Trump's Interview Disaster, The Kids Online Safety Act, and Governor Jared Polis

[Ad Break]

Kara Swisher: As marketing channels have multiplied, the demand for content has skyrocketed. But everyone can make content that's on brand and stands out with Adobe Express. You don't have to be a designer to generate images, rewrite text, and create effects. That's the beauty of generative AI that's commercially safe. Teams all across your business will be psyched to collaborate and create amazing presentations, videos, social posts, flyers, and more. Meet Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content. Learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business.

Scott Galloway: Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door. Expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like Tea Time You. Mmm. Or this Tea Time You. Or even this Tea Time You. Said you hear about Dave. Or even Tea Time Tea Time Tea Time You. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great.

[Intro Music]

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

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.

Kara Swisher: So there's so much going on, Scott. It seems like 100 years ago when you were with the dudes, the white dudes.

Scott Galloway: White dudes, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Where are you right now?

Scott Galloway: I'm still in Aspen. I'll be here for...

Kara Swisher: There's a lot of white dudes.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of white dudes, my friends Eddie Blau and David Frey, my roommates, my sophomore year at UCLA are coming to town.

Scott Galloway: That's nice. That's really nice.

Kara Swisher: I'm just waiting for my invitation. But in any case...

Scott Galloway: There's no reason to issue an invitation to you. I will sometimes walk into my home and you'll be there.

Kara Swisher: That's true. I can just show up. I am staying at your apartment this weekend when I take my son to school. Louie's going back to NYU for his final year. So thank you in advance.

Scott Galloway: You're welcome.

Kara Swisher: So lots going on. Tell me really quickly, there's a lot of news happening as we speak. First of all, tell me about the dude call and you made Mark Hamill do something for money. I loved it. I love that whole thing. Explain to me how that went.

Scott Galloway: You know, it was really nice. I think the first thing is I was initially like, oh, we're going to be accused of identity politics. And what I realized was the vibe was we were sort of poking fun at ourselves and some of the identity politics on the left. There was no like no one ever even dreamt of saying well as white dudes we need the following. It was tongue. It was really nice. It was a super nice vibe.

The politicians on the call, governors of Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Secretary Buttigieg, a bunch of really impressive representatives. They were very, I thought they stole the show. I thought they were outstanding. And you can see why they run for office. Everyone kept their comments brief. I think we raised $4.5 million. It was a really nice vibe.

Kara Swisher: You like having a group of guys just guying it up, but in a nice way. Not like the bad group of guys the other day.

Scott Galloway: And the guy who stole the show was the dude, Jeff Bridges.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I mean, he is the dude. He is the white dude. He's like the patron saint of white dudes.

Scott Galloway: They had all these actors. They had Joseph Gordon-Levitt. One of my favorite movies, a weird movie called Looper that he was in. I got to know him because he was doing the Travis Kalanick role in Super Pumped.

Kara Swisher: He's very talented. He's actually a great dancer.

Scott Galloway: Okay. And the kid who plays the Hobbit, Sean Astin.

Kara Swisher: Oh, he was there, Sean Astin. Oh, wow. He seemed very thoughtful. And explain to people what you did, make a paper. Hamill did. I can't believe he did it. Explain what you did. Dance for my money, sir. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I went through my whole rant and then I said, you know, I'll donate some money, but I'm a selfish person. I need something in return. And I said, I have a hero on the line. I need this hero to unmute and say the following. I'm Luke Skywalker, and I'm here to rescue you. And so he did it. I thought it was a nice moment.

Kara Swisher: I love that. I was like, oh, he didn't. And then I'm like, oh, he did. Well, it was enjoyable to watch. It's interesting. I was saying in the last pivot, trying to be insightful, that every medium has its day in an election. And this is a medium of video. What's interesting is so far, you know what the technology of this or the medium of this election is? Is Zoom. Zoom, Zoom. Sort of a pandemic bad feeling. But now, you know, because you have to be on Zooms. But I have to say, I think it's very, you know, someone was asking me, oh, these, I think it was you, identity. But it actually is fun identity politics. Like it's. This is us making fun of ourselves. We weren't saying that, you know, we're white dudes and we need the following and we're representing ourselves. We weren't. It wasn't that.

Scott Galloway: It was a really nice vibe. They thread the needle. The kid who inspired the whole thing, he should be so proud of himself because he pulled us together in like 72 hours and raised four and a half million dollars and created a lot of good vibes. Yeah, all these groups are fascinating. Now there's going to be a seniors one. There's going to be a cat ladies. It's just fun. It's a fun way to raise money and talk about politics and feel community. I know it sounds crazy, but online you can have a feeling of community. It's not fake community. It's actually real.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, I was very amused by your performance. It was very funny. And I heard a lot about it.

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: You did your whole man has to protect woman thing.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I got a lot of pushback for that. We're men, we protect and we provide. Someone was like, do you believe he said that? I'm like, he says that every week.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I got pushback there and I got pushback. I mean, online, you get pushback. I got pushback on my dress, which I understand. And I got pushback from ringing up Israel. But, you know, player gonna play. Daddy's gonna daddy. The dog's gonna howl.

Anyway, we've got a lot to get today, including the latest earnings from Meta and Microsoft. And the Senate is finally passing regulation to protect kids online as well as other things, fakes and things like that. Plus, our friend at Pivot, I'm bringing you a good person, Colorado's Democratic Governor Jared Polis. We're going to talk politics and tech. He's a tech guy. That's how I met him. And he also started Proflowers. He did. That Proflowers, there was a candy company attached, all those things. He's a really interesting fellow.

Scott Galloway: So I have a little bit of a story there. When I was in the 90s, I was the co-founder of Red Envelope, and ProFlowers was kind of our competition. And I'd heard, because my company was about to go public, I thought, well, white guy about to be rich, I should run for office. And my company went chapter 11. He sold his company early and made a shit ton of money, and now he's the governor of Colorado.

Kara Swisher: It's his mom. His parents started that company, by the way.

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's right. That's right. You know that story.

Kara Swisher: His mom called me. It's San Diego, wasn't he living in San Diego?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, it was in San Diego, but they were all in Colorado. They were all consequences.

Kara Swisher: She, La Jolla, essentially, she called me when they offered her that money. And I was the reporter, and I was like, you know, you're telling me news. Like, it was funny, but she's one of these sort of innocent kind of, not, she wasn't, I wouldn't say not sophisticated, but she, you know, she was like, Carol, what do you think? And I was like, thank you for the tip, Susan. And I told her to sell it and get all cash.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God.

Kara Swisher: Because I thought Excited Home was real. It was the first crazy acquisition that made no sense.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Well, you're welcome, Jared Polis.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, but first, as we tape, Wall Street Journal, Evan Gersovich and former US Marine, Paul Whelan are being released from Russian prison in a prisoner swap. This is great news. I'm so glad. What a terrible situation for both of them. But it seems good news and I'm glad they didn't wait until Trump got to do it or got to say it was his or something like that. These people needed to come home. This was a ridiculous whatever mock trial. I don't even know what to say. It's kangaroo court. But, you know, I'm sure there'll be criticism of who they swapped with, but I think this is a good thing.

Scott Galloway: I think it's great. I don't know the details of it. I've immediately thought, what are they swapping? And unfortunately, the really sad thing about this is that you create an incentive to take more people, incarcerate more people illegitimately. But it is wonderful that they're going home, coming home. I was worried about Evan. And one of the things I love about Jake Tapper's, every day, Jake Tapper has been reminding the U.S. that Evan has been falsely incarcerated in a Russian prison. Paul Whelan didn't get nearly as much attention. Anyway, just as it was wonderful that Brittany Griner came home, I think this is wonderful too. So that's great for them and their families. This whole thing is like, there's such a kangaroo state over there in Russia. This is how they operate.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, but the big story, speaking of strange things, is Trump is making news because he needs to be in the news for his appearance at a conference of Black journalists. In his 30-minute interview, Trump insulted moderators, vowed to pardon January 6 defendants and question Kamala Harris's race. Let's listen to a clip.

[Audio Clip: Donald Trump: I've known her a long time indirectly, not directly very much. And she was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. And now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black? She is always identified as a black. I respect either one. I respect either one. But she obviously doesn't.]

Kara Swisher: Oh, good heavens. I don't even know what to say. She's always been Black. I don't know how I've always thought of her as Black and Indian. What is happening here, Scott? I'm very eager to hear your comments, because it seems like he just wants attention to himself, or maybe he's got a cognitive problem, or maybe he's just a racist. The way he says Black was so strange.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but what's more disappointing is that there's a certain, and it's unfortunately a significant portion of the population that responds to that bullshit. They do. And so, at some point you got to blame voters.

Kara Swisher: I agree.

Scott Galloway: It's like, unless he's, you know, you send a swift react. I mean, keep in mind the Republican Party used to be the party of equal rights. I mean, they've played a very big role in civil rights. You know, he's better than Lincoln for black people. That's another thing he said again, as he likes to say. And just laughing. And I think so many people feel so abused or lied to with sort of this starched politically correct, or what they perceive is a bunch of elites telling them that they're for them and then things getting worse for them, and they're so angry about certain things or perceived loss of what America is, whatever it is, that they just want someone who's so— they conflate change and leadership with how offensive you are because they're sick of people telling them one thing and being so kind of politically correct and not really—

Kara Swisher: Let's move away from it. Let's put what he said. I love your, from what you're, it's not their fault for this guy saying these things. This is really strange.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, but they keep responding to it, Kara. It works, unfortunately.

Kara Swisher: Well, some people do. Well, okay. So a couple, a progressive podcast is outraged. And you know what? His audience claps at this shit. They're like, he's a leader. Oh, it's just Trump gonna Trump. And they don't, until voters, people respond, products respond to the marketplace. Until voters start saying on Fox or interviewing, his comments on race are unacceptable. I used to follow him. I'm not going to follow him anymore. I'm not going to vote for Harris. He's not going to stop.

Scott Galloway: All right, so what would you do here? How would you push back? Besides being, I'm not outraged. He's just, he's a racist and this is what he says.

Kara Swisher: But this is kind of nutty. It seems nutty, but it's obviously a messaging attempt. Although they did pull him off the stage. His staff pulled him off the stage.

Scott Galloway: That's, quite frankly, that's what I would focus on. I would focus on, I'd go after him and say, I would go after Donald Trump is too old and we've all had this person in senile and is making ridiculous statements. And even his own campaign full of his own acolytes and their own set of weirdos are now pulling him off stage because he is so old and crazy. I wouldn't go after the indignant speech. I would go after another. This is another piece of evidence that he is way too old and doesn't understand what he's saying. And even his own campaign now, similar to what Biden staff has been correctly accused of of hiding what is going on here and they had to pull him off the stage. I would focus on that aspect of it.

Kara Swisher: Let's assume this isn't a tactic by him though, not just that he's a crazy old man, racist man, which he is. What is the tactic here? I don't even understand. I know it appeals to some people. Those people are already in his camp. Who else does this appeal to?

Scott Galloway: Well, I guess it activates them, but also the attacks against Senator Warren were similar, that they're pretending to be something they aren't for their own advantage and to try and seize the moral high ground.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. I don't think she's ever hidden it.

Scott Galloway: Well, yeah, it's a ridiculous accusation. But they've already started kind of the sexist and racist attacks.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I don't know. This thing is unhinged. And I think you're right. You focus on the unhinged and weirdness of it. I think this word weird is an excellent one, I have to say.

Scott Galloway: I think so, too. That was smart of them. It's much better than the plural. What would you do, Kara?

Kara Swisher: You know, I was like, oh, for fuck's sake. Like, you know, I have to say, he's just crazy. He's a crazy old man. He's a crazy old man racist man. Like, oh, what a crazy old racist man. That's so strange. And then I'd make fun of him. I think making fun and mocking him is better than being righteous about it. I thought the reporter did a good job. Like, what? Like, huh? That kind of thing. And interestingly, Harris seemed to have taken your word for it and has not reacted with righteousness. She's just like, this is just more of the same crap. Like, let's move forward. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's interesting that she controlled herself. I thought that was a smart move on her part not to be like she didn't she didn't dine out on it, but for sure. And she could have. She had a speech right after to a huge group of black sorority women, which she's a member of, by the way, because she's black.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I don't think she should. I mean, this kind of comes to the VP. This is a perfect job for the VP. The VP typically is the attack dog. And I think she wants to come across as a little bit more statesmanlike.

Kara Swisher: And I don't know. She did a good job. I was expecting like a remark, but she didn't make any. She's like, oh, like that guy, the racist over there. Let's just ignore him kind of thing. Interestingly, on the Kamala side, more than 100 VCs of pleasure support for Kamala Harris. The group includes many notable names like Mark Cuban, Reid Hoffman, Aileen Lee, Vinod Khosla, bunches, bunches, very good entrepreneurs. Reid Hastings already gave a ton of money. The group's pledge says that it believes in a strong institutions are a feature, not a bug. It's sort of the blue team essentially and they very high level people who are really you know more of the remarkable people. The group on the red team is Elon who is absolutely talented, Peter Thiel who's absolutely talented, and then a bunch of, like, idiots, you know, and sort of failed entrepreneurs or crypto bros and stuff like that. So, you know, this is sort of, it's become an interesting split. I never thought the tech people were liberal myself, so I'm not surprised by this.

Scott Galloway: Well, the region they're in is. Silicon Valley is actually quite, 53% of residents, Silicon Valley residents are registered Democrats versus only 16% of Republicans. But I get, you know, to your point, they're not running for office there. They're just wealthy tech guys. Secretary Buttigieg had a good answer for it. He said, look, these are essentially a group of very rich people, and the Republican Party tends to be very good for very rich people. And these aren't people focused on maybe some of the bigger issues.

I got some pushback, actually really civil pushback, about my comments about Commissioner Gensler being agnostic around crypto. And this really articulate gentleman, I forget, from a university, maybe overseas, said actually Gensler's been terrible on Bitcoin and crypto. He's been very hostile towards it. And what he brought up that was really fascinating, he said, you know, approximately, actually my co-host Ed Elson, I'm proud that he said this, but 17% of Americans own some sort of crypto. And this notion, and also a lot of them are single-issue voters because they're so passionate about it. There's definitely kind of a weird feel, kind of a culty feel around the crypto space. But I started thinking about the difference between a vote and the intensity of the vote. And that is there is a certain percentage of the population that is kind of single-issue voters. And to a certain extent, the intensity of your vote makes it more powerful because the issues that have, quote-unquote, an intensity following, you used the right word, modulate. And actually, crypto, since the last election, has more intensity around it, more people on it, and more people really look hard at the viewpoint around crypto or the complexion or the perception of that person being amenable or not amenable to crypto.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they're a little culty. I don't know what else to say. They're single-issue voters. That's certainly true. You know but things like crypto things like there a lot of Jews are single voter issues now. We hoping to date campaigns have always made the mistake of believing that a lot of people are single issue voters around choice. And to date they haven't been. And people are hoping this election might change that. But it'll be interesting to know how many people are single issue voters around the border. But it struck me that crypto is going to play a much bigger role in terms of intensity. They're definitely intense and they all want jobs. And they, you know, they're mad about the whole Sam Bankman-Fried thing. And, you know, they're just, they're really in it for themselves, Scott. I don't think it's much more complex than that. And they decide that crypto is a religion to them. And so if you question them, and look, I think Kamala Harris is going to come down in a much more center place with some regulation, safety, things like that. What was it called? The triangulation in the Clinton administration?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, she's going to come in the center.

Kara Swisher: And then they're going to be like, oh, we love her. You know, these people have no political values except for more money for themselves, honestly.

Scott Galloway: I think a lot of people vote that way. I think a lot of people see it as government is ineffective. I'm just going to vote for whoever keeps the most money in my pocket. I think a lot of people vote that way.

Kara Swisher: That's correct. I agree. These guys are just, but these guys have to tell you what they think about everything, though. I'm like, just say I want more money. Just, like, go away. You, you know, you political value-free people and stop lecturing me.

Scott Galloway: Is this before or after they moved to Texas to spend more time with their family because they're outraged at California politics?

Kara Swisher: You know what? It was so funny. I was in San Francisco and one of the VCs who's most against California was sitting right there in Tartine Manufactory having lunch. Like that he goes on and on. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing here? I thought you hated California. He spends a lot of time in California. It's such bullshit. It's such endless fucking bullshit with these people. I'm sorry. They're so, they're just liars. I don't know what else to say. Anyway. Are you still in California?

Scott Galloway: I'm not. I'm back in D.C.

Kara Swisher: Are you back in D.C.? Okay, good. As Harris nears making a VP pick, by the way, speaking of which, that'll make a difference. It'll be an interesting person. One of her top options is cementing a strategy for Democrats. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has decided the line of attack against Republicans, calling them weird. He's a very folksy fella. Let's listen to a clip.

[Audio Clip: Tim Walz: The fascists depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back. But we're not afraid of weird people. We're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid.]

Kara Swisher: He's pretty funny. I have to say, I like him. I'm like national host of America. It should be Tim Walz. There's also Josh Shapiro, who is a very fine legislator, governor of Pennsylvania. There's Andy Beshear from Kentucky. There's Mark Kelly, senator from Arizona. Any thoughts? Do you have any thoughts? It's going to be announced within days.

Scott Galloway: I have a lot of thoughts. I've been thinking about this a lot. And I'd love to get your view, but I look at the criteria. The bottom line is, as much as it's important to get along, and this is a qualified person that could be president, I think the reality is the vast majority of the wood behind the arrow in terms of decision making is simply who can help us get elected. I think that is the number one criteria, because your ability to govern and how you govern, it takes a distant second seat to, well, we've got to get elected first. So I think that's just the first consideration. And that comes down to, in my view, are they in a swing state? And that immediately puts Kelly and Shapiro in the lead. To a certain extent, Walz, while he isn't in a swing state, he's in a swing region. And that is that kind of, if I just looked at him and heard him for a few seconds, I think he'd be a Republican, which gives him a little bit more credibility among that crowd.

Kara Swisher: He's got kind of a Gretchen Whitmer vibe, like friendly, but funny.

Scott Galloway: That's right. Just a folksy Midwestern.

Kara Swisher: No bullshit. Yeah.

Scott Galloway: You can trust me vibe. Just my tone, my no-nonsense kind of puffy, blotchy skin, white guy rap gives me more credibility, unfortunately.

Kara Swisher: Coach.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, coach, teacher. He's just out of central casting. And he's in a region. He borders, I believe, Wisconsin and Michigan. So he's potential. The second is, do they immunize the top of the ticket on an issue they're weak on? Do they bring diversity around that? And the two issues that I think, and the reason why I think the final two, if you will, are Shapiro and Kelly, is that it technically, they would immunize presidential candidate Harris from, one, Israel, which is already being used as a cudgel, and two, the border. Senator Kelly has a fantastic line on this. He basically says the Democrats don't understand the border and Republicans aren't sincere about fixing it. And he just comes across as very good on the border. And that becomes obviously a very big issue and technically a weakness of hers. I'm talking about perception now. What is or isn't legitimately a weakness. Shapiro obviously strengthens her bona fides around concerns around the Jewish community around the views on Israel.

And then you look at their profiles, Kelly's out of central casting, an astronaut, victim of gun violence. I mean, he's just really, he just, he's...

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he's a nice fella too.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. And he comes across as nice. Shapiro is outstanding in terms of his presence, and he's more forceful. The reason why I think, and then I want you to guess, that my bet is Shapiro is the following. He is an outstanding attack dog because he has been taking on the Trump administration with lawsuits as an AG on the Islamophobia, around election denial. He's like ready to go to go after the Trump administration and he's very forceful and very articulate. Kelly, that suit just doesn't really fit him. He's not an attack person. He's very credible.

Kara Swisher: I think it's going to be Shapiro too. I do. I think they're going to open themselves up because he's very pro-Israel in a way that young people might find distasteful. So she's trying to, as you see, she's trying to modulate between, she's the ultimate modulator. Like, it's terrible what we're seeing. At the same time, let's defend Israel. That's really where she's going. He's got, you know, the issues, I think, around school vouchers. He's a very unusual politician. I have to tell you, my conservative relatives in Pennsylvania love him, which is interesting, you know. He's very good. And then the reason why I think, I have a more boring reason, and Michael Smerconish highlighted this to me. The reason why I think it's Shapiro is she has a campaign stop planned in Philadelphia. I don't think that's an accident.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we'll see.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, we'll see. It'll be someone, a white guy, and they're all quite qualified. Honestly, I wouldn't feel bad about any of them. And, you know, interestingly, Trump went out of his way to say the vice president doesn't matter at this ridiculous BJ thing, which was funny. He sort of was like, who cares about the vice president?

Scott Galloway: To a certain extent, I was thinking about this. The vice president is kind of so far nothing but downside. And that is no one remembers them unless they were kind of a fucking disaster. Unless you're Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin. Unless you run for office and then become president, Joe Biden, George Bush, stuff like that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah but I'm not sure George Bush. Has anyone been elected president in any of the top five reasons ever the VP? The VP is basically invisible. It just gets you well. It puts you at the top of the ticket. It puts you at the top of the list. I'm not talking about the Veep. I'm talking about it's a great role for the Veep because they naturally they're the number one contender for the next election. But I'm just saying in terms of their ability to help the ticket, it feels to me like Veepies are just all downside. You just hope they're okay.

Scott Galloway: I think in Shapiro's case, I think he's, how old is he? I'm going to look it up. I mean, it's 40s. He looks young.

Kara Swisher: We're about the same age, I think.

Scott Galloway: 51.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he's a little bit older than me. Wait a second. How old are you? I'm going to look. You're coming to my 50th birthday party.

Scott Galloway: I'm not coming to your 50th birthday.

Kara Swisher: I believe you're coming to your 60th.

Scott Galloway: Call me Nancy Reagan and stop it.

Kara Swisher: It's my birthday.

Scott Galloway: 59, November 3rd, 1964.

Kara Swisher: Okay, whatever. Wikipedia is wrong.

Scott Galloway: All right, Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Anyway. Zsa Zsa. Okay, let's get to our first big story. We've got more tech earnings to discuss. So much going on. Let's start with Meta, whose shares jumped in extended trading Wednesday after the company beat estimates for revenue and profit in the second quarter. Advertising revenue rose 22% from a year earlier. And the strength of that business seems to be offsetting concerns about heavy spending on AI, which I think is necessary for them. The AI spending will be increasing with Meta upping its expected 2024 capital expenditures to at least $37 billion. We're done with the Metaverse. Now we're spending the money on AI. Meta shares did sink on AI spending news last quarter. The market seems more optimistic because they've got a really good business to get them there, I guess. There's still not a lot to show for these AI investments. And a lot of investors are worried about where the payoffs are. How long will investors wait to get a return from Meta? And I'll just go through Microsoft earnings really quickly. Microsoft, they're less enthusiastic about those, which were a bit of a mixed bag. Overall sales and profit growth beat expectations in the latest quarter, but revenue for the company's cloud business rose slightly below the prior quarter. And analyst expectation shares were down about 3% on Tuesday after the earnings report, but rebounded for the most part the next day. So talk a little bit about the two companies. Thoughts?

Scott Galloway: There's just no denying it. Meta, I mean, Meta, their earnings were up. Their earnings per share were up 73% year on year. The ad impressions and average price per ad both increased 10% year on year. I mean, that's incredible. The average price and the number of impressions up 10%. Three and a quarter billion daily active users. So 40% of the planet is on a Meta platform every day.

Scott Galloway: The only thing giving anyone any pause, and it depends how well they positioned it, is they warned that CapEx growth for AI will grow significantly. And they've said that the amount of compute needed to train Llama 4 will likely be almost 10 times more than what was used to train Llama 3. And people get a little insecure about this, they immediately go to the infrastructure place. Similar to what they did in '99 when they went to Cisco.

Scott Galloway: Because if you look at the CapEx for the software layer—Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon—their CapEx is up 31%, but their revenue is only up 19%. Whereas the hardware layer, where you go first—NVIDIA, AMD, ARM—their CapEx is actually flat, even maybe down 8%, depending on how you calculate it, but their revenue is up 146%. So it feels like a safer play right now. Since reporting their earnings, Microsoft and Google, the software stack, have declined 2% and 6% respectively. And NVIDIA, when AMD reported, was up 8%.

Scott Galloway: But the thing that freaked everybody out on the Microsoft call was their announcement of something like a 78% year-on-year increase in CapEx to $19 billion. That's staggering. And get this, the entire tech industry is in such a spending stream. The capital expenditures of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google this year will be about $200 billion. That's double what the U.S. government spends on homeland security. These numbers are just staggering.

Kara Swisher: They are. They're staggering. Whether they're going to get the money back is a real question. I think OpenAI is making money, but who else is? This irritating VC, I'm not even going to name him, was asking Sam Altman at lunch, "Is anyone going to make money here?" I think everyone's worried about that. Is this spending going to result in growth that meets the amount of money they're spending?

Scott Galloway: I don't see they have another choice but to spend, correct? This is not the metaverse. This is a really critical shift in computing. I don't know how they can't. All systems are go here. As much excitement as there was about the web, even though the revenue is scant relative to the investment, it's dramatically greater than the revenue anyone was getting from the web in the '90s. So everybody is going all in.

Scott Galloway: And it plays to their strength in the sense that they already have a captive audience to roll out AI applications to. They've learned from the father that if you have the advantage of cheap capital, you leverage that advantage and go hard at CapEx to try and pull away from everybody else. They're like, "Our advantage is we have access to cheaper capital because of our market cap and our PE. So we are going to turn on the spending jets."

Scott Galloway: Here's a fun stat. 40% of S&P 500 companies discussed AI in their earnings calls. Only like 20% are tech companies. So even non-tech companies are talking about AI. That's up from 1% five years ago. This is a tidal wave.

Kara Swisher: Money well spent, or we don't know yet, or impossible not to spend?

Scott Galloway: I think it's money very well spent for some players. Existing players who are running away with it. I do think there's a jump on the bandwagon. I think a lot of analysts are going to say to some of these second-tier or consumer companies, "Rent AI, spend money on it, but you shouldn't be spending CapEx on it." Because I've heard about some companies trying to develop their own LLMs and going very hard at this.

Scott Galloway: But the stat that absolutely blew me away is that if you look at the actual amount of revenue that AI applications are generating right now—OpenAI, ChatGPT, subscriptions, things like that—it's about $20 billion. And it's inspired a $3 trillion increase in market capitalization. So right now, the industry notionally is trading at 150 times revenues. That just does not feel sustainable. That means the revenues these applications are garnering has to double every year for the foreseeable future, which is a big ask.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, which we've talked about. It's an arms race. They have to do it.

Scott Galloway: It's an arms race.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we discuss the Senate finally passing social media safety regulation, and we talk to a friend of Pivot, Colorado Governor Jared Polis.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back with our second big story. The Senate is finally taking action with online regulation for kids, passing a pair of bills to expand privacy and safety protections by an overwhelming margin this week. The Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, requires platforms to take reasonable measures to prevent harm, including online bullying and sexual exploitation. The Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA 2, would ban targeted advertising to minors and strengthen privacy protections. The bills now head to the House, where they face an uncertain future and probably will not be passing this year.

Kara Swisher: There's also some others. I think it's called the Defiance Act around fakes. And they introduced one about fakes, the No Fakes Act, from Marshall Blackburn and Chris Coons. So they're making some activity. They're just not passing them, and people are a little worried about KOSA being able to stand up to congressional scrutiny. The ACLU and tech industry groups have criticized the bill, saying important conversations around gender equality and abortion rights could be censored. The companies will be more careful than not careful. That said, it's thinking about child safety. But there's a lot of controversy, and most people think it won't hold up to scrutiny. That's too bad.

Kara Swisher: I'm wondering how much of this is written by the companies themselves, and they insert booby traps so it'll never get past muster. But we've been saying for a long time that elegant legislation would be that Section 230 protections are removed for AI-elevated content. To me, this seems like a really clean, smart thing to do.

Scott Galloway: I'm a fan of this. The problem is, I've said that the first real externality of AI would be deepfake and shallowfake videos as we lead up to the election. The number of deepfake videos available online has surged by 900%. It's up 10x annually, according to KPMG. You would think the kid stuff would be bipartisan. The other part that's interesting is the Keep Entertainment Safe to No Fakes Act, granting individuals a federal property right to approve the use of their voice, appearance, or likeness, exposing unauthorized creators to legal liability.

Scott Galloway: We've got to move pretty swiftly to punish platforms or anyone who doesn't have the technology to somewhat police deepfake audio. Some of the things people can do with deepfake audio is really frightening. Meanwhile, lawmakers in both houses are introducing bills this week to address some of the AI issues. A bipartisan group of senators unveiled legislation that would permit the creation of AI replicas without the consent of a person being replicated. In the House, there's a proposed bill to carve out Section 230 immunity for tech companies that fail to remove intimate deepfakes from their platforms. This is largely around porn fakes.

Scott Galloway: Chris Coons said that legislation for AI replicas would protect celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, as well as non-celebrities. The 230 one is a little more complicated. Chamber for Progress, a center-left group, just put out an open letter to Trump asking him to clarify his stance on Section 230. He's repeatedly tried to roll that back, which is a problem. They're moving on a lot of this stuff, but it doesn't mean they've passed anything. The only thing they've managed to pass is a TikTok bill, essentially.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but sometimes activity and motion don't translate to progress.

Scott Galloway: That's correct.

Kara Swisher: There's a lot of arm waving here. I just want to see something actually passed. Everyone should have the rights to their digital twin, their likeness, video likeness, deepfakes of them, their voice. But I generally believe that if they don't pass something that really gives downside incentive to the platforms to ensure AI deepfake videos are taken down—we've seen this before—they're going to feel really bad after the election about all the videos showing violence at polling stations that were clearly deepfake videos. They'll figure out a way to take it down after they've cashed everyone's check.

Scott Galloway: This really needs to happen. And I won't even go there because I don't want to give people ideas. Deepfake audio and video has so much extortion capability online.

Kara Swisher: It does. There's been story after story about people calling, saying they sound like you, "I have your kid. Here's your kid's voice." There was the Porsche guy, or the Ferrari guy—they were pretending it was the CEO and he figured it out. They were using a deepfake voice of the CEO as if the CEO was calling him. He asked him something he knew only the CEO would know, which was a book he was reading. They weren't able to answer, and they ran off. There's been a ton of stories recently about people deepfaking people out of money, out of all kinds of stuff. It's going to just get worse and worse.

Scott Galloway: Super, super important, but we'll see where Congress gets. I don't think they're going to pass any of this. And I doubt KOSA is going to hold up to constitutional scrutiny. That's what most people feel. Because these companies will be more censorious than ever if they feel like they're even slightly at risk. If kids are talking about being gay or things like that, they'll take that down because it'll vary state by state what is bad and what is not bad. It's going to be really hard. And this is all to the benefit of tech companies.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot so we can talk about it. A tech guy and a legislator. Jared Polis is the Democratic governor of Colorado. He's also the chair of the National Governors Association. Governor Polis, welcome. It's great to see you again.

Jared Polis: Good to see you.

Kara Swisher: So how's it going? How's it there? You just mentioned there are wildfires in Colorado. They're across the West.

Jared Polis: Yeah, one of the impacts of climate change is the West is hotter and drier, and we're experiencing a lot more. Oregon's been in the news the last few weeks. We now have nine fires in Colorado. We have four that have elevated to state responsibility. We called out the National Guard. Unfortunately, for better or worse, we're getting pretty good at this drill. We've evacuated everybody. Tragically, there's only one confirmed death. But we're doing everything we can.

Kara Swisher: We should do another show sometime on all the technology around fighting fires. It is really interesting to see some of the work around satellite imagery. It's really evolved quite a bit over the last decade.

Jared Polis: That's amazing.

Kara Swisher: Scott's in Colorado right now, just so you know. He's in Aspen.

Jared Polis: Oh, are you, Scott? Where are you?

Scott Galloway: I'm in Aspen, Governor.

Jared Polis: Yeah. So you're probably—both the Front Range and the Western Slope are getting bad air quality as a result of this, too. You can quite literally smell it in the air.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that's why I have you here. It's really tough here in Aspen. And I need government to really step in and protect me.

Jared Polis: Well, from fires, that might be the appropriate role of government, honestly. I think that's something we can agree on.

Kara Swisher: Can I segue to an actual question?

Scott Galloway: First, I just want to say, Governor, I'm an enormous fan. I think you're one of the few of a dying breed of raging moderates—practical, reasonable. I'm just an enormous fan. I think Colorado, with you and our senior senator Michael Bennet, are just great examples of what good government can do. Anyway, enough of that. Let's bring this back to me.

Scott Galloway: I'm in Aspen and I bought a home here. One of the things that struck me is it's nearly impossible to build. It's nearly impossible to renovate. The local review boards and the government have clearly decided to employ a strategy which I think infects the entire nation: wealthy incumbents who already own homes weaponize their local governments to ensure no new housing can be built. The result is houses across America have gone from $290,000 to $410,000 from pre- to post-pandemic. Young people just can't afford homes. It used to be two-thirds of America could afford a home. Now it's one-third. I realize this is a broader national issue. But as governor of a state that's growing and prosperous, what are your views on how we increase housing stock? And what are you doing specifically to ensure that more housing gets built so a younger generation has the same access to buying a home as we had?

Jared Polis: Preach, preach. I couldn't agree more. That's exactly the nexus of a lot of the issues we're working on. Housing prices are a function of supply and demand, basic economics. Demand is high. Isn't Aspen wonderful? Isn't Boulder and Denver wonderful? There's lots of wonderful places in our country people want to live. Supply has been artificially constrained because of local government regulations to prevent the construction of new housing.

Jared Polis: We are taking that head on. We've made some progress in Colorado. You'll be happy to know we added accessory dwelling units by right. So if you have a single-family lot, you can build an accessory dwelling unit. We did multifamily zoning near transit within half a mile of bus or rail. We're for all of it, Scott. I agree we need to do more.

Jared Polis: When people look at what is preventing housing from being built, it is effectively the zoning and local regulations that make it difficult or impossible. Sometimes you can fight city hall if you have the tenacity and $50,000 in lawyers, and eventually you can build it two years later. But all too often, they don't even let you. You come in saying, "Hey, we're doing this 80-unit multifamily complex." By the time you're done, they've gotten it down to 20 units. The exact opposite of what we need. I'm for intervention at any level—local, federal, state. We absolutely need to remove some of these artificial constraints to prevent housing from being built where we need it.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to move you to politics, if you don't mind. Scott was just talking about the idea of moderation. Democrats like you or Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania having that imagery of more moderation, helping consumers, not being the same old Democratic Party. I'd love you to talk a little bit about where you think the Democratic Party is right now, especially with the candidacy of the Vice President about to become the candidate, and the DNC meeting very soon in Chicago. Talk a little bit about how you look at it across the landscape right now.

Jared Polis: I'm not always sure that "moderate" is the right word. The connotation of "moderate" is that you somehow don't want to do anything or support the status quo or support the midpoint between what both parties want to do. I don't think that's the case. I think "solutions-oriented" is better—good solutions that work, whether they come from the left or the right, wherever they come from ideologically, you want to see them deployed.

Jared Polis: Take this housing issue we just talked about. You can find people on the left and the right that might oppose this. It doesn't mean it's a moderate solution. It's just a solution that works. There might also be allies on the left and right. It doesn't really align on an ideological map. In our state, we've got more support on the Democratic side for some of these land use reforms. But in Montana, the Republicans were supporting some of these same land use reforms. Sometimes that's for political reasons.

Jared Polis: Look, I think both parties, and especially the Democratic Party, which I'm a member of, are very broad tents. It's different than a multi-party European system where each ideology has its own party. The Democrats might be composed of three or four different parties. Republicans are composed of at least two or three—the nationalist party, the traditional conservative party, the religious party. Democrats have constituencies, but we're all here in one party. That makes things a little tougher. We have to work out our differences beforehand.

Jared Polis: But I'm excited. Kamala Harris is a much more forward-looking, future-looking face for our party. And I think the coalition is moving in a direction that's more pro-business, pro-tech. That's something that excites me.

Scott Galloway: Governor, Colorado punches above its weight class. It's 21st among states in terms of population, 15th when it comes to the size of its economy, and an even more impressive 8th in terms of how much personal income it generates. I don't know if that's education, a business-friendly environment, or the kind of person you attract. But as sort of the CEO here, what are the levers or the pillars of punching above your weight class economically?

Jared Polis: One of them is the great quality of life in the outdoors here. That's a competitive advantage we have. But it doesn't mean it's a given. We say, how do we enjoy the outdoors in a sustainable way? We added some state parks. We reduced the cost of access. We're doing a lot around wildlife conservation. So that's one key attribute.

Jared Polis: Beyond that, we've reduced the income tax three times in Colorado since I've been governor. When I came in, our income tax was 4.63%. We reduced it at the ballot box to 4.5, then 4.4. And now with the legislature—it was near unanimous, by the way, we got almost every vote of every Democrat and Republican—we reduced it to 4.25%. We reduced property tax percentages as well. We're the 48th lowest property tax state. Many Coloradans who hear this might complain because their properties went way up in value and the rates floated down, but they might still be paying more in absolute terms. But as a percentage of our property value, we're 48th lowest.

Jared Polis: We're favorable towards innovation. While education is so important, and no governor can say we have a terrific education every school across the board because it's locally controlled and there are a lot of differences, we have a system that allows for innovation. We are second in percentage of charter schools, as an example, to Washington, D.C. Within districts and outside of districts, we have choice that allows parents to choose the option and the school that works best for their kid. We just implemented universal preschool. One of the things I ran on—Colorado didn't have preschool before. Parents had to pay for it. Now we have universal preschool for every four-year-old. It's the preschool of that parent's choice, subject to a lottery and waitlists and so forth, but everybody has equal access. That's exciting.

Kara Swisher: Talk a little bit about the impact of tech. You're a tech guy going way back. We met back in the Blue Mountain Arts days. You also founded an internet access company from your college dorm room. You and your parents ran Blue Mountain Arts, which was the best trade of the internet age back then. You managed to sell it at the peak and get out. You had a lot of theses about politics in the information age that I remember we used to discuss. Now the tech people are really involved in it, and sometimes for the negative. There's sort of a blue team and a red team right now. Can you talk about the role of tech? A lot of them are over there because of all kinds of reasons, but crypto is one of the issues right now, and you've been a big proponent of that.

Jared Polis: Sure. I want to say, by the way, I'm not somebody—for conflict of interest reasons, I want to be clear, I don't own any crypto. But even if I wasn't in public office, it doesn't mean I would necessarily invest in crypto. I'm not bullish on crypto per se, but I'm bullish on technology per se and removing barriers for disruptive technologies like crypto.

Kara Swisher: Colorado became the first state to let residents pay state income tax with crypto.

Jared Polis: Absolutely. Crypto forward. You can use it to buy your driver's license, different state fees you can pay in crypto. Very few people do, but we're excited that some do. We also want to create some regulatory safe harbors to the extent we can for new developing technologies like crypto. Much of that is federal, so there's only limited ability of states to do that.

Jared Polis: I can just say as a member of the Democratic Party, having won primaries for Congress, for governor, I've never had any issues with my fellow Democrats about being pro-technology, pro-crypto. Is that what you run on? No, because that's not the top issue on people's minds. You run on preschool and environmental protections and the things you're doing. But whenever it comes up, that's always been my position.

Jared Polis: By the way, Colorado is well positioned now in the quantum technology sector too. That's another exciting area. People don't know Colorado's designated tech hub for quantum computing by the Biden-Harris administration last year. We won a $40 million grant from the government this month to jumpstart that growth.

Kara Swisher: Go ahead.

Jared Polis: That's right. In many ways, that was a recognition of where we are. It wasn't like they were giving that to us to become the leader in quantum. It was the recognition by the feds that the national play on quantum tech is here. Over 3,000 jobs in quantum tech already, which is far more than any other region of the country. We have five Nobel Prize winners. We want to bet on the future in Colorado. We're a very forward-looking, innovative state. America is a very forward-looking, innovative nation. Most major innovations, both in the online world and the offline world, a disproportionate share come from America. You talked about Colorado punching above our weight. I'm proud that our country very much punches above our weight. With the right tech-forward, innovative policies, we'll continue to do so.

Kara Swisher: So what do you make of so many tech people—I never thought they were politically liberal myself for years and years, I didn't think they had any politics—but many of them become Trump supporters. How do you look at that? And then of course there are the ones that are not, like Reid Hoffman, Reid Hastings, Benioff, etc.

Jared Polis: I grew up in this culture and I'm part of it. I think you do too, Kara. I get Elon Musk. I get 4chan, Reddit. I get this stuff. People are trolls and trash talk and all the fun stuff along with it, the wonder and the beauty of the internet and what it brings out. But there's an ideological diversity there. You just saw a bunch of venture capitalists—VCs for Kamala Harris. I think most people that are professionally involved with tech value the stability that Kamala Harris would bring.

Jared Polis: Donald Trump is about chaos. There's a beautiful side to chaos on the internet, but there's not as much of a beautiful side to chaos as the chief executive of the largest, most important country in the world, both on the international stage and the domestic stage. It's hard to figure out what the core beliefs are with regard to tech and Donald Trump. He tends to like it if it talks about how great he is, and he doesn't like tech if it denigrates him. He shifts really dramatically. I don't think he has any opinions, honestly. He's narcissistic. That's his lens that he views tech through.

Kara Swisher: So let me ask you, to follow up to that, how would you make the case for people to support Vice President Harris in tech?

Kara Swisher: What is, if you had to, you were in front of some of these guys that are like, she's against crypto, or I'm not getting, you know, woke mind virus, whatever the nonsense they're spewing at any one moment.

Jared Polis: Yeah. I mean, first of all, she's not Joe Biden and she's a different person. And Joe Biden is who he is. I happen to like Joe Biden. But you'll like him for who he is. He's an old time Irish pol. I think what the country needed at the time. I certainly supported him last time around. I don't think we were making the case, "This is the guy for the tech and the future." Right. "This is the guy to save democracy, hopefully to bring us together." He's the elder statesman we needed, a safe hand when we need it through difficult times.

Jared Polis: I think Kamala Harris can be more indifferent in a lot of different ways. She hails from California, strong ties to Silicon Valley. She has a lot of friends and associates that are themselves entrepreneurs. I think she understands the value of disruption and the entrepreneurial economy. And you see that manifest itself in policy. She already did outreach to the crypto world. She's already doing extensive outreach to the venture capital world. I think she gets value and capital formation. And is she going to be perfect on every issue? Of course not. Nobody is. And by the way, many Republican states are taking a hard turn, anti-internet, anti-free expression, restricting access and so forth. So look, it's not a partisan thing, but I think Kamala Harris will be a great leader for innovation and for the future.

Scott Galloway: Governor, you were on a bunch of people's short list for a potential VP pick, which connotes the notion that you're at some point a viable candidate to be president. When you look out across either foreign policy or tax policy or social policy, are there any one or two issues that you're especially passionate about that if for whatever reason you were to end up in federal office, you would want to pursue that you think are especially important in America right now?

Jared Polis: Well, one that I highlight that I'm hopeful that Kamala Harris will be better on because we had kind of too mediocre—we had a bad choice with Donald Trump, mediocre with Joe Biden—was trade and expanding markets overseas, bringing down tariffs and trade barriers. Trump is absolutely the worst. Ten percent universal tariff on everything that's inflationary, increased costs, not to mention the retaliatory tariffs other countries would launch that would destroy American manufacturing and hurt American agriculture.

Jared Polis: I think we have huge potential to grow stronger trade ties with our allies. I'm not even talking about the geopolitics of China now. And I have opinions about that. But I'm just saying with Europe, with the Americas, our Senator Bennett, who you mentioned earlier, has the Americas Act in Congress, which would expand the Mexico, Canada-U.S. trade agreement to other countries in Central and South America. This is something we should embrace. It's something that Donald Trump is the worst in and Joe Biden was mediocre in. I'm hopeful Kamala Harris will be more like President Obama and leading the way in trade.

Jared Polis: We used to have one and a half good parties on trade. The Republican Party could be counted on and half the Democratic Party. Now you're down to half a party who's pro-trade. The Democrats, the half of us that are pro-trade, are still here. Republicans took a hard turn towards nationalism, towards isolationism and against trade, and that is the detriment of innovation and the detriment of our economy.

Scott Galloway: So you perfectly deflected Scott's question, but go ahead, Scott.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I was going to say, let's talk specifics.

Jared Polis: So that is an issue that I would want to help bring to the national stage, for sure.

Scott Galloway: Let's talk specifically about China. There's real tension. There's been sort of a cold peace right now. The Trump administration and the Biden administration are becoming kind of tariff crazy as it relates to China, the second largest economy. And before you answer that question, just a fun fact, Colorado has the same size economy as Thailand with a 12th of the population. So anyways, back to China-U.S. trade. Would you lower tariffs? Would you try to re-embrace China? What would be your trade policy as it relates to China?

Jared Polis: Well, I have spoken out against the recent tariffs that President Biden imposed on solar and electric vehicles, to a lesser extent. I'm not as concerned about that, but certainly on solar panels. Now, is there a legitimate national security nexus around sensitive technology when you're talking about the CHIPS Act and on-shoring or friend-shoring of key technologies that include applications in the defense sector? I would put that in a different category, and I would make sure that we consult with national security experts on our sufficiency in those areas to prepare for all contingencies.

Jared Polis: But when it comes to things like the clothing on our back, 98% of it is imported, much of it from China. A 10% tariff would be a tax on the middle class. It's back to school time. Everybody's shopping for their kids' clothes, paying 10% more. On solar panels, we want to power the low-cost clean energy revolution. If China is producing them at a level where they're losing money, that's their problem. It's our opportunity. Let's buy as many solar panels as we can to create low-cost energy for the American people. Electric vehicles, too, not part of critical defense infrastructure. I don't think we should be levying tariffs on them. And then, again, you get to the sensitive national security things, and I'm much more sympathetic towards on-shoring and friend-shoring of technology.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, a lot of it is hand-waving. A lot of it is hand-waving about everything. You just deflect his idea of running for office. And you and I have talked about this. And you had a very funny rejoinder when anyone asked if you were a vice presidential candidate, which was, "If they're looking for a Jewish gay guy, fantastic, here I am, sitting in Colorado." But why wouldn't they pick you? I was sort of like, he's wrong. Why wouldn't you be acceptable to a vast majority of people?

Jared Polis: Well, I was making more of a commentary on how they do the crosstabs and the polling is down to a T. Obviously, somebody from a swing state would be at a premium. And as somebody who wants to like Kamala Harris, I do like people like Mark Kelly and Josh Shapiro because they do bring people along in their state. And it's been modeled mathematically. It might be half a percent. It might be ever. We don't want to be sitting there after Election Day saying we lost Pennsylvania by 0.2 percent. "If only we had Josh Shapiro on the ticket we would have won," if that was a tipping point.

Jared Polis: But no, I focus on bringing an audience to younger people, to tech savvy people. It's a foreign looking face of the party. I've got fun social media. I try to stay positive with it as opposed to negative. But we do quirky stuff on there. But no, I really love the job I have, Kara. I don't think there's a better job than Governor of Colorado.

Kara Swisher: How much more can you be Governor of Colorado? You're sort of like Whitmer.

Jared Polis: I have two and a half more years. Two and a half, same thing with Governor Whitmer, right? And very popular governors. We have a lot of great governors across the Democratic Party. It's really quite amazing. The states are at this point, in any assessment, they're just more functional than the federal government. We're able to get stuff done, whether it's preschool, whether it's innovation policy. We made the first two years of college free for everybody earning under $90,000. So just boom, boom, boom. And the federal government is very frustrating at this point.

Kara Swisher: Okay. Last question for me. Do you have a pick for vice president? Do you have any? Who would you pick if you were her?

Jared Polis: Present company not included, of course.

Kara Swisher: You can pick yourself.

Jared Polis: Right. In terms of winning, I ascribe to the data that shows that there's a small but noticeable effect for the hometown, home state person. So, I mean, Arizona, Mark Kelly's great. Astronaut, science, tech, he's great. Josh Shapiro, I've gotten to know over the last two years, haven't known him as long as I know Mark Kelly, but great. Very popular in Pennsylvania, very forward-looking. I think those are your top two. If you go away from the competitive states, you're losing that advantage. There's plenty of wonderful people with different appeal. But somebody who wants to win, I just don't want to wake up after election day and say, "My God, we could have had it with one more state."

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Scott, last question.

Scott Galloway: So Governor, you're the father of two. What advice would you have for fathers, or mothers for that matter, with very high pressure jobs, important jobs, in terms of what you learned about, or what surprised you? What are you better at in terms of being a dad than maybe you were a few years ago? What advice do you have for young fathers?

Jared Polis: Our kids are very different, like most people with multiple kids. Our daughter is very athletic, going to go to her baseball games. And our son is more cerebral and computery and all that sort of stuff. But no, embrace each kid.

Kara Swisher: Look at him smiling as he describes his kids. Look at him smile. You gotta love this guy. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Jared Polis: Well, they're great. You just sort of love them where they're at and you enjoy the time with them. Our kids are 10 and 12. We just try to enjoy every moment where we can with them. And they're a lot of fun. We have dinner at home pretty much every day. Sometimes we have dinner a little late, 7:30 if I'm late, early if I'm back by 6:30, but we have dinner every day and have good discussions.

Scott Galloway: Just one quick follow-up. What about being a good partner?

Jared Polis: Well, Marlon is a great guy himself. He's the first gentleman in Colorado. His focus is animal welfare issues, so adopting cats and dogs and protecting wildlife, and he's very involved with that, and I support him in that, and we have a great home life. We do gaming at home. We play League of Legends most nights and sometimes watch TV, but we love computer games and hanging out.

Kara Swisher: Interesting. So he's a cat lady. Interesting. No, I'm teasing. That's my last question. What do you make of the efforts by the Republican Party to weaponize parenting?

Jared Polis: It's, you know, I have four kids. I don't talk about anyone lesser or more than. I don't judge people for having kids or not.

Kara Swisher: Does this backfire from your perspective?

Jared Polis: Well, absolutely. It's just strange, first of all. And again, we talked about Donald Trump not having any core beliefs, but Republicans saying we want the government to parent your kids is very opposite of where they traditionally been. Also very off-putting, I think, to many in the tech community. But that's basically what they're saying. The mainstream message is that many Democrats, myself included, embrace: look, there's different value sets among different parents. You raise your kids different ways. That's great. We're not saying I'm for or against how you raise your kids. Even the relationship with tech is a very personal one. Some parents don't want their kids using any tech till they're 16. Others introduce it at age six. This is not for the government to decide. This is for parents to decide in their families and in their homes. And do I think that is a winning message? Absolutely. But is it the right thing? Of course. And so that's a contrast that I'm willing to raise every day of the week. And I think the Republicans keep burying themselves deeper with trying to take over parenting when most parents just want to raise their kids and be left alone.

Kara Swisher: One hundred percent. Anyway, we really appreciated Governor Jared Polis from Colorado. And you're a real star. Your journey has been so fascinating to me, where you've been and where you're going. So I'll really be eager to see what's next. Thank you.

Jared Polis: Always a pleasure. Thanks, Governor.

Scott Galloway: All right, Scott, he's a good guy. He's a really good guy. Could I have been more sycophantic? I was literally like Kara interviewing a lesbian journalist from The Atlantic. My questions were like, "How can you be this awesome?"

Kara Swisher: He is awesome. He was very funny back in the day. He had like a little briefcase. He was like—I used to call him Michael J. Fox because his parents were hippies and he was like wearing a suit all the time. He's a funny guy. He's really come into his own. I really enjoy him quite a bit.

Scott Galloway: Anyway, it shows you how good government officials can be, right? He has a lot of choices and he took this one. It's a really well governed state. They have great elected officials. He does have the benefit of money to be able to do that. So he's doing it for himself and for the people of Colorado.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions.

[Ad break]

Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, before we get to predictions, Don Lemon just texted me. He's suing Elon Musk for refusing to pay him after the canceled X deal. X executives used Don to prop up their advertising sales pitch, then canceled their partnership and dragged Don's name through the mud. Lemon's lawyer said in a statement, just so you know, good for you, Don. I wrote him back, "yay," because I don't think he's getting his money back. But nonetheless, it's yet another lawsuit for Elon. And Linda Yaccarino looks like an idiot once again. OK, now tell me your predictions.

Scott Galloway: Well, I thought the prediction was going to be around VP and I'm picking Shapiro. The other prediction I'm making, I'm just thinking about it because we didn't get to it, is I think we've hit peak tweeting of funds. The dream of every fund manager is captive capital, because the way you go out of business as an alternative investment manager is mismatched durations. You invest long and you raise money short. You aggregate a series of positions that are not that liquid. Then your investors put in a redemption and you either have to sell so desperately that it takes the value of the fund down or you can't even sell. So you have to put up gates saying your investors can't withdraw their money, which is effectively the end of your fund, because once you put your gates down, everyone redeems.

Scott Galloway: Captive capital is the dream of every hedge fund manager. Berkshire Hathaway and Apollo have both been very smart, and that is they have insurance companies, so they have captive capital. Another way you get captive capital is you do an IPO and you raise capital from shareholders who own a stake in the returns on your investments. Bill Ackman's Pershing Square planned to do a $25 billion IPO. And just this week, they announced that they're pulling the IPO. It's pretty obvious that the reasoning is that he took a calculated risk that awareness is everything. And there's some evidence of that when guys like Chamath or Cathie Wood basically offer just terrible returns.

Kara Swisher: Or Warren Buffett.

Scott Galloway: Or Warren Buffett. It's folksy. But go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but Warren has performance on his side. Warren is both a good brand and has underlying performance. So far, Chamath and Cathie Wood have one of those things. They have awareness, and their performance has been abysmal to worse.

Scott Galloway: And Ackman, to his credit, a lot of people would argue, is a brilliant investor. But when he's out there with these tweets circulating conspiracy theory, weighing in on higher ed and DEI, it appears that institutional investors have said, "You know what, we see that as a bug, not a feature." And he had to pull his IPO. And I think it's going to give pause to a lot of these fund managers who decided that they are celebrities, internet celebrities, and that the world needs to know what they're thinking about stuff.

Scott Galloway: The most ridiculous tweet of the year from a person that manages billions of dollars was from Cathie Wood of ARK. The tweet read as follows: "As a result, our trading-related capital tax losses should offset trading-related capital tax gains for years, an underappreciated asset associated with our strategies." What she's saying is, our returns have been so shitty, we have lost so much of your money, that those losses we've aggregated are going to be so valuable to offset future gains that this is an underappreciated asset.

Kara Swisher: Oh, we suck, but let me turn it into something else.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. So my incompetence as a fiduciary for your capital—I've lost so much of your capital that these losses are an underappreciated asset.

Kara Swisher: What a surprise. These people are such grifters, honestly. The PR person saying, "Wait, how do we turn a negative into a positive?" And your sycophants on Twitter might even buy this. And by the way, she deleted the tweet because I'm sure about a million people weighed in and said, "Let me get this straight. My incompetence is your advantage."

Scott Galloway: Anyways, I think that these very iconic investors, the day of them being bored at night and tweeting out shit, I think a lot of their institutional investors are going to go, "Put the fucking phone down."

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and do your job. Do your fucking job. Focus on returns. Bill Ackman's become such a horse's patoot. And he was before, by the way, but he had results and he kept his mouth shut. There's all the stories of him being a jerk to people. But whatever. He did a good job. He had some wins. He had some losses, but a very good investor. Good at his job.

Scott Galloway: This era of him has got to be—it's just been so depressing to watch in a lot of ways because he's an interesting fella. And what happened here is that he mistakes who his audience is. He thinks his investors are all these dumbasses who are going to just be a meme stock, when actually they're institutional investors who just don't want this nonsense and sloppiness. He apparently released a letter he shouldn't have released. He told people who his investors were. You live in the investing world, and that's your audience. And if you think you're going to trick someone into buying into your IPO, it's not happening for you. It's just not.

Kara Swisher: They sort of misjudged his audience completely or the power of his audience. And they're just a bunch of people that like to troll. They're not real investors. They could be dumb money, but they're not even that for you. So, you know, whatever. Good luck with that. I find it just him going on and on about DEI. I feel like I should do a whole thing about hedge fund investing, about which I know nothing, and I would like to tweet about it endlessly. That's what I kind of compare it to.

Scott Galloway: You're correct. So it's over. Yeah, he spoke before me at TED. And I'm mixed on Bill because I think he's actually an interesting guy. And I think in some ways, I do think his heart's in the right place. He's philanthropic. Anyway, but he said something on stage which really struck me that this is what happens when you become powerful and you surround yourself with yes people. The person interviewing him said, "You throw your weight around around DEI essentially because you're a billionaire." And he said, "No, my fame around DEI is because of my ideas. It has nothing to do with—" And it's like, are you really that tone deaf? You really think that your ideas around DEI not being a great idea are so... In Ukraine. Let's hear what you think about Ukraine. Like, whatever. These people have so many hairs up their ass. They just can't stop itching. It was like, wow, you really don't get it.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, but he is a big, handsome man. I'll give him that.

Scott Galloway: I sat next to him. I sat next to him or stood next to him at the urinal. And he looked over and he said, "Circumcised."

Kara Swisher: I like that. No, just the wear and tear, Bill. Thank you for talking about Bill Ackman's penis. Boom. I was closing the show with a dick joke.

Scott Galloway: You were sitting at the—I didn't want to go into this. We did sit next to each other at the urinal though. Or stand. I'm sorry, stand next to each other.

Kara Swisher: Oh, right. Okay, and we end on the penis of Bill Ackman. We're a little weird. It was that kind of convention. Anyway, Bill, just get back to your job and stop yammering away. Honestly, I'm sure your wife loves that you dragged her through the mud, by the way. That was a nice job for doing that.

Kara Swisher: But anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Please read us out.

Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her tight engineer in this episode, thanks also to Jabros and Neil Severio. Nishad Kharoua is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. 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, have a great weekend.

[Ad break]