More Twitter Drama, Amazon Post-Pandemic, and Guest Jon Favreau on the Midterms

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And of course, I sound a little sick. And of course, Scott takes the day off. Scott Galloway is out celebrating his 40th birthday. Okay, sure. So today I'm joined by the host of NPR's Marketplace podcast, Kai Rizdahl. Welcome, Kai.

Kai Ryssdal: Hey, Kara. It's so good to be here.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I love your voice. It's so good. I love your NPR voice. Thank you. So you also are a very, very good business reporter, et cetera. And it says here that you hate scripted banter, so we're not going to do that. But I would love to know what's going on in Marketplace.

Kai Ryssdal: Oh, so the economy is the story, right? If you look at all the opinion polls, something like 45% of people say economy or inflation is the story, which is our sweet spot. 100%. So, you know, our reporters and me, we're just going out and talking to people, right? Because the through line of this economy is, look, the data is fine. The data is great. But unless you know what people are experiencing in their daily lives, then nothing matters. I just got back from Buffalo, huge reporting trip out there. We got reporters all over the place just finding out what's going on because that's what matters, right?

Kara Swisher: And what's the mood from your perspective? Is it about housing or price of gas? Because gas has gone down a little bit, but it's not as up as it was.

Kai Ryssdal: But look, you see that in eight-inch high letters every time you go to work and you're thinking about gas. I was in Buffalo, as I said a minute ago, and I asked a woman running a small business, tiny restaurant, literally started it out of her kitchen. Now she's got a storefront in Buffalo. And I said, look, if I say inflation to you, what do you say? And she looked at me and she said, true. I mean, that's it. That's the whole deal for almost everybody out there. And we know that, but it's infecting people deeply and substantively in every part of their lives.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And in terms of being frustrated about it, do they blame anyone in particular? There's so many—it's too hard to be complex, right? You can't go to Ukraine plus COVID plus supply chain plus—

Kai Ryssdal: They don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear Ukraine and COVID, right? They just want to say, what are people going to do about it? What is the government going to do about it? How am I thinking about this for the election? What's it going to mean for me? I have tough time putting food on my table. What am I going to do about it? You look at food expenses, right? They're up like 13% over a year. That's fundamental for everybody.

Kara Swisher: Right, right. And especially if you're running a small business like this woman you're talking about. Do you see anyone who is concerned about anything else but that from your perspective?

Kai Ryssdal: No, I think, you know, if you go to the fringes of each party, you'll find the issues, right? I mean, I think if you go to the progressives, they've got Dobbs and they've got abortion and social welfare and things like that. And if you go to the right, you've got immigration and whatever else goes on in the right on this party.

Kara Swisher: Election denialism.

Kai Ryssdal: Election denial, right? I mean, all of that stuff. But right now in the main, right, people just want to talk about their daily lives. It is literally, I was talking to another woman in Buffalo, and I said, you know, what I haven't heard anybody talk about this week so far is the word recession. And she said, look, why are you worried about a recession when every day is a struggle? Don't bother me with recession. Don't bother me with Jay Powell. Don't bother me with Joe Biden, right? I'm trying literally to get by every single day. How am I doing that?

Kara Swisher: Right, exactly. And I need help from the government. And what help do they want?

Kai Ryssdal: Well, so they want gas prices to be lower. They want all prices to be lower. They want education to be available. They want all the things that make a society function, but are having a tough time getting. And it's a real challenge. And look, politics in this country is arguably broken. And the way to help people is not for people in the mainstream and politicians to be saying, listen, we're going to do this policy or that policy. It's for things like state and local governments to work right because they're closer to the people.

Kara Swisher: Right, which is why they're very different from state to state. If you had to come away with one thing, are they positive about the future or just exhausted?

Kai Ryssdal: Exhaustion on every level seems to be clear. I think people are really tired. But if you ask people about their individual financial circumstances, right, they are generally not optimistic, but they are, listen, I can do this. I'm working hard. I can do this. What they have a challenge with is the longer term picture, right? Are my kids going to be able to get by? How am I going to do when I'm in retirement? Those kinds of things are really top of mind for people, I think, as they go about their daily lives.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would imagine. Well, it's very important that you do this reporting. It's critically important because I think people need to hear it over and over and over again and get away from the noise part of the politics.

[Transition]

Kara Swisher: Anyway, today, Andy Jassy needs someone to save Amazon. Also, Elon Musk sharpens his pitch for Twitter subscribers and his acts, and will speak with Pod Save America's Jon Favreau about what to expect in the midterm elections and beyond. But first, the Fed has raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points for the fourth time in a row. They're still trying to beat inflation down, I guess. This brings short-term borrowing rates to their highest level since 2008. Stocks took a tumble on the news. The labor market is still strong with unemployment rate at a 50-year low. Crazy configuration of statistics. But go ahead. What do you think of their strategy, Kai?

Kai Ryssdal: You saw this the other day in Powell's press conference, right? He is absolutely convinced the Fed is doing the right thing, that they are raising rates extremely quickly. They've gone from zero to almost 4% in something like nine months, which is historically fast. He is not in the mood to do this thing that everybody's calling the pivot, right, to start slowing down the rate of increases. The really interesting thing about Wednesday was the Kremlinology of the Federal Reserve, right? You remember you used to look at the Kremlin wall in Syria and figure out whichever one was gone, right? So what happened on Wednesday was that the Fed put out a statement, and I'm going to get a little weedy-ish here, right? But the Fed put out a statement that said, we will take into consideration the lag with which monetary policy acts, right? And that's a throwback to Milton Friedman, who famously said, monetary policy acts with a long and variable lag, which in English means when the Federal Reserve changes interest rates, it takes a long time, six to nine months to trickle through the economy, right? And so the Fed yesterday, after everybody saying, listen, you need to slow down a little bit because there are deflationary things coming, housing, right? Rents are coming down, deflationary things are coming, and you might be squeezing too hard too fast. The Fed in that statement said, we get it. We're listening. And you saw the markets react. They went up, right? And then Powell comes out and in essence says, no, no, no, no, no. I understand that that's what we had to say to get everybody on board the statement, all the members of the Federal Open Market Committee, right? And it was a unanimous statement, which is not rare, but it says a lot that they got everybody to buy into this statement, right? Powell came out and said, no, no, no. Not only are we going to keep on raising rates, but they're going to be higher for longer than a lot of people had thought. And I think the Fed now is like, we're not screwing around. We are not screwing around.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. The party people are now not the party people. The punch bowl has been taken away.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. Well, he owned the punch bowl. He filled the punch bowl.

Kara Swisher: Right, right. It was Mr. Punch Bowl. And now he's Mr. No Punch. That's what I'm going to call him.

Kai Ryssdal: That's what I'm going to call him. Yeah, Mr. Punch Bowl.

Kara Swisher: Mr. Punch Bowl. Anytime. So continuing. This is going to continue these rate hikes.

Kai Ryssdal: Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. So next meeting is 13, 14 December. It's going to be at least a half percentage point, 50 basis points. That would be news, actually, right? If they slow down just a little bit, that would be huge news. But it's going to go on for a long time. And Powell said on Wednesday, he said, it's not about when we start slowing down the rate of interest rate increases. It's about how long they go on and how high they eventually get. And he's talking, you know, now four and a half, five percent. And they have gotten much higher than that.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. And look, and you can see it now, right? I mean, if you look at housing, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 7.1% now. I can't move now. I'm not, there's no chance I'm moving.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I got in at the low rates. And the Dow is reacting in a middle way. I just, it sort of doesn't quite know what to do, it feels like.

Kai Ryssdal: Well, I think, you know, the Dow and the rest of the indices, while, and I have to say this, right, stock market's not the economy. It's a really good indicator of where the big companies are going and what people think about it. And so far, it's been a tough year, but I think there's some stability in there now. And there's some bottoms being found.

Kara Swisher: Yep. Except in big tech, right?

Kai Ryssdal: Right. Or maybe they're just like everybody else. It turns out they're not immune to gravity.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, CVS and Walgreens have tenderly agreed to pay $5 billion each in settlements related to their role in the opioid crisis. Thrilled about this. The deal still needs approval from a majority of plaintiffs, including state and local governments. Both companies say payment is not an admission of wrongdoing. I say that. Walmart also reportedly pays $3 billion to settle similar lawsuits. I have been fixated on this story for a long time. I've read everything, watched every show. I followed all this stuff, whether it's Patrick Rodden Keefe or Barry Meyer writing those amazing books, and obviously Dope Sick and all the other things, and all the various and sundry Sackler things. Talk a little bit about what this means that they're paying this.

Kai Ryssdal: Well, so look, I think actually if you pay $5 billion, you're kind of admitting wrongdoing.

Kara Swisher: Yes, you are.

Kai Ryssdal: Let's just say that, right? So this drug has been a scourge on this country. Hundreds, thousands of people have died. And the idea that these companies now are saying, well, here's some money and I hope this makes it okay, is kind of not okay. Is it going to affect the companies and their bottom lines? No, I don't think so. I mean, these are multi-billion dollar companies and they've got a revenue stream. So it won't have an impact on them, meaning.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, look, might it change their behavior? Sure. But in terms of actual punishment, I don't think-

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. Parking ticket.

Kara Swisher: Right. $5 billion is couch cushion change, right?

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. Exactly.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the numbers should be so much higher. You'll add a zero to every one of these, and that's where you begin with a lot of these things.

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Kara Swisher: Lastly, New York's pay transparency law is not working the way it's intended to. The day after the law was implemented, companies added salary ranges too broad to be interpreted. Amazon had listings with a range of 80 to 180,000. The Wall Street Journal had listings ranging from 40,000 to 160,000. And Citigroup had multiple listings with a range of zero to 2 million, which they later claimed was a mistake. I assume the zero one. What do you think about pay transparency and pay quality?

Kai Ryssdal: It's an interesting question. I am fully in favor. Full stop.

Kara Swisher: Explain why.

Kai Ryssdal: So first of all, let's be clear, right? My salary is a matter of public record with the Internal Revenue Service because of where I work and the amount of my salary. So we should get that out there. But I think the idea that somehow keeping everything secret is a better way to do business and as a way to get people motivated and keep them attracted to wanting to work in your company is just misguided, especially when we've got century, I was going to say decades, but it's centuries of pay inequality, both on gender and race, also location. I think if you want people to have faith in the system, right, which is at a very low bar right now on every single subject in this country, I think you have to make the system visible to them. And transparency is one way to do that. And look, pay matters. Pay matters. It's a motivator. It's how you put bread on the table. And if you can't have faith that what you're making is equal to the person sitting next to you, then what are we even doing? I don't know.

Kara Swisher: Or explaining why the person sitting next to you earns more, having the employer explain that. I think one of the things is employers use that, and I only was one for a very short time, not to motivate people. It's that if you keep them in secrecy, I never thought it was a very good idea. It seemed demotivating.

Kai Ryssdal: You're right. But it's to keep people like not against each other in some fashion.

Kara Swisher: That's not what I was doing, but that's what it does, right? It does keep people because you don't know what everybody gets.

Kai Ryssdal: Right. Right. And I think that's a real problem.

Kara Swisher: Go ahead.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. And then, you know, the whole gendering of how people get higher pay is really challenging, right? I mean, And a lot of women just won't ask for what they deserve. They will not. And I just, you know, if this tips that balance so that now women are empowered to ask for what they deserve, then that's a net positive.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, 100%. At Google, there was a lot of people putting their salaries in at Google, for example, in different places. But you're absolutely true. Just managing people, men ask for more money. It just was. I hate to be a cliche, but it really was true. It was really fascinating. And everyone doesn't quite know what they're worth, you know what I mean, or understand. But there needs to be transparency in explaining why you make decisions you do much more clearly, I think. Anyway, I'm glad I'm not a management anymore. That's all I have to say.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, let's get to our first big story. The pandemic is over for Amazon stock. Obviously, Amazon did very well in the pandemic. Amazon shares fell sharply this week, erasing gains made since the onset of the pandemic. Now, Amazon's market cap is below a trillion dollars. The drop comes after Amazon essentially told investors Christmas is canceled. It issued disappointing projections for the fourth quarter as it deals with lower consumer demand. How important is Amazon to the larger economy? Can we say as Amazon goes, so goes the nation? What are your thoughts on this?

Kai Ryssdal: Well, so look, we can say it, I suppose. And Amazon is, you know, the second biggest retailer in this economy, right behind Walmart. And we all, those of us who order from Amazon, and obviously not everybody does, but there's something incredible about being able to click on your computer and have it show up in your doorstep the next day. The catch, of course, is that the party's over, and Amazon, I think, hasn't recognized that yet, as a lot of companies haven't. As we shift from goods to services in this economy now and experiences that we can travel and do all that stuff, I was just looking up their share price. It's down like 50% year on year. And that to me, I don't know, is a big warning sign to Andy Jassy, right? Andy Jassy comes in the other day at their earnings announcement and says, the macroeconomic environment is really complicated. And literally the only thing I could think of to say was, yeah, but the reason he gets a zillion dollars to run this big company is to be ahead of that and to figure it out. Right. And so you know, is he going to be able to figure it out?

Kara Swisher: Okay, you're Andy Jassy. Here you are. You have higher costs. You hired too much. The demand is off. No one's home. They're not buying as much, but there still isn't enough stuff, right? Also, there's still lots of different problems, even around baby formula continues to be an issue.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, which is incredible. It's incredible. It's shocking.

Kara Swisher: So what should you do if you were him? What do you do? You have to cut costs really quickly, obviously, but you also want to continue to provide that level of service that you're well known for.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, I think what you have to do is you have to be selectively investing, right? I mean, you have to do some hiring freezes in some areas of the company where you can get away with it, but then you have to lean into those things that are going to keep making you money. And look, we look at AWS, right, is one thing that makes them a boatload of money. So you try to get more there. But then the retail experience, I don't know. Am I going to be pissed if something doesn't show up in a day and instead takes three days? I don't know. I might adapt. I might adapt. So I think you have to think of areas where you can shave those costs, but at the same time, keep giving people those products where, you know, this is a good thing for us to have. And we need to lean into being able to get people to provide that service.

Kara Swisher: Right. And the interesting thing is that they have taught consumers that. Like I bought something. I'm like, what? It's taking two days? Are you kidding me? And then I was called myself. I was like, okay, stop it. You really need to stop it because.

Kai Ryssdal: So this is actually part of the conundrum for retailers in this country has been for years, right? We are unbelievably fickle. We are entitled, right? We want it cheap and we want it yesterday.

Kara Swisher: Yep, yep, yep.

Kai Ryssdal: And so the mess for Jassy and everybody else in retail in this economy is how do you satisfy that at a time when the supply chain is still boogered up, when inflation is still a thing, your costs and your inputs are there. It's tough for you to hire because there are two jobs for every single person in this economy. And if somebody doesn't like working in an Amazon warehouse, they can go out and get another job, right? It's enormously complicated.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. So is it bad if consumers aren't buying as much? I mean, obviously, buy, buy, buy is our national anthem, essentially.

Kai Ryssdal: It absolutely is. And so the old statistic is 70% end of this economy is spending by consumers or on behalf of consumers. So is it a problem if consumers aren't buying? Yeah, absolutely. But we cannot possibly keep on consuming at the rate we're going. And I think, and that's a climate change thing, right? That's a sustainability thing. It's a corporate profits thing. And that goes, it goes, but my favorite Adam Smith quote ever, right? The guy who wrote Wealth of Nations.

Kara Swisher: Please avail me. Scott has no Adam Smith quotes. He has dirty jokes, but he has no Adam Smith quotes. I'm not a dirty jokes guy.

Kai Ryssdal: Anyway, so Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776. He says, consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production, right? Buying stuff, using stuff up is the sole reason we make stuff, which on the face of it makes sense. Right. But if you stop for a minute in 2022 America and on the planet Earth, we can't keep doing it. Sorry, this is kind of a tangent, but it's just not sustainable.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. So what does a company like Amazon do? Find other businesses? What?

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, I think so, right? Invest in rockets and getting off the planet?

Kara Swisher: What? Well, yeah, we're going to get to Elon Musk later, I guess, and maybe putting him on a rocket. I don't know. So look, I think if you were Amazon, you try to train American consumers to think differently. We have now, Jeff Bezos has trained American consumers to want it cheap yesterday and on their doorstep. And I would argue that maybe there's a chance for us, and look, I'm being naive. I get that. There's a chance for us in this moment when climate change, awareness of climate change is really, really high now. We're coming out of the pandemic economy. So things have changed. Consumers are different. Work is different. Home life is different. Media is different. Everything is different. Maybe there's a chance now for people running the biggest companies on this planet. And let's throw Tim Cook in there and Jassy and all the rest of them and say, maybe there's a chance to do things differently. I don't know. God, I sound like Robert Reich and Elizabeth Warren.

Kara Swisher: I like Robert. I like your own. I like Kairos down this way. It's not really anti-business. But what's the one thing Jassy should be doing besides telling us, no shit, Sherlock, the economy is complicated? What should he be doing? I mean, he inherited, you know, Jeff had up and to the right. And of course, that's the way it was going. What would you, is his job at risk? Or do you feel like he's just been as, you know, has been handed a bad deck like Biden has, for example?

Kai Ryssdal: I don't know. I think he's got to ride the tiger a little while, right? He's got to ride the tiger of his share price, of consumer expectations, of his company's profitability. Because, you know, just going back to what I said a minute ago, we're not through the rough patch of this economy and the pandemic. We're just not, right? Supply chains, while there are fewer ships in the port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, right, 25 miles down the road, supply chains are still a mess because everything gets off the container ships, but there's rail and, oh my gosh, there might be a rail strike, right? There are trucking challenges. I don't think he has the capacity right now to do anything. I think he rides it for a while and then goes to my paradigm shifting. You know, let's teach American consumers to be a little bit different.

Kara Swisher: All right. We'll see. He's got a tough road. By the way, it's not Amazon's only problem. Leaked emails show the company's cooperating with the FTC as it investigates whether Amazon misled customers into signing up for Prime. And speaking of Prime, Amazon is extending its subscription music product to all Prime customers. Thank you, Amazon. This is great. Free music. Subscribers will now get access to Amazon Music Library ad-free. Yay. That's a shot across the bow to Spotify and Apple Music. I do pay for, I don't pay for Spotify any longer, but I do pay for Apple Music.

Kai Ryssdal: How come?

Kara Swisher: Joe Rogan thing. I just didn't like their answer. I just didn't like their answer. Like, I just go where I go, you know, and everyone was like, oh, they're just, I'm like, no, I don't have to spend, every time I don't want to spend my money, somewhere people get angry. I was like, I just don't want to, like, leave me alone. You don't have to. I'm not telling you to do it or anything like that. Apple Music works really well. It's a very good product, but I'm going to try out Amazon's for sure. Free is better than $10 for sure. That's a lot of things to give people. I'll tell you that. Is that going to work? I don't know. I don't think it's you can get any music anytime you want, right? There's some limitations on that. Going to try it.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. Look, I'm a little intrigued by your "I'm going to spend my money where I want" thing. Because what happens is, and I'm not the only guy who does this, right? You sign up for the service and you get used to it and you get locked into it. And then it's just force of habit and you're there by inertia. And then you have to change, get your preferences and, oh my God, my playlists and all of that stuff.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. I think all these government investigations are going to wind down a little bit more given how off all these companies are from a power point of view and a financial.

Kai Ryssdal: But you don't think Lena Khan is.

Kara Swisher: No. What are we, two years in? Yeah. And where have we been? That's true. Right away, we're waiting.

Kai Ryssdal: I think it's hard for her to argue that Facebook is a scary behemoth, that whatever the heck it's worth, it's a couple hundred billion dollars, that's it. And I don't mean to say that's small, but it's small. That's small compared to what it was. And it's definitely on its back leg.

Kara Swisher: But anyway, Kai, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Twitter users are holding onto their wallets, and we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Jon Favreau, about the midterm elections and 2024.

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Kara Swisher: Kai, we're back. Elon Musk is adding more threads to the drama at Twitter. Oh, my God. I mean, honestly, this drama queen, I don't know what to say about him. He reportedly plans to eliminate 3,700 jobs or half the company, a move that could come as soon as Friday. After we tape, one of its executives left his schedule public, probably on purpose because that guy is that kind of guy, showing a RIF meetings. He'll end the company's work from anywhere policy. Everyone's going back to work at Elon Musk Companies. That's consistent with what he's done before. Also this week, more Twitter executives abruptly left the company. The chief marketing officer, Leslie Berlin, very nice person. Chief people and diversity officer, Delana Brand. I know all these people. Chief accounting officer, Robert Kydon. And the chief customer officer in the company's highest advertising executive, who just the week before was reassuring advertisers that Elon was there to do good things. And she left, Sarah Personette. She's very well regarded within the ad industry, so that was not good. He may not need executives, ad execs anyway. Ad giant IPG has recommended his clients pause advertising. There's a whole bunch. Coca-Cola, American Express, Spotify, and others are clients of IPG. All right, putting Elon Musk aside for a second.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, okay.

Kara Swisher: All right, just aside, can any company function like this? I mean, you've seen so many companies, Kai. So what do you think morale would be like at Fox or Marketplace if the bosses said, tomorrow, 50% of you are going to be gone? What's the motivation? Am I going to hustle to get a product out? I'm not. You kidding me?

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. I'm going to be calculating my severance and worrying about finding another job. And oh, by the way, about paying my mortgage. I don't think that works. And even for those who are left, the idea that this company now is, I mean, almost literally a chaos agent, right? It's called a chaos monkey in case you're interested.

Kara Swisher: Chaos monkey, sorry.

Kai Ryssdal: How do you go to work every day and why?

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I don't know. And so here for me, honestly, though, is the bigger question. And you've talked to Musk way more than I have, right? But I interviewed him at SpaceX a number of years ago, talked to him at Tesla a number of years ago. And he was, while weird, right?

Kara Swisher: He's always been a weird dude.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: He was a normal human being. A hundred percent. With normal, you know, here's my aspiration for this company and here's why I'm doing this. Coaching.

Kai Ryssdal: Well, look, if he gets all of that right, he changes the planet.

Kara Swisher: But now somehow there's been a switch flipped and he's like a man child who doesn't understand the rules of the road.

Kai Ryssdal: Agreed, agreed, agreed. It's really quite – it's almost unexplainable for people who've spent time with him.

Kara Swisher: I've always enjoyed talking to him. We've argued many times. He has got weird tics and things like that.

Kai Ryssdal: So do all.

Kara Swisher: Well, no, he has more than others. But, you know, really this is not the person – I mean.

Kai Ryssdal: He just goes through these cycles. I don't know what else to say. It's cycles of some sort. And now he's in a very deep narcissistic cycle of sort of Jesus. He thinks he's Jesus or something. I don't really know what.

Kara Swisher: No, I think he thinks, as most rich people do, extremely ridiculously rich people do, I think he thinks that the rules don't apply to him. And as near as he can tell, they don't.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. Yep. Right, right. The SEC doesn't step in. Let's get to the business of it. Does it remind you of the early days of the Trump administration? We've got an executive who got something you probably didn't want, sending proclamations via tweet, haphazardly appointing his friends and relatives to leadership roles. And just like Trump, there's speculation of foreign involvement. The Treasury Department has reportedly requested more information about the foreign investors. Why the chaos? I'm trying to see, is there some genius to this at all whatsoever? Because everything looks like a retread, a stupid idea other people have tried. And very typical turnaround moves, except meaner and crueler and more just random, essentially.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Sorry, I'm just trying to work through the Trump analogy, right? Because yes, to all of those things that you said. I think also, though, and who knows, but maybe he watched Trump do all the things that Trump has done and get away with it and said, you know what? I'm going to try that, too.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Because he is being mean-spirited, right? He is, I mean, look at trying to fire people for cause after he takes over that company, right? And that whole farce, including the CEO and the rest of the C-suite. He is having success because nobody is able to, nobody is willing to, nobody wants to challenge him on these destructive things he's doing.

Kai Ryssdal: And here's one more thing, right? It's not news to anybody that what Donald Trump has done has been destructive to the American fabric, right? And that's not a partisan thing. It's just an observable thing. Although somebody will come after me for being partisan. I would argue that what Elon Musk is now doing with this global communications platform, while it is disproportionately influential based on its size and its number of subscribers, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Kai Ryssdal: It is destructive to the American fabric.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. I think one of the things that's interesting is some people inside, I know some of the people working with him, they're like, well, he's doing something. I'm like, what? What's he doing? Like, what? like cutting costs so he can not lose money, right? That makes sense. If I were him, I'd want to cut costs and not lose as much money as I did. But it's like there's action. And I'm like, oh, okay. Like, I don't think screaming is really a good business plan. Now, some of the ideas, trying to shift the business is not a bad one. Like, but they're nothing fresh. I'm like, this is nothing that someone hasn't suggested, including Scott Galloway. By the way, they're using Scott Galloway's playbook and they call him, Elon called him a numbskull. Like whatever, okay, you're using the numbskulls plan. But one of the things was this updated plan for subscription Twitter product. It was Twitter blue. I bought it and then got rid of it because it was useless to me. I always try things, didn't find it valuable to me. And everyone was like, you're cheap. I'm like, no, why should I pay for something? I don't want to pay for. Like I said users would pay a month not 20 Of course they floated 20 just upset people They see half as many ads I don see any now so okay They get priority in replies mentions in search I don know what that means Subscribers could post longer videos. I don't care. They'll be able to bypass paywalls for publishers who agree to work with Twitter, of which there'll be zero. These publishers have been down that road before, and they certainly don't trust Elon Musk. The one they need to get is the New York Times, and all he does is insult them on Twitter. Why would they do that? That's the one they need because they're the monopoly news organization at this moment in time.

Kai Ryssdal: But what do you think about this? Well, so first of all, I'm not going to pay for it because I just object in principle. Same reason I'm not going to buy a Tesla, right? I don't want to put money in Elon Musk's pocket. I mean, call me superficial.

Kara Swisher: There's lots of other cars out there now, just so you know.

Kai Ryssdal: Oh, I know. And I've got one coming. But look, here's the challenge for me. I have a relatively good experience on Twitter, right? I use TweetDeck. I don't use the normal app. And here's, in my opinion, here's why I have a relatively normal and good and enjoyable, right? I like Twitter. I use it all the time. It's a news source for me. It's a serendipitous discovery thing for me. I make friends and contacts and I've got Twitter buddies all over the place, right? I mean, and it's vaguely profile raising. It doesn't do anything for me in a business sense, but it's profile raising, right? And look, you and I have never met and we're Twitter buddies, Right. But, but look, part of the reason why I have a good experience on Twitter is because I'm a white male with status and a lot of followers. And here's where this is going. I was talking to my wife about this the other day and I said this to her and I said, you know, Twitter, Twitter can be a cesspool, an absolute shithole for so many people, most of whom are women and people of color, but everything's going to be fine for me. And she looked at me and she said, so you're okay being on this platform where your colleagues who are women and your colleagues who are people of color are having terrible, demeaning experiences? And I don't quite know what to do with that. So it's possible I'll leave. I don't know, but I'm sure as hell not paying him eight bucks.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. I think one of the problems is that it doesn't really matter if he makes money or not to him, I guess. Are there any moves here that are good? I mean, just a way, again, leaving him aside besides breaking the product.

Kai Ryssdal: Look, you talked about this a second ago, right? He is doing something. And look, move fast and break things is a Silicon Valley trope. And people are discovering actually that maybe that doesn't work so much. But Twitter as a business has not been great.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It has been super challenged for a very long time.

Kai Ryssdal: What he's doing seems to everybody else not to make much sense. Maybe there's a plan. I don't know. Maybe his buddies who are in the war room with him now at Twitter are hatching something that's going to be great. I don't know. But I think his leash now, his tether, is really, really short. And the amount of time it's going to take for him to drive this product into the ground, I don't think is long.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. You tweeted something the other day. The left and right are mad at me, so that's good. I think he's so reductive. So reductive. It's not the left and the right, you dumbass. Like, that's what I thought when I read it. I was like, oh, oh, so you're right. I'm like, you're still an asshole. You're still being an asshole. I don't know what to say. It's not a plus thing. You're not doing anything right. You're not making it better. You're not making it happier. You're not making it a nicer product. You're driving people to TikTok and et cetera. And one thing that I think is lost among this is two things. If he cuts these costs, gets it to a better number, which you can by cutting – you can cut your costs and then the numbers look better. And advertising doesn't fall off that much, maybe a little bit, right? But advertisers are running screaming. I lost a $250,000 deal on Twitter. I can just say just one of one that was going to be. It was, ouch, that's right. Fuck you, Elon. That's what I have to say. It was great. And by the way, those Twitter employees were all fantastic. I'm sure you're laying them off. They were amazing. They were amazing and innovative and trying new, fresh things. I shouldn't say fuck you, Elon, but actually, really, that was a lot of money, if you don't mind.

Kai Ryssdal: I think that was heartfelt. I don't think you should pull that back.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that was heartfelt. No, I shan't. And we were making a great product, too. That was really good for the platform. So could he clean it up in that way and then take it public again as almost like a meme stock or a fan stock? If it looks a little better, do you see that working on Wall Street given all the different AMCs and et cetera, et cetera?

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, look, I think there's appetite for anything on Wall Street, right? And the upside potential of a social network that is uncluttered and free of and setting Musk aside, as you've tried to do and I haven't really let you in the last 10 minutes, right? Setting him aside, if there's a social network that comes along that is curated, uncluttered, accessible, and not violent or misogynist or racist, then yeah, I think there's definitely a market for that. But I don't know if Elon Musk can get there.

Kara Swisher: What if he does that? Can he, if he, if he even just cleans it up a little bit, not even cleans it up, but just cleans up the finances, could he, could he take it public and get all his fans just to buy his stock and make his money back? That Tesla, Tesla, right? I'm not buying a Tesla, but zillions of people are buying Teslas.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. Sure. He could do it. Sure. He could do it. Yeah. And look, the guy's got great skills. The guy's got great skills. I just don't know that they're being exercised right now in a responsible way.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. The last thing is he's using Tesla, speaking of Tesla, Tesla and SpaceX executives and engineers, which he does at his other companies. How do you do that legally here?

Kai Ryssdal: Oh, such a good question, right? I mean, the day it closed, he had a platoon of Tesla software engineers, right? They froze the code for the Twitter folks, and they brought in a whole slew of Tesla engineers and started going through the code that way. I don't, you know, it's a privately owned company. He can do, I suppose, what he wants, not Tesla, but Twitter.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but Tesla's not. Tesla's not, right. Do they get paid? Yeah, who pays them?

Kai Ryssdal: Great question. Someone has to, right? Because it's a public company. Here's another thing. And, you know, Musk gets a lot of credit, as he deserves, for SpaceX. But Musk isn't running SpaceX, right? Gwen Shotwell is running SpaceX. And she's made some missteps in, you know, her comments about Musk and the sexual harassment thing from a number of months ago. But if he could find a Gwen Shotwell for Tesla and a Gwen Shotwell for Twitter, then I think it could work.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, we'll see. He's got to bow himself out. The people he's picked, I have to say, I have not very much confidence in, as they say. Clever people, but really, honestly, lean towards jerk. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot. it. John Favreau is the co-founder of Crooked Media, a former speechwriter for President Obama and host of more podcasts than me. He's on Pod Save America, Offline and The Wilderness. Welcome, John.

Jon Favreau: Thanks for having me.

Kara Swisher: So I heard you just went through the same thing I'm going through, the RSV, like dance or whatever, toddler sickness.

Jon Favreau: First, we thought it was croup, Then the doctor said it's probably RSV that gave him croup, and now he's mostly recovered, but Emily and I both got a little laryngitis as well.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, me too. Me too. Little kids, man.

Jon Favreau: Little kids. Do it to you every time.

Kara Swisher: Exactly. Let's start off. We're going to each go back and forth asking you questions. The midterms are less than a week away. Tell me what races you're watching.

Jon Favreau: Well, because I'm a political junkie, I'm watching all of them. But Pennsylvania, Georgia are the two big ones, I think, that will sort of... Still. In Nevada. that will sort of determine control of the Senate. Maybe Arizona, too.

Kai Ryssdal: So let's start with Nevada, because I think everyone thought that sort of was locked up. But Adam Lacksalt showed some real strength.

Jon Favreau: Yeah, I think the problem with Nevada is this is less about candidates than about the state and what's been happening over the last couple cycles. So Nevada was the one state where Joe Biden did not improve, the one blue state in 2020, where Joe Biden did not improve on Hillary Clinton's 2016 margin. Right. And part of that is it's a very working class state. There's a lot of a big proportion of non-college educated voters there. And Democrats have been losing those voters steadily. First, it started with Democrats losing white non-college voters. But in Nevada, where there's a pretty sizable Latino population, we're now starting to lose working class Latino voters as well.

Kai Ryssdal: Right. And why is that?

Jon Favreau: Well, so I went out there for the wilderness and I talked to a bunch of working class Latinos in Las Vegas in the focus group. And a lot of them said that, first of all, like inflation is top of mind for for everyone, especially housing. Housing came up in all the focus groups. It's like one of the biggest issues I've heard about, but not a lot of politicians are talking about it. And a lot of these folks were like, I don't think that the Democratic Party is the party of working people anymore. And they don't necessarily trust the Republican Party. So the most common word I heard to describe the Republican Party was extreme. But the decision that a lot of these voters are making is either I don't want to vote at all or maybe I'll give the Republicans a chance.

Kai Ryssdal: All right. What about go through Pennsylvania and Georgia?

Jon Favreau: So in Pennsylvania, I think, you know, Fetterman had a pretty big lead early on and they did a great job of defining Dr. Oz is like sort of a rich, out of touch guy from New Jersey. I think the Republicans dumped a bunch of money into that state. They went really hard on crime attacks. John Fetterman was on the parole board there. And so they ran a lot of ads. And so Josh Shapiro, the Democrat running for governor there, was also on the parole board. And Fetterman and Shapiro sort of split on some of the parole decisions. And so the Republicans used that sort of as a wedge to say, oh, even Josh Shapiro disagreed with some of the decisions John Fetterman had made. And I think that the Fetterman campaign has been, I think it's a really very well-run campaign in the way they define Dr. Oz, but I think those attacks have sort of piled up. And I think a lot of Republicans who didn't like Dr. Oz at first, sort of coming home now, and just, you know, Pennsylvania is a closed state. And so Dr. Oz is going to get most Republicans, and John Fetterman is going to get most Democrats, and it's going to come down to the wire. Come down to the wire. And then lastly, Georgia. And then in Georgia, you know, I did a couple I did a focus group in Atlanta and of younger black voters and asked about Herschel Walker. Just about every single person was like, oh, he's crazy. He's crazy. But then I asked about Warnock and they're like, well, haven't heard much from Warnock. Feels like he just does what Biden wants him to do. And we're upset with Biden because of inflation and because of crime. And so I'm sort of not sure. So they weren't sold on Herschel Walker, but the larger political climate, which is voters being upset about inflation and then especially voters in cities worrying about crime, is sort of pushing against Democrats everywhere.

Kara Swisher: Back up to Nevada for a minute. How did it happen that the Democratic Party became not the party of the working people anymore?

Jon Favreau: Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's like, I think the people I don't think that the voters necessarily buy the Republicans of the party of working people now. But I think that a lot of voters, you know, have been dealing with sort of this struggle with costs, cost of housing, cost of education, cost of health care for a long, long time. I think inflation has now added to those problems. And they look to Washington or they see the headlines and it's like, oh, Democrats passed an Inflation Reduction Act, right? Now, the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act aren't going to take effect for a while. The prescription drug benefit, which is great and super popular, isn't going to go into effect for a couple of years. The climate stuff that's going to lower people's energy bills is not going to take effect for a while. And so they see headlines about Democrats being like, yeah, we fixed inflation. And then they're still wrestling with inflation because they have still gone to the grocery store and they can't afford to pay for groceries. And so there's this disconnect. And, you know, people think that no one is actually fighting for them or working to improve their lives in a tangible way. I think there was also it's also the case that Democrats have focused, I think, rightly on, you know, the Dobbs decision and protecting abortion access and the threats to democracy posed by the Republican Party. And so the fact that those things are in the headlines and not economic issues, or at least they're not hearing that from Democrats outside of the ads that Democrats run. Right. That's sort of widening that disconnect that voters feel with the Democratic Party. over.

Kara Swisher: And Dobbs has not stayed a very big issue for many, or at least the top issue, correct? It's sort of a like to have, not have to have.

Jon Favreau: I think it's what you'd expect depending on the state, right? And so in a state like Pennsylvania, where it's pretty cut and dry, Josh Shapiro wins, abortion will be legal. Doug Mastriano wins, it's going to be banned. So Josh Shapiro has like a 10 point lead over Mastriano because people vividly see the stakes on abortion. I think in other places, people are like, okay, well, I'm pro-choice, but if a Republican wins, at least abortion will be protected where I live for various reasons. And so I think it's, the force of the issue is dependent on where you live and what the race is.

Kara Swisher: Right. But they realize what's going to happen, correct? Why wouldn't it matter as much in Pennsylvania economically compared to that? Why does it matter more in other states than others?

Jon Favreau: Well, it matters in certain states where abortion on the ballot, right? So like in Michigan, right, there's a constitutional amendment that's going to be on the ballot that you can, if you vote for, you can protect abortion. And you can actually tell how this is a powerful issue because Tudor Dixon, who's Gretchen Whitmer's opponent, the Democratic governor there, Tudor Dixon was like, well, you know, you can vote for this constitutional amendment to protect abortion if you want, even though I'm against abortion, and still vote for me, for governor.

Kai Ryssdal: I see. Oh, so she's even pushing that. So the House goes to Republicans. What can we expect there?

Jon Favreau: It looks like just endless, hearings, correct? Endless hearings, investigations, and potentially a debt-selling crisis. They could provoke a debt-selling crisis if they don't get cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Kai Ryssdal: And then what about the Senate?

Jon Favreau: Senate, if Democrats keep the Senate, Joe Biden can continue to nominate judges and confirm judges and move the judiciary sort of back towards the center from the far right. And he can also nominate people to fill the government if Republicans control the Senate. I think most judicial, no judicial vacancies get filled. And I think that Joe Biden will have a very hard time nominating anyone or confirming anyone to work in his administration. At all, whatsoever. Even under McConnell. They'll just block everything.

Kai Ryssdal: For who? For whose benefit? Trump's?

Jon Favreau: To make the government seem like it's broken, which redounds to the benefit of the Republicans, The Republicans are the party that says that government you know can run a one car parade Right It for it for power That what it is Right I mean you know And they know that voters ultimately don pay attention to like the intricacies of what happens in Congress And they'll just blame Joe Biden and say, oh, we have a dysfunctional government. It must be Biden's fault.

Kara Swisher: Right. So so, John, given the stew of Dobbs and inflation and the political paralysis that we have now in this country, take me back to your speechwriter days. Is there anything you'd have done different for the last like six, eight months?

Jon Favreau: Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, look, I think, you know, larger economic and political trends are what they are. And there's only so much you can do. I will definitely stipulate that. I was around in 2010 where we lost a whole bunch of seats because we passed. We were in the, you know, coming out of a financial crisis and had just passed the Affordable Care Act. We all thought it was worth it anyway. But I do think that Democrats going forward are going to have to really focus their message on fighting for working people and on economics and on the economy, because that is the struggle that most people feel in this country. And I think we are now a party that is mostly college-educated voters. And for those voters, most of them, not all, but most are more economically secure than non-college voters. And so I think we often forget sort of the real struggles that people are facing. And we say things like, why don't people understand that abortion's at risk? Why don't people understand that democracy is at risk? Why don't people understand that these Republicans are extremists? And the truth is, a lot of people do understand those things, but they just, they can't get by. You know, I've seen this woman in Vegas and she's like, I want to protect abortion access and I want to ban, you know, assault rifles. And I'm afraid to send my kids to school. She's like, but I've also moved motels five times in the last three months because I can't even afford rent and I work two jobs. And that to people is the bigger emergency right now. And Democrats, it's not just about a list of policies that will help that. It's about sort of organizing the entire party around that mission to help working people succeed.

Kara Swisher: Well, who represents that? Because it's interesting, because I think about it like, none of this is an indulgence, but Democrats focus on democracy, extremism, anti-gay, anti-abortion, the extremists on the Republican Party, and hammer that home very heavily, heavily, heavily. The top leadership certainly does. And Biden just did in a speech, essentially about democracy and political violence. The Republicans are hammering home their own indulgences about censorship and killing babies and whatever they happen to have, or trans people teaching critical race theory in schools and peeing on children or in whatever. Whatever, that's their indulgence. It's like they need, they can't stop going down that. Both of them are a mistake. You know, not the mistake. The first one is not a mistake. Both of them to stress them and not the economics parts. Um, but how do you get out of that? How do you get out of that idea of getting people to think about that, even though the, it is very important about democracy and political violence and et cetera, et cetera.

Jon Favreau: Yeah. It's, it's, it's the challenge of our time. Part of it is there's a media issue, right? The media tends to cover, uh, cultural issues more than economic issues. That's just sort of the way it got. Look, in 2012, even before we knew that Romney was going to be our opponent, we wanted to define that election as an election about the middle class and about the economy. And we knew that that would require tremendous discipline. Everything we said, every ad we put out, every time Barack Obama got up, he talked about this is a defining moment for the middle class. He said it over and over and over again. And then we were fortunate to get Mitt Romney as an opponent who was sort of embodied the Republican Party that we were trying to define. He looked like the Monopoly guy. He looked like the Monopoly guy, so it worked out. But it takes a tremendous amount of message discipline to focus in on that message. And look, I don't think that the Republican, all the Republican stuff about critical race theory and all the stuff that, all the indulgences that they, you know, they talk about all the time. I don't think it works for them beyond their base, right? I talked to a bunch of voters in Virginia who voted for Joe Biden and then voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin. And I asked them about critical race theory. Most of them were like, oh, we disagree with Glenn Youngkin on critical race theory. We think that's crazy. We just don't think Terry McAuliffe represented change and we're pissed about the grocery tax. And so we decided to give him a try. So I don't think that their culture war bullshit is working very well on the Republican side beyond riling up their base.

Kara Swisher: And angering liberals, obviously.

Jon Favreau: And angering liberals. Right. We take the bait and we get mad and then the fight becomes about these cultural issues and the economic debate gets lost.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah. What do you do with this, right? I mean, you guys spent a lot of time on Pod Save America being prescriptive and all that. And I guess my question is, do you think it's harder now for the Biden team than it was for you guys in 2012, given social media, given the state of play, given 2016 and 2020, you know? And social, definitely social media, the ability for Carrie Lake to become famous or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who would have been a nobody.

Jon Favreau: Yeah, it is so, so, so much harder. And I think one of many Trump effects is he has sort of set the expectation that the president of the United States is going to be part of the constant communication and information flow that all of us operate in all the time. And so I think that whereas, you know, even in the Obama administration, we say like, oh, we don't want to put the president out all the time. We want to like just have him speak on special occasions because otherwise sort of now I think you actually you now you need to do it all the time. You need to communicate constantly. And I think that if I were in the Biden administration, I would want the president out even more. I think the party needs communicators who are out there all the time talking, talking on Twitter, talking on all social media platforms everywhere. And not just in the way that, you know, you put out a tweet that sounds like it's a fucking press release, right? Like actually communicating in authentic ways all the time.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of that, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, what do you think the impact of Elon Musk owning Twitter will be? I was just talking about that this morning.

Jon Favreau: I mean, I think that it's interesting because if he was nicer about asking people to pay for a better experience on Twitter, you could actually see, like, look, if he's going to charge you $8 just for a blue checkmark that's a status symbol only, I don't think people are going to pay for that. But if you if you presented it as like, OK, this is a better user experience if you pay a couple dollars a month. And I welcome everyone to do that. I think you could you could see some people joining. He is an asshole, though, and he's decided to be an asshole and he's polarized the whole thing. So then now if you pay for Twitter, you're like supporting Elon Musk, who is being an asshole to everybody and being a troll. And so I think that people are either, and some people were saying this today, he seems to be flooding Twitter with more promoted ads now to try to force people to pay. And I think people are either going to pay or they're going to quit. Or just sit there quietly until an alternative comes along.

Kai Ryssdal: Is there an alternative?

Jon Favreau: I don't know. I don't know. I think it's like a probably, this is probably as good a time as any if someone wanted to start a social media platform.

Kara Swisher: Funny. Funny you should say that. Anyway, I have one more question. Anyone to watch in 2024?

Jon Favreau: I don't know. I don't know. You don't know. Wow. No one that I'm watching. Come on. Believe me. I know this is what you're getting from me now is exactly what I say in my private conversation. Right. Yeah. I think I think they all suck. I think that's they all suck kind of thing. I think Joe Biden has done a good job with being given a terrible hand, right? I also think that what I was just saying about the need for someone who can be out there all the time communicating effectively, I think that's important. And I think we have to think hard about who that person is to lead the party forward.

Kara Swisher: Is there anyone you think, is it Buttigieg, Newsom's been out there banging the drum on and on, very aggressive?

Jon Favreau: You know, and I really do believe this. You've got to sort of have a primary to test people out, right? Like, because there's nothing that tests people like a presidential campaign and people who look good on paper once they start running are not good. I think the thing we do about just like looking at people's resumes is looking at people on paper like that doesn't work. It never works. You actually have to test people out, see them out there on the campaign trail, hear them and then see what happens when they get attacked.

Kara Swisher: Oh, I have one more. I still don't know if Trump's going to run or be indicted. Which one?

Kai Ryssdal: Both can be true. I think both.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm with Kai. I think both. I think if he's indicted, actually, it's more likely that he runs. I mean, I think he runs no matter what. I really do. I think that's just everything we know about him tells me that he is not going to just go off into the sunset the way things have been now.

Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, so indicted. As my grandfather used to say, indicted, but never convicted.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, on that note, and we'll go into that story. Anyway, thank you, John. If you want to get involved in these last days before midterms, you can go to votesaveamerica.com. Obviously, listen to John's great podcast. There's so many of them, Pod Save America being the biggest, but there's also Offline and The Wilderness. Thank you, John.

Jon Favreau: Thanks for having me, guys.

Kara Swisher: Good to talk to you, John.

Kai Ryssdal: All right, Kai, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

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

Kai Ryssdal: Okay, so riffing off what Favreau said. This may get me some nasty emails. I think at some point three to six months after the midterms, whatever the result, Joe Biden is going to say he's not going to run in 2024. I think he's going to look—I think Joe Biden is a decent man.

Kara Swisher: Really?

Kai Ryssdal: And I think he truly wants what is best for this country. And I think he will realize that at the age of—he's going to be what, 82, 83 at the next election and the next inauguration—I think he will realize that the job now is beyond him and that for the good of the nation, he needs to not run again. And this is going to take people really close to him. It's going to take Jill and his family, right? And his grandkids, right? Who call him like pops or whatever to say, "This is—you did your job. You did the thing that you set out to do in the 2020 race, right? You got this country on the right foot again."

Kara Swisher: Don't know what—although, honestly, I was arguing with someone the other day who loves him so much. Obama, I was like, Joe Biden's done more stuff than Obama did in all his years, like in terms of passing legislation. It's really kind of amazing and getting people to calm down, although I think it's a nearly impossible task on some level. But that's an interesting prediction. So who is your man?

Kai Ryssdal: So look, I don't have one, right? Let's have that primary. Let's have, as Favreau said, let's have everybody go into the primaries and have it out. Because people who look good on paper don't look good necessarily once you get going. And as you said, right, the vice president, Newsom, Buttigieg, I'm sure there's a zillion more that I can't even think of. And it's going to be cast of thousands up there, right? It's going to be a free-for-all. But that's what I think is going to happen. I think you've got to look at Buttigieg and Klobuchar. That's who I would look at.

Kara Swisher: Oh.

Kai Ryssdal: But I don't know. Maybe there's some governor that we're not thinking about right now.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Newsom's certainly being aggressive.

Kai Ryssdal: Oh, come on. He's all but salivating for it.

Kara Swisher: Yes. No, he said to me, "No, Kara, I've not even thought about it." Oh, please. I'm just telling you. I'm just reporting what he told me.

Kai Ryssdal: You know what's funny is when—so I was at KQED, the local radio station.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you were? I love KQED.

Kai Ryssdal: Oh, yeah, a long time ago. And it was funny because, you know, when you were at KQED, you have some major media outlet in town.

Kara Swisher: It is.

Kai Ryssdal: You could call the Board of Supervisors. And when Gavin Newsom was on the Board of Supervisors, you would call and get him answering the phone and he's like, "Hi, Gavin." And I'm like, "Oh, hello." It was really funny. And now, you know, the man wants to be president.

Kara Swisher: He's still accessible, I have to say. Yeah, he was the mayor when I was living in San Francisco and was on the board. So was Kamala Harris, was the city attorney, if you recall.

Kai Ryssdal: That's right, when you were covering.

Kara Swisher: Okay, I miss San Francisco, Kai. We should both be back there. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about tech, business, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Kai, that's the show. I really appreciate it. I'm an enormous, enormous fan of you and your show and everything you do. I think you're such a high-quality business journalist and such a pleasure to listen to all the time. And I don't say that about a lot of people, let me just say.

Kai Ryssdal: Pleasure was mine. I really appreciate it.

Kara Swisher: All right. We'll be back Friday for more. Could you read us out? I bet our staff would love it with the Kai Ryssdal voice. Better than mine right now.

Kai Ryssdal: Today's show was produced by Lauren Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Endrodot engineered this episode. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to your podcast. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thanks, Kai.

Kara Swisher: You bet.