.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. And there was a controversy over the RFK ad, and now he just apologized for it because a PAC that was affiliated with it was trying to copy an ad by his uncle, JFK, obviously. And he had to apologize. It was terrible. I think a Trump supporter is the one who paid for it because they were trying to mess with Biden in that regard. And boy, was the reaction. He never apologizes because he's such a fatuous popinjay, but he did, like using the memory. And they all like, get the fuck off of JFK's lawn right now, which was interesting. But they were all creative. I thought they were. I don't think there was a real loser. And there used to be a lot of losers. I thought they were all pretty, if they're spending that much money, they had creative people doing it. I thought they were good. I thought they were fun and enjoyable. You should watch them all with your kids because they're funny. The Flashdance one is very funny. The only one I saw on YouTube was I saw the one with Jennifer Aniston about forgetting stuff. And she sees David Schwimmer.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's right.

Kara Swisher: It's fun. It's fun. Anyway, it was good. It was a great Super Bowl, very similar to the Grammys. Highly enjoyable live television broadcast, right? So I think it was probably a win for CBS.

Scott Galloway: It sounds like it was a win all around.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think they previewed a bunch of their shows, which they did a nice job. They pushed the NFL very nicely. There were several NFL ads that were good, too, that were funny. And I know it sounds dumb, but it felt very Taylor Swift-y. It was great entertainment, great fun. Everyone's having fun, except the right wing is losing its fucking mind. And I have to say the very best, Joe Biden had the best tweet. It was, he tweeted right after a picture of him as a dark Joe Biden with the eyes, with the laser eyes. And he just wrote, "Just like we drew it up." So he's playing into the conspiracy theories around that this was planned by the CIA, the Taylor Swift win and this and that. If they did, they'd have Travis Kelsey have the last carry for the touchdown, FYI. But there's all these conspiracy theories around her that he was going to propose to her or back Biden in the middle of it. And I thought Joe Biden took advantage of it beautifully, "Just like we drew it up." Like, you fuckers. We didn't make, you know, this wasn't a conspiracy theory for the CIA to hurt Donald Trump. And then the person who had the worst social media, I think, was Donald Trump himself, taking credit for Taylor Swift's success and trying to kiss up to her.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he did a tweet where, or a truth where he said, he goes, "I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and other musical artists. Joe Biden didn't do anything for Taylor and never will. There's no way she could endorse crooked Joe Biden," which she's done before, by the way, "the worst and most corrupt president in the history of our country, be disloyal to a man who made her so much money. Besides that, I like her boyfriend, Travis, even though he may be liberal and probably can't stand me." He didn't do anything about it.

Kara Swisher: So full of lies and taking credit for her. And what I wrote is taking undeserved credit for her enormous success is classic and heinous, but it reads as if he is stone cold terrified of her and her power and realizes after a lifetime of terrorizing women that this is the one who can actually end him. Even her boyfriend frightens him. It's incredible that he couldn't just say congratulations. He has to take credit, which is sickening. Bill Maher had a really interesting take on Taylor Swift. And he said that Taylor Swift could swing the election. And his, I mean, it was really interesting what he said. She's from Pennsylvania. She's white. She's dating a white guy. She's a country star. And she doesn't even need to endorse Biden. She just needs to encourage people to turn out the vote, because who will she turn out? She'll turn out young people. And younger Americans tend to be browner, which means they're more democratic. She could literally swing the election.

Scott Galloway: The strategy that would be just so genius here, if she in fact would like to see, I can't imagine any woman who's...

Kara Swisher: She backed Biden before. She's not... And she was anti-Trump, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So we know she's pro-Biden, but here's the thing. The strategy is not to be pro-Biden. She should never use President Biden's name. She should never use Donald Trump's name. She should just talk about turning out the vote.

Kara Swisher: Exactly. But I don't... She backed Biden before. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. She could say, what a heinous rapist. Like, I don't know.

Scott Galloway: No, no, no, no, no. We got to be smart here. We got to stop trying to shame people into not voting for Trump. We got to be smart. If you get young people to turn out, he wins.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Anyway, I would recommend people watch Americana, where she talks about how dangerous it is. Her father was very concerned about her attacking Marsha Blackburn and backing Democrats because of her safety. Anyway, it was interesting. It was an interesting thing. Anyway, it was a great Super Bowl. Kudos to it. Now let's move on to our first big story. Special counsel Robert Hur has released his report on President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents. The report concludes no criminal charges against Biden are warranted and also says there was evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials as a private citizen. There were a number of references to Biden's cognitive abilities, notably calling him a "sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory." I have to say this was the media... Your coverage is out of context of what I read the whole entire thing. And if you read it, which no one will, nonetheless, this is what happened. It was damaging. Biden lashed out at the special counsel during a press conference late last week, particularly at the claim that he could not remember the year his son, Beau, died. The guy was talking about strategy around a trial. Biden did mix up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico at a press conference. That said, Donald Trump mixed up the presidents of, I think, Turkey. And then he thought Nikki Haley was Nancy Pelosi. So let me just equalize that. Donald Trump also weighed in saying if Biden was not going to be charged with classified documents, then neither should he, calling his own case selective persecution. It is not. So it obviously created a lot of things. People were furious about the number of stories in the New York Times and columns. And I would agree there were seven of them talking about Biden's age and nothing. And they did not put what Trump said a day later about letting the Russians attack Europe in the same spot. It was very weird media selection. I never say the media's biased, but boy, was that something to see.

Scott Galloway: I don't think it's still a problem. And a large amount of people believe both are too old. I think over 60 percent. More people believe Biden is too old compared to Trump. Let's not equalize it. Trump has 91 indictments. It's not comparable, but it's still a problem. So and you've talked about this a lot. So what do you think about this? Well, how do you get beyond this?

Kara Swisher: I think you saw him moving out last night during the Super Bowl, even though he didn't do the traditional interview. He did a ton of social media. It was all very clever, funny, making fun of himself. He's got to get out there, I think, ultimately. What are your thoughts?

Scott Galloway: I see it as either really poor judgment or a planned hit piece because he was there to talk about the legal veracity of these documents which the president, President Biden, turned over versus President Trump tried to hide and destroy evidence. And again, it goes back to what my friend Dov Seidman says, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. And basically the special prosecutor did his job to the extent that it was clear. He said, this was an error in judgment. As soon as he recognized his error in judgment, he fully cooperated and he's the one that disclosed he had these documents. So he drew sharp relief between the two cases and did his job. He's not there though to be a neurobiologist and made comments that anyone reviewing this thing would go, you realize this is going to be blown up into something much bigger and it has no legal frame. It's not appropriate. Now the larger issue here is that when you have a 77 or 78 year old obese man and an 81 year old man, there's about a 7% chance every year that they're going to die. So essentially, between now and the election, there's a little less than a coin flip chance that one of these two slips and breaks a hip or something like that. And what is just so upsetting and frustrating is that America produces more remarkable people, I believe, than any nation in history. We have remarkable military leaders. We have remarkable artists, business people. Every time I go to Washington, as much as we shit post Washington, I meet remarkable people. And we end up with two people, quite frankly, that just should be nowhere near the White House because of biology. It has nothing to do with their character. Let's just put that aside right now. People this old should not be put in positions that require this exacting a cognitive, physical, and emotional and mental stamina, which nobody has at that age. I don't care if you're Jack LaLanne. This is just insane. But anyways, here we are. But the reality is they're both really old men. And so I find it discouraging that those are the two people we've produced. But this, in my view, was either very poor judgment or a naked hit piece. Because to think that this wasn't going to go crazy in the media and that they were going to zero in on this shit was just not being honest with the impact.

Kara Swisher: I thought the media could have done a much better job because Trump has been saying, like literally at Pennsylvania and then North Carolina, he said a series of incoherent things. I think the point I was trying to make actually on Chris Wallace's show, because they were like, this is a big problem. Like, are you, Trump, you know, he's not as, Trump isn't as bad. I'm like, almost worse because he says incoherent things. We've gotten used to it. Trump lies so much that we don't think it's cognitive decline. Someone wrote, Trump is incoherent and occasionally is coherent, and Biden is coherent and is occasionally incoherent. But more than that, Biden has always had gaffes, right? He's definitely old, no question. He has more gaffes than ever. He always has gaffes. Trump is getting increasingly insane. And the reason I think Biden gets more attacked for it is because he reminds me of a nursing home. He's the nice guy in the nursing home and occasionally can find his apartment. Right? That kind of like, I'm going to use a metaphor. Trump is the guy in the cafeteria who accuses everyone of stealing his fork or his jello or whatever. The reason he seems more vigorous is because he's louder, but that doesn't make him any less cognitively disabled, right? He just seems vigorous. And that's true. But the crazy one in the nursing home is the one I'm worried about. The loud one is the one I'm worried about. Not the sort of friendly old guy who's effective, by the way, speaking of which. Now, the day, let me just say, the day after his comments encouraging Russia to do whatever the hell they want to any NATO country, doesn't mean defense guidelines. This is a dangerous, incoherent person who already was problematic. The NATO Secretary General said Trump's words could undermine security and put American and European forces at risk. These comments, and Nikki Haley even said this kind of comment that makes Joe Biden look clear-headed. Joe Biden is clear-headed about this. These comments are, if he's not incoherent, then he's dangerously leading us into a world war. It's just astonishing that there's even a comparison between the two and that equalization of this. And the fact that The New York Times did not put this on the very top of the thing and kept referring to Joe Biden's stupid report was, I think, a dereliction of their duty. I never say that about the media. But in this case, when I heard that out of his mouth, I was like, are you kidding me what he just said? Dangerous. And if he meant it, he's dangerous. And if he's incoherent, he's even worse, more dangerous. Your thoughts?

Scott Galloway: Well, someone called me over the weekend and said, you know, if you were asked, the Democrats, how would you deal with this issue?

Scott Galloway: And I said, you're getting one thing right, but you're forgetting the second. You got the peanut butter right, but you're missing the chocolate. Him taking it is humorous. Humor reflects intellect, and it makes light of the issue, and you kind of turn the situation around. And they're doing a great job of having Biden joke about it. Where they're failing is that it should be the following: no one person runs the largest country in the world. It's never been one person. It's an entire infrastructure.

Scott Galloway: It's a person running a company. This is the most robust, youthful, vigorous administration in history. We have for the first time a young woman as vice president. We have a secretary of transportation who is just into his 40s. We have secretaries of state who are young and vigorous, not old men from Exxon. And by the way, young, vigorous people who work really hard, you're loyal to them and you create a culture of youth and loyalty and innovation. And that's what they have in the White House versus this revolving door of old white men, including Peter Navarro, who's going to prison.

Scott Galloway: I mean, if you want to talk about an administration, you don't talk about the president. You talk about the presidency. And this is a group of people who are the most youthful, robust, and innovative in history. And that's how they should position it. Yeah, he's old. There's nothing they can do about it. But look at who he surrounds himself with.

Kara Swisher: Although Republicans use that as they're all really running it in his place, that he's just *Weekend at Bernie's*.

Scott Galloway: So I was on a panel, I think it was Brett's season, called *Weekend at Bernie's*. Fuck you on that one. I got to say, I couldn't say that on the air, but he's not *Weekend at Bernie's*. He picks them.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's right.

Scott Galloway: Right. Yep. Trump just kept firing them and then they kept turning on the guy and either running against him or ending up in jail. That's not youthful. That's about as primitive as you can get. And if you have to look at the people who've worked for him—every person who's worked for him who's left calls him a moron, crazy, incoherent, possibly insane. I'm sorry, it's just not the same with Joe Biden, and the equalization of it cannot be allowed to happen.

Scott Galloway: And I absolutely get why people do it, because most people know the kind of old guy Joe Biden is. They're not used to crazy, like really malevolently crazy old people. There's only a few of those, comparatively. So that's what they're worried about. What they should be worried about is a highly incoherent person who's becoming increasingly incoherent, is overweight, is clearly been red-pilled in a way that's really disturbing, and is attacking Nikki Haley's husband. "Where's her husband? Where's her husband?" He's deployed in the military. He's fighting. You fucker. That kind of thing.

Scott Galloway: And as someone whose dad was in the military, it's astonishing. And he did it before. He did it with the Gold Star family, he did it with John McCain. "Oh, come on. I don't like people who've been captured." But here's the problem. There's no such thing as shaming people and they're not voting for the guy.

Kara Swisher: No, there isn't.

Scott Galloway: They've got to focus. They've got to play offense. And I think they should absolutely highlight and get some of that youth out there. Because the way I would position it is: the president is old. There's no getting around it. He still has his faculties. But he's a good man. He makes great decisions. Don't measure behaviors. Don't measure gaffes. Measure results. The results here are the best in history. Jobs, low unemployment—they're the best in history. His age is an issue. He has the most youthful presidency in the history of the country.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, good. I like that. Scott, they should hire you. Decide what team you want. One of the things, they should also vitamin this man up and get him out there. There's ways to make people cognitively sharper and just let him sleep. Get him out there. You and I both know it—when we get tired, we start to make mistakes. And we're not that old, but it happens. So anyway, we have to go on a quick break. I think they should hire you, Scott. When we come back, we'll discuss Disney's new adventure with Epic Games, a big deal. And we'll chat with friends of Pivot, Zoe Schiffer and Kurt Wagner, about Elon Musk's chaotic reign at Twitter.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Disney has turned the corner and entered a new era, according to CEO Bob Iger, following a blockbuster first quarter earnings report. Earnings per share rose 23%, beating estimates. The company cut streaming losses more than expected to $138 million.

Scott Galloway: Pretty good. Manageable.

Kara Swisher: And also says it will boost its cash dividend by 50%. Disney also made a slew of other announcements, including an ESPN streaming service in 2025, an exclusive version of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour movie that will stream on Disney+, smart move, and a Moana sequel. Also, Frozen is coming. I got that directly from Bob Iger, which, of course, he wants me to spend more on Frozen. And perhaps the biggest news of all, Disney is getting into gaming, acquiring a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite.

Kara Swisher: Scott, you had talked about Disney being a buy, one of your buys. Talk about the move into gaming. You predicted this in various forms over the last few years. You thought Disney should acquire Roblox or Netflix would buy Epic. I think he's doing his Bob Iger thing. So what do you think about this?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I pick two or three stocks every year. My picks this year were Alphabet. I think this year is the Empire Strikes Back in terms of generative AI. I just think the data set they have to work with—your calendar, your YouTube viewership—are just unparalleled. And I picked Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery because I think the tech stuff that everyone loves is so fully valued. In my view, I wanted to go after stuff that was distressed. And Disney trading at a 10 low, it has unparalleled IP.

Scott Galloway: I think Bob is a very solid executive. What they lost was the narrative, and it wasn't entirely sure what the strategy was. And I think he's sort of turned it around and appears to be playing offense after the layoffs. Streaming's now making money. The parks are just this unsung juggernaut of a business. I think they did $10 billion in EBITDA this year.

Scott Galloway: And so Epic—just disclosure, Epic is one of my biggest investments. In 2021, I made a purchase in the private markets. There's all these platforms now that sell secondary shares from employees. And I did it for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted some exposure to what is a $180 billion market, the gaming industry. Epic has Fortnite, which I see as just an unbelievable... My 13-year-old is, I don't want to say addicted, but the reason I like video games more than social media is they are actual social. One of the nicest moments of my week is my son has this battle cry that he screams out from the room when he's playing Fortnite with his buddies. And they're really elegant in terms of how they monetize it. They also have this underlying infrastructure.

Scott Galloway: So I thought I want some exposure to the space. Now, it adds to the flywheel of Disney because you can imagine they're probably going to come up with all sorts of rides. Maybe even a Fortnite movie series in the makings.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they probably watched Barbie very carefully, right?

Scott Galloway: 100%. And this gives them a chance to date before they acquire the company. What was interesting is the valuation on it was about $21 or $22 billion, which was actually lower than the valuation was last year. But the moment Disney made the investment, it began trading up in the secondary market because everybody sees the validation of having Disney involved. I think this is good for Epic. I think it's good for Disney. I think it's good for Bob Iger. Win, win, win.

Kara Swisher: Let me put some context in here. Disney has been in gaming. They tried Club Penguin, mostly for kids. They bought a bunch—I'm blanking on all of them. Tapulous. They had a lot of app stuff, and that didn't work out well for them. Maker Studio, remember that one?

Scott Galloway: Maker, yeah.

Kara Swisher: That was more video oriented. It wasn't gaming, but they were in a lot of gaming stuff, especially around kids. My kids had Club Penguin. I write about it a little bit in my upcoming book, but they never were able to make it work because they never really committed to gaming. This is a very important gaming company. What it does is it puts them at odds with Apple, which is in a very serious legal fight over App Store stuff with Epic. And the CEO in particular—I'm going to hopefully interview him soon—but it puts them at odds with Apple, which is one of their partners. Iger and Apple have been very close.

Kara Swisher: But they have to get into this. It's sort of like, whatever you think of the Vision Pro, Apple has to get into spatial computing or facial computing, really. And they have to get into gaming. This is a critical part. Netflix has kind of dabbled in it by creating a gaming thing, but Disney's got to own this area in a really significant way. And this is what they do now, especially because the Nelson Peltz proxy fight is still looming. Iger addressed it in an interview with CNBC last week following the earnings report. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: Bob Iger: "The last thing that we need right now is to be distracted in terms of our time, our energy by an activist or activists that, frankly, have a completely different agenda and don't understand our company, its assets, even the essence of the Disney brand."]

Kara Swisher: No, that's him. He's pushing back, and he has been. For his part, Peltz responded to Disney's latest earnings, saying it's déjà vu all over again. "We saw the movie last year and didn't like the ending." Nelson, you got to go away. Stop hanging out with Elon Musk, et cetera. I think he's going to fend off Peltz. Peltz is looking kind of—he's kind of ruining his brand here. He's doing things that are right for this company. And to sort of badmouth it when he's doing—the streaming got better, this is a really interesting deal. The parks are doing well. This is a difficult turnaround for Bob Iger, some of which is his own fault, no question. But he was right about going into streaming, even though it's costly. So I think Peltz looks like a pot.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but the ultimate shark repellent for an activist is when the stock goes up. The stock's up 22% in the last 30 days. And so what happens is, when you're an activist investor—which I have done—you never win at the first meeting, at the first annual meeting. But if the stock continues to go down, you win at the second. If the stock continues to go up, as the activist, you just sell your stake. You're in it for money. You're not in it for victories or wins. These guys have big egos, but for the most part, they're in it to make money. So if this stock does what I think it's going to do—and I think it's up 50% to 100% in 12 months—Peltz will declare victory and leave, never run another proxy fight, make a shit ton of money, and Bob will not have this guy on his board.

Kara Swisher: I disagree. I've been in a ton of these situations. Bob has a bunch of people on the board who are not scared of Nelson Peltz. They would have stuck the angry guy in the corner and let him punch himself out and gotten on with the board meeting. And then they wouldn't have had this detractor heckling from the cheap seats.

Scott Galloway: If the stock continues to go up, Nelson Peltz will sell and go away, and everyone wins.

Kara Swisher: Right. Yep. That's it. He's not winning on this one. Anyway, we'll see what happens. Iger did a great job with this. I think Epic is really interesting and really sharp move by him. And it's not that risky, but it's also not unrisky, which is just the way you want to be.

Kara Swisher: All right, let's bring in our friends of Pivot. Zoe Schiffer is the managing editor of Platformer and the author of *Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter*. Kurt Wagner covers social media for Bloomberg and is the author of *Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul*. Twitter books are here, everybody. Welcome. Two people I have great regard for. Kurt used to work for me a long time ago, and Zoe works for Casey Newton, who's a very good friend of mine. Both amazing reporters. Welcome to both of you.

Zoe Schiffer: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Kurt Wagner: Thank you so much for having us.

Kara Swisher: So let's start. You both have Twitter books. You're competing. We decided to bring you together. I'm sorry to do this, but it's better for you.

Scott Galloway: It's better because we're going to talk about both your books, and they're different in lots of ways, and we want to distinguish them and why you should read both.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Kurt, you detail in your book how Twitter was already having problems during the Jack Dorsey years, well before Elon came onto the scene. He obviously was at the Super Bowl last night sitting there looking forlorn as always. Talk about the history. You covered this for us at Recode for many years. Some news from the weekend: a federal judge ordered Elon to testify again in the SEC's probe of his version of Twitter. The SEC is examining whether Elon followed the law when filing the paperwork about his purchases of Twitter stock and whether his statements about the deal were accurate. But let's start with you, because the Jack Dorsey years—he kind of pushed this and thought it would be great for Twitter. Talk a little bit about that.

Kurt Wagner: He did. I mean, he admired Elon tremendously. He used to refer to him as his favorite tweeter. He invited him to corporate offsites.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah.

Kurt Wagner: He really had an admiration for Elon. And so when this opportunity presented itself—and Kara, you heard this before as well—but he had been talking for years about how Twitter shouldn't be a public company. Jack was very much of this mindset that Twitter should be private, that it should be out of the pressures of the Wall Street investor cooker. And so when Elon showed up and had the money to do this thing that Jack had wanted to have done for a long time, he jumped at it. Obviously, I think it was a mistake, but that's one of the reasons that he was so excited for Elon to take over.

Kara Swisher: Well, talk a little bit about the problems there. We covered this for years, both of us. It was, as Mark Duckworth said, a clown car that ran into a goldmine. And it was always a clown car and a very emotional one. It was a company that had tremendous influence that outweighed its business by an order of magnitude. People talked about it, people used it for politics and sports and other cultural things, but the business never caught up. And that was why it was always in this really tough position.

Kurt Wagner: And one of the things that my book gets into is actually, Jack Dorsey had orchestrated this three-year business plan right before Elon showed up. And it was very ambitious. It was coming off the heels of COVID. They were like, "Hey, we're going to add more users than we've ever added. We're going to build more revenue than we've ever had." And they were not on pace to hit any of these things.

Kara Swisher: No, they never were.

Kurt Wagner: Yeah, you look into the future and you just realize they're kind of headed for this disaster financially as a publicly traded company. So again, I think the board also saw Elon as an escape from having to go through what they knew was going to be a bad situation. And no one else wanted to buy it.

Kara Swisher: Zoe, is there a scenario where Elon could have been successful at the helm of Twitter? He buys it. He tries not to buy it. He just decided to say, "I'll buy it no matter what." And then, of course, tried to backtrack on it. You write that the attributes that made Musk good at tweeting—a combination of recklessness and shamelessness—

Zoe Schiffer: I think you're being kind.

Kara Swisher: But you're right—those things made him exceedingly bad at running Twitter. Talk about that transition, because I even thought he would be good. I was like, "OK, let's try this," because it was such a disaster as a company.

Zoe Schiffer: Yeah, I think there's this narrative now that the media was very biased against Elon's acquisition from the beginning. And that's actually incorrect. There was a lot of excitement, even from a small group of employees and people in the media, about the acquisition, because like Kurt said, Twitter had been in such a bad place financially and growth-wise for so long. There was a lot of frustration from even certain employees about this.

Zoe Schiffer: What Elon did—and what I feel like was such a big unforced error—is that he came in with this posture of "everyone who works here is an idiot and I don't want to listen to you." He didn't come in with an immense amount of curiosity. When he sat down with employees from day one, and they were explaining the technical backend of how Twitter worked, he would interrupt them and talk about his own expertise, or he would look really bored or be scrolling on his phone. So from day one, he wasn't really interested in what the people who had worked there and had worked so hard to make Twitter successful had to say.

Kara Swisher: And why was that from your perspective?

Zoe Schiffer: I think that he felt like Twitter had been sliding in a bad direction and he really conflated some of the attributes of Twitter's company culture with this big fear he had around the "woke mind virus." The idea that employees got a day of rest off every month, that they got pretty good perks. It was in his mind a culture of laziness, of people who didn't want to work hard, who didn't want to be hardcore. And he felt like, "If I can put rockets into space, if I can build electric vehicles, then surely I'll be able to come in and fix Twitter. No problem."

Kara Swisher: Because it's a media company, Scott.

Scott Galloway: If I can only read one of your books, which should I read? Just kidding.

Zoe Schiffer: Oh, stop.

Scott Galloway: But go ahead. You won't read mine either. Don't worry, guys. He's not going to read my book either. But go ahead. Isn't Twitter the ultimate side piece? You have a guy who is making tens of billions of dollars at a payments company, kind of showing up every once in a while and just nodding. And then you have a guy making tens of millions somewhere else showing up every once in a while to tell them how fucking stupid they are and they get back to other shit. And now you have a CEO who's literally in over her head, who has no business running a company like this. Isn't this arguably—I'm having a difficult time thinking of any company that's had three worse CEOs.

Kurt Wagner: I think that the fact that there's been so much turnover at the CEO—I think this is one of the worst CEO jobs around because it sounds really glamorous, right? It's Twitter. You get to show up at the Super Bowl. You get to do all these things. You're culturally relevant, which is really exciting to a lot of people. But again, the business was always a bit of a disaster. It comes with all these huge problems around content moderation that people think are going to be super easy to solve and they're never as black and white as they seem.

Kurt Wagner: And there's a reason—Dick Costolo had a great quote. Actually, he shared this with Kara during an interview. He said running Twitter is like running any other company in dog years. One year at Twitter is seven years somewhere else. Because it's a really thankless, terrible job, but people think it's going to be cool because it's Twitter and there's a cultural element to it. And I think that that bothers people.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Zoe Schiffer: I mean, this isn't as true at the CEO level, but it was true for a lot of the board members and the management. One of the key frustrations that employees had is that so few people at the highest levels of the company even tweeted. They didn't use the product. And a lot of employees joined because they loved Twitter as a product. And then they were there, and it felt like there was an immense lack of understanding of what Twitter even was and what made it special. So many of the features that we think of as critical and crucial to how Twitter works actually came from the community. It was things that users found to organize the conversation and literally begged Twitter for years to codify into the feature set, and then Twitter would kind of begrudgingly do it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of that thing about a kid. When it was good, it was very, very good. And when it was bad, it was awful. But it was always an awful business. I think it just has morphed into an awful place in a lot of ways. Although last night with the Super Bowl, it was fun, right, for a second again. But both of you talked to a number of former employees for these books. Was something you found particularly shocking or surprising? Zoe, you start and then Kurt.

Zoe Schiffer: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that we know, but I kind of overlooked at the beginning, was that there was this small group—a core group of employees who were really frustrated with Twitter 1.0. They felt like it was incredibly inefficient. They wanted to hustle and get stuff done and ship new features. And they just felt like there were so many roadblocks in Twitter prior to Elon Musk coming on board. And so when they saw Elon coming in, talking about efficiency, shipping product really fast, they were actually really, really excited.

Zoe Schiffer: And yet, even those people who were so loyal and all in on Twitter 2.0, all in on this hardcore vision, became incredibly disillusioned over the months that followed. Why? Because they felt like his product sense—the kind of core thing that they thought he was going to bring—maybe culturally he won't be that great, maybe he'll be kind of rude in person, but his product sense will be really, really good. That just didn't feel like it was in place. He would kind of come up with ideas on a whim. It felt like his mentions were dictating what employees were working on. If a high-profile person was in his mentions complaining about something, all of a sudden it would be Code Red, the top engineering project of the day.

Zoe Schiffer: And they were being torn in a lot of directions at once. It was like, "Fix this content moderation problem immediately right now. Elon's really upset about it. But also, we need to ship this other thing right now. It needs to be done by the following morning or everyone's fired." And no amount of loyalty would ensure that people would keep their jobs.

Kara Swisher: So, Kurt, talk about that. That's behaving like a king, right? Which he behaves everywhere else if you start to really plumb at his other companies.

Kurt Wagner: And one of the things that I'm sure Zoe saw and I saw as well is that a lot of his product decisions and a lot of his direction came from his own personal experience. He's basically running this thing in a way that fits for him, but he is not the average user. He's not even close to the average user. He's got 160 million followers and he's the richest man in the world. So he's kind of creating a public good or a public service as he wants to think of it, but he's doing it in a way that suits his own personality, which is not a very useful way for the rest of us.

Kara Swisher: What about the increasing radicalization of him? He's really changed, as anyone who's spent any time with him. Talk a little bit about that.

Kurt Wagner: I mean, there's a couple of theories around this. I think one of mine is simply that this was a really easy way to differentiate what he's doing at X versus what Twitter was. It was clear that Twitter wasn't working. Even Jack Dorsey didn't think Twitter was working. And so one thing you can do if you're the new guy is to come in and just be the exact opposite of what the old guy was doing. And so part of me wonders how much of this shift to the right, this shift to a very conservative, anti-woke mindset of Elon is really a business decision in some ways. It's a way to differentiate himself and what X is building and bring in people who were disillusioned by the old version of Twitter.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I think it's very real. Zoe?

Zoe Schiffer: Well, I'm curious what you think about this, because I agree with everything Kurt's saying. And I also feel like the Elon Musk that's building Twitter or X is a very different Elon Musk from the one that was building Tesla. And I think one difference is that he has a lot fewer people around him who will tell him the truth. It feels like his circle has gotten smaller and it's gotten more sycophantic. The people that are close to him are total yes men. And when he's retelling a joke for the third time, no one's going to tell him that he's doing that. When he's making a horrible decision or going after someone and harassing them, no one really stands up. And if they do, it's a lower-level employee who's instantly out the door.

Kara Swisher: But you know him, you knew him much better than us in the earlier days. Yeah, I think I would point to the two Wall Street Journal articles recently about drug issues and the board—the enabling board. And Scott maybe has a question about this, but the board was highly enabling because they made money. And I thought that was the most important thing to point out. Everyone who's enabling him and licking him up and down all day either wants to be on the plane or wants to—I don't know why you would. It sounds—I'd rather be with Taylor Swift, but if I was going to suck up to someone. But the enablers are really quite something, and they literally can't. And I've had some of them come up to me saying, "We can't say anything. Keep saying it publicly because we can't." And I'm like, "Fuck you. That's what I—" You know what I mean? I was like, "Yes, you can, but you're in love with your hundreds of millions of dollars." How much money do you need?

Kurt Wagner: I'm curious what you know about the business where it stands today. I just can't imagine any advertiser would think, oh, we should advertise on Twitter. What do the financials look like? And do you have any insight into whether these three banks that hold the debt are going to try and offload the debt? What are the atmospherics around the current business?

Kara Swisher: I can go first.

Scott Galloway: Sure.

Kara Swisher: I read a little bit about this and I'm interested if Zoe's heard similar or not, but that in Q4, the holiday quarter, which is obviously a huge one for advertisers, their target was around $2.5 billion in advertising revenue. Now that's a little more than half of what they did two years earlier, the last full year before Elon was there. And this was also before Elon told advertisers to go fuck yourself on stage at Dealbook. So I would be shocked if they hit that, quite frankly. And I was having conversations with advertisers over the past month, both after CES, but before the Super Bowl, to just get a feel for what they were thinking. Almost all of them said the same thing, which is like, our clients don't feel comfortable coming back because Elon is so unpredictable. It's not even necessarily the stuff that's happening on the platform. It's Elon himself. And it was very telling yesterday, the Super Bowl, biggest ad day of the year for X. Elon was tweeting about boobs. I don't know if you guys saw this. He was literally posting the morning of the Super Bowl when all these advertisers, they've been luring them back, trying to convince them this is a safe place. And he's coming and he's posting these things that are just head scratchers. And until he stops doing that, I don't think advertisers are going to be super comfortable.

Scott Galloway: He's not going to stop doing it. And let me underscore he's 52.

Kara Swisher: But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Go ahead.

Zoe Schiffer: Yeah, I mean, I've heard the same thing as Kurt. It's not a surprise. He said one year after he bought the company that it was worth $19 billion. He bought it for $44 billion. He said himself he didn't buy Twitter to make money and that he would rather be able to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it, consequences be damned. And I think he keeps doing those exact things. He's had this tortured relationship with advertisers from day one, because why? Advertisers are content moderators. They're going to pull ad dollars if you talk about boobs during the Super Bowl. And yet he seems to not be able to help himself. And if that's because of, like Kara pointed to, the drug use that's been documented very well by the Wall Street Journal, or simply because he has a very childish sense of humor, we don't know. But he has very few checks and balances on his power, and he seems to not care if it hurts the business.

Kara Swisher: So where does CEO Linda Iaccarino, and I'm using CEO term loosely, fit into all of this, if at all?

Kurt Wagner: I guess I'll give her credit for this. I mean, the Super Bowl actually brought some real advertisers back to X. I was actually sort of surprised. And that's only going to happen if someone is there to convince them or talk to them, right?

Kara Swisher: She's very good at it with advertisers.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, she's in that world.

Kara Swisher: She's from that world.

Kurt Wagner: People, before she took this job, I believe people really respected her and admired her in that industry. So clearly she is doing what she can to build on those relationships and bring people back. But she has a boss who is constantly working against her, which is not easy. And I don't think you should necessarily let her off the hook here either. I mean, she's choosing to be there. She's choosing to support Elon and the things that he is saying sometimes. But I think they're working almost against each other often because she's out trying to sell this stuff and he's just lighting it on fire at the same time.

Kara Swisher: Let me say, I know a lot of people closer. She's all in. She's blaming everybody else, including me.

Zoe Schiffer: That's what I was going to say. Everything we know so far is that she's completely all in on the vision still and she is doing what she was hired to do, which is clean up Elon Musk's messes.

Scott Galloway: Well, she also thinks he's the greatest mind in all of history, from what I understand.

Kara Swisher: But okay, sure. Why not?

Scott Galloway: I'd go with Einstein, perhaps.

Kara Swisher: There's been so many rumors of so many different businesses, payments, right? The X, the Everything app. Do you have any sense for what is actually going to happen in terms of a product roadmap in '24?

Zoe Schiffer: I mean, we know that they're working on a complete app redesign and revamp, and payments are going to be a really big part of that. But I have such suspicion about the everything app terminology even. When he first bought the company, he hosted an all-hands meeting with employees and someone asked very specifically, "Are you going to try and make us like WeChat?" And he scoffed. He was like, "That's a ridiculous question." I just use it as an example. Everything app can mean a lot of different things. Since then, we heard him talk about literally making X a lot like WeChat. This isn't a vision that feels like it comes from a serious strategy. It feels like something that happens on a whim. Take just one example, which is Elon Musk's decision to limit API access for third-party developers. If you are truly building a super app, you want third-party developers building apps on top of your app. Because with 1,500 or 1,000 engineers, you're not going to be able to build all of the functionality that you need in order to create a really robust super app. And yet we see him saying things and then doing the exact opposite in practice.

Kurt Wagner: Well, if I could add to that too, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg tried to do this at Meta or back at Facebook, right? With Messenger, they're kind of trying to do it a little bit with WhatsApp. And it didn't work. And Messenger is way bigger than Twitter was. I'd say Mark Zuckerberg is probably a much better executor of these kind of consumer software ideas than Elon is. And I just don't think that this idea of a super app is super relevant to folks in the United States, quite frankly. It has some appeal in Asia. But yeah, I just I'm with Zoe. He has been fixated on for years. He has talked about it a long time ago.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, no, no, it's just like, I'm interested in world peace. It doesn't mean it's going to happen. It's just not clear to me what that even means to him.

Kara Swisher: So what's the thing they're going to do? What's the revenue, as Scott just asked? Is there anything they could do? Give me an idea, each of you.

Kurt Wagner: I mean, I think payments are the big push, but I would be curious what occurs. I think that that's the kind of X.com vision from the 90s is integrating a payment platform with social...

Kara Swisher: Not media companies, not Tucker Carlson Network, right?

Kurt Wagner: Yeah. I'm not going to say this is going to work, but because this is where they're headed, I'll point it out. They're going into this professionally produced video route that we actually saw with the Twitter 1.0 guys. The idea being, hey, if we have WWE wrestling and we have Don Lemon and we have Tucker Carlson and, God willing, we're going to partner with the NFL. That's never going to happen, but let's pretend, right? Maybe they could get some high quality video advertisers to come back because they know they're advertising against the NFL or the WWE. They're not advertising against random people in your feed. We saw this play out with Twitter 1.0. It did not work. I'm not necessarily convinced it's going to work here. But since that's the direction they're going, I'll say that that might be what we're going to see over the next year.

Kara Swisher: You young people don't remember when Yahoo did news. Everyone wore Banana Republic outfits. It didn't work. I feel like that's kind of their vision of what's going to happen. If you were going to ask me what I think is actually going to happen, I think XAI subsumes X. I think the focus becomes large language models and X becomes an input for those models, a training ground for those models, but the focus and the momentum shifts.

Scott Galloway: But what's the consumer facing product there?

Kara Swisher: I mean, a ChatGPT rival.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I see. Got it.

Kara Swisher: I mean, X could still exist, right? Because you still want the training data for all that. And X still exists. But I think what we're seeing with like Quora, where all of the new investment dollars are coming in, but they're coming in to fund the AI initiatives. They're not going to revamp Quora and make Quora better. Like that to me is the corollary here. This is a prediction. This is just what I think.

Scott Galloway: What is the most surprising thing that you found, the single most surprising in a very short order? And will Elon own this thing going forward five years? I say yes. I don't know about the surprising things. I didn't do the whole book on it. But each of you tell me that.

Kurt Wagner: Yeah, I can go first. This is a little tiny detail, but again, one I found surprising, which is right around the time that Elon started buying Twitter stock, which was late January of 2022. He had complained to CEO Parag Agarwal about the @ElonJet account and basically said, "You need to take this off Twitter. It's following my plane. It's a privacy thing." And Parag essentially ignored Elon. And within days, weeks, he's buying Twitter shares and two months later, he owns the whole company. Now, I'm not saying that's exactly the motivation, but I think the timing is super interesting and I can also say that some people pretty deeply involved in the deal thought that that was a true motivation for him. And it's just crazy to think that this $44 billion deal may have started with the ElonJet account.

Kara Swisher: And I don't think it's that crazy. And also Babylon B. I would say Babylon B really bugged him. He complained about it to me, actually.

Kurt Wagner: Go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Oh, and I do think Elon will hold Twitter only because I think to get rid of it would be to admit failure and defeat, and I'm not sure that he'd be willing to do it. And as Zoe pointed out, the XAI thing gives him a very logical pivot into the AI wars, and I think Twitter could be key to that. So I think he's going to hold on to it.

Zoe Schiffer: Yeah, I mean there were a lot of small surprising revelations but one that comes to mind immediately is just the afternoon of deal close. There had been this enormous push and pull over the summer. Will he buy the company? Will he not? He's going to sue Twitter. Twitter's going to sue him back. They're all ready to close the deal. All of the paperwork is being signed. All of the lawyers are at the office. And Elon realizes that he's missing about $500 million, and they're short. And he asks Twitter if they can loan him the money, essentially, because it's about to be theirs. Twitter says absolutely not. And they're able to get it anyway. But I think it just shows how slapdash the entire process was that even at the 11th hour, they were scrambling trying to get the funding. I agree with everything that you both said. And I think too much of his ego is wrapped up in X to have someone else own and run the company.

Kara Swisher: What is the culture or the vibe like at Twitter right now?

Zoe Schiffer: It's a totally different company from the one that it used to be in every way. The office literally looks different. It used to have this kind of celebratory, multicultural vibe, and now it's more of a spaceship metal. The art on the walls looks really different. But I think the people who are there, it's very, very top-down now, and the people who are there are either completely bought into Elon Musk's vision, or they're trapped for visa reasons. But either way, they're pretty scared to talk, and there's not a vibe of open discussion at all anymore.

Kurt Wagner: Yeah, I was going to say just the commitment to Elon is pretty intense for the people who are still there. And we're at the point where most people who didn't believe or whatever, they've been able to jump ship. Not all, but most. And so it's much more hardcore Elon than it was before. Not to give Zoe's book a shout out there. So, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Excellent. All right. Thank you, Zoe and Kurt. I recommend both books, Scott. Again, Zoe's book is called "Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk's Twitter." And Kurt's book is "Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul." I would say the soul is lost, but I really appreciate that from both of you.

Zoe Schiffer: Thank you, Kara.

Kurt Wagner: Thanks, Scott.

Zoe Schiffer: Thanks so much for having us.

Kurt Wagner: And we're excited for your book as well.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Snooze.

Scott Galloway: Oh, stop it. You're not reading any of them, Scott. So just move along.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, thank you guys so much. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first?

Scott Galloway: No, you go first, Kara.

Kara Swisher: I would say the win, I thought the Super Bowl was, again, like the Grammys, a real win for entertainment and real people. It was lovely. It had a lovely vibe to it. And I liked it a lot. And I don't love a sports event. And I would say, I got to say, a win goes to Joe Biden's social media manager. I was really impressed. I thought it was very funny and tongue in cheek. And I think they're doing a fantastic job. I don't think it's going to get through to as many people. But I'm glad they're on TikTok, the Communist Party and all. My fail was Donald, as I said earlier, Donald Trump with NATO. I get there's issues around NATO. Hello. Nice to meet you. So democracy is tough. But what he has said is dangerous. It's dangerous especially the signals it gives to someone like Putin. My only non about that is Putin is incompetent. And as you see, he can't even win in Ukraine. He's a world power. So that would be the only thing. But to put so many people in harm's way like this is, he should not be president of the United States. I get why people want to vote for him. I'm not trying to shame you. But to wish for the economy to go down was heinous enough. This is really, really, really dangerous. Everyone's world will be crushed economically if something like this happens. It's an invitation to dictatorship, and it's an invitation to dictators.

Scott Galloway: Well, can you imagine how Finland feels? Finland, one of the big victories of NATO, the European Union, and the brave Ukrainians and Biden and the EU's coming together around pushing back on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is Finland decided to join NATO. How the fuck do they feel right now? They're taking their young men and women and putting them in a NATO uniform. And you're saying that the primary funder in, let's be honest, NATO's for the most part controlled by the US. They're now saying to Finland, who shares an 800 mile border with Russia, the guy that might be president is saying that Putin should attack NATO. I mean, anyway.

Kara Swisher: And that's what he said. Don't say he suggested it. He said it. He's a transactional fuck is what he is. I think everything's a real estate deal. And he isn't really that good at real estate either. So please, it's not real estate. This is not real estate. These aren't condos in Queens. It's not. This guy's wholly unqualified to be the commander in chief. Wholly and dangerous.

Scott Galloway: Okay, so my win is I can't help it. I've said young people, you shouldn't try and find the needle in the haystack. You should buy the haystack, buy low cost ETFs and index funds. But I love stock picking. I think it's fun. I think you should take a quarter or maybe even a 30-year capital and try and find outsized alpha and gains in individual stocks. You learn a lot about the markets if you're so inclined, and most people aren't, but if you are. But one of my holdings, and I'm talking about my own book here, and it's confirmation bias, but I think there's some logic here. I think Airbnb is more of a prediction than a win, is going to have a monster earnings at the close of business today. We release on a Tuesday. I'm still just in absolute awe of Meta's earnings. And I'm not in awe of the company. I think Mark Zuckerberg, to have all that kind of money and not protect people means he's a boy whose masculinity never took over and his intelligence and his skills have vastly outpaced his empathy and masculinity. I think he's a lost man. But the earnings were so striking. To grow revenues 25% while reducing headcount 25%, I've never seen anything like that. And I tried to suss out what are the things that really drove it. I looked at who are the biggest purchasers or who has the most NVIDIA AI-enabled GPUs on order. And the two biggest are Microsoft and Meta. They have the most on order. And I don't think there's any accident that Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world and Meta just absolutely blew away its numbers. And I was talking to the team today. I believe that these GPUs are basically that this move to AI is the equivalent of corporate Ozempic, and that it's giving them such incredible efficiency, they can shed weight like they've never before. And I was thinking about Airbnb. What else is Meta? Meta is a consumer space. Consumer spending is much more robust than people think. It's the biggest player in the space. We're moving to an economy, I asked Swatamotor on Prop G the other day, and he's like, it's not necessarily a good thing, but size matters and it keeps increasingly matter. And the biggest company in every category is garnering more and more efficiency and more and more market share. Consumer spending vastly outpaced any estimates. And then I think about Airbnb. They bought an AI company in Q3 of last year. It wasn't a big purchase, but it reflects that Brian is really thinking about AI. They have not been hiring like crazy. Unfortunately, there's some unfortunate winds to their back, and that is I think young people have sort of, I don't want to say given up on buying a house, but are taking a lot of that money. And there's just a different gestalt zeitgeist among young people. If you're in a relationship with someone, you might think, I'm going to go to Bangkok for three months and work remotely. And that just feeds right into Airbnb. Now 20% of Airbnb's bookings are for 30 days or longer. Consumer spending is way up. I think they've embraced AI. I think you're looking at, they're the leader in their space.

Kara Swisher: I don't think it's just young people. You know, we're renovating a house. I would look, first, before looking for something, I went to Airbnb.

Scott Galloway: And all of that, anyone who's actually looked at the pricing of Airbnb, I hate to say this, Airbnb has monopoly power.

Kara Swisher: And look at the fees they charge.

Scott Galloway: Oh, there's VRBO.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there's VRBO.

Scott Galloway: They're pretty good.

Kara Swisher: That's VRBO to Airbnb is what Lyft is to Uber. And that is, it's kind of cute. In certain areas, they're good, especially with older people and older.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, yeah, yes. I like them both. I like them both. Anyways, I just think, and this is a prediction, and granted, I can disclose around the stock, but I think you're going to see a monster earnings call tonight from Airbnb that's going to surprise everyone to the upside. And quite frankly, the market already senses it. Stock's up 7% today. My fail is I was really moved and shocked by, I mean, not shocked, shocked but not surprised. Someone put out this Instagram reel with Julia Roberts talking about this picture with her niece. Did you see this?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she looked adorable. Emma Roberts. It was just so cute. She's with her niece, cute thing, playing cards in the morning. They look adorable.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And there are literally hundreds of comments about how she's not aging well and look how shitty she looks, talking about what's failed, just really going after her looks. And I thought to myself, okay, if one of the most beautiful women in history gets attacked like this, what are the chances that our daughters get to their 30s unscathed? And she made this point.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And I really appreciate her saying that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. She made a very big point of it. Good for her. She came out swinging. She said, "This is just such bullshit." And I thought, and here's the thing, fairly or unfairly, the reality is women are disproportionately evaluated based on their appearance and men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic well-being, economic prosperity. You would never say to a man, "You are so weak and such a failure and have so few skills you will not be able to take care of your kids." You would never say that to a man. You would never go on social media and say, "I've observed you and you will never be able to take care of your children." You would think that is a low blow. You would never say that. But it's open season on women's looks.

Kara Swisher: I agree. I liked what she had to say. She was clear-headed in doing it. I have to say, like dunking has really got, I've about had it with dunking. Like I don't mind if it's at big famous people and some of it's funny. I like it when it's funny and not so righteous. But the righteousness and the ability just to say nasty shit out loud is really, it's a disease of Trump. It's a disease of Trump.

Scott Galloway: I'm a sexist. I make fun of men's looks. I objectify them.

Kara Swisher: With women, with women, you don't make fun of their looks.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I agree. I don't think you should make fun of anyone's looks. But yeah. Our society disproportionately evaluates women, and young women especially are told that their entire net worth, their self-esteem, unfortunately, should come from their looks. You would never walk into a restaurant and see someone famous and go, "Jesus Christ, you're aging poorly." You would never say that. It's not a free speech issue. And the thing that was really unfortunate about it is a lot of these comments, you can tell, are from men.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: And it's just like, Jesus Christ. Welcome to Gamergate. This is, I agree. Did your mother teach you anything? So, and everyone goes to, well, it's free speech. It's great about the internet. You would never behave this way. You would never go on Twitter and say to a young man, "You can't speak English. Your logic is so poor, you will never be able to take care of your children because you'll be such an economic failure." You would never say that. You wouldn't. Anyway, so my fail is social media has given mostly men license to really attack. Yeah, just in a, this is the opposite of masculinity. These guys think that they're being tough. You move to protection. And women are especially sensitive because our society disproportionately evaluates them based on their looks. And it's not right, but it is. No man should ever disparage a woman's looks ever. My win goes to Julia Roberts for speaking out and clapping back. I thought it was a nice moment for her to say, you know what.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. What are you thinking? What are you thinking?

Kara Swisher: I would agree. It's bad raising. When someone comes at me with, "Oh, it's my free speech," I'm like, fine, but you're an asshole. That's what you are. You're an asshole. That's simply what you are. Anyway, speaking of relationships and men and women together, Scott and I went on Esther Perel's podcast, "Where Should We Begin?" for some couples counseling because we love each other so deeply. You'll be able to hear the entire session next week. And here's a little tease.

Scott Galloway: Sometimes people present themselves as tough.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: But for the purpose of covering, which often is a very tender, gentle...

Kara Swisher: I think you're talking about me.

Scott Galloway: I am actually tough, but I also can be tender.

Kara Swisher: It's okay to be tough. I mean, we've met maybe three or four times that we have spoken together. I don't think of you as tough, but I do sometimes think you can be intimidating.

Scott Galloway: Which Scott, who presents as tough, doesn't intimidate me at all.

Kara Swisher: God, literally, our narcissism knows no bounds.

Scott Galloway: I know, it's true.

Kara Swisher: But it was good. Anyway, that'll drop in the Pivot feed on Tuesday, February 20th. It's very enjoyable.

Scott Galloway: That's what the world needs. More Scott and Kara.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Anyway, we want to hear from you, by the way. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Scott, that is the show. We'll be back on Friday for more.

Scott Galloway: What an enjoyable show. Once again, I love our relationship.

Kara Swisher: I love our relationship. Read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Saverio. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.