Joe Rogan’s Trump Jabs, Blockbuster Tech Earnings, and Another Tariff Deadline

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Scott Galloway: David Hasselhoff still has a few of my loose sweatshirts, but that's another story, Kara.

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway. Just so everyone knows, it's super nice to have strangers in your apartment in the morning that you are not paying for sex.

Kara Swisher: We did not have sex.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I'm not a stranger.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay. But seriously.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: It's really, it's great to see you. How are you?

Kara Swisher: Good to see you. I'm so glad you're here. You're going to spend like a part of the day with me. We're going to do our secret CNN thing today.

Scott Galloway: All I care about is I've been told I can nap in that pot of oxygen or whatever it is you're going to do to me. Sound vibrations.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm trying to get you to live longer because I need you around.

Scott Galloway: I was hoping you were going to probe some orifices or something. Isn't that...

Kara Swisher: None of that. No, that's okay.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you can go to a testosterone party with me.

Kara Swisher: That would be fun. There's a tea party?

Scott Galloway: Oh yeah, all the time, young men. They do it like a thing. Young men have a party.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, a tea party. Just like when women get together to do whatever, you know, like facials. Yeah, men do it. And then what do they do? Do they like... They talk about it. Is this a gay thing?

Scott Galloway: No, it's not.

Kara Swisher: No?

Scott Galloway: It's like a straight thing. No, it's like, you know, another manosphere thing. It's just ridiculous.

Kara Swisher: You don't need more testosterone. Just so everybody knows. And you don't need more oxygen. You don't need more of a lot of this stuff. But we'll see how. Today should be just fun. I want to do something fun with you rather than serious. But we've got a lot to get to today here from your apartment in Manhattan. Blow up tech earnings, crazy. A big shakeup on the weight loss drug market. I really am interested in what you think about this. And how much does Trump need to worry about Joe Rogan? Joe Rogan is turning rogue on Trump on several topics.

But first, the man who opened fire in a Manhattan office building on Monday, not terrifically far from here, killing four people and injuring a fifth, was targeting the NFL headquarters with a note claiming he suffered from CTE. A page in the shooter's note accused the NFL of concealing the dangers to football players' brains in order to maximize profits. This is a longtime thing. Lots of people are concerned. I didn't let my kids play football because I was worried about that. The shooter played high school football but did not play professionally. And, of course, what he did was heinous but pretty devastating. The people, you know, same thing with Luigi Mangione. People acting out on anger, the level of anger in the society. And maybe you can only find out if you have CTE after you die. So I assume they'll check this and see if that's the case. But I think Sanjay Gupta said 40% of the people who claim they have CTE before they die actually have it, like 100%, which is quite a lot. It's not nothing. So I don't know. Any thoughts?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, well, first off, we don't know if and what role CTE played here.

Kara Swisher: Right. We don't.

Scott Galloway: Everyone's been talking about it for a while, but it's an example of capitalism. I'm not sure you could really justify the sport if it didn't make billions each year, if it wasn't psychologically and economically just so ingrained in our culture. But they really are sort of modern day gladiators and they pay an enormous price. But the thing that struck me about this, Kara, or what I think the obviously in addition to the tragedy the families of the people who were murdered is, you know, we're back to office mostly. Actually, it's interesting. The U.S. has had kind of the most anemic return to office of almost any nation. And young people have gotten very used to, I think it's the employment market is so strong here and tech is so strong. The companies have had a difficult time getting everyone to return to the office, especially five days a week. And something I've always noticed about that I can't stand about going to meetings is that from the time you get to the lobby, by the time you go through check-in security and all that and get up to the, it's like 10 or 12 minutes, at least 10 or 15 minutes. And this is only going to make security that much more complex slash robust because the last thing you want to worry about is going to a place that is less safe than the place you came from. And it is also porous in a lot of ways.

Kara Swisher: It was interesting because immediately, because there's a mayor's race, there was sort of like an on, kind of like, you know, why didn't Mamdani do something about him? Because he's not mayor, you know, he's because he's way ahead, actually, among Jewish voters, a bunch of other things, which is interesting. I thought he handled it rather well. He said, we're only as strong as our weakest gun laws across the country and called attention to the fact that even though New York has very strict gun laws, you can't be protected because this guy was from Nevada. And I think his boss got him the thing that he assembled the assault weapon. And I think, again, it's such a complex problem. Like here we have CTE. We've got the ability to create weapons of mass destruction for people to have assault weapons. What'll be interesting, like, again, it's another thing where they'll talk about it and then do nothing about assault weapons or the ability to assemble assault weapons in the country. And probably if he does have CTE, blame it on that. But it does, you know, I always feel unsafe at buildings. I don't know why. I feel like there's such like a place where someone who has mental illness, which is growing, or people that are angry like Luigi Mangione can take it. You can see how easy it is in a big city like New York.

Scott Galloway: Well, this one will get attention. I mean, there already been dozens of mass shootings every year. And you said something once that struck me. You said that as a species, we're good at adapting. And that's a bad thing here. We have normalized and adapted to something that we should not adapt to. And also, this will get more attention. And I'll be interested. There'll be articles basically saying that when it's nice white executives in midtown Manhattan, a mass shooting gets play in the media, when it's just a mass shooting of a bunch of nice people at a mall in Kentucky, no one gives a shit because there's so many of them. So this will get a lot of attention. But again, this is really basic math or science or X, Y, validate, nullify a thesis. And if your thesis is the following, that guns are the primary, or weapons of war really, are the primary culprit, that theory would be validated because we do not have a monopoly on head injuries. We do not have a monopoly on angry young men. We do not have a monopoly on mental illness. What we have a monopoly on is that all of these people have access to weapons of war.

Kara Swisher: Right. Exactly. And there's ways around it. And also this bullshit notion that you can't do anything about it, that it's too late, that Australia had a mass shooting, reasonable people, okay, we should ban assault weapons, and they have had a dramatic decrease in mass shootings. The UK had a deadly mass shooting back in, I think it was in 96, in Dunblane, Scotland. And where kids and teachers were killed next, you know, right away, no more assault weapons. So this is something, and I've said this before, one of the free gifts with purchase of moving to the UK, it's like a lot of things. If you actually look at statistically, I mean, a mass shooting, there's no reason, there's no reason not to go out. There's no reason not to go work. There's no reason, in my opinion, not to send your kids to school. If you look at the real hard numbers, you and your kids are still, at least mathematically, pretty safe. The problem is the fear, and that is, when I'm in the UK, I don't have these horror fantasies about turning on the TV and seeing my kids' school on the screen.

Scott Galloway: I agree. I think about it a lot actually with my kids in school, my young kids in school and public school. It's just the mental illness combined with the availability of these guns. Most anxious, depressed generation in history, and then you have weapons of war. And the other thing I go to is just what is happiness in a society? And we tend to think that we're studying to the wrong test. We think if the Dow hits new highs, that we're happy. Now, the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ, which in my opinion are two of the most damaging metrics in history, are basically just wealth indices. And that is an indices on the wealth of the top 10% who own somewhere between 50 and 90% of the stock. And spoiler alert, they're doing really well. But if you think about real happiness in a society, it's not only a function of what you have, it's a function of what you don't have. If you find out your wife has lung cancer and you live in Norway, it doesn't mean you're going bankrupt. And that's not necessarily the case here. And also, they have an absence of this type of fear that we have to live under. So it's not, I mean, we keep talking about this.

Kara Swisher: The thing that drives me crazy is we'll hear from a bunch of people on the right, thoughts and prayers and all this bullshit, but I'll be very curious to see what the studies are. They track people going in and out of buildings in Manhattan. They do. There's all kinds of technology, absolutely. But it'll be interesting to see what the trends are, if people just sort of ignore this or people think, you know. I don't know how you could harden buildings, you know, given.

Scott Galloway: Metal detectors?

Kara Swisher: I don't honestly. I don't know. What could you do? If you're clever enough or you're violent enough, you can get through to these things. Or just sit in front of the building.

Scott Galloway: Right. I mean, that's what the great city of New York is about, as being able to go anywhere. It's the crush of humanity.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. The assault weapon. I mean, I think Hochul has called for an assault weapon. But again, as Mamdani correctly said, if you can go buy it in Tennessee, what's the difference? And drive yourself through the Lincoln Tunnel. That's the end of it. It does help, though. New York's gun laws do help. And I was saying to someone a couple nights ago, New York City is actually one of the safest big cities in the world. It's actually quite safe.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, except for this, except for this. Again, another senseless tragedy for our country. And it's so common and we've become used to it.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of something you've talked about a lot, Scott, a Senate committee voted to advance a bill that would ban stock trading by members of Congress, presidents and vice presidents with a convenient carve out for Donald Trump. Lawmakers would be banned from buying stocks once the bill goes into effect and blocked from selling stocks 90 days after that. But divestments wouldn't be required until the beginning of the new term, so Trump is in the clear. The bill originally called the Pelosi Act for Nancy Pelosi you like to give a hard time to was introduced by Senator Josh Hawley the only Republican who voted for it. Trump initially said he supported the ban conceptually but later lashed out at Hawley accusing him of being a pawn for the Democrats. He wanted to put in a Pelosi thing just because he's such a revenge-minded person. The future of the bill is uncertain, but it is moving forward. Trump is also calling for an investigation. Nancy Pelosi stopped trading. But the problem for him is there's tons of Republicans doing the same for her part. Pelosi put out a statement saying she supports the legislation. You know, of course, he's just cutting off his nose despite his face, and has attacked Hawley as a second-rate senator, and then Hawley tried to suck up to him again. But the fact that they cannot get this through, and you've talked about the idea of just paying the Congress people more. It's just astonishing. 80%, it's an 80-20 thing, I think. 80% of people across the country think they should do this, and they're not doing this.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So it's some of the most popular, or it has more support of any proposed legislation in a long time. This is largely performative. My understanding is it's not going to go through. But I mean, one of the real advantages that the U.S. has is that we have the deepest pools of capital. And that is there is a giant river of capital that flows in, has arteries reaching into the deepest corners of Thailand that if somebody's working there and has something like a 401k or invest in stocks, 50% of that capital will ultimately end up in the U.S., flow to the U.S. because of our incredible companies, IP, colleges, R&D, risk aggressiveness, but also because we have rule of fair play. And that is someone thinks if I invest in an S&P or an NASDAQ fund, even though I'm not in the know, I'm not in Congress. I'm not on a board of directors. I'm not going to get fucked. Someone else isn't going to make a ton of money at my expense. There's rule of fair play. And as a result, startups in the United States have $5 million for every startup. In Europe, it's 1 million. We have five times the venture capital here per company. And if you, these deep pools of capital, which are just an enormous advantage. A lot of that is because there is quote-unquote rule of fair play. The reason why the Russian stock market is not worth what NVIDIA loses or gains every day is everyone assumes the game is rigged, so they're not going to put their money in the stock market. The person or a code score in St. Petersburg is like, no, this is rigged. And to be blunt, Speaker Pelosi and her husband, their net worth is estimated at $250 million. And last year their net worth increased 54%. And Democrats managed to eke out a 31% return in 2024 and Republicans a 26%, both overperforming the S&P. And Trump's crypto. Trump, we're talking about someone who's really cashed in as a Trump family.

Kara Swisher: Well, that, I mean, here's the problem. A small amount of corruption leads to big corruption. And to a certain extent, Trump said these, you know, these Congress people are playing small ball. They're doing insider trading for hundreds of thousands or millions. I'm going to do it for billions. But Speaker Emerita Pelosi, in my view, let's talk specifically about the legislation. He was not serious. When you call something the Pelosi Act, you're saying, fuck you to the other side, because a lot of people understandably have a great deal of affection for Speaker Emerita Pelosi. When you call something, when you're purposely being aggressive-

Scott Galloway: I think they changed the name.

Kara Swisher: I think it's the Honest Act.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they did change the name.

Kara Swisher: But it showed he wasn't really serious about what would be required to pass this, and that is bipartisan support. When you come out of the gate swinging like that, the Democrats are just like, you know, fuck you, boss. You just didn't need to do that. The moment you are elected to office, the moment, even as I think you go through the primaries, you have to put your money in a blind trust. And if you're not willing to do that, what you're acknowledging is you have some sort of special access or information that other people don't. Not supporting this bill means that you want to continue to engage in insider trading. The fact that you have people in intelligence briefings where they aren't making decisions on tens of billions of dollars that may or may not be spent by companies that are publicly traded, and then you can literally leave that briefing and go call someone, and you're not supposed to, but you can. The fines are such that everyone ignores it, and say, honey, go buy-

Scott Galloway: Whatever.

Kara Swisher: Go buy-

Scott Galloway: Or this AI. What was the one that she bought call options on in the morning? Marjorie Taylor Greene did it a bunch of times, too. But Pelosi announced, when Pelosi announced her disclosure, she'd bought options, call options in a healthcare AI company. I forget the name of the company. The stock spiked like 10 or 15%. I mean, it's just, anyways, they should have put in a blind trust. And also the other side of this, we need to pay these people a lot more so they don't feel the temptation to do these things. I think they get $174,000. They both equal in the Senate and the Congress. I think it's $174,000, which is a lot for regular people. They live in D.C., support two homes. It really isn't.

Kara Swisher: So what would you give them? First of all, they could put their current. They don't have to have stocks. You just put it in an index fund or a blind trust.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they just have no control over it. Just a blind trust. These are everywhere.

Kara Swisher: What would you pay them?

Scott Galloway: I would pay Congress people, I would pay our representatives a million dollars a year, our senators two million a year, and the president five. I would go to the Singapore model. And that is pay them really well and then absolute zero fucking tolerance for any of this nonsense. None. You can't, anything you have control over in terms of capital allocation of your own personal funds, you no longer have control over it. If you do, you're kicked out.

Kara Swisher: There is a criticism that people who are good at money won't go into Congress. But I'm like, yes, they do it for other reasons. And by the way, it's become a rich person's game because it costs, I think I was on a panelist night and he was saying it used to cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to run for Congress. Now it's eight or nine million. So only rich people can afford it or people with access to funds. And then they're on the hook for rich people, right? So it creates a really bad situation. It's not going to discourage anyone. Something like that would not discourage anyone from running. And it creates a distraction. And then you feel like you've got to engage and play in this game because the representative from Kentucky is making millions of dollars while you're not. And also, after taxes, that amount of money if you're trying to support two homes. And look, these people deserve to make more money. They're impressive, important people doing important work.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I agree. And if we're going to have zero tolerance, which we should here, we have to pay them really well. Or give them a housing allowance.

Kara Swisher: You know what they could create? Like a congressional apartment building, and then we could have a reality show.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God.

Kara Swisher: That would be hilarious.

Scott Galloway: What happens when Ted Cruz runs into Bernie Sanders in the shower?

Kara Swisher: Romance.

Scott Galloway: There you go.

Kara Swisher: It would be so good. They could like do that. And the sparks fly. For the congresspeople, they could. For the younger ones, why not? Some of them do live together, don't they? Be something fun. Make a thing of it. Or give them housing allowances or something. I don't know. They do get a lot of allowance and they get all kinds of perks. But this is just ridiculous. Josh Hawley, we're behind you, even though I'm not really behind you. Every time they do a picture of Josh Hawley, it's the insurrectionist. The fist pump?

Scott Galloway: The fist pump.

Kara Swisher: The fist pump. Yeah. That guy's never escaping that picture.

Scott Galloway: I'm with you. I'm with you. Run! I'm running from you. Run! These people are fucking crazy. Run! I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm right behind you. I'll be in Rehoboth. Josh, you're never going to be president, just FYI.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Joe Rogan has some criticism for President Trump. He's ramping up. He's turning into a San Francisco lesbian.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Joe Rogan is turning into a real thorn in the side for President Trump. Let's listen to what he had to say about Trump's administration's crackdown on immigration and international students. Let's listen to a clip.

[Clip of Joe Rogan plays]

Joe Rogan: It's an overcorrection. Right. And it's also like they have a mandate, I think, of like 3,000 people a day they want to deport. You know, you got a bunch of people that are totally innocent. They're going to get caught up in that. Right, right. They have been. Right. You know, they have been. A lot of people that have green cards. A lot of people that are supposed to be over here. And then they're kicking students out that write articles they don't like. Yeah, that's nuts. Fucking crazy.

[Clip ends]

Kara Swisher: And that's not all. Let's listen to a clip of Rogan talking about Trump's reaction to all things Epstein.

[Clip of Joe Rogan plays]

Joe Rogan: There's a line in the sand. This one's a line in the sand. Because this is one where there's a lot of stuff about, you know, when we thought Trump was going to come in and a lot of things are going to be resolved. We're going to drain the swamp, we're going to figure everything out. And when you have this one hardcore line in the sand that everybody had been talking about forever, and then they're trying to gaslight you on that. So it's interesting.

[Clip ends]

Kara Swisher: I'm not sure if Rogan's disapproval carries much weight as its endorsement did. I don't know. What do you think of this? I think it's actually, you know, it's sort of late, you know, Joe. Of course he was going to do this. He seems kind of fatuous to what Trump is, but I don't know. What do you think?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. I think that, I do think it matters. A lot of, when I speak to young men, I feel like a lot of times they're reading back a script from Joe Rogan. I think arguably Joe Rogan in terms of young men has more influence because he's seen as an honest broker. I think the most, I don't want to call it dangerous thing about Joe Rogan, but I think Joe is like, it's not an act. I think Joe is genuinely, he's not reading, he's not Fox News reading from a teleprompter saying Smartmatic has been weaponized by Hugo Chavez because we told you to say it. I think what he's saying, he believes. And also the manosphere, if you will, or male dominated or male centric podcasts there has been a significant tide shift. Shane Gillis, Andrew Schultz, Andrew Schultz. All these guys who quite frankly if you were to point to one person who potentially put Trump in office it would be number one would be Musk.

Kara Swisher: Right?

Scott Galloway: Quarter of a billion dollars, great platform. Turned on him. Very smart. And then probably number two is Joe Rogan. And the stat I love is that if you want to talk about how brilliant the Trump campaign was and how non-brilliant the Harris campaign was, and it kind of reminds me of Mondani and Cuomo, Trump flew right into the atmosphere, which was not only good for positioning, but by going on Rogan that one time with 40 million YouTube videos or views and 15 million audio downloads, for Harris to get the same level of exposure, she would have needed to go on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox every night for three hours for two weeks. So quite frankly, whatever, unless it was going to take her two weeks to get down and back from Austin, she should have done it. So these guys carry a ton of weight, and there has been a real significant shift. It's the combo of all of them. It's not just Rogan. I mean, Schultz has been particularly vehement about it, and Shane Gillis is mocking him, making fun of him. Then you have the South Park guys on his ass because they're considered pretty right in the middle, like not in the middle but they don't beholden to anybody. Honey Badger don't give a shit, they go after everybody.

Kara Swisher: What do you think, I mean it's interesting because he's moved from the Epstein things which I think animates a lot of these people. A lot of them are angry about the Epstein stuff and now it's moved to colleges and deportations which they're like, why can't these kids say what they want as long as they're not violent. I think Rogan said that. He's like, if they're not violent, they can write whatever they want. So that is consistent with their thing of the left quashing them, but now they're applying it to Trump.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Again, I thought of you last night. There was another weapon of mass distraction yesterday, something ridiculous, something outrageous. What was it yesterday?

Kara Swisher: Oh, come to me. Giving Diddy a pardon.

Scott Galloway: Oh, exactly. Yeah. Megan Kelly's mad about that. Giving Diddy a pardon. Okay, that's what the president should be focused on right now. I mean, I'm telling you, every day. Again, the moment he does this shit, you gotta start referring to Diddy as Diddy Epstein. You just gotta make, you gotta let him know, folks, we're not falling for it. If you're sawing your assistant in half and expect us to look over here, we're not gonna do it. We wanna see you pulling the rabbit out of your coat pocket, not out of the hat. And a lot of people aren't going along.

Kara Swisher: Rogan has been pretty Trump positive, and he's doing it a lot. I'm interested to see what he'll move on to of something he doesn't like, right? But there's quite a lot. It's not just one thing. And as I said at the beginning of this whole thing, and let me tell you, I think Elon started this, this Epstein thing. And he absolutely, by that tweet, he did. But I think Epstein is at the core, as I said, the pillar. But then there's all these other things that are consistent with what they said before, which was, why can't those students say what they want, even if I don't agree with those students? Why can't humor, right, when he's threatening all kinds of entertainers and stuff like that, why can't they say what they want, even if they're left? And I think they are consistent in that. They should be consistent in that regard. They should, if they say people should say what they want, it should apply to the left and the right, right?

Kara Swisher: And so that was interesting when Rogan did that. I'm curious what he'll do next.

Scott Galloway: Well, they can claim, and actually, I think it's good for the medium. No matter what happens, CNN and Fox, you kind of have a sense for which way they're going to go on every story. These guys, to their credit, are saying, you know, I was wrong. I do not support these policies. A couple of them have said, I regret voting for them. And I think the immigration raids really rattled a lot of them because I think a lot of them know, are exposed to it, see how cruel it is.

Kara Swisher: The thing is, I don't get it. It's ineffective. There were actually more people being deported during the Obama administration than are being deported right now. They just worked more cohesively or seamlessly with local law enforcement. And this just feels like, okay. Well, because they are going after people who are like gardeners in Home Depot. They're kind of cloddish about it in a lot of ways. They're doing it so performatively with the masks and the whole fear and Kristi Noem. Did you see that picture of Kristi Noem riding around on a horse with her alleged paramour, Corey Lewandowski?

Scott Galloway: I did, and I'd like to, though. In Argentina. They're just riding horses around. It's like, what are you doing there? What are you doing? She's in Argentina riding horses? Something like that. I'm here for it. I think I've decided Kristi Noem is super hot.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Her whole ice Barbie thing is so strange. It's like, what? She's not the president. I'm trying to figure out where this is going.

Scott Galloway: It's straight to the White House or straight to Cinemax. Either way, I'm here for it.

Kara Swisher: A reality show, right? I'm sort of like, what are you doing, girl? Like Sarah Palin in Alaska.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that didn't work out so well for her, did it?

Kara Swisher: That's not going to work out for you, Kristi, because you're a lady. It doesn't work out for ladies. I'm sorry. It just doesn't. It's not going to work out. Anyway, speaking of ladies, and she's not a lady, because Ghislaine Maxwell has offered to testify before Congress in the Epstein situation, but only with conditions that include immunity. And on Tuesday, President Trump told reporters that Epstein stole Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's accusers, from Mar-a-Lago. She died by suicide in April following a period of serious health issues. She was the 17-year-old that Prince Andrew allegedly abused. Paid off, I think. Anyway, she was one of the more outspoken ones and had a very tragic life. She worked in Mar-a-Lago in the spa and Ghislaine Maxwell got her to come over to his house. And President Trump keeps changing his story of why he got in a fight with Epstein. First, it was because of some real estate thing. Then it was because he found him creepy. And now it's because he stole her. The use of the word "stole" around sex trafficking sort of says it all to me, or "I didn't have the privilege to go down to Epstein Island," which was a crazy word to use. He just continues every day to dig himself into another hole and keep this story alive. Like I said, it's almost suicidal. It's weird on his behalf to continue this. As for Ghislaine Maxwell, she deserves nothing. I said on CNN that, you know, what does she want, cocoa in a warm blanket? Give me a break. She needs to stay in jail. If they give her immunity, it will continue. This story for Trump will never go away and it's already not going away.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he's really got, and that's why he just comes across as so guilty here, because he's got such weird judgment. You know, he said that he wishes Ghislaine Maxwell well. He didn't wish any of the victims well, he wishes her well. And then he says, oh, you know, why he's disappointed or offended by Epstein, he took his employees. Yeah, I'm like, okay, so that's why you don't want to be associated with this guy? Were any of his other activities that were reported and widely covered, did any of those offend you? Problematic? No, it was that he hired his valet from Mar-a-Lago. It's like, okay, you're kind of missing the forest for the trees here. So he continues to act like someone advised him to try and act as guilty as possible.

Kara Swisher: The idea of what effectively would be a pardon, which is what immunity would offer, almost.

Scott Galloway: Complicity. For Ghislaine Maxwell, it's like, well, again, why are they speaking to her now? The only motivation to speak to her now is a desire to clear the president. There's always been a desire to find out what exactly happened here and who was involved. And if you weren't able to get that information and offer whatever it is you needed to offer back then, then the only reason that you can logically deduct from this is that you're hoping she will say something to exonerate the president, because the only thing that's happened is there's new heat on the president. So I don't, the whole thing really stinks.

Kara Swisher: It won't exonerate him now because it looks like he's doing that, right? So it'll look like it fixes in. So it's weird. I find this the strangest thing. I actually believe, when everything the White House says, I don't believe what he says. I kind of believe that's what he thinks. He's mad at him for taking, stealing a person who works in the spa. That's what I... He doesn't care about these women. He doesn't care about the abuses. He cares that someone stole his employee. I actually believe that when he says that. I don't think he's making it up in that room. I think this addled old man thinks that. He's all pissed that he stole one of his employees.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't see that. Yeah, the whole thing. The whole thing is just something... I have to say, a lot of people who didn't think it was a conspiracy theory or just were not really paying attention to it many years on.

[Sound of a noise outside]

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's a noise outside your apartment. Oh, shit. I forgot to call 911 back and tell them you're not intruders. I know you. There's a strange lady rifling through my things and mumbling to herself. I'm taking that buttery coat. That buttery coat of yours.

Scott Galloway: I have somebody who's slaughtered several dozen animals who were llamas that were only raised on Japanese Wagyu rice. I went through that skin phase where I couldn't buy enough leather coats. Anyways, have at it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they're very nice. I may take one, but it's sort of warm out.

Scott Galloway: If you borrow my coat it means I then borrow your car and we go steady. That means we're going steady.

Kara Swisher: We are going steady? Oh, my first girlfriend Melanie Kagan, who... Which you wore your coat?

Scott Galloway: Oh yeah. And my letterman coat. I was a letterman, a D1 athlete.

Kara Swisher: This is college?

Scott Galloway: College. You know it, baby.

Kara Swisher: Do you have any clothes from people? I still have clothes from people I went out with.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, David Hasselhoff still has a few of my loose sweatshirts, but that's another story, Kara. That's another story.

Kara Swisher: That was a loving relationship. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So beautiful and poignant.

Kara Swisher: Paul Giamatti has a big bottle of my moisturizer. I don't, don't, don't force me to give details. He's such a nice guy.

Scott Galloway: I would like one for you. That was pretty good. Two random names. I love your wife. David Hasselhoff. I don't, but if you weren't married, I'd love you to go out with Paul Giamatti. I think that would be good for you.

Kara Swisher: Oh, wait, hold on. Hold on. Let's unpack that. The person you have decided is for me is Paul Giamatti.

Scott Galloway: Oh my God, I'd totally like to hang out with Paul Giamatti. I'm totally down if Paul Giamatti can be Emily Ratajkowski. Has she asked about me?

Kara Swisher: No.

Scott Galloway: Seriously, she has asked about me, right?

Kara Swisher: No, she has not.

Scott Galloway: She's totally asked about me. Nobody who looks like Emily Ratajkowski...

Kara Swisher: You know who asked me about you? Let me tell you. Here we go. Men.

Scott Galloway: Sure.

Kara Swisher: Michael asked me about you, the guy you debated in Detroit. This lovely guy, Chuck Rocha, I was on a panel with, asked me. Men ask me about you. You have such a man crush on you. It's disturbing on many levels.

Scott Galloway: Well, tell them to swing by. Why shouldn't they come by my apartment? This is what women say to me, including very attractive women. They're always like, "Oh, Scott."

Kara Swisher: Oh, God.

Scott Galloway: That's all they say. Just keep him away from me. They don't say, "Oh, Scott, I want to fuck him." It's, "Oh, Scott."

Kara Swisher: No, it's literally like, "I need to, that reminds me, I need new mace cartridges."

Scott Galloway: Yeah. But men are like, "He's so dreamy."

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. I love that, Scott. He's so dreamy. You bring up my name, and the next sentence from women is like, "You know, I'm thinking about just having sex with women from this point forward. I don't think we need men."

Scott Galloway: It is so true. I haven't had a woman say she's hot for you. Men I have heard say I was hot.

Kara Swisher: Paul Giamatti called us. That's something. That's something.

Scott Galloway: I know, it's something.

Kara Swisher: All right, we have to move on. Tariffs, tariffs. And Jerome Powell has a set, let's just say. At the time of this taping, President Trump says he will not extend the latest August 1st tariff deadline. The president reportedly plans to sign new executive orders after we tape imposing higher tariffs on several countries that have not reached deals. The administration has managed to get only eight deals done in 120 days, but with a number of partners. In the last few days Trump has announced a 25% tariff on India with a penalty for over on Russian energy and military equipment. It said that South Korea has made an offer to buy down the 25% it faces. He's interested in hearing it. One of the things that's interesting is whether he's going to extend that deadline. Fear not, everyone. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who seems to be living his best life as Trump's favorite person, told Corporate America it's, quote, "not the end of the world" if these tariffs are on for days or weeks. Meanwhile, the Fed held interest rates steady, as I said, on Wednesday for the fifth meeting in a row as the Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy grew at a stronger than expected pace. But there's lots of troubling things in the report, actually. And now inflation today just ticked up a little bit. And so Powell seems to be waiting until September to see the impact of the tariffs, which I think is probably a good thing to do. So what do you think about what's happening? In some cases, some of the countries are saying what he said happened didn't happen. Obviously, a lot of these numbers are going to be paid by American consumers in the end. Any thoughts on this?

Scott Galloway: The only thing you know you're going to get, first off, none of them, I hate it, they call them deals. They're all frameworks that they can put out a press release. And in the press release is some giant number that is unenforceable, specifically the amount of money they're going to invest in the U.S.

Kara Swisher: Yes. Thank you.

Scott Galloway: So I hope that, I hope we just get through this, get on it. I saw someone, Bill Maher, a very intelligent woman, saying that tariffs, she said to Bill, "Why are you against making American workers more productive?" They're kind of like wrapping themselves in the flag. And folks, let me just remind you that free trade or tariffs are inversely correlated to economic growth. They're telling American consumers that they have to pay more money for a Japanese car such that they get a shitty car for $40,000 instead of a great car for $30,000. That not only makes us consumers less prosperous, paying more for shittier things, but it also makes us less competitive because we don't need to compete. So, and I'm going to talk about this in my prediction, but Figma, this design company, is going public. And it was supposed to be acquired by Adobe. The fact that it wasn't because the regulators blocked the deal is going to make that market much more competitive. And so when all you're doing is making things less competitive in the short run for companies because they have the advantage of taxing foreign companies, you make our companies less competitive, you make our consumers less prosperous, and it has been shown that over the medium and long term, it decreases productivity. And the GDP numbers were really strange. I don't know if you saw those, but the GDP numbers, so this was the strangest thing that came out of the GDP numbers. You subtract out of GDP imports because that is economic activity or production that took place offshore. Imports were down 30% year on year, like 34%. I mean, it's not even that the prices are too high or that American consumers don't want them, but foreign companies that build businesses importing products into the U.S., making our lives more prosperous and our products less expensive and a better quality of life, have kind of stopped because they don't know how to plan. They don't even know how to price stuff. They don't know what it means. They don't know what the demand's going to be because they don't know what these tariffs are. So I'm at the part of the program now where I just hope for the purposes of just getting back to work that they get a bunch of these frameworks done. And all these nations are learning. Yeah, agree to agree to the tariff and then announce a trillion dollars in investment in the United States over the next 10 years, which is not enforceable.

Kara Swisher: That's what happened with all the tech companies. Remember, they were like, "We're going to invest." And then they never did. That's the thing. And so Trump can tout a deal. One of the things, Richard Quest, who I like on CNN, was so frustrated.

Scott Galloway: Oh, has he? That guy?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that guy. He's great. But the point he was making is the 15% is getting eaten by these companies. They're just going to take the cost. And you'll see numbers like Ford or GM. They had the first time since 2023, Ford is losing money, which it wasn't. It was doing well. They'll eat the cost because it's low enough, but eventually they won't. Second thing is consumers will pay for this in the end, like not the money that's going to the treasury. And it just, literally, he's like, he said the same thing you did. These are frameworks. They are not the thing. And so you'll never, how are you going to know if they're going to invest? Just saying they're going to invest, they will not do it. And so it's all nonsense and kind of unnecessary shaking of the economy for no reason. Now, that's not to say that being tough on people or sort of playing game of chicken with some of these countries where it's not asynchronous trade is not a bad idea, right? Like we always say that. But one of the things that's important to understand is that it's not in place. It's just not. Like a lot of things with Trump, it's a lot of vaporware. And that is the real problem. And so when Jerome Powell comes in and says, "We're just going to wait about cutting interest rates. We'll see what happens." That's the adult thing to do. And of course, Trump attacks him because it doesn't work without an acquiescent Fed, right, to try to feed this thing. And he's not going to be acquiescent. And interestingly, with the Fed meeting, two of the Trump-appointed people voted against keeping it the same rate. So now it's totally politicized, which are good economic decisions. Powell, this guy has a set. He really does.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah. He's doing exactly what you're supposed to do when you have a Supreme Court justice or long tenure appointments. The reason we do that is such that we get stuck with some bad people sometimes, but the reason we do that is such that they can be independent minded. But one of the biggest risks I think to our economy is, so the definition of robust, a robust industry is, for example, the fast food industry. If McDonald's goes out of business, you're still going to be able to get $1,800 of calories for five bucks, right? Because there's a ton of competitors. If Jamie Dimon called the president right now and said, "Oh, we had some rogue trader, he levered up, got past our compliance, and if I don't get $500 billion by tomorrow, we're out of business," that existential or systemic risk, because J.P. Morgan is so big now and so powerful, they have become, in my opinion, too big to fail. That makes an economy weaker. We now have seven companies that represent over 40% of the S&P's value, of which represents 50% of the world's value. So you have essentially 20% of the market cap of the world is tied up in seven companies. And what these tariffs are doing, there's so many second order effects here, is that, okay, you know who's not affected by the tariffs? You know who's just champagne and cocaine right now? Tech companies.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, we will talk about that.

Scott Galloway: But if you're an investor, are you going to invest in the 70% of companies in the S&P 500 that are subject to some sort of tariff risk? You're like, "Oh, fuck it, just buy Meta," right? I don't know how to predict this. I don't know how to model against it. So what do we have? Even greater concentration of wealth and of market cap in an increasingly small group of companies and people. Who will not be able to deliver in the end, actually. They can keep up with the numbers, but it's like the last thing. Does the president really think it's a good economic policy to basically transfer market capitalization from Dow Chemical and Ford to Alphabet and Meta? Is that what we need right now?

Kara Swisher: That's not, these companies-

Scott Galloway: It's the opposite. It's the opposite. These great American companies that are either in manufacturing or consumer products that are subject to these tariffs and subject to this insecurity and chaos, that's kind of, those are the companies, quite frankly-

Kara Swisher: That is a really good point. And they tend to be, they don't pay their people as well, but they tend to employ many more people. And it's like, okay, if we were going to do any economic policy that transferred capital or advantage back from one group of companies to others for a more robust market, quite frankly, a stronger, more diverse economy, we would probably want to let some air out of the AI tech balloon and transfer it across the rest of our great American companies. That's not what they're doing.

Scott Galloway: And this is effectively saying to every institutional manager, "Fuck it, just invest in tech."

Kara Swisher: That's right. All right. Well, then, actually, we'll get to that. We'll go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Microsoft and Meta's earnings, which were blockbuster.

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with earnings news. Microsoft just reported a blockbuster quarter with total revenue surging 18% year over year to $76 billion. But as Microsoft doubles down on AI, the capital spending is climbing up 27%. Meta also had a huge Q2 with $47 billion in revenue up 22% and $18 billion in profit up 36%. Meta's AI hiring spree also acknowledged in the earnings with compensation for technical talent in priority areas cited as the second largest driver of cost growth. These big deals are paying all these AI researchers. How do you look at this? Are these AI bets paying off or it's advertising for Meta? It's their old business that's doing well, probably helped by AI, but not in the way Zuckerberg is spending. Any thoughts on this? They're really doubling down on AI, obviously, whether it's research costs or talent costs or just simple investment in compute. Any thoughts on these two earnings?

Scott Galloway: So you forwarded me an article from the Wall Street Journal that was really fascinating. And it said, basically, this is the weirdest GDP report we've seen in a while. Because when imports go down 30%, it sort of artificially juices GDP. And if you're thinking about, I mean, these numbers, well, one, okay, so the numbers of traditional business is just staggering. They continue to perform. They're using AI for better targeting and I think every media planner in the world is just throwing up their arms and saying, "Just spend more money on Meta or on Alphabet." They also have the benefit of the market has decided that it loves CapEx and AI. The market has decided that AI is going to be enormous, and whoever wins the war, it's going to be a function of brute force, and that is as represented by CapEx. So Oracle, when Oracle went public, Larry Ellison, I think, owned about 24%. He now owns closer to 41%. Well, how is that possible? They would use their cash flow to buy back shares, thereby decreasing the amount of shares and increasing the relative ownership of people who own shares. Except about two years ago, he decided, "Nope, it's now a capital war in AI. We need to be a distant number two of infrastructure to NVIDIA. We're going to massively spend in CapEx." Arguably, that was one of the better business decisions of the last 10 years. And Larry Ellison, you want to talk about elephants can dance, is now the second wealthiest person in the world. And the most crazy stat from that article, and I still can't believe it's true, but it stated in that article that there was more spending last quarter on AI investments than there was consumer spending. So think about this, 355 million people in the US, everything they're spending money on, their Netflix, their Starbucks, going to see F1, all consumer spending was less than the investments in AI. I mean, my God, that is-

Kara Swisher: I know, the numbers are that massive.

Scott Galloway: That is just staggering. But Meta up 12% in pre-market, earnings beat, a massive earnings beat, 714 versus 589, revenue of 47.5 billion, expected 44.8, a 22% year on year. And one of the things that was so impressive is they grew their customer base or their users by 6%, which may not sound like a lot, but when your base is 3.5 billion, that's too much. There's no other game in town. There's no other game in town. They added the population of Brazil to their user base year on year. And in addition, the market loves this CapEx. Their CapEx spending was $17 billion. By the way, that's double what it was last year. And the market just loves it.

Kara Swisher: Well, someone has to pay for all those young men that they're hiring. I mean, billion dollar deals. Whatever you say about Mark Zuckerberg, he goes for it, right? And even if he made a mistake with Meta. And the same thing over at Microsoft. The question is, when does it not pay off? Like, here you have Grok doing it. You've got Amazon doing it. Amazon just paid, even the New York Times, $20 million a year for its stuff, which is nothing, which is peanuts. You know, I just think that this is an arms race for these people, and it's being paid off in the market right now for them. And they're using that in order to, like, goose themselves, rather. And you're right. Everything is being shifted over to these seven tech companies and nobody else. And so Ford and GM who have made strides are going to suffer. So will John Deere. So will all the other companies at the expense of these people. Now interestingly, Zuckerberg had to put out one of his essays. These people love to put out essays and letters and vision manifestos. He loves to do this and they're always long and badly edited. But he said AI superintelligence is now in sight. He put out this letter and video outlining his vision for it. It was described by one outlet as a mini manifesto. Let's listen to Mark Zuckerberg if we have to.

[Clip of Mark Zuckerberg plays] Mark Zuckerberg (in clip): A lot has been written about the scientific and economic advances that AI can bring, and I'm really optimistic about this. What I think an even more meaningful impact in our lives is going to come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, be a better friend, and grow to become the person that you aspire to be. This vision is different from others in the industry who want to direct AI at automating all of the valuable work.

Kara Swisher: Blather. "Grow to the person you aspire to be." He did this before. That's the guy that's good. "I'm going to be the person I aspire to be because of Mark Zuckerberg." One time he called me when he wrote one of these ridiculous manifestos. He called me and asked me when he was speaking to me what I thought of it. And I said, "One, you need an editor. Two, I don't understand this, this whole thing about community." He just was like, "Social media will bring us together." Such bullshit. And of course it didn't. And I was, at the time, I was like, "This is such bullshit. Just say you just want to make money on automating all our valuable work." I'm fine with that, right? But these people just aspire to be these visionaries, and they have the smallest intellects and the least amount. They just love to put these things out. You know, you don't hear this from Jamie Dimon much, right? By the way, he's been meeting with President Trump, which is a good thing. Like, you don't hear this nonsense from our smarter people in our society because they don't feel the need to do it. Remember when Gates put out these essays, "The Road Ahead"? It was so nonsensical. Now, one thing Zuckerberg did say, which I agreed with, but I didn't think he had to put on such a thing, is he said smart glasses will be the primary way people interact with AI. Of course, he said that because he has a smart glass business. And without them, people will be at a cognitive disadvantage. Do you think you're going to be at a cognitive disadvantage without AI glasses?

Scott Galloway: Well, I mean, the idea, so these LLMs, I've always said that the LLM is just a function of who we are, but unfortunately who we are in a certain medium. And I wish the LLMs could crawl the real world because I think generally speaking in the real world that people are lovely. But the fact is they're crawling our complexion, our personality online, and it gets really ugly really fast. And if this AI, I've always said that companies were the closest thing I had to kids before I had kids, and that is you conceive of them, they look, smell, and feel like you. They're sort of a corporate embodiment of another personality. And if Llama, the LLM from Zuck, ends up being anything like him, it'll be emotionally stunted, brilliantly efficient, and constantly urging you to reconnect with your ex. I mean, it's just going to be such a weird... If this thing ends up... When you heard that, didn't it sound AI-generated? It's like the non-human human.

Kara Swisher: Oh, it's just, no, because he's done it before. It's like so anodyne. It is so, I literally had this bad memory for, I was at my ex's house, like, sleeping on a couch, and he called me.

Scott Galloway: You got kicked out on the couch? Talk to me about that.

Kara Swisher: No, no, because we were broken up.

Scott Galloway: Lesbians do that too?

Kara Swisher: No, no. So, it was just so fucking ridiculous. It was like, I remember going, "Oh my God, how can I get off this fucking phone call with this idiot who just thinks he's a visionary?" Like, literally, no, there's so many visionaries. Like, John Malone's recently written a book. He's a visionary. Like, he doesn't talk that much, and what he says is choice. These guys can't stop fucking talking and giving you their predictions of the future. It's, like, I want to hear it from you, Scott. I don't want to hear it from this guy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, you got to give it. He is a visionary. He really is. But his vision is a legless universe where people are cutting themselves. That's his vision. But, like, that he says, like, "I'm here to help you achieve your goals, be a better friend and grow a person who aspired to be. It's not about automating all your valuable work, Mark. It's about automating all your valuable work and so you can make money off of it." Could you just say that?

Scott Galloway: Like, honestly, this nonsense of being, Facebook is not going to make you a better friend. It is not going to allow you to create what you want to see in the world and grow to be a better person. And neither does Mark Zuckerberg care about that. And then, oh, by the way, buy my glasses.

Scott Galloway: If I asked AI to give me an image of Mark Zuckerberg that defines who he is, I feel like it would be—granted, this might be the edible speaking—but it would be a guy at a really sad malt shop sucking up the world's user data through a straw. And every time he made eye contact with you, he'd apologize and look away. I just think this guy is so unusual, so strange. And to his credit, he is actually smart enough to realize it, so he brings in really likable people, whether it's Nick Clegg or Sheryl Sandberg.

Scott Galloway: But getting back to it, I just want to talk a little bit about earnings. I was so blown away by this quarter's earnings, just the amount of CapEx these guys are throwing at it. I think Microsoft may be the organization as of today that has invested more money, more capital in the future than any organization in history, with the exception of countries during war. And by the way, it's paying off. They're up 8% in pre-market trading. They blew away their earnings, 365 versus 337. Revenue is 76 and a half billion versus 73.8 expected. Revenue was up 18% year on year. And its cloud-based unit, Azure, grew 39% this year.

Scott Galloway: If you applied the same price-to-sales ratio to its cloud unit, it would be a $1 trillion business. Right now, it's a $75 billion revenue business. And they're planning to spend $30 billion on capital next quarter. That's up 50% from the same time last year. If it kept constant, it would work out to be $120 billion. That means right now, the category getting the most CapEx of any category in the world is AI. And the company spending the most is Microsoft. Microsoft is right now spending more money on AI than almost any organization in history has spent on anything, with maybe the exception of a percentage of GDP that Britain and Russia spent during wartime.

Scott Galloway: Meta's quarter, I think, is the biggest investment by a private company in history on anything, and it's paying off. These companies—I mean, it's just this tariff bullshit. While Ford is trying to figure out how many times a windshield wiper comes across from Canada or Mexico and how to build their business and estimate it and spend all the time—

Kara Swisher: Yeah, Trump is kneecapping them while these guys—

Scott Galloway: Then you have these guys that are just running flat out and killing it, literally running away with it. But why wouldn't they kill? They have nothing in their way. Ford and GM and John Deere have things in their way. These guys have no obstacles. No regulatory obstacles. They just buy their way into seamlessness, which is their favorite part.

Scott Galloway: Think about this. The two of them added $550 billion in market cap since 4 p.m. last night. Since they announced their earnings, they've added $550 billion in market capitalization. So they just added—let's add Netflix. Let's add the French stock market. People don't get a sense of the scale. It's working for them. It's a machine.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's...

Scott Galloway: Anyway, speaking of things that aren't a machine, let's finish up. Novo Nordisk shares are plummeting after the company slashed its full-year guidance, citing weaker-than-expected U.S. growth for Ozempic and Wegovy. The stock dropped 30% at one point on Tuesday, wiping out nearly $93 billion in market value. Novo Nordisk is blaming the downturn on increased competition from Eli Lilly's Mounjaro and Zepbound, as well as, more significantly, cheaper GLP-1 knockoffs, which are not going away. They thought they were going away when manufacturing got settled.

Scott Galloway: The company also named a new CEO, replacing the previous CEO who was ousted by the board in May as the stock was sliding. This is incredible. A product that is going to be so big and the company at the top of it is just losing it. This is one of these amazing stories because of all kinds of pressures. Of course, competition was going to get in here. It's only going to get bigger in the GLP-1 market.

Kara Swisher: Very quick thoughts on this, because it's the opposite here, right? An amazing opportunity that's been blown, I guess.

Scott Galloway: Well, speaking of tariffs, the number one import into the United States from Europe is pharmaceuticals. I said two years ago, and I was mocked for this, that I thought the more important technology in terms of on-the-ground change to society was not AI, it was GLP-1. What's happened here is that because of a shortage and a loophole, some companies have been able to offer compounded GLP-1, which is basically like generics. Hims & Hers stock went crazy because they were able to sell GLP drugs for a fraction of the price. Then, as you mentioned, Eli Lilly's GLP offering, Zepbound, is now more popular than Wegovy.

Scott Galloway: I absolutely love this category. I still think it's going to grow like crazy. Only 8% of Americans have taken a GLP-1, but about a third of them are interested. I think the most accretive thing you could do for our economy right now would be to offer access to GLP-1 drugs for everybody. If you look at the obesity industrial complex that wants people to buy a sugar bomb, eat shitty food, take advantage of the lowest calories-to-cost that people have to turn to in food deserts, and then hand these people over to the companies producing statins, hip replacements, knee replacements, kidney dialysis—we are effectively monetizing people's health. So much of it is obesity related. Obesity-related healthcare costs are one to one and a half trillion a year.

Scott Galloway: Similar to what the UK Health Ministry did with smoking—they said, if you are smoking, we'll send you a free electronic nicotine delivery service because while that's not good for you, it's much less bad for you than tobacco. I think over the medium and long term, if you really wanted to have an impact on healthcare costs, you would make GLP-1 drugs accessible to absolutely everybody.

Kara Swisher: So what did this company, which is at the forefront of it, do wrong?

Scott Galloway: The honest answer is I don't know. I don't know if it's distribution or branding. But I would argue right now it's a great value because this is, if not the market leader, one of the market leaders in an unbelievable business and category. And it's trading at a PE because it's been hammered for not performing well.

Kara Swisher: Well, interesting. They did a deal with Hims & Hers, right? And then they continued to sell the knockoff. So then they got in a fight with Hims & Hers. Hims & Hers was selling the knockoff, then Novo Nordisk did a deal with them. And then it fell apart because they continued selling the compounds, which need to be regulated. That loophole really has—these guys should have been riding off into the sunset, but they don't because of these GLP-1 knockoffs. It's fascinating that this is what got them, that they didn't anticipate this.

Scott Galloway: The market has a tendency to over-punish and over-reward. The momentum right now is against these guys. Their five-year average PE has been 33, it's been as high as 50. Today it's going to open at 14. When you think about the average S&P company trading at a PE of 26, to get the market leader—even though it is underperforming expectations in GLP—at 14 times earnings, I actually think the stock is a buy right now. There's no doubt about it. This is a national champion for Europe that is faltering or not living up to expectations. But I actually think the stock has been over-punished.

Scott Galloway: Of all the technologies in the last 10 years, the one I'm most excited about is GLP-1. I think it's a game changer.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely. In fact, in doing this secret documentary, one of the things that every doctor has said is—I asked them what they think the most important developments in technology and pharmaceuticals are. They always say mRNA vaccines, CRISPR, and GLP-1s. They say, "I don't know which one's more important." And they all mentioned GLP-1s for a range of things because we're just beginning to understand it. I would agree with you.

Scott Galloway: All right, we have to move on. One more quick break, but we'll be back for predictions.

[Ad break]

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

Scott Galloway: I have a very quick one. Kamala Harris announced this week she's not running for governor of California. She also revealed she's written a book about her campaign called "107 Days." I'm not so sure she's going to run for president. I didn't think she was going to run for governor. I don't think she's going to run for president. I think she knows that she can't win and she has enough responsibility to understand that. So I predict she will also not run for president.

Kara Swisher: Well, I'm good at running other people's lives. If I were the vice president, I would go be the chairman of a hedge fund, make a shit ton of money, and just wait for the next Democratic administration and be a Supreme Court justice.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's what I'm always saying. I don't think she needs the risk of potentially losing. I'm not sure she'd win governor. She just doesn't need that.

Kara Swisher: She has to win by a lot if she wins, right? So if she wins and doesn't win by enough, she'll be tarred in that regard. A lot of people describe California as ungovernable, that special interest groups are so entrenched. Even Republican governors will say, "I would not want that job." It's a very difficult job. I think it's the right move. I don't think she wanted to do it. As an executive, she didn't have the fire. When I talked to her, you could tell. It was like she's supposed to versus she wants to. She's probably sick of running.

Scott Galloway: I hope she doesn't. I don't think she should. She had a good try. Given the hand she was dealt, I think it was one of the greatest performances in history by any athlete or person. When I saw her walking into that debate with the president and the amount of pressure on her shoulders and the way she handled herself—good job. Great job.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she deserves a lot of credit for trying to run a U.S.-style race, hamstrung by what was, you know—

Scott Galloway: British election. Oh, man. Biden.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. British election cycle. I mean, she had 111 days or something to try and pull this off. And she had Biden hanging around.

Scott Galloway: Oh, she's happy.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I hope so, too. I think she's been a great public servant. I just don't think she's going to run for president. But she's literally the first Supreme Court justice appointee of a Democratic presidency. She's an easy one.

Scott Galloway: That's a lot of work.

Kara Swisher: Okay, what's your prediction very briefly?

Scott Galloway: So each year I pick an IPO of the year. That is an IPO I think is going to do really well. Airbnb, last year it was Reddit. Today I believe will be the IPO of the year, and I think that IPO is a company called Figma. It's a design company. I've been building these—my son's been trying to find a business and building these sites—and it is so obvious that design is the salsa to the chip of all AI. Whenever AI returns anything, it just looks anodyne, generic. If you look at designers, IBM used to hire one designer for every 70 programmers. Now it's one to 10. Design is a booming field and seems to be so far immune from AI.

Scott Galloway: Figma is essentially a collaborative software company. It's great for design. The thing that got me looking at it was my partner at Prop G, Catherine Dillon, who is a professor of the visual arts at Tisch. She teaches a very popular course called Design Language. The first thing she does for her students is ask them to download Figma.

Scott Galloway: There's this thing called the Rule of 40 in SaaS. You take your growth rate plus your profit margins. Figma's profit margins are around 20% and its growth this year was 44%, giving it a Rule of 40 of 64, which puts it in the top five of SaaS companies. To give you a sense of how profitable and economically efficient this company is: Uber spent $21 billion between 2009 and 2021. Figma has raised $750 million but has $1.5 billion on its balance sheet, meaning it has accreted capital.

Scott Galloway: It works with between seven and eight of every 10 Fortune 2000 companies. Adobe is sort of the Mercedes—a bit over-engineered, an amazing company. They have responded with competition, Adobe Express, because Figma is known as being more collaborative. Figma is a little bit easier to use. Figma, I think, is more like Toyota. It's going out at 18 times revenues.

Scott Galloway: The most interesting thing about this is that this was the IPO that wasn't supposed to happen. This IPO will offer investors an opportunity to invest in a great company. More competition means corporations will be able to have better products for a lower price. It's great that Adobe didn't get it. I think that was a great move by the government.

Kara Swisher: That's exactly right. And we'll come back to that. $20 billion valuation right now.

Scott Galloway: Also, from an employee standpoint: when companies are acquired, generally within a year, 18% of the employees have left the acquired company. When a company goes public, they usually increase their hiring in year one by 23%. The reason this company is going public is not because of our antitrust, not because of our regulation, but because of EU antitrust, which blocked this merger. While we're sitting on our hands, letting companies concentrate power and create a less competitive market, the EU regulators said, "No, this makes no sense to take the number one and two player and let the upstart go."

Scott Galloway: Figma is to Adobe what AI is to search. Adobe is still going to be an amazing business. But this is the new stuff. These guys are the new guys. The EU blocked this, and as a result, Figma got a breakup fee of a billion dollars. It's still shy of the Adobe deal, but in terms of creating more billionaires, in terms of creating more economic value for people, this is the right way to go.

Scott Galloway: My prediction is the following. As of yesterday, I was literally calling everybody I could to try and get shares in this thing for the IPO. Typically, they want to build a book of somewhere between eight and 12 times demand. Institutions call and say, "I want a million shares." They always vastly overestimate because in any decent IPO, you're going to get cut back. A really good IPO builds a book of eight to 12 times the request for the number of shares being issued. I found out yesterday that Figma was 40 times oversubscribed.

Scott Galloway: If you look at the companies going out this year, not only have there been fewer IPOs, but the companies that have performed well are not great companies—they're fashionable, like Chime or Circle, stablecoin shit. This is, in my opinion, a real company that's a great company that's killing it, with amazing economics and great products. We haven't had many of those, if any, this year.

Scott Galloway: My prediction is the following—always dangerous to make predictions about stocks. This is not financial advice, but this is what I have been trying to do. I have been trying my damnedest to find shares in this thing because I think the first trade today—I think this thing closes up monstrously today. We're recording on a Thursday morning. I think Figma is what I'll call the first great company to go public in 2025. I think it's going to be seen as one of the better IPOs of the year.

Scott Galloway: I'm really excited about this company. It's also a lesson on the importance of antitrust and regulation. Who wins here? More employment. Investors have an opportunity to invest in a pure play, amazing company. Corporations get more competition. More tax revenue. And thank you, EU. They actually said, "No, this is not a good idea. We would be better with two great companies, not one here." As a result, this company is now going public. It was supposed to be acquired two and a half years ago for $20 billion. It was going to be acquired for 50 times revenues, but now investors will get a chance to invest at about 18 times revenues. This is a win-win-win.

Kara Swisher: Win-win-win. I hope you got shares, Professor Galloway. Anyway, thank you. That's an excellent prediction. I love that one.

Kara Swisher: We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Kara Swisher: Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe this week, on Prof G Conversations, Scott was with Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist and host of The Ezra Klein Show. Let's listen to a clip.

[Clip plays]

Ezra Klein: What's not working is the Democratic Party being leaderless and rudderless. I'm not shocked that at the moment, if you ask people in a poll who they'd vote for, they don't really know what to say. Which Democrat? What do they know about them? The Democratic Party is in a pretty shattered place. One of the reasons the Democratic Party is very unpopular right now is Democrats do not like it. Those people are not going to vote Republican, but they are pissed off at the Democratic Party, which to them has been ineffectual, unable to stop the worst of what Trump is doing, unable to come up with a message or a set of leaders.

[End of clip]

Kara Swisher: Ezra is the kind of guy that wants to talk to you about his mushroom microdosing but first asks if he can share his screen. That was a good interview. He's really smart. I don't agree with him on everything, but he's really smart.

Kara Swisher: Now, Scott, the time has come. You usually get testy by this time of year, but Scot-Free August is upon us.

Scott Galloway: It is. It is upon us.

Kara Swisher: I think you're happier this year. You usually get real testy and wrangling.

Scott Galloway: I'm in a good place. I think it's Ezra Klein. Every time I listen to Ezra Klein, it's like listening to a meditation app describing the collapse of democracy.

Kara Swisher: But how much are you going to miss me, Scott? A lot? A little?

Scott Galloway: I don't miss anybody. I miss people when I see them. I saw you this morning.

Kara Swisher: You're always ready to see me. Stop it.

Scott Galloway: I miss my boys. Those are the only people I've ever missed in my life.

Kara Swisher: Okay, you miss me. I don't miss people, and then I see them, and I think, "Oh, I miss them. It's good to see them." I miss when you're not there. But we have some amazing co-hosts coming up. Mel Robbins, "Let Them" lady, who's amazing. She has one of the top podcasts. Anthony Scaramucci, who was a big hit last year, is coming back. Rachel Maddow is coming and replacing you, Scott. I feel like things could happen.

Scott Galloway: Rachel Maddow?

Kara Swisher: Rachel Maddow, and more.

Scott Galloway: Isn't it weird? People want to replace me, but they don't want to be on with me. Our guest quality goes up so dramatically when you're not here.

Kara Swisher: This year, it's a big year. I'm fine to replace him because I know I'll do better. It's a low bar, but no one wants to come on.

Scott Galloway: Secretary Clinton is going to be Jessica's co-host at Raging Moderates when I'm gone.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's great. I know.

Scott Galloway: Do you have any advice for these folks at all while you're away?

Kara Swisher: Just a lot of lesbian jokes. That's my go-to. By the way, if you listen to Ezra Klein's podcast on one and a half speed, it's like listening to a normal person describe how to ruin a dinner party.

Scott Galloway: Okay. All right. Any advice for co-hosts? Just lesbian jokes?

Kara Swisher: A little nod to the dog and totally profane. Not that funny, but because it's profane and not that funny. All of these people are somewhat left of the head of HR from the National Park Service. Our job on this podcast is to grab humor back for the progressives. So be inappropriate, show some humor. We're all going to be dead soon. Whoever you offend will get over it. Let them own that emotion and just have some fun.

Scott Galloway: Have a great time. People will miss you.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I do. I always miss you. I always wonder what you think of things. So I'm excited for you to get back in September.

Scott Galloway: I'm not. Here's the answer. I'm not. Occasionally, people make the mistake of going, "What are you thinking?" And I'm like, "I'm not. What am I thinking about?" Things happen, and we'll catch up when you get back. And I will somehow come stay at your apartment while you're away.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. I'll be back next week with a special co-host, and they will do their best to replace Scott, but nobody can replace the irreplaceable Scott Galloway. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver. Ernie and Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Severio, and Dan Chalon. Nishat Khera is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care.

Kara Swisher: Have a wonderful August and thanks for continuing to bring great work. And at some point, I trust you will take a long weekend or something. Anyways, have a great August, everybody.