--:-- Scott Galloway: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
--:-- Scott Galloway: AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 24-7 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Scott Galloway.
--:-- Katy Tur: And I'm Katy Tur.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Kara is actually taking a day off today. So we're joined by the host of MSNBC's Katy Tur Reports and author of *Rough Draft*, Katy Tur.
--:-- Katy Tur: Katy, a couple of things. A couple of things. First off, you're welcome. I know this is a big thrill for you.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I am so pleased. I thought that having two books on the bestseller list would have been a fulfilling experience, but I didn't understand what fulfilling was. I get it. Until I sat down and got to host a podcast alongside you, sir.
--:-- Katy Tur: This is a trick we pull. When we ask people to co-host with me, we ask them to co-host, but we don't tell them they're co-hosting with me. That's what happened here, isn't it?
--:-- Scott Galloway: It totally is. I mean, I thought it was going to be me and Kara. And I said, absolutely. And then I found out it was you. And I tried to beg off, but I just couldn't do it without burning a bridge. So here I am.
--:-- Katy Tur: Somewhere at CAA or WME or whoever manages you, there's a meeting right now saying, we need to be more involved in Katy's decision making.
--:-- Scott Galloway: This is from the Vox Media Podcast Network, credible journalist jumping the shark.
--:-- Katy Tur: By the way, if Kara is taking the day off, you know what that means. That means she's getting married for like a seventh time. We don't buy this whole vacation thing.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. Now, if she was another kid, if she was a man, she would be horrified by her. She gets away with a lot of stuff.
--:-- Katy Tur: OK, so today we're going to talk about Instagram's new look and Meta's new troubles. Also, storm clouds are gathering over Trump land. We'll hear from a listener about whether lack of abortion access will impact college decisions. That's interesting. So first, Joe Manchin says we have a deal. Can you break down what's gone on here?
--:-- Scott Galloway: You know, I have to tell you, when I found out about this yesterday, I was gobsmacked because when I left work last week, Joe Manchin had just put a knife in the Democratic deal. He said he wasn't going to vote for anything with climate change or raising taxes. To hear him double back and say, no, I'm good with this deal, was quite shocking to me. So what happened? He had said that he was always welcomed at the negotiating table. He was always there. His team was looking through the bill. He was really concerned about inflation. They were going to make sure that whatever this bill was, wasn't going to add to inflation. They came back apparently with Schumer and continued negotiating in secret and got to a place where they could decide on a big package that would give a lot of money to fighting climate change. It would be a really, really big deal. Money that would allow Medicare to renegotiate drug prices, which frankly I am shocked that hasn't been on the table or hasn't been passed before. Why in the world would you not allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices? It benefits the entire country. The only people it doesn't benefit are the lobbyists for the drug industry. And a lot of money for other Democratic programs as well. It's a big deal for Joe Manchin to come to the table. It's a big deal for Democrats to get this. And the Republicans feel a bit slighted here, which is also interesting when you look at what might happen with chips.
--:-- Katy Tur: So Senator Manchin, is he a moderate who sticks to his principles and wants to reach across the aisle, the last of a dying breed known as moderates? Or is he someone who is a raging narcissist who sees himself having these opportunities to be the swing vote and get in front of a million cameras and be the spoiler? What's the view from inside the Beltway?
--:-- Scott Galloway: The view from inside the Beltway is that Joe Manchin is reveling in the position that he is in, where he is kingmaker right now. I mean, who's president, Joe Biden or Joe Manchin? Joe Manchin is the one that has all of the leverage here. He has all of the leverage in the Democratic Congress. Kyrsten Sinema has some of the leverage as well, and she certainly could still hurt this bill. But he is somebody who's leveraging the position he has. He's always been more of a moderate. He comes from an extraordinarily red state. It's remarkable, Scott, that he even gets elected in that state still. So he's got to guard those interests. But again, I think even a lot of Senate Democrats were surprised that he went for this. They thought that he wasn't going to go for anything, especially with the climate provisions. He got some energy stuff on the back end, including a project that he's close with for a pipeline that should come soon. But then there's the taxes. When you're talking about Manchin, you have to look at who Manchin is. He gets more money from the energy industry than any other senator in the Senate. His son is the CEO of a coal mining company. He has it in a blind trust. So there are natural questions raised about where his interests lie. I think that that's an ethical issue that should concern all Americans. Not saying that he's doing anything nefarious, but it does raise the question and the appearance doesn't look good. For him to come to the table on this, I think it's going to assuage some of those fears.
--:-- Katy Tur: Also, can we talk about the carried interest loophole being closed? Democrats have been running on this for years. Trump ran on this in 2015 and 2016. He said it wasn't fair that all these hedge fund guys and these private equity guys were making tons of money on the back end. And then when Trump passed his tax law, this somehow got erased from it and it was let to stand. So if this goes through the Senate, that's going to get a lot of money back to go back into the economy and pay for a lot of these big plans that Democrats have. That was one of the reasons that Manchin said he wasn't for some of these bills. He didn't see how it paid for itself, and he was worried about inflation.
--:-- Scott Galloway: What Katy is referring to is the carry interest tax loophole. It's arguably the most outrageous tax in the tax code. It's the following. If you sell copiers and you get a commission, you pay ordinary income on those commissions. But if you're a hedge fund manager and you get a commission on the money you make on money, so your stocks, your fund, you have a billion AUM, you're up 10%, you make $100 million for your investors, you get a $20 million or 20% carried interest. That $20 million is taxed at long-term capital gain. It makes absolutely no sense. It's nothing but a giveaway to the top, not even the top 0.1%, but the top 0.01%.
--:-- Katy Tur: Most importantly about this story, where does Katy Tur vacation?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Cape Cod.
--:-- Katy Tur: Oh, fancy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, my husband's family has been coming here since the 50s.
--:-- Katy Tur: You know, that fits.
--:-- Scott Galloway: All right, Katy. Speaking of deals, Twitter shareholders will vote on Elon Musk's offer on September 13th. Twitter board is urging investors to approve the deal for a $44 billion bid. Musk and Twitter are slated to head to court in October shortly after the vote. Is there a view in D.C. around what's going to happen with the chancery court? And has this been a bridge too far for Musk?
--:-- Katy Tur: There is an open question about whether the courts are going to go after him and try to make an example out of him. There are rules that apply to everybody when you sign a contract that says you are going to do something. And if you back out of that contract, there is a penalty. There's a penalty in this deal as well. He's going on Twitter. What Twitter is saying is that he's attacking them. He's taking down their market value. He's making the company look worse in order to get a better deal out of them. They're saying this is essentially blackmail that you're doing. The courts have a chance to make an example of a guy who is one of the richest men in the world who, as we spoke about before, is kind of acting like the rules don't apply to him. If things are fair in this country, if the rules do apply to everybody, you would imagine that they would say you can't do this. You either have to pay the penalty or you got to buy the company.
--:-- Scott Galloway: A contract is a contract. How would you describe the relationship between D.C. and Musk? A lot of his profits have come from government tax credits given to purchasers of EV vehicles. It appears that Biden's had some high profile misses or he's decided to not include Tesla in some stuff. What's the relationship between D.C. and Tesla and Musk?
--:-- Katy Tur: I am not an expert in the relationship between D.C. and Tesla and Musk. I think the relationship between Washington and the tech industry in general is not a strong one, because I don't think Washington understands the tech industry, as we've seen from some of the conversations that senators have when these tech leaders are sitting in front of them. Listen, I think Elon Musk is a complicated individual who has really big ideas and has done some really remarkable things. Creating energy technology around cars that is desirable, making them look sexy, making people want them is a really big deal. These solar panels and these energy grids that he's talking about, the space exploration that he has. These are all great, big ideas that make this country an amazing place. The question is, can our government figure out a way to harness that so that it benefits everybody? I don't think they've quite figured that out. I don't think they know how to deal with somebody like Elon Musk, who's eccentric. It strikes me he is pissed off and has been offensive and really just kind of out of line with so many of our senators and elected officials. Isn't he due for a cold lunch?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I didn't think that, but look at what Trump did. Trump proved that none of that matters. Everything's transactional. He just slapped around everybody in Washington, including other Republicans. He slapped them the worst, and they came crawling back to him. Is Elon Musk Donald Trump? No, he's not. He's not a politician. He's not harnessing the will of 50 million or 150 million people or whatever it is. 90 million on Twitter.
--:-- Katy Tur: I think they're more similar than people think.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, but he's not running for anything at the moment. So he's not the threat that Donald Trump was. But does that mean that he can get away with things? I think so far he has. The chancery court stuff might change it.
--:-- Katy Tur: Yeah, I hope so. And again, this is projecting because he calls me names on Twitter, but I think a lot of these senators, legislatures, judges, courts have just said, okay, we've got to send a message here. You said this before, that if contracts aren't upheld, there's got to be a certain code. It strikes me that he has pissed off so many people that it's going to come to roost here. We'll see though. You're right so far.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think what we have in this country, this is part of what got Donald Trump elected, are people who are above the rules and people who have to follow the rules. It seems like there's a class of people in this country who are very rich or very powerful that get to do whatever they want. Donald Trump was one of those people, even though he was the one railing against it. Elon Musk seems to be one of those people. There are a lot of lawmakers that seem to be above all the rules. If you want to run things that make people confident, run a system that makes people confident in it, you've got to start applying those rules to everybody. I think that goes the same for what we're seeing. We can get to this later with the DOJ and Donald Trump and the insurrection. Are you going to apply the rules to him as you would apply them to everybody else? Is that the kind of country we are? Or are there actually people who are above the law? It's a big question.
--:-- Katy Tur: Yeah, that does feel like that question is coming to a critical juncture. I think a lot of people are hoping that both this chancery court case and potentially a criminal indictment against the president are going to send a signal that we've hit kind of peak megalomania. Maybe this is the point at which justice does start to punch back and say, no one is above the law. But then what happens if Donald Trump gets reelected again, or if somebody who's very sympathetic to Donald Trump gets reelected again and installs a DOJ that takes it all back or starts going after political rivals? We are at this weird inflection point, as you said, where you're going to go after people and you're going to apply the rules the same to everybody. But if Donald Trump or somebody like him gets in power again, are they going to take that example and then bastardize it and start using it to their own advantage? Who are we as a country? We're going to start defining it in the next few years. And it may get pretty ugly.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, it does feel sometimes you do wake up and think, this is not the America that at least I'm used to. It feels as if we've really gotten to a weird point. Optimistically, I think these two cases or these two situations are going to set a big tone for what happens over the next decade.
--:-- Katy Tur: Anyways, another important poll. The Fed voted this week to raise interest rates by 75 basis points. That's in line with expectations. But less expected, a Senate report says that China tried to woo Fed officials into disclosing sensitive information for over a decade. Fed Chairman Powell pushed back on the reports. I'll put forward another thesis, and I'm curious to get your response. I think corporate espionage is the most efficient way to grow an economy. We did it in the 19th century by stealing textile and manufacturing IP out of Europe, and I think the Chinese have been doing it to us for the last several decades. Is it as out of control in D.C. across corporate America as I think it is? And is this just another example, or is this an example of xenophobia?
--:-- Scott Galloway: If you are the one perpetrating the espionage, you don't think that it's unfair. You think that this is the way the world works. I don't have to live by your rules. You don't have to live by my rules. I'm going to try to get as much information as I possibly can.
--:-- Katy Tur: Listen, we are in a battle with China right now for economic position. They have a lot of power. They don't have the same rules we have. So when they start trying to infiltrate our stuff, they're not going to play nice. Of course they're not. They're going to try to get the information in any way that they can. It's our job to try and protect that. It's information warfare. It's not hot war, but it's information warfare. We've been engaged in it in one way or the other for the entirety of human history. You brought up an interesting point. If you're doing the espionage, you don't feel as if you're a spy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I call it soft espionage. The example I use is say you're a bright young woman who came from a fairly modest background in China, and you get the opportunity to go to university. They say we pay for it in America. You get an MBA and you become an incredibly impressive young woman and you get a job at Google. The people who paid for your education, the people who are giving your dad and your cousins jobs in the government, call and say, we would just love to talk to you every once in a while and get your view on technology. Then the calls get increasingly like, what is Google planning here? Could you find out this information? Is there a way you could ask to be transferred to this team so we can have more of these calls? You don't call them and say, start killing executives. I think this is happening everywhere. I think it's the most efficient form of economic growth. I'd be shocked if we didn't find out that in every tech company, there's soft espionage everywhere.
--:-- Katy Tur: But I do think if you are coming from a place like China, and you are sending your best and your brightest to school in a developed, rich country that is somebody that you want to gain a foothold against or that has information that you want, use the leverage that you have. We'll pay for it. We'll take care of your family. Who is that person going to be loyal to? The company that pays their paycheck or the person who got them there? It's going to get complicated. I imagine that loyalty lies in the place that's paying for you and keeping your family safe and well.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Jerome Powell raises interest rates 75 basis points. What's people's view of Fed Chairman Powell and any thoughts on inflation, which tends to be a massive dilemma here?
--:-- Katy Tur: Elizabeth Warren thinks that the Fed is making the wrong decision. It's too blunt. It's going to hurt lower income families. The prevailing wisdom is that the Fed's got to do something because inflation is out of control. You go to the supermarket and you're paying $10 for bacon when you used to pay $8. People's grocery bills are rising hundreds of dollars. That is not tenable for a lot of American families. The Fed's got to do something. In history, they've had one big tool, and that's raising interest rates. So far, the increases that they've made have not done anything in the immediate aftermath. So they're going to keep on doing them. The question is, if they are able to get inflation under control, will they have done it without sending us into a recession? The GDP numbers came out today that show that we have two straight quarters of declined growth, which worries some. The Republicans are already using it to campaign, saying we're in a recession. Joe Biden and his economy are a mess and American families are hungry. But it's complicated. It's a really complicated picture that the Fed's looking at. It's probably more complicated than ever with the war in Ukraine, the supply chain issues, and COVID backlash. It's a weird time. I don't envy Jerome Powell at all. I don't think anyone does.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Although the market seems to like it. The market went up a ton. I think the market responds to what I'll call an adult in the room. I think Fed Chairman Powell comes out of this a winner. I think he's making hard decisions. I think Senator Warren's view, inflation is much more damaging to low-income families than interest rates. The people who interest rates hurt the most are usually people who have a lot of leverage or a lot of debt. So I don't understand that comment.
--:-- Katy Tur: Let's move on to our first big story. Mark Zuckerberg, the Zuck. Katy should be glad he's colorblind because Meta is seeing red for the first time ever. In earnings reports this week, the company announced its first ever drop in revenue. This is a big deal. In Facebook's 20-year history, it's usually reporting 20, 30 percent revenue up. Its revenue was down. It's down about 1 percent from Q2 last year. The stock has been cut in half. Their net profit dropped to under $7 billion, and the company's VR division posted a loss of $2.8 billion. Curious to get your thoughts on the Zuck or Facebook or their plans throughout the metaverse.
--:-- Scott Galloway: The metaverse is such a strange concept to me. My husband's done stories on this. He's gone into the metaverse. I don't get it, and maybe I'm just an old person. I don't get why you'd want to live there in that alternate reality. What does that do for you? I could be totally wrong. In 20 years, it could be all the rage. 10 years, I doubt it. But to me, it just feels strange. Facebook, listen, I work in a dying industry. I work in television news. We are contracting. We have been contracting now for decades. I think Facebook and these media companies that have now been around for a while are going to start to see the same trends eventually. They harnessed lightning in a bottle for a time with social media. Now as social media is diversifying, there are so many different apps. There was a study that showed that people under 30 are now using social media even less. There's a decline in social media use as they're starting to feel like they're being taken advantage of. They don't want all of their information out there. Are they going to these smaller communities where it's just them talking with their friends? I think the Facebooks of the world are in for something of an awakening. The question is, are they going to be able to pivot and redefine themselves? Zuckerberg's obviously betting on meta. But as a layman, Scott, I don't get it. I don't get it at all. I don't want to be a cartoon with no hands. I'm sure the technology is going to get better.
--:-- Katy Tur: No legs. You get hands, just no legs.
--:-- Scott Galloway: What about the physical experience of life? To be crude, you can't go have sex. You can go have sex in meta, but are you going to feel anything? That doesn't make sense to me. If you go eat a peach in the metaverse, is it going to taste good to you? Your life is centered around physical experiences, the physicality of touching sand. How do you get that in the virtual world? How do you approximate that? If you don't do that, how can you ever enjoy it as much as you enjoy real life? I think you don't get it because it's not gettable. His vision of it, the bull argument is we already have very big businesses based on the metaverse. Video games are a metaverse. Twitter, to a certain extent, is a metaverse. When you go on a trading or investment app, it's sort of, technically the metaverse is a three-dimensional rendering of the web that's an immersive experience. The thing that is so arrogant or kind of consensual hallucination between Mark Zuckerberg, his employees, and his shareholders, and by the way, employees supposedly don't buy into this, is that they can address gaming, education, work, entertainment, and they can do it all using this device called Oculus. So far, it's been a giant thud. All of these companies are looking to reignite growth. When their businesses become mature, they have an obligation to shareholders to take some of the cash flow from those mature businesses and pour it into growth. Facebook's growth vehicle or attempted growth vehicle is meta. They made the acquisition of the century with Instagram, and that was the gift they kept on giving. Until now.
--:-- Katy Tur: That's right.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Google and Amazon were in cloud. That was their growth vehicle. Now Amazon, I think, is going into healthcare for their growth vehicle. But I think Facebook has really stubbed its toe here. To your comments, it doesn't make any sense. The numbers are starting to come in.
--:-- Katy Tur: Their troubles do not end there, though. High-profile users are angry with Instagram's new video-first redesign. This is big news. Kylie Jenner and Chrissy Teigen both complained that the app is losing its focus as it tries to compete with TikTok. In response, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri posted a video where he doubled down on the changes. Are you a TikToker, Katy? Is your husband on TikTok?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Neither one of us have TikTok because both of us feel, why would you want to give the Chinese government all the information about you? That's how we feel.
--:-- Katy Tur: Are our kids on TikTok?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. Our older son is on TikTok. He's constantly face down scrolling in it. I, as most respectable old people, see TikTok videos two weeks late on Instagram, which was a meme that went around that I identified with. TikTok's obviously a very big deal. Everyone's on it. I don't know. I'm just getting to be a fogey now. Even Instagram, my one addiction now is Instagram, and I find myself mindlessly scrolling through it all the time. But I am of the same mind as Chrissy Teigen and Kylie Jenner. I just want to see pictures of my friends. What happened to the pictures of my friends? Why am I being flooded with content that I don't follow? Why am I being pushed toward these stupid videos where I just see stupid things happening? Or I'm transfixed by somebody icing a cake. Why am I watching this video of somebody icing a cake? Why can't I look away? I don't enjoy it. Also, why am I looking at these influencers? I'm just constantly being sold stuff. I'm tired of it. So I'm with them. Let's go back to smaller. This is again with the trends with people under 30. They're going to smaller groups where they can connect with their friends, have interesting conversations with the people that they want to talk to, and not being forced to consume what an algorithm or what a big company wants. I have a Twitter account. I've got a lot of followers on my Twitter account. There are tweets that go out from my Twitter account. I have handed over the reins of my Twitter account to my husband, because Twitter was driving me nuts. I booked coming out and I said, I just don't want to deal with it. I gave my husband my account number and I said, just please tweet stuff that's relevant and tell me anything that I need to know.
--:-- Katy Tur: Was it making you unhappy?
--:-- Scott Galloway: It was a mental health decision. The book that I was releasing was deeply personal. I knew that it was already hard for me to talk about it. I knew it would be even harder for me to hear from the peanut gallery, especially when so many of those voices are, as you said, just bots. I decided just to log off. But there was also a professional decision behind it. I found that in my job, I would go just as muscle memory, I would just go to Twitter in the middle of a commercial break to see what people were saying about the last segment.
--:-- Katy Tur: I know, I do too.
--:-- Scott Galloway: While it was kind of helpful real-time feedback at first, I realized later that I was bending toward what one or two people said. It would get into my head. Subconsciously, I would start asking questions that were more along the lines of a comment they made. I don't think that that's a good thing. I think that it's better to do my own research, to ask my own questions, to not be influenced that directly by just one or two voices in real time. In order to stop the temptation, I just took it off my phone. I think it's helped a lot. If there are conversations about this conversation we're having on Twitter, I will be blind to it, happily.
--:-- Katy Tur: I do find myself watching Instagram Reels more. I like Instagram because I enjoy watching people younger and hotter than me, i.e. everybody. The videos at play, I do find myself doing more of it and going less to TikTok. I think they're just saying we've got to—
--:-- Scott Galloway: It's working?
--:-- Katy Tur: I don't think they have any choice. I think they've got to pivot to what is the biggest trend in media consumption right now. If you think about every quarter for 10 years, almost every media company reported kind of anemic earnings and profits. That's because Netflix was sucking the oxygen out of the room. For the last 25 years, every retailer has, on average, announced flat to bad earnings because Amazon was sucking the oxygen out of the room. Now in the last 72 hours, Twitter, Snap, and Google announced sort of middling to just horrific earnings because TikTok is sucking the oxygen out of the room. Facebook looks at TikTok. Facebook's most innovative action is copying other people's innovation. That's a decent strategy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Stealing from Snapchat.
--:-- Katy Tur: 100%. That's a decent strategy. I think they look at TikTok, which is algorithmically driven, short form videos, and they say, we got to go there because that's what the kids want.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Don't you think that they're— I wonder when the inevitable full scale backlash comes or if it comes. Don't you have a nostalgia for the 90s?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I have a nostalgia for not being connected. Because I remember it. I remember not being connected. I remember having to go to a pay phone to call my parents to get a ride. I remember having a landline and having my friends call and talking all night on the landline. I remember meeting up at a mall and saying, "Here's where we're going to meet at what time," and not texting "Where are you?" when they're just around the corner. I remember a simpler time, and I miss that time. I miss being able to go off the grid for hours or for days. I'm on vacation. There's no reason why I should be looking at my phone, and yet I'm looking at my phone. I don't want to be reachable when I don't want to be reachable. Can we go back to that? Is there going to be a backlash?
--:-- Katy Tur: Are the kids starting to drop off social media?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't think we're going back.
--:-- Katy Tur: Why? But why? They love *Friends*. They love the show *Friends*.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Okay, that's one thing. Yeah, they love Ross and Rachel. That does not make an economy.
--:-- Katy Tur: But they love the interaction without the phones. It's not... when are we going to have a bunch of sitcoms in the future where everyone's just staring at their phone?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Let me guess, you are Adidas Superstars. I agree, but it's the world we live in.
--:-- Katy Tur: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about the latest with Trump and his allies and take a listener question about higher education and abortion access.
--:-- Katy Tur: Scott, we're back with our second big story. Trump is under investigation by the Justice Department as part of a probe into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. DOJ investigators have asked witnesses, including top aides to Mike Pence, about conversations with Trump. And the DOJ has also obtained phone records from key officials and aides in Trump's administration. What is the view? Are we looking at a criminal indictment here? What's the momentum here?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I am going to be the brake pumper on this. As somebody who covered the Mueller report day in and day out, I think we did a disservice to the country, to the report itself, by overanalyzing it and by pumping up every single indictment and guessing—educated guessing—what Robert Mueller was going to find and what would come from this report. I don't think it was good. I think if we had just waited on the Mueller report, waited for the findings to come out, didn't cover it every single day, didn't set expectations so high, the report itself would have landed with a much stronger impact. And it was an important piece of investigative material that just disappeared. A lot of obstruction there, a lot of problems, a lot of still unanswered questions about relationships that the Trump team and Trump himself had with the Russians. I think it would have landed harder if we shut up about it more. So I think we want to be very careful with how we talk about what DOJ might be doing and what sort of criminality Donald Trump himself might be exposed to.
--:-- That being said, the January 6th Committee has done a remarkable job of laying out the timeline, laying out all of the people involved, the extremist groups involved, the signals they were getting, and then Donald Trump himself not doing anything on the day of January 6th. I think it's been revelatory. I think it will have an effect, if not on the midterms, then on the 2024 election and the Republican primary. I think it's already having an effect on the would-be Republican primary. So when we talk about the Justice Department and what they're doing and who they're looking into, I think it's interesting. We raise an eyebrow. We ask some questions about it, but we don't set expectations.
--:-- Katy Tur: Still, they're investigating, which is interesting. And there's a rumor that, to get back in the news in a positive way, he's going to announce his candidacy for 2024. Do you think that's true? And also, there's a belief—and I wonder how much of it is us just hoping—that large contingencies of the Republican Party are moving to other candidates.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think it is starting to happen. When you look at the polling in the Republican Party, half of the Republican Party now says they want a candidate other than Donald Trump. That is a really big number. If I was working for Trump's team, I would be nervous about that. If I was working for DeSantis' team, I'd be very excited. I think people, as the Republicans expected, got a little exhausted by Donald Trump being in the news every day and saying something every day. His hardcore base, forget about them, they're not going to move. But everybody else is asking themselves, "Is there someone else who has the same policies, who looks and sounds like Trump in terms of policy, but doesn't have the same drama attached to him?" And they might be looking towards somebody like Ron DeSantis. I don't think the January 6th hearings are helping. They're not hurting the Republican Party per se, but they're hurting Donald Trump.
--:-- Katy Tur: I'm curious, you've been covering elections. One thing about elections is the frontrunners at this point usually never end up getting the nomination. I remember us talking about Giuliani or Fred Thompson or whoever it might be who was the frontrunner.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Fred Thompson, wow.
--:-- Katy Tur: Remember Herman Cain? He was at one point leading. So you see what it takes, so to speak. Who are the names that we don't hear about that you think have a shot, either on the Republican or the Democratic side?
--:-- Scott Galloway: People will talk about Larry Hogan. Some Republicans see him as the great Republican hope—somebody more measured and reasonable, a more traditional style Republican, not divisive—to get the nomination. I think he's got a hard uphill battle in front of him. The Democrats are a lot tougher. They don't really have much of an obvious bench right now. There's Kamala Harris, who's the vice president, but people see issues with her because she hasn't been very high profile in her time as vice president.
--:-- Katy Tur: Let's just pause there. I think you're being kind. Everything I've read or heard is that her office is a shit show, that the West Wing doesn't even like dealing with their office, and that she's basically been already kind of sidelined. She's generally thought of as ineffective. The issue I've heard about her is that she doesn't know why she's running, or didn't know why she was running when she was running in 2020. She didn't have a forward-looking thesis of why she should be president. While she's fun and charming, she couldn't gain any momentum because she couldn't define her reasons for getting in the race. That's the issue they still see around her. This administration... I mean, there's Pete Buttigieg, but his profile hasn't really risen at all. What's the view on him now that he's in D.C.?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think he's doing a perfectly fine job in his role, but his profile hasn't been raised at all. He hasn't done anything where people are looking and pointing and saying, "Oh, Pete Buttigieg. Yeah, look at that guy. Look what he did. I love the way he speaks." I think people want somebody who has executive experience, and I think they're going to look, if Joe Biden doesn't run again, toward governors. There's a lot of talk about Gavin Newsom right now, who has his own problems if he's going to get into the race. California is a hard state to run from when you are a Democratic candidate. Republicans have done better there, but it's a very blue state and it can tend to pull you into a much more progressive zone than the rest of the country is at. But he's going hard at it. He came out of his recall efforts stronger than ever. He's attacking DeSantis, which is an indicator that he is flirting with a 2024 run. He's running ads in some key places. So he's somebody to watch out for. And then there's a lot of whispers and talk about Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
--:-- Katy Tur: Yeah. It already feels like... I thought Governor Newsom's kind of aggressive move of running an ad in Florida was a stroke of genius. I think he sort of indicated that "I am the torchbearer for the next generation of Democratic politics." Do you think if Trump announces... It strikes me—I don't know if you've spent much time with Governor DeSantis, but I've said that people like Governor DeSantis from afar, but he's distinctly unlikable. My prediction is that he'll shoot up and shoot down really fast because you just listen to the guy talking and you're like, "This guy's a jerk."
--:-- Scott Galloway: He has been very successful in Florida. I think that alone means he's someone to reckon with. There are candidates around the country who want him to come speak on their behalf. That says something. But the knock on DeSantis—and this was a knock that followed him in his college days—is that he is very bad socially. He's just not good one-on-one. He's strange. He's quiet. He's, as you said, not likable, not friendly. How does he overcome that running for president? Does he need to overcome that? Because when you get in these big rallies and you're just going after the other side and owning the libs, as the Republicans want to do, I'm not so sure how likable you need to be. As long as you're feeding the red meat that the party wants.
--:-- Katy Tur: Well, the good news is you can be strange and awkward in college and go on to host a podcast. So that's some consolation for those of you out there.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So other Trump allies are in trouble. Verizon's cable TV network will stop carrying One American News Network after this weekend. Womp, womp, womp.
--:-- Katy Tur: I didn't even know what that was.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah. OAN is a rabidly pro-Trump network that peddled conspiracy theories around the 2020 election. Verizon Fios was its last major distributor. One OAN host called Verizon a "radical Marxist corporation." Well, sure. Okay. And urged viewers to cancel their subscriptions? What's going on here?
--:-- Katy Tur: Streaming is rising, so arguably they shouldn't need to be on cable television. If they're really that influential, they should be fine with streaming. I think it's a big deal. I think it's a line in the sand for these companies who say, "We don't want to distribute what you are peddling because you are peddling dangerous falsehoods." OAN was on the leading edge of that. You might not know who they were, but you remember some of those Trump press conferences where there was always one question the press secretary would go to when they were feeling too much heat from the regular press. There would be a girl in the back with black hair who always wore a scarf. She always asked the biggest softball, or she would say, "Tell me why the Democrats are so terrible. How can you be so awesome?"
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, exactly. That was their safe space. That was OAN. So good riddance. And not only that, here's some data: OAN had a total viewership of 14,000 people, just to give a reference point. By the way, I've had a TV career. I was on Vice and that show got canceled. Actually, I walked from that show. Then I was on Bloomberg and that got canceled before it aired. Then I had a program on CNN Plus and it was very successful.
--:-- Katy Tur: I heard about it.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm literally the COVID-19 of television. I kill weak networks. I put them over the edge. And by the way, testament to you, you were brave enough to have me on your show and your show is still on, which says that your show is enduring, Katy. You survived the dog.
--:-- Katy Tur: I would still have you on my show. Are you still contractually obligated to CNN?
--:-- Scott Galloway: They're still paying me, which I think means I'm contractually obligated. But to be serious for a second, you said it before. We're in a lot of media channels: podcasts, newsletter, books, speaking, and television. I'm fairly analytical with every piece of data I have. When I look at the amount of time to produce TV, when I look at the amount of money we make relative to the effort, TV comes in a distant last. I believe it's empty calories. I can't get over how few people actually watch television anymore. I can tell the feedback I get based on the volume of Twitter. But there's something about TV—I don't know if it's credibility or it tickles my narcissist sensors—where I keep going back to it. The foot you lead with is television. Have you thought about, in terms of managing your own career, leaning more into books or podcasts? Because I do think right now, and I'm saying this of all anchors, you guys are pilots for 747s for Pan Am. You're the bomb right now, but I don't think it's got a great outlook.
--:-- Katy Tur: I share your concern. You and I had this conversation a couple of years ago, and I didn't really have an answer for you because I just didn't see it in the immediate future. In the past couple of years, especially the past year, I've started to get very concerned about what happens on the cable side of things, on the broadcast side of things. We're overleveraged. I work for a cable company and my husband works for a broadcast network. We're riding high right now, but as you said, we could be running into a mountain very soon. So where do we go now? Where do we go next? I have books as a backstop, but if you've written a book, you know a book is very difficult. You can't make a life off a book. Podcasts... do I have a great idea for a podcast that would get the kind of viewership that you have? Not at the moment, but I would love to find one. I love the idea of talking. My husband and I really want to do a podcast together because we like each other right now. We want to kill our marriage, so we thought working together would be a great idea.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, I was going to say, I would advise against that.
--:-- Katy Tur: I know. I do believe that people on a base level want to hear the news told to them. There is a desire for something along the structure of what TV news provides, with visuals and with somebody anchoring the coverage, especially on those big days. I mean, where are you going to go on a day where the Capitol gets sacked by thousands of angry Trump supporters? You're not going to go to the Pivot podcast. You're going to go to television. You're going to want to see it happen in real time. That might not be on DirecTV in a few years. That might be on YouTube TV in a few years. And it will look a lot like DirecTV because you'll turn on your TV and see a bunch of apps at the bottom and you'll just go to the place where you find the live streaming news. I think there will always be a place for it. It's just going to contract, and there will be fewer people needed to do it. Who survives those hunger games?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Anyways, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got mail.
--:-- Katy Tur: I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail. The question came in via email, and I'll read it. "Hi, Scott. You recently mentioned South Carolina's crackdown on abortion and how it will impact people's decisions to move there. My son graduated from Clemson this year and my daughter from Washington University in St. Louis a couple of years ago. They each had terrific college experiences, but now I question whether I'd want a child to attend college in either of those states since Roe v. Wade has been overturned. We live in New Jersey where access is not an issue. I'd love your thoughts on how lack of access to abortion and reproductive health will impact college decisions. Thanks, Kathleen Brown." Scott, your thoughts?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I want you to go first.
--:-- Katy Tur: I don't think 18-year-olds give a good goddamn about Roe v. Wade in terms of their decision around where they go to college. I think we've engaged in higher education in this awful, rejectionist, luxury brand positioning that makes it very difficult to get into a good school. In terms of a stack ranking on where you're going to go to college, that state's view on choice is just not going to be in the top 10. I think people will think more about whether they have a good football team versus these types of statewide decisions when it comes to your decision to go to college. I think parents will think about it and they will try to assert some influence over their kids. Some of that might be just talking to them, and other factors might be financial. I do think it will be consequential for women—and men too—who go to college and have an unplanned pregnancy. It happens. It's not unusual, especially around the age where you're starting to be more sexually active, which is college. Kids don't always make the best decisions. Or they make great decisions. Sometimes that's the right decision, right?
--:-- Scott Galloway: Sometimes it's the right decision, but I think it will have consequences. If it starts having high-profile consequences, that could have an effect. The question more is, do they stay in that state afterwards? Do they go to college in South Carolina?
--:-- Katy Tur: Generally, I find... I love it here, but this is not the place I want to be because I've got a future to plan. I don't think I can plan my future, especially if those states start going after you if you try to get an abortion elsewhere. That's what's really scary.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I find, generally speaking, almost every campus environment feels fairly progressive. I find that in almost every state, the universities are this little progressive West Berlin enclave, no matter how conservative the state. They feel progressive. I just don't think people are going to feel threatened by this.
--:-- Katy Tur: I think you're right about that. Look at Austin. It's the same way. Athens, Georgia. All of them. When you're choosing schools, you've had your heart set on a school probably for a little while. This might not affect the next few years. But I wonder if it starts to affect the few years after that, if these laws remain in place. There are a lot of questions about what it does for the midterms, how people vote on this issue. I think Democrats are hopeful they will turn out, although historically abortion has been more of a single-voter issue for Republicans. There's a lot of loud talk among Democrats, but are they actually going to say this is their one big issue? And are there enough Republican, moderate Republican women or independent women—and men too—who say, "I don't like this. It makes me uncomfortable. This is my one big voting issue"? That's an open question.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So Kathleen, the net net is maybe not going into college, but whether people stick around in that state might have more of an impact. If you've got a question of your own that you'd like answered, send it our way. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Katy, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Okay, Katy, let's hear some wins and fails.
--:-- Katy Tur: Democratic Party win. Joe Biden win this week. Manchin getting on board for this legislation for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, signing on for climate provisions, signing on to increase taxes among the wealthiest to close that billionaires loophole. That's a really big deal.
--:-- Scott Galloway: More for the party or for Biden?
--:-- Katy Tur: I saw it as a win for Biden. I think a win for Biden is a win for the Democratic Party right now. They're one and the same, and they need to run a victory lap to give them some momentum in the midterms, which, historically speaking, doesn't look great.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And your fail?
--:-- Katy Tur: My fail is me, Scott. My fail is me for being on this podcast.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's not true. You're going to see our book sales. We're going to sell at least three or four books here, Katy. This is a big deal. I'm going to call my editor and say, "You better print. Better print those copies. I need three more stats."
--:-- Katy Tur: That's right. My fail this week, in keeping on topic, is the Republicans.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You work for MSNBC, right?
--:-- Katy Tur: I'm going to go out on a limb here. Mitch McConnell, but only because of this. Because Mitch McConnell is usually so very good at manipulating the system to his advantage. He had said, "We will pass CHIPS so long as the negotiations on this Democratic bill, which was resurrected, stop." And Manchin said, "I'm not going to do it." So it looked like it was dead in the water. All the Republicans signed on. They whipped him. They got them ready to go. And now Manchin, after saying yes, has put McConnell in a position that McConnell usually puts others in: feeling like he got duped.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, it's really weird to read that the Democrats played the Republicans. That's just an emotion I'm not used to. It's not normal. I really have got to be honest with you. I was very surprised to find out that Joe Manchin signed on to this bill. I was genuinely shocked.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So my win is I think Amazon's acquisition of One Medical for $3.8 billion is a huge turning point, or hopefully a catalyst or the flag dropping for overdue disruption in the healthcare industry. The leading cause of bankruptcy. It is nearly impossible just to text your doctor and get some information. A combination of regulation coming down because of the pandemic, the deep pockets of Amazon, dispersing medical care from doctors' offices and hospitals to our smartphones and our smart speakers. I think this could be an enormous turning of the tides across what is supposed to be the wealthiest nation in the world, where we spend on average double on healthcare what other advanced nations spend, for worse outcomes. I am really hopeful. While I believe Amazon should be broken up, I think they should let this go through and we should bring in the great white shark of disruption into the healthcare industry. So I think that's a win. Any thoughts on the acquisition of One Medical, Katy?
--:-- Katy Tur: I think it's great for the healthcare system to be diversified and disrupted. I think, as you said, it's a big problem in this country. I will tell you right now, I am still getting medical bills for the C-section I had 15 months ago with my daughter. They come in the mail and I have no idea what they are. It's complicated. All I know is that I have to pay them or my credit's going to get messed up. I am in a position where I have more time than most to try to figure it out. I have more resources than most to try to figure it out. That just goes to show you that the system is not set up for you to understand it. It's set up to take advantage of you. Our healthcare system, for all the things we do right, all the innovation we make, and the high-quality healthcare we have at the very top, there is a lot of unnecessary suffering and unnecessary financial pain that is built in. It's unfair. Anything that will try to disrupt that, to fix that, I think it's a good thing. So applaud.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And my fail, if you will—and this will get some shit on Twitter—the prisoner exchange that might happen where Brittney Griner could be traded for the arms dealer Victor Bout, who's one of the world's most notorious arms dealers, referred to as the "Merchant of Death." I think it's a terrible idea, and I think it reflects weakness on the part of the president and his administration. I think all this will do long term is ensure that more people from special interest groups, more gay people, more athletes will be incarcerated on trumped-up charges across the world. This was negotiating with a hostage. It's no accident that they decided, based on an alleged minor infraction of having vape oil, to incarcerate someone who is LGBTQ and an athlete. Because Putin, who is the Yoda of PR and propaganda, knew it would inflame certain communities here in the United States, understandably, and they would put pressure on them and they would get back someone who is a very dangerous individual. I think this shows an incredible lack of leadership and bowing to outside pressure. Your thoughts?
--:-- Katy Tur: What do we do? We don't negotiate with terrorists. That usually is the standing rule.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 100%.
--:-- Katy Tur: Listen, I think it's hard. Obviously, anybody who wants to see Brittney Griner and the others who are imprisoned in Russia freed, I understand the intense desire to get her out and to do so at any cost. If that was my family member there, I would feel the same exact way.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yep.
--:-- Katy Tur: I think if you're taking a utilitarian approach to things, there are questions that rise about what precedent it's setting and the leverage it gives to foreign powers. I also wonder what it means for Americans who are deciding to travel abroad to places that aren't mainstream. Do Americans still travel abroad to a place like Russia? Do they travel abroad to some places in South America that might not have leadership friendly to the United States? Do they travel abroad to some places in Southeast Asia who have the same issues? It makes you think twice about where you want to go and what sort of risks you want to take.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, it feels that way. I was with friends last night. My close friend Greg Shove and I took our sons to the World Cup in Russia almost four years ago. I'm going to go again. My sons are football crazy. I thought about it. I don't think I'd go back to Russia. I'd been there once before on business. But here's the thing: a professor, a no-name professor, if they found vape oil in my suitcase, I don't think they'd do anything. I think they are going to strategically start incarcerating people that will create dissension, agita, controversy in the United States. I think we've fallen for it. I think this was a terrible—
--:-- Katy Tur: So you're saying you're not a high-value enough target?
--:-- Katy Tur: I don't even think they would trade the guy who played a Russian on Homeland for me. I don't think they would. I just don't think they'd be like, "Well, sorry about that, Scott. You know, Mrs. Galloway, you're welcome."
--:-- Scott Galloway: So just a quick pat on our own back here. We had a listener named Jonathan DM us on Twitter after our last episode about career advice. And he said, open quote, "I asked for a raise yesterday after listening to your show. I got the raise. Thank you." End quote. So thank you for letting us know. That made us all around here. We talked about it before the show, made us feel really nice.
--:-- Katy Tur: I will say, I listened to that conversation you had with Kara about getting a raise and every two years going to see what your market value is. And I have to tell you, I found it useful for myself. Not getting too comfortable in a position just because you've been there, and making sure that people know what you're worth. Because there is a tendency to see you as the person you were when you came into the company, which can be especially harmful if you come into a company when you're really young at a very low rate. It can be hard to leave that behind, leave that perception behind.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You need competing offers.
--:-- Katy Tur: Yeah. And especially, there's a lot of research showing that it's especially difficult for women who tend to be less aggressive about asking for increased compensation. We don't value ourselves as much because we have been conditioned to feel like we are not as valuable as men. We don't contribute the same thing. We don't work as hard. We're not as smart. That's what we've been conditioned to believe throughout our lives. And it shows in the way that we're paid. I mean, we make less, we still make less than men. I applaud the effort to get us toward equity. And I think we need to be loud about it. And I think we need to retrain ourselves to say, "Hey, listen, everything that we grew up with is bullshit. And we are just as good, if not more, if not better than everyone else." And to ask for what we deserve. You know, demand what you are worth, people. Ask for what you deserve.
--:-- Scott Galloway: That's a good place to end it. Okay, Katie, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. True story, Katie, we actually, because we do get a lot of downloads, have a lot of currency in the marketplace and can ask a lot of people. You are number one on my list, and solely because I was really moved by the courage and vulnerability that you demonstrated about your relationship with your father and your family when you came on and talked about your book. I think it's important that people who are as famous as you are demonstrate that kind of vulnerability. I was really moved by what you said, and I appreciate you being on the pod. Thank you very much.
--:-- Katy Tur: It was a hard thing to do, but I think transparency is best and telling the truth is best, and sometimes the truth is ugly.
--:-- Scott Galloway: There you go.
--:-- Katy Tur: There you go.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Jertat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Mia Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thanks, Katie. And thanks, everybody. We'll see you on Tuesday.
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