Is Elon's Offer Serious? Plus, Inflation, Astroturfing, and DAOs

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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: What should we talk about today?

Scott Galloway: What are we going to talk about? Let me think. Let me think. People are begging for us to talk about this. They are begging. Let us talk about Elon Musk, his offer to buy Twitter.

Kara Swisher: Obviously, we can talk about inflation and everything else. And we have a listener question about AstroTurf campaigns. But really, it's just Elon.

Scott Galloway: Very briefly, we will discuss other things. Should we or just let's just move on? What should we do? No one wants to talk about TikTok or whatever else we were going to talk about.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Or Ethereum. Anything else. No one cares. You know what? We're just going to get to the big story. Elon Musk must really want that edit button. After failing to join the board, Musk is now offering to buy Twitter, all of it, the whole company, for around $43 billion. For good measure, he slipped in a 420 joke. That's his weed o'clock joke in his offer. $54.20 per share. He's done that before when he offered to take Tesla private for $420. And he said funding secured when he didn't have the funding secured. It cost him money and Twitter, Tesla, big fines of $20 million each.

Kara Swisher: In the SEC filing, Musk says he'll unlock the company's extraordinary potential and defend free speech. He also faces a lawsuit from Twitter investors who say he didn't disclose his stake in the company early enough. Musk allegedly missed a key disclosure deadline by two weeks, which gave him a bunch of money. But that's sort of in the rearview mirror because of this bid. This is interesting. I had a little back and forth with a couple of people. Last week I tweeted, all bets are off. And I thought that he could do it. It was a very big reach for him.

Scott Galloway: You thought he wouldn't, that he'd go away. Here we are. I'm going to ask our listeners for a certain amount of grace. We are recording this at approximately 10:45 on Thursday morning. So quite frankly, by the time you listen to this podcast, a lot of new information might have come out. So we're looking at this through the lens at 10:45 a.m. on Thursday morning. My whole point was, I don't know what he's going to do. And that's how I look at everything Elon does, that he kind of, it's just like him to try something like this.

Kara Swisher: Agreed. He's got Morgan Stanley as his advisor. And to me, $43 billion is very cheap for one of the most high-profile platforms on the internet, which is Twitter. Even if its business is mediocre, its stock is mediocre, it really does have enormous potential that no one's been able to unlock as a public company. And he says he will unlock it.

Scott Galloway: Only he can unlock it.

Kara Swisher: Only I can fix this. Yes. Yeah. Although, honestly, compared to Trump, Elon does have a record of very substantive achievements. So what do you think?

Scott Galloway: Well, first, I just feel as if I have an obligation. My first job and the only job I've ever had was at Morgan Stanley. So I feel an obligation to reach out to my peers and inform them that unless they got an upfront fee for this, and if it's like a traditional M&A deal where they only get paid on the consummation of a transaction, they are late nights and really good work, which they will do here, will have the same payoff as an engineer working on Oculus or the Portal or Libra. And that is the market. Not going to happen.

Scott Galloway: The market opened today on an offer, I don't know, 20% or 25% of the market was, hey, Elon, you're full of shit. The stock isn't even up.

Kara Swisher: Not yet, no, yeah.

Scott Galloway: And I made the mistake of turning on CNBC where every anchor was touching themselves over this offer. Is there a critical thinking test? You must fail to be on air at CNBC. I mean, within about five minutes, it's pretty obvious. This is a ridiculous bullshit offer. And let's walk through all the reasons why.

Kara Swisher: It is cheap. I was arguing, though, with Bill Cohen, who is a very good analyst who wrote about this.

Scott Galloway: Bill Cohen of Vanity Fair?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but now he's at Puck. Yeah, yeah. That guy's a clear blue flame. Yeah, he thought it might be serious. Who's going to go against him? That is the thing. But there's no – okay, okay. All right, I'm just saying. Let's break it down.

Scott Galloway: Let's break it down. All right, break it down. All right? Break it down. You think it's a game.

Kara Swisher: I think – I don't know. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: This is – read the filing. My best and final offer. Okay. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Let me tell you how many deals end up at the initial price. None.

Scott Galloway: None, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Usually higher.

Scott Galloway: This is nothing but cloud cover for him selling his shares, similar to this bullshit poll where he pretended that he was thinking about selling his shares. He is trying to create cloud cover to get the hell out. Okay, so first off, I sold my shares. And make some money in the process, correct? He's offered $54 a share. It was trading at $54 in October. It was trading at $77 in last February. I sold my shares just a while ago at $56. So he's made an offer at the average 52-week stock price, which is not a premium. So his share, even if the board agreed to it, the shareholders would step in and go, sorry, girlfriends, we are not selling for this.

Scott Galloway: And then this notion that this is my best and final offer and I will reconsider my position. This is the equivalent of another one of these polls that he should stick up his ass. But instead, it's nothing but a false flag to try and pretend this is a serious offer. It's not a serious offer. It's cloud cover to sell his share. So let's go one level deeper. All right. OK. No one seems to be able to do math here. He can't afford this.

Kara Swisher: Well, now, wait. I'm going to press back. You say why, and then I will push back on that. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Okay. Call it $44 billion. He has to come up with $40 billion. There's a few ways he could finance this. The first is with debt, and he can't because his company has no EBITDA. No firm is going to loan him more than a billion or a few billion dollars. So he has to come up with $40 billion in equity. He could go to his friends and say, hey, rich whack job, you put in $5 billion, you put in $10 billion. When you start talking about eight commas, even the craziest investors on the right, the takerist culture, will start asking like, well, OK, beyond your free speech maximalism, what is the actual strategy here? If we put Trump back on, which is the only thing I can figure out, this translates to action, how does that actually make this firm worth anything more?

Scott Galloway: And let's imagine that it closes. Well, his point is private. It will be able to do things privately.

Kara Swisher: You know what would happen on the day it closes?

Scott Galloway: What?

Kara Swisher: 10 to 30 percent of the most valuable people in this company go, you know what? I put up with coming here instead of Google and I'm 10 to 20 million dollars poorer than I would be if I'd gone to Google or Pinterest or any of these guys. And now you want to bring in a guy who brings volatility, has no strategy, and we're going private? They'd be like, that's it. I'm out. I'm going to Meta. I'm going somewhere else. And then what? What is the strategy here? And the billionaires, these guys, his buddies like their money more than they do of any bullshit notion around free speech, which is nothing but a push for – it's not a push for free speech. It's a push for fraudulent speech. Elon Musk wants to protect his army of bots that have artificially supported or juiced his stock price as evidenced by the great work that a Maryland professor has just done. They're going to start asking questions he can't answer. He can't raise the money for his friends.

Scott Galloway: So then really the only viable source of financing here is for him to borrow against his shares in Tesla. So he would have to borrow $40 billion against $200 to $300 billion in equity value. No single bank is going to be the bank that they'll do their analysis and go, if shit gets really awful here, we're not going to be the bank that's taken down by this guy's mania. So it would be a number of banks. They would put huge margin requirements, meaning that if Tesla's stock got cut in half, which it easily could and it would still be one of the most valuable –

Kara Swisher: Wait, I think it'd still be the most valuable car company in the world.

Scott Galloway: Then all of a sudden, Elon Musk would get margin calls and be a forced seller of Tesla stock. You know whose stock goes down if this deal were somehow to go through and he were to raise the money against Tesla shares? Tesla's stock would tank. There is no viable route to financing here. And so the market is barely up. The market senses what CNBC and every other analyst can't seem to get to. And that is this is a bullshit offer. It's not going to happen.

Kara Swisher: I would agree. I said that. It's a lowball offer. But it's not lowball enough. It's not an embarrassingly lowball offer, which is interesting. The other thing is, will it set off interest by others? Because there is this under, at the very heart of what he's saying is correct. This is an underleveraged asset. Agreed. For some reason, they are not able to make it into what it should be. Considering its position, it's how well known it is, it's not a business that's ever distinguished itself. And therefore, if you could get this property for under, you know, I think Mark Benioff in 2016 offered $20 billion for it at the time, if you recall. He saw value here at $20 billion for sure and actually changed his mind because he got so much pushback from Wall Street and others.

Kara Swisher: Who would think this is valuable to them despite the controversy? And that's one of the issues is the other bidders. If you remember, Disney looked at it and Mark was the closest to doing something. It's controversy. See, this time Trump's not on there, so it's a little less controversial. But who would buy it? A hedge fund? Is there some value here that you can milk? And I think there is. That is one thing that I think he's got right. He's got absolutely right. That he alone can do it? Not necessarily, right? And so who would be coming in here? One, two, I think he does have a lot of rich, crazy friends that might be able to do this. They want to own it.

Scott Galloway: I know. I agree. I agree. Peter Thiel is not, likes money more than anything. But look, this guy is funding JD Vance. He's funding like, they probably want to use the money to do things like that. But it's certainly an interesting thing if you're bored, right?

Kara Swisher: You know, I wrote this column. I just crash wrote this column. And my son, one of my sons loved the 420 joke, thought it was funny. They liked it the last time. They'd snicker about it. And then he immediately said, he's bored. And I think that was the best analysis I've ever heard. Like, he's bored. And I was like, yeah, that is correct and everything. And so one of the problems that one of the people who would be a possible buyer, I wrote them and I, you know, I've asked Apple. I think Apple would never do such a thing, you know, that kind of thing. I've asked all the obvious buyers. One of the people who would be one of the obvious buyers said, you know, everything Elon Musk learned about business, he learned from space balls, which I thought was really funny. But I do think there is some possibility that someone else will bid. Maybe not. And then what does he do? Is he going to be like the dog that caught the car? He pulls his bid? What does he do? I don't know what the Twitter board does. That's what I'd like to understand.

Scott Galloway: He's going to try and position himself as a hero. We've seen this before. Buys Bitcoin, it's going to save the earth, which is terrible poor governance. Tesla shareholders don't need Tesla to go buy Bitcoin for them. And then decides it's bad for the environment, sells it at a profit to plug his earnings shortfall. This is him pumping, and he's about to dump and use this as an excuse. I tried to save Twitter. I told him this was my best and final offer, and he's going to sell. Infinity. Fini. The same thing that happened at Etsy, at Dogecoin, at Shiba Inu, at Bitcoin is about to happen here. And that is, your son is right. Similar to the guy who lives up the road from me here, he has a pathological need to be the headline story every 48 hours. This just isn't a serious offer.

Kara Swisher: I mean, there is a real quality to his stuff that he's making. It's very visionary and everything else. And he has the right to say he's good at his instincts, right? And one of the things Mark Benioff said at the time in his book, Trailblazer, about his – he said his instincts were to buy it and he always loves going against naysayers. And then he actually physically fell, right, when he was going to make the pitch and hurt himself. He's a big guy and went down real hard. And he said the first time in his life he apologized to people because his instincts might have been wrong and he listened to people who didn't agree with him, which I thought was interesting. This, of course, Elon has nobody like that saying, what are you doing?

Scott Galloway: That is a great point. And it's a lesson to powerful people. And I especially think it's a lesson to young men whose testosterone results in biological predisposition to risk-taking. And that is greatness is in the agency of others. And as soon as you get to a certain point, and it took me a long time to figure this out, in my view, you never want to make a big personal or professional decision without the benefit of mentors and people to advise you. And a board, a good board, will occasionally just say, you need to rethink this. We understand your vision. And by the way, Elon Musk has been more right than wrong. When he has a vision for Mars, it's the right vision. And I think he can articulate something really compelling. And I don't understand half of what he's saying, but I'm like, this guy knows what he's talking about. When he talks about moving equipment into the atmosphere for less money using reusable rockets. When he talks about electric vehicles, he has absolutely no vision here other than First Amendment blather. He hasn't been able to articulate-

Kara Swisher: Free speech, not First Amendment, yeah.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay. But none of it makes any sense. What does he want to kill a live puppy on Twitter spaces? What is he talking about, free speech? Yeah. All right. So why wouldn't he just buy Gab, Parler, True Social, Rumble, Mastodon, Diaspora? Why wouldn't he do that?

Kara Swisher: This is the prize. Okay.

Scott Galloway: Why wouldn't he? My Great Dane just took a dump the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Why wouldn't he buy that? There's more value in that than any of the firms you just mentioned. True Social, Getter, and what's the other one? Gab, Parler, Mastodon, Rumble. Rumble. They love this whole big First Amendment free speech thing. And because they want to wallpaper over the fact that more people—

Kara Swisher: They're not very good businesses.

Scott Galloway: More people are downloading Curtains.com app than there's nobody on these platforms. They don't work. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: But they are on Twitter. So this is the one. This is the one that someone wants to own, right? You summed it up. This is an undervalued—he's got this right. Baller move, capitalist move, this is an undervalued asset. The problem is he's become a walking poison pill because of his inner behavior and his position. He will sell and he will use this as an excuse. This was my best and final. I tried to save the world for free speechers. I think he's going to sell and I think he's going to get out. And then the thing could potentially be in play. As long as he's there, it's a poison pill. Now, you asked who could buy it. The obvious one is Salesforce. But there's also all these fintech companies. A PayPal. I think Jack Dorsey would like to reunite his sister wives with Block. All of these fintech companies have incredibly rich currency and their ability to integrate their products. I mean, a private equity firm might say this would be interesting. What's more likely here is an activist comes in. This is the play. This is the play. An activist comes in here and says, all right, clean up the bots and move to subscription. Which Elon talked about that many people have. Two or three dollars. Yeah, he ran the poll. And it's like, oh, where do we get that idea? And anyways, that's the play here. In terms of an outright acquisition, it's a fintech company. And the most likely one is Salesforce because the co-CEO is chairman of the board. And they've already demonstrated that they want it. He wrote the note to Brett Taylor, just for people who don't know, who is the co-CEO of Salesforce, was formerly at a lot of different, very well-liked within Silicon Valley. He did also take a slap at management. He thought management sucks. and that they didn't know what they were doing. Of course, it is in a weird way a slap at Jack Dorsey, who he's close to or he supports, who has been running the thing forever. So that was kind of interesting.

Scott Galloway: So what about these angry, I want to get to two things. They're angry investors who are suing him for the disclosure thing, which everyone's forgotten for the second.

Kara Swisher: And who predicted that was going to happen? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Scott Galloway: You know what would be a baller move? Just back to, I just want to, for a moment, who might acquire them? You know what would be a baller move? And it's turning out, as much as I don't like some of the software skirting minimum wage practices, you know who's become a very clear blue strategic thinker? And I wouldn't be surprised if he's thinking this right now.

Kara Swisher: Cuban.

Scott Galloway: No, Uber. Uber's got a $65 billion market cap. Say they give the combined firm, they give 40% of it to Twitter. What do you have if you had Uber and Twitter together? You'd have the U.S. equivalent of super app. and that is super apps or a combination of transportation, payments and social. If they had two of the three legs of the stool, people would get very excited about what could be the first super app in the United States. And Dara, I'm just consistently impressed. I think people, Dara doesn't get the credit he deserves for going into food.

Kara Swisher: I don't think he could do that. I don't think he could do that. That doesn't make sense. It'd be a very, Twitter, Twitter is, has two, Twitter has two ways to massively increase shareholder value. That is, one, adopt the most accretive action in business history and start to move to subscription and grab some of the surplus value from people who have 81 million followers. And instead of spending $2 billion a year on marketing, just start tweeting. You and I would pay something for Twitter every month. And right now, they're not making hardly any money off of us.

Scott Galloway: The monetization of their terrible business model. Yes, which we've talked about. With their inferior subset doesn't work.

Kara Swisher: I think it's a big move. I mean, I called all the obvious ones, like the Googles and the Apples and the, oh, no, no, no, no, no. You know, it's just such a ridiculous, like, circus over there. And then they have to deal with Elon. You're right. Until he's out, they don't want anyone near. It was already problematic with Trump. And now it's like, Elon, even worse. You know, that kind of thing. So let me ask you a question. What does Twitter do? What does Twitter do? By the end of the day or tomorrow, they very politely say, thank you for your offer. We have formed a special committee. We continue to serve in the best interest of all shareholders. And we believe your offer dramatically undervalues the firm. And they say we remain open to conversations about how you or any shareholder can add value. They're going to reject this out of hand as they should. And if they didn't reject it out of hand, these are smart people. This is not a serious offer. And by the way, the market already knows it's not a serious offer. The stock isn't up. So look for the board to in a crisp, full-throated way to basically say, thank you, no thank you. And by the way, we hope you're the first man on Mars.

Scott Galloway: That would be my hope for this individual. That would be funny if he did that. Good luck on Mars. Elon Musk, the way to describe him, brilliant. We will get to Mars sooner because of him. has catalyzed the race for electric and also, hands down, is the world's biggest troll. This is nothing but trolling. This isn't serious.

Kara Swisher: You know what? I'm going to, again, push back. I think it's a little serious. I think he gets things into his head and he gets on them. And I think at the heart of it, as I said, is this is an undervalued asset and he sees it at a discount. If he got it at a discount, I don't think he'd mind getting it at a discount. I think he sees it for lots of reasons as something that's valuable in some way. He also, you know, likes it. He likes owning it. He likes the idea of being king of Twitter. He's king of everything else he owns, right? Gets to do whatever he wants. Two other questions I have. One is, what does the SEC do right now, given this other earlier stuff, as if this didn't happen? He's very, in this way, he's very Trump-like. It's like, now moving on from my SEC problems with the lack of disclosure when I first bought the stock, we're going to go. He's sort of going, kapow, look it over here. He's very, you know, Trump is on to the next outrageous thing. In this case, it's buying the company. And it's not outrageous. It's just people pay attention. And you know all the business media is going to go blah, blah, blah, blah, or take it seriously. But at the heart of it, I think, one, he really likes this company and wants to own it. And two, it's an undervalued asset. And someone, and it should, I have been talking about it going private for years because it can't do what it needs to do as a public company because it's under pressure. And so in the right hands, the right rich person, it could be, you know, you don't see Bezos coming in here at all. Like that's not something he would do. And in fact, Bezos is more down Elon's avenue politically, I would say, you know, kind of.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I don't know. Bezos strikes me. I believe that Elon is firmly in this culture or this political viewpoint I call takerist. And that is I rail against the same organization that has subsidized almost everything I do, whether it's NASA, whether it's DARPA, whether it's EV credits, whether it's the amazing investment California taxpayers have invested in the University of California to produce engineers that go to work at Tesla to build amazing value such that he can peace out the taxes and not pay California taxes. I think Bezos, while is a master tax avoider and great at playing the Commonwealth offer for ridiculous subsidies in HQ2, I don't think he is up for – I don't think he's a takerist. I think that Musk and some of his right-wing buddies have become total takerists with a rail on the government unless they have their hand out. And it's literally they break their hand either waving this libertarian weird bullshit where I hate the same organization that is funding everything I do. And I don't think Bezos is like that. I think he's been a fantastic steward for The Washington Post. And we have a tendency to kind of lump all these people together.

Scott Galloway: But I just want to go back to the math here, Kara. and I'm doubling down here, as strange as it sounds, he can't afford it. He can't finance it.

Kara Swisher: It's a lift.

Scott Galloway: Well, let me just give you the boring logistics here. When I borrow money against my stocks, or I take a position in options, Goldman does a calculation and they look at my net worth and they look at the liquidity of my stocks and how concentrated I am in a stock. And they say, if you want to borrow a million dollars against, they'll say, based on a bunch of factors, We need you to have $2 million in equity value. And when any big bank goes, okay, this one position going very, very wrong could sink the entire bank. Because we're talking about big money here. They're going to say, we need you to have, if you want to borrow $40 billion, and the only asset you can borrow $40 billion, I guess, is Tesla stock. An analyst is going to go, Tesla could feasibly go down 80%. It's gone up fivefold in the last three years or two years, which means it could go down 80%. If it goes down 80%, he has to start selling shares, which puts further downward pressure on the stock. He puts Tesla at risk. He puts Tesla, which has a lot of momentum right now, at risk. And by the way, let me just add, Apple is getting into this business. Elon is like the Netflix of this era. And there are going to be others that are moving in here with a lot greater resources.

Kara Swisher: Even though he has a way far ahead, he's technically so far and above anybody else and beyond. It doesn't mean that they can't catch up. It really doesn't. He's not magical. And so he is in a way, but he isn't, right?

Kara Swisher: He's visionary, but not magical. And so you can see an Apple moving in here. The other competitors are going to get better and better. And so he's putting Tesla at risk, which is kind of fascinating because I think of all his loves, Tesla is his great love.

Scott Galloway: Let's go back to some predictions we made. I think SpaceX is going to be worth more than Tesla, mostly because Tesla will decline in value. And also the most valuable list ever assembled is going to be the list that we all join when Tim Cook pulls back some dolphin-free, ergonomically, ecologically made-by-Native-Americans cloth that he pulls back and shows a piece of steel wrapped around four tires with an Apple logo on it. And everyone's going to get on the list. And overnight, or nearly overnight, that list is going to become worth $100 billion, $150 billion. And that's all going to come from Tesla shareholders.

Kara Swisher: That is one company I don't ever—that's a company you cannot count out, even if they make—they have made very few mistakes. They have obviously a lot of hair on them around the app store, although he made a very—Tim made a very big speech talking about sideloading and the dangers and that they're not a monopoly. And they have been declared by a judge not to be a monopoly because there is Android and they're not the biggest phone seller. But nonetheless, they're going to do very well in cars and they're going to do very well in AR glasses.

Scott Galloway: Five years ago, the global auto industry was a low margin manufacturing based $660 billion sector. It is now a higher margin software driven $1.7 trillion sector. And Tim Cook has to grow revenues by $250 billion over the next five years. So he's like, I can either go into healthcare or I can go into auto and putting an Apple logo on a hospital kind of works, but putting an Apple logo on the front of a cool car, oh my God, disco. And so they are, I think, hard at work at a car and they can announce it. They can do a Microsoft blocking move. They can just put some shitty car up and put a logo on it and say, They were building a waiting list. They will not. They will not. It's just like their AR glasses. You know, obviously, Facebook did this whole jazz hands thing around the metaverse. I love jazz hands. I love that. And Apple is ferreting away at their thing, and they will be beautiful. I just, you know, I sound like an Apple fan person, but they will make a beautiful product. They will 100%. It's right in their wheelhouse.

But here's the decision process that CNBC and everyone else will get to later today or tomorrow. And by the way, analysts are going to start to do the math and go, wait, it's not a serious offer. B, he can't afford it. And C, soon enough, Tesla analysts are going to go, this would be really bad for Tesla. Because the only way he can finance it is to put himself in a position potentially of being a forced seller of Tesla shares. If Tesla shares go down, if JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, all the people who would loan him this money against his shares, they'd say, OK, we'll do this. But we need you to have equity value of like $100 or $150 billion to cover this because we are not betting the firm on your misadventures in Twitter. And then if the stock gets cut in half, which any analyst at Tesla will go, even the bulls will go, that's a possibility that that could happen. Tesla analysts are going to begin to sharpen their pencils and go, this is really bad. This injects a massive amount of risk, exogenous risk, into Tesla shareholders that they don't need. There's no upside in this for them other than risk of their largest shareholder becoming a forced seller.

I will underscore. Everyone was like, Trump will never win the president. Trump will never do this. Trump will never be the head of the Republican Party. This guy has fans and this guy has an ability to attract attention in a very helpful way to him and so at its heart it's a baller idea and that he's doing it is not as i'm like i i didn't even know which one he'd do i i i if someone was like i was on tv the other day and they're like what's he gonna do and i'm like i don't know something like you just don't know he zigs he zags and then he does something else. So I think at the heart, he's correct. I think it's very expensive. It's very, very expensive to do this, even though this number is low, if that makes sense. I think it's a low ball offer. It's a big number. It's a low ball offer that's not too low.

Kara Swisher: I think I was arguing with Bill about this, but he was like, who else is going to come in? And I was like, maybe he doesn't want it really. He wants to do something else. He missed the baller move. We'll see. He missed the baller move.

Scott Galloway: You know what the baller move here is?

Kara Swisher: What, what, what?

Scott Galloway: The baller – I'm like – I'm literally thinking, should I even say this because I'm scared he might do it.

Kara Swisher: What? Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: The baller move would have been if he'd said, I'm starting a Dow and I'm the first $10 billion in to buy Twitter. Because then he would have got $30 to $40 billion of it financed by dentists and Twitter evangelists.

Kara Swisher: Yes, Dow. The Twitter Taliban would have funded this $1,000 or $10,000 at a time. And if he'd said, I'm the first $10 billion in, let's take Twitter to the moon and to the promised land of fake free speech. So many people are such big fans. They'd be like, oh, I'm partnering with Elon Musk. I'm putting in my $1,000. And I started getting calls from all these dads asking me to speak to their sons, telling them not to do this. It's so funny. I just tweeted. Scott and I should do a Dow. I was like, why don't we do a Dow?

Scott Galloway: If the gas fees were lower, I mean, I'm not speaking out of school and I'm not trying to pretend I'm more important than I am. I have talked to several firms around this. If you could figure out how to lower the gas fees, because the problem is if you don't get the organization, when you redistribute the money back to people, you can lose right now a dramatic amount. You pay a huge toll for setting this up once you decide not to do it. But if Musk had come in and said, I'm the first $10 billion into a Dow of $50 billion to take this company over, I think he could have raised the money from a couple hundred thousand of his 80 million fans. And then it would be serious. Trump would have put in a million. And not only that, it would have been technologically fascinating and everyone would go, oh, my God, he's such a fucking genius. And the crypto bros would have just literally started like masturbating in full sight. They would have been so excited over this.

Kara Swisher: It would – Yeah, I like it. And that would have been the baller move because here's the thing. The market in a hot – You're right. The market in a hot minute recognizes what CNBC can't figure out in a day. He can't do this. He can't do this. This isn't a serious offer. All right. But a Dow. We should do a Dow.

Scott Galloway: I kept thinking, let's do a Dow. We wouldn't attract the attention he would at all. But there you go.

Kara Swisher: Who could we get? Who could we get to do – Mark Cuban.

Scott Galloway: Who could do it with Cuban? That would work.

Kara Swisher: I don't think Mark – I think Mark – No, I know, but I'm just trying to think who could – We're going to go to the Mavericks games and work on pharmaceutical prices. But just who could do a Dow like that? There isn't another figure, right?

Scott Galloway: Oh, I think there are.

Kara Swisher: Who?

Scott Galloway: I think anybody who's credible, who, if you brought together an operating group of talented media executives and people who actually seem to have some credibility and care about the Commonwealth, I think if you could lower the gas fees, I think a Dow would be very interesting here. The problem is at some point, at some point you want to let Parag and management actually get on with the business.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, because it hasn't been run by a full-time CEO for a very short amount of time, let's just say. Yeah. I think Jack has still got a huge following He could do a DAO I don know if he interested

Scott Galloway: And at some point the shareholders of these companies go hey boss you might want to stay focused over here And you know what would happen When the stock if this became a reality and Tesla stock was off five or 10%, all of a sudden Tesla shareholders would begin saying, Elon, you don't love, you don't love, why don't you love us? Why don't you love your family, your first family?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I got to say though, he still has a fan base that's really quite

Scott Galloway: Oh, enormous.

Kara Swisher: Enormous. Yeah, you're right. Jack could do it. Yeah, there's a couple of people who could do this. You're right. Anyway, it would be interesting. Anyway, never boring.

Scott Galloway: Never boring, even if he's bored, is what my last line of my column was that's about to go up.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about inflation, and we'll take a question from a listener with an unusual profession.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story, which is a big story, even though this one's, of course, occupying all our brain cells because it's Elon and it's Twitter, etc. A little thing called inflation. The U.S. Department of Labor this week said that inflation is at a four-decade high, or 8.5% year-over-year.

Scott Galloway: Wow, that's a big number. It feels very 70s.

Kara Swisher: U.S. stocks and government bonds yields dove on the news. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on oil market were at least partly to blame. And of course, COVID and supply chain disruptions did their part too. And then the inevitable coming out of this situation with COVID. How much inflation comes from corporate price gouging? Some people are alleging that because U.S. companies posted record profits in part by raising their prices, including Tesla, by the way, from what I understand. It's up a couple thousand dollars, seven or eight thousand dollars. ExxonMobil and Chevron are both reaping record profits, their highest in seven years. Exxon says it's going to use the money to start doing stock buybacks, which is good for them. Democrats in Congress are introducing a bill that would penalize companies that engage in price gouging. It'll go nowhere. The unemployment's low. The prices are up. Gas prices are down from where they were last month, I was just noticing. Labor market full recovery. Unemployment 3.6%. Productivity growth up. People are getting raises. So inflation, inflation, inflation, though. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: So just as this First Amendment blather from the right is just blather, I personally believe on the left, the blather is price gouging.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree.

Scott Galloway: If there's a hurricane in a city and Home Depot or Lowe's were to triple the price of lumber overnight, which, by the way, they do not do, then that is price gouging. When you buy every bottle of Purell at the market and then try and sell it on eBay, okay. And by the way, one guy did that and he got tremendous.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that was a little more complex of a story, by the way. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Well, I think that guy got shamed quite unfairly.

Kara Swisher: Yes, he did. Monica Lewinsky had him in a very good documentary. I actually felt for that guy.

Scott Galloway: Price gouging. Exxon, Chevron, if you believe, who's – Hermes is raising the price of handbags faster than inflation. Are they price gouging? I mean, first, one and two bedroom apartments across America are up 20 percent and 28 percent respectively year on year. Does that mean every real estate owner is price gouging? Price gouging should be purged from the far left because it means they don't – Explicit price gouging, right? That's their right. You know what? When gas prices were $1.50 a gallon, should the government have stepped in and subsidized oil companies, which, you know, quite frankly, you could argue they do in this cronyist environment. But here's the thing. Companies, we live in a capitalist society that has the fundamental around pricing are what the market will bear. And for about 15 years at Urban Outfitters and Panera, we haven't been able to raise prices. And now we can. And guess what? You know what we're going to do? Raise prices. And guess what? You know who's also price gouging us? CEOs. Well, let's stop them. Oh, no, they do it. You know who else is price gouging us right now? Frontline workers who want salaries up 40%. They're not price gouging us. So anyone who says price gouging. We should price gouge someone. Who should we, Jim, back off? My point is anyone who uses the term price gouging outside of a hurricane means they don't understand economics and they haven't bought into capitalism.

Kara Swisher: I'm with you on this. I'm with you on this. Nonetheless, it's a big, you know, the Republicans are using inflation in a lot of the messaging and consumers are worried about it. Consumers are worried about the ability to buy things and the supplies. It's supplies. You look at baby food, a baby formula, it's hard to find. As someone who has a baby, it's really hard to find and it's much more expensive. And so there's a lot of like in your little life, you do notice it quite a bit. And so and you blame who? You blame Biden, presumably, or whoever's in government.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, look, we are the reason why. I mean, let's we should also purge the word transitory. At this point, inflation is not transitory. It is to some extent here. And it's been the perfect storm of bad things where an invasion has sent commodities skyrocketing. But the reason why I think, I think, unless the psychology steps in where people just start buying things because they're worried they're going to be more expensive the next day. And I don't think you see that. I think why I'm, first off, a couple of things. Anytime you have the Fed aggressively raise interest rates, it creates a recessionary environment. And I'm not sure that's going to be any different here. But recession is not the worst thing in the world. The definition of recession is something that happens every seven years. And as long as it doesn't turn into a depression, you're fine. The reason why America is actually, I think, going to benefit a little bit from what's going on globally is look at the position we're in. We're in kind of the optimal position. One, we're energy dependent. Look at Germany wringing their hands. Do you realize right now Europe is funding the war effort in Russia? We don't have to buy Russian coal and oil. We are a net exporter of energy. We are also food independent. So we don't – we're not like an African nation that's like, shit, 10 percent of GDP this year is going to go to buying basic staples.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, inflation in other countries is also high. This is not a Biden thing.

Scott Galloway: We're actually as well positioned to endure these spikes as anybody. I don't – you know, the yield curve was inverted. It's de-inverted, meaning people believe that it's a problem in the short term, not in the long term. It looks like we're going into recession. The interesting thing here is that consumer sentiment is negative right now. And every time you have consumer sentiment at the level it's at right now, it means one of two things. either we're already in a recession or a recession is coming. Because at the end of the day, this is more about animal spirits, you know, if people start feeling insecure. But when Jerome Powell starts taking interest rates up 50 bips at a time, that's just going to cool the economy, and that's what they're supposed to do.

Kara Swisher: All right. So speaking of supply chain woes, there's more trouble with truckers. This time in Texas, they're not being nice to truckers. Truckers entering from Mexico are facing long lines due to an inspection policy from Texas Governor Greg Abbott. I think this is an unforced error, although some people say he's doing it to raise prices to make Biden look worse. The governor doubled inspections of incoming cargo after the Biden administration lifted a policy that turned away asylum seekers. I don't know what to make. I think it's an unforced error and his party looks like an idiot. And Biden people are pushing back rather significantly. And so was Beto, if you noticed, he was tweeting away on it. I think he was over-tweeting, but nonetheless, why not take advantage of something that has great visuals of trucks, you know, not being able to get in and your avocados spoiling and all your produce spoiling. And so I don't know what's going to happen here, but I think he probably has to let these trucks in because he'll get blamed. The one thing Republicans do is point to Biden for supply chain issues or inflation issues. This sort of pins it a little bit on the Republicans. So I don't know.

Scott Galloway: Anytime I see a story about truckers, I empathize with Travis Kalanick when he said the problem is sitting in the front of the seat.

Kara Swisher: Stop. Don't you dare. They're going to come around your house and like beep.

Scott Galloway: Look, I don't think trucking is what I'd call a rewarding career for people. And I think whenever you have technology disrupting industry, like what I believe is going to happen in trucking, I think you as a society have to make an investment in retraining and recognize that there are people on the bad side of disruption. I was in Brazil and I gave a speech at VTACS. And just so I can brag, 11,000 people. And the question is, what would be your piece of advice to Brazil. Brazil is about to experience the perfect storm of good things, commodity prices surging, SoftBank and Tiger coming in with capital, an entrepreneurial society, a young workforce. But here's the thing, they need to learn from us. And that is prosperity doesn't necessarily translate into progress. And we continue to have these incredible unlocks around globalization, digitization, but we don't want to invest or reinvest or take care of the people it leaves behind. And to be honest, or not to be honest, I think autonomous driving, I think the place it goes is trucking because they can drive it.

Kara Swisher: Well, I think he's more concerned with asylum seekers in these trucks, right? This is just all, you know, coast playing on political issues. They need to build a wall to keep immigrants in. We have net negative migration. It's still a big issue with people who live down there. I know a lot of people, even people who I find very reasonable. This goes back and forth in such a ridiculously uncomplex way that it's exhausting on both sides, I have to say.

Scott Galloway: This all goes back to the Gang of Five and who is one of the weakest senators of the last 20 years, and that is Senator Rubio is this hot, young, good-looking junior senator, was put on the Gang of Five and asked to come up with immigration reform. It was a bipartisan group of senators. They had a real shot at this, and he started posing for the crazy right and withdrew from it because he wouldn't agree to a path to asylum. We have used the most flexible economic, agile workforce in the history of our economy. And that is the 10, 20, 30 million good people who risked their lives and took us seriously when we winked at them and said, you can come over as long as you wipe grandma's ass and pick our grapes and serve our food for below market and let us maintain our quality of living. And then we decided to demonize them. And this is not only immoral, it's economically stupid.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you've got a lot of economic ideas today. You've got a lot of very strong economic ideas.

Scott Galloway: Our quality of life. So many middle class and upper income people, they talk about us taking our jobs. They take the jobs we don't want for less money than we'd have to pay domestic workers. And even now, our unemployment rate is low. It's really, you know, they were closing so many stores, whether it's airlines or stores, they close on a certain day because they can't get people. Combination of low unemployment and immigration issues. I'm especially profane today. I wonder if it's because I worked out and I'm sweating.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I see that. No more sweating. Anyway, it's an interesting situation. We'll see where we go with inflation. What do you think? I'm blathering on.

Scott Galloway: I'd just let you blather. I think price gouging is kind of a ridiculous thing to keep focusing on. I do think people are concerned about inflation. And it's a very important political issue that you have to address and not act like it's a transitory thing because people have real pain. And I think Greg Abbott did an unforced error. Someone who never makes sports metaphors. They were doing good making it look like this is not going to win anything these pictures are fantastic for Democrats of people waiting to get in I don't think people stick to their guns if their fruit is more expensive and again it's the same thing if anything is more expensive no matter how you feel about immigration you tend to be like why am I paying this much for my whatever produce comes from Mexico anyway we'll see again things are more complex all these governors Kira are trying to out crazy each other They're all trying to say to a 60-year-old white evangelical voter with a straw in Iowa, hey, no, I'm crazier. No, wait, I'm crazier.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the stuff around trans and gay people are the worst, obviously. You know, the one who's the best at this, I don't know what DeSantis is going to do to one-up Greg Abbott, but we'll see what he's going to do. Do you see what Rick Scott said?

Scott Galloway: No, what did I say?

Kara Swisher: My senior senator.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So the junior senator, the spineless senator who could have played a real important role in actual immigration reform but decided he wanted to, you know, had to cater to the crazies because he was going to run for president the next four cycles. Rick Scott, our junior senator, has put in place a bill that would remove all federal programs and we'd have to stop Medicare, stop Social Security, cut the IRS funding in half. This is a guy where men and women with guns and badges showed up because he had committed as CEO the greatest Medicare fraud in history. But now he wants to get rid of the IRS and wants to get rid of all federal programs unless they're voted back in. Can you imagine what a disaster that would be for CNN? He's an idiot. I think he's never going to be president. This guy has never been – same thing with Rubio. I wouldn't say the same of DeSantis. I think he's got a native political – DeSantis right now looks like the Republican nominee. That's my bet.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think so. But you never know. Again, these folks on the right, and this is the problem. This is such a threat to our society, not only on the left, with these ridiculous offers like proposals, like the Green New Deal that just make us seem so out of touch.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Is that the whole world has become the only way you get elected is by appealing to the crazy on the crazy left or the crazy right. Anyway, I don't – I think this is just part of that. I don't think that's how you get elected. But nonetheless, anyway, let's –

Scott Galloway: What moderates are getting elected, Kara?

Kara Swisher: Well, I think there's going to be – I have a whole – theory about the exhausted middle. There's a lot of us. The silent majority, the exhausted middle.

Scott Galloway: I do. Would you consider yourself part of the exhausted middle?

Kara Swisher: Compared to right now? Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I mean, compared to the right wing, I'm screaming, screaming liberal, but they've gone off the deep end. So I look a lot more reasonable than others.

Scott Galloway: You're more what I call, you're more of a capitalist than I think people give you credit for. I think you understand the importance of making sure the engine kind of hums, if you will.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. I had an argument with a DeSantis person about that. They're like, you, blah, blah, woke about leaving Florida when we did the pivot. And I was like, I'm a capitalist. Are you a communist? I can't do what I want as a business person. And then they want laws. I was like, well, you are a socialist. I don't know. I can't tell, but I should be able to do what I want.

Scott Galloway: No, you're not a socialist. You're performative. And I am too, because I don't know if this will actually make any difference, but we're not socialists. We're not.

Kara Swisher: I want people to get the fuck out of my house. Anyway, let's pivot to a listener question. This one came via email. I'll read it. You've got, you've got, I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've Just a note on the recent Facebook scandal about placing op and letters to the editor about TikTok Hundreds of companies especially tech do indeed do this We know this Usually the way that is much worse than this example Here Facebook is trying to smear another company In most cases these AstroTurf campaigns are used to influence public policy It slobbing by any other name and it completely unregulated unreported and under the radar Sincerely someone who used to do this for a living we aware We aware sir someone who used to do this. That's a nice name, someone who used to do this for a living, but we're aware. We don't have to like it.

Scott Galloway: I mean, you got to look at the impact. It's one thing if, I mean, a lot of people, a lot of competitors, including traditional media companies, hire lobbyists to create hyperbola around the damage that Facebook is doing, and sometimes unfairly. They say, okay, they make them out to be in certain instances more evil than they were being in that instance. Sometimes they're actually, you know, for example, I think social media has done the right thing or tried to do the right thing around Ukraine. And so I don't think every situation, I think in every situation, there's a group of people and lobbyists who will try and position Facebook as the evil empire. Now, in this instance, what is so just distasteful and kind of bridges from amoral to immoral is it didn't take a lot of critical thinking to go, okay, do we really want school boards all over the nation to begin assembling and taking their valuable time and resources to try and address the story of the assault your teacher challenge that we believe is credible because media outlets have been running it, and it ends up it's not credible. And one of the primary forces driving this false flag, this false story, is their rival Facebook. I mean, that kind of crosses a line. That's my sense. What do you think?

Kara Swisher: No, I think others have done it. I think he's correct. But it's still not. It's like saying, you know, people really take a dump and these people just pee. It's just disgusting no matter what it is. And so it's just – it's also let's try to compete on quality. And I get why you would try to undercut the – you know, Uber did it. You know, it's not uncommon. It's not uncommon that people try to do it to Apple. Apple tries to do it to others. There's always a constant lobbying campaign going on almost continually because it's one tool in the arsenal. In this case, it seemed – and even though Facebook is claiming it's a rogue person, it's distasteful. It's just – because on the face of it, instead of competing to be better, they are – that's always my inclination. But I'm not surprised people do this. And it is unregulated, unreported. How could you regulate it? How could you regulate people lying about other people? They do it all the time personally. Rumors. You've been subject to rumors. I've been subject to – I had someone call me. They're like, oh, someone's saying this about you. I'm like, it's not true. I don't know what to tell you. There must be a reason, whatever. And so I think it's, you know, it's human nature to do this. Just like we talked about shame. It's trying to find shame in things. It's never going away.

Scott Galloway: I really want to encourage Facebook to continue to go all in on the Oculus. I just think that is a great idea. Please double that. That is such a good move.

Kara Swisher: You're so mean to the Oculus. It's not a bad product. It's a very good product.

Scott Galloway: This is literally the K car meets the Newton meets Quibi.

Kara Swisher: Newton wasn't as good as Oculus.

Scott Galloway: Again, I hope it's the same people that worked on Libra or Diem or Portal. I love the idea of these thousands of people just literally wasting their lives.

Kara Swisher: Oh, don't be mean. It's a much better product than others.

Scott Galloway: The thing is already dead, Cara. It's already dead.

Kara Swisher: All right. Okay. But people try different things all the time. For example, CNN, for example. You know, everyone tries something.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's a low blow. Have you seen Jake Tapper's book club?

Scott Galloway: Take that back. Take that back.

Kara Swisher: No, I will not.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God.

Kara Swisher: I'm just saying I like it. I support innovation. By the way, Salon Magazine said I'm the best original content on CNN+. Thank you very much, Salon.

Scott Galloway: Well, that is true. I would agree with that.

Kara Swisher: I would agree with that.

Scott Galloway: That was a passive-aggressive compliment.

Kara Swisher: I would agree with that. Yes, I would agree with that. I think you're fresh. I think you're fresh in general and in a negative way. But I also think I like your stuff. It's the only stuff I'm watching on there, I'll be honest with you.

Scott Galloway: Thank you for that. I appreciate it. As much as I like. I think the other stuff is quite well done.

Kara Swisher: More importantly, have your sons watched it? Have your sons watched me? I'm desperate for their affirmation.

Scott Galloway: Oh, you know what? I'll get them to do it. They like listening to you. Alex has been listening to Pivot a lot lately, which he was. And he said he got, I didn't see him for a little bit because I was in California. When are you guys coming back down to Casa de Dogs?

Kara Swisher: We should. We should. We should. But it's hot now, right? It's real hot.

Scott Galloway: It's starting to get hot. It's still really nice down here. April's actually a really nice month in Florida.

Kara Swisher: Let me think about it. I got to figure out when we, if we were a very busy family, as you know, with all the children.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, well, we'll sit with bated breath. So let us know.

Kara Swisher: Well, okay. Okay. Scramble the jets. We'll come down for a weekend. We'll come down. We'll come down for, you could come up here. It would be really nice. You can come up for the White House Correspondents Dinner, which might. I have to get invited to that. Part of it might be canceled. I have to get invited to that. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Although. You and I could go as a media entity. Francis Haugen wanted to go with us. Should we go and make out? That'd cause some.

Kara Swisher: No. No? No. No.

Scott Galloway: Oh, God. No.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, one more quick break. Try to clean yourself up. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, give us this week's wins and fails.

Scott Galloway: What up? So I've got to be honest, I'm a little triggered by all of this. And I haven't been focused, but I'm just real straight and real quick. Some wins and fails. I think that there was a win. I think, I don't know if it's the health commissioner in Philadelphia. They instituted, they reinstituted a mask mandate for indoors. And I want to be clear. Yeah, they did. My son mentioned that this morning. I think Florida has mostly gotten it right. And that is, I want to give Florida leadership credit. And I was very critical. I do think that, I don't want to say we on the left, but a lot of people said, had a lack of nuance in the argument that, okay, you sequester seniors to give people access to vaccines. But there is a tradeoff and a real cost to extreme lockdowns. I think that that argument, I think it's important when the data changes to change your mind. I think that argument has more credibility than I gave it. And I want to acknowledge that.

At the same time, I think the city of Philadelphia has made a very unpopular decision. And that is what government is supposed to do. It's supposed to look at the data and prevent a tragedy of the commons and think long term. And I'm not even saying I agree with the decision. What I'm saying is government needs to do what they think is best for the people regardless of the political fallout. And I think that they really showed leadership here because I thought they must be getting so much shit from an exhausted populace around that decision. But I thought that's what government is supposed to do. They're supposed to think long term for us. So my win is what I think is a leadership move by government in Philadelphia.

My loss – and you and I spoke about this a few days ago. My fail, if you will, is Barack Obama, President Obama. And that is, I think there are a few individuals in the world that have a more credible voice and are more needed at this moment. And I want to be clear, I think he's earned this right. But I think he's mostly hanging out on David Geffen's boat and making millions of dollars and enjoying life. And I think he deserves it. But I think the Commonwealth needs his voice right now on a variety of issues.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would agree.

Scott Galloway: And so I think the fail or let me put it, the invitation of trying to position this as a positive, I think President Obama is someone who commands the space he occupies, is young, is thoughtful, has credibility with centrists and people on the right. So he should get more serious, right? I think he needs to look at some of these issues and weigh in here. And not only that, I think he's also good at telling the far left to calm the fuck down. You're not being realistic around this. I think he has credibility. He's one of the few people in the world right now that both the left and the right will listen to. Come back. We need you.

Kara Swisher: It was reported that I had lunch with him recently. And this is true. And it was off the record lunch. But one of the things I think – I got the impression, and again, he didn't say this, that it's very hard to be an ex-president and weigh in on things.

Scott Galloway: Agreed.

Kara Swisher: You know, George Bush just paints and says lovely things now and doesn't really – so I think he doesn't – I think he's probably worried about hurting or overshadowing Biden. That was my – he did not say this, but it's my impression that you have to be very careful when he could cause more trouble than benefit. And I thought he had such a great brand to weigh into it, risk that right now. He has such –

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah. He left the stage while everyone was applauding. And to get back on the stage is a lot of risk.

Kara Swisher: Right. But I think he's concerned about not stepping on Joe Biden. I think that is a big concern of his. And I think that's probably pretty smart. But I do agree he could be a little more serious about some issues, which is, I think, important for someone like him. Because it's very hard to be – these presidents are all young, right? And so what do you do? Except write a book, take that money, do speeches, take that money. Like it's really hard because a lot of these presidents are not necessarily older. Some of them are old. In any case, we'll see what happens when there. I don't know.

I don't have a win and a fail. I think that obviously the Ukraine situation, which I hope does not come out of the news, the things they're discovering, the comment that Biden made on genocide, it was sort of over his skis, but I kind of appreciated him saying it. I think he sometimes says things that are pretty true and then gets a lot of crap for not being diplomatic. But I think what's happening in Russia, including the disinformation campaigns among people there. There was a very devastating story in the Washington Post about how people really have decided Ukrainians are less than human, and that's what they're using as an excuse to kill them and wipe them off the face of the earth. So the continued heroism in Ukraine and the fails, obviously, the Russian people who just really have got this one wrong. And I don't think, I think we're not, I think if they, I think they have been fully propagandized so that, that they believe what they're doing is right. And I'm so sorry for them to, that this has happened for them. And I find it reprehensible that they're not picking their heads up and seeing what's happening and seeing, you know, they're seeing, as I often say, they're seeing what they believe. They're not believing what they see. And of course, they don't get to see it. In any case, they've been fully propagandized.

One thing I just want to note about the Twitter thing, Twitter has Goldman Sachs, New York Times is reporting as Goldman Sachs to help fend off Musk. It's CFO, Ned Siegel, who I like quite a bit, was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. They've been a longstanding relationship. And I suspect that the Securities Exchange Commission will probably weigh in here at some point if they're actually paying attention. But this is going to be an interesting – again, the Times is also going to be, how does he pay for this? And I think that's going to be hard.

Scott Galloway: It's going to be hard.

Kara Swisher: Well, as we sit here, Kara, as I am like a bored dude sitting in his parents' basement vaping and checking his stocks all the time for no real reason, Twitter is flat. An announcement to buy the firm for $54 a share? Market's yawning. Market's like not a serious offer. They're not like vomiting, but they're definitely yawning.

Scott Galloway: Just to read Musk's statement, I invested in Twitter as I believe its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe. And I believe free speech is a societal imperative of a functioning democracy. Since making the investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive or serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. That may be true, but this is a little.

Kara Swisher: I'll make a bet. If the deal goes through. I was listening to CNBC this morning and they had an analyst on saying, yeah, this is a fait accompli. The deal is going through. The board has to take it. And they're all nodding their heads. If the deal goes through, I'll go out for a steak dinner with Joe Kiernan and ask his views on the pandemic and act interested and nod my head.

Scott Galloway: Oh, no. You're screwed.

Kara Swisher: And if it doesn't go through, I get to roll with Andrew Ross Sorkin. We're friends. We're good, good friends. And Sarah Eisen, who I think she and I should be friends. I get the feeling.

Scott Galloway: I don't think you're friends with any of these people.

Kara Swisher: I'm friends with Andrew. You know that.

Scott Galloway: That hurts my feelings.

Kara Swisher: Sure, sure. You know what I'm doing tonight? I'm having a dinner party for Ben Smith here in Washington.

Scott Galloway: We'll smell you. That's pretty compelling content.

Kara Swisher: He is a friend.

Scott Galloway: That literally, that makes CNN Plus feel compelling.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to get shit for that comment.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah, you will.

Kara Swisher: That's okay. It's funny. You can make fun. You know what, Scott? You be you.

Scott Galloway: I have no choice at this age.

Kara Swisher: All right. As Elon Musk just said, I have moved straight to the end. No more back and forth. This has been a great show. That's what he said about his Twitter bit. He's moved straight to the end. Because of you. Do you know you? I want to say thank you because I was thinking of you. That interview, actually the interview you did with the woman on shaming.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I thought that was so outstanding. I think you're an outstanding interviewer.

Scott Galloway: It made me feel insecure because I think our interviews go down in quality when you have to ask me to ask a couple questions.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no, you're very good. It's not true.

Scott Galloway: And also, you know what you do, Cara? You know what you do? And the only person that's on the same level as you is Michael Smirconish. The two of you set people up for success better than anyone I know. And that is, you know, and to push back, you know how to pull out their views in a thoughtful way. That is a real skill.

Kara Swisher: Thank you. Thank you. I like Kathy a lot. Kathy O'Neill. She's really great. I would recommend you listen to my Elon interview from September, which was interesting.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I'm going to do that right away. And then I'm going to go get a colonoscopy without anesthetic.

Kara Swisher: I'm trying to get him to talk again. He hasn't gotten back to me. I think he's busy with Walt. Walt, by the way, you know who's the winner here? I have a win. Walter Isaacson who was with Elon during this whole period he's writing a book it's pretty well known on Elon and he's right there come on I don't know does he really can't he wait till he's dead no can't he wait till he's dead oh you know what I'm trying to say I would love to be him right now because he gets this he gets a front row seat to the circus and it's a fascinating circus in any case that's the show speaking of circuses we'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot unless Elon Musk buys us that would be fun I don't know.

Scott Galloway: That'll be good. That'll be good. And then he'll make you eat lunch with him every day.

Kara Swisher: That'll be fantastic.

Scott Galloway: Before he has you disappeared, as they say.

Kara Swisher: Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Neyman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miel Silverio. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Box Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Oh my gosh, Kira, may we live in interesting times.

Kara Swisher: We do. You and I are going to space. You and I are making out at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Scott Galloway: We are not making out.

Kara Swisher: That's right. Surrender to the dog.

Scott Galloway: No, I shall not.