OpenAI Lawyers Up, Paramount's Messy Merger, and Guest Isaac Arnsdorf

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: I don't know what to say. We have to talk about Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez at the White House state dinner for Japan's prime minister.

Scott Galloway: Wait, hold on. She wore this to the White House? That outfit she wore.

Kara Swisher: I think she looked great. I loved it. I liked that she did it. I have to say, I know everyone's trashing her for it and saying she belongs at Mar-a-Lago, but I just love that she did it. He looked thrilled. I'm liking this couple.

Scott Galloway: There's a couple of reasons I like her outfit.

Kara Swisher: Oh, God. I walked right into that.

Scott Galloway: You didn't even get it. I walked literally. You didn't even get it.

Kara Swisher: It just occurred. I was like, what? And then I'm like, oh, my God. He literally just made a boob joke right in front of me and I didn't hear it.

Scott Galloway: He looks like an 18-year-old who went to prom with the hottest girl who lost a bet and has to go to prom with him. I mean, look how happy he looks. And by the way, I just want to say regarding his midlife crisis, I am so here for it.

Kara Swisher: I am too. I just think it's fantastic. I think the guy is literally—

Scott Galloway: You wanted me to dump on it. I couldn't. I was like, what is wrong with that? If loving her is wrong, I don't want to be right. That's what I have to say.

Kara Swisher: All I got to say is, sometimes divorce is a good thing. Both Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott get to be the people they want to be. She gets to give away billions of dollars anonymously. He gets to buy a yellow Canary, Canary Yellow Corvette T-top and crash it into a hair transplant clinic.

Scott Galloway: This guy is literally like a midlife bomb detonating over and over and over. It's great content. It's amazing.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I mean, it brought a little Trump back to the White House. Good for him.

Scott Galloway: It did bring a little Trump back to the White House. Good for him and good for them. And by the way, I have met both her first two husbands. The football player, I forget his name. Is it Tony Gonzalez? What's his name? He's this big, handsome, articulate, charming guy. I mean, he's just the most impressive man. Whitesell. Who's also like a total fucking baller. Tall, handsome, smart. I mean, okay, what is – she must be literally the most captivating woman in the world. I don't know.

Kara Swisher: Anyway. Oh, my God. I liked it. All the haters, just leave them alone. So what? It's not inappropriate for the White House. I mean, the Trumps were there with, like, blood trees. Come on. It doesn't bring it down. It was fun. Leave them alone. Stop being mean to them. I'll cry. I'll do that crying thing. He's the world's richest man. Jeff, you do Jeff.

Scott Galloway: That was quite a list of people there. Did you see the list?

Kara Swisher: I didn't see the list. I'm totally sequestered right now. I have no insider info.

Scott Galloway: Oh, first time ever I looked at a list. But it looked like a fantastic get-together. And we're sidling up to Japan because of China. Obviously, we're trying to create better relations. But this is who was there. Robert De Niro was there with his new wife, who we just had a baby with. He looked fancy. He looked so sexy. He was dead sexy when he walked in. It was a very sexy dinner. And then they had Christy Yamaguchi, who looked fantastic and looked like she was having a great time.

Kara Swisher: Is she the ice skater?

Scott Galloway: Yes, she is. And she does a bunch of other things. Tim Cook was there with Lisa Jackson, who works at Apple. Jamie Dimon was there.

Kara Swisher: I want to meet Tim's partner. I want to know who Tim's fucking.

Scott Galloway: He doesn't have one.

Kara Swisher: I don't know about that. I don't think he does. He's so big and handsome and rich. I think he dates. I don't know what he does, honestly.

Scott Galloway: He should hang out with Bezos. Bezos will get him laid.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Okay. All right. In any case, I want to talk about Tim. I love how we're not allowed to talk about Tim Cook as if he's a saint. The patron saint of gayness.

Scott Galloway: No. You know who's there? He's a big, handsome man. Tim, you're not getting any younger. Scott is here for you. By the way, I've got a great pickup line for him.

Kara Swisher: I would like to move along.

Scott Galloway: Go ahead. Go ahead. He should say to any hot young man he meets, "There's only going to be seven planets after you see what I do to Uranus."

Kara Swisher: Oh, no. That is such a bad... I hope all the gays come after you for that, and I'm not going to defend you in any way for that one. I'm not. I hope they come.

Scott Galloway: Gays have had her. Just words. Just words. He's not a saint. He's the CEO of a company. He's a big, handsome gay man. Get out there.

Kara Swisher: I'm continuing. Rahm Emanuel, who's the ambassador to Japan, for people who don't know. I did a good interview with Rahm recently. Sean Fain was there, who just had those negotiations over the automakers.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah. The smart union guy.

Kara Swisher: The smart union guy. He was there. I thought that was cool. Doug Emhoff and Vice President Harris looked fantastic. I like when they dress up for these things. She's an attractive woman. I think we look good as a country. It's a White House. It's meant to be pageantry.

Scott Galloway: And I actually think you could pull this off. I got the Fab Pad in Soho. You got the connections. And you got this total, like, woke cred. I think we should do a fundraiser for the president. And I will wear Lauren Sanchez's outfit.

Kara Swisher: Oh. We don't want you back in a dress. Remember, we got you out of the dress.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah. That upset people. You can't do that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you're not wearing the dress. She looks great in it. You would look terrible in that dress.

Scott Galloway: I have more legs than a bucket of chicken. You'd want to wear that dress. If I was a woman, I would have amazing legs.

Kara Swisher: You would look so fucking bad in that dress. That was in my head. That's really mean. Janet Yellen was there.

Scott Galloway: Seven planets.

Kara Swisher: Look, I love a state dinner. I covered them as a young reporter for the Washington Post. I used to have a ball doing those, and I'd like to go to one. We should go to one. I bet we'll never get invited.

Scott Galloway: I'm down for it. You got to work on that. All this fame. You keep talking about all the cool shit you do without me.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I should get an invitation. I can't. This does look like a good party. Which country do we want?

Scott Galloway: What country? Yeah, I know, because it's a state dinner.

Kara Swisher: It's a state dinner. We have it for prime ministers, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to a party tonight at the U.S. Ambassador's House here in the U.K. about sustainable fashion, which I could give a shit about.

Kara Swisher: Right, yeah. Sustainable fashion. We're in a consumption culture, folks.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. OpenAI is going on the offensive as the company tackles numerous lawsuits. And Paramount's possible merger with Skydance is getting a little messy. Plus, our friend of Pivot is Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, who has a new book, "Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy."

Kara Swisher: That's to follow our last one with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. And people liked that interview, by the way. But first, David Chang's Momofuku finds itself in the middle of some chili crunch drama. Momofuku has trademarked "chili crunch," a spicy, oily, crispy condiment popular in Asian countries, after sending cease and desist letters to manufacturers using the name. The brand has been accused of trademarking a generic cultural product. Some critics have compared the move to trademarking ketchup and suggested it's monopoly behavior. A company in Denver previously owned the trademark and sent a cease and desist letter to Momofuku, which instead worked to purchase the trademark for itself. Scott, you're a branding person. What the heck? Chili Crunch? I've seen Chili Crunch stuff all over the place in Asia. And anytime you go to an Asian market, there's a million Chili Crunch things. This seems crazy for Momofuku and David Chang to do. He looks like an asshole. What are your thoughts on this marketing thing?

Scott Galloway: Well, the majority of bad ideas started out as good ideas. Our ability to protect IP is really important. Whether it's someone's likeness, patents, or the chemical context of a pharmaceutical, America's innovation and our economy relies on intellectual property protection and our ability to legally protect it. This has gone crazy. This reminds me of when Paris Hilton tried to trademark "that's hot."

Kara Swisher: Oh, right, yeah. Remember that?

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And someone said, "No, you can't trademark this." The reason we have thoughtful judges and laws is that we can say there is a line here. What's happened is it's been weaponized. Big companies or well-resourced companies send cease and desist letters to everyone for anything that smells remotely similar. They use it as a means of suppressing competition and trying to get unearned PR. For example, Amazon will file a patent for a floating warehouse, which is probably physically impossible for the next couple of centuries, and they will file a patent for a projectile defense shield for their floating warehouse. They do it because they know reporters at Forbes and other business magazines troll patent filings and then write about them. IP protection has taken on all this nuance, including intimidation and well-resourced monopolies. If you get a cease and desist letter and you're a small company, you're inclined to say, "Am I really going to take on this well-resourced company or am I just going to find another name?" But this is an example of it gone haywire. These are generic terms, and I believe the court will say, "Sorry, this term has become generic. You can't own it."

Kara Swisher: This is exactly why I want to talk about this. Even though people are losing their minds on the Internet, it's really important what he's done here. I agree with you. Where do you think it's going to end up?

Scott Galloway: It'll be dismissed.

Kara Swisher: Meaning he won't be able to cease and desist them.

Scott Galloway: No. This will be legal harassment. They'll say, "You have no domain over this name and you should pay back the legal fees for the people where you're creating superfluous..." But it's an issue around the trademark office too, because I think he does own the trademark, right?

Kara Swisher: He owns it.

Scott Galloway: Well, but if it's trademarkable.

Kara Swisher: Right. I can't believe he got the trademark at all. I don't know. This is for IP lawyers, but your ability to encourage people to make the requisite investment in developing important differentiated intellectual property is really important to provide that protection. At the same time, you have to ensure there's a competitive marketplace where people trying to develop their own IP don't bump into IP that's been inflated beyond reasonable protection.

Kara Swisher: All right. Moving on to a more controversial subject: the abortion decision in Arizona. The highest court in the state upheld the 1864 — I'm not kidding, folks, 1864, when Lincoln was president — law that would ban abortion at conception with no exceptions for rape or incest, and put doctors at risk for two to five years in prison for providing abortions. The ruling is on hold for 14 days. It's being sent back to the lower court to hear additional arguments. Voters could overturn the ban, and they probably will, if abortion rights groups are able to get the measure on the ballot. What a friggin' mess here. Carrie Lake is losing her mind because she was for this and now she's against it. She's running for senator against Ruben Gallego in Arizona. Donald Trump recently claimed he wouldn't sign a federal abortion ban. If it comes to him, I bet he does sign it. I think he's lying about that. I don't know if it'll ever get to his desk and if he becomes president. A lot of ifs. But this is nuts. The Republicans keep shooting themselves in their tiny little feet.

Scott Galloway: In a strange way, I was kind of happy to see this because I was worried that people would say, "OK, it's been sent back to the states. People who want to terminate a pregnancy can actually..." I was worried that people were going to think, "Oh, this isn't that big a deal." And I think laws like this bring home in Arizona — which is now technically a swing state — that, Jesus, these people are fucking insane. This has gone way too far. Not only that, I think this has essentially inaugurated Senator Gallego. I think they're going to have a field day with Carrie Lake. This is a reminder that these laws are important and that this isn't a group of people looking to moderate it or have a thoughtful discussion. They're looking for the Handmaid's Tale. I saw this and it's a dangerous game to play, but I was sort of happy because I thought the public in Arizona needs to see just how fucking crazy these people are.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. When they were saying, "Oh, now they got the one," I said, "No, they want the whole thing." You don't understand. They want it everywhere. They don't want it in just states. They want New York not to be able to have abortions. They want nobody to have abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. Trump totally missed the boat on this. There is a place where you could probably get most people to be okay. The GOP has been trying to say they want abortions up until birth. It's not what they want. It's such a lie. They want to be able to have abortions, and no one is allowed to have abortions up until... no doctor will do that. That ad that Biden did was really effective. This woman got sepsis, can't have kids. This is nonsense. This is why I've been saying this on our show. This is a big topic for people, not just women.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of political stuff, hundreds of creators on Threads and Instagram have sent Meta an open letter asking the company to reverse its move to limit the reach of political content. Facebook is running from the room on political content because it's handled so badly every single time before. So they decided not to deal with it. The company's decision has impacted the reach of accounts posting on issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and disabilities. One prominent account covering abortion rights has reported seeing a decline in reach from 10 million to 800. The letter suggests that Meta should let users opt in or out of restrictions rather than making it a default setting. This is a huge mistake from Meta. They just want to get out of a thing they do badly, so they said, "We're not going to do it anymore." This company is constantly shooting itself in the foot. This is their idea of getting rid of political misinformation by killing everybody. Honestly, these people don't have the ability to make a good decision on these things. Your thoughts?

Scott Galloway: For a long time, Meta has said they're not subject to the same liability, not only because of Section 230, but philosophically because they're the bulletin board and they can't control what people put up. That's their argument. But by virtue of the fact they've decided to remove all political content or at least diminish its visibility, they're acknowledging they're an editor. They're acknowledging they're a media company. And I actually think they have the right to do that because they are a media company. But if they have the right to do that, then they are subject to the same laws — defamation, slander, misinformation — that every other media company is subject to. Personally, I don't like it because I love Jessica Yellen's content. It's called News Not Noise, a way to get up to speed in 90 seconds. She tries to call balls and strikes. Unfortunately, because Meta says, "We're just not good at this and we don't want to allocate resources around fact-checking. We don't want to have anything resembling a responsible media company. We'd rather leave the room and not have any of it." Fine, you get to make that choice. But then guess what? You're an editor, which means you're a media company, which means you can be sued.

Kara Swisher: Right. Someone pointed out that if Taylor Swift decides to back Biden, she'd be blocked. Is that political? Yeah. It's friggin' ridiculous. Just because the shitty users are fucking things up doesn't mean you have to hurt the good users who are trying to have good political discourse. Meta, get yourself together and pay the price it costs for being a media company. That's what you are. I hope this convinces people. Recently, I've been talking a lot in events I'm doing for the book. I'm like, they're a media company. Let's stop pretending. They're a modern media company, but they're a media company. If Rupert Murdoch can get sued — and believe me, I'm thrilled he did and lost — they should be able to get sued.

Kara Swisher: All right, let's get to our first big story. Speaking of that, OpenAI and Meta are getting closer to releasing new AI models capable of reasoning and planning, according to a new report in the Financial Times. Both companies confirm they're working on models that will be more sophisticated when it comes to problem-solving and handling complex tasks. The ability to reason would bring the technology closer to artificial general intelligence, where AI has some form of human-level cognition. I don't like to anthropomorphize these things, but reasoning. They have reasoning. It's not human reasoning, but it's reasoning. What do you think about this next step? This is the fear game for a lot of people. Elon Musk, as usual, had to weigh in because he can't shut the fuck up. He said in an interview, "My guess is it will have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year." I think that's probably correct. I had been in a thing many years ago where they said AI was like a dolphin now and it's going to surpass humans and then go way past humans in thinking. I don't think that's the big thing. But do you see any kind of problem with this? Obviously, it's fraught with potential problems.

Scott Galloway: When you say "this," you mean the speed of its development?

Kara Swisher: The speed of its development, which seems natural that this would happen.

Scott Galloway: The author of Sapiens had a really interesting analogy. He said at some point it was just amoebas. Then eventually these amoebas evolved to Tyrannosaurus Rexes, and it took billions of years. He said AI now is an amoeba, but it'll get to T-Rex in about 10 years. I think he's right. I don't think you can slow it down. What you can do is put in place pretty stringent regulation and also bilateral cooperation. We had Senator Warner on, and he said the American public doesn't realize that behind closed doors, there's actually more bipartisan cooperation. I think that's also true of bilateral cooperation across countries. Even Iran, North Korea, and the U.S. come together and say, "Okay, we're not going to have battlefield technologies where we can blind soldiers in a nanosecond. We're not going to try and slow down the development of bioweapons because that could be bad for all of us." What I don't like is the hand-wringing, the posturing, and the catastrophizing. I think we need to play to their greed. Give them economic incentive to help develop the regulation and regulatory bodies. The only thing I ever see these companies react to is money. They pretend to give a flying fuck about the world, and maybe they do in their spare time, but their day jobs are just getting more and more money. Create economic incentives to have the equivalent of an Iron Dome missile shield. There is no reason we can't have defense and guardrails as sophisticated as the missiles are the problems themselves.

Kara Swisher: I agree with you. This new privacy bill from Senator Cantwell — I'll be interviewing her very soon — has a lot of money things in it. There are fees and incentives, which I think is important. And speaking of which, there are legal issues too. Liability is a great cleaner. It's a very clarifying situation for many companies. We're getting some insights into OpenAI's legal strategy. The company has been hit with more than a dozen high-profile lawsuits and government investigations in the last year. The company has hired about two dozen in-house lawyers to work on issues, including and especially copyright, according to the Washington Post. As the Post put it, these actions underscore the new reality: OpenAI is at war. One of their strategies is to paint it as a bulwark against China. I've heard them all. The New York Times has a very significant lawsuit against OpenAI. I urge everybody to read it. The tech companies are saying that training is not the big deal. They're not really stealing. They're just training. They're trying to use fair use and everything else. It's Sarah Silverman suing. It's a whole range of people from The New York Times to Sarah Silverman to authors. And of course, I had my own experience with AI making Kara Swisher books. You'll have that with your book coming out soon. What do you think of where these copyright lawsuits are?

Scott Galloway: My fear is that we make the same mistake we did. The two original sins I see are making the internet ad-supported and not having micropayments. I think that led to terrible places. And two, back in the aughts, we should have bound together — all the traditional media companies should have bound together and demanded that these companies pay their fair share to crawl our data and slice up the block of cheese and then sell it for more money. The thing that brought it home to me: I had dinner with the managing editor of the New York Times once, a guy named Bill Keller. He had to excuse himself early because he was negotiating the release of one of his journalists from the Taliban. I'm like, okay, that's what the New York Times has to do. The New York Times has to negotiate the release of a journalist, and Google just pulls up a dump truck and takes money from us. They don't put their people in harm's way. They don't fact-check anything. We had an opportunity to bind together — News Corp, Condé Nast, everyone, Hearst. I wanted us all to bind together. That was my idea. Then say, "You are not allowed to crawl our content, and we're going to have a licensing war between Microsoft, Bing, which was viable at the time, and Google and anybody else." There was all this antitrust concern, and we fell into the idolatry of innovators. We thought, "No, we're going to make money. They're going to send us traffic." We're at that moment now, except companies seem to be smarter. The only thing I'm worried about is they're being atomized. The New York Times should not be going at this alone. Barry Diller wanted them all to go together.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they did. That's how they absolutely should have done it. They should all be speaking with one voice, similar to the way there's a group representing all music artists that says to KROQ, "If you're going to play The Cure this number of times through the year, you owe us X dollars." It's an ecosystem that works. What's really interesting that people don't think about — and we'd love to talk about this at some other point — is these companies still don't have a business plan. It's got to be advertising or something. None of these AI companies have a business plan yet for how they're going to make it. OpenAI has a bit of a plan. A little bit. A small subscription. But how they're going to make money in the big way is going to be interesting. There's plenty of money if they do it right with these media companies, in cooperation. I think they're going to tend towards not wanting to give them much of the pie eventually. But we should not be giving away the milk for free. We'll see where it goes. I think they're going to win some of these copyright lawsuits, and then we'll see. They have their arguments, and maybe we'll bring them on to hear from them. It would be good for people to get illuminated on what each side is saying.

Scott Galloway: Well, according to Marissa Mayer, it's still early. And according to Sheryl Sandberg, we're proud of our progress, but we need to do better. They're going to deploy the same number of...

Kara Swisher: Yeah, same nonsense.

Scott Galloway: Sam Altman is Sheryl Sandberg with hushed tones. He's very attractive. He's very nice. He gives you the illusion that he gives a flying fuck. He's going to deploy his army of lobbyists, and they're going to try and say it's about progress. They'll use jingoism. "China's AI weaponized warriors are coming for us." They will pull out the same playbook. "We're here to help." And our golden girls, the walking dead Congress, will want to be part of the young...

Kara Swisher: "To Serve Man." It's a cookbook.

Scott Galloway: The same thing, not as bad, but the same thing is happening again. They absolutely need to bind together and say, "You crawl any of our data..." I want to have Tom Petty's "Even the Losers" for our opening song. We can't play five seconds of it. There's no fair use. That would cost $80,000. I looked into it. $80,000 a year. But OpenAI can crawl every article in history off of the New York Times.

Kara Swisher: I agree. All right, we'll see where it goes.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about why shareholders are not thrilled with Paramount Global's merger plan and speak to a friend of Pivot, Isaac Arnsdorf, about the rise of the MAGA movement.

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Kara Swisher: From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and Heavyweight is back. The new season is bigger than ever. Bigger hopes. "I keep waiting for this moment when he says, mom, I get it. I'm sorry." Bigger dreams. "Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This is a real chance." And bigger heartbreaks. "I thought it would be my movie moment. And maybe he would even whisper in my ear, I've always been in love with you." Check out new episodes of Heavyweight on Apple Podcasts.

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. Paramount Global is facing some headwinds in the midst of exclusive merger talks with Skydance Media. That is run by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison. I've done an interview with him. He's a really interesting guy. He does the Star Trek and Mission Impossible movies and Top Gun, too. He's a very successful movie maker. Paramount has currently lost more than one-third of its market value since early December when reports about the possible merger first come out. That's kind of interesting. Shareholders are worried about the deal's structure. It would unfairly benefit Sherry Redstone. The way it's formulated, and we could go into it, I guess. Let me go into it. Four directors are also expected to step down from Paramount's board in coming weeks, according to the Wall Street Journal, because they're pissed about that. There's a lot of rancor. Under current terms, Redstone's National Amusements company would receive over $2 billion in cash from Skydance as the first step of the deal. Then Paramount Global would acquire Skydance in an all-stock deal valued around $5 billion. Very complex. National Amusement controls Paramount Global, and so it would advantage the Redstone family. Paramount also has had a $26 billion all-cash offer from private equity firm Apollo Global Management, who you and I know, Mark Rowan. But they're going with Skydance because it's better for Sherry Redstone. It is. The Paramount board formed a special independent committee to evaluate the company's options. The board seems to be trying to push back on the deal by threatening quitting. But Sherry Redstone has control here because she's a controlling shareholder. So what do you think, Scott? I'd love to hear your thought.

Scott Galloway: There's no doubt about it. Sherry and the bankers have just fucked this up so badly. I can think of the last time a company with this type of assets—and even though it's in a declining industry, this is an iconic company with iconic brands, Yellowstone, everything, cash flow, all kinds of shit—and it's in the midst of merger talks and the stock is off 24%. I mean, you just never see that. What you have here is a dual-class shareholder structure where the one shareholder who can block everything, despite the fact she's sitting on a melting ice cube every day, crosses her arms and says, "No, I want a premium to what other shareholders would get." So the other shareholders have said, "Sorry, girlfriend, we're going to try and block this deal." What's obvious here is that when there's only two bidders and one's a financial bidder, it's clear this is shaping up to be a failed auction. And then shareholders see internal strife. This is not only a clusterfuck, but it's like mom's addicted to diet pills and dad's a pedophile, but the neighbors didn't know. Now everybody knows.

Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. That's a cinematic image.

Scott Galloway: Their dirty laundry is just being aired. This company can't get its shit together. The shareholders are at war with each other.

Kara Swisher: Less moon vests. This company, honestly. There's an interesting warfare. All the strategic players that should own this thing have said, "We don't even want it." And a financial buyer, Apollo, was in there. If Apollo was in there, it means the cash flow alone at the price it's at right now is justifiable, meaning the thing is a failed auction. And then you have Ellison in there. What's going to happen? You're Mr. Dealmaker. What's going to happen here from your perspective? What should happen and what will happen? Because the assets are good for someone. Obviously, Mark Rowan wouldn't be sniffing around if he didn't think it was interesting.

Scott Galloway: It's an opportunity. I think Ellison and Rowan are grownups, and I think they're going to split the baby. I think they're going to end up each taking—I think the thing's going to be sold for parts. I think certain assets will go to one player and certain assets will go to another. She has literally overplayed her hand for five years and no one believes her. She can't bluff. There's only two people in the world who are even interested in this thing right now. And at some point, they're not precluded from partnering and saying, "Okay, I want the studio. You're going to take the cable assets." One's a distressed asset, good bank, bad bank. But I think she has to get out now. If she doesn't get out, the stock's going to go another 30% or 40% down.

Kara Swisher: But she doesn't have to because she doesn't have to, right? So she could hold firm, correct?

Scott Galloway: Oh, sure. She could continue. She can stop shooting herself in the feet. Her bankers, if she has any, they're going to say to her, "If we don't do this, your company is off another 30 or 50 percent next year." Every day she doesn't close a deal, this thing goes down in value.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's been a long—it was worth a lot more five years ago, right? It's just been like a—

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. Nothing ice cubes ago. This was an iconic brand trading at a very strong multiple. Off 24. You can put out a rumor and CEOs and bankers do this, saying there's been an inbound inquiry or we're open to selling the company. The stock pops 10 or 20 percent. The stock's gone down here. So I think this is going to be sold for parts.

Kara Swisher: And who wins, Apollo or Skydance?

Scott Galloway: The answer is yes. Yes.

Kara Swisher: That's a really smart thing. So you think there's—Mark is on the phone to this guy saying, "Hey, girl." It strikes me that this thing has become an ungainly robot built in a factory of lesser robots. It's got subscale parts. They're all assets, but there's not really a ton of synergy here at subscale. I would imagine Skydance wants certain assets and not others, whereas Apollo just wants cash flow. These guys are adults. They're super smart. The bankers and Sherry have demonstrated neither of those things. They're going to split the baby.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, the board move was something else. That takes a lot for—those people are like—that means they're at war with each other. Those people are professional board members. It's Don Ostrop, a whole bunch of people. They don't do this lightly because they love being on the boards.

Kara Swisher: No, it means they're at war with each other. Yeah. They love being on boards and being on private planes and everything else.

Scott Galloway: It means individual board members have lawyered up. They're not speaking to Sherry. It's gotten really fucking ugly. And every board member on this board is regretting going on the board of this thing. And they're now thinking about reputation and getting sued.

Kara Swisher: 100%. All right. Well, we'll see where it goes. Sherry, get with it. Come on. Even if you have control, you don't have control anymore. I think that's pretty much it.

Scott Galloway: I think she should start dating Lauren Sanchez.

Kara Swisher: Well, I'm sure you're going to tell me a dating story about you and her someday. But anyway. Well, you had mentioned Senator Cantwell before. And I just can't comment on it because she and I, you know, we don't talk publicly about our work life.

Scott Galloway: Scott is dating. Fact check. Scott is dating none of these people, nor do they have any interest. And Kara Swisher has asked them.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to be asking Senator Cantwell about that, too, just so you know. It's my job to fact check Scott's dating history. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Isaac Arnsdorf is a national political reporter for The Washington Post and author of "Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy." Isaac, welcome.

Isaac Arnsdorf: Thanks so much for having me, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Earlier this week, we talked about these issues around dictatorships with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. And you're our follow-up because we thought it was important. It's a topic I'm thinking about a lot, especially because I'm thinking about Steve Bannon almost continually, who you write about a lot, which I appreciate for people to understand how important he is in all this. But this is a book where, for once, Donald Trump is not the main character, as I said. It's about MAGA as a movement. Talk about why you wanted to dig into it and why you made Steve Bannon such a big character. It's absolutely correct to do so, but talk about that.

Isaac Arnsdorf: Thank you. The book is kind of like a search to discover Trump anew. He shows up at the very beginning, and then we see people hearing him and trying to contact him, but we don't actually meet him until the very end. Part of that was just like, what else is there to say about the most famous person in modern human history? But part of it is also that I started the reporting at a time when Trump was out of the picture. This was early to mid 2021. He was basically in hibernation at Mar-a-Lago. It was actually the movement, his supporters as harnessed and guided by Bannon, who through their activism at the ground level paved the way for Trump to make this comeback. It was not at all clear or inevitable that we would be where we are now.

Kara Swisher: Bannon is a marketer in a lot of ways. I pay a lot of attention to what he says because he's quite brilliant on communications and marketing. He has a media background for people who don't know it. He was part of a lot of weird things, too, including the biosphere. He's a longtime media executive. He's a little Roger Ailes in that way. So let's talk about a couple of things. You interviewed him several times over the last few years. You write he believes that the MAGA movement could represent a dominant coalition that could rule for 100 years. Sounds very Third Reich in that regard. And I recently interviewed Tim Ryback about how Hitler did a similar kind of revival of himself. So talk about Bannon's role here, especially before and after January 6th, because he's got his own legal problems, obviously, which he has tried to squirrel out of.

Isaac Arnsdorf: There was the first indictment for the fundraising for the wall that he and the other people involved were actually spending on themselves, allegedly. But Trump helped him out with pardoning him for that. That actually really helped him in that moment right after January 6th when Trump sort of disappeared and a lot of pro-Trump voices were getting deplatformed from mainstream social media and weren't getting a lot of mainstream news interviews either. That really supercharged the development of this alternative ecosystem of MAGA media. Bannon really became the sun of that solar system. And it helped that he had the validation of that Trump pardon. But you're also right to think about Bannon. The weird period for Bannon was when he was a White House or campaign strategist. He came on through Breitbart. He came on as a media figure, and so there's something very natural about him as this outsider media figure.

Kara Swisher: One might compare him to Goebbels, honestly. You would in a lot of ways. But also brilliant the way—I hate to compliment Goebbels, but he was brilliant in terms of selling Hitler. Talk a little bit about what his role is. His role has developed. He obviously was on the outs, and then he was in trouble legally, and then he came back after the pardon. He has his show, "The War Room." I spent a lot of time focused on Steve Bannon, I have to tell you, myself. Talk about what would you say? You called him the sun. How would you explain that a little further?

Isaac Arnsdorf: Well, actually, I literally just came here from the War Room. Before this, I was doing an interview on his show. We're neighbors on Capitol Hill. So I've just gone through the looking glass and back out.

Kara Swisher: About your book. Yeah, exactly. About your book about him.

Isaac Arnsdorf: The case for their story not being—when I first heard that Bannon was telling Trump supporters that they needed to go become low-level officials in the Republican Party, it's sort of like, okay, well, down ballot. But there's a lot of stuff that people talk about online. What matters is, does it actually cross over into real physical political action? What became amazing to me about this story is that I would call around to local party offices all over the country, focusing on the key states, and say, "Are people coming out of the woodwork to be precinct chairs?" which is a nothing position that no one's ever heard of. And the answer was yes. That's when I knew that is actually the power of Bannon. What happens on his show doesn't stay on his show. It actually crosses over into action. He's very intentional about that. He is trying to give his listeners a feeling of empowerment and agency. Particularly in that time after January 6th, when many Trump supporters were so confused, disillusioned, and disoriented about what happened, that guidance was crucial.

Kara Swisher: How do you assess him as a person? Like you were on the show, obviously, I wouldn't say you're friendly with him, but you know him and spend time with him. How do you assess him as a power figure?

Isaac Arnsdorf: He's very smart. He really does read. He reads voraciously. There are times when I feel like it's Steve Bannon's world and the rest of us are just living in it. He understands—he is a generational talent as a political strategist in understanding both the mood of at least a part of the population and understanding how to channel that into meaningful political action.

Kara Swisher: This guy is such an interesting character. What do you think his endgame is? When he's with people he trusts, and he's not a young man, and they say, "What is your endgame here? What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish?" If you were to try and look into his soul or his head, what do you think the endgame is for Steve Bannon?

Isaac Arnsdorf: There was a point in the reporting where he said very explicitly to me, "I'm not in the rebuilding business, I'm in the tearing down business." He views history as a cycle of building up and tearing down, and he wants to be an active agent of that tearing down so that something new can be rebuilt. What he has in mind is redefining the two-party system. So instead of having two national pluralistic parties, you'll have a left-wing globalist elitist party and a right-wing populist nationalist party. He thinks that's a rubric for the nationalist party to dominate.

Kara Swisher: Of course, he's using the word nationalist, which has its recriminations. So he doesn't want to be there. He just wants to burn down the world. I always say some people just want to burn down the world. They want to change it. I'm like, no, no, no. They want to burn it down for the next thing. How does he react to that idea that people are kind of onto him on that thing? I don't think he cares, correct? He'll talk to you, right? I wrote him once, he wrote me back in five seconds. It was really something to see. You don't usually get that from figures because he's got his finger on everything. He knows who everybody is, correct?

Isaac Arnsdorf: As a media figure, he appreciates the importance of media. He's not one of these people around Trump or like Ron DeSantis who really believe we make stuff up and we're the enemy. He's much more like Trump in the sense that he is dying to use us for his purposes. He is unapologetic about using terms like nationalism. Nationalism is a hell of a drug. But he is a little bit sensitive about this idea of ending democracy. He points out accurately that this precinct strategy, what the Trump supporters are doing, is using the machinery of democracy to try to achieve their political objective. But it's important to understand that democracy often ends not at the end of a rifle, but at the hands of its elected leaders.

Kara Swisher: Democracy. Hello. This is precisely what the Tim Ryback book is about. It's that Hitler used democracy to end democracy. That's nonsense what he's saying to you. Anyway, Scott, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: What role is he playing in the election for 2024?

Isaac Arnsdorf: From what I understand, he is not the campaign CEO like he was in 2016. He is not frequently in touch with Trump himself, like other advisors. He is in touch with some members of Trump's team on a fairly regular basis. But it's helpful to Trump to have that little bit of critical and plausible distance while at the same time you have Bannon as a laboratory for developing the movement that fuels Trump.

Kara Swisher: One of the things he called Trump was his instrument. When he saw him coming down the escalator at Trump Tower, it feels like he thinks Trump is not dumb, but that he's just the instrument to getting what he wants, correct?

Isaac Arnsdorf: He thinks that Trump viscerally understands the aesthetics of power and how to make himself a vehicle, a vessel for the grievances and desires of a lot of Americans. Trump has the charisma, the fame, and the stature to do that. But Bannon and Trump have slightly different goals. Everything for Trump is about himself. When Bannon describes him as his instrument, he's talking about trying to channel the movement into an institution of the party where it can transcend the limits of being a cult of personality around a single leader and actually achieve the durability through the party structure that it would need to be a hundred year regime.

Kara Swisher: That's why it's not going to work. Just FYI. Anyway, it's been a busy week for Donald Trump and his legal team trying to put a stop to the hush money trial. It's not working. It's slated to begin next week. He loves to do those delay tactics. I know you've been following all that. I just would love you to talk about the Trump legal issues helping him with these MAGA supporters that you've been chronicling.

Isaac Arnsdorf: There was an amazing moment where I happened to be at a cigar party on the sidelines of the Georgia State Republican Convention.

Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. That sounds like fun.

Isaac Arnsdorf: It ended up being the night where Trump got indicted the second time. I was in the position of being with these Trump supporters when they were finding out in real time, or even in some cases being the one to break the news to them, and seeing how they reacted. It helped me understand because for people outside the movement, there's a sense of, "What is relatable about paying hush money to a porn star or mishandling classified information? How could that be something that anyone else could think could happen to them?" But if you believe that's all made up politicized charges, planted evidence just to stop him from his political opponents, then you see it as, "What chance do I have if they can do that to him with all his power?" These were people in the Georgia Party who knew people who had been subpoenaed or charged because of January 6th or the fake electors investigation. It was personal to them. There was a way in which there actually was something very powerfully relatable about the sense of alienation. The supporters very strongly identify with Trump when you see him in all caps truths about, "How can they be taking away my businesses? How can they be putting me on trial? This is so unfair."

Kara Swisher: It's the grievance industrial complex, I call it. As you've gotten to know Bannon, how did it change your view on politics in America?

Isaac Arnsdorf: The only way that I ever became comfortable understanding what happened in the last few years was to understand it in a much longer timeline. There was actually a lot of continuity between what we call MAGA and the dawn of the modern conservative movement with Barry Goldwater. The issue was that it was systematically marginalized by the Republican Party for many decades. It made an outside attempt with Pat Buchanan and with the Tea Party, but it never until Trump had someone with the charisma, the resources, the fame, and the wherewithal to mainstream it. That, to me, was the only way it made sense, how this could spread so far so quickly, was to understand that it was actually something very deeply rooted in American political culture.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely. They never got their chance, really. And now they've got their guy. He's right about the instrument part. It is a lot of marketing, too. And tapping into long-held feelings by not much of the country, but enough of the country, about grievance and being left out and left behind. And beyond that, it's never your fault. That's the other part, which, of course, it's never their fault. They could never imagine they did anything wrong that deserves this kind of treatment. But it'll be interesting. So do you have any predictions about what's coming with this, where it ends up? Does it have the strength? We were just earlier talking about the abortion thing. There's a lot of hits it's been taking. At the same time, it still continues to have remarkable resilience. When you're looking at it, I'm not asking you to make a prediction, how do you feel about its resilience?

Isaac Arnsdorf: I think there are two sides to that coin. The way that the party infrastructure is more unified and consolidated behind Trump is a huge asset, especially as an offset to the mess of his legal troubles and the RNC's finances. Whatever's going on with that campaign, the fact that you've got the field organization out there in the party and it's full of really die-hard Trump supporters is meaningful. The flip side is that Democrats, and the book deals with this strand of the story also, how Democrats and some anti-Trump Republicans figured out a way to use an anti-MAGA message effectively to wedge off Republicans who are uncomfortable with MAGA and what they see as how the party has changed and gotten more extreme. That's an underappreciated story about how the midterm results were so favorable to the Democrats. That's key to understanding the bid that the Biden campaign is making. It's a vanishingly small slice of the electorate, but it's going to be a close election and that could be decisive.

Kara Swisher: I've always been amazed how, and Bannon does this beautifully, how much losers can pretend they're winners and convince you that they didn't lose. They've lost everything over the past couple of years, and they continue to act like they're the biggest winners ever. That's a strength of Bannon. Don't believe your lying eyes. Anyway, this is a really important book. There's several books recently that I think are really substantive. Isaac's is one of them, which is called "Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy." Thank you so much.

Isaac Arnsdorf: Thank you.

Kara Swisher: That's Steve Bannon. I watch him carefully, Scott. I really do.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: I pay a lot of attention to him. Anyway, I really urge you to read this book. He's someone we think of as an unmade bed and kind of a schlub, but he's certainly not. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

[AD BREAK]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, before we do predictions, I just want to note some news that just came in. O.J. Simpson has died at the age of 76. His family posted a statement on X. "During this time of transition, his family asked that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace." The Simpson family. I don't know what to say. I have no regard for him, so I don't want to say rest in peace. I don't know. What do you think?

Kara Swisher: I think he's a murderer and I hope he suffered. Took two innocent lives, was exonerated by a jury that fell into the trap of identity politics and incompetent prosecution. Go straight to hell, boss.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think I'm with you on that one.

Kara Swisher: All right, let's hear a prediction.

Scott Galloway: Well, on that note.

Kara Swisher: We're so... I was at a thing the other day and I said someone should die. I think I was talking about Alex Jones because he's so heinous. And someone's like, "You shouldn't wish death on people." I said, "I think I shall. I think I shall."

Scott Galloway: Anyway, let's hear your predictions. I'm not going to kill him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, no, there are some people that deserve one retirement plan.

Scott Galloway: My prediction is super boring. I think big bank stocks are about to kick off their earnings tomorrow when this releases with J.P. Morgan. I think they're going to beat their earnings expectations because their stocks, what had been priced into their stocks was the assumption that interest rates were coming down. And big banks kind of live and die by their net interest margin. They loan out money for mortgages at 7% and they pay you kind of 3% or 4%. That margin is where they make the bulk of their money. People are assuming the interest rates they were going to have to offer people because inflation was declining was going to come down. It hasn't. In addition, there's been some consolidation. Some regional banks have gone out of business. There's also been a flight of capital from regional banks who are worried about an SVB-like situation into the biggest banks. So you're also seeing the IPO markets come back a little bit. I just think it's champagne and cocaine for these guys. Despite the fact they have actually outperformed the S&P and had a great year, I still think they're going to continue to outperform and they're going to surprise the upside this week.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they also, though, were looking for a rate cut. They look like they're not getting one. For some reason, Jamie Dimon's been a little irritating lately in his pronouncements. Have you noticed that? There's been a lot of pronouncing, and he was wrong the first time about where the economy was going. Now he's sort of gloom and dooming it.

Scott Galloway: It's impossible.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: I think he'd make actually a pretty good Treasury Secretary. He's going for it for whatever administration. He's sucking up to Trump and sucking up to Biden. He was at that Japan party with Mrs. Sanchez yesterday.

Kara Swisher: Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Oh, really?

Kara Swisher: Mm-hmm. He's on the list, but we're not.

Scott Galloway: We must have just barely been cut out.

Kara Swisher: Barely. But I am going to the embassy on sustainable fashion. I wonder, should I?

Scott Galloway: You know, if I got a White House state dinner, I'd have a hard time picking between you and Amanda. I would. I kind of want to go with you in a weird way.

Kara Swisher: You know it.

Scott Galloway: Amanda, I'm sorry, but Scott would be... That would be like, we'd get arrested.

Kara Swisher: Oh, yeah, no, that'd be fun. We would get arrested. I feel like we'd be wandering. It'd be bad but good. We'd be wandering around and then go up. Somehow we'll be up in the residence. And then go to jail.

Scott Galloway: Stealing the china.

Kara Swisher: Stealing things. Stealing the branded china. Sorry, Amanda. I may have to take Scott if I can run.

Scott Galloway: Putting pastries in my purse.

Kara Swisher: Yes, exactly. You're not wearing the dress. What would they do? There's nothing they could do. They'd arrest us and put us in jail.

Scott Galloway: There's nothing they could do in a woke White House. I mean, us and the J6 hostages would be in jail.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Fuck those people. They broke the law. They should go to jail. This White House of a jail. I mean, you're the only date I've ever had to the White House. You and Tammy had a... We had a good time. You dressed up. You were such a good boy. You were such a good boy there. Let me just tell you.

Scott Galloway: I was very intimidated.

Kara Swisher: You were on your best behavior. When the Secretary of State stops and goes, "Kara Swisher," and I'm like, "Jesus Christ." Jesus, maybe I should be nicer to her.

[Transition]

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

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, this is such a good substantive show today, I think. I like it a lot. But before we go, we're nominated for a Webby Award, and we need you to vote for us at the link in the episode description. We're in second. We need to get to first place. But anyway, we'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot.

Scott Galloway: Vote for us for the Webby. Desperate for other people's affirmation. Daddy is addicted to other people's affirmations, so please feed my habit.

Kara Swisher: In any case, read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griven. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Milsa Verrio. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot for New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at newyorkmag.com. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Rest in peace, Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Thank you.