Signalgate, Auto Tariffs, and Trump's Crypto Empire

Kara Swisher: If you want to know what you look like when you were 17 and you got caught masturbating, that is literally the facial expression of these people.

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

Scott Galloway: And Kara, if you're texting and you see the emoji of a makers in ginger, a guy dancing, an olympic, I am in the chat. That means I am in the chat.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. I am here. I can't believe this happened, like, right after we taped the last show. Let's get right into a fallout from Signal Gate. Some people are calling it Whiskey Leaks.

Scott Galloway: Hold on. Do you like Whiskey Leaks? Whiskey Leaks.

Kara Swisher: Just before we get into the serious stuff, I think people want to hear more about me.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, okay. I'm a little slow today. All right. So I think, as you know, for the first time in my life, I had something resembling a non-outstanding physical where he said, you're borderline hypertensive. I didn't tell you this.

Kara Swisher: Oh, statin time.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, 140 over 80. And I'm like, what? Take it again. I made him take it like eight times. I'm like, sorry, we're not doing a ninth time. And so immediately had my urine, my blood drawn, my fecal matter, like everything uploaded to ChatGPT. And they all come back with the same thing. Drink less. And when they started asking me questions. So anyways, I have.

Kara Swisher: What's happening? What are we going to do? Are we going to dry out clinic with you? What are we doing? What's a fun thing? Can we do?

Scott Galloway: Dry out clinics as a sober person. I don't know what it is. By the way, just a quick side note, I think this anti-alcohol movement is the second worst thing behind remote work to happen to young people. Your 25-year-old liver, the damage or inability to process or ability to process alcohol at 25 is dwarfed by the risk of social isolation and anxiety.

Kara Swisher: Okay, all right. I understand you're looking for a good excuse. It makes sense for me to drink less. Tell it to Pete Hegseth, Whiskey Links, the head of Whiskey Links.

Scott Galloway: My 50-year-old liver can't process the same way. Anyway, so I took my blood pressure over the weekend. I'm taking it in a while. I was becoming obsessed with it. It's 127 over 72. It's dropped dramatically. And I'm like, oh, it's a mistake. And I kept taking it. No, it's not. It's perfectly healthy.

Kara Swisher: You're not going to ask my blood pressure. I just had to take it. Do you want to know? What's your blood pressure? Sure. 106 over 68.

Scott Galloway: I'm like a corpse.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I think that means you're a vampire.

Scott Galloway: I'm a corpse. I'm a corpse. So I'm trying to figure out what's gone on. And I figured out that I'm drinking dramatically less because Chiltern Firehouse burned down. I was going there once or twice a week.

Kara Swisher: What? That hotel in London? You didn't know that?

Scott Galloway: No, I went there.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. My Mecca, my cathedral.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. I'm sorry, folks. I stayed there.

Kara Swisher: That's scary.

Scott Galloway: Geopolitical disasters are going to have to hold on for a minute. So I go there. I'm never able to get in there. It's total face control, the coolest people in London, the coolest room, greatest bartenders, greatest vibe. The door woman ends up, she has a podcast called, I forget what it's called. Oh, shit, I'll find out. A really talented young creative woman. And she came up to me and said, hi, I love your podcast. Would you be willing to have lunch someday? I said, sure, we had lunch. At the end of the lunch, she goes, here's my WhatsApp number if you ever want to come by. Here it is. This is like Charlie getting the golden ticket in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And whenever I got with my friends, everyone's like, wouldn't it be great to go to Chilton? And everyone's like, do you know anybody? And I'm like, yeah, no problem. I'll just text my friend. Anyways, this is, I'm there twice a week. And the world clearly decided that the universe was out of order with me having access to this level of hot, cool people just regularly. The place burned down.

Kara Swisher: What? That's a beautiful old building.

Scott Galloway: No one was hurt. No one was hurt. But it's out of commission for three years.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Well, it's got a janky inside if you stay there. It's like a really old hotel. It's made out of a firehouse, but it's all these twists and turns.

Scott Galloway: It does feel—

Kara Swisher: It's a total Andre Balaz special. It's a shitty hotel with decent service and hot people and amazing cool vibes, so you can charge $1,100 a night for a $400 room.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, more power to you, Andre. By the way, met the mother of my children at a Raleigh hotel controlled by Andre Balaz.

Kara Swisher: Okay, we're going way off the whiskey leagues.

Scott Galloway: My son's middle name is now Raleigh. Anyways. So what are you doing with your health? Let's move away from Chiltern. So what I'm doing with my health is the Chiltern firehouse is burned down. And I figured out that I think somewhere between I'm drinking somewhere between six and eight fewer drinks a week because Chiltern burned down. Anyway, so I need to find a new place. So last night, there's a bunch of new contenders. Last night, and I'm checking them all out. Last night, I went to this new place called Soho Muse, which is a Soho house. But Soho house has figured out they let in too many people. So now they have a one that you can't get into.

Kara Swisher: There's always another room.

Scott Galloway: Yes, this is how it works.

Kara Swisher: There's always another level. That you're not in.

Scott Galloway: So I found somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. Went there last night. Pretty good. Not sure. Daddy went deep in the paint. And tonight I'm going to Kensington Gardens.

Kara Swisher: You just got a thing that said stop drinking. What are you doing, high blood pressure man? Where's the statin and the sitting around watching, hugging, hugging and watching?

Scott Galloway: As Winston Churchill said, I've gotten more out of alcohol than it's gotten out of me. I would not have kids, and I'd likely still be a virgin. And I'd have very few good friends if it wasn't for alcohol.

Kara Swisher: Let's get back. Listen, Pete Hegseth of this podcast. I'm sorry. National security breaches. Let's go back. You know, whiskey leaks. Let's go to whiskey leaks.

[Transition to main topic]

Kara Swisher: The Trump administration is denying and downplaying the wrongdoing, even though the next day, Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic, the editor-in-chief, of course, released the text from the signal group that he was mistakenly added to. This is so unreal what happened here. The newly released messages show Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sharing a timeline of the Yemen attack and a description of the aircraft involved, which is classified, Pete. Sorry, it is. They're pretending it's not, but it is. The latest White House strategy is insisting these are not actual war plans, which they were. And as Pete Hegseth told reporters on Wednesday, he knew exactly what he was doing. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays]

Pete Hegseth [in clip]: There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information. You know who sees war plans? I see them every single day. I looked at them this morning. I looked at attack plans this morning.

Kara Swisher: What an idiot. Just one. Meanwhile, national security officials were on Capitol Hill getting questioned about the signal leak and hearings becoming contentious. Democratic Congressman Jim Himes noted the worst case scenario of the whole incident at one of these hearings. Let's listen.

[Audio clip plays]

Jim Himes [in clip]: Everyone here knows that the Russians or the Chinese could have gotten all of that information. And they could have passed it on to the Houthis, who easily could have repositioned weapons and altered their plans to knock down planes or sink ships. I think that it's by the awesome grace of God that we are not mourning dead pilots right now. Among other things, where were they? Who was listening? What devices they are on?

Kara Swisher: So talk about what your initial thoughts on hearing the story and what you think about the White House strategy here, arguing about semantics of what war plans and classified is and making Jeffrey Goldberg the enemy. And he keeps just dropping the receipts every five minutes and they're caught out lying. Are they making things worse for themselves by not owning up to it and taking responsibility? Press Secretary Karen Levin, who I like to call Tracy Flick, did say in her briefing that Elon has offered to put his technical experts on the case to go figure out how Goldberg got out of the chat.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God.

Kara Swisher: Stop with the Elon solution. He doesn't know anything about this. Talk a little bit about this, and then we'll get to the repercussions, if there are any.

Scott Galloway: Well, these are some of our most senior and most impactful and most important people in government. And I think you have to take them at their words. So let's just look at a few of their past quotes. Any security professional, military, government, or otherwise would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information. That's Secretary Hegseth referring to Hillary Clinton's emails being on his server. More from Secretary Hegseth: "How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or their recklessness in handling information?" Again, that was Secretary Hegseth when they found emails on a server that he decided were classified. Let's keep going. "The fact that she wouldn't be held accountable for this, I think, blows the mind of anyone who's held our nation's secrets dear," Hegseth added back in 2016, "and who's had top secret clearance like I have and others who know that even one hiccup causes a problem." What about Secretary Rubio? "Nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton," Rubio said at Fox, "even though she thinks she is." Well, let's talk about CI Director John Ratcliffe. "Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act. That's a criminal charge so serious that it can bring the death penalty." Close quote. When you have the Clinton emails on top of the fact that the sitting president of the United States admitted he had documents in his garage, Director Waltz or National Security Advisor Waltz told CNN, "But they didn't prosecute. They didn't go after these folks," exasperated. "Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such," said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. And my favorite quote on the actual—

Kara Swisher: You know what my name for her is? Cruella de Text, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: And my favorite quote is actually from the text message chain. "We are currently clean on OPSEC" from Secretary Hegseth, meaning we are clear, you can trust that the security protocols are in place. And this reflects a couple of things. One, this administration, as led by Donald Trump, President Trump, believe that the government of the United States, which is the most impressive organization in history—ask yourself, for all the shitposting all of us do about the U.S. government, who's provided more rights and more prosperity at a lower cost, at taxes this low? Best product for lowest price brought to you by the U.S. government. Most impressive organization in the world. And these folks have decided that any protocols, no matter how established or how important, they're bigger than. That they just, they don't need to pay attention to this stupid shit that people before them were doing. It's the ultimate Dunning-Kruger effect. And then the last thing I'll say before I get your comments is when someone is pulled over and convicted for a DUI, on average, on average, they have driven drunk 80 times previous to that. So the question isn't what happened here, because fortunately, Jeff Goldberg understands security protocols. He didn't release the information until after the attacks had happened. When he realized he was privy errantly to classified information, he voluntarily exited the chat. He understands security protocols. I mean, make him defense secretary.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: He knows more about national security than all of these people put together. The scariest question is we found out they got a DUI here. What are the other 79 times that secure information has been leaked to bad actors who aren't going to follow security protocols? Maybe work for the CCP or the GRU. When you put peewee, little leaguer, incompetent ass clowns in positions of this importance, there are going to be unforced errors. But the problem is we don't see 79 of the 80 unforced errors.

Kara Swisher: 100 percent. And you know what's incredible is, of course, Trump uses his – a couple things. One, they're morons. Let's just be clear. They're also liars. They're liars about what – they're morons and liars and then they're hypocrites because of what those things you just read. They literally were making a big case on a much less egregious violation, right? So that's one. Two, who knows what phones they were on? Were they on personal? They were not using, you know, my ex-wife worked in the government. I saw the phone she had. She didn't like it, but she used it because it was secure, right? She couldn't use her iPhone. You can't sideload Signal on these things. By the way, the Signal CEO is like, wrote me, she's like, I cannot believe this shit. Like, this is crazy that they were using our stuff. Now, journalists use it to talk to sources. Lots of people use it to have encrypted communications. But these are not impenetrable systems, by the way. It's a commercial app. It is not, it shouldn't be, they were definitely doing them on personal phones. And they also were definitely doing them from places. You don't know what network they were on. They were definitely not in skiffs doing this, which is these protected little tents that they make. They weren't on protected communications. And they were talking about war plans. Like, whatever word you want to use, it's information that should not be on a commercial app. The second thing is the way they put Jeffrey Goldberg. I think what happened is there was someone with his initials that they brought in. Because that's happened to me with several tech companies. I've been brought into emails at Facebook by Sheryl Sandberg one time, I think. I've been brought into seeing the earnings of a tech company before they were released to the public once because someone with my name was similar to someone at the company. And I just got emailed. I got into the email chain. It happens. People do that. But the fact that they're doing this not on a secure line and doing this with such cavalierness was just so moronic. And then to lie about it afterwards and then get caught again the second time when he releases what was there. I just I don't think anyone will get fired because the people in charge of the Justice Department will not do their jobs because they're very busy protecting Elon Musk and no one's going to get. So it may be Mike Walls will get because he also apparently his Venmo is open, too. Like, it's just they're being sued by the government watchdog group for using Signal Discuss military plans, by the way. And you can't make this up. Trump's not so favorite judge, the one overseeing the Venezuelan deportation case, got assigned to the Signal case. But is there any it looks like Trump is just going to defend his people and maybe throw one over. But is there any recourse here? Do you see anything at all? What do you make of their response? Like from a just from a marketing point of view, trying to get this, you know, this move on. Everyone was at the right after. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on. That was the sort of the message from all Republicans. Now there seems to be some cracks in it because it's so serious what they did here.

Scott Galloway: This is a crisis. And there's only three things you have to remember in crisis management. I don't care if it's Martha Stewart, Exxon or what's happened here. One, you have to acknowledge the problem. This was a fuck up. There's just no getting around it. This is unacceptable. That should have been their three words. This is unacceptable. Two, the top guy or gal needs to take responsibility. The person either the defense secretary someone needs to say I take responsibility. And then the third thing is and this is the hard part you need to overcorrect. When Tylenol when it was found out that some crazy person had put cyanide in Tylenol capsules, Johnson & Johnson cleared all of the shelves of all Tylenol nationally at huge cost to them to restore trust. They're doing none of these things because President Trump comes from the Roy Cohn zeitgeist of never, never acknowledge that you're wrong and just continue to lie. And if you lie long enough, you, in fact, will, you know, people will start to believe you. But the real damage here is that if you think about within the greatest organization in history, the U.S. government is arguably the most successful organization in history or the most impressive. And that is the U.S. military. It has turned back fascism. It has turned back, repelled armies out of Gulf nations in days because of our ability to deliver violence anywhere in the world really effectively, efficiently, and because people are willing to put their lives on the line. And when you can't trust the people at the highest levels that they are taking, when you're flying an aircraft, you're trusting some guy from Omaha or some gal from Nebraska that she is obsessing over every part on that plane before you have to skirt along the atmosphere at two times the speed of sound, avoiding surface-to-air missiles, and then trust that the agents on the ground risking their lives would never have anyone not follow protocols and might unmask them. So what does this do to the effectiveness, the morale, the willingness to join these security forces? And also, there's stuff around the phone and the app. It's a misdirect. I've had some interaction with our security apparatus. When you go into a building of the NSA or the CIA, you can't even bring a phone in. I'm not talking about high-level classified information. No, they make you put them in a box. They make you put it in one of those lead boxes or whatever. And then this conversation was why skiffs were invented.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Scott Galloway: Because the idea is you have a secure room that knowing how are our allies going to share their sensitive information with this clown car? So the damage here, we don't know. The damage here is like an iceberg. The majority of it is below the surface. We will never know about it until there are military operations that fail. They will blame it on somebody else. But this is an enormous. The astonishing reaction of, well, nothing happened. The operation was a success. I'm like, I don't care. We don't know if it was a success. We don't know. Who knows? I don't trust any of you people to tell the truth on anything. And then misdirecting it towards Goldberg.

Kara Swisher: Two things. Let me make two points. One, you're a bunch of morons. Again, lying morons. Two, Goldberg was doing the right thing here, and he's a badass for doing all—he did everything right ethically. Perfectly. He did. And then when they challenged him about whether it was true, he didn't release the text initially. But then he's like, fuck you. I'm going to release the text. The third thing is, let me just tell you, do you know who's also a quiet hero here? Lorraine Powell Jobs, owner of The Atlantic, is letting this keep going, right? Because there's a lot of corporate people who are pulling in their horns for Trump, whether it's Disney paying that settlement with George Stephanopoulos or Paramount considering it. Or Paul Weiss, law firms bending the knee. Fuck Paul Weiss. Like all these people are doing this and Lorraine Powell jobs is running the Atlantic. If you don't think they're going to come at her or they've already come at Jeff Goldberg over that Nazi piece he wrote about Trump. You remember Jeffrey did that story that infuriated the Trump people. Let me just tell you, if you're look, I was just thinking, who's the Catherine Graham of this era? People like her, like that, that are not backing the fuck down. And there's a billionaire. You want it. Not all billionaires are bad. She's a billionaire. She's she is. have got a lot of bravery to put up with this stuff and to be able to take the pressure. When I think of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the rest of them, and Musk sitting and sort of prostrating himself to Trump and what she just did, just a, again, just a real differential. And this puts people in danger. And I think it's, again, a good topic for Democrats to attack on. You're incompetent and you're liars over and over again. And then the other excuse they're using on Fox News, which are also complicit in trying to defend this after attacking Hillary Clinton relentlessly for years over something that was much less serious by a factor of 10. Do you remember when you accidentally added a random person to our pivot text chain?

Scott Galloway: Do you remember that? I don't.

Kara Swisher: You did. You added some guy and he's like, hey, I'm here.

Scott Galloway: Okay, if Scott does that, that was annoying enough. But the media on the right is saying, well, everyone knows about that. Everyone's done that. I literally like...

Kara Swisher: That's so mean, isn't it? Jesse Waters, you're a moron. You're a moron. But you don't need to be a national security advisor to know what happened here. And that is, when I establish an ongoing relationship with a male prostitute, I change the name and the number, or I change the name...

Scott Galloway: To Kara Swisher.

Kara Swisher: It throws the people in my life off the scent. So it's clear. It's so obvious what is happening here. Walls is Jeffrey Goldberg. That's it's obvious what's going on here and he had the wrong name purposely on the wrong number to throw the folks in his life off.

Scott Galloway: Oh, interesting little geopolitical humor to lighten the mood.

Kara Swisher: I think it was someone with the JG on the staff that he thought he was at I think he thought he was adding someone else and Tulsi Gabbard refusing to acknowledge it was her and and Senator Warren's like uh so TG isn't you isn't you and she's like uh well no well it's under review and he's like what does that have to do anything and then and then she says there was no classified information like and he's like well then share it if it wasn't classified she looks like I think he was good Warner was good oh my god so was Bennett so was Ossoff oh it was Stanford Bennett my man they all were all were they were my man who I supported for president in 2020 you know what they they all had the same attitude what in the actual fuck that was that was the tone what in the actual fuck the only person who's conducted himself kind of like better than all of them is Trump because he's like yeah I think it looks like they fucked up but then he of course defends them by attacking the reporter I love watching these hearings if if you want to know what you look like you look at these people if you want to know what you look like when you were 17 and you got caught masturbating yeah that is literally the facial expression of these people.

Scott Galloway: That never happened to me.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Literally the facial expression. But no one's going to pay. Do you think someone's going to pay?

Scott Galloway: No, Walls maybe. Let's take a bet. Which one?

Kara Swisher: Oh, I actually do. One of them's going to go down. Hegseth or Walls?

Scott Galloway: Not Hegseth. He seems to like Hegseth, despite the fact it looked like he was drunk texting. That's what it seemed like to me.

Kara Swisher: I think it's, oh my gosh. I think, look, I don't think Trump cares about national security. I don't think he cares that he's putting—Documents in his bathroom. That he's putting warriors in harm's way. I really don't think he cares. What I do think he cares about is I think this is very embarrassing for him. It makes him look incompetent. There's going to be a blood offering. It's a toss-up between, I think it's got to be walls.

Scott Galloway: Well, I don't know. It could be walls. He could also decide Hexeth, this DUI hire just makes us look bad. Hexeth getting off that plane and being so indignant. No attack plans were shared. I see attack plans every day. And then you see these text messages and they have the equipment, the cadence, the sequencing, the targets, the time. I'm like, what do you want? Color coded tabs? I mean, he came across, he's handled himself so poorly.

Kara Swisher: I think so. Gabbard? I don't know. Someone's got to go. I think someone's going to go. Do you like their schemes of how he got? You're morons. It was a hoax. It was a hoax.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it was a hoax.

Kara Swisher: He's a spy. He's a spy. He's an asset. I've never met him. And then, of course, inevitably, when he goes, I've never met Jeffrey Goldberg, literally picture of them standing, talking together. They have met. He's a national security person. Jeff Goldberg is known for national security reporting. They know each other, like literally. It's sort of when Trump always goes, I've never met Maggie Haberman or I've never, you know, I don't know that person who worked with me for five, 10 years.

Scott Galloway: A really easy prediction. This isn't my prediction. A really easy prediction. At a very big D.C. event in the next 30 to 90 days, Jeffrey Goldberg and his wife are going to walk in somewhere. There's going to be a pause and he is going to get a standing ovation.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. He really. If there's a winner here, it's journalism and it's Jeffrey Goldberg. We are so annoying. Journalists are so fantastically annoying these days. I love it. But this guy just did the right thing. He just he he resisted the temptation to just continue listening in because he understands, you know, defense and security protocols. He didn't release it till after the attack. He's been he has handled this perfectly. Perfectly. Perfectly. We'll see if it matters. Actually, the snap polls are people are like, what in the act? Because one thing that it does, I do think it's more, this is a real crisis, is because everyone understands this. It's very easily understandable what they did. Because everyone has been. The one thing they're telling the truth is everyone has been in these things. And they're like, you did what? You did, you know what I mean? This is something understandable to the average citizen of incompetence. Like even my mother at first. And of course, my mother immediately went when she didn't know about it because Fox wasn't covering it properly. And then I explained it. She was like, well, that's not good. And I was like, no, it's not. And she goes, but Hillary did it. And I'm like, that's where you go. I was like, not really. And then Biden did it. But that's where they're going.

Scott Galloway: Here's one of my let me just finish this by one proposal. I was thinking about what do you do about this? Like this shit has been going back and forth between Republicans and Democrats. This leakage of information, right, in this highly informational age. I think we just decide from this day forward, everyone else before this, you get off the hook for it. The government is sloppy around everyone in the government, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, have been arguably sloppy around communications and especially classified communications. Everyone gets a pass. From now on, if you do it again, if you've sideloaded shit or you're using your personal phone, you're going down. From now on, we're going. Everybody, nobody gets a pass from, it's not going to happen in the Trump administration. But let's just clear the playing field. And from now on, these are the rules. And if you break them, you're going to jail. That's what I would do. What do you think?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I like it. But I think it runs deeper than that. I think these guys, look, we like to think that you can put people, I mean, for God's sakes, we've got a Fox host, his defense secretary. And we're surprised that there's amateur errors. Okay, no morons. So it's not, okay, you can have protocols and fine, put them in jail. That's not the problem. The problem is an environment where you have an autocrat who values loyalty and fealty over competence. The other thing I think they were doing, and I think people haven't talked about it enough, is they're on Signal because they're trying to avoid accountability. And they don't want people to see these things. And so what they're doing is they're, all this stuff, just for people who don't know, the government is supposed to preserve all their communications on things like this. And they're trying not to preserve them. And the only last thing I would say Walz did that was astonishing to me, on Signal you can have disappearing information, this stuff can disappear. And usually people set it to an hour or a day. He had four-week disappearance. I was like, are you an idiot?

Kara Swisher: Like, if you're going to disappear, disappear it right away. But I think what they were trying to do was avoid accountability. It's disorganized crime.

Scott Galloway: That's correct. They're not even competent criminals.

Kara Swisher: But at the heart of it, they were trying to abrogate their responsibility to preserve accountability. And I think that's why they were on that chain. And so they were hiding. They were hiding, and then they got caught, essentially.

Scott Galloway: The U.S. military, our ability, our near monopoly power on the ability to deliver violence all over the world in a lethally devastating, expert competent way. I don't think, especially people on the left, I don't think they realize how much prosperity that delivers to us. That fear. When the attacks of October 7th happen and Hamas is hoping to inspire a multi-front war on Israel, Biden sends these amazing things called U.S. carrier strike forces that literally take a city to run and massive capital expenditure and skills and 5,000 sailors who are just so highly trained, so committed, so willing to put themselves in harm's way. And he parks them off the coast of the Mediterranean and says to Iran, sit the fuck down. And we don't have a multi-front war. And we don't have a nuclear power backed into a corner, Israel. America doesn't realize, it doesn't miss what it doesn't have. And that is a level of prosperity and freedom that is a function of a military that trusts each other, that trusts that the people back in Langley, Virginia, will not accidentally share who I am and I will be tortured and then murdered, that if I am flying with a package of armaments and a cache to deliver, that I have the right coordinates and the air defense systems haven't gotten ahead. And the Russians don't know it. And the Chinese don't know it. And the Iranians don't know it. This is so moronic. It's just moronic. It's moronic and they're liars and they're trying to hide at the same time.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, OK, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump unveils his latest tariffs.

[BREAK]

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[BREAK]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. President Trump announced a 25% tariff on imported cars and car parts. Let's listen.

[CLIP: Donald Trump speaking] Donald Trump: This is the beginning of Liberation Day in America. We're going to take back just some of the money that has been taken from us by people sitting behind this desk or another desk that not quite as nice but they have their choice of seven as you know. And we're going to charge countries for doing business in our country and taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things that they've been taking over the years. They've taken so much out of our country.

Kara Swisher: He's so obsessed with—first of all, his digressions are so strange about the deaths. But his obsession with "we're getting cheated" is really becoming like, what's your fucking problem, dude? Everyone's not trying to cheat you all the time. And again, every accusation is a confession. He's a cheater. And so he focuses in on cheaters and takers and things like that. And that's exactly what he is. The tariffs will go into effect on April 2nd and will apply to finished vehicles shipped into the U.S., including from American brands that assemble outside the country. Almost half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. are imported. But lo and behold, Tesla will be spared while the Musk company does import parts—it makes vehicles in the U.S. However, Elon posted on X saying, "Important to know that Tesla is not unscathed here. The tariff impact on Tesla is still significant." No, it is not. Again, a lie. Do you think Trump will pull these back? And what does he keep doing here? Because it really spooked the markets. We're covering a tiny bit. And then they didn't. So any thoughts on this?

Scott Galloway: Well, I had a few thoughts listening to the speech. That's the first time that I have, in my view, or that I've really noticed cognitive decline. That's the first time I thought, oh, wow, he was getting old.

Kara Swisher: And you've been saying it for a while.

Scott Galloway: That's the first time I really saw evidence of it. He just sounds not fleet of foot, so to speak. And his speechwriter is clearly mimicking what Nigel Farage said about Brexit, claiming that this is our independence day. And it's like, well, folks, you realize that people declare independence from Britain, not Britain doesn't declare independence. Declaring independence from who? But we've just said this all along. If you were looking for the most elegant, clear blue line path to increasing prices and reducing the competitiveness of our products overseas as reciprocal tariffs are implemented, there's no more elegant way to reduce prosperity in economic history probably than tariffs. I teach strategy. If you try to distill strategy down to a few basic tenets, two of them would be the following. In strategy, you're trying to answer one question: What can we do that's really hard? Either with spending $18 billion a year on content is really hard, but we have access to cheap capital. Okay, we're Netflix. Building the most robust supply chain in the world because of access to cheap capital is really hard. Hi, we're Amazon. What can we do that is really hard? And then the second thing is the biggest mistake people make in strategy organizations is believing that they're boxing against a speed bag or that they're in that Twilight Zone where when they move, they stop time and no one else responds. The strategic error here is so basic. He's under the impression the U.S. is so powerful and superior that we can just levy tariffs errantly without any rationale and that they won't respond and levy reciprocal tariffs. As a matter of fact, you want to talk about people who are doing it strategically. Canada and Europe have said, not only are we going to implement reciprocal tariffs, we're going to be especially hard on the tariffs affecting red states. We're going after your heart and lungs, President Trump. They're being quite strategic about it. And it's this basic error. I see companies make this all the time. We're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this. Okay, you realize that Adidas and On will do the same thing. They will respond. And that is the biggest strategic error: assuming that you are operating in a vacuum of strength and that your competitors aren't going to respond. And every nation has levied reciprocal tariffs. No one has said, "President Trump, you're so big and bad and America is so amazing." I think there's an argument that you could say we have unfairly subsidized a military umbrella for the second and third largest economies in the world, specifically Japan and Germany and maybe most of Europe. I think that's a valid argument. But the notion that we don't get the better end or as good a deal on any trade agreement, on any business relationship, is just not true. I have done business in every large Western nation, and there is a brand halo by rule of law, innovation, the fact that we are willing to enforce laws, the fact that we don't take shit from anyone, that we attract the best and the brightest. When you walk into a room, even as a small firm, I ran small strategy firms, you benefit from the halo of the American brand. And to think somehow that people were taking advantage of us, it's just this weird victim complex. It's this weird notion that I make decisions in isolation, no one will respond, and somehow I'm the victim. It's incredibly immature, and it lacks all what I call forward-leaning thinking or real kind of blue flame thinking around strategy and game theory.

Kara Swisher: Well, it's just, I think it's just moronic. I don't know what else to say. Speaking of that, Trump's crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, has announced plans to launch a stablecoin. This guy is just literally like an octopus. He goes everywhere. He's like a handsy guy who's everywhere at once. Stablecoins are tied to assets to maintain more stable prices. USD1, as it will be called, will be pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar. That's what stablecoins are often pegged to. GOP lawmakers—that means they have to hold the dollar for every coin—are currently working on legislation to regulate stablecoins. Liberty Financial said it has brought in over $500 million from previous coin sales. Trump Media also announced a partnership with Crypto.com this week to launch a series of ETFs. I know there's a fire hose of news every day, but what in the actual fuck?

Scott Galloway: Speaking of what in the actual—there's so many what in the actual fucks—but he should not be doing crypto. He should not be doing crypto and his family shouldn't be doing crypto. And they're doing crypto, which is such an opaque area.

Kara Swisher: Thoughts? Very brief thoughts?

Scott Galloway: It's grift. And when you're trying to chase down or respond to national security breaches of incompetence and recklessness, it kind of unfortunately wallpapers over the fact that he's engaging in a level of grift for his kids that if Obama did it, there might have been a move to impeach him and some Democrats would have voted to impeach him. The standards have just been lowered so dramatically. I was thinking about when I remember going to China a few times with a group of American businessmen and we would bring up the notion of human rights. Can you imagine us even having the gall or the gumption to bring up human rights violations now when we go abroad? We can't. Or to accuse them of grift and corruption. We have lost all moral authority. All the high horses are gone. We're down off the high horse. This is just ridiculous. He should not be doing this. And people should look into this. There's no power to look into it, but this is just grift, pure and simple. And especially in an area that is about to be—GOP lawmakers are working on legislation. This is so—he shouldn't even sign the frigging thing. He won't do it. And then it's open for so much fraud for regular consumers. Just buyer beware in many ways.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about whether Disney's Trump donation is paying off in the newest podcast network.

[BREAK]

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[BREAK]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. The FCC plans to investigate Disney's DEI practices. They just are moving from company to company doing this. Disney shareholders rejected an anti-DEI proposal earlier this year. By the way, Apple and I think Costco also did. But last fall, Disney settled the defamation lawsuit with Trump. And after the election, agreed to pay a $15 million donation to Trump's presidential library. The sucking up to Trump isn't even paying off, right? It just isn't working.

Scott Galloway: I don't know what to say. They're going to go to every DEI thing and just keep litigating one after the other, whether it's law firms who are against Trump or whatever they happen to do, whether it's DEI or just pure revenge. They're going to keep doing this shakedown. It feels like I'm in the middle of the early scenes from The Godfather movie with Robert De Niro wandering from Italian-owned store to Italian-owned store.

Kara Swisher: Well, there's two things here. There's the policy around whether DEI practices should be legal or illegal in their current form. That's a valid argument. But the problem here, and you introduced this word to me, is systemic change versus non-systemic change. When the president goes after Colombia, it tickles my senses. I like that. I think that the Ivy League has tolerated a level of anti-Semitism they would not tolerate across any other special interest group. But the way you address it is you pass laws that affect everybody. You don't decide who you dislike the most and start going after them, or who you like the most and host—"Hi, I'm Cal Worthington, 10% off your Tesla right now." You're supposed to pass laws that show a lack of favoritism because there's no way to implement targets or enemies or favoritism for your allies without it just becoming an autocracy and corrupt. So before we even start here, when he starts targeting individual firms or the head of the Department of Justice calls out or the attorney general calls out Disney by name—if he were to say the media is not going to have certain protections around certain slander, and it's true for everyone, okay, you might disagree. You might think that puts a chill. But when they start going after specific universities and specific companies—

Scott Galloway: Law firms.

Kara Swisher: Then all you're trying to do is say, okay, we're Paul Weiss, or we're Perkins, or we're Skadden Arps, or Latham & Watkins. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to work for their kids for free on this new Trump stablecoin thing, because then we'll stay out of his crosshairs. And you end up in a downward spiral of corruption. And for corruption folks, that's the biggest tax because people get unfair advantage and it's taxed on everyone else that doesn't have proximity to the president or isn't willing to pay him.

Scott Galloway: And we talked about this on CNN. There is a domino of cowardice. Bob Iger, your cowardice inspired Paul Weiss's partner to say, okay, we'll pay or we'll settle rather than fight. Your cowardice inspires Jeff Bezos to go, the quickest way for me to get to $110 to $150 billion is to get rid of the opinion section of the Washington Post. Until one of these guys—and let's be honest, they're all guys—says, "Fuck you," and the public and shareholders in business rally around this person, this is just going to continue. He's just going to have these one-offs and everyone's going to go, I don't want to be in this crosshair. So just give him a couple million bucks for his inauguration, or come out and say you'll work for the stablecoin, or you'll buy—wink, wink. The thing about these crypto coins is effectively what the family has done. They have, under our watch, opened a Swiss bank account and anyone could put money in, and Trump gets to know who's putting money in, but no one else knows. It is such incredible grift. And I don't think it's an accident they announce it and decide to move forward when it's like, oh, wait, we've had a national security breach. How do we turn lemons into lemonade? Everyone's going to be focused on Hegseth. So let's announce the stablecoin with it. Can you imagine Sasha, Malia, Obama, and Chelsea Clinton launching a crypto coin? Everyone would be going fucking crazy, right? And here's the thing. It's not their fault. It's our fault. And the way we got to get back to this is to be brave for companies to stand up to them. And we need to begin immediately pushing back, being fearless. And also, 2026 is not that far away.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. Let me give you an excellent example of what The Atlantic is doing. And by the way, they are fucking badasses. Carolyn Levitt, Tracy Flick, lying again at the White House goes, "The mainstream media continues to be focused on a sensationalized story from the failing Atlantic magazine that is falling apart by the hour," which is not true. Literally, everything that comes out of our mouth is a lie. Fact check: Nick Thompson, who's the CEO of The Atlantic, which is doing really well. We have more subscribers than ever before. Ads are up. We're profitable. We're expanding print issues and podcasts. We publish everything that is new to you. We're hiring more and more great journalists to cover you fairly. And then he put fist, flag, and the fire symbol, which is what Mike Waltz used in terms of the attack. It's just pushing back is the best way to go here with these people. You have to both be factual and you have to also punch back at this nonsense. And what is really interesting is they can't get this story out of this news cycle. And it's day five and he hasn't been able to change the subject by all manner of diversions. So don't let him change the subject. And so we'll see where it goes. But Disney should stand up. All these companies should stand up and find their backbone or their set.

Kara Swisher: So very quickly, Megyn Kelly is launching a podcast network. Lots of people are doing this. MK Media launching next month. We'll have shows from Mark Halperin, Maureen Callahan, and Link Lauren. I think the company she's worked with was sold to Fox, the red whatever you call it. Let's listen to what Megyn has to say about this.

[CLIP: Megyn Kelly speaking] Megyn Kelly: I'm so excited about these three. Aren't these a great three to launch with? They cover the gamut, right? Link has got such a following amongst young sort of right people or independent people who have just had it with the weird left.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, her podcast, which launched in 2020—I was one of the first people to talk to her about doing a podcast, as I said before—is consistently one of the most popular news podcasts in the country. I don't know if it's news exactly. You're kinder to her than I am. I think she's just a rage machine and she has a little act that she takes on the road and screams at women, a lot of women. But the idea of what's happening here is a bigger thing. There are a lot of really interesting independent companies being created, whether they're on conservative or liberal. And this idea of doing these podcast networks is going to be really interesting in how you do them and keep them entrepreneurial. I know Scott and I have talked about it, especially the voices on the weird left like ourselves. Anyway, it's really an interesting time for this idea of industrialization of podcasting and some of these other things as they move into video. Any quick thoughts?

Scott Galloway: First off, White House spokesperson Levitt married a 59-year-old when she was 27, so I'm kind of a fan. But I think it means I have a shot with AOC. I'm just saying.

Kara Swisher: You so don't have a shot with AOC. It's crazy.

Scott Galloway: Well, you know my criteria for every spouse I've had. It's very simple.

Kara Swisher: No, I didn't want to hear this. Okay. No? Okay, never mind. Okay, go ahead. What is it? Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: It's simple. Two things: a badass or a great ass.

Kara Swisher: Okay. We're going to hear it in the comments on that one. Okay, I like that. I hate that. I hate myself. All right, just talk about the podcast network. I'd rather not talk about Megyn Kelly because I think she's a rage machine and hateful, but go ahead.

Scott Galloway: Megyn is very talented. And you've got to separate the person and their talent from their political views. She's a very—

Kara Swisher: No, it's not political views. It's performative rage. But go ahead. Fine. Fine. Whatever.

Scott Galloway: She's very talented. One of my big predictions in October of '24 for '25 was media of the year, and it happened on election day. So much money pours into local news stations because old people supposedly determine elections and old people still want to get the weather on their local news stations. Local news stations hemorrhage money for 22 months. And then for two months, every two years, they jack up the rates by sevenfold and they sell out because the local guy running for Congress just plows money into it. That typically is a 60-year-old white woman watching cable news or listening to local television. Trump realized he zagged when everyone zigged, went on the Manosphere, went into podcasts, went on every fucking testosterone-laden podcast, and it was brilliant. The average listener to a podcast is a 34-year-old male. And a 34-year-old male is Latin for swing voter because they care about economics. Who is seen as better on the economy is dynamic. Sometimes it's Democrats when they realize, oh, they've created 50 million jobs in the last four decades and Republicans have created 1 million. And sometimes people go, oh, Republicans are acknowledging inflation. They're speaking more. They're business people. Trump's a businessman. So it goes back and forth. So they're the swing voter. In addition, you're seeing a flood of advertising into this young male demographic, because those people are the great white rhino of advertisers—they're stupid. They spend money on things like shoes and watches and coffee and they're decision makers at companies around technology. They buy high margin products and you can't reach them because they're watching Netflix and Spotify. So where do you reach a 34-year-old male? You reach him on podcasts. Reaching a young male wealthy audience is an advertiser's dream and you can't reach them anywhere else. In addition, 50% of people have said they listen to at least one podcast a month. The medium is growing faster than Alphabet or Meta right now in terms of ad revenue. In addition, there's a built-in moat. Because we started seven years ago, we have a huge subscriber base on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube, and anything we drop gets downloaded when you subscribe. And advertisers base their advertising and CPMs on your built-in installed base. So if you have been in the podcasting game for a while, you almost have a natural moat around you because advertisers will only advertise on pods who have a certain amount of scale. So the little guys, the 699,000 podcasts that aren't in the top 1,000, it is difficult for them to make it out of the crib. So you have a tectonic shift in the flows of rivers of advertising capital into this new medium. And strangely enough, despite the fact there are low barriers of entry and 700,000 podcasts put out something every week, there's really only 500 or 600 of them that have the scale that advertisers want. Like almost every other medium where digitization comes in, it's become a winner-take-most, if not all, environment. What's interesting about podcasting is the two newer platforms are YouTube. More people listen to podcasts on YouTube now than on Spotify or Apple. 20% of my listens at Prof G, because the Prof G market is very visual, is on TVs. It's on YouTube that people airplay to their TV. You're seeing our revenues here at Pivot are comping up for the last seven years at probably 28 or 30 percent a year. So this is attracting a ton of talent, a ton of capital, big growth up a small base. And Megyn—oh, and by the way, I forgot. You know who's just decided they're getting into the podcasting game? Netflix. So if they put Steve Bartlett or Pivot or On with Kara Swisher on their front page for a hot minute in front of 300 million people, that podcast is going to go into the top 10. They're getting into the game. So you're going to see advertisers switch to the small number of companies that have scale. You're going to see a dramatic increase in advertising spend. You're going to see some nine-figure-plus deals in podcasting. You're going to see some really, really big deals. This is the medium of 2026.

Kara Swisher: Let me ask you a question. I was just thinking about this. Things were on par with advertising to do really well this year. And now this tariff thing that Trump's doing is fucking with everybody's business and ads. They're showing a little bit now. They're like, oh, maybe not so much because things were really sort of, the juice was going for a minute there, but they're noticing that when people pull, they're going to pull from this. Is that a worry?

Scott Galloway: In the short term, yes, it hurts everybody because people go on to a standstill and we've seen this. They say, just cool your jets, stand down until we figure out what's going on. However, if you look at the shifts in mediums, everyone knew people were shifting money and ad spend from traditional media into search-based media or social-based media. We all knew that. But what happens is whenever there's an economic shock and media planners at big agencies are forced to rethink their budgets, they typically take everyone down, but then they come back in the new mediums. Exogenous shocks give a company pause to rethink their entire media strategy, and that almost benefits the new guys. So actually in recessions and in economic shocks, in the short term, it hurts everybody. But in the medium term, it massively expedites the transition that was sort of already happening at a low speed. It expedites it in Google and Meta. When they take their advertising budgets back, it gives them a chance to think, should we be spending this much on newspapers or broadcast television? Maybe not. Let's go. We know we're going back into TikTok and Meta and Alphabet. So while we will absolutely, with these tariffs, see a reduction in our growth, it's not going to be there first. When the economy comes back, it's going to expedite the disruption.

Kara Swisher: The shift. Yeah. People are thinking, you're right. OK, I wanted to understand that. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

[BREAK]

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

Scott Galloway: Oh, look, the Chinese see this void. We had spent decades and $70 to $80 billion a year on USAID helping fund a hospital in Cambodia. Tremendous goodwill in Cambodia. Set up this infrastructure. It was working well. Money was being put to good use. We just cut it off. You know who showed up literally the next week? And this is a true story, the Chinese. And they are taking advantage of all the good work that's been done to usurp soft power. And I believe this goes back to the notion that we have a monopoly on our ability to deliver violence. We have, I think, 700 bases in 70 or 80 nations. I think China has two or three. You're going to see a dramatic increase in the number of Chinese military bases on foreign soil because they are filling our shoes and getting massive benefit from the organizations, the relationships in the NGO sector that we were funding. And they'll just slip into those shoes and say, no, no, no, you don't need to close the hospital. The good guys are here. And nothing's for free. The next time they show up in a year, two years, three years and say, look, we'd like to have a naval base here. We'd like to be able to refuel our planes here and we'll pay for the revenue. And by the way, how's the hospital coming? Is it still working? Great. So we're going to see for the first time a dramatic increase in Chinese military bases overseas, which to date, the U.S. really has had a monopoly on. This soft power translates to hard power. And people don't realize—again, these people don't think long term. They're morons.

Kara Swisher: Well, the whole basis of an elected official at the end of the day, it goes back to strategy. What are you supposed to do that's really hard? You're supposed to prevent a tragedy of the commons over the medium and the long term. Can I make an interjection here?

Kara Swisher: Because there's just a new story from New York Times today that Trump administration abruptly cuts billions from state health services. This is across our country. States have been told they can no longer use grants that were funding infectious disease management and addiction services. They've cut $12 billion in federal grants to states who are being used to track infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment, and other urgent health issues. That means these state health departments were already underfunded or in real trouble. They received notices Monday that the funds, which are allocated, are being terminated.

Kara Swisher: And let me just say, in Lubbock, Texas, public health officials, this is not to, these are red states, just so you know, red state people. They're leopards about to eat your face. Public health officials have received orders to stop work supported by these three grants that helped fund the response to the whiting measles outbreak there, according to Catherine Wells. On Tuesday, some health departments were preparing to lay off dozens of epidemiologists and data scientists. This is the same thing. This is goodwill and the things that the government does that are effective for people. And it's going to be the same issue in this country. The question is who's going to come into the breach, right? Which is what you're talking about with the Chinese doing that.

Scott Galloway: I don't know if you'd like to link those. I like that. No, I think that makes sense. It's the same attitude across this country and it will have repercussions. But the people or the entities that will fill the void abroad are foreign nations, some of which do not have our best interests at heart. I don't think of China as an enemy. I think of them as a competitor, maybe even an adversary. The organizations that will fill the void in the U.S. are for-profit organizations that over the medium and the long term will probably demand margin.

Scott Galloway: So what happens when the government vacates from these services is – and this is what they want. They want private enterprise running all prisons. They want to privatize Social Security because then corporations will insert themselves in the middle. In some ways, they're more innovative. In some ways, they're more productive. In some ways, they're just interested in making money. That's what they do.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know. And that's not good for the public comment. They'll get monopoly power on the jails and whatever this part of the county or this part of the state. They will slowly raise the rates and we will end up paying more for less. There are certain things that should be delivered at scale. The electricity in a city needs a monopoly. And in order to have monopolies, you have to have regulators such that they don't enact monopoly pricing power. So this is abroad. Our adversaries will fill the void domestically with these businesses that they're cutting. You'll see private enterprise move in. And over the medium and the long term, the consumer will lose.

Scott Galloway: Lesser services.

Kara Swisher: Exactly.

Kara Swisher: All right. Elsewhere in the Scott and Kara universe this week on Prof G Markets, Scott spoke with Karsten Brazeski, a chief Eurozone economist for ING. Scott's been talking a lot about Europe, what's going on in Europe. Let's listen to a clip.

[Clip plays]

Karsten Brazeski: Debt means the same as guilt. Oh, wow. And I think that is not the only language, but that is an important one. Yeah. So somehow debt, like government debt, always had a negative connotation. So Germany was clearly the fiscally frugal country, which could tell the southern European economies to also do austerity.

[Clip ends]

Kara Swisher: So interesting discussion about what's happening there. I thought it was.

Scott Galloway: I listened to it. Yeah, I'm convinced if my co-host on Property Markets was German, we just wouldn't be successful.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, let's talk about AI and the markets. It just doesn't have the same ring as when a British guy is talking about it.

Scott Galloway: It's a good German joke. But the thing he was talking about, I don't think he got fully across, the German word for debt translates to guilt in English. Isn't that interesting? And they're about to kind of unchain their fiscal strength for infrastructure spending and military spending, which I think is going to be a big deal.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. And you've been talking about the European. Now suddenly I'm seeing stories in the Wall Street Journal how the place you should invest in is Germany. What was my stock pick for 2025, Cara?

Scott Galloway: You were great. European value stocks. Just for people who don't speak German, which I do, schuld is debt, the debt, S-C-H-U-L-D. It also means blame, guilt, fault, liability, trespasses. So, schuld, you know, when you say, excuse me, unschuldigen, or something like that.

Kara Swisher: My favorite German is farfenugen.

Scott Galloway: You love that word.

Kara Swisher: Oh, it's the best.

Kara Swisher: All right. That's our show. Thanks for listening to Pivot, and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Inertod engineered this episode. Ronnie Polidaro edited this video. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Severo, and Dan Shallan. Nishak Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Kara Swisher: That's right. A whiskey emoji dancing and a limp dick. The dog is in the chat.