Trump’s Alive, China Flaunts BFFs, and Scott’s Back!

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher, and we're going to get right to it because there's been endless speculation in recent days, questions swirling about his whereabouts and many people believing the worst. But Scott Galloway is not dead. He's here now with non-bruised hands and shapely ankles. Welcome back, Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway: Thanks, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Look, there's a lot going on, and I don't like to talk about myself.

Scott Galloway: I don't want to make a big deal out of this.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no.

Scott Galloway: That's right, ladies. That's right. You've been so good in August. You've been deprived. I know it's going to help. A little bit of Scott. You're thinking, how do I resist fascism? The key is not to resist. Is to surrender to the dog. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do, ladies? That's right. We doing a field trip down to where Kara hangs out? We're going to this big white house, and we're screaming, bring out your dad. Bring out your dad. And then we're going to party with RFK Jr. Or as I like to call him, the marvelous Mrs. Measles.

Scott Galloway: By the way, by the way, I'm like your Xanax and your HBO Plus. You don't need me but you want me. Oh, last thing. Okay, Kara, did you know? Oh no, birds have mating rituals and it goes a little bit like this: hello, hello. That's right. Oh my god. That's right, Lindsay. Maintain eye contact and relax the throat. I'm having another stroke. A Donald, Donald Trump's... I can't hear anything. You're welcome. Next up, Rachel Maddow. Put your earphones on, Scott. Put them on.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Put on your earphones.

Scott Galloway: Are you hot? Can't hear. Can't hear. I like doing a podcast this way. I can't hear. I can tell you one thing. Rachel Maddow didn't take her shirt off.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. I've been working out so hard this summer.

Scott Galloway: I see that. I even brought my testosterone.

Kara Swisher: Did you?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Oh, thanks for showing us that. Don't we do it live on TV?

Scott Galloway: No.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no. Oh, no. Okay. All right. All right. Do you do this every day?

Scott Galloway: No, once a week.

Kara Swisher: Okay. All right. Well, so glad.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God, Kara. One inch, two inches, two and a quarter, two and a quarter, two and a quarter. Bring back Gavin Newsom. That guy's had a glow up. Talk about a glow up. While I was gone, he glowed up. He glowed up. He glowed up. He said he wasn't going to do a lifting contest against you because you probably were out working out all summer. That's what happened. It's not easy looking this way when you're 78.

Kara Swisher: Tell me about your time away. We had a terrific time here.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I noticed that.

Kara Swisher: And not only that, I noticed our downloads went up.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, they did.

Kara Swisher: And all the comments are like, can we have a Scott free 25?

Scott Galloway: Yes, I know. Not every day.

Kara Swisher: A lot of people missed you.

Scott Galloway: Those are anonymous accounts that I pay at an Albanian troll farm to manage my brand.

Kara Swisher: We had a good time. Let me, I'll go through. We had a really good series of guests. I have to say there wasn't a loser in the bunch, but they were all great. And of course it ended with Gavin Newsom at exactly the right time because he as you say he had a glow up. But Matt was great. All of them. Wes Morris, all of them. Scaramucci, Tim Miller, I'm going to miss someone, Abby Phillip, Mel Robbins.

Scott Galloway: Let them. Let them.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Sorry, Mel, that shit don't work. Try that with kids. I'm sorry. I don't. I love her. No, because she has "let me" is the second thing, which is let me smack them back to last Sunday.

Kara Swisher: Oh, David Remnick. He was really good. He brought the smarts. He was excellent. And the mooch, obviously. We kicked it off the mooch. But we did miss you.

Scott Galloway: Thank you.

Kara Swisher: We did miss you. So tell me what you did.

Scott Galloway: People know what I did. I was here hosting and improving our downloads. What were you doing?

Kara Swisher: I continued my world-arrested adolescence douchebag tour. I was in Colorado, I was in Ibiza, and I was in Nantucket. And then I was in Brazil for a speaking gig.

Scott Galloway: I saw that. Still a total fucking whore of money. What happened? What are the highlights of your vacation?

Kara Swisher: Oh, you know, Cara, it's just a chance for me to reconnect with nature and my children. New York, you know, the best thing about this past month has been the last week in New York. It's amazing. I was trying to think, what is it about? One, it's like model country safari because it's about to be fashion week. But two, all the douchebag dudes are gone because all the spiritual motherfuckers into crypto are at Burning Man. The guys left in New York right now are just awesome. I've been connecting with a bunch of friends. Actually, I felt a little bit like you. I was anxious to get back to work. You probably sensed it. I started tweeting and texting at everybody.

Scott Galloway: Oh, I did. You kept commenting as if you were still on Pivot.

Kara Swisher: Yes. You're like, my thoughts on this in three parts, in triplicate. Everybody deserves to know what I think about this. We saw that. We saw the thirstiness. It was coming in. Like around August 15th, I'd say. That's when you, you know, halfway through the summer, you're like, oh, wait a minute.

Scott Galloway: It was too long. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Did you know, I mean, there is. There's a lot of news. In addition to being really good at not working and trying to spend more time, I don't know, just reconnecting and doing cool shit because I can't, I'm going to be dead soon. In Germany, every, well, not every corporate board, but best practices among boards, as they say to the CEO, you need to take at least four to six weeks off consecutively. Ah, yes, consecutively. And if the company falters, it's a negative on you. And I mean, to a certain extent, you always want to make sure that nothing's too dependent upon you. And unfortunately, you guys did that a little too well.

Scott Galloway: A little too well.

Kara Swisher: But no, I had a great summer. I'm sorry to inform you that Rachel Maddow will now be co-Pivot.

Scott Galloway: Go ahead. Yeah, she's a genius. We have a thing. She's really good. I think we had a thing.

Kara Swisher: Well, you look like you look like brothers. That's correct. It's like we like the Kelsey brothers of lesbians in a weird way. Yeah. No, you guys, you guys need to find. So what is your favorite, what's the, go ahead, you can talk about Rachel.

Scott Galloway: Well, no, you both need to find one of your, I don't know how all that shit works, but create a super army of Wokistan army to take over everything.

Kara Swisher: We weren't that Wokistan, I thought we had a lot of insights. You actually guys, you remind me of each other. You're both very hardworking. Yeah. What was your favorite part of your vacation? Name one moment. Was it with George Hahn when you were cuddling on the sand?

Scott Galloway: No, no, no. I've started, I mean, before being serious, I've started working out. There's this cool gym in Nantucket that's outdoors. It's like a prison yard. And I've started working out with my son. And it's like that saying, your kids are the only people you want to be more successful than you. And my son has gotten fitter than me just in the last six months, faster than me. And I can already tell he's not as strong as me yet, but he's getting there. But it was just fun. I mean, you saw with Alex, Alex looks like a fucking superhero. But watching your son get strong and not only that, I think about trying to figure out what I call SLOPA, and that is slow dopamine. And that is showing your kids that small efforts and acts of discipline every day add up to something really wonderful. And he's starting to feel that. He's like me. He's just super tall and super skinny, but we're lifting weights and we're eating a lot. And it was just kind of fun to see that progress over the course of the summer. And it was very bonding for us. You should work out with Alex sometime. I'd like to see that now.

Kara Swisher: No fucking way. Because remember you worked out with him when he was like a teen, like, and he was little.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's right. No, that guy, that guy looks like the rock. If the rock had Irish parents. Yeah. He's in really good shape.

Kara Swisher: We had a, we had a lovely, I did take a few days off. I mean, I did podcasts from Vermont, but all four kids were in Vermont and we had a really wonderful time.

Scott Galloway: Jesus, you went to Vermont?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I went to Vermont.

Scott Galloway: Did you take your Subaru and your German Shepherds? Could you be more cliche? Guess who bought a Subaru?

Kara Swisher: Oh no. Who bought a Subaru?

Scott Galloway: Louis Swish. Louis bought a Subaru.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, we got him for, you know, it's our last little gift to him. We got him a Subaru Forester. And that's what he picked. He had a choice of, you know, in that range, whatever he wanted. And that's what he picked. A lesbianist car.

Scott Galloway: So, is that a graduation gift?

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's nice.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and that's it. Now he has to make his own money.

Scott Galloway: Why does he need a car in New York?

Kara Swisher: He's actually living, not living in New York, he's living up in Western Mass for now with his girlfriend. So anyway, he's got a lesbian car now. He's a lesbaroo. He's so pleased. I can oddly see that, actually.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except for the mustache. He could be a very attractive lesbian.

Kara Swisher: So what's the mustache? What's happening with the mustache?

Scott Galloway: Honestly, or as I like to call it, my second taste. It's like a caterpillar. Go ahead. I was in Brazil last week for a speaking gig, and I went into this barbershop. And granted, his English was better than my Portuguese, but I basically said, take it all off. And I ended up with this Burt Reynolds, if he was Jewish and ugly look. This was an accident. Seriously, this was an accident.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm not sure I love it. I don't love it on Louis either, but I'm telling you.

Scott Galloway: No, it doesn't look good on me. I don't know. I look like literally like a cantor at the second biggest temple in Cleveland who's having a midlife crisis.

Kara Swisher: That's good. What else could I do? I'm trying to think. Oh, according to the New York Post, I'm in Devil Wears Prada, too.

Scott Galloway: That's New York Post. I think I saw pictures of you filming. Maybe. No?

Kara Swisher: No, no, no. No, literally, that's what the creative community was streaming out for, is the Devil Wears Prada. I mean, we are really reaching the barrel.

Scott Galloway: No, it's going to be so good. Are you kidding me? No, it's the same. That is such a good movie.

Kara Swisher: Go more than that. So Meryl Streep is looking for a bigger brownstone?

Scott Galloway: No, I'm just telling you, that was a great movie. Go back and watch it again, and it will be a great sequel. You know, I wouldn't say. When it's a huge hit, who has been right about hunting wives? Kara Swisher. I'm always right about these. Two close friends. You and Justin Theroux are both in it. So I'm going to see it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. But quite frankly, the world just wasn't asking for the devil. Where's Prada 2? But it is. There's an AI theme in it, I bet. That's what I've read. I don't know.

Scott Galloway: Raise minimum wage to $25 an hour, mandatory national service and no sequels for three years. No sequels for three years and the creative community will bloom. It's a great film. I mean, no one does anything original anymore. Except for Sinners was earlier in the spring.

Kara Swisher: Oh, Sinners. This is a big summer, actually, for those.

Scott Galloway: No, that was spring. Weapons. What was it? Have you seen these things? I don't even, I'm so culturally out of it.

Kara Swisher: I saw Sinners because I did. What did you think of it?

Scott Galloway: I liked it very much. It wasn't as scary as I thought because, I mean, I heard vampires. And the other one is weapons? What is it? Weapons. Weapons. Oh, weapons. Weapons. And that's supposed to be, everyone who's seen it says it's the scariest movie they've ever seen. And it's a different kind of scary. This guy is apparently like a very gifted maker of things, but I can see it. I can see it. I'm just waiting for Wicked too.

Kara Swisher: Well, thanks for doing all the hard work. I almost started to feel bad that this is your happy place.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I liked it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed talking to you.

Kara Swisher: You just want to work and buy more Subarus.

Scott Galloway: Yes, that's correct. Now that Louie has a Subaru. But we've got a lot to get to today. We've got a lot. We're going to go through. A lot happened while you were gone. Like a lot. I was kept, every time something happened, I'm like, I wonder what Scott would think. I did the whole, the whole summer. I did the whole August. I did. Obviously, Donald Trump is still alive. He offered proof of life at a press conference Tuesday after going six days without a major public appearance or saying something, which I think we're not used to because he's such a fucking diarrhea mouth. The Internet went wild over Labor Day weekend with rumors about Trump's health and speculation that he died. All these conspiracy theorists said they were trying to put it together like they were detective, essentially, Clouseau. The hashtags were, where is Trump and Trump is dead, were trending on X. People were sharing their all kinds of conspiracy theories on Reddit and TikTok. One of them, I actually said, that's the way the White House website is always. And people got mad at me because I was like, sorry, this is not right. And same thing with closing of Walter Reed. I was like, it's not closed. I just drove by it. It's not closed. But people had all these different theories. He claimed at his Tuesday presser not to have heard of the rumors, even though he posted he never felt better in his life. Of course, he heard them.

Kara Swisher: And what I was kind of irritated about, because you and I have been really, we're tough on Biden. You was particularly at the beginning of it. And it turned out to be true. And if they had listened to many people, not just us, things might have been different right now. But I don't see, one of the things that bothered me, besides the exaggeration and conspiracy theories on social media, was you didn't see a story in any of the newspapers talking about this as a phenomena. And then actually doing digging and what's going on with his health, because something is going on with his health, right? With the hands, there's actually visible things, his ankles. You know, he looks not well. He misses a lot of things. How do you look at this? And I'm amazed at reporters. I'd like a good reporter to tell me what's happening, actually.

Scott Galloway: Well, okay. So sometimes the obvious explanation is the right one. He's suffering from a condition that's only going to get worse, and it's called 79. And I listened to Sanjay Gupta yesterday on CNN, and I think Sanjay, or Dr. Gupta, an actual expert who's done the work, his explanation was very reasonable in that there are reasonable explanations. And in this instance, in a rare instance of the truth, his doctors have let out information. He has that condition where if you bleed it comes right through your skin. It's just thin skinned. I think that sounded very logical to me. The vascular condition that older people get where their ankles swell. That sounded very logical to me. But if you try to figure out or if you look at an actuarial table and say, what is the likelihood from insurance companies, which, by the way, have been, you know, they predicted the L.A. fires. If you want to talk about people who can predict the future, talk to people in the actuarial. Because they have to pay for it, yeah. Because they're trying to figure out what can we afford, how much should we be charging for certain outcomes around health and death. And if you go into an LLM or you go to an actuarial table and you say you have a 79-year-old who is obese, under a lot of pressure, but access to the best medical care in the world, what is the likelihood in the next three and a half years they either die or become incapacitated, couldn't work? It's towards 50%. So I don't think there's any big conspiracy here. I just think we're dealing with someone who's 79.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think that it's just that it was interesting to see they continue not to. I think they should look, imagine like Roosevelt or Wilson. It's not just them or Kennedy had a number of health issues, right, that were including drug use that was probably should have been reported on in some way. I find it really interesting that especially the people who were like all in on Biden being like, how dare they hide it? Why don't we know more about the health of all our leaders, right? Like, you know, Jerry Nadler just stepped down from Congress because he obviously is old. Like, that's kind of stuff. I just wish we had more of an insight so we could assess. I get it about privacy, but not for these people. I feel like we should know quite a bit more and not rely on like Ronnie Jackson, who really needs to sit down as a doctor. Really independent assessments of our leaders so we have some sense. Maybe I'm wrong.

Scott Galloway: Well, there's two things going on here. The first applies to everybody, and the second is more mendacious and unique. And the first is that ageism is still an ism. And we, as progressives or thoughtful people or media, are seen as ageist or worried about being ageist if we reference that biology doesn't give a shit about how politically correct you are. I mean we essentially Democrats potentially lost control of Congress and weren't able to block ship because we were unable to be honest and say to the five members who died in Congress you are no longer capable of serving in this important role. And we decided to ignore it with Biden and we're ignoring it again with Trump. People this old shouldn't be asked to get on planes to go to Singapore to negotiate trade agreements or have to get up at three in the morning and decide whether or not they're going to strike a terrorist cell and start calling. They just don't. Presidents should probably be in their forties and fifties just because of the physical and mental acuity it demands. And we have decided that it is politically incorrect to be ageist. And biology says, hold my beer. And this happens across both parties.

Scott Galloway: The second thing is more mendacious, and that is Trump has deftly, meticulously, and bluntly taken a page out of the autocrat's handbook and said, anything you say negative about other people, that's First Amendment, have at it. Anything you say negative about me, you better get ready to lawyer up and it'll be thrown out of court, but I'll sue you. I'll try and ruin your reputation. And it's working. People in the media, the biggest media companies in the world, I mean, you can point to so many examples, not only of it sending out a chill, but him actually extracting payments and barter from law firms that technically should be the least scared of this guy. So he's put a chill. And it's like, do we really want to be the media company that leads with saying something is wrong here? And it looks like congestive heart failure, because if it's not, they're going to have to, you know, in two or three years potentially settle with the guy. And he's not afraid to weaponize the DOJ and raid homes and have the head of the FBI who wrote a fairy tale kids book about a king that was wrongly prosecuted going and dunking the basketball after someone's house is raided without even saying how they got the indictment. I mean, he's weaponized institutions we never thought were capable or would be weaponized. So, yeah, people are, it's working. He has put a chill on any real criticism.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he's energetic. That's for sure. He's energetic. He's very robust.

Scott Galloway: Robust. Well, robust. He looks sickly, but energetic. It's a really weird combination.

Kara Swisher: And I think some of it is cognitive decline. That's very clear. I mean, again, let me put someone on the left. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who's supposed to be the representative from DC, while not having a vote or is certainly involved, has just been out of it because she's...

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Let me put someone on the left. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who's supposed to be the representative from D.C. while not having a vote or is certainly involved, has just been out of it because she's old and she might be running again, which is just like...

Scott Galloway: Insane.

Kara Swisher: Insane. All these people. There should be a number. I come more and more around to your feeling on this. What did you think of the death rumors? Because they kept coming back. They left and came back and left and came back. This is like no waiter on a country. That's what I kept thinking. I mean, in a weird way, I don't think they're trying to suppress it because one, it keeps Epstein out of the news. And two, they know he's not dying or he's not imminently dying. And then let's show him in five or six days. Fine. Oh, the media is talking about it. Fine. They're not talking about Epstein. Let them continue to talk about it. I'm fine. But it doesn't, all this is done so far because it looks as if the obvious explanation is the right one. And these are not life-threatening conditions. These are just the average ailments of a really old man. And it's anything to keep Epstein out of the news cycle. That's all they want. He might disappear again for five days and create rumors.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's true, or something else. You're right. Actually, that's really smart.

Kara Swisher: Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump sets his sights on New Orleans for the next crackdown.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Trump is floating the idea of sending National Guard troops to a lot of cities but now it New Orleans the latest target in his crime crackdown. He also still fixated on Chicago and Baltimore calling both cities hellholes this weekend asking the governors of those states to invite him to deploy troops which they are not doing. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker fired back, I refuse to play a reality game show with Donald Trump. Trump did hit a legal setback this week. A federal judge ruled his use of troops in Los Angeles was illegal. What a surprise. The judge warned that Trump appears intent on creating a national police force with the president as its chief. Newsom himself said the problem with the troops in Los Angeles is they had to waste their resources protecting them from citizens, which was, I think, probably accurate. Talk a little bit, by the way, we'll get to the foreign stuff in a second, but how do you look at what's happening here? I mean, they're trying to obviously push back in San Francisco, in Chicago, Baltimore. I think he must have gotten news that people were mad about that there wasn't a red state that got looked at because most of the murder statistics are in eight of 10 red states are more murderous than blue states. Talk a little bit about what was it like from afar? Because we haven't really talked about this increasing militarization.

Scott Galloway: It falls into the basic pattern of all politics now are actions at a political level. And that is one, Democrats either ignore a problem or aren't honest about it or let it go too far. In my opinion, they let the DEI apparatus go too far on campuses. They sweep in with an overcorrection and under a false flag of anti-Semitism, try and pull funding and ensure that our populace stays uneducated because educated people have an annoying tendency to ask why. They overcorrect. We do something really stupid. We let a 6'5 swimmer born as a male show up to a woman's national NCAA competition, sweep every medal, taking medals away from women who've been training their whole lives, have bike competitions, or a transgender woman crosses the finish line five minutes early and all Democrats kind of look at each other, you know, not knowing what to say and say it's inspiring. And then they sweep them with an overcorrection and start demonizing transgender people and kicking them out of the military. People who have saved bravely and consistently, making us less safe. Democrats have ignored or not addressed what are very real lifestyle issues, quality of life issues in cities. That's the bottom line.

Kara Swisher: Yes, Newsom talked about this.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, Newsom talked about this.

Kara Swisher: And so what do they do?

Kara Swisher: I know, let's sweep in with an overcorrection under the false flag of trying to reduce crime, such that we can normalize military in cities in case I decide to deploy the military if it looks like I'm going to lose the election. First off, it's just wrong. The military is not right. They are not there to protect people. They are there to accomplish missions that oftentimes mean killing people. They're trained in combat.

Scott Galloway: Actually, in D.C., they're there to pick up the trash, but just so you know.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but they're trained in combat, not crime or law. They have the wrong attitude about civilians, the wrong complexion of civilians. Cops are taught to protect. The military sees people as potential threats. That's what they're trained to do. And they're untrained in collecting evidence and building a case that will hold up in court. Even if they're able to arrest or prevent crime, they won't be able to put criminals behind bars. But I feel like as Democrats, we get the right idea. We take it too far. We decide there's a narrative. We have a knee-jerk reaction to everything. We are not as focused as we should be. We prioritize social virtue. We're trying to achieve social virtue and ignore the actual material and psychological well-being of Americans. And then the Trump administration sees that hole and runs right through it with a bullet train of mendacious, awful behavior to accomplish something else that's unrelated. Also an overreaction.

Scott Galloway: 100%.

Kara Swisher: With other sticky problems with it. So what would you do? Do you think the governors are responding correctly and the mayors?

Scott Galloway: Well, look, I said, and I'm patting myself on the back, I said six months ago who I thought would be the Democratic nominee in '28. And I said, the most likely person is TBD. TBD. We didn't know who Barack Obama or Bill Clinton were at this time. The democratic process, when we let it run its course, is like Navy SEALs training, in that as few people get through it, but the people who get through it are deadly. They're very good. The people who can survive all those fairs in Iowa and get on debate stages and stand up to podcasters like you, they just get battle tested and they just get very good. And so it's probably, we don't know. That's probably the leader right now. I said, if I had to bet on anybody, people consistently underestimate Governor Newsom. He survived a recall effort. If you look at California since he's been governor, it's passed Japan to become the fourth largest economy. The technology and companies literally driving the S&P and global markets are back stronger than ever. And by the way, where are they? Oh, they're in that unlivable state called California. People are moving back. Supposedly on the ground there, you said, and I have friends in LA, the fires were bad, but people are saying in some of the cities on the West Coast now, they've gotten the memo and they are saying, okay, maybe calling people the unhoused versus the homeless isn't going to solve the problem. And we're going to have to move in and make some uncomfortable decisions and restore quality of life.

Kara Swisher: May I just interject very quickly? I have to say, San Francisco is excitement with the AI companies of all different kinds. There's new stuff everywhere you go. Now, I had said this was going to happen because this is the way San Francisco goes, right? But everybody is back. Everybody is back. And it has a real energy to it that had been missing for a little while during COVID particularly. And there was no, I think, you know, I was talking to a bunch of AI people and there was sort of like, there's no better place to do it than here. Like with Stanford and Berkeley, I was both at Stanford. I was at Berkeley. I spent some time with Steve Jobs' son, Reid, who was doing a bunch of stuff in biotech with AI involved in it. It's just the place to be, if that makes sense. And Newsom feels very muscular. And I think he used that word, right? It feels very muscular, California, right now, for some reason. Is this a good thing for people like him and Pritzker and Wes Moore to show off muscularity around these Trump attacks on cities?

Scott Galloway: Look, this has been the August of Newsom. His pushback by mocking and holding up a mirror to how ridiculous Donald Trump's communication style is has been hilarious and really effective. And that is, it just basically says, okay, look how ridiculous this is. The way, you know, the all caps pushing back. He was kind of the leader we wanted, right? We wanted someone to push back. The next part of the program needs to move to ideas. J.B. Pritzker is giving off really nice dad energy and being thoughtful. But the reality is Trump hasn't done anything illegal and they're somewhat hamstrung around Trump. I believe what Trump is doing. It may be stupid. It may be a false flag. It may be disingenuous. It may be a poor use of our military. But it's not, as I understand it, it's not illegal.

Kara Swisher: Well, the polls, people don't like it. People don't like it. Like all the polls are pretty clear, including the Republicans. No one loves a troop in a city. Nobody, even if they're picking up garbage. It's weird. It's not, you know, it's not something you see except when you go visit other countries that are under autocratic rule, right?

Scott Galloway: A couple of things are going on. One is good, one is bad. And I can speak to this in fairly knowledgeable detail because I'm in New York right now. I spend a lot of time here. I don't care what anyone says. We're in 2030. You know history is much clearer and harsher in hindsight. People are going to look back on New York in 2025 and say, that was a golden age. Walk around. There's lines to get into stores. There's a new amazing members club opening literally every two weeks. The art scene, the fashion scene, the food scene—through COVID, this city shed its skin. There's new places. There's a sense of energy. It's amazing. The downside to all of this is the following. Inflation is out of control in these hubs, these epicenters that attract basically three types of people: someone in tech who's highly educated and can afford a $5,500 one bedroom in Manhattan; finance bros who make a very good living; or somebody whose parents are putting them through New York or San Francisco. So that young person who wants to come and try and make it in a non-finance or non-tech industry and add, they just can't afford this city. Every young person I meet, they're making really good, what used to be really good money. They can't afford to go out. And I always go to, you know, we're in a sex recession, we're in a mating recession, young people can't afford to go out. They can't afford to go to a place and demonstrate excellence to each other and smell each other's pheromones and make friends and find mentors and find mates. So it's become a playground. It's never been better to be in the top 1%. America is becoming more like itself every day as evidenced by how amazing New York, and I imagine San Francisco and LA right now, but quite frankly, there might as well be a velvet rope around these cities for anyone under the age of 40 that's not making $150,000 a year. So unless we get rid of nimbyism, unless we put more money in their pockets, tax holiday, 8 million new homes construction, manufactured homes on sites that cost 50% less, and really make an effort to put more money in the pockets of young people, all of the amazing cities in America are basically going to be sequestered to a small number of very fortunate, overeducated people with rich parents.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think homes are beginning to really focus in on homes. I mean, you talk a lot about other issues, but even homelessness, a lot of homeless people have mental issues. A lot of it is solved by homes. Like that you get people out of a high—one of the things in this documentary I'm doing is high stress situations lead to cognitive like mental problems, cognitive signs. And there's no higher stress than not having a home or not having somewhere to go or having to figure out where you're going to eat or drink or something like that. And it seems like if we could get more people housed in affordable housing and then create a city that has all kinds of people, not just the rich people, as you point out. I mean, where you live is a particular place, right?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, people don't have a birthright to be in Manhattan.

Kara Swisher: Or not Soho in particular.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, 100%.

Kara Swisher: That's a circus there, really. I love it, but it's a circus. But I think homes should be, whoever's running should focus in on homes. After we get over the Trump thing, like, I think Newsom's smart in attacking Trump until the 2026 elections. And then we should act like rear view mirror. If they win the House, like, what are we going to do for you? And homes should be at the very top of that list. Also restoring vaccines, but that's another issue.

Scott Galloway: I mean, let's be really bold here. The next part of the Democratic program, if we're going to flip the House and win back the White House, we've got to go, OK, we were flat footed. Now we're resisting. Now we need to move to ideas. And around housing, you zeroed in on what I think is one of the biggest issues, because the reality is if you can't afford a house, you feel shame. You have trouble making a step towards mating and also a house because people have a tendency to pay their mortgage rather than be embarrassed and have it foreclosed on. It ends up being a great way to build wealth over the long term. It gives you a sense of place, motivation. There's a lot of wonderful things about homeownership. In Singapore, let's be bold. One bold thing. Eight million houses in 10 years. Do away with federal legislation that takes down nimbyism. What they did in Minneapolis, what they did in Austin, they said, no, we're going to take off the height limits. We're going to take certain areas and we're going to do, let's do, if you took big swaths of land and unincorporated them near the center of cities and had manufactured homes and then government-backed mortgages and said, okay, we're just going to flood the market with a bunch of new housing that is inexpensive. Or you could go even deeper and go really innovative and bold and do what Singapore does. Singapore gives houses to people and says, and then graduates until they're finally paying market rate and mortgage. And you know what it ends up being? It ends up being their retirement. They not only get a home but they say to them, we want you to build wealth. We want you to build a family. Wealth is the yeah, wealth creation. We want you to have kids and we want you to build wealth. So if you're a good citizen and we look at your finances, we got to do one of two things and the answer is both. We either got to raise incomes of young people, put more money in their pockets, restore, get rid of capital gains tax deduction. Everyone pays one tax rate. Do what Portugal does, tax holiday for people under the age of 30, which wouldn't cost us that much because they don't make that much money. Or we've got to lower the price of housing. I mean, there's only two things we can do. And the answer is we should do both. It would be a great thing for, like, what are we going to do for you today? Eight million houses in 10 years.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things I'm going to switch, I think Trump is more on the ropes, even though he seems like a complete menace today with all the vaccine things and everything he's doing, the attacks, the attacks, the attacks. This one really stuck out for me, the U.S. being excluded from the group chat. Indian Prime Minister Modi entered the summit in China this week, holding hands with Russian President Putin before the two formally formed a friendly circle with Chinese President Xi. Meanwhile, President Trump put a message for Xi, Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as they appeared together for China's largest military parade, which he wishes he had, because it was a pretty good military parade, writing on Truth Social, "May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un as you conspire against the United States of America." These are people he cozied up to, like cozy, like scary cozy. And fun fact, it was interesting, Xi and Putin were talking on a hot mic about the possibility of becoming immortal via organ transplant, which was pretty funny given what I'm working on. But this to me was like, how did we drive these players together? In the decades, this hasn't happened. We've managed to keep them apart, to be close with India. It's been a struggle over the many years for various issues, but it's a country we should be close with. But here we are shoving them into the hands of Putin and literally in the hands of Putin. And the same thing with Xi. That picture really gave me the chills, I have to say. And then he goes, "conspiring together." That's right, Donald Trump. They are conspiring against the United States of America. And that's why we should have been in there and not allowed this to happen.

Scott Galloway: You're exactly right. Bush, W said that the axis of evil was North Korea, Iran and Iraq. They had some energy combined, a willingness to sacrifice, you know, they're crazy, some decent science, some decent science and scientists, actually formal scientists in Iran, and about a GDP of about a trillion dollars. India, that image, the image of 2024 was Trump pumping his fist in the air. The image of 2025 in retrospect will be that image you just described, but the three of them looking like their little brothers ganging up against Laughlin. It's like the siblings of the Murdochs saying, we're sick of this shit. We can collectively, we're strong, and we can push back on our big crazy asshole brother. They have a combined GDP of $20 trillion. They have unbelievable energy. They have unbelievable technology and capital out of China. They have the largest emerging consumer population in the world, India. Those three nations together are a formidable, frightening alliance. And to your point, I mean, the thing, there's some weird stuff protecting Taiwan. One of the things that's protecting Taiwan is China has had to divide and deploy a great deal of military resources to its northern border on what's called the Amur River because China and Russia have always had territorial disputes. We take for granted the fact that if we in Canada were having territorial disputes up around Montreal, Toronto, it would cost us about $100 billion to fortify that border, another $25 billion a year. And China and Russia were spending a lot of money on fortifying their borders in the north across the Amur River. There was zero bridges 10 years ago. Now there are three bridges, and there's a quarter of a trillion dollars in trade. So all of a sudden, they're getting along and liking each other. And the biggest own goal, the biggest own goal was that the new swing votes geopolitically that were kind of playing both sides, but emerging economies who are incredibly important, similar to that soccer mom in Madison that might decide the next presidency, the two swing votes were the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and India. And we have a fantastic relationship with India.

Kara Swisher: Have had.

Scott Galloway: Not now.

Kara Swisher: I'm getting there.

Scott Galloway: You're stealing my thunder. It's a democracy. And in addition to that and I can speak to this firsthand, we have this connective tissue with India amongst tech companies. In addition, if you walk down the hall of NYU Stern and you want to find someone amazing at research that could be making tens of millions of dollars being the chairman of Millennium or some other great quant trading firm, but instead decided to teach, that's someone most likely with a multi-syllabic last name who came out of Delhi and somehow managed to get to IIT and is one of the smartest people in the world. And what do the smartest people in India do, or a lot of them, they come teach at our elite universities. And look at the way we are treating academics, universities, and foreign PhD students, many of which come from India. We have this amazing vehicle for goodwill. We have torn it up, and we have done the absolute stupidest thing possible, and that is we have taken three enemies or three people who didn't get along very well, and we've said, no, nothing rallies your enemies like being the bigger dick enemy. That photo of the three of them, what do they have? They have massive amounts of energy. They have massive amounts of technology, technology and capital. In addition, Russia and China have something that the EU and the US don't have. They have a willingness to kill their own people. Russia has been willing. I don't care if it's good or bad or wrong or right, it just is. They are willing to kill and or injure a million of their own people. Europe is being invaded and the EU will not put any of their young men and women on the boots on the ground. I mean, to a certain extent, the most intimidating people in your class and who get a disproportionate amount of power are not only the people with the biggest fists, but the people who are willing to actually throw blows.

Kara Swisher: Right. Throw hands. I mean, one of the things I was talking to a guy like Dmitry Alperov, he started CrowdStrike. He was saying the enthusiasm, he was talking about Ukraine. He's a very big supporter of Ukraine. He's like, the enthusiasm of Russian troops still putting hundreds of thousands of people, they need the jobs, right? Because the economy is more trouble than it was before, for a variety of reasons. But he's like, you know, it's hard because Ukrainians have either no more people to give or they're just exhausted or they don't want to do it anymore. And the Russians just keep throwing bodies after bodies, like, and they just let them die, like the way they treat them. But some of these people need the money. So they just continue to just toss people into the void in Ukraine, for example.

Scott Galloway: I think you're 100% right. But we so instead of stupid tweets they performative and look like, oh that tweet started out he trying to be presidential. Oh wait, his friend showed up with ketamine and now what the fuck is he talking about? Right, they're conspiring against us. He and Rubio and Hegseth behind the scenes of the Joint Chiefs should be doing the following. The Ukrainians have come up with a Flamingo missile that can go deep into Russian territory. And there's one number that matters, 17. 17% of Russia's energy infrastructure has been damaged. If 50% of their economy is energy-based and you start, if you get that number to 18, then to 19, then to 20, then to 30, Russia's out of business and Russia has to come to the table. F-15 pilots and planes, fantastic anti-aircraft, fantastic radar systems, and then help them with that new Flamingo missile. If that 17 number goes to 27 and maybe 30, Putin shows up with a different attitude because this is an economy. He's still playing Donald Trump too. It's basically a gas station posing as an economy. He shouldn't be sending out tweets. He should be figuring out a way to help the Ukrainian army with their unbelievable technology and brave army figure out a way to take that 17 number up a half a percent every week for the next six months. And then all of a sudden Putin's going to change his tune.

Kara Swisher: 100%. But more to the point, we got to move on, but would you like an organ transplant for eternity? You know what? I forget that name of the Mexican artist that Salma Hayek played.

Scott Galloway: Frida Kahlo?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I love what she said. I want my death to be glorious and I don't want to come back. I'm not one of these people that wants to live forever. I don't. Do you?

Scott Galloway: After doing this, no, no. I want to be healthier. That's one thing. Healthspan, not lifespan. Literally, I've been running a couple miles four times a week now.

Kara Swisher: Oh, good for you. That's great.

Scott Galloway: And eating things, having a little more.

Kara Swisher: Or I'm not, you know, the protein loading is a little much. I think they're going overboard, speaking of going overboard. But some of the practices I'm paying a lot more. Like, I want to be healthier. That's for sure.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but you have what is the key to longevity. I mean, everybody is...

Kara Swisher: Small children.

Scott Galloway: That's exactly right. It's being social and having a lot of friends. There's studies that show right now, if you had a choice between having no friends and not smoking and having friends and smoking a pack a day, you'd live longer if you had friends and smoked a pack a day. Taking care, caregivers live longer than anyone in the world. If you want to die, just go home, stop being social, and stop having mental interest, and stop talking to your friends.

Kara Swisher: You know every study with this documentary that is the everyone like what is it that saves you? I like people. It relationships. Yeah, it relationships. I was like honestly that what it is. It's going to be an interesting journey. There are other things, cool things happening. And money.

Scott Galloway: Money, absolutely. The life expectancy for us, and you're doing a show on this and I'm curious to see it, the life expectancy for people in the top decile is 12 to 15 years greater now than people in the lowest decile.

Kara Swisher: Yep. Even in countries like Denmark, which have longevity, the people who die are the poor people. Money is absolute number one. Indicator number two is people. And if you solve the cancers and everything else, it's interesting. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Google getting off easy.

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with more news. Google will not be forced to sell off Chrome or Android. We thought they might. That's the ruling in an antitrust case which determined the company was operating in a legal online search monopoly, which was determined. The company will, however, have to make certain search data available to competitors, sharing, essentially, not necessarily the algorithm itself, but search data itself, and let people use it. And they'll be barred from having exclusive contracts related to distribution of products. They still can pay a lot to have placement, etc. Google said in a statement that it had concerns about the data sharing could affect the privacy of users. They should shut the fuck up and do a little dance in Mountain View. The company can now appeal the finding that it is a legal monopoly, they should just hush and move along. Google shares are up 12% in the last five days since I'm taping. I know you are a big Google fan. I think you thought this verdict would be more harsh. I wasn't sure because things have moved on. And one of the things that Judge Mehta, I think is very smart, talked about AI sort of changing everything. So they should send a big basket of flowers to OpenAI, which was interesting to me. I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Scott Galloway: Well, every year we pick or I pick a big tech stock pick. And this year I've picked Alphabet because it was trading at 17 times BE until a few weeks ago. The S&P trades at 24. So let me get this. Take the average S&P company, Dow or Procter & Gamble. Google is still growing like crazy. They still get 96 times the traffic of a ChatGPT, largest streaming service in the world, YouTube, three other businesses that do over 30 billion in annual revenue, five products that have at least two billion users and they're the number one in what is probably the most interesting application of AI and that is autonomous driving. And they're trading for less than the average S&P company. Why? Because of this overhang of this cloud of uncertainty around antitrust and AI.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, AI is going to create a lot of value, is going to be a formidable competitor, but they also have very strong AI offerings. Maybe not in an LLM similar to ChatGPT, but they'll find other ways to leverage their amazing IP and their interface and their custody of the consumer.

Scott Galloway: And what this was with this overhang has now been solved. And let's talk a little bit about the case. You know, the FTC and the DOJ always break my heart. Finally, it's been rendered a monopoly. Finally. But this is what happened. This is like your kid comes home and he went out high on meth and started killing dogs and knocking off 7-Elevens, and you come home and say, that's it. You've been found guilty. We're going to punish you. We're not letting you go on Snapchat for 30 minutes. This was, there's two things, finding them guilty, and then there's the remedy. We found them guilty. You've been taking meth and holding up convenience stores. You're guilty. Oh, you got to wear an ankle monitor for 10 minutes.

Kara Swisher: What would he have done, though? I mean, pulling it off is sort of looking backwards, right? There is this push from AI. Like, things have changed. Now, I think Google's going to dominate here, by the way, FYI. I think they're going to move their search monopoly into an AI monopoly. Most people feel that Google's the one to beat, ultimately. OpenAI, we'll see if they can make it, because given they're the only independent one, relatively independent one. But I feel like, what is he going to do? How can you look backwards at remedies? That's the problem, right?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but they've always faced these existential problems where-

Scott Galloway: They should have done it sooner, is what you're saying. Let's go back. Let's reverse engineer to big ideas to the Democratic Party. One of those big ideas needs to be to say, I'm this great, environmentally concerned Republican called Teddy Roosevelt. I love Republican, traditional Republican ideals of which there's none left in Congress. And one of those traditional ideals was trust busting to bring down costs for everybody. The big four, they should be 11 different companies. I'm going to turn the three biggest pharmaceutical companies into nine. I'm going to break up cable. I'm going to break up big chicken. I'm going to break up big ag. And we are going to see a decline in inflation over the next 10 years consistently because we are going to create the greatest sucking sound downward of prices in history, and that is competition.

Scott Galloway: Google, if YouTube was forced to spin from Google, within three months, YouTube would announce their own search engine and Google would announce their own video platform immediately overnight, creating a competitor that would lower the costs on the greatest toll booth in history, which is Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet. There needs to be a candidate that says, I'm fucking Teddy Roosevelt. I am going to break up so many big companies. Look at what's happened to the price of chicken. Look at what's happened to the price. We charge four to eight times for medications than you can get it for in Dubai or Toronto, despite the fact that it's the same, or we invented it. I'm going to go through all of these industries. I'm going to get Jonathan Kanter and a bunch of economists, and we are going to break up and lower cost. It goes to affordability. Consumers don't like these companies. And by the way, these products are going to get better and shareholders are going to get richer as they have in every breakup.

Scott Galloway: What has happened to the price of long distance phone calls? I remember when I was-

Kara Swisher: Remember how much it cost? Oh.

Scott Galloway: I spent summers with my father, right? My mom and dad were divorced. And once a week, we lived in Glen Ellyn, Chicago. My dad worked for Vigoro after he got laid off from Owen Scott's selling shit for a different company, literally fertilizer. He had an office in downtown Chicago. We would take the train in on Sunday when he wasn't working into Chicago, go to his office so I could call my mom on the Watts line, because calling from our house was like $1.10 a minute to call California. So we would travel on a train for an hour so I could use the Watts line at his phone. What has happened to the cost of telco? Because they broke up fucking AT&T into seven baby bells. And by the way, within 10 years, each of those companies was worth more than the original AT&T, because we found out lying fallow at Bell Labs was cell technology, analytics, fiber, things they didn't want to release because they were gonna compete with the-

Kara Swisher: And now internet, right?

Scott Galloway: I mean, Louis was just in Europe, he called me on FaceTime. It cost nothing. You would unlock shareholder value, create greater employment, greater tax revenue. But the problem is these guys love control. They all wanna sit on the iron throne of all seven realms. So they create dual class shareholder companies. So these companies can't be broken up unless Sergey or Mark decide it's okay to break them up. There's very few of these companies. One of the reasons Warner Brothers stock is held up, one of the few things, is it's one class of stock, which means someone could come in and actually break it up if it ever looks like a viable business where the parts are greater than the whole.

Scott Galloway: But this all reverse engineers. Affordability will again be the issue. James Carville is right. It's the economy, stupid. Specifically, it's affordability. And a really solid thing... I just say Mondani, same thing. I think that's why he won. I think that's why he came ahead. He talked about prices. He actually had a very similar campaign to Trump, but that's another talk show. But a key theme for Democrats should be a really thoughtful response. I am a trust buster. I'm going to bring down your pharmaceutical costs, the cost to advertise. I'm going to bring down the cost you incur as parents on your children getting into relationships with character AIs, because these companies don't have any sort of competition or regulatory protection such that a 14-year-old can establish a relationship with a character AI that confirms their suicidal ideation. Fuck that.

Scott Galloway: There are all sorts of rents that have been incrementally going up. We're like a frog in boiling water and we wake up and we're like, our kids are a threat. Our prices are out of fucking control. Do you realize the biggest corporate tax cut in history would be if China and the US made up and they leveraged their manufacturing and we leveraged our IP to get along again? But the second biggest tax cut in history would be the breakup of Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet. So he didn't do that. So when I read his thing, it made sense. It's like, AI has already taken care of this. The market has already sort of taken care of this.

Kara Swisher: What? It's not happening now. That's the end of it. I mean, look, these companies, they're all at the White House today, by the way, all these tech people, except for Elon. But this took years in the making. And this is where it ends. And they're even thinking of appealing it. They don't want to have to do anything. They're basically... The slap on the wrist is, okay, you can't have that $24 billion unilateral agreement, but there's probably a way around that. And again, the market, which tends to be an unemotional arbiter driven on simply fear and greed, or it's not politicized, that takes in millions of points of light, sent Alphabet and Apple for two of their biggest share gains in the last...

Scott Galloway: Leaving our market far too aligned to tech companies, but that's another, we'll get to that next week. But speaking of monopolies, by the way, Newsmax has filed a lawsuit accusing Fox News of acting as a monopoly and suppressing right-wing competitors. The lawsuit alleges Fox News coerces distributors into exclusionary agreements and had used intimidation tactics to hurt Newsmax, including hiring private detective firms to investigate Newsmax executives.

Kara Swisher: I mean, this is a rooting for the bullets here, Scott, situation. But I don't know how you win this law. This is insane.

Scott Galloway: So they were a sharp-elbowed competitor.

Kara Swisher: Oh, you're kidding. It's Fox News. What? I mean, so they sent detectives? Too bad. Like, it's Rupert fucking Murdoch. What do you think he's going to do? He's going to find out that you are dating a goat. That's what's going to happen here. And he's going to use it in some fashion. And then pushing, coercing distributors into not distributing it. I don't know. I mean, people want to have Fox News on their programs. OAN just got on YouTube. So, to me, that's the end of this case. You know more about this than I do. I don't see any legal merit in this. To me, it seems like a play by Newsmax just to be in the news cycle and get PR. I don't think this case is going to go anywhere.

Scott Galloway: But what is happening here is really dramatic. I mean, Fox News viewership down 30 percent, MSNBC down 27 percent, CNN down 42 percent. Do you know what happens when your business is down year on year 42%? You literally can't fire people fast enough. That's a meltdown. Your business has been cut in half in a third to half year cost or fixed cost, meaning all of a sudden you have literally no money. And you know who's doing this, Kara? You know who the culprit is?

Kara Swisher: I don't know. It's not me and Rachel Maddow because we're great. But go ahead.

Scott Galloway: It's Kara Swisher.

Kara Swisher: Okay, hold on. Let's just do the math. The 25 to 54 demo, that's the core demo. They're the only demo that matters to advertisers, because people younger than that are either in college or their parents make their purchase decisions. People older than that get smart and start spending money on healthcare and saving money for their kids. People 25 to 54 are still in their mating years, which leads to irrational decisions, which leads to margin. They buy expensive coffee, Brunello Cucinelli, Range Rovers, because they're still in their mating years and still trying to impress other people and signal. That is all they care about.

Scott Galloway: Generously, a third of MSNBC viewers are in the core demo. No, CNN. Let's do CNN. The average CNN show gets 92,000 viewers. That's down 55% times 0.3. It's probably less than that. There are only 27,000 people on average watching CNN shows that advertisers care about. Let's go to Pivot. We get 400,000 downloads every episode. 70% of our listeners are in the core demo. We're getting 10 times the core demo as the average CNN show. So what is happening? Our revenues are up 40% this year because everyone's figured out that the average MSNBC viewer is a 70-year-old white woman who's already decided who she's voting for and is done buying Sephora products. She's just like, no, I'm just going to let things go. More catheters.

Kara Swisher: More catheters.

Scott Galloway: And meanwhile, the average podcast listener is a 34-year-old male who makes 150 grand a year. That is the great white rhino for advertisers.

Kara Swisher: There's stuff they could do. I always like, everyone's like, oh, they're over. I'm like, why? You're romanticizing it. No, I'm not. No, no. Because if you make a great product, people will come. I'm sorry. You could do a lot with it. There's a lot of assets there. And I don't think it's going... I just did a long interview with John Malone, which was a kicker.

Scott Galloway: I'd love to hear that, actually.

Kara Swisher: It's really great, actually. He's so complex a thinker. He's a self-described autistic. He's probably one of the smartest people in the history of media. He really is, I have to say. He's also a crotchety old, fantastically amusing guy. I read him one thing where someone said, John's been out on the plains and the mountains too long, and his mind has gone crazy. And he laughed and laughed. He's got a good sense of humor. And that aside, I think we had an argument. I was like, making it centrist is not the answer. It's making it interesting for people, right? If you make an interesting product with talented reporting, and I think he is right about this. He said, people really like news, and if you deliver it right, it corrects. He goes, I get thought of as wanting it centrist. I don't want it centrist. He lets Fox off the hook quite a bit. Like, well, they're entertainment, most of it, right? They're not news, they're entertainment. So that's a different thing. I think that's a canard. But I think if you figure out a way to make it entertaining and you bring costs into line, there's no reason a great brand like that couldn't do well, that they started by the great Ted Turner, by the way.

Kara Swisher: I just feel like a lot of these companies, not just CNN, have sort of not understood what the assignment is. And then they have way too many costs, as you and I know. But some things are popular. Let me tell you a quick story. Last night, I brought Louis' friend Ben Berman, who I love, one of his friends from high school, because he really loves Caitlin Collins' show. And he watches it all the time. He thinks it's great. He knows what's going on there. And I was like, I've just brought down the demo for your show right now by bringing him here. I brought him into CNN and he was thrilled. So there is interest. And this guy is a pretty good consumer of all kinds of things, not just CNN. And I don't think he's a unicorn. I think if you give people something they like and latch onto, any media property can be good. That's my argument.

Scott Galloway: Okay, there's two things. When you have still very profitable but declining businesses, which pretty accurately describes cable news or the cable TV world, there's a way to make money and add shareholder value, but it's to stop injecting Botox into grandma such that she looks freakish. It's to make her comfortable and consolidate. There isn't a reason for CBS, ABC, and NBC to have three different newsrooms. They're just not that different. They're reporting the same fucking thing, starching it, trying to make it interesting, and then showing some guy who's raising dogs in Alaska alone and some inspiring stories so we're not just totally depressed about it. It's the same fucking thing over and over. And whoever's more attractive, you tune into that person. The backend can be consolidated. It's very easy.

Scott Galloway: I told you one of my best investments ever was a Yellow Pages company. And we knew the business was going away, but we just went around and bought every Yellow Pages company, held on to the best salespeople. And as long as you cut costs faster than the revenue declines, you can have a good business. This business is not coming back. And the reason why is the following. You're right. A great product always works. But the three key words here are means of production. The means of production for the Colbert Show costs $100 million. They make $60 million, which means they lose $40 million. Stephen Colbert is an amazing talent. It would be an amazing product on podcasts. And of the 200 people that work on that organization, eight will make it onto the podcast arc. They will do $20 million in top line revenue instead of $60 million, but he will continue to make $10 million. But unfortunately, the 194 people that don't make it onto the arc are gonna be getting their real estate licenses. The means of production at CNN and traditional media are just unsustainable.

Scott Galloway: So this is what's going to happen. All that amazing talent, and they do have amazing talent, amazing brands, is going to be arbed down. What are podcasts? Podcasts are now TV shows with a strong audio overlay. This is what you're going to have. You're going to have "On with Kara Swisher." My prediction is Mark Thompson is going to call Kara Swisher and say, we're going to run "On with Kara Swisher." I want you to do the following things. We're very talented. We're going to make this a little bit more TV friendly. We're going to reduce it to 21 minutes so we can pelt nine minutes of ads. We're going to run it. And here's the thing. They don't need to get as many viewers because you can prove we're going to do $10 million in revenue this year. What do we have, eight people? That's one and a quarter million dollars per professional. Cable news is averaging two to four hundred thousand dollars per professional. The means of production, it's a cost issue. And a lot of these companies may not be able to transition their means of production without some sort of radical restriction.

Kara Swisher: You could. There are glimmers of interest, including Fox News. Let me just say, they could. They could. If it's done right.

Scott Galloway: They have.

Kara Swisher: Well, yeah. Well, hold on. Just let me give you an example. Megan Kelly is getting bigger audiences than she did on Fox with six people.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's what she's doing. Six people.

Kara Swisher: Yes. She's a very entrepreneurial person. Lowsome, but entrepreneurial. Quite frankly, this is very self-absorbed. I've decided, unless it's someone I'm friends with, like Stephanie or Anderson or Michael Smirkoff, you know, I'm name dropping right now. I don't, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Look at the viewership. And not only that, in order to get ratings, they have fucking food fights, like whatever that show is with Abby Phillip. It's like no longer news. Everyone's becoming foxy. Unless you're on The View or Morning Joe, if you have your own platforms, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. There's some prestige to being seen on MSNBC. You do it every once in a while. I used to go on once or twice a week. I don't go on anymore.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I know you don't.

Kara Swisher: Juice is not worth the squeeze. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

[Ad Break]

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

Scott Galloway: Can I do a short one?

Kara Swisher: Of course.

Scott Galloway: Right now as we record, Trump is set to host big tech leaders including Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman in the Rose Garden. Club, as he's calling it. I think he paved it over and put up a parking lot. Interestingly, Elon was not on the invite list. And Trump had just recently given an interview with Scott Jennings, speaking of food fight, who on that Abby Phillips show. And he wasn't on the list, which was somewhat interesting. But Trump said that Elon has to come back into the fold. He has to. And I thought, does he? Does he have to?

Kara Swisher: But anyway, I just was interested to see what would happen. I'm not so sure he'll come back in the fold. He may back J.D. Vance. He may back someone else. He may stay in the Republican fold because the Democrats won't be having him anymore. But it was just interesting to me that Elon wasn't there. And I'm not so sure he's going to be as cooperative as they think he is. He's not a cooperative person. That's my prediction.

Scott Galloway: I think he's got bigger fish to fry right now. I think he's on the verge of losing 60, 80% of his net worth. I was in Brazil last week. Every time I got an Uber, it was like this nice, clean little Tesla-like car called a BYD. Do you know the BYD Sunny that goes for $8,000?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, all over the world.

Scott Galloway: The CCP has asked automobile manufacturers to stop lowering their prices. You can get a decent brand new car in China for $8,000. The average price of a car in the U.S., new car, is $50,000. The average price in China, $21,000. You want to make things more affordable for young people? Partner with the Chinese and adopt these types of dark factory manufacturing techniques, a competition. Anyways, he's got bigger fish to fry. By the way, Elon said that 80% of Tesla's value will eventually be Optimus, the humanoid robots the company's been developing.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, look over here.

Scott Galloway: Mark Benny put one up and it couldn't get him a Coke. Mark, stop it. I don't want to talk about my core business because it's imploding. So I'm going to create a bunch of the Reboven.

Kara Swisher: That was my favorite van. Oh, remember that? The Reboven?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: What happened? The Reboven. Robots. All right. What's your prediction?

Scott Galloway: Mine is boring, but it's the boring stuff that moves the needle. So the appellate court basically said that these tariffs are illegal, that Trump illegally enacted the kind of Emergency Powers Act when this wasn't really an emergency. Bush did it after the 9/11 attacks where you can actually take exceptional action around pricing under the auspices of some sort of national security threat. And the appellate court basically said, no, this doesn't justify the emergency such that you can do unilateral tariffs without congressional approval. If it goes to the Supreme Court, now, a lot of people have said that he has workarounds. There's other ways he could implement tariffs. If the administration were to decide to try and figure out a way to declare victory and leave and walk back these tariffs and say, oh, we never intended to keep them. It was a means of negotiating. We have all these great new deals and frameworks and agreements. And if Uruguay decides to implement a different trade agreement, and these are all frameworks, not agreements, fine, they're allowed to do that.

Scott Galloway: But if they decided, or the Supreme Court upholds this, and the Trump administration figures out a way to spin this and walk back the tariffs, which have gone from an average of 3% to 17%. And what do we see? On average, for every 1% increase in tariffs, we see a 10 basis point decrease in GDP. So our GDP growth was supposed to be around 2.8. It's been cut in half to 1.4. That may not sound like a lot, but that's the difference between doubling the economy every 30 years versus doubling the economy every 50 years. If the Supreme Court upholds that these tariffs were illegal, and the Trump administration decides to try and figure out a way to use this as cloud cover to walk the tariffs back, declare victory and leave off a fucking disastrous policy from one of the two most dangerous people in the world right now, Peter Navarro, second only to RFK Jr., you are going to see one of the biggest weeks in Dow and Nasdaq history. Because all of a sudden, they're going to go, okay, we're going to add another one or 1.5% GDP growth when we back away and we pull our heads out of our asses.

Kara Swisher: Let's go, Brandon.

Scott Galloway: If the Supreme Court upholds that these tariffs are illegal and the Trump administration decides not to double down and walk these things back, a step back from the wrong direction is a step in the right direction. If those two things happen, you're going to see the biggest day in the markets of the last few years because the underlying economy has been surprisingly robust. Jobs are starting to get tight now, but go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but if we take away this nonsense of the tariffs and say, okay, just kidding, we're declaring victory and leave, we got these great deals, but we're going to pull them back to where they were, overnight we accrete one and a half percent GDP growth. So that decision, I mean, this was a big decision. What if the opposite happens?

Scott Galloway: Well, I think the bottom line is what you're seeing is, again, the tariffs are yet another transfer of wealth from the 493 old economy companies in the S&P to the seven new economy companies because Broadcom, to a certain extent, NVIDIA with this vig they've got to give, which is just socialism. But in general, the companies that have been hamstrung in terms of their ability to plan or actually see their costs go up and shareholder value go down are exactly the wrong companies we want to hamstring right now. It's Caterpillar. It's P&G. Whereas the big guys who now represent 40% of the market have been totally unfettered.

Kara Swisher: So you're helping-

Scott Galloway: They're in the rose garden right now.

Kara Swisher: You're helping seven companies when you punish 493.

Scott Galloway: So all that's happened here is a transfer of wealth from old economy companies that actually needed the help more than anyone to the new guys who are the last companies that needed it. So I think you would see a really healthy rise in the S&P 493, if you will, if they do away with these tariffs. Because Meta doesn't care about tariffs. It really doesn't affect them.

Kara Swisher: No, it doesn't affect them. They're not making anything.

Scott Galloway: But this is going to be the biggest market moving decision in a while if this happens. This is a big deal. It's giving them, I almost see it as an opportunity for the Trump administration to declare victory and leave and say, well, I'm a gamesman. I'm an incredible dealmaker. I threaten these things. We got amazing deals, but now the market's getting a little yippy, he'll say something. So we're walking them back. But this was a huge victory for us. I forced them to come to the table and do all these great economic deals. But anyways, my prediction, if the Supreme Court holds it up and the Trump administration signals they're going to roll some of these ridiculous tariffs back and we're going to accrete overnight one to one and a half percent additional GDP growth, watch the markets scream.

Kara Swisher: All right. I love it. I love it. Our next show, we will be talking about RFK Jr. What a fucking murderer that guy is. He's a murderer, 100%. Anyway, the Florida vaccine thing. God, I was a little concerned about you.

Scott Galloway: Oh, Leo.

Kara Swisher: I had, I think, what, 17 or 14 vaccines by the time I was 12?

Scott Galloway: Well, that's the problem.

Kara Swisher: Fluoride?

Scott Galloway: I know. I mean...

Kara Swisher: Polio.

Scott Galloway: Polio.

Kara Swisher: That guy who's the Florida doctor in charge is a fucking idiot. Like, that guy is so stupid and arrogant. I've never seen such a performance.

Scott Galloway: That's DeSantis announcing that he still believes he can be president and wants to be the inheritor to MAGA in '28.

Kara Swisher: Well, I understand, but it's ridiculous.

Scott Galloway: Agreed.

Kara Swisher: It was funny. There was a picture of two women who had so much Botox in them and says, don't let anyone tell you what to put in your body. We don't want to put on substances. I was like, yeah, no, you don't need any more of that. And now you'll be preserved. They'll find you hundreds of years from now in a crypt and they'll be like, oh, look, they're still here. Anyway, we'll talk about him.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. It's been a great summer for Rubella and Measles.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. Marvelous Mrs. Measles, like you said.

Scott Galloway: They're about to do a reuniting tour. By the way, I saw Oasis. I couldn't be any wider. I went to that Taylor Swift concert, and I saw every white 15-year-old girl. This is where their parents go. They go to the Oasis concert.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. How was it? Many people have spoken of it. Tim Miller loved it.

Scott Galloway: I thought it was fantastic. I like Oasis. I didn't love them. I went to the concert. It was amazing, but I love the backstory. It's two brothers. Yeah, they hated each other. And I love that money solves all problems. A promoter came to them. That's why we're together again. That tour, on a much bigger level, supposing that tour is going to generate a billion dollars. I went to MetLife. The stadium was packed, and people were rocking out.

Kara Swisher: I know.

Scott Galloway: They've done a good job. The two brothers said, I hate you, I hate me, but I like $50 million more than I hate you. They have decided to put their differences aside.

Kara Swisher: I hear they're bringing it. I hear they're bringing it. It is fantastic. There's a couple of concerts I've seen videos of that I'm like, you need to stop concerting, David Lee Roth. I saw Lady Gaga.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that was supposed to be a great concert too.

Kara Swisher: So different. It was in such a contrast between old rock and roll. Oasis is just a couple of white guys who grew up playing the guitar with great voices. They just rock and rollers. Lady Gaga is Broadway meets cinema meets opera meets ballet. It is a real performance.

Scott Galloway: I heard that.

Kara Swisher: I heard that. I want to see it. I think I want to go see Dolly Parton.

Scott Galloway: Both are outstanding for different reasons. Do you want to go see Dolly Parton at Las Vegas? Can you buy me a ticket?

Kara Swisher: I would love to see Dolly Parton. $3,000 tickets.

Scott Galloway: She deserves every penny. You know what?

Scott Galloway: We should go. You and I should go. Anyway, we'll be traveling a lot this fall.

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

Scott Galloway: Scott, as I said, I'm thrilled you're back.

Kara Swisher: Thank you, Karen. I'm glad to have you back here at home.

Scott Galloway: Thank you for saying that. The kids missed you.

Kara Swisher: Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. And be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back next week. Scott, read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Gallagher. Ernie Inchitaud engineered this episode. Jim Mackle edited this video. Thanks also to Dubros, Ms. Rivera, and Dan Chalon. Nishat Kuruas, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Kara Swisher: Kara, Zoe, Taylor, Lara, Kate, thank you so much for giving me this much time and doing such a great job. It's very generous of everybody.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, just very grateful for your time off.

Kara Swisher: Drew.

Scott Galloway: Well, Drew knows. Drew's here right now.

Kara Swisher: Okay.

Scott Galloway: Anyways, I'm rubbing my fingers through his hair as we speak off camera. Anyways, thank you, everybody, and it's great to be back. Thank you.