Universities Cut Ties with Russia, Antitrust Action, and Guest Preet Bharara

[Transcript begins]

Kara Swisher: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.

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

Scott Galloway: And so I pulled into a Texaco. Guy rolls out and says, can I help you? You know what I said?

Kara Swisher: What?

Scott Galloway: Just looking. Just looking. Get it? Like you roll into a... When you don't laugh, then the audience does not have permission to laugh.

Kara Swisher: Because it wasn't funny. Do another joke.

Scott Galloway: Another cold? Yes.

Kara Swisher: Do you have kids or something?

Scott Galloway: Yes. That's why people your age should not have children, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Really? It's a risk.

Scott Galloway: They're little cesspools.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. I'm excited for the next version of Lice that's coming soon, I'm sure. Lice is next.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, we had one of those scares at our school.

Scott Galloway: Scares, it happens, right? It's not a scare, it's a thing.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, no, it is a thing. And then you take a comb and go through your kid's hair and you're like, it's like a treasure hunt. You're looking for these little things. You go through your kid's hair.

Scott Galloway: I hired people, that is what money is for. I hired people to come there. You should see my boy's hair. They were called the lice police or something like that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you must have a good time when your kid has had lice.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, before they go to sleep at night, I adjust their backs and I run my hands through their hair and I'm literally like, oh my God, what I could do with this hair.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, you had it once and you didn't appreciate it, I think. Did you appreciate your hair when you had it?

Scott Galloway: My hair used to be my best feature. I had a ponytail in graduate school, which looked really cool, by the way.

Kara Swisher: Right. Looked really cool.

Scott Galloway: Did it?

Kara Swisher: I doubt it.

Scott Galloway: I remember being in graduate school and reading a finance book and thinking, I don't remember underlining this chapter. I'm like, oh my God, it's my hair. And within like 18 months, I was fucking Yul Brynner.

Kara Swisher: Really? What happened?

Scott Galloway: It went fast.

Kara Swisher: Why?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. Something about DNA and testosterone and follicles. I don't know what. It happens to two thirds of men. And then I shaved my head and I actually have a pretty good head for...

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Can you ever grow out your hair? I'd like to see that.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. I have more hair than people think. Unfortunately, most of it's coming out of my ear and my nose. But I'm thinking about braiding the two.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Sort of a, I don't know. Anyways. There was a guy at the Washington Post who was bald like you, and he used to grow his hair long in the back and then flip it on the front.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, a comb over. It's called a comb over, Kara.

Kara Swisher: It was like a crazy comb over. It was a crazy comb over. It didn't work, I have to tell you. We knew what was going on with his hair.

Scott Galloway: I wear a lot of wigs.

Kara Swisher: I like that. You have great hair. You're blessed. You have very good hair.

Scott Galloway: Yes, I do. My family has great hair. We're great. Actually, my brothers have a hair loss, but not that bad. Just a little bit.

Kara Swisher: Just a little bit. A little bit to be dangerous.

Scott Galloway: They don't know from hair loss. I have seen one of your brothers, and he looks like Cher compared to me. I mean, anyways, I'll show you hair loss.

Kara Swisher: I think you look great. Anyway, today, a court ruling could spell trouble for Amazon, and university funds are dropping out of Russia. Also, we'll chat with friend of Pivot, Preet Bharara. He's my one call. You know what I mean? If I get stuck in prison or when I get stuck in prison, he's my one call.

Scott Galloway: When. I think when is really the more operative word here.

Kara Swisher: In the big house.

Scott Galloway: I'll start a gang.

Kara Swisher: We have a couple things going on. The Fed has raised interest rates for the first time in three years as it battles inflation. The hike comes in at 0.25%. Increases are expected six more times this year. They said they're going to do seven. Unemployment is low at 3.8%. So what thinks you? What thinks you of this?

Scott Galloway: It's really... we don't recognize it. Most adults have not experienced 70s inflation. I was a little kid when it happened. But it is really insidious. When people... I mean, inflation at the end of the day is too many dollars facing too few products. And we have on both the demand and the supply side huge stimulus. Economy strong, full employment, people have a lot of money, a lot of confidence. And at the same time, and this is what I didn't expect, the supply chain issues continue to get worse. And then it becomes a psychological phenomenon where people think, I'll just buy now because prices are going to go up. I put a deposit down on a Rivian and I got an email message saying, because of supply chain issues, we've had to increase the price you agreed to when you gave this deposit. And I'm not exaggerating.

Kara Swisher: Well, that's the thing, they can.

Scott Galloway: And I went back and I refreshed my order status page. And I think they'd raised the price about 20 grand. And of course, all hell broke loose. And they reached out to Rivian. And the last thing Rivian needs when it's trading at a ridiculous multiple is any sort of negative PR goodwill. And they backtracked. They sent you another email saying, just kidding. We're excited about delivering your Rivian in 2029, and we're going to keep the price the same.

Kara Swisher: So they're really going to lose money.

Scott Galloway: So they're really going to lose money. But here's the thing. That's the right move because it doesn't matter with a company like Rivian. They're not going to be able to justify... either. Rivian right now has, I think, a bigger market cap than Honda, and it hasn't delivered a car yet.

Kara Swisher: I know. Why did you get one? What was your thinking? You need a truck or what?

Scott Galloway: Because I refuse to acknowledge I'm going to die and still hold hope for a random sexual encounter and want to believe that I'm 45 again, so I buy ridiculous cars that I think make me seem more macho.

Kara Swisher: You wouldn't go for a Porsche or something like that? One of those that fell into the ocean?

Scott Galloway: I know. I cannot fit in a Porsche. I have an elbow hanging out each window. I look ridiculous in a Porsche.

Kara Swisher: What about a Maybach? You could do a Maybach.

Scott Galloway: Oh, come on. You think I'm going to roll around in a Maybach?

Kara Swisher: Yes, I would. I could see it. I could see it.

Scott Galloway: All right, fine. Get a Rivian, whatever. I still have the Kia, so just keep that in mind. I still have the Kia. And I'm going out to San Francisco next week for a couple weeks, and I rented a Nissan Pathfinder. It's very exciting. It's a luxury vehicle for me.

Kara Swisher: Why is that?

Scott Galloway: Because I've got the tall child. I've got legs with me. I've got the two babies and the wife, and I need a big car still.

Kara Swisher: You guys need a Winnebago.

Scott Galloway: I know. You literally need a Winnebago and a trainload of people carrying your luggage.

Kara Swisher: It's true. I think Nissan would be a really interesting acquisition by Apple. I think Apple, which this would never happen, but Nissan and Renault, who owns Nissan, and they're angry about it because they bought it on the cheap, is one of the most interesting design companies in the world. Nissan is actually relative to its brand. I think one of the most interesting companies in the world. They consistently make fantastic cars with great design.

Scott Galloway: Oh, good. I am glad.

Kara Swisher: And Apple, if Apple wanted to get from letters A to F really fast, it would acquire a Nissan. It's not going to happen, but I think it's interesting to think about. But back to inflation.

Scott Galloway: Back to... well, let me just... go ahead.

Kara Swisher: I'm sorry, go ahead.

Scott Galloway: I was going to say the price of the new Tesla is going up as fast as gas. Tesla raised its prices across its entire lineup by as much as 10%. Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla and SpaceX are seeing significant inflation pressure. And so he used the opportunity to raise prices.

Kara Swisher: Well, yeah, and it's substantial across every model, kind of five to 10% real price hikes. And a lot of the minerals or metals that go into making a battery are in especially short supplies. I think nickel is the one that's really skyrocketed.

Scott Galloway: But if you go back to 70s inflation, where you have this psychology where workers are consistently asking for more money, which makes sense. They're demanding higher wages because everything they buy in groceries keeps going up. There's no elasticity. Every time a supplier raises prices, they see no drop in demand. We have both of those things right now. What I had never seen before, which really shocks me, is I hear people saying, we should buy now because the price is going to go up. Not only across real estate, but across... So used car prices are up something like 40 plus percent. New cars up, I think, 17 percent. And if you look back on the 70s, it basically took us... Paul Volcker, who's considered kind of a hero of economics, came in and said, this is really ugly. We've entered into a cycle. We've got to break out. Stagflation.

Kara Swisher: Remember stagflation.

Scott Galloway: Stagflation. That's right. But even just inflation on its own really diminishes everyone's purchasing power. It's terrible for the people in office. And the only way you can do it is to slow down the economy, which is also very unpopular. But if you look at everyone talks about the great years of the Reagan economy, we basically took interest rates from like 20% way the hell down through the 80s, which created incredible growth. And Volcker... a lot of people... or was an incredible stimulus for the economy once we got inflation under control. But Volcker made some very hard choices. Jimmy Carter probably doesn't get the credit he deserves because he appointed Volcker. But we forget how difficult and damaging inflation can be. And so this is Powell, who supposedly his role model in EIDL is, you guessed it, Paul Volcker, saying we've got to cool the economy down. We can't let inflation get away from us.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of not cooling down, Elon is still tweeting about jokes about fighting Putin, which we said were tasteless.

Scott Galloway: I haven't seen that.

Kara Swisher: He's also posted a couple of memes that seem to mock the national enthusiasm for Ukraine. One popular reply to his tweet simply read, didn't realize you were fully right wing. I don't even know what he is, honestly. I think he just does what amuses him on some level. It strikes me. Again, I just think there's a certain group of people who would just rather be in the news, have to be in the news every day. And if they can't come up with anything productive or insightful, they think, well, I'll just gaslight everybody.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, he does tweet a lot. But still, he's in an area that's very popular. Now drivers will be able to charge their EVs outside of Starbucks thanks to a partnership with Volvo. Volvo is just coming out with an EV that looks pretty attractive. The pilot program will roll out to just 15 stores. But the Starbucks CEO, Kevin Johnson, or KJ, as he was known when he was at Microsoft, won't be around. He announced his retirement this week. It was rather sudden. And Howard Schultz is returning as interim CEO. There's a lot of union issues there, and they thought KJ apparently didn't handle it very well. But now Howard Schultz is going back, who had tried to run for president. And he's going to face a lot of unionization and things like that. He's always been somewhat hostile to unionization, which he tries to pretend he wasn't, but he has been over the years. So interesting times for Starbucks.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but Howard Schultz, being the CEO at Starbucks is like being the starting forward for a basketball team when Michael Jordan is on the bench and injured but healing fast. There's just a good chance that... I think Howard Schultz has done this a few times. He's always kind of hanging around the hoop saying, okay, one false move, I'll go back in because I am an outstanding CEO. I know the company better than anyone. I'm surprised that Howard Schultz consistently wants to go back and be a CEO after amassing the wealth he has. I would think, Jesus Christ, I just don't need it. I think on a risk-adjusted basis, it's a bad idea, but I bet shareholders like it.

Scott Galloway: They do. I just can't imagine how difficult it is to negotiate a package. Oh, I guess they make a lot of money, but there's a... any CEO, the average tenure of a CEO now, I think it's about five years. And I would say at Starbucks, there's a very good chance that the guy kind of counseling you at any moment might decide, no, I'm going to take... give me the reins back, boss. But it's an incredible company. I wonder if they're just running out of growth opportunities.

Kara Swisher: I don't know. It's a tough business. And unionization is coming. They've always been very good to their employees, but I think a lot of companies are facing that, Amazon and many others. We'll talk about that in a minute. But lastly, AMC is now in the gold business, apparently. The theater chain invested more than $27 million into gold and silver mining in Nevada. They need to stop. That CEO needs to stop, speaking of weird CEOs.

Scott Galloway: So in an interview this week with Variety, Jared Leto, who is in We Crashed, I think he's terrific in it, as I said. If it wasn't for Marvel films, I don't even know if theaters would exist. Jared and I are on the same page. He's quite tech savvy. He's playing a villainous vampire in an upcoming Marvel movie that looks great. I find him to be one of our best actors. But what is with the gold? What is going on? It makes no fucking sense. It means they have a shitty board.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And even if you justify the investment. So let me be clear. Buying a gold mine may be a great investment. Shareholders don't need to buy stock in a company that is a theater company that had become a meme stock for them to invest their money in a gold mining company.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, what up? This is what you call not only stupid, but terrible corporate governance. It means the board of AMC, and I wish I had their names, have no business serving as fiduciary for shareholders. It's bizarre. It makes absolutely no sense. I read it. I was like, what? It makes no sense.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, that CEO's... I don't know. I don't have much regard to it. It kind of... a lot of things sort of indicate a top when CEOs get this godlike quality. And when CEOs are allowed to do just ridiculous things like this, it kind of indicates things might be getting a little top. Because in tough times, no CEO is allowed to do a show like this. It's a shitty business. Come on. Like, I don't care how much Hollywood moans about it. When I wrote that, they lost their ever-loving minds. I was contacted by so many. I was like, look, I'm just telling you the weather, my friends, or what's coming. I'm the weatherman. That's who I am. I'm the weatherman.

Kara Swisher: I just interviewed Jeff Katzenberg, and they all bust into song about the collective part of humanity. They make it sound like movie theaters are baby seals. Theaters are okay. Theaters, you do feel that. A live theater concert performance, I'm all for those. I did an event last night talking to some theater people. I don't... it's going to be a small business, but it's still... you do feel that when you're in a live theater event or a live concert event, commonality. But in a movie theater, no, I do not. Do you?

Scott Galloway: Well, you can't see... it's hard to see Hamilton even though Disney did a great job. It's hard to replicate Elton John's 8th farewell tour on your screen at home. But movies, you can. The delta between your in-home experience and movie theater experience is narrow, and I would argue even been surpassed. At home, movie theater is a terrible small business. And this is now being used as a shell for other things.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, makes no sense. We're in agreement. Makes no sense. We don't like it. Jared Leto's great, by the way. We Crashed. We're going to have one of the people who's playing Scott Galloway on next week. Very exciting. Are you excited?

Scott Galloway: That's right. He had to work out for like 18 months to do the role.

Kara Swisher: I might replace you with him if he's clever enough.

Scott Galloway: You always say that and you think I'm threatened and I'm not. I think you should. I realize how much... I'm the saltier vinegar. I'm the peanut butter to your chocolate.

Kara Swisher: Do you know who I'm going on with tonight? He invited me onto his Twitter spaces. This was kind of our date.

Scott Galloway: Really? Tell me.

Kara Swisher: John Stewart.

Scott Galloway: Really? On Twitter's Twitter.

Kara Swisher: John Stewart. We had such a good time.

Scott Galloway: Jesus, poor John Stewart.

Kara Swisher: We have a thing. We've got a little bit of a kismet. I have to tell you, we've got kismet.

Scott Galloway: Really?

Kara Swisher: Anyway, let's get on to our first big stories. This is something near and dear to your heart. Universities around the U.S. are cutting financial ties with Russia. Schools, large and small, have sold their Russian investments or announced plans to do so. The list includes Yale, the University of Colorado, and the public universities of Arizona. The University of Michigan says it won't make any future investments in Russia. And MIT ended a research partnership in the nation. That's probably a significant thing because MIT has a lot of Russia links. So why would you want to stay invested in Russia? And I do worry a little bit about too much. There are some amazing Russian scientists and everything else that may not be for this war. What do you think about this? I think about a lot of people who I know who are from Russia or who work in Russia. And universities have been secretive about their investments and endowments. At MIT, they got into big trouble over Jeffrey Epstein money at the Media Lab. So what do you think about this?

Scott Galloway: Well, there's a lot of dimensions to it. Russians investing or giving money for research, the fear is always that it's going to be polluted or contaminated research that is geopolitically biased or sensitive. And we have the same issues with China. And universities always struggle with what is an incompetent, arrogant workforce that needs so much funding that they're willing to sacrifice certain standards to take that funding. And they build these monsters. Universities are literally almost incapable of cutting costs. And so they have a lot of pressure to raise a lot of money constantly. And that leads to, not often, but it does lead to occasionally bad decisions. So not taking Russian money is an easy one. Not investing in Russian assets is a lot of companies, a lot of financial services complexes have decided they're just not going to traffic in Russian investments right now. Now, I do believe these will end up... The people who don't have that problem and are pure capitalists and have bought Russian bonds in the last two weeks, I think that's probably going to be the best performing asset of 2022.

Kara Swisher: Oh, wow.

Scott Galloway: There are companies in Russia that have fantastic Western governance that sit on top of huge oil fields, not only in Russia, but outside of Russia, and could pay off their bonds just with the assets they have held outside of Russia. And those things are trading at $0.20 a dollar right now.

Kara Swisher: Well, Koch Industries is staying in Russia. They're staying. They're not leaving. They're obviously really involved in a lot of oil and gas. So I can always tell what economy is booming based on what students I have. And that is when I was in graduate school at Berkeley, a third of our class was from Japan. Because the ultimate luxury item and the ultimate signal of wealth is you send your kids to an American university. And Japan was booming. And then now we have a lot of Chinese nationals in our class. And I think it's wonderful because I think we're less likely to go to war with one another. These are going to be the kids that go home and rise up in the ranks and have a lot of power. And when they have an affection for In-N-Out Burger and Baywatch and they have friends and football games and the University of Michigan, they're just more inclined when they become the deputy undersecretary of economics or even end up in the KGB. They're just more likely to say, why don't we call them and see if we can work this out? So I think it would be a real shame to persecute students. We did this to Iranians back in the 80s and it was bullshit.

Kara Swisher: I know, it's ridiculous. I find this shameful. I find this shameful. In Congress, Representative Eric Swalwell pushed for visa restrictions for Russian students and Representative Ruben Gallego tweeted that students should be sent home. There's about 1,700 Ukrainian students here and 4,800 Russian students in U.S. colleges and universities. That's a shameful thing to do. I'm sorry, it's shameful. It is not... there's one thing to say, McDonald's, you're not going to get your McDonald's in Russia. You can... that's a pressure point. But to do this to students is shameful. Just shameful.

Scott Galloway: Absolutely. No question. Agreed. It's an investment and de-escalation of conflict and an investment in partnerships. I mean, you'd like to think in 20 or 30 years, there's new leadership in Russia and we're allies. That would solve a lot of problems if Russia and America figured out at some point a way to work together. I think it'd be especially good for Russia. If you think about what's going on here, Kara, you have a nation that has the largest landmass in the world, sits on top of an incredible bounty of natural resources, has cultural and scientific accomplishments that any nation would pray for, and yet their economy is a quarter of the size of Japan's. It's smaller than Italy's. It is a failed system. Many of their most talented people don't live in Russia, right? So they live elsewhere.

Kara Swisher: Well, not only the most talented people, I would argue that the people who cozy up... the best way to become a billionaire in Russia is to cozy up to Putin. And then once you get those billions, you get out. And at some point, the Russian people are going to go, well, clearly we produce a lot of wealth. But when the majority of it leaves and is not reinvested in Russia, and we look around us, and a lot of people think, well, why do you go into Ukraine? It's because if all of a sudden Ukraine is adopting a European, more capitalist Western model and started thriving and everyone was looking over the border at people that look so well and feel like them and saying, well, am I in a failed system?

Scott Galloway: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: So Russia, I think right now, I just... I think this is a really bad look and it's laying bare the fact that Russia is a failed system. And then they've now lost more soldiers than we lost in our 20 year or whatever it was in Kershyn in Iraq. They've lost more people than we lost in the battle of Iwo Jima. And there's no way to hide that because nice young men who thought they were serving their country are going to come home in boxes and break the hearts of a bunch of people. There's no way to hide that.

Scott Galloway: Well, you know how Putin feels about Stalin. They'll have more. That's what Stalin said when that happened.

Kara Swisher: What a terrible human being he was. In any case, embrace their students here. Let them see the way of life here in democracy. There's nothing better. There's nothing better. Anyway, shameful, shameful, shameful. Sanctions are one thing inside the country, but this is not. They're here, and we should welcome them. And even if we have disagreements with them.

Scott Galloway: You know, Louis went to cooking school with an oligarch son many years ago. He has some stories.

Kara Swisher: Well, okay, but that's the other side of the argument, is you go after the kids of the oligarchs. That's what Swalwell's probably going to say. I guess.

Scott Galloway: I don't know. I can't say Louis liked the oligarch son. He was a little imperious, but nonetheless, because he was so rich.

Kara Swisher: That's a shocker.

Scott Galloway: Indeed, have an oligarch experience, my son. Although, Louis, the thing he said about him, he's like, he wasn't a very good cook. And that was his issue. He didn't commit himself to cooking.

Kara Swisher: Those are fighting words in cooking school.

Scott Galloway: His sauce was salty. We didn't have to try. He was an oligarch's son.

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, an unprecedented court case against Amazon moves forward. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Preet Bharara, about a new revelation involving the Supreme Court. What is Preet up to?

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Kara Swisher: Scott, we're back. Big things are brewing in antitrust this week. First, a federal judge gave the go-ahead to a consumer antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. At issue is an Amazon policy that bans sellers from listing goods at a lower price on competing marketplaces.

Scott Galloway: Ooh, that's a problem.

Kara Swisher: The lawsuit claims that the policy effectively raises prices for consumers. The judge said that it might be true but also ruled that an arrangement isn't exactly price-fixing. Now a lawsuit is moving forward. It could affect a similar antitrust case against Google. Amazon is claiming the policy keeps prices down and helps consumers. But you know, this is where their weakness is, this marketplace and what they sell and how they control prices. So it's a really interesting discovery. Could be quite interesting.

Scott Galloway: I suspect this is inflationary and it's a perfect example of antitrust. And that is, you have suppliers, retailers who want to diversify their supply chain such that what has happened at Amazon doesn't continue to happen. And that is because Amazon has developed monopoly power. And 50% of all e-commerce runs through their platform. They can now charge rents of 34% on the dollar to their retailers that sell on their platform, whereas I think 12 years ago...

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they charge more than most platforms.

Scott Galloway: Whereas before, it used to be 17 or 19. They consolidate the market, and then they raise the rents. And what you would think is if you're Patagonia or Birkenstock or Maytag or Whirlpool or whoever it is that sells on their platform, you want to invest in other channels such that you're not as dependent upon one, and you might offer them a better deal such that they can offer at a lower price. And when Amazon says you're not allowed to offer at a lower price, that's bad for the consumer. It's bad for competition. And it creates more power to Amazon. And Amazon is the only company that has the power to demand that. So it's a perfect example of how consumers get screwed by monopoly rents in an environment where we haven't had robust antitrust. This is a great thing moving forward.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, and we'll see what happens. It's interesting. But Democrats in Congress are also taking aim at mega mergers. A new bill would give the FTC and DOJ the power to block mergers without a court order. I'm not so sure that'll work. The bill targets mergers valued at more than $5 billion, among other criteria. The bill's co-sponsors include Senator Elizabeth Warren, notably absent Senator Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. Senator Kay... Chuck Schumer reportedly told antitrust advocates that they needed to prove that antitrust bills would get 60 votes before he'd bring them to a vote. So it's a question of whether antitrust legislation is coming. I think all the action will be in the courts in this case. I just do. But it's Amazon's Achilles heel, this stuff, I think, I suspect, along with the unions, if I had to pick two things there, and how it raises prices. And if you get some discovery, Jeff Bezos even talked about the bleeding between the walls that are supposed to go up. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens. I don't think they're going to pass a lot of tech legislation in this. Now with the Ukraine situation, the pandemic, I think it's probably unlikely. What do you think?

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Kara Swisher: Yeah, the idea, I worry that it's overreach, that people at the FTC and DOJ, and they're actually fairly bipartisan because some of the commissioners have a lot of power in terms of appointments. But I worry about a small bureaucratic organization having the power to block mergers. I like the idea that it can be challenged in court and then you actually look at the law. And the law is more enduring through any one administration or any one viewpoint. Because there is something to M&A. It does help consolidate.

Scott Galloway: I remember when we were on, when I was involved with the New York Times, I said, let's get together and coordinate with the new houses of Conde Nast and the Murdoch. Sure. News Corp and let's take all of our content and represent it as one bundle and go to Microsoft or Google and say, you need to license our content and pay us a lot of money.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And we didn't do it. And one of the reasons they didn't do it was they said they were worried about antitrust.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: That's always been the concern. So antitrust overreach can also kind of chill an economy. I don't, so I like the idea that the FTC or the DOJ make a recommendation or they file a suit.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: And then judges look at case law and decide whether or not the merger of the acquisition should go through. In any case, we'll see what happens with these different bills. Very few of them are moving. And obviously, everything's sort of taking a backseat to Ukraine. And also there's the upcoming Supreme Court nomination that's going to move through. So that's where everybody's focused. I noticed many of the people who've been working on tech legislation were in a lot of these pictures with the new possible justice and also in some of these Ukraine meetings. So we'll see. We'll see where it goes. Tech always gets a break, no matter how you slice it.

Kara Swisher: All right, let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Preet Bharara is the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the host of Stay Tuned with Preet. He's also the author of Justice Is, a guide for young truth seekers. And on March 31st, he'll host Ben Stiller and Gary Kasparov at New York City's Town Hall. Welcome, Preet. And Scott is not invited, correct, for your event.

Scott Galloway: He's invited, but he's going to have to pay.

Preet Bharara: Yeah, there you go. Go to cafe.com slash events, Scott.

Scott Galloway: Kara hangs out with Jon Stewart, and I get back of the house seats at Preet with Ben Stiller.

Preet Bharara: All right, I thought Ben Stiller was her best friend. We can accommodate you.

Scott Galloway: See, Scott thought Ben Stiller was his best friend. We are very close.

Preet Bharara: He's my one call, like I said.

Scott Galloway: All right. I follow you. You have Ian Bremmer on, then I have Ian Bremmer on. You have Ben Stiller, then I have Ben Stiller. I'm sort of trying to catch up. We, of course, have thrown the best live events and did have a Ben Stiller interview.

Kara Swisher: What do you want to talk to these two about? Gary's been particularly vocal about Russia, obviously, and quite a lot for a long time now, actually. And then there's Ben. Why that pairing? Tell me about it.

Preet Bharara: Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting. I think we'll have some fun. We'll have some laughs, which I think is important, even in serious times. And we'll talk about serious stuff with Ben. I don't know if, Scott, you talked to him about it. But on top of being a brilliant actor, a comic actor, a serious director, he's also an activist in the area of refugees. He has been a longtime advocate of refugees around the world. He's been to Syria. He's a UNHCR goodwill ambassador. So that's very relevant right now. We have a gigantic refugee crisis that's happening alongside the invasion of Ukraine. And then Gary is, I think, one of the smartest people on the issue of democracy and autocracy on the other side of the coin. And what I've been noticing recently is there's this, in some quarters, and at least with respect to Gary, a good faith, reasoned disagreement about what the U.S. should do with respect to a no-fly zone or arming Ukrainians. And this is rare for Twitter, for all consumers and participants of Twitter, in Twitter. But there a difference of opinion as to whether or not if we engage too much do we risk World War III.

Scott Galloway: Right.

Preet Bharara: And Gary has been somewhat critical of our response and I like to tease that out a little bit.

Scott Galloway: Right. See what he thinks. Meaning he thinks we should go in and that they essentially a paper type.

Preet Bharara: I don't necessarily go in, but he's of a more aggressive mindset. He wants to know. And by the way, Gary over the years has been fairly prescient.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: And has been critical of U.S. policy and how we treated Putin before. And says a lot of this was foreseeable and predictable. And we should have done more.

Scott Galloway: Is he a coming?

Preet Bharara: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that'll be a fascinating interview with the two of them. And this is, again, on March 31st in just a couple of weeks at New York City's Town Hall. And we're also going to have them play dodgeball.

Scott Galloway: Oh, nice.

Kara Swisher: Now he's making a reference to that fine film. Or chess.

Preet Bharara: Or chess. Nobody played chess with Gary Kasper, unless it's Big Blue. So we're going to talk about a lot of things.

Kara Swisher: You have a lot of big topics. Andrew Cuomo released what appears to be a campaign ad this week. "I haven't been perfect. I've made mistakes. But I also made a difference." Though it doesn't specify an office, allies have approached him about running for governor against Kathy Hochul, who was his lieutenant governor. If he wants to run as a Democrat, he has to file by April 7th. What do you think about this? And do you have anything to announce, Preet?

Preet Bharara: It sounds obnoxious or glib, but I will announce that I'm a little tired of hearing about, hearing from Andrew Cuomo.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: He had a bunch of terms. People did investigations, not just one person, not just one firm. but there were multiple investigations and there were multiple reports and every major Democratic leader in the state asked for him to resign. And he did. He likes to blame other people.

Kara Swisher: Yes, he does.

Preet Bharara: And if he wants to run, he can run. It's a free country. And that's how I feel about it. He's got a lot of money. He and his people are not truth tellers. He and his, I have a particular act to grind here in the sense that he has on multiple occasions lied about me and had people lie about me. So I'm happy to see him gone. If he wants to come back in, he can run in the race like anybody else and see how he does.

Kara Swisher: Do you think he'll run as a Democrat?

Preet Bharara: I don't know. I think he's testing the waters probably. He's got a lot of money.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. It's really, obviously the most recent controversy is what's in the headlines as it should be with Governor Cuomo. But I remember the corruption there was kind of a consistent theme. And just to your point, it's time to move on. It's time for New York to move on. It's time for him to move on. And the thing that frightens me is that I actually believe he's going to be a more viable candidate than people believe. I think money counts for a lot. I think he's doled out a lot of favors and, if you will, accoutrements of his power. I think it's going to be surprising how strong a candidate he'll be.

Kara Swisher: I'm going to take the other side of this. I think Kathy Hochul is much more popular than people think. So Preet, why don't you settle this for us? What do you think, Preet?

Preet Bharara: Well, I'm not voting for him. That's what others will do. Look, I'm not a political expert or a campaign expert, but it does seem that Kathy Hochul is broadly popular. She's not too far to the left, not too far to the right. She has gotten a lot of endorsements. She's not made any mistakes. She's put together a pretty good coalition. She also has a lot of money now. And I don't know. I don't know that it's a great look for him to challenge her in a primary. I'm shocked he's doing it. After having resigned. No facts have changed. I mean, he's hired lawyers to make certain arguments.

Scott Galloway: Shamelessness is the thing, Scott.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of shameless, we learned this week that Ginny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, attended the Stop the Steal rally on January 6th.

Scott Galloway: Of course she did.

Kara Swisher: She says she left before things got violent, and she knows she paid for Bust's organizer rally. Conflict for Justice Thomas? This has been bandied about? Or should he recuse himself if a January 6th case comes before the court? What do you think?

Preet Bharara: I think there's a very good argument for that. And what some people may not appreciate is that the Supreme Court justices, unlike all the other courts, they're bound by the principle in the ether that they're supposed to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest or something that can reasonably question with respect to their bias. And many of them don't. This is, I think, a particularly strong case. If there were like an ethical counsel on the Supreme Court or working for the Supreme Court, they would probably advise that it's in everyone's best interest for Clarence Thomas to recuse from those cases. But he hasn't, and he's not required to. There's no enforcement mechanism of the general principle, which a lot of people have been complaining about. I saw somebody suggest, someone in the media suggest fairly aggressively that this is a basis, the non-recusal is a basis to file articles of impeachment in the House against Clarence Thomas. And they cite this example of Justice Chase from two centuries ago who was impeached, not convicted. That's an interesting argument. I think it's futile. I'm not sure that we should engage in too many more futile impeachment inquiries and proceedings. But I think an ordinary lawyer or ethicist thinking about this matter would say it's probably best for Clarence Thomas to recuse because his wife has not only been very vocal in favor of some of these points about the election that Donald Trump puts forward, but also I think she or her group signed on to an amicus brief with the court and Clarence Thomas didn't recuse himself. Now, there are arguments that there have been other instances of failure to recuse on the part of Supreme Court justices appointed by Democratic presidents, too. So there are arguments to be made on both sides, not to say the term both sides, lest I get a lot of terrible mail. But I think this is a fairly egregious case.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: And it's also ironic, given that Clarence Thomas is one of the people who has said recently that the court is becoming too political or it's being perceived as too political. Well, part of the reason for that is that he refuses to recuse himself in a case like this. And I'm sorry, just to put an exclamation mark on it, the reason why also you wonder about the conflict, it's not like he then sat on a case and then ruled against the president. He was the sole dissenter with respect to one case where committees were looking for information relating to January 6th. And so you put two of two together. His wife has certain views. She's influential. She expresses those views. She engages in conduct. She signs on to briefs. And her husband ends up being the only one to side with Donald Trump.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they're a unit. They're a unit. They talk about that a lot. And she's very active. You can read some very good pieces, I think, in The Times and The New Yorker about her. She's very, very effective and active on that side. And so we'll see. And you know what? That's her right. That happens all the time. You have partners who each have their own careers and lives, and that's totally fine. It happens in law firms all the time. You have judges who have spouses who are lawyers and active before the bar. That's all fine. But what you do when you run up against a conflict is the judge steps aside on those particular cases, and then everyone can be happy.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, we'll see.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of whether people are going to be happy, in the State of the Union, President Biden told Russian oligarchs we're coming for your ill-gotten gains. So this is something you've tracked a lot with Russian wealth hiding in the United States. Talk about government seizing wealth. You've ceded some wealth in your time, haven't you? You're a wealth seizer.

Preet Bharara: Not personally. No, but you know what I mean, as U.S. attorney.

Scott Galloway: Which is different from Julius Caesar.

Preet Bharara: Yes, yes. It's a different kind of Caesar.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, look, it's a difficult thing. It's about time.

Preet Bharara: What I think the most interesting thing about this is it's not just a phrase that Joe Biden uttered in the State of the Union shortly thereafter, that the Justice Department announced basically an oligarch seizure, you know, asset seizure, seizure, seizure?

Kara Swisher: Seizure?

Preet Bharara: Seizure. Yep.

Scott Galloway: Seizing.

Preet Bharara: Yeah. Task force, which will be run out of the Justice Department. I think there's an AUSA, an assistant U.S. attorney from my old office, the Southern District, that'll be running point on it with coordination among various agencies, including the FBI, Secret Service, and others, to try to find and seize assets that look like they are being used or in some way payments being processed that violate the very, very serious sanctions regime that's been imposed on Russia. It's not always easy because you have to show who owns the assets. Money laundering figures in very prominently here, as you might imagine. But I think the fact that they're very focused on it, it's become a top priority, not just of the administration, but specifically of the Justice Department. And they have a lot of seasoned people. Maybe we'll see some results. Now, there's a question as to whether or not—there's another debate, and this maybe is another thing we'll talk about with Garry Kasparov, about how effective sanctions are against the oligarchs. And there are some people who say, yeah, that's what you got to do. First of all, it's more fair than broad-based sanctions that hurt the ordinary Russian people. And they also say, well, if they get, contra Putin, maybe they can convince him to go home. There are other people, including a former oligarch I saw today, saying, if that's what you think, you have no idea how Russia works. And I don't know what you folks think. Putin is so far gone. He's so invested in this, in saving face. He has so many troops on the line that some adversity on the part of some erstwhile oligarchs is not going to do much to persuade Putin of anything.

Scott Galloway: So he's not going to persuade. He's kind of like... I don't know. Like Bill Barr.

Kara Swisher: Bill Barr. He went off the rails. I didn't even see him. Do we have to talk about that guy?

Preet Bharara: Yeah. I want you to talk about that. Talk about all my favorites.

Kara Swisher: Let's talk about Cuomo, Putin, and Bill Barr. What do you think of the book?

Scott Galloway: Hold on. Just before we move on from that issue, just as a lot of people would argue that we had an understandable and emotional reaction to 9-11 and a lot of civil liberties ended up being shoved to the side under things like the Patriot Act, do you worry at all that as we try to, we're angry and we see these terrible images coming out of Ukraine and we try to go after assets? Are you worried that private property laws get put aside, which over the long term is bad for capitalism and fair trade?

Preet Bharara: Yeah, it depends on how it's done. Everything has to be done to the letter of the law, not just the spirit of the law. And if there's an adequate case to be made and there's judicial process, then I'm not so worried. I mean, everything is capable of being abused. On the other hand, going beyond legal questions, the fact that people are getting very emotional about what's going on in Ukraine and children being killed and that very emotional video may also have the effect of, on the other side of the coin, causing people to want to do something more militarily that could be a recipe for World War III. And there's an argument to be made that if we channel that energy and effort into a legal process, notwithstanding the concerns you raised, that's still a lot better than channeling it into military process and escalating in a way that makes everyone worse off.

Kara Swisher: What do you make of Biden calling him a war criminal yesterday, Putin? It wasn't offhand, I'm guessing.

Preet Bharara: I don't know with Biden sometimes. Biden has had a tendency, and people are critical of this, and some people embrace it and like it about him. He gets a little bit ahead of the curve. And this is not the same thing at all, but it reminded me of the time that Biden got ahead of Obama when he was vice president and talked about his support for marriage equality.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Remember that?

Preet Bharara: Yeah. And I don't remember if that was offhand or very clever. And people loved it. I don't think Obama loved it so much.

Kara Swisher: Too bad.

Preet Bharara: Because he got a little out front. And so sometimes it's the case that you have very careful lawyers and very careful experts who are shying away from saying something that is kind of obvious for fear of it being above their pay grade or for fear of provoking something. Diplomats have a certain way about them for good or ill. And every once in a while, Joe Biden cuts through it. And I think in this case, I think a good thing and just called it like he saw it. I mean, if you look at the videos that we're seeing and you look at the unprovoked nature of what's happening, I'm not a war crimes prosecutor, so I don't know all the elements you would have to make out. But I think it's something that he felt in his heart. It wasn't a gaffe. But I don't know that it was a planned thing for him to say.

Kara Swisher: I think it was planned. It looked planned. No, he came back and said it.

Scott Galloway: It gets tough because what about war isn't criminal? I mean, anyways, I think it's a much longer, more existential conversation.

Kara Swisher: Well, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

Scott Galloway: Do you want to say it again? Thanks for that.

Preet Bharara: Part of your conversation with Gary Kasparov, he said a lot of people, really intelligent people are talking about, look, help us, a no-fly zone. But here's the thing. A no-fly zone isn't something you flip on a switch. World War III isn't necessarily the end of the world. World War III is two superpowers of nukes engaging with each other. And be clear, a no-fly zone doesn't lead to World War III. It is World War III. Because effectively, we have to scramble jets to engage their jets when they're in Ukrainian airspace, which they are now. So what's interesting about that to me is, I'm not a military expert. I don't know about no fly zones. I'm an expert on what I'm an expert on, criminal law in the United States of America. But I'm confused because what you say makes sense. That's how I think I come out as a somewhat informed citizen. But then I hear other smart people, some in elected office, some former military folks who are making cautious arguments in favor of some form of a no-fly zone. All of those people know more than I do. So I don't know quite precisely who's right. I think that you, Scott, have said it the way that I agree with. But what do you make of the fact that you have some credible voices, not crazy people, credible voices, talking about some form of a no-fly zone to assuage the situation in Ukraine?

Scott Galloway: Well, it's so interesting because to a certain extent, and there's a lot of shades of grades here in modularity, but Stinger missiles and what we are really good at is arming and funding and organizing an insurgency. And when you give anti-aircraft equipment, that's a form of a no-fly zone. It's just that when you officially say we as the West are enforcing a no-fly zone, what you are saying is that if a MiG gets through the defenses and is over Kyiv, we are going to scramble jets out of Poland under a NATO banner and U.S. pilots, and we are going to engage directly the enemy. And you have to be very thoughtful about that. You have to. This is the plot of Top Gun. And it worked out well there, but not here.

Kara Swisher: In any case, let me finally ask you. I got the MIG. I got it. They went bogey or whatever. I forget it. It's not a good idea, says Mother of Four. Isn't there a sequel coming out?

Scott Galloway: Yes. I'm so excited. I'm going to go with Jon Stewart.

Kara Swisher: That is exciting. I'm going to go with Ben Stiller. Phil Barr is in the news with this idea that Trump is crazy, but I'll vote for him. Essentially correct. Have I got that wrong?

Preet Bharara: Yeah, kind of. You know I think it a shameless tour to sell his book and it worked. And a lot of media outlets including one that I work for gave him a lot of air time. Much of the stuff that in the book is self-aggrandizing, I think, important things that he did that were wrong. A lot of it is information that would have been nice to have had at the time. The just departed attorney general of the United States has a view about the big lie and about how Trump was trying to push the big lie. He himself left so he didn't have to preside over that mess. That would have been nice to have and to know publicly in connection with the second impeachment proceeding. And the thing that calls, this is not the most important thing, but the thing that calls me the most is, he's a little bit presenting himself as a guy who pushed back, right? And that he's a critic of Trump in some ways, although, two problems with that. One, he said he would vote for him again in 2024, even though he thinks he's an unbalanced, unfit guy. And two, in his resignation letter, you may recall, it was very, very unctuous.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: I don't use that word a lot, but I like it. And he said something like, what's very impressive about how Trump handled himself and had all these achievements was that it was in the face of all this opposition.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: Of all this resistance. How can you, on the one hand, essentially claim that you were leaving because of the mess you saw and speaking the phrases of resistance to the big lie and then also praise the president for having had to deal with all this BS resistance? It just doesn't square.

Scott Galloway: Maybe he's a hypocritical chode. I don't know. Maybe. That's the subtitle of the book, I think.

Kara Swisher: I'm just curious what you, the Sonny Balwani trial started. So I've not followed it since his co-defendant was convicted.

Preet Bharara: You know, I always thought that it was a good thing for him to have a separate trial. They got a severance. This is in the Theranos case. Elizabeth Holmes was convicted. I imagine that a lot of the same evidence, communications and common sense and circumstantial evidence that they brought to bear against Holmes will be brought to bear against Sonny himself. So it's probably an uphill battle for him. It will not come in, and it's not permitted to come in, that there was another defendant who got convicted, and they're going to have to screen well in the jury pool to make sure that people are not aware of that. That can't infect their decision. Someone else's guilt in a matter is not supposed to bear on the guilt of the particular person on trial, and that's Sonny in this case. So it might be a little bit of a trick. I don't know how well-known it is. and you have to rely on jurors to tell the truth about what they know about the matter. But many, many, many, many people have never heard of this.

Kara Swisher: Well, there is a Hulu show and documentary, too. Not just that. There's others.

Preet Bharara: No, there's a lot. There's a lot. But that happens all the time.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: In America, there are famous cases. We talk about them on the podcast. You and I talk about them sometimes. You're always able to seat a jury. If there were ever a trial, we didn't talk about this, and I think it's unlikely with respect to the Manhattan DA's office. if there were ever a trial against Donald Trump, that would be a circumstance in which you would never get a jury pool of 12 where nobody's heard of Donald Trump. Or what he's done, or has an opinion about him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, you just need to get a question. You just need to get... Is there going to be one? That Manhattan DA was...

Preet Bharara: Well, no, there were these two, as people may recall from news reporting, there were two very well respected former federal prosecutors one was a federal prosecutor one was in the DA's office who stepped down reportedly over a dispute about how viable the case is against Donald Trump and they got the impression from the reporting that the new Manhattan DA thought there were problems with the case and maybe it was weaker than these two attorneys thought so they've gone, the DA's office has said that they still are looking at the case and it's ongoing and they've assigned someone new to oversee it. But it doesn't look great for the prospect of a prosecution. For a couple of reasons, one, Donald Trump does not use email, does not use texts. That's a way to tell what's in someone's mind. People send them inadvertently. People send them late at night. People say more than they sometimes mean to say in texts and emails. And Scott is smiling because I think he's probably guilty of that.

Scott Galloway: Yes, he is. Yes, he is. You should see the shit that Kara sends me late at night. Literally, you should see it.

Preet Bharara: That's all going to come to court. It's not going to come into court. But the other thing you need is someone to flip and cooperate. And there were two prospects, one, Michael Cohen, who has a lot of problems of his own and problems with veracity and pled guilty to lying to Congress. And then the other, this guy, Mr. Weisselberg, the former CFO, who clearly the DA's office was pushing really hard to flip and to tell the truth about Donald Trump. That didn't happen. And we know it didn't happen because they had to charge him.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: with various things last year relating to tax evasion on fringe benefits. That's not the heart of the investigation against Donald Trump. So in the absence of a cooperating witness and communications, it's not hard for me to believe, and people don't like it when I say this, it's not hard for me to believe that a case against Donald Trump, a criminal case where you have to prove his intent, his state of mind, is uphill, is difficult. And reasonable people who are smart can disagree about the quantum of proof, And that seems to be what's happened here.

Kara Swisher: When you have someone like Allen Weisselberg, do you yell at him? What do you do if you don't, you're going to flip. What do you yell?

Preet Bharara: No, you don't yell. I don't, I don't. So as I write in my book called Doing Justice, most professionals.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Preet Bharara: I think it's different depending on different circumstances, both for getting truth out of people and for persuading them to do the right thing for themselves. I don't think yelling and screaming works, particularly with sophisticated people who are advised by sophisticated lawyers. What you want to do is you actually want to be human to them and say, look, some version of, what you think is important to them. You're going to go to jail for a long time and we're not bluffing and we're going to charge you. In fact, I don't know how tough these charges are and what the sentencing might be. Think about what's important to you. There was a detective who used to use, they used to work with, who used to use the method of, if he was trying to flip a guy, and this was in narcotics cases, it was a little bit different. he would try to find a photograph of a member of their family and he would put it on the table and he would say, you want to be a man? You think doing your time and keeping your mouth shut is being a man? Maybe being a man is being around for your daughter's graduation from high school.

Scott Galloway: Oh, bad.

Preet Bharara: Or your son's wedding. Maybe that's being a man. Maybe think about that. And he would leave the room.

Scott Galloway: I would rather do just Elon-level fisticuffs, but okay. How's your book doing, Preet?

Preet Bharara: It's doing well. *Justice Is a Picture Book* has been received very well. I didn't draw the pictures. We have a wonderful illustrator, Sue Cornelison, who did it. It's basically an introduction for very young people to courageous figures who advanced the cause of justice in modern times in America, and also in other ages and other parts of the world.

Scott Galloway: Who's in it?

Preet Bharara: We have Malala Yousafzai. We have Gandhi. We have John Lewis. We have Nelson Mandela. We have so many.

Scott Galloway: Wow.

Preet Bharara: Lincoln.

Scott Galloway: Give us one we likely haven't heard of.

Preet Bharara: I don't know if everyone knows the name Elizabeth Eckford.

Scott Galloway: No.

Preet Bharara: She was the young Black girl who was the first to integrate public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. There's this iconic photo of her being walked in by a federal agent. People know the image and know the idea, but they don't necessarily know the name. The way I think about it is, kids read comic books with superheroes who wear capes. That's all well and good, and they're about the fight between good and evil, presumably. Why not have a picture book that's also entertaining, that's about real-life people who are fighting against evil and fighting for good? Parents can choose to learn more and answer questions about other people. I don't think there's too young an age to inspire people to be good.

Kara Swisher: Oh, on that note. All right. If you're in New York, you can see Preet live with Gary Kasparov and Ben Stiller at Town Hall on March 31st. Tickets are available at cafe.com slash events. Thank you, Preet. We really appreciate it.

Scott Galloway: Thanks, Preet.

Preet Bharara: Thanks, folks. Stay out of trouble.

Kara Swisher: No. Never. No.

[Preet Bharara exits]

Kara Swisher: All right, Scott, one more quick break. As usual, Preet was a genius. We'll be back for predictions.

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Kara Swisher: Okay Scott, give us a prediction. I haven't heard a good prediction from you of late. Give me one that hurts my feelings.

Scott Galloway: Well, I know, but I need one. Just because you're rolling around and getting pedicures with Jon Stewart, you think you can be disrespectful to your partner?

Kara Swisher: I'm not getting pedicures. Do you think I get a pedicure? I'm not a pedicure lady.

Scott Galloway: Rub each other's feet. Rub La Roche-Posay on the small of each other's back. I don't know.

Kara Swisher: You're so jealous.

Scott Galloway: I'm very excited for you. You have to insult. I am a little jealous. Is he a nice man? What's he like?

Kara Swisher: He is. Let me just give you a little moment with Jon Stewart. This guy facilitated all of the others. He was like me with tech reporters. A lot of the top tech reporters worked for me at one point. He's the one that started a lot of the stuff, whether it's John Oliver, Sam Bee was there, Stephen Colbert. You got to give him credit for creating the genre, if you want to call him washed up. I think he's got a lot of kick in him. He's a very honorable guy. Did a lot for our first responders. He's been doing a lot of work for first responders and deaths. You don't have to have a TV show and be all fancy like yourself to make an impact. I like John.

Scott Galloway: So my prediction is, and I was inspired by just comments earlier, I think we're going to find out, Kara, in about three to six months, that in the last two weeks through the end of February and the middle of March, a bunch of distressed credit hedge funds and banks, including Goldman Sachs, had their best performing once-in-a-generation investment: buying distressed bonds in Russian companies.

Kara Swisher: Whoa.

Scott Galloway: These things have been beaten up so badly. The headline risk here is that you're going to find that there were some companies whose bonds are down 20 cents on the dollar. They still have a ton of assets inside and outside of Russia. Everyone had to be a forced seller to get out of these investments. If the University of Texas had bonds in Gazprom or whatever, they had to sell them, which put ridiculous downward pressure on these things. I think we're going to find out that a bunch of people are going to make billions moving in and buying the stressed assets of Russian bonds.

Kara Swisher: Wow. And then what does that mean? That they'll just benefit later when things are calmer?

Scott Galloway: I think capitalism is great. I don't even fault it. I don't own any Russian assets. I understand the intention and the rationale for going after the economy and not financing that. I get it. But there's just no getting around it from a pure capitalist animal standpoint. The last couple weeks were probably the buying opportunity of the century for the fixed income vehicles of good Russian companies. I think we're going to find out that some hedge fund managers had a crazy return, and Goldman Sachs made a shit ton of money off of buying distressed Russian assets in the midst of all of this.

Kara Swisher: Interesting. Well, let me ask you, speaking of distressed stocks, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg appeared at South by Southwest, tripling down on the metaverse. The stock is slightly up. It was down in the 180s in the last month. Now it's at 204. It's climbing back a little bit. It's still way down from its $323 price back in February.

Scott Galloway: Well, I don't know if you heard. They're going into the business of mining NFTs, and I've heard their first NFT is signed by Mark and Cheryl, and it's of a 15-year-old girl who's 5'10", 100 pounds, who's addicted to dieting sites. That's their first NFT.

Kara Swisher: You're so mean. Too much, Scott?

Scott Galloway: Yes, too much.

Kara Swisher: I want to know about their stock. Is that a buying opportunity?

Scott Galloway: I think I'm the only person that's ever lost money on Facebook's stock. I owned it, and then I felt bad about it and then I sold it. Look, I think Oswalt de Motoren summarized it perfectly. He said that a name change, when the general viewpoint and complexion of your company is so negative, you have to change your name, it's usually not a great forward-looking indicator. I also believe the metaverse is already shaping up to be a $10 billion thud for them.

Kara Swisher: Could be for the initial parts.

Scott Galloway: And other people are quietly working on it like Apple and others. So you don't see their stock... it's moving up. It's been quite a bit today. I wouldn't want to put a sell recommendation on Facebook, because if you look at its core business, it's still a spigot of cash. It's still growing. Incredibly profitable. It's a dream come true: a media company that has no media costs. Look at what we do here. What if we paid Vox? That's the equivalent to do this. And they were able to sell against it. It's still an incredible cash generator. So I wouldn't feel comfortable saying go short on the thing. But there's so much overhang here. It's going to be all about Meta, whether they can diversify into Meta. People are going to find they can't. I think they're going to find they can't. But they'll still have these incredible cash flows. The slide is really interesting. We'll see. I've been watching it very carefully.

Kara Swisher: So, in other words, don't invest in Facebook, invest in Russian stocks. Bonds, excuse me.

Scott Galloway: I don't want to tell anyone to invest in Russia. I'm just saying we're going to find out that the vultures came in here and boy, did they make out.

Kara Swisher: All right, that's a pretty interesting prediction. Anyway, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday for more. Hopefully my voice will be back. Read us out, Scott.

Scott Galloway: All right, today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and Jatot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Barrows and Miel Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. How do we de-escalate future conflicts? How do we turn enemies into allies? To the great connective tissue of our universities: let's continue to embrace the best and the brightest globally. Our wonderful Russian students and faculty members, we continue to embrace you and welcome you.