Liberation Day, Elon Exit Rumors, and Guest Co-Host Jon Lovett

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Kara Swisher: Yeah, lesbians know what penises look like. We know what they look like. That's partly the way you figure out you're a lesbian.

Jon Lovett: That's correct.

Kara Swisher: Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm the very nasty and openly lesbian Kara Swisher – that's according to my number one fan, Megyn Kelly. Scott is off today, but in his place I brought in someone who Megyn Kelly might also take issue with, and obviously will – the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It, Jon Lovett. Welcome, Jon.

Jon Lovett: Hi, good to see you.

Kara Swisher: Good. Did you see Megyn trying to flirt with me online? Did you see that situation?

Jon Lovett: Yes.

Kara Swisher: You know, dipping your pigtails in ink, for sure. I mean, seriously, what is the deal? Did you understand I like LGB, but not T?

Jon Lovett: Oh, of course. Of course. They're trying to divide the T off from the LGB. That's what they've done at all.

Kara Swisher: I don't think she knows what Q is or plus. What is plus? What is Q?

Jon Lovett: No, I don't think they know what the Q is. They certainly don't know what the IA is. They're not into any of these letters, but they're mostly focused on trying to... they want the T off of the flag, and we have to keep the T on the flag.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I didn't make a response to the New York Post when they called me for one. I felt that was the right way to go, didn't you think? It seems as though this is... is it just drumming up a misunderstanding from years ago to find a way to talk about you? Is that what this is?

Jon Lovett: I called her a rage machine last week on the show. Because she is. She just yells at everybody. And she wasn't... I hate to say it, talking about Elon Musk, they weren't exactly like this then. So it's kind of a shock. What happened is she had canceled on the show and we had back and forth, back and forth. I think I wrote sort of to the staff and her person like, "When are we going to do this thing?" And then the person said, "Our sister died." And then I wrote, "I'm really sorry." So the whole thing is, I didn't know, right? And then it was ridiculous. Of course, I'm sorry her sister died. It's just very strange. I think it was just an excuse to yell at me for a little while.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's what it seems like. She has a podcast network like you guys. Did you know that?

Jon Lovett: Well, the reason I know about it is because she called you a bitchy lesbian or whatever she said. That's how I... I mean, that's the whole purpose. There's a cycle to this, right? She picks these fights, it generates a Page Six story, it gets attention.

Kara Swisher: Who do you beef with? Who beefs at you from the right?

Jon Lovett: Well, John got in a fight with J.D. Vance on Twitter.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I saw that. Which is just incredible that the vice president... Explain that for the people, what it was about.

Jon Lovett: It was about the fact that the Trump administration is... I don't even want to call it deporting. It is kidnapping people and dispatching them to a gulag in El Salvador. And we have increasing evidence that they're making mistakes as they do this. Now the administration is claiming once you've been sent to this mega prison in El Salvador, they don't have the ability to bring you back. So no mistakes. So there's no due process to catch mistakes in advance and no way to rectify mistakes once they've happened, which is obviously wrong, even if you are getting it right. But now we see that they are getting it wrong. And Vance was defensive and dissembling and lying about what the record said about one example.

Kara Swisher: Right. That he was in M13 or whatever that he was.

Jon Lovett: MS-13.

Kara Swisher: MS-13, excuse me. And then he wasn't.

Jon Lovett: Right. It was just like nonsense.

Kara Swisher: Well, we have no idea other than there is no evidence for it.

Jon Lovett: Right. And the evidence... there's no... which you want.

Kara Swisher: Well, of course. Yes, they have provided no evidence that this person was in MS-13. Vance claimed he was convicted. As far as we can tell, this person has never been convicted in the U.S. of a crime.

Jon Lovett: Right. And the evidence he cited wasn't there. We have, similarly, this for other examples of people that seem to have been rounded up because they had tattoos that rubbed an ICE officer the wrong way, including a tattoo for autism awareness.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. That guy, that was the gay barber? Was that the gay barber?

Jon Lovett: No, the gay barber had a crown that said mom and a crown that said dad.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. It's evil. It's evil. All of it. Well, good for John. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. It's really kind of a dark time at the same time. It's tons of material for us to talk about and tons of things to get up in arms about what's going on. And we've got a lot to get to today, including Trump giving the middle finger to the rest of the world via tariffs, with these sweeping new tariffs, which seem ridiculous. And every economist on all sides is pretty perplexed about the whole thing. And plus, what's next for TikTok? But first, President Trump is probably told his inner circle that Elon Musk will be transitioning out of his administration in the coming weeks, according to Politico. The White House is denying the report, with Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt calling it garbage in a post on X. Elon also weighed in on X saying it's fake news. We'll get to Elon's role in Wisconsin election in a bit, but the big picture of Elon is indeed beginning to step back. What do you think about the move and the timing, the 130-day tenure as special government employees do to end in late May, early June, whatever that is? It might be time for him to focus back on Tesla. The company shared its dramatic numbers this week, dramatically bad. Sales plunged 13% in the first three months of the year, the largest drop of deliveries in history. Nobody wants it. Obviously, these protests are counting, but also the fact they don't have any innovative cars. What is, from your perspective, what's going on here with their communications? And then what happens when he's not in his orbit and stops the day-to-day government business that he's doing? And what will happen to Doge when that happens? In Scott's absence, just to finish it up, I'll note he predicted Elon's exit and the end of Doge just a few weeks ago. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: Scott Galloway]: I think he's basically going to pull a Vivek and just slowly fade away out of, and I think Doge is going to die a quiet death because he has, it looks as if his power has been emasculated. And two, he's just losing so much money right now.

Kara Swisher: So talk a little bit about this. What do you imagine is happening here?

Jon Lovett: So I think, first of all, we should dispense with the idea that this is because the 130-day window is up. Because as we all know, Trump has nothing but respect for arcane rules governing when people can and cannot serve. So that's ridiculous. I think it is probably too pat and too convenient for all of us that have found the way that Elon Musk has sort of rampaged through the government to be obviously disgraceful, but also politically unpalatable to say, look, we'll talk about Wisconsin, but he's deeply unpopular. Doge is bringing negative attention to Trump. Trump put Elon out there as a shield. He took all of these hits. And now because he's unpopular, Trump's moving him aside. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to say this was always basically the plan – that he was going to come for a few months, get this thing rolling, and then step back.

Jon Lovett: That said, Elon Musk has drawn so much negative attention to what could have been a far more boring endeavor. He has brought so much negative attention to the kinds of cuts that they might have wanted to make, but probably not with this much fanfare and probably without this much chaos. What is unclear is, A, how much of this can go on without Elon as this singular aggressive figure, and B, how much of what he's already done is so damaging and so complete that really they've gotten what they wanted to get out of Doge and now they can move on.

Kara Swisher: Which is to break everything.

Jon Lovett: Which is break everything, fire everybody. I have a friend at the VA and he was talking about how, yeah, the surgeries are continuing, but a bunch of people lost their access to the computer system because they were fired and then unfired, but they haven't gotten it back. So they're not really able to work. A lot of the chaos, it leaves the headlines, but it's ongoing. These agencies have been hobbled in ways that we know about and in a lot of ways that we don't know about. So it doesn't surprise me that he'd be stepping back. And I also, Trump can't possibly be enjoying how much blowback this is getting and how much is coming on to him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I had talked about the idea of a heat shield that he does, like he wants to do these things and not get blamed. It is interesting that Elon has such bad negatives. I think Harry Enten on CNN said he's political poison for anybody who's near him. And we'll talk about Wisconsin in a second. But Trump has less negatives, even though he's his boss, presumable boss. So heat shields are not the worst thing in the world. Someone, as you said, rampaging through the government. And I think one of the things I had said, when these reports came out and when the Wisconsin thing happened, they were like, "OK, that's it." I'm like, "No, no, he's not. He doesn't care about a failure. He'll just keep... he'll make it not a failure. He'll pretend it's not what you did here. And then he'll move on to his next disaster, this kind of mess." And he doesn't care. I think the issue is making a nuisance of himself, making himself the center. And in Wisconsin, he was by himself. Trump wasn't physically present there the way he often is. And so with Elon as the center of attention, wearing that cheese head, it was kind of like Dukakis and the tank. Remember when he had that picture? Or any of those unfortunate pictures? Or around DeSantis and the boots or things like that.

Kara Swisher: So let's talk about the Wisconsin election where despite spending $25 million, Elon was unable to buy a state Supreme Court seat. You can buy a presidency for $200 million, but you cannot buy a state Supreme Court seat for a tenth of that. Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford handily beat her conservative opponent Brad Schimel, maintaining the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She's replacing another justice who is a liberal justice. In terms of the other elections this week, Republicans did keep those House seats in Florida, replacing Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz, though margins were significantly narrower than in the last election. The strategy of making Elon the enemy was effective in the Wisconsin race. I think he's just irritating. And though he didn't help himself, as I said, with the cheese head hat. What is the playbook? Because he's not always going to be there to beat up on. And of course, on Sunday, he said the entire destiny of humanity hung on this race. But he later said, "I expected to lose. There is a value to losing a piece for positional gain," which I'm calling "downward facing doge." What is happening here? Because I'm trying to sort of like, is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I'm always quite wary, even when these people lose, of how much they actually lose.

Jon Lovett: Oh, it's a very good thing that he lost. He got nothing for that money. They lost the other statewide races as well. I was in Wisconsin in the run-up, and I went knocking on doors. Obviously, that's anecdotal, but we talked to... went to 150 doors. And Elon had made himself the main character. It was what's on people's minds. One example, we were just walking down the street and someone in the neighborhood was like, "Well, what are you knocking on doors for?" And we said, "Oh, we're trying to make sure everybody gets out to vote for Susan Crawford." And they said, "Can you believe what's going on with Elon? They're setting the test list on fire. He's spending $25 million, we're spending millions of dollars in the state." And I think it... again, I would love to say that, "Oh, Elon, this is proof that Elon Musk is political poison." I don't know that. I think what you can say is that in this environment, and this is very good news, no amount of money can overcome the political fundamentals. And Elon Musk is not a persuasive figure to the kinds of voters that Republicans need.

Kara Swisher: The independents.

Jon Lovett: Yeah. He seems to be...

Kara Swisher: I call him repellent. He's repellent to voters.

Jon Lovett: He is. He's toxic.

Kara Swisher: Why is that? Why is it? Obviously, rich guy, rockets, this and that. What has happened here?

Jon Lovett: Look, I think there's the obvious answer, which is he has a terrible personality. And we're getting to know him more.

Kara Swisher: Meaning we're...

Jon Lovett: Yeah. And he's abusing his wealth without respect for our democracy. And I don't mean even... look, he puts out this announcement saying basically he's going to buy votes in Wisconsin. It gets a lot of blowback. He's accused of committing crimes. He changes the language on it so that it's more legally permissible. So he's no longer giving you money for votes. He's giving you money for signing a petition, whatever it may be. But fundamentally, he's flying in to Wisconsin on a private jet to throw money down in front of the populace, like a grand vizier visiting the colonies. And he is cutting in this chaotic and destructive way parts of the government. They may be the parts where they view it as the weakest for Democrats to defend – places like USAID – but they're also shuttering Social Security offices. They're coming after Medicaid. It's a small... I don't believe most people are seeing this. But I do think it's important that this figure who has taken on this vast amount of power, basically bought his way into this role, does it with so little respect for the tens of millions of people that are skeptical of him or don't like him. That if somebody is protesting him, they're Soros-backed. Democrats oppose him only because they are evil and they want to send Social Security checks to undocumented immigrants. That when people are critical of Doge, he claims, "Oh, it is because they're not being specific." Have you noticed they don't offer any specifics? There has never been more valid, specific, clear, focused criticism. Meet David Farenthold. Are you kidding me? You are cutting billions across or claiming to cut billions across this government. We are pointing to specific container ships, holding specific amounts of food, to get you to release it. So there's a total lack of respect for anyone who is not MAGA.

Kara Swisher: That's one of his tricks, by the way. He does that in interviews all the time. "Show me a specific example." And then I have 10. And then he goes, "Show me a specific." It's just exhausting. It's exhausting.

Jon Lovett: And so he is basically not acting democratically in any way that a person would. You can imagine a version of this whole process unfolding where he says, "You know what, I'm going to all these agencies. I'm going to listen to some of the people there. And I'm going to go to the heads of these various departments. And I'm going to say, 'Oh, you have three months, two months, three weeks to give me cuts. And these are the amount of cuts you have to give me. And if you don't give me this amount of cuts, I'm going to do it for you.'" And you can imagine him engaging with people on the actual substance of these criticisms. But he can't do that. He has no aptitude or willingness to do that. And we don't know with Elon, when he goes in front of a crowd and says, "This is a grand scheme to bring in immigrants to turn them into voters." We don't know if he believes that or if he just believes that's an advantageous argument to make in front of the people for whom he has no respect. He burns PR people like you can't believe. And he had some good ones many years ago.

Kara Swisher: But obviously PR is critically important to him. He wants to be seen as the center of attention. He seems like a nuisance. And anything he pretends to be funny when the only person who is funny is his daughter Vivian, who is actually funny. I will just say though, I do think the most important... stepping back from his sort of repellent qualities – isn't that a good word? Very good word. Here's what I think we've learned, and I think this is what's most important even if you can't totally tease the correlation from the causation. We learned that $25 million in Wisconsin did not change the outcome of these races, and Crawford overperformed against other statewide races. And then we learned in Florida, in these special House races, that Democrats overperformed by roughly 15 to 17 points. And what does that tell you? It tells you that there are a bunch of vulnerable Republicans whose margins of victory were well below 15 points who are looking at this and saying, "Hold on, I have a deeply controversial vote coming my way for reconciliation that involves tax cuts for the wealthy and Medicaid cuts. Elon's money cannot protect me from the general." So is it now the choice? Do I side with Elon, prevent a primary, and hope his money protects me in the fall? Or do I side with my constituents, brace for a primary, get through it, and hope my voters reward me for not going along with the Trump agenda? That choice just got a lot harder for some of these Republicans.

Jon Lovett: It is. And I think one of the things that I heard one Republican making is they don't have any game below Donald Trump because I think he's still popular with the people he's popular with, period. And I think that if he's not present, their bench gets real thin and really irritating. Like you've got the charmless J.D. Vance. You've got the sad, soulful Marco Rubio, who looks like a loser. You've got... there's no game. And then crazy Howard Lutnick, he seems like Crazy Eddie from the old days. It just doesn't have... if Trump's not present, it's really hard for them to do anything. And at some point, he's not going to be present.

Kara Swisher: Interestingly, in contrast, as New Jersey Senator Cory Booker invigorated Democrats this week with a 25-hour speech in the Congress against the Trump administration. Booker is now in the record books for the longest speech in Senate history, surpassing Strom Thurmond's stand against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. I have a serious question for you, but first let's listen to Senator Booker explain how he managed not to go to the bathroom for the 25 hours.

[Audio clip plays: Cory Booker]: I talked to a lot of people. I copied some of the things we did for 15 hours. So I fasted for days into it. I stopped drinking water a long time ago. I think that had good and bad benefits. I definitely started cramping up from lack of water. So if some of you saw me really drink nothing, at the end I was just trying to do something to stop my muscles from cramping. So there's just a lot of tactics I was using to try to make sure that I could stand for that long.

Kara Swisher: So a progressive accomplishment of not peeing. But what... why do people like this? It had a huge following. Lots of people watched it. I was sort of surprised by those numbers. It had a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington quality to it. But why do this? Because sometimes, I'll be honest, Booker does a lot of stunts that I'm like... a stunt. But this was a good stunt. I feel like in some ways. And I don't mean to minimize it by saying stunt, but it is what it is. He's trying to garner attention and get focus.

Jon Lovett: Yeah, it's a good stunt. I too was... I thought it was a good idea. I was glad he was doing it. I'm glad to see when anybody is basically trying things to try to grab attention in this chaotic media environment. I was also blown away by the number of people watching it, the amount of clips that were circulating because of it. And it just speaks to the fact that there is a huge hunger among the majority of the country that does not support Donald Trump that are looking for people who are going to fight, that are going to respond to the moment, to the scale of what we're facing with a sense that this is a different time and we're going to need to treat this differently. And we can't just go along with business as usual. You can't... the plan can't be to vote for the continuing resolution and then go on your book tour. That's just not the world we're living in. This is a dangerous moment. And you want to see leaders that reflect that. And this is a... look, it is a stunt, right? Because ultimately it doesn't have any impact, but it does draw people's eye to what is happening in our political system. And he is doing something that required him to sacrifice and to go through some... sounds like a fair amount of pain. And good for him for doing that. And I think a lot of people will see moments from it, see his passion in it, hear some of the different arguments he was making. I thought he did a great job talking about Social Security and Medicaid. And look, I think a lot of times Democrats are skittish about how to thread the needle because on the one hand, they view Trump as an existential threat to democracy. But on the other, they hear from the consultants and the polls and genuinely believe that where their best argument is day to day is on the ways Trump is going after Social Security, Medicaid, health care, the basics, the services and programs people rely on. And I thought he did a really great job of articulating both of those arguments, and specifically around look at all the chaos, look at all the destruction he's bringing to our democracy. What are we getting for it?

Kara Swisher: What are we getting? Does that raise his profile as a presidential candidate going forward? I mean, he's always been bandied about as that. I'm sure it does.

Jon Lovett: I'm sure it does. Everybody... is he running for president? Is there any senator that isn't in their minds in some way running for president?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It was interesting when I was in Michigan, a lot of the students were asking me who was going to run. I was sort of surprised. I'm like, "Oh, I don't know." And then maybe go through the various and sundry people. It was interesting. They certainly are interested in looking over the Democratic Party in that regard. He definitely raised his profile.

Jon Lovett: It's funny, even as you asked that, I'm such a political fiend. And for whatever reason, I have just no appetite for that right now. First of all, because it feels so far away. And also, I don't really think there's much you can do to kind of handicap this race right now. Anybody who wants to be president has got to be somebody... and Cory Booker did this, great... has to be someone out there in the fight showing that they understand the politics of this moment, that they have a passion and a rage in them to protect the country. And that's what I'm looking for. My one sort of feeling about it is I am so not interested in the kinds of planning and maneuvers that are about building a profile and carefully managing the rollout. That is from another era and I'm just completely not interested in it.

Kara Swisher: It really is, right? The book, the this, the that. No, thank you. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what works. Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, it's Trump against the world with these new tariffs.

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Kara Swisher: John, we're back and recording on the day after Liberation Day. Do you feel liberated?

Jon Lovett: Yeah, so this is sort of a boxing day for Liberation Day.

Kara Swisher: President Trump unveiled his latest tariffs, the most expansive yet, at the White House on Wednesday, with the help of a giant poster board. He's imposing a 10% tariff on all U.S. trading partners as well as double digit. He's calling them reciprocal tariffs. They're not, just so you know, about the worst offenders. He seems to... nobody thinks these are good things. And the math is like nuts. The EU faced 20% tariffs, Japan 24%, South Korea 26%, and China an additional 34% on top of existing tariffs of, I think, 20%. Russia conveniently didn't make the cut. Trump also is slapping tariffs on unexpected places like some uninhabited islands in the Antarctic where only penguins live. People are having a good time with that. The EU, China, and others are already planning retaliation. He's been very flip-floppy on tariffs, sort of red-light, green-light, which caused chaos, and now he just dropped the bomb. He really did essentially drop the mic. The markets opened just a little while ago. The S&P dropped 3.4%. The Dow fell 1,200 points, more than 2%. And the Nasdaq is down 3.8%, big numbers. A number of sectors are getting hit. But in terms of tech specifically, things are looking rough right now for tech, particularly because they're so invested across the world. Apple's down over 9%. Amazon down 8%. NVIDIA down 6%. Alphabet down 4%. U.S. tech companies are becoming collateral damage when it comes to retaliation, getting hit with fines, restrictions, and new taxes by major markets worldwide. They also have obviously interconnected with so many different markets. What do you think of this rollout?

Kara Swisher: Peter Navarro is back, my friend. He's back and he's crazier than ever. Trump's building a wall and we're all going to pay for it is I think what's happening. Larry Summers posted this and he's, I don't think, a famous economist and former treasury secretary and somebody who is not hyperbolic, saying that a crude estimate of Trump's tariffs puts the projected loss at $20 trillion, or well over $200,000 per family of four. Then he walks through how he reaches that very conservative estimate of the damage.

Jon Lovett: They're not reciprocal tariffs. People were baffled by the number. I'm not an economist, but people looking at this are sort of scratching their heads trying to figure out what this number is. And they realized that it's not based on the tariffs of these other countries. It's a crude calculation based on the trade deficit with these other countries, and not the trade deficit on goods and services, but just the trade deficit on goods. Even the administration itself admitted that it was too hard to actually calculate for every country what the reciprocal tariffs would be, and so they came up with this ridiculous formula. The hope has to be that these fake numbers are just an opening bid in a negotiation.

Kara Swisher: Chris Murphy had that in his—I'm going to read from some of it. Chris Murphy, who's been very vocal, just like Cory Booker, the senator. "Those trying to understand these tariffs or economic policy are dangerously naive. The tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy, a means to compel in loyalty with every business that will need to petition Trump for relief," which many people are. And what he was saying essentially is that this gives him power. And the reason he can is because he's taking control of spending and taxation into his own hands and rewarding loyalty and punishing dissent. Our own revolution was spurred by the king's use of heavy taxation on the colonies to punish our push for self-governance. The king's message was simple: stop protesting and I'll stop taxing. What do you think is happening here? Besides, even Scott Bessent looked like an idiot, and I don't feel like he is.

Jon Lovett: I think Trump has believed since the 80s, the last time he formed any new ideas, that tariffs are good and that we have trade deficits because other countries are taking advantage of us. He has been pushing and pushing and pushing to do sweeping tariffs. He was stopped in the first term by cooler heads. There are many ways in which what we're seeing with Trump is a kind of extreme, bizarro version of a normal pattern with first and second term presidents, which is in the first term, presidents work for the White House. In the second term, the White House works for the president. Presidents figure out where they can get more control. They feel more confident in exercising the power. They feel like they belong there. They no longer feel like they're imposters. And so all the people that would have stopped Trump from doing this, they're gone.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Jon Lovett: It's a different set of people. But he has more responsible people. I mean, I think they all look like idiots today, but he has more responsible people on economics than he does, say, running around the FBI or HHS. But Trump wanted to do this and nobody could stop him. They put together this half-baked, cockamamie plan involving a ridiculous calculation to create these charts. Nobody is really crossing the T's and dotting the I's, which is why we're taxing penguins. And the end result is this chaos. That said, I think the point that Chris Murphy is making is a really important one. He has a lot of grand language there. Trump knows. Trump likes using his power. He likes the way it feels to exercise power. Congress has given way too much authority to the president on tariffs. He puts these tariffs in place. And all of a sudden, Republican House members are lobbying him. Businesses are lobbying him for relief. Countries are lobbying him for relief. And even if you view it, even if you take the most generous version of it, which is not that he's doing this to destroy democracy, but doing this to create leverage, the question is, what does he do with it? Can he use these tariffs, say, on agriculture or to provide relief for these tariffs on agriculture to rally votes for a bill, for example? I do think this is about power. I do think this is about control. But I also think he genuinely believes that tariffs are good.

Kara Swisher: Implications right now, right at the beginning of this, obviously the stock market's down, obviously Wall Street's screaming, so are farmers, so is everybody screaming essentially. I think we just don't know. It's interesting because we talked about this on Pod Save America on Monday. And look, there's a lot of hyperbolic partisans talking about how the markets are crashing, the markets are crashing. And they weren't. They actually weren't. They were down, of course, but year over year, they were up. And the question was why. And it seems like what we've learned today is nobody really believed it would be as bad as what they announced. And I still don't think we know. What we have to watch unfold is, are we seeing the beginning of a truly disastrous long-term tariff policy? Or is this an extreme version of what we saw when he first put in place the Canada and Mexico tariffs, which is he talks a big game, but if he gets concessions in quote or pushback or just fake concessions like a fentanyl czar or a press conference in which the Mexican president announces policies she had already put in place months earlier, will he lower them? What does he want to reduce these numbers? The hope has to be that because these figures are so ridiculous, like he's calling them reciprocal tariffs. How does Vietnam—they're being asked to reduce their tariffs that don't exist below? This is about a trade deficit.

Kara Swisher: And I think the one thing that's not being noticed is service tariffs, service issues, because that's tech companies. And we are in not a deficit. We're in quite the opposite where we have the advantage there by, I think, $300 billion. We're in a surplus in that regard. And now Europe is going to target the McKinsey's of the world, the cloud business of whoever, Microsoft and whatever. And so we have a real vulnerability in the service, which is why you're seeing the tech companies get so whacked here.

Jon Lovett: Look at just the Canada example. Trump rails against this: "They're taking advantage of us. This trade deficit, this trade deficit." But if you take away fossil fuels, if you don't look at oil and gas, we have a trade surplus with Canada. They're our biggest customer. This is supposed to be to help domestic manufacturing. Domestic manufacturers, a lot of their customers are around the world. They're going to take a huge hit because of this. The other big problem here is even on Trump's own terms, the fact that nobody truly believes or can know whether these will be upheld consistently. How is anybody going to plan to build in America? How is that possible? Why would you build a factory when you know that, A, you don't know that these tariffs are going to stay in place? And even if they do, you know that America is going to be isolated from the rest of the world. It's actually just another example of the chaos and incompetence makes them fail even on their own terms.

Kara Swisher: But Doge is going to end up costing the government money because of how ham-fistedly and stupidly they've done this, getting rid of the IGs, getting rid of the parts of the government that figure out what's effective and what's not. Firing the best and the brightest, the new and excited people that have just been hired, the people that were just promoted, the lawsuits that will inevitably come that will cost the government millions and millions and millions of dollars, billions of dollars. Who knows? Same here.

Jon Lovett: Yeah, I think we know now how he bankrupted his casinos.

Kara Swisher: I just feel like we have such insight into why his businesses are so shitty at the same time. I'm going to move on really quickly because one of the things, another podcaster, Joe Rogan, thinks the Trump administration's deportations are horrific. Because now, even the thing that he polls strongest on, which is immigration, he's starting to get pushback there. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: Joe Rogan: "You got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons. This is kind of crazy that that could be possible. That's horrific. And that's again, that's bad for the cause. Like the cause is let's get the gang members out. Everybody agrees. But what's not innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs? And then how long before that guy can get out? Can we figure out how to get him out? Is there any plan in place to alert the authorities that they've made a horrible mistake?"]

Kara Swisher: Sounding somewhat reasonable for Joe Rogan, although you watch the penny drop slowly with this guy. The administration has acknowledged a deported man, for example, with protected status to El Salvador because of an administrative error and says they can't get him back. They can invade Greenland, but they can't get him back from people who are paying. Again, same thing, haphazard. People do not like the haphazard nature of a lot of these things. The tariffs, this, the rollout on things that he actually polls well on, immigration for example.

Jon Lovett: Yeah, look, forget the politics. What they are doing is despicable. It is despicable. It doesn't serve public safety. It doesn't serve the goal of immigration enforcement, border security. As Rogan points out, it doesn't serve their own agenda. It's just cruel. It's just evil. And there's just not been enough. Rogan has had more moral clarity than a lot of Democrats on this who have scared themselves into believing that if they're talking about immigration, they're falling into a trap, as if the American people cannot handle a position as simple as: we believe in enforcing our immigration laws, but we have to have due process because government makes mistakes and everybody has rights. That's not that complicated an argument.

Kara Swisher: The other part of this, and Liberation Day is now obviously we're glib about it and they've mostly used it to mean tariffs, but they don't just mean tariffs. Stephen Miller has used it to refer to immigration as well. Do we believe that the administration is going to ramp down deportations? Do we believe the administration is going to maintain this level of deportations? They are building towards greater and greater deportations. Do we believe the number of mistakes will go down as they do this more? Of course not. And the judge, one of the judges that was looking at this, said that the Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act in World War II because she points out you could accidentally sweep up somebody who's here legally, who's a citizen. They would have no ability to seek recourse. They end up in a gulag in El Salvador, and now they can't get out. Now the government is claiming they don't have the ability to bring them home.

Jon Lovett: Yeah. It's just like a movie. I keep feeling like a Sylvester Stallone movie. I feel like I've seen these. I'm an aficionado of all these kind of movies where someone's in a prison for the wrong reason or they get swept up into something silly and then they're stuck.

Kara Swisher: I mean, look, this example. They keep saying, "Oh, we were deporting the most dangerous members of Tren de Aragua." This Andres, the gay hairdresser. He was not being helped. When he came for an appointment, an asylum appointment, he thought he was going to be deported until he found himself in this nightmarish situation. He has not spoken to his family. He doesn't know that right now there are people angry and fighting for him. He is in a nightmare. He is in a country that's not his own. Think about it. His head has been shaved. He's been there for weeks. There's no outside. It's torture. We're torturing these people. This is not a deportation. This is a kidnapping. The government has kidnapped these people. And then meanwhile, Kristi Noem poses in kind of torture porn, essentially. Her outfits are strange and...

Jon Lovett: In her Rolex.

Kara Swisher: Not just the Rolex, the outfits themselves. The super shiny shoes. I'm like, what are you doing? Modified Nazi? What's happening? What's the fashion? Think about the inhumanity that is required to stand in front of a group of people that are forced to be there to film this kind of fascist porn.

Jon Lovett: Are you surprised in any way?

Kara Swisher: I am surprised, actually.

Jon Lovett: Really?

Kara Swisher: I'll admit to being—well, when I saw it, it was surprising. I couldn't believe that they were doing it. I believe there are a lot of people who like it. I'm not surprised that there are a lot of people who liked it. But I am surprised by how quickly we've gotten this low to have the Secretary of Homeland Security basically making Viet Cong style propaganda.

Jon Lovett: Do you remember the movie Network?

Kara Swisher: Of course I remember the movie Network.

Jon Lovett: This reminds me of this. Can you believe Network is 50 years old? It's completely pertinent. Everything on there, we've done. It's unbelievable.

Kara Swisher: It's unbelievable how good Network is. They're going to start broadcasting executions. That's what I see. We talk, that's sort of a sci-fi trope, the idea of national broadcast of executions. This was one step in that direction. Absolutely. And it's just the whole nine yards of it is, and they won't fix it because they're incompetent also. They're incompetent and cruel, which makes it different.

Jon Lovett: Well, think about it. Yes, they are incompetent and cruel. And the most dangerous force in any society is an incompetent, cruel bureaucracy. A bureaucracy that doesn't know what it's doing and doesn't care who it hurts. In history, it is the most dangerous force. And it starts with these unsavory gang members. And the next step is a wider roundup that gets a bunch of people that they'll point to as being awful human beings who were glad to get out of the country, who how dare Democrats try to protect. While meanwhile, as part of these sweep ups, you end up with legal residents, visa holders, students, citizens. Citizens who don't look like a Norman Rockwell painting, who have tattoos, have accents, maybe don't speak English as well as they would like, who look like the kind of immigrants they want to deport.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jon Lovett: That's where we're heading. And as they're doing that, they're accusing people that do vandalism of being domestic terrorists.

Kara Swisher: Exactly. Do you imagine that it's from—you have to think about it from a political point of view. Is there a good political point of view? Because people can feel it. People are like, "Wait a minute, that could happen to me." I think that's really what gets it. That seems strange. And people have that trope in their heads of people being unjustly grabbed and sent somewhere. It's very familiar from movies and history and things like that. Do you think it's an effective tool for Democrats to push in on?

Jon Lovett: So we have increasing evidence that Donald Trump maybe not only outperformed among recent immigrants but maybe won recent immigrants. There are more and more stories of people who can believe that their family members are being impacted by this. "That's not the kind of immigrants I thought Trump would—not my wife, not my husband. I thought he was going to go against." The leopard ate your face kind of thing.

Kara Swisher: Right, right.

Jon Lovett: And I hope people see that and feel that in the same way people voted for Trump and some of his positions on trade poll well in the run up to an election, and then they watch tariffs unfold and people hate it. They don't like it. They learn through the public debate and come to a new point of view. Public debates still do manage somehow, despite ourselves, to educate people about the substance of issues. My deeper hope is—you see a lot of hand-wringing coverage about how Trump's turning us into Russia and Trump's turning us into Hungary, but we have an advantage which is that America is still filled with Americans. We are an individualistic, rambunctious, rebellious, freedom-loving group. And if even after years of anti-immigration propaganda and misinformation and caravans, Americans still largely are against draconian immigration policies. If you look at the polling, people want sensible—it depends on how you ask it. People still want those positions. People still obviously believe in due process and people believe in the Constitution. And so we just have to make this real for people. And it is unfortunate that it does require playing defense and watching Trump do these things and then using those as examples to make it real for people.

Kara Swisher: Right, right. Well, I think it's that "it could happen to you." Absolutely. A friend of mine was in local news. And I said, "How do you like your marketing is so interesting, like on everything." And he goes, "Oh, it could happen to you." That trope that they do in local news, like no matter what it is—killer bees, it could happen to you. Mold, it could happen to you. And it was very effective in getting people to listen to things. So that's what I thought: it could happen to you. And I think people then—that's what Joe Rogan was doing. "Wait a minute. I have tattoos. Just a second here."

[Break]

Kara Swisher: All right. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the latest in the bid for TikTok. I know you're fascinated with TikTok, Jon.

Jon Lovett: I am.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Jon, we're back with more news. President Trump is reportedly reviewing proposals for TikTok this week. The administration is said to be considering bids from Blackstone, Oracle, and Marc Andreessen. Amazon threw in a last-minute bid. It actually makes sense. It's probably not a top contender, but Walmart was in the last go-round here. Oracle was, too. The TikTok ban requires no more than 20% of TikTok or its parent companies owned by foreign adversary countries. So they're thinking about letting ByteDance stay in for 19%, apparently. I'd love to know, you use TikTok a lot, correct? You have—well, I'd love to do a day in the life of your For You page. But what do you think is going to happen here? There was an interesting story which I think there's sort of a pall that's been cast over TikTok on this, like where it's going, who's going to own it. A lot of people feel that if they don't get the algorithm, it's not going to be as good as a product. It's lagged a little bit recently, maybe I'm wrong about that, but it feels like it a little bit, that creators aren't putting their shoulders into it the same way. Maybe I'm wrong about that. But how do you imagine it's going to happen here? I thought Elon might get a hold of it. Maybe not a good idea to give it to Elon right now from a perceptible point of view. He seems busy.

Jon Lovett: I haven't noticed any change in the actual use of the app. It is interesting how much this has become Trump's decision. How far down the road we've come. We talk about how he wants to be the main decider on tariffs and wants people to come kiss the ring. That's what we're seeing here. This presumably should be ByteDance's decision.

Kara Swisher: Well, China has to cooperate here. And now with these tariffs, I'm not so sure they're feeling cooperative.

Jon Lovett: But Trump isn't. And there was some hope, apparently on the part of the Chinese, that TikTok was a bit of leverage in the tariff fight, but that doesn't appear to have gotten them anything. I don't know what happens with TikTok. I was pretty upset about the way this all went down. The law itself, because there was very little public debate or explanation about why TikTok was so dangerous. And a lot of the explanations were about the harm it does to people. But people didn't seem to mind if that harm was being done to Americans by Americans. Instagram is awful for young people. I think TikTok can be really awful for young people. So why is it a good thing if Americans do it to each other, but a bad thing if a foreign country does it to us? Why do our own billionaires running rampage through our minds? Why is that acceptable? And so I never thought they made the public case, which is why when all of a sudden they copped the car and TikTok was about to be banned, they did this ridiculous "Save TikTok, thank you, President Trump" bullshit. And it worked. So I really don't like the way this went down. The law itself.

Kara Swisher: Right. They didn't make the case. Many people argue that. They didn't make the case at all. They're just always "a national security threat." Excuse me. Show me your homework. My For You page is recipes and old clips of Conan. A lot of recipes. Got to make the viral Turkish pasta, Kara.

Jon Lovett: Really? Your recipes and Conan O'Brien?

Kara Swisher: Just, you know, among other things. Hot guys doing new kinds of exercises, teaching me ways to lift weights. That's Scott Galloway's favorites too, just to, you know.

Jon Lovett: I think that there's a big overlap between fit, middle-aged men and gay guys. There's a big overlap in what they're seeing, which are just handsome men rocking their delts. Rocking their jails.

Kara Swisher: What do you imagine is on mine? I don't use TikTok that much, but what do you imagine?

Jon Lovett: Oh, I think there'd be—hmm, I think we'd see lesbian talk and gay talk are so separate. They're such distinct universes. I don't know what we'd see with you. Woodworking, clips of Brandi Carlile, that kind of thing.

Kara Swisher: No, no. You'll be surprised. ASMR. I love ASMR. And cooking. I like watching people cook. I don't want to do recipes. I just like watching people. Especially there's one on Threads called Food Porn that I love. It's just like people—I'm a good cook, but I don't do it very often as much as I should, but I like watching other people cook. That's weird. But I used to watch The Galloping Gourmet when I was a kid. I'm not going to go into a job. You remember him? And then he drank at the end. Drank himself.

Jon Lovett: I want to look up The Galloping Gourmet.

Kara Swisher: It was a guy who seemed gay but wasn't. He was like Julia Child, but funnier. I used to watch him cook all the time. And then he'd always drink a bottle of wine by the end of it. And it was very amusing to an eight-year-old.

Jon Lovett: When I was a kid, the Food Network launched. And everyone was like, "That's got to be a joke. How can you fill a whole network with food content?" And the answer was, you can. And it's great. It was ahead of its time. But I used to watch the Food Network with my mom.

Kara Swisher: I bet you like Paula Deen. I bet you secretly like Paula Deen.

Jon Lovett: You know, I was at Jeffrey Weingarten's. Remember Jeffrey Weingarten?

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah, of course.

Jon Lovett: He said, my mother and I used to joke about this for years because he said, "Fava beans are very in right now." And that's just something we said to each other for years. "Fava beans are very in right now." They are never in. They've never been in.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, what do you think the resolution is going to be? Make a prediction.

Jon Lovett: I think one of these deals is going to be the deal and they're going to—it's going to basically look the same at the other side of it. And the user experience will roughly be the same, but there will be this sort of change in ownership. It's a nothing burger. It's owned by a lot of U.S. people. U.S. people own a lot of this thing. And then it's not going to be any more protected if there are problems with China.

Kara Swisher: And I, unlike you, believe there are indeed abuses by the Chinese and they're a little different. I believe that. Mark Zuckerberg is dangerous, but I don't really want the Chinese government also up in our grill in this way because they have different goals besides just fucking us. They want to fuck us and beat us kind of thing. But I think that it's going to be more dangerous than ever in those regards from a national security point of view. And they won't solve the problem. And then everyone will make money. The same people you're complaining about. But we'll see. I don't think Elon will be part of this, but maybe he will. Maybe he'll get in. He's such a nuisance, he'll probably try to get in there.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: All right, Jon, one more quick break. When we come back, we'll be doing some predictions.

[Break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Jon, let's hear a prediction. Do you have a prediction for us?

Jon Lovett: I do have a prediction. I'm actually re-upping a prediction that I made before the election, but I want to make it here because I want it on the record. I said this last year, which is that if Donald Trump won, Eric Adams would end up in the cabinet. And I just want to lay that down once again. I believe that that is the end result of a lot of this. Because he'll lose the mayoral election. He just announced today he's going to be an independent. And he's already started the suck-up process with Trump.

Kara Swisher: What job will he get? Who are they going to take out? Kash Patel?

Jon Lovett: I always thought he was a natural for Homeland Security.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you know, Kristi Noem. That's it. That's a natural fit for him. But I could see him at FBI, too. We'll see. Depends on how long Kristi Noem lasts.

Jon Lovett: Oh, my God. They're all moving here.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of moving here, I'll tell you what I'm pretty pissed about. Supposedly, Elon's leaving. I don't think he is. He's such a nuisance. He's going to stay. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg bought a $23 million mansion in D.C. So he's here, too. I moved here, Jon, and they followed me here. The stalkers that they are, they're all here. You got to get close to the king. And it's all the bad ones. The ones I liked are not here. The bad ones are.

Jon Lovett: If America is going to go from having a democracy to a court, you got to be near the court. That's true. I get it. Honestly, although $23 million seems cheap for a house in one of the big ones.

Kara Swisher: But he was supposedly lobbying Trump to avoid the antitrust trial. I'm not so sure that's going to work. Because ultimately, as dislikable as Elon has become, Mark Zuckerberg has always been dislikable. And I think he polls—all those polls show they still don't like him at the White House. They still don't like him. But anyway, he's here. I'm so excited to see him at brunch or over drinks at Cafe Milano. Do these people leave their compound? Are you going to see him at the restaurants?

Jon Lovett: They just don't leave their houses, right?

Kara Swisher: They're not going to leave their house. It's not going to do anything. I mean, unless there's some MMA fighting or something happening, he'll not be going anywhere. But we'll see. I just don't want them here. I'd like them to leave. Already, I'm not thrilled to be here, but here I am. And I actually live here.

Jon Lovett: You're not thrilled to be there? I like it. I like it.

Kara Swisher: You should try L.A. I love L.A. I love California. I cannot get my wife to move us back to California.

Jon Lovett: Put me in. Put me into this debate. I really want to be part of that.

Kara Swisher: I have this beautiful new studio you're seeing behind me. I like D.C. very much. It's very lovely. And you've spent a lot of time here. But I really miss California so much. Just for you, Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles. It's so beautiful. Despite all the problems you've been having lately, it's still—I was just in San Francisco. It was gorgeous. It's wonderful. So anyway, I will not go on about that. Jon, one thing before we go. Is there something you're watching or reading that you love lately? I mean, everyone's talking about White Lotus, obviously, or Severance. Is there anything else?

Jon Lovett: I'll tell you. I've gone back to the beginning of Real Housewives of New York. And it is a joy. Look, when the world is—

Kara Swisher: Are you watching it?

Kara Swisher: Okay. I'm starting from the very beginning. I never watched it before. So I'm going back to the very first season of Real Housewives of New York.

Jon Lovett: I have been resistant, I think from a kind of snootiness to Real Housewives for years. I've always said to myself, I don't like the reality shows. I like competitive reality shows, but I don't like the true Bravo.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Jon Lovett: And in hindsight, that was me hurting my own viewing. The Real Housewives are incredible. And I do believe it is hard to understand Trump. People call up talk about him being a reality show because of The Apprentice. But that was a competitive show. You really need to understand Real Housewives. Now that I see it, it is a great way to understand how Trump operates and the way these women use conflict to draw attention to themselves.

Kara Swisher: Oh, all right. You love it. It's a joy. That's interesting. So go rewatch that. I'm going to give the recommendation. Hacks is about to come back. And I love Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.

Jon Lovett: Yeah, they're amazing.

Kara Swisher: It looks hysterical. And I think they're the best pair of—speaking of conflict—the two most fantastic pair that I never expected. So I'm very excited for that to come back online.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: Anyway. Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week with more. And Scott will be back from his college tour. Just so you know, he hung out with my son in his frat yesterday. And I can't wait to hear that story.

Kara Swisher: But thank you so much, Jon. You can hear Jon on Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It every week, wherever you listen to podcasts. They're wonderful podcasts.

Kara Swisher: I will read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Anderjot engineered this episode. Jim McIll edited this video. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Kara Swisher: Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Kara Swisher: And Jon, thank you so much.

Jon Lovett: Thank you.