Trump Takes Office, TikTok’s Brief Shutdown, and Crypto Cronyism

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Scott Galloway: Trump declared the beginning of a, quote, golden age of America.

Kara Swisher: I think Zuck is hoping it's the golden shower age. I think that guy's going dirty.

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

Kara Swisher: And I'm Scott Galloway. Dark greetings from the USA.

Scott Galloway: And Hail Satan, Scott. The second reign of Trump has begun with a plethora of things. We'll talk about some of these ridiculous executive orders, which have no meat to the bone, as they say. But let's get right to the inauguration. I know you were drowning your sorrows in 80s music and firefighter videos. Did you watch the inauguration?

Kara Swisher: No. So one of the things I would recommend any dad does with his son, because it's a lesson or his 15-year-old son, sort of a rite of passage in the Galloway household about culture, politics, homosexuality, culture, sex, is to watch the entire eight seasons of Game of Thrones. And I believe in season five, Stannis Baratheon decides to burn his daughter Shireen at the stake. It is such a disturbing scene that running through it the second time, I decided for my own mental health, I'm just not going to watch that entire episode. And for me, the inauguration was the burning of Shireen Baratheon at the stake. I thought, I just don't need to watch this. Although I will say, really my one takeaway, and stay with me here, is the most important person on the planet right now, or the person with the most potential to do real good for the world, is Lauren Sanchez.

Scott Galloway: Oh, all right.

Kara Swisher: I mean, let's be honest, the Zuck is hornier than a three-balled cat. Yeah, I went back and looked at that video because I thought it might have been unfair. It was not unfair. He was catching a look. If she really wanted to do the world a solid, she would seduce Mark Zuckerberg, the Zuck. He's down for it.

Scott Galloway: Oh, wow. I didn't think you'd go there, but go ahead.

Kara Swisher: And then Priscilla Chan gets half the voting shares and boom, mental wellness and trust in institutions skyrockets.

Scott Galloway: I don't know. She was right there with him. She was right there with Mark at every event.

Kara Swisher: No, no, no. But she was in the overflow room because she doesn't have...

Scott Galloway: No, no. She was there. She was there. She was standing next to him. She's in the rotunda? She was in the rotunda. She was next to him. You didn't notice her because she was wearing pearls and a very conservative outfit, but she was right next to him.

Kara Swisher: You're right. I didn't notice her. I did not notice her.

Scott Galloway: You didn't because Lauren was like, yeah, bustier. Yeah, here we are. Hello. Come meet the girl. We hate to talk about clothes, but oh, my God, Melania Trump looked like a nun next to Lauren. She looked like she was headed to the Capitol to force people to give tribute in the Hunger Games. She looked so—and I love the air kiss. They clearly are very fond of each other.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The hat. That was a strategic—

Scott Galloway: But Lauren Sanchez is the leader we need right now.

Kara Swisher: That was a strategic hat. All I looked at were ladies. I spent the whole time looking at the ladies there, all the different— I think the fashion was off the hook. The pictures I've seen.

Scott Galloway: Well, some of it, yeah, they definitely dress, many of them. I thought they looked great. I thought that people look great.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, well, some of them do. I don't like that look. It's very shiny. And all those tech leaders and those beautiful knee pads they all had.

Scott Galloway: I know. I'm surprised they weren't exhausted by the weekend.

Kara Swisher: And some of them really were trying not to smile. Tim Cook smiled occasionally, but was trying to have a stern look. Sundar Pichai didn't know what he was doing there. He's like, oh, Jesus. He was next to Elon. It was the whole thing. The whole panoply was so ridiculous. And then Trump, my favorite part was Trump putting them up there right in the front. Now I know I wanted it inside because it looked better. It looked better inside. It was like actually a beautiful tableau kind of thing in a repulsive way, but it was beautiful. So if he was on the dais outside, you wouldn't have seen them all like that. And they would have been all bundled up. But instead, it's like, look at the rich people I collected one after the next. And the lady. And the lady. And so it was really, and he put them right there, right next to him, right over his shoulder. So you couldn't avoid them. And moved out. Governors moved out.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they were in the overflow room. Yes.

Kara Swisher: No people that were at his rallies. No people that he cared about. It was all rich people. Money. And then he even stuck Miriam Adelson in the back, like, which was kind of interesting. And Dana White. But he wanted to show, I have a trillion dollars of people right here and they're at my behest. And I own them. And it was such a, they were so played by this guy. It was, I kind of was like, kudos, Trump. I've never been able to nag them like that. I've never been able. But he did. He like had them in their spot. I thought it was interesting.

Scott Galloway: The only point of light that brought a smile to my face was there's a rumor that this guy named J.D. Vance is vice president.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I heard.

Scott Galloway: And he did show up. Trump looked like he was going to fall asleep when they were swearing Vance in. But there's an image of Vice President Vance's daughter wearing all these Band-Aids on her fingers.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It's really adorable. Do you remember Band-Aids for kids? They were Bluey Band-Aids, actually. I clocked that. That's a flex. That's a mom flex. I mean, they ignored him completely. And interestingly, we'll get to the people getting out of jail. But Vance said they wouldn't let out violent criminals, and they have.

Scott Galloway: Well, he doesn't know what's going on. I mean, Musk is the one. And we'll get to Musk in a second. But President Trump declared the beginning of a, quote, golden age of America, even though we're kind of in the golden age of America, after taking the oath of office on money, calling his inauguration Liberation Day.

Kara Swisher: I think Zuck is hoping it's the golden shower age. I think that guy's going dirty. That guy's going dirty. All right. He said he was saved by God to make America great. Again, referencing last summer's assassination attempt.

Scott Galloway: But God decided to kill that fireman. I'm sorry.

Kara Swisher: Go ahead. You're right. It's all such bullshit. He made a series of announcements about his inaugural address, including one that made Hillary Clinton visibly laugh. She was there. I love that Hillary just said, you know, she's like, I know a lot of people are like they shouldn't have gone. But I'm like, I'm down with her being right there. I'm down with Mike Pence being there. Like, you tried, dude, and you didn't succeed. So let's listen to Trump.

[Audio clip plays: Donald Trump speaking] Donald Trump: A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs.

Kara Swisher: It's so ridiculous. It's so fucking ridiculous. It's so laughable and stupid. And I ran into, of all people in the CNN green room, Elizabeth Warren, and I thought she'd be all, you know, had her dander up. And she's like, that was so friggin laughable. Like, what in the world? Like, so dumb. He also said that we're going to expand. He says this manifest destiny thing, but not just on this planet. But let's listen to that.

[Audio clip plays: Donald Trump speaking] Donald Trump: The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation. One that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.

Kara Swisher: Okay, not exactly JFK, but this is what Musk has been after the whole time. It just, the penny kind of dropped, and I went back and listened to a couple interviews I had done with him many years ago, 2016-18. His need to get to Mars seems to have been his goal here in a lot of ways. It's not money necessarily with this guy, but it is this whole Mars thing. What did you think of these Gulf of America and Mars situation?

Scott Galloway: Well, first off, the notion that America will again be the most prosperous, most admired, most powerful nation in the world. Well, good news, boss. It already is. It's all of those things.

Kara Swisher: That's right.

Scott Galloway: And the naming stuff is sort of, I mean, it's just kind of ridiculous. The Gulf of Cheaper Eggs. It's just sort of dumb, right? And the thing that really struck out to me, and I would imagine, so first off, this guy's full Putin. Did you notice we're going to expand new horizons for our flag? So what, we're invading Canada? I don't, where are we going? And by the way-

Kara Swisher: Mr. Anti-war, Mr. Anti-war wants to take on other countries.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we won out of bad wars, but we're becoming imperialists. And I'm down with Canada becoming the 51st state because that means Democrats win everything.

Kara Swisher: That's correct. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: So I don't, I thought that was really unusual, but I get the sense that he really has decided that Russia is the role model, both in terms of kleptocracy and expansionary vision. On the whole, I thought the stuff I've seen, I think Republicans do optics better than we do. I thought the aesthetics, the fashion, the get famous rich people up front and their hot wives, and if they're hotter, give them a better seat. I think they just understand that shit better than Democrats.

Kara Swisher: Though I have to say, a lot of people who were at the parties felt it was a lot of cheap tricks. A lot of people had to go. They just had to go.

Scott Galloway: I think it was made for TV.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. And like people there was like it was joyless and cheap tricks, which is and these were these were Republicans. They were like, this is gross and not cool. It wasn't cool, someone said to a friend of mine. What was interesting was the visuals. It was all for visuals. I did find his speech petty and small minded as he is. He's still he's in a perpetual campaign. This guy is never running for anything again. He just can't get out of the campaign mode and get into the governing mode ever, you know. And now Elon Musk, of course, is getting to go to Mars and we hope he goes first. We're very excited for his travels there. Never to come back because you can't come back, by the way, just so you know. He told me that. But he gave a speech at at the Capital One Arena where they did the usually have this inaugural parade that goes by the White House. They canceled that. And again, for spectacle's sake, that's leaving aside Billy Ray Cyrus at one of the things. It was quite a spectacle. So let's hear Elon's speech.

[Audio clip plays: Elon Musk speaking] Elon Musk: You know, there are elections that elections that come and go. Some elections are, you know, important, some are not. But this one, this one, this one really mattered. And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you.

Kara Swisher: You know, at the noise at the end there, that's Elon thumping his chest and doing what appeared to be a fascist Nazi style salute. Some people are calling it a Roman salute, but a Roman salute was a Nazi salute. Some people saying he was doing his heart goes out to you. That's not how you do it. It was weird. Some people are blaming it on him having Asperger's. And, you know, I'm sure, you know, in the sound of music, Rolf was just showing his heart went out to the Von Trapp family when he did that symbol, that signal. But it was stupid. I don't know what to say. It's like, oh, we're going to we're going to be on the incoming of a flood of this kind of bullshit. It was given he's in the public eye so much, he should be very careful about his signals that he does. I think a lot of people are letting him off because of the flood of other things that happened. I don't know if you had any thoughts.

Scott Galloway: Like I'm like you, I'm not a huge fan of Elon Musk, but I actually think he did a decent job. I thought he looked good. I thought he seemed enthusiastic. He captured the audience. I think the hand gesture was unfortunate, but I would give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't I don't think.

Kara Swisher: Except the Nazis were getting let out of jail. That's the only like I don't give him the benefit of the doubt. Like I assume you want.

Scott Galloway: You really, you're connecting the two that he's—

Kara Swisher: I don't know what he's doing. I just think he has—if you're in a position of that much power and that much influence and you're in the public eye, you should try not to do things that could be construed that way.

Scott Galloway: I just think that— I agree with you, but I don't think it's fair to conflate what he did with anything supporting the Third Reich. I don't—I just—I think that's a bridge too far. I think that's unfair to him.

Kara Swisher: Which is, I think, what he might have wanted to happen. Honestly you know he loves to troll people in some way to get people He expecting us all to go oh how dare he I think as usual it was sloppy and obnoxious is what it was at the very least I think he knew exactly what he was doing. And to attribute it, you know, it's interesting when everyone's like he is, you know, autistic or on the spectrum. A lot of people on the spectrum are like, I've never done a Nazi type salute kind of things.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but I mean, OK, again.

Kara Swisher: I agree. I'm not going crazy. I think he got caught up in the moment and made like to the moon. He did it twice. Let's just be clear. He did it twice. And if you watch it, it's weird. It's as weird as can be. I'm not, look, there's nothing to be done with this guy. He's going to continue to try to troll us and try to do all kinds of things that sort of like tickle liberals' outrage. This is his thing. This is what he's going to do till the end of his life. And he likes to do it. He likes to make memes. I think he absolutely knew he was doing. I don't think he cares. I don't necessarily think he's, you know, I don't know what he is. I don't know why he did it. But I thought it was badly done at the moment. Definitely. I think you have to be careful about signals and things like that. But I agree. I'm not going to, I'm moving on. Like, whatever. Elon was weird. Weird.

Scott Galloway: In addition, as I said, they all had prime seats. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, better seats than cabinet nominees who were behind them, I believe. What's incredible is the other notable attendees, too. Joe Rogan, Rupert Murdoch was there.

Kara Swisher: I didn't see him there. I don't know where they put him.

Scott Galloway: LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, really full of business people more than anybody else. And even Miriam Adelson, a big donor of his, was shoved, even though a business person shoved in the back, which was interesting. I don't know. It was quite something. And it was definitely made for TV. Trump quickly got to work on Monday evening, issuing sweeping pardons to over 1,500 of the January 6th rioters. He was thought to have not, J.D. Vance said he wasn't going to let off people who had violent things. But that's exactly what he did. But he let out people who had beaten up cops very clearly, people who had gotten 20 years to life, people who were obviously there to cause mayhem. But he let them off, too. One woman who was just inside and was a nonviolent protester wouldn't take the thing. She said, I committed a crime. I thought that was pretty honorable of her.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that was weird.

Scott Galloway: But he let off some very dangerous people. I know a lot of people that worked on those cases, and they are terrified now that these people are out and emboldened. They essentially said Trump now has his own private militia at his behest. I think that was pretty upsetting. I don't know what you thought about that one to me was the most seriously disturbing of all the many executive orders.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I don't know. There's a few trying to revoke birthright citizenship, trying to override the 14th Amendment, that feels, you know, some of it, I can understand declaring a national emergency of the border. Declaring a national energy emergency is just dumb. Gas on an inflation-adjusted basis is cheaper than it was 50 years ago. We are the largest oil producer in the world. Biden issued a ton of drilling permits. So that's nothing but just a false narrative. And it goes back to the notion we were talking about. America will be the strongest, most respected. We're there. Unfortunately, Biden was unable to communicate that effectively.

Scott Galloway: Correct.

Kara Swisher: Some of the stuff that, you know, this expansionary visionary stuff seemed very strange to me, felt like we're colonialists again. What do you think of this strategy of flooding the zone with shit? Now, I know all presidents do this. They put out executive orders. These are just one outlandish idea after the next. Most of them have no force of law. Most of them are just press releases, as they said, on better letterhead. But it is this flooding the zone with shit to get Democrats, you know, completely flummoxed. How dare he? How dare he? How dare he? Oh, how dare he do that? They should just not respond.

Scott Galloway: Most of this, I think a lot of it was throwing red meat at sort of populist symbolic. I do think it was a baller move to have a ton of executive actions as he was on the desk. It kind of visually represents leadership. You know, some of the stuff immediately said, I promise these things. I'm making do on these promises day one, even if they don't hold or even if they- I tried. I tried. I think he's being, one of the more generous things I think you could say about Trump's tenure the first time around was that he proved to be more of a pragmatist than an ideologue. And I do think he could have had an executive action around tariffs right away, but he didn't do that. He's obviously using it as a negotiating tactic, which again is a pragmatist. Some of this is just, you know, some of the, okay, the people who got out of prison are not comfortable with it. It's awful. I'm almost like, just give it to them so we can stop fucking talking about it and having museum exhibits where Marjorie Taylor Greene goes into like a zoo and holds the hands in praise. I get the move along idea. I get it. It's just some of these people are dangerous criminals.

Kara Swisher: That's a fair point. He talks about dangerous criminals on the street. He just let out some day. There is a point to moving along. Washington let off the people who did the whiskey rebellion. He did it, right? That happens over and over again. You just say, that was wrong. Let's move on. In the case of, he could have picked out a few, and even J.D. Vance said so, that were dangerous and beat up cops.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. The violent criminals, the proud boys, the oath keepers. Right. The ones that beat up cops. Guilty to sedition. Jail you go. Yeah. The stuff around, you know, there's only two genders, there's male and there's female. I almost see that as just unimportant, but mean.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. It's like, it's just, okay. You're just thumbing, you're, you're just waving the middle finger at a group of people. Fine. Have at it. Be who you are. I don't think that's going to have much, much effect.

Scott Galloway: I found this was mostly, you know, kind of like most of these things were sort of where's the beef or what actual impact on the ground is this going to have?

Kara Swisher: I agree. I thought it showed weakness, actually. I was like, there's too many of them. There's too many ones and all of them are kind of empty. It was sort of performative. I thought he should have been much more strategic and stronger. I thought they were all, I think they all showed. You know how Mark Zuckerberg is like, I'm grilling meat. I'm shooting buffaloes. That's what it was like. I was like, you're not a man because you have to performatively man at us. There is one, though, just real quick. There's one I actually thought was good. The singular one I thought was good was reclassifying federal employees, making them easier to fire.

Scott Galloway: I don't see any reason why federal employees shouldn't be subject to the same standards and anxiety that the private sector is.

Kara Swisher: Okay, but he's using it to put loyalty in. But yes, yes, I see you're And a return to work mandate is kind of a quiet firing. But just in terms of actual data, this notion, this trope that the right likes to circulate, the government state or what you would call it, the social state. What's the term that is? Deep state.

Scott Galloway: Not the deep state. The government state or the welfare state, whatever it is, that the government's too big. The percentage of employees represented by government employees has toggled between 14 and 17 percent for the last 15 years. it's at 14.2% right now. And the majority of those employees are state and local government. So actually employment amongst government employees is at a bit of a low right now. So the notion that it's just our deficit and our spending has exploded because the far right and the far left come together to agree on reckless spending and deficits and interest and entitlements. But the notion somehow that the employment base has ballooned, it just isn't accurate.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I know. It's just their way to attack people and try to scare them. That's why I don't like it. It's not done to make things better. It's done to terrify, which is stupid. All right, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we discuss what is exactly going on with TikTok after Trump's made the move and talk about the meme coin and other things.

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Scott Galloway: Scott, we're back. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to delay enforcing the TikTok ban for 75 days, though it's unclear if that order will hold water legally. Most people think not. This follows TikTok briefly shutting itself down in the U.S. for about 14 hours over the weekend ahead of the ban going into effect, which was just a performative piece of bullshit on behalf of the TikTok executives. As he signed the order, Trump attempted to explain the new plan where the U.S. would run TikTok as a 50-50 joint venture with its current owners. It's inexplicable, but let's listen.

[Audio clip plays: Donald Trump speaking] Donald Trump: The U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok. And congratulations, TikTok has a good partner. And that would be worth, you know, it could be $500 billion or something. It's crazy. The numbers are crazy. But it's worthless if I don't, if the president doesn't sign, then it's worthless. If the president does sign, it's worth maybe a trillion dollars. So I think like a joint venture, I think we would have a joint venture with the people from TikTok. We'll see what happens.

Kara Swisher: I mean, that's one of many ideas I've heard. You know, I don't mind ideas here, but this is, EO is just pointless. It just is. He doesn't have very many options because there's a lot. And by the way, people like Tom Cotton and others are like, you're not going around this law, Apple. And guess what? Right now, you cannot download TikTok and other ByteDance apps on the Apple Store or the Google Store. These people have good lawyers. They understand that Trump is all lather. He can't do that. Now, he gave some assurance to, I guess, Akamai and Amazon and Oracle. But they are liable, very liable right now for billions and billions of dollars if they don't comply with the law. So I think Trump can really do is pass a new law. That could happen, which is not going to happen. He could try to get some deal done with the Chinese. There's no reason the Chinese need to do this. I don't care what he threatens them with. And he doesn't have many options. He just doesn't. As a president, he doesn't have a lot of options except for following the law. He doesn't have to follow the law. You can order the Justice Department not to follow the law. But as you can see, as I said, Scott, they'll pick the Supreme Court and the Congress over Donald Trump in this situation. And so you can't download TikTok right now. But talk about this 50-50 joint venture. I don't even understand. The American public owns it? I don't know. Maybe give every American a share in TikTok. That would be great. Whatever.

Scott Galloway: So this is unusual. The government owning a stake in what was a private company has happened all the time, and there's a word that describes it perfectly. It's socialism. Communism. Socialism is the government owns the means of production. Whether it's the UK government deciding it's a good idea to invest in an innovative car company called DeLorean, whether it's Obama who fell under a lot of criticism for making low-interest loans to Solyndra. And Tesla, by the way. This is pure socialism. This is the government picking winners and losers. And the notion that the government, we kind of one of the basics, basics, tenets or pillars of American capitalism that has proven to be right is the government is not good at picking winners and losers. That when we have full body contact violence in terms of competition with an operating system of rules that produces unicorns and prosperity and hopefully you tax them at a good rate and we can reinvest in our Navy and seniors et cetera. But the notion that the president could decide which companies we going to be JVs with and which ones we're not. In addition, this goes to a much larger point here. And that is, are we a serious people? We had a law passed by 79 senators, 350 congresspeople, one of the most bipartisan unanimous laws of our elected representatives in recent history. They can't agree on lunch and they agreed on this, but go ahead. Signed into law. We gave them six months to divest. And then when it comes, you know what we do? We blink. We say, oh, wait, we're going to extend it. And by the way, on a dime's notice, TikTok, which legally has to listen to the CCP, was able to inspire, rally, and motivate tens of millions of people to talk about the TikTok ban, voice their opposition. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the good folks at TikTok decided to tweak the algorithm and elevate all of that content, such as 170 million Americans were all of a sudden inundated with a certain viewpoint, right? That then resulted in political pressure that resulted in presidential action, what happened on Saturday and Sunday is exactly the reason this thing needs to be banned. What is the next issue that the CCP slash TikTok can decide to inspire, rally, and motivate tens of millions of Americans to exert pressure on our elected representatives? And the notion that somehow China now, we gave them six months. Here's a law. Our elected representatives. We passed it. You know what they said?

Scott Galloway: Hold my fucking beer. You are not a serious people. And we now think that they're going to come to the table. They're expressing interest in working with Trump. The glitzing is going to be done by what they're going to do is the I call it the Elon faint. They're going to get it into the hands of someone they like who they can manipulate, or it's going to be fake. They're still going to be there.

Scott Galloway: And it's still going to be... if you know, the two people I trust on this whole thing. One is Tom fucking Cotton, I think he's speaking some truth about the dangers of China and manipulation of the United States. And AOC, who did a fantastic thing on, I think it was Blue Sky, where she's like, "Look, I didn't see any substantive manipulation here. I'd be happy to do this if they would show it to us," right? Both of them are like, "We all look like fucking idiots." Both of them said the same thing. You either put up or shut up. You either follow the law. If you're going to pass this law, pass another one. That's what they can do.

Scott Galloway: And Trump, they'll do something behind the scenes, but it will result in much less security, much less privacy when they should have gone back and done a broader law about all these companies, all of them, and have a thing in there saying foreign adversaries can't own this much of a big media property. That's all they had to do. And they wouldn't do that because they get all their bank from those. [Referring to the tech people on the dais] This is all fixed.

Scott Galloway: Now, let me just say, one person wrote a piece. Kevin Roos wrote a piece: "What if no one misses TikTok?" He was like, there isn't that much anger as you think. The only people I feel for is the creators who are making money on this platform. And I do love entrepreneurs doing that. They can go somewhere else. They'll go to YouTube or wherever they can go. And I'm sorry about that.

Scott Galloway: The economics are really interesting because I have a 14-year-old son. The average 14-year-old American boy spends 17 hours a week on TikTok. So if you take out sleep, basically, without TikTok, you're getting an entire day back for a 14-year-old boy. Now, unfortunately, he's not going to use that to study or play the piano or hang out with his dad. The calculation is about 10 or 15 percent goes to Snap, 20 percent to YouTube, and 70 percent to Meta platforms. So there's $23 billion up in advertising revenue for grabs here. About $15 or $13 of it goes to Facebook. 10 times revenue is $130 billion. You're looking at essentially Mark Zuckerberg is about to get $20 billion wealthier personally with a banning of TikTok.

Scott Galloway: But I think all of this goes to a different issue. And that is, one, if a Chinese-owned or CCP-influenced company can exert massive political pressure, I don't need to see evidence of whether or not it's a security threat. I agree. That's where I part with... [referring to Kara's earlier point] I think she's making a good point, is that they voted too quickly and didn't do a broader one. Really, that was her biggest beef, is that it just was jammed through. So nobody got to really think about it and nobody did a broader one. And I agree with her on that.

Scott Galloway: The American word and American laws no longer have veracity. It's like, OK, we can buy off their politicians. We can invest, make people wealthier. It's now a kleptocracy. And when they say something, do they mean it? I don't know. Well, they do mean it because Apple and Google are not following this thing. That's where I look at. These lawyers are like, "No fucking way we're going to expose ourselves to this." To me, the fact that you can't download it says everything to me. Trump has no power here in this thing. And he will do some jazz hands deal with his pals. But they've got to get Congress and the Supreme Court to approve it. And I think in this case, the two other branches of government are prevailing.

Kara Swisher: Let's get to some very quick headlines. I do want to talk about that meme point. But first, President Biden's last hours, he pardoned his family members, Dr. Fauci, members of Congress who served on the January 6th committee, General Mark Milley. I didn't mind the last parts of those. The family members kind of really wasn't a great thing. I thought it set a terrible precedent. In a statement, Biden did say the pardons should not be mistaken as an admission of guilt, but that's exactly what it'll be mistaken as. Any quick thoughts on that?

Scott Galloway: It's a race to the bottom. And that is when you're worried your family members or someone who you may not agree with their policies, but did their level best as head of the National Institute of Health or the CDC could come under political prosecution or just by virtue of somebody doing their job. It's a race to the bottom. We've become that nation now. And you're just going to see all sorts of abuse of the powers of the presidency, but I don't blame them at all. I don't.

Kara Swisher: That's exactly how I feel. I was like, "Oh, God, did he really have to do this? This is bad." Being the stand-up guy hasn't worked for him. So I guess he thought, "Well, fuck it." And he did it right before.

Scott Galloway: Right. He did. John was joking about it. Did he auto-pardon? Because he was sitting in the room when it was announced, when it was done. No one wants to disarm unilaterally.

Kara Swisher: Well, speaking of disarming, the Department of Government Efficiency's first cut ended up being Vivek Ramaswamy. You're fired. Ramaswamy was reportedly parting ways with DOGE to launch a campaign for governor of Ohio, which he's not going to win. He's not running for two years. He got fired by Elon Musk.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, exactly. No, totally.

Kara Swisher: The news came just hours after Ramaswamy posted a photo with Elon with the caption, "A new dawn." There's tons of reporting that they didn't like this guy, essentially, and Elon didn't like him. And actually, a lot of people didn't. In the meantime, moments after the swearing-in, district court filings alleging DOGE doesn't comply with Federal Advisory Committee Act. I would agree with it. They're using Signal. They're using Signal. They should do that. If it's so transparent and such a good thing, why don't they do it in the full light of day? What do you think of DOGE now, Scott? I know you want to cut government waste, and there's been a lot of these commissions over the years. But this seems like a ridiculous circus at this point.

Scott Galloway: I mean, I don't know. DOGE is one of the lesser offensive things. I don't want to pre-hate it. I think it's important on a regular basis. They call them different names. Every president has his own rule on efficiency or better government. It needs to happen on a regular basis because government spending is like a barnacle on a boat. They're just hard to scrub off. But they've already eliminated waste by 50 percent on this commission.

Scott Galloway: I think it's a hilarious soap opera. The idea that this guy is trying to spin the narrative that he's leaving to run for governor. The word is Musk and the governor of Ohio gave it to another guy. He wanted to be appointed for the Vance Senate seat, now he's saying he's gonna run for governor. I know, but he wanted that seat apparently. Yeah, but supposedly the word is Musk and his team were like, "This guy is all hat and no cattle." What's the term? He is the Brian Williams term, yes, all hat and no cattle. He just couldn't find a mic he didn't like, which you can imagine Musk and him fighting. That's like Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett fighting for a camera. That was a good 80s reference.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, I can't imagine the two of them. Musk is wealthier, more powerful, said, "I don't like this guy. He's out." This notion that he's doing it to run for governor in 24 months. He would have loved to stay in this high profile position. That would have been the best thing he could have done in terms of name recognition. So this is not his idea.

Kara Swisher: Man down. First man down. First irritating man down.

Scott Galloway: That's right. The first firing.

Kara Swisher: Actually, this really is the first firing of the Trump administration. It is.

Scott Galloway: Oh, God, he's so irritating. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Anyway, it's sort of like, as you were saying, when Bannon and Musk were fighting, I'm like, "I'm rooting for the bullets."

Kara Swisher: Anyway, this is the most important story. I think Scott and I were both totally offended by this. And I think it is actually a serious problem of corruption. Trump and Melania have released their own individual crypto meme coins. They're called... just so you know, meme coins, these kinds of coins are called shit coins. There's a fart coin in case you're interested and many others like it. As of Tuesday morning, the two coins were worth $8.4 billion combined. President Trump's reportedly planning an executive order to make digital assets a national priority. Well, he promises to release one billion of his own coin in the next three years. This is just... they don't have to stay at the Trump Hotel anymore. They can just bring the receipts for buying his shit coin, essentially. This is really bad.

Scott Galloway: Staying at the Trump Hotel or playing golf there where he saw the ledger of golf officials buying stock in Donald Trump Media, that was all checkers compared to this, Jess. Because with Donald Trump Media, he has to file with the SEC a public document saying, "I'm selling shares," the price would crash. Now, the following conversation I would speculate will or already has happened. And that is, "President Trump, congratulations on your enormous victory. It's your good buddy, Vlad. And guess what we're thinking of doing? The Treasury here in Russia is thinking of investing $600 billion for a variety of reasons in cryptocurrency, specifically the Trump coin. And my economists, wouldn't you know it, have calculated that based on the small float of a half a billion dollars, when we pulse in 600 billion rubles or $10 billion, that's going to take the market cap of this thing easily to $50 or $60 billion. And should you decide to sell 20% of your stake overnight, what do you know? And I just bring this up. You'll become one of the five wealthiest men in America. And you don't have to say. And nobody will know. And in unrelated news, President Trump, we would like you to cease arms shipments to Ukraine."

Scott Galloway: I mean, this is just... this is bribery writ large. They have created... it's kind of a bond. This is what they thought Bitcoin would be used for. Bribery, corruption, pornography. It's a great point.

Kara Swisher: I'll tell you, a lot of crypto people are horrified because they were like, "Great, we're finally getting our legs under us around some really important legislation and regulation."

Scott Galloway: What if he can't get two or three Republican senators on board for a federal ban of abortion? And he just calls them and says, "Hey, on the down low, you're old, you're leaving. I can give you $10 million in crypto to your fund or to another account you name. And no one will ever know." No one will ever know.

Scott Galloway: Oh, Taiwan or China, you're about to invade Taiwan. We don't need to do it covertly. Just call them. Oh, Sudan, the largest, arguably, humanitarian disaster globally right now. More people are dying in Sudan every day than in Ukraine. What if he just calls both of them and says it's eBay for geopolitics. Whoever buys more Trump coin gets U.S. intelligence and some of our heavy armaments. Or Smelania. It's called Smelania. And nobody has to know. I can sell it. I can buy it. Buyers and sellers, totally opaque. This is...

Kara Swisher: Grifter city.

Scott Galloway: America has more from a platform that used to be about prosperity and making money. I think that's wonderful, such that we can tax these people and invest in the middle class. It's important to have that ambition. It's important to make money. It's a wonderful thing. But we also were a platform for civil rights, for rule of law, for electing a group of people that had laws that recognized conflicts of interest such that they could think with some level of patriotism about preventing a tragedy of the commons long term and do what was right for all Americans.

Scott Galloway: And then we could project those values overseas and try and advance women's rights, try and advance democracy, try and do away with honor killings and child marriage. We could project our... now all of that has been crowded into a tiny little box and America is essentially becoming a platform for how do you make the jump to light speed in a Hunger Games. And if you make money, you have a remarkable life and you get to sit up front with your hot wife. But everybody else, unless you have money, sorry, folks. You're not on stage. This really has gone...

Kara Swisher: And they run media. They run everything. They have a lock.

Scott Galloway: The meme coin, his coin, is literally the democratization of kleptocracy. This is the thing people must pay attention to and do as much reporting on as possible. This bribery system that they've put into place. And it's, again...

Kara Swisher: It may have already happened. We don't even know. We don't even know. And of course, they've now captured the IRS, so there's not going to be any investigation by the SEC. They've captured the SEC. There's no way to... it's up to reporters who they're putting the pressure on to be silenced, right? A lot of people are definitely pulling back. I mean, a lot of the coverage was like, "Look at the pageantry of normalcy of power." Like, they didn't mention "felon" once. They did mention the insurrection several times. Isn't it ironic? This is where the insurrection happened and they're sitting there, right? They're all sitting there as if nothing happened. They did mention that. But for the most part, everyone's going to be pulling back. They are. They're absolutely going to be pulling back. And you're not going to see it.

Scott Galloway: And that is what Russia is. Russia is a broken, hollowed out state full of haves and have-nots, really making nothing, no innovation. And instead, just that tableau of the tech people up there should tell you every single thing you need to know about this particular, what's about to happen.

Kara Swisher: Hopefully, there'll be pushback. We'll talk about that in the next episode. Like, what is the actual pushback? What is the way to control it? Because they do have their hands on the AI. They have their hands on crypto. They've got their hands on media. Which, by the way, they revoked that executive order. That was one of the executive orders they undid. They did, yeah. It was Biden's AI. Biden's AI, which was quite a good, fair one, I thought. They just don't want any business.

Scott Galloway: I would... this crypto thing is really bad. It's just... as you said, democratized corruption.

Kara Swisher: All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. I think I'll go first. Yesterday, someone who I really had a high regard for, Cecile Richards, who I recently interviewed in June, died of brain cancer. She had suffered from it. She used to run Planned Parenthood. She did an amazing job. She's the daughter of Ann Richards, who was the legendary Texas governor. Just an amazing woman, devoted to public service, devoted to helping women, very articulate, moved Planned Parenthood forward. Everyone always focuses on the abortion part of it, but it's a very important health care system for a lot of people. Just a tireless fighter and a decent person. She never was... I know the left has a reputation of being scoldy or anything like that. She just was dignified. She fought. She was strong. The fact that she died on this day... let's remind you, it's MLK's day too, and it is his day period, not just two... was really sad. And she was an inspiring figure to me and many other people. And so her life was a win.

Kara Swisher: I would contrast that to the demented interview that Andreessen did with the New York Times, where all manner of inaccuracies, but mostly a poor, broken man who had something happen to him in his childhood, which is unclear, just is taking it out on the rest of us. What a ridiculous victim mentality he has. It's so sad. And please read it because you can see the problems I've had with him over the many years. It's never his fault. It's always someone else's fault. Someone's getting in his way. And he has to use inaccurate historical and other references to make his points. Just comparing the two of them, I couldn't think of a bigger contrast. Someone who is dignified and a real contributor to society, and this guy who certainly has contributed, but just can't bring everybody else with him in the journey of his life. There you go.

Scott Galloway: My win is... I just think you got to give it to the guy. I think this is... my win is Trump. I think his... just trying to call balls and strikes, I think this is arguably the most iconic, remarkable political comeback in history. And I hate to acknowledge it, but the guy left under the cloud of an insurrection. And since then, he's been a convicted felon and yet he managed to exploit weaknesses. And there were many in the Democratic Party who were seen as totally out of touch with real world issues that affected Americans. And he legitimately won the presidency back. I think it's bad for America. I did not vote for the man, but I just think you got to give them their due. I think they ran a masterful campaign and to say we'd be sitting here four years after this mob invaded the Capitol, I think it's remarkable. It's the most remarkable political comeback in history. So that's my awkward or uncomfortable win.

Scott Galloway: My fail is, again, we are not a serious people. We're in the World Health Organization. We're out. We're in the Iran nuclear deal. We're out. We're in the Paris Accords. We're out. We're in. We're out again. We're banning TikTok, bipartisan legislation, signed into law. Oh, just kidding. We want to do a deal. Our ability for our enemies and our allies to take us seriously around anything has been so dramatically diminished. No, you can... if you do this, if you don't cooperate with our enemies, we have your back. Do they take us seriously when we say that? No. You can turn over information to protect American service people if you give us information on the Taliban's movements, and we will make sure that you are safe and we get you out. Will they take us seriously now? No. You should not invade Taiwan. We will reciprocate. We will defend Taiwan as an ally. Do they take us seriously at our word?

Scott Galloway: We are not a serious people. And the lack of consistency, the lack of respect and regard for established treaties, precedents of the previous president is hurting us. We are no longer a nation. We're a platform for making money and dividing the spoils amongst an increasingly few number of people such that they can take their third wife or second wife or whatever it is to the inauguration. And whoever's richest gets to sit at the front as Melania, as First Lady Melania, asks for someone to give tribute. This is... we have fallen so far so fast. And I'm also, quite frankly, a lot of blame resides with traditional Democrats for providing just an opening here for being, in my opinion, out of touch with regular Americans' real issues. Anyways, my fail is that we are so inconsistent around our policies, even our laws we don't want to enforce. And we are blinking left and right. We are not a serious people.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I think there has to be a different kind of political leader among the Democrats that is really... either just, I don't know, because then you do the tit for tat thing. You do what Biden did with the pardons. You lower yourself.

Scott Galloway: That's right. Race to the bottom.

Kara Swisher: You have to kind of lower yourself. It does have... speaking of Roman salutes, it has an end of Roman Empire vibe to it.

Scott Galloway: It definitely does. Never been more powerful, never been more prosperous overall, not for everybody. Karl Marx, capitalism collapsing on itself.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's really a disappointment because we have so much. But the panoply of those tech people, I cannot believe... that's what I can't believe, having covered these people. And I wrote in 2016 that they were sheeple. Boy, are they sheeple. Boy, was that a good call. But let's be even-handed here. Aren't you really disappointed in Tim Cook?

Scott Galloway: Absolutely.

Kara Swisher: I'm really disappointed in Tim Cook. I know why he did it. I get it. I get it. But he didn't... Satya Nadella wasn't there. He didn't have to be there. Maybe he did. Maybe he did. Maybe there's all kinds of behind the scenes things happening that I don't know that we're not privy to. I'd like it to be in front of the scenes. I'd like an explanation. I think it's probably just shareholder thing. Sam Altman was there. There were lots of people there that didn't want to be there. That's for sure. And I told you, I got a text from someone saying, "I hate myself more than I think you hate me right now for being here." And I was like, "I doubt it. I doubt it. I see why you are, but it doesn't mean I hate you less than you hate yourself."

Scott Galloway: But I mean, there is a point where you have to say... and not be the thing that Democrats do is they do this sort of huffy indignance about it. "How dare they?" This kind of stuff. Just don't show up. Like Michelle Obama. That's what you do. Like Mother Pence didn't show up too, by the way. I bet they were like throwing back shots at a bar together. Like, "Fuck that guy."

Kara Swisher: You have to create a whole new narrative and story about America for people that gives them hope and makes them feel like it's fair and not that panoply of bullshit with those people. And they looked good, but it did look like the Hunger Games.

Scott Galloway: God, I think you're right. A hundred percent.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Lauren Sanchez, we need you. We need you. I would rather her be president. And like, I don't know. She's very smart. I think she's smart. I think she's an impressive woman. She is smart. I've met her. She's smart. I think she could do a lot more with her intelligence. But I don't know. I think she's doing pretty well.

Scott Galloway: All right. Whatever. OK. I don't know. I think she's doing pretty well. She's an adjacent brilliant person, but she should be in the center of things. Like more Mackenzie Bezos. I'm sorry. Sorry, Lauren. But I think she's running circles around you in the end. In the history. Historically, she's going to run circles around you.

Kara Swisher: We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. By the way, if you want to see more Lauren Sanchez, go check out her Thread, Scott. She's really put them up. She put up a lot of photos you might like of herself.

Scott Galloway: Oh yeah. I'll send them to you.

Kara Swisher: That's all I need is Kara Swisher sending me nude photos.

Scott Galloway: It's not... well, it's almost nude, but just go watch it.

Kara Swisher: It's very performative in a very... I'm going to keep my words to myself. It's unusual to look at. But she does it all the time. Anyway, good for you. Good for you, Lauren, if you want to do that. I'm in favor of that.

Scott Galloway: I'm going to send her a Trump coin.

Kara Swisher: OK, all right. Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, I recently spoke with Yonder CEO Graham Dugoni for On with Kara Swisher. You'll like this, Scott. Yonder is the company behind those pouches getting used at concerts and in schools to lock away phones. It's a physical manifestation of the problem we have with these things. I really like this product. And this guy was fantastic. Graham explained to me why it's so important for kids to be separated from their phones in schools.

[Clip from interview plays] Graham Dugoni: What's really important for young people in education, I think, is mostly developing critical thinking faculties. Absolutely. And so when you think about the type of assignments they're getting, the tools at their disposal, I think the risk is that young kids are becoming information retrieval machines. And that's not critical thinking. And no matter where we think we're going as a society.

Kara Swisher: I love that idea. Information retrieval systems. Yeah. Without that, we're not going anywhere fast. And that's not necessarily a native faculty. It's a muscle that has to be flexed. Anyway, it's a great... he was so interesting. I really thought you would like him a lot, Scott. I kept thinking of you throughout the show. In any case, Yonder. Jonathan Haidt loves Yonder, for example. You have to really just get these things out of your hands because they're so addictive. They're addiction machines. And so I kind of love this business. It's pretty simple. And he's doing a bunch of other things around getting your phones out of your hands for just a short time of the day, at least.

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more. Would you please read us out?

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Ms. Saverio, and Dan Shulon. Nishat Karwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe 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/pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Have a great week.