Part Two: The Rise of the "Activist" Investor

Summary

BEHIND THE BASTARDS
Part Two: The Rise of the “Activist” Investor (Bill Ackman)
June 11, 2026

Episode Overview
This episode dives deep into the life, failures, and egotism of Bill Ackman, one of America’s most notorious “activist investors,” with host Robert Evans, co-host Kim Kelly, and producer Sophie. The show explores Ackman’s transition from skilled (if ruthless) dealmaker to disastrous would-be reformer, chronicling key debacles like J.C. Penney and Herbalife, and culminating in his recent far-right turn amid the Trump era. Interspersed are sharp-witted anecdotes, mocking jabs, and the hosts’ candid personal insights.

MAIN THEME:
How Ackman’s blend of arrogance, showmanship, and misplaced “activism” has left a trail of financial calamities for beloved American brands, made him widely loathed among both the public and his Wall Street peers, and finally led to his full-throated embrace of reactionary politics for personal gain.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Activist Investor" Archetype and Pop Culture Parallels

• The episode opens by jokingly comparing Bill Ackman’s real-life role to that of the cutthroat tycoon from “Pretty Woman” – “that’s his job.”
  • [00:35] Sophie: “That’s his job.”
  • [00:36] Robert: "Yeah, yeah…Gere…corporate raider thing."
  • The group riff on how corporate raiders rebranded as “activists”, seeking not just money but public adulation and legitimacy.
  • [01:52] Kim: “They want to own everything, but they want us to love them for it. And they get so mad when we don't.”

2. The J.C. Penney Disaster: How Not to “Apple Store” Middle America

• Ackman spent nearly $1 billion of Pershing's money to take a dominant board position at JC Penney in 2010. He pushed out the existing CEO, aiming to reboot the chain and “make JC Penney great again” by mimicking Apple’s retail strategy.
  • [04:11] - [07:32] Robert and Kim reminisce about JC Penney’s “family photo” core and mall anchor identity.
• Ackman recruits Ron Johnson, the ex-Apple Store guru, who imposes high-end, minimalist redesigns and eliminates coupons, switching to “everyday low prices.”
  • [10:25] Sophie: “But it also has the energy of a place where I wanna buy said $3,000 item and leave as fast as possible.”
• Catastrophe ensues:
  • JC Penney’s customer base (35-55 year old women, moderate means) abandon the brand, alienated by the loss of coupons and “boutique” pricing.
  • Sales collapse, layoffs intensify, and nobody on the ground (or the board) was allowed to question the New Strategy.
  • [15:05] Robert (paraphrasing Ackman): “People seem to be happier buying something at 50% off that costs $50 as opposed to it being marked $40 and there being no discount.”
    [15:45-15:59] — Ackman blames the customers for “not doing the math.”
  • [17:11] Kim: “That’s how the best way to destabilize a working class mother is to change literally anything she’s expecting.”
• Ex-CEO Mike Ullman returns after fifteen months and 19,000 layoffs; Howard Schultz of Starbucks blames Ackman for presiding over the whole mess.
  • [22:31] Howard Schultz quote: “Bill Ackman has the blood on his hands for being the architect and the recruiter of Rod Johnson and then the co-author of the strategy.” [22:31]

3. Ackman’s Public Persona: Arrogance and Alienation

• Ackman’s star fades; peers dislike his narcissism and lack of self-awareness.
  • [23:33] Vanity Fair quote: "There's a saying in this business, 'Often wrong, never in doubt.' Ackman personifies it."
• The group riff on a classic “rich dude” anecdote: Ackman’s disastrous attempt to one-up athlete-cyclists on a group bike ride:
  • [28:03] Story from Cohen’s Vanity Fair piece:
    • Ackman “rode out far in front,” then “bonked” 32 miles in, “letting out primal screams of pain from the cramps in his legs.”
  • [28:14] Robert: “It’s such a profound failure of basic humility.”
  • [29:01] Robert: “His mind wrote a check that his body couldn’t cash. I love it.”

4. The Herbalife Crusade: When “Activism” Meets the Pyramid Lobby

• Ackman bets $1 billion on Herbalife’s collapse, publicly declaring the company an illegal pyramid scam and agitating for government action.
  • [29:51] Robert: “He has his company short Herbalife by a billion dollars...he does the Bill Ackman thing, media blitz...console the government will kill Herbalife.”
  • Ackman is arguably “in the right” for wanting to destroy a predatory MLM. But he still expects to make money doing so and underestimates the industry’s entrenched legal protection and political lobbying, especially from the likes of the DeVos family/Amway.
  • [34:19] Robert: “...the pyramid lobby...not just to curry favor, but to prevent its extinction.”
  • Herbalife’s defenders (including fellow hedge-fund tigers Carl Icahn and Dan Loeb) “pump” the stock against Ackman’s short, partly to humiliate him.
    [37:44] Robert: “If Icahn and his friends can keep Herbalife stock up, Bill loses... a shitload of money.”
• Public humiliation ensues:
  • [43:11] Robert: “The weight of hedge fund guys wanting to see Bill fail was greater than the weight of money and government scrutiny that bill could bring to bear on Herbalife.”
  • CNBC airs a live shouting match between Ackman and Icahn.
    • [45:51] Bill Ackman: “He literally said, you know, bill, we can be friends now...”
    • [45:56] Carl Icahn: “I never said that.”
    • [46:16] Kim: “You’re gonna be your best friend on earth. Incredible.”
  • Ackman eventually loses $1 billion. The “master’s tools” can’t dismantle the master.

5. Ackman’s Pattern: Hubris, Recklessness, and (Sometimes) Profit

• The cycle repeats:
  • Borders investment, $200 million, fails spectacularly.
    • [48:37] Kim: “This man has killed every company my grandmother loved.”
  • Valeant Pharmaceuticals: Pershing loses $4 billion after Ackman doubles down while ignoring red flags about price-gouging scrutiny.
• Sometimes, major wins:
  • In 2020, Ackman correctly shorts the US economy at Covid’s onset, turning $27 million into $2.6 billion in 10 days by betting against corporate bonds and fueling panic with media appearances.
    • [52:44] Robert quoting Ackman: “It only cost us $27 million. We ten days later, it became worth $2.6 billion.”
  • Criticisms: Did his fearmongering on CNBC and Twitter cause further chaos as part of a cynical bet?
    • [53:47] Robert: “Is it wrong to do that when you’ve shorted the market as part of a strategy? Yes.”
    • [54:08] Stephanie Ruley: “He caused the markets to puke and he caused the circuit breakers to trigger...”
    • [55:22] Robert: “That’s how he makes his money.”
• Ackman’s core flaw: “An unwillingness to acknowledge the possibility that he might ever be wrong.” — [49:13] Robert

6. Right-Wing Pivot and Culture War Obsession (Trump Era)

• Despite not being a rightwinger previously, Ackman makes an abrupt shift in the Trump/post-Oct 7, 2023 era, driving a rightwing witch-hunt against Harvard and other universities over campus protest “antisemitism.”
  • He demands Harvard name student protesters so employers can blacklist them.
    • [57:19] Robert: “He demands publicly that Harvard name any students who, quote, blame Israel for the attack...”
  • He helps lead the charge to oust Harvard president Claudine Gay over accusations of tolerating antisemitism and then, paradoxically, plagiarism.
    • [58:53] Kim: “Does that even matter?”
    • [60:32] Robert: (irrational crusade against DEI programs, women in business, etc.)
  • Hypocrisy: When a plagiarism story surfaces about Ackman’s new wife, Neri Oxman, he scrambles to excuse it as “clerical errors”, writing 5,000-word Twitter defenses and threatening reporters — after orchestrating a plagiarism campaign against Gay.
    • [62:20] Kim: “She got him.”
    • [63:58] Kim: “Your husband's dreisand effecting the whole thing.”
  • Seeming loss of business focus due to culture-war mania:
    • [68:53] Robert: “…he can't actually look at the world as it is and make good decisions anymore. It all has to fit into this ideological schema that he's gotten trapped in.”

7. Final State: A Cautionary Tale

• Ackman remains incredibly wealthy but increasingly marginal both as an investor (having missed key market events because of culture war obsessions) and as a public voice (openly endorsing Trump, praising war, and fixating on campus enemies).
  • [70:53] Robert: “He's not gonna suffer for this ... Other than that, I don't think he's capable of really seeing the world in the way that he used to.”
  • [71:09] Kim: “He lost his business mojo. Now he's just a jag off.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [15:05] Robert (on Ackman's error): “People seem to be happier buying something at 50% off that costs $50 as opposed to it being marked $40 and there being no discount.”
• [22:31] Howard Schultz: “Bill Ackman has the blood on his hands for being the architect and the recruiter of Rod Johnson and then the co-author of the strategy.”
• [28:14] Robert (about the cycling debacle): “It’s such a profound failure of basic humility... his mind wrote a check that his body couldn’t cash.”
• [37:44] Robert: “If Icahn and his friends can keep Herbalife stock up, Bill loses... a shitload of money.”
• [43:11] Robert: “The weight of hedge fund guys wanting to see Bill fail was greater than the weight of money and government scrutiny that bill could bring to bear on Herbalife.”
• [45:51] Bill Ackman (CNBC): “He literally said, you know, bill, we can be friends now...”
• [46:16] Kim: “You’re gonna be your best friend on earth. Incredible.”
• [54:08] Stephanie Ruley: “He caused the markets to puke and he caused the circuit breakers to trigger...”
• [68:53] Robert: “He can’t actually look at the world as it is and make good decisions anymore. It all has to fit into this ideological schema that he's gotten trapped in.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:11] – Ackman begins the JC Penney play
• [09:00] – The Apple Store-for-pants disaster
• [14:19] – The psychology of coupons & consumer trust at JC Penney
• [20:56] – Howard Schultz goes on record against Ackman
• [28:03] – The infamous cycling debacle
• [29:51] – The Herbalife crusade and Ackman’s “real activism” (and real self-interest)
• [34:19] – The Pyramid Lobby and its political power (DeVos / Amway)
• [43:11] – Why Ackman loses: other rich investors want to see him fail
• [45:51] – Iconic on-air feud between Ackman & Carl Icahn
• [50:53] – The Valeant Pharmaceuticals disaster
• [52:44] – The COVID short: Ackman’s $2.6B pandemic windfall & PR blitz
• [55:09] – Pattern: Ackman stoking chaos for profit
• [57:19] – The post-Oct-7 rightward pivot, campus protest blacklist crusade
• [62:20] – Neri Oxman plagiarism scandal and Ackman’s double standard
• [68:53] – Losing focus: Ideology trumps investing

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Tone & Style

The episode brims with irreverence, schadenfreude, and working-class solidarity. Hosts relish pointing out the disconnect between Ackman’s elite confidence and his disastrous lack of insight. The humor is cutting but never mean-spirited toward victims; it lands squarely on the out-of-touch billionaire and his world.

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Conclusion

Ackman’s story is the ultimate cautionary tale: a mix of brilliance, toxic arrogance, and a ceaseless need for recognition, leading to corporate failures, public humiliation, and an ideological descent that leaves him peripheral even as he remains fabulously wealthy. As Kim Kelly puts it, “He lost his business mojo. Now he’s just a jag off.”

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Recommended Segment for Newcomers
If you only listen to one part:
[28:03–29:50] — The bike ride story, encapsulating Ackman’s hubris, competitive need, and utter lack of humility.

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Transcript

[Kim Kelly]

Media.

[Robert]

Welcome back to behind the Bastards. The only podcast that this week is talking about Bill Ackman, the patron saint of activist investors with the great Kim Kelly. Kim, welcome back to the show. How are you doing? How are you feeling?

[Kim Kelly]

I'm good. I'm excited to talk more about this terrible man, Robert.

[Sophie]

You know what I realized in between part one and part two? You know that very famous movie Pretty Woman? Richard Gere's character.

[Robert]

Yes.

[Sophie]

That's his job.

[Robert]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, that's exactly like Gere is. And that was still when it was like the corporate raider thing. Yeah, yeah, right. Like that's very much the point of the movie is that like he's kind of a scumbag businessman.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, the terminology is so much cooler. Like they should have just kept doing that, honestly.

[Robert]

Corporator, pirate.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, yeah. Ar vaas, et cetera. At least just own it. If you're gonna be a bastard, just be a bastard.

[Robert]

Well, that was one of the more effective things about a hook is that like, you know, Robin Williams character who's like a grown up Peter Pan comes back and like one of his old like friends is like, oh, you're just like a pirate now. Like that's all you're doing. There was a really good one of the Monty Python movies, I think it was. Meaning of Life opens with like a good scene skit about basically that. About like a, like a high seas accounting firm, like, like basically being like corporate pirates. It's very funny. Yeah. But then, then things. At a certain point, they're not happy being like evil monsters anymore and they have to pretend to be making the world better. And that's kind of like the Bill Ackman KT boundary here is like corporate raiders to activists. Um, it's funny, you know, like they

[Kim Kelly]

want to own everything, but they want us to love them for it. And they get so mad when we don't.

[Robert]

They don't want to. They don't want us to act like they're doing what they're doing. They want us to act like they're doing us a favor. Right. And we ended last episode, we talked about how Bill's company makes a shitload of money off this Canadian Pacific deal that this guy Paul Hilal puts together. And kind of during the same period where Halal was executed this masterful turnaround of Canadian Pacific, which is like, often, like a lot of people point out, like, this is about like the, the chief perfect example of how well this kind of thing can work. Like an activist investing situation can work. This is the best case scenario. While that's all happening, Bill is miserably failing to do the same thing with J.C. penney. Like at the same time as Paul is having this huge success story for Pershing, Bill is beginning to lead the company into a boondoggle with J.C. penney and this is a very fun story.

[Kim Kelly]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Robert]

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[Robert]

So Bill starts acquiring shares of the legendary American retailer in 2010, and he makes a big play with about $900 million of Pershing's money. And this earns him a seat on the board. So he puts a little under a billion dollars into J.C. penney's and he gets on the board, right? And so now he's in a position where he can start dictating and demanding the company make some changes. So let's talk about JCPenney's, right? You grew up around the same time I did. You went to like JCPenney's to family photos, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Oh my God.

[Robert]

Pictures and shit.

[Kim Kelly]

Christmas shopping with my grandma every year. School shopping. Before I was like old enough to have opinions about the clothes I wore. Go to pennies. I was getting winter coats at Penney's with my grandma up until it closed.

[Robert]

They got my mom and a book of fucking coupons, right? To get like whatever, like the worst looking bulk clothing that you could, you could, we could all. We could be dressed in like. I didn't look good back then. I'm not gonna lie.

[Kim Kelly]

The Cherry Hill Mall was the center of the universe. I was from Germany.

[Robert]

JCPenney's, go to the mall, go, go

[Kim Kelly]

to Bertucci's, go to the diner. Just fucking Americana out. That was the American dream. And they took it from us sitting

[Robert]

Santa's lap, all that stuff. They being Bill, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Specifically.

[Robert]

So J.C. penney's at the time that Bill gets involved, because 2010 is when he starts buying his way in. One of the biggest names in retail in the US for generations. But by the aughts, it's quite a while. 10 or 15 years at least, into a period of significant contraction. In 1989, JCPenney's sales were about $15.3 billion. By the mid-1990s, it was closing in on $19 billion a year. And in 2007, the highest revenue year, it almost crossed into $20 billion. And that sounds good. Like that seems like it's making more money every year. But if you adjust for inflation, that means in 1989 the company made the equivalent of $29 billion as opposed to 19.9 billion in 2006, right? So in 20 years it's gone, it's contracted significantly in real terms, right? As Joseph Ginto we got the Internet, right? It's not people. We got the Internet, we got better stores. J.C. penney just like didn't handle that transition into the 21st century very well. As Joseph Ginto and also, you know, the fact that we have like fucking phone cameras increasingly now and just easily portable digital cameras in 2006, that starts to eat into. Cause part of what brought people in is you get your family photo, we might as well do some shopping while we're here, right? Like all that stuff eats away at their, their, their role in society. As Joseph Ginto explained in an article for D Magazine, by the time Ackman made his investment in 2010, J.C. penney had been effectively stagnant for more than two decades. In inflation adjusted terms, the company had actually lost billions of dollars worth of ground, ground that its competitors now claimed. So they're going bad by the time Bill gets himself involved and Bill has a plan to make J.C. penney's great again. And that plan is to rip off Steve Jobs, right? That's Bill's genius plan is I'm gonna do what Steve Jobs just did at Apple, but I'm gonna do it to J.C. penney's, and I'm gonna hope that shit works. Right.

[Kim Kelly]

How?

[Robert]

I'll explain. To be specific, the first big activist change that Ackman pushed through once he was in position is to make the company SHITCAN Its current CEO, Mike Ullman. And Ullman had. He had presided over J.C. penney's highest revenue year ever in 2006. But. But he had also been in charge for a lot of J.C. penney's decline. He was not a great CEO. Right. So getting Mike out, let's call that a neutral. Probably a neutral. Good decision for Bill to have made. Unfortunately, his next move is to replace Mike with a ringer CEO. And the CEO that Bill wants to put in there is Ron Johnson. And in 2011, Ron Johnson invented the Apple Store. He is the guy that Steve put in position when they needed to create the Apple Store. Ron is the guy who, like, makes it. Right. So in 2011, he's a pretty hot commodity. Apple Stores have been a huge success. Like, no one can argue the guy was not good at his job. Like, the Apple Store worked very well. It did the thing that it was supposed to do for Apple. He was an enormous success. Business writer Bhavnesh Patel describes Ron as having, quote, built Apple's retail empire from scratch. And as Patel noted, he thinks differently about retail than anyone else. And that's why Steve Jobs liked him. Bill likes Ron because Steve had liked Ron. Right. And I really don't think it went any deeper than that. I think he's like, well, this guy created the Apple Store, and the Apple Store's worth money. JC Penney's doing bad. Apple Store guy. JC Penney's. JC Penney's will be doing good. Right. Like, that's. I think that's the limit to which Bill is really thinking this through.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, Just do the Apple Store for slacks, essentially.

[Robert]

What of the Apple Store for pants? That's Bill's business acumen. That's the Harvard MBA at work. What if an Apple Store, but for perfume that they spray in the air as you walk by? So genius. As soon as. Yeah, genius. Brilliant stuff. So Ron is now the CEO of JCPenney's, and he sets to work doing what you'd expect the Apple Store guy to do if given control of a brand like J.C. penney's. He remodels everything, all of their stores to look a lot nicer and to appeal to a High end clientele. You know how Apple Stores look, right? Big glass storefronts, they have a lot of tables, like very open floor plan, very soulless, cold, soulless, minimalist, but also high end, like clean, like modern. You know, it's good for if you're going to be spending a lot of money on a product. Like an Apple Store feels like a reliable storefront. Like I'm about to spend $3,000 and that's a huge amount of money for me on a laptop.

[Sophie]

But it also has the energy of a place where I wanna buy said $3,000 item and leave as fast as possible.

[Robert]

Sure, yes, yes. You don't wanna stay in the Apple Store, but you do trust that the things that they sell you at an Apple Store will work, right?

[Sophie]

Sure.

[Robert]

So he remodels JC Penney's to like have a more high end look. And here's how Patel summarizes Ron's first six months as CEO. He has eliminated coupons and promotions, replacing them with an everyday low price model. He's begun redesigning stores into a town square format with branded mini boutiques. It is a radical, expensive, simultaneous change on multiple fronts. The early data is alarming. Same store sales are dropping, are falling sharply. Not just a blip, but a structural collapse. Customers who had shopped at JCPenney for decades are not returning. The store traffic numbers are deteriorating every week. So six months, not a lot of time, they start turning these JCPenney's into town squares with boutiques and they stop having coupons. It's really once they stop having coupons, people stop going to JCPenney's immediately.

[Kim Kelly]

That's not what Penney's is about.

[Robert]

No, you fucked it up, you moron.

[Kim Kelly]

Nobody wants Apple Store for pants.

[Robert]

No, no. And that's the gist of the problem, right? Ron was very good at selling premium consumer tech products and an Apple Store is a good to sell a premium consumer tech product. Right. IPhones are ubiquitous devices. But like most people who own iPhones are not rich. It's not like only people with money have iPhones. It's a very normal thing to own. But for most people who are not rich, a smartphone is gonna be the most expensive thing that you have on you on a day to day basis, right? And like your smartphone and your laptop, they're up there with like your car and your house is like the most expensive single things that you own. So if you're going to be making a purchase like that and you're not someone with a lot of money, if you're someone who's making like a thousand or a $2,000 purchase, and that's a huge, huge deal. You probably feel better doing that purchase at a place that feels like premium and clean and functional, right? But that's not what you go to J.C. penney's for, right? And J.C. penney's noses from the jump, their loyal customer base. The people who keep J.C. penney's in business at this point in time are women age 35 to 55 who household whose households made between 35,000 and $100,000. Right? These are not people looking at for a premium experience. These are people looking for a deal because they, they have to cut money. They have a family they don't have. They have to stretch every dollar. They're not looking for a premium experience.

[Kim Kelly]

You know, solid, reliable, affordable, mom friendly. That's pennies.

[Robert]

Pennies, exactly.

[Kim Kelly]

That's like, that's what we want. That's what the people want.

[Robert]

And what Bron's, you can't charge up pennies. You can't. And that's like Ron's whole thing. His proudest move is that we've brought more than 100 different brand name boutiques to sell their wares in these new town squares that we're designing. These include brands like Jonathan Adler. He's bragging, we've got these $3,000 couches in JCPenney's now. And it's like, but people don't want to buy a $3,000 couch at J.C. penney's for no discount. That's not why you go to pennies. And people are pointing this out at the time, according to D Magazine, quote, if you said, and this is them interviewing an employee, if you said, our customer, she can't afford this or that, you'd probably get fired. Says one headquarters employee. So you didn't say anything, right? Because this is what we're doing. You know, it's the same like this AI shit. If you bring in like, I don't know if this works here. I don't know if this is a good place to be using this. I think this has actually made our workflow worse. So you can't say that. You're not allowed to have that opinion, even though it's accurate, because the boss has said, we're doing this thing and it has to be a good idea, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Meanwhile, the customers whose money you want, they go in, they see a nice couch, they look, oh, I can't afford that now.

[Robert]

I can't afford this.

[Kim Kelly]

They don't Want that?

[Robert]

I'm here to get socks, right? I'm trying to buy back to school. Shit. I don't need a $3,000 couch. I got my couch off.

[Kim Kelly]

We're going to Penny's. Give me a coupon, send me. I'm going to Auntie Ann's.

[Robert]

On, you should know J.C. penney's, unless it's marked down 80%, people aren't buying furniture at J.C. penney's. The people who shop at Penney's get their furniture from Kriggs. Let's do in 2011, right?

[Kim Kelly]

I didn't know that they had furniture at Penny's.

[Sophie]

Neither did I.

[Robert]

Certainly not nice stuff.

[Kim Kelly]

We didn't go to that level.

[Robert]

So the fair and square pricing is also a disaster. That's the biggest catastrophe. The fact that they're. And again, they don't Bill and don't understand this at all. They're like, well, but the prices aren't changing. We're just not pretending, you know, by having these like, oh, now we have a coupon. We're always giving you. No, that's not. That's not how people's brains work. Right? And within days of the change, as soon as they stop taking coupons, customers fucking riot. There's an immediate drop off in traffic. And it says, it says a lot about Bill, how much this surprised him. And here's a quote from Bill. Interestingly, people seem to be happier buying something at 50% off that costs $50 as opposed to it being marked $40 and there being no discount. And that's how Bill interprets this. And you can see he's like, wow, people are dumb. Right? That's the lesson he takes is, oh, we failed because people are idiots and they can't do math. And I thought people were smarter. That's not really what's happened. And here's Joseph Ginto does a good job of, like, explaining the error in Bill's thinking. Buyers don't just want something that at $50 that's marked half off because they're stupid. They want to buy something at half off because they don't trust that a company's everyday low price is in fact fair and square. This is the American way of haggling. We doubt the price tag, but we don't confront the seller. We simply remain silent about our misgivings until a sale comes around. And at J.C. penney's, a sale always came around. In 2011, just 0.2% of all products sold at a J.C. penney store were sold at full price. That means Johnson's fair and square was a radical change in strategy. And yet it was never tested with customers before being rolled out nationwide and was not vetted in advance by the board. So they have internal details that show 0.2% of our sales are full price. 99.8% of our sales are discounted to some extent. And we're getting rid of discounts. And they don't even test it. They don't even have, like, a trial JC Pennies to see if this works and makes people happier. They just do it. That's malpractice, right?

[Kim Kelly]

That's surprise. Oh, my God. That's how the best way to destabilize a working class mother is to change literally anything she's expecting.

[Robert]

Yeah, it's like if your kid turns 16 and you're like, all right, well, it's time for you to learn how to drive. So I am putting you in command of a shipping vessel in the, like, heading through the Strait of Hormuz. Just drive her straight through, son. You got this. I'm gonna be. I'm not gonna be on the boat, but you can handle this pilot. Or three.

[Kim Kelly]

You're a smart guy.

[Robert]

It's malpractice. It's deeply irresponsible.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, my God.

[Robert]

And it's very funny to me that Ackman's interpretation is. Well, people are dumb and they can't do math. And the reality is, like, you didn't test this. You didn't check to see how people would respond before you did this. Everywhere. People, your customers aren't the stupid ones, Bill, you're a dummy. That's dumb.

[Kim Kelly]

They have focus groups at the mall. It's built in. I've done them for like 20 bucks.

[Robert]

My God. Like, we did AB testing on titles of articles for Cracked, let alone fucking your entire sales strategy. So anyway, yeah, I think Ackman and the fucking Apple store guy rushed to make reckless changes and didn't follow any of the best practices for doing that sort of thing. Because, hey, it worked at Apple. How could we lose? We've got the guy from Apple. Have you seen how much money Apple makes? Right?

[Sophie]

Because when I think JCPenney, I think Apple.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah, Apple, absolutely the same thing.

[Robert]

It's. It's so. They don't even. I don't think Bill thinks beyond it in any way. And when this completely fails, he is caught so hard by surprise. Now, Ron Johnson, for his part, claims initially, after the first six months, where the company's hemorrhaging money. This is just like the pain inherent to transitioning to a more sustainable business model. Customers are gonna come back in time, and it'll be fine. We just gotta stay steady as she goes. And Ackman is like, we've got all full faith behind you, Ron. We're backing you up to the hilt. Keep going. You know, we'll continue plowing forward. So months more go by, and by the summer of 2012, sales are still down across the board. There's no sign that customers are coming back. And Johnson starts to backtrack on some of his most controvers moves. He reintroduces clearance racks and sales to J.C. penney's. But he keeps these expensive remodelings going without ever testing the plan on customers. He never checks to see do they like the remodeled stores. He just keeps spending insane amounts of money on it. And now no one's showing up at J.C. penney's anymore. Cause he screwed that pooch already. At no point were there any hints that his strategy might have a chance of succeeding. But Ackman protected Johnson from calls to replace him, and the work went on. In April of 2012, Johnson Cut. Cut 15% of the HQ staff in Plano and fired thousands of employees. 19,000 total layoffs. He blamed the company's issues on these people, stating in February of 2013 to the Wall Street Journal that the JCPenney's headquarters staff in Plano had been overstaffed and unproductive. Per D magazine. As proof, they claimed that employees in Plano had watched 5 million YouTube videos in a single month. And that a third of the time headquarters employees spent on the Internet was for purposes unrelated to work. And that's really gross, vindictive ass covering. The only reason you put something like that out, as opposed to doing what like, normally you do, which is like, we have to make these layoffs, and we're sorry to have to let these talented people go. But that's just the way business works. When you're like, no, they were just watching YouTube videos. You're trying to explain why your strategies aren't still working. And you're trying to blame it on these lazy people at headquarters. It's not their fault you ruined the company. Right?

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah. Like going after people that are probably being paid a salary that makes it so that they often shop at JCPenney's. Like, you probably should have just asked them what they thought in the first place. You wouldn't have to let anybody go.

[Robert]

No, if they said what they thought, they would have got fired. So they stopped speaking up and just watched YouTube videos while the company circled the drain because you clearly weren't going to listen to them.

[Kim Kelly]

You know, it's.

[Robert]

Yeah, it's a disaster. Ron gets let go not long after this point. He's CEO for like a little less than a year and a half. The board brings Ullman back temporarily and Ackman calls for him to be fired again. Even as he's trying to like pull Pershing out from its investments because all of its investments in AC Pennies are bleeding money. Now. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks and member of the Pennies board. He's actually, weirdly, this is how bad Bill Ackman is at what he's doing. Howard is like a voice of reason here. So Schultz is on the Pennies board and he makes the unprecedented almost decision to publicly shit talk another board member. It's really bad for your company's stock price if board members are talking shit about each other while the company's going through crisis. And the fact that Schultz does that says a lot about how desperate the situation is. So this is what Schultz says on cnbc. This is the truth. This is not fiction. Bill Ackman was the primary engineer and architect of recruiting Ron Johnson to the company. He and Ron Johnson co authored a strategy that has fractured the company and ruined the lives of of thousands of J.C. penney employees. Bill Ackman has the blood on his hands for being the architect and the recruiter of Rod Johnson and then the co author of the strategy. Okay, Howard, wild for Schultz to be the good guy here, but he's not wrong.

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, where was that Howard Schultz when the fucking workers at Starbucks unionized?

[Robert]

Well, well. Hey, hey, hey, hey. He's not gonna eat where he shits. So Johnson's tenure at J.C. penney's lasted just 17 months. But in that time, same store sales fell by 30% and the company lost around a billion dollars in cash, roughly equal to Pershing's investment in the company. Ackman resigned from the board in August of 2013 after selling off his entire position, netting a $500 million loss for his company at the same time as Halal's making billions. Now at this point, it shouldn't be surprising when I say Bill Ackman by 2012 is at least as hated as he is respected by his peers in the finance industry. Right. Like not shocking when fucking Howard Schultz is talking shit about you in public, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Publicly.

[Robert]

And you're on the same board. Yeah, man. One hedge fund manager told Vanity Fair. There's a saying in this business, often wrong, never in doubt. Ackman personifies it. He is very smart, but he lets you know it. And he combines that with this sort of noblesse oblige that lots of people find offensive. Me, generally not. On top of that, he's pointlessly, needlessly competitive every time he opens his mouth. And then this person immediately asked Cohen, the interviewer, the journalist behind that article, do you know about the Ackman cycling trip with Dan Loeb? And I. I can't wait to tell you this story about Bill Ackman. But first, we should tell the story of the people who sponsor this podcast.

[Kim Kelly]

I'm so excited.

[Robert]

I am, too.

[Kim Kelly]

I love when they fight like rich dudes. Fighting is the best thing.

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[Robert]

And we're back. So as you were saying, Kim, these people. It's very funny. Cause we're about to talk about a legendary story, a legendary rich guy beef. Cause all of the people in this story are rich ghouls to some extent. But there's also. There's the ghouls who you can clearly, you can identify with to some extent as, like, well, this is an intelligent person who's capable of, like, looking at the world as it is and, like, seeing things realistically. And there's this person whose narcissism has completely blinded them to reality. And it's. Yeah, I love this tale. So in the summer of 2012, Bill Ackman decided to go on a long cycling journey with a group of very rich guy friends. Or at least he's friends of, like, one of them. I think these are mostly friends of his buddy, Dan Loeb. Right? And Dan Loeb is a triathlete who takes cycling very seriously. He's another multimillionaire investor type, you know, finance dude. As are all the guys in this cycling group. But they're also, like, guys who take cycling seriously. Right? These guys are super rich, but they're also, like, serious athletes. Like, Dan Loeb is a competition triathlete. He does marathons. He's in really good shape. And he knows how you handle a long bike ride, right? All of these guys do.

[Kim Kelly]

But, like, it's not exactly the wilderness, going to Montauk.

[Robert]

Right, Right.

[Kim Kelly]

Can stop and get soda, but you have to.

[Robert]

You have to be reasonable about it. If you ride at a reasonable pace, if you don't go more than your body can handle, if you're, like, you know, properly hydrating and fueling yourself, you can get through something like this okay, you know, even if this isn't something you do regularly. But immediately, as soon as they start cycling, he rides out far in front of everybody, going as fast as he can, immediately as his hyper competitive instincts, that's how Loeb describes it, drove him forward, right? So, like, he's. He just. He can't handle the idea of, like, well, these other guys who cycle all the time are better at cycling than me. He has to beat them all. He has to be the best. And so I'm going to quote from Cohen's article here. What comes next? As he and Loeb approached Montauk, Loeb texted his friends, who rode out to meet them from the opposite direction. The etiquette would have been for Ackman and Loeb to slow down and greet the other writers, but Ackman just blew by at top speed. The others fell in behind at first, struggling to keep up with the alpha leader. But soon enough, Ackman faltered at mile 32, Ackman recalls, and fell way behind the others. He was clearly bonking, as they say in the cycling world, which is what happens when a writer is dehydrated and his energy stores are depleted. While everyone else rode back to Loeb's East Hampton mansion, one of Loeb's friends, David Tiger Williams, a respected cyclist and trader, painstakingly guided Ackman, who by then could barely pedal and was letting out primal screams of pain from the cramps in his legs, back to Bridgehampton. I was in unbelievable pain, Ackman recalls. As one writer notes, I've never had an experience where someone has gone from being so aggressive on a bike to being so hopelessly unable to even turn the pedals. His mind wrote a check that his body couldn't cash. I love it. I love it.

[Sophie]

Nice. Finance joke snaps for the finance joke.

[Robert]

Well done. It's beautiful.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, my God.

[Robert]

Incredible.

[Kim Kelly]

Jesus Christ. I'm also.

[Robert]

Screams like, it's such a profound failure of humility, of, like, basic humility, of like, well, I can't do that. Weird little guy. He's got everybody. He's gotta be the best. Yeah, I could do that. No, you can't, Bill.

[Sophie]

No, you can't.

[Robert]

And that's fine. You don't do this normally.

[Kim Kelly]

I just wish you could see a guy like that on, like survivor. Or alone.

[Robert]

Yes. It's always beaut. You do sometimes. And those are the best episodes.

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah.

[Robert]

I'm nearly always a cop on a loan. It's always like someone who was like a cop and came in like, oh, I'll be ready to. I'm ready to survive. And then they get scared. Cause it's scary.

[Kim Kelly]

I'm watching the arctic circle one right now. And there is a cop. And I am just waiting.

[Robert]

Wait for his mind to break.

[Kim Kelly]

Yes. Couple more episodes.

[Robert]

But by the time 2012 rolls around, Bill is embroiled in this disaster with J.C. penney. And one of his subordinates Has a shocking million dollar hit. Multi billion dollar hit with canadian pacific. Right? And my interpretation is this kind of eats it bill, right? That his last big success at his company with someone else. And he has this really public failure. Embarrassing, embarrassing failure at J.C. penney's. Bill's got an ego. And I think he fundamentally just needs the limelight. That comes with getting the credit for giant, bold business moves. And he starts casting about for a project to call his own. In 2012, he settles on a whale of one. Herbalife. Herbalife is a multilevel marketing company. That sells, like, drink powders and nutrition shakes, A lot of nutrition products. Like, what is a nutrition shake? Like, what do you mean you're giving me nutrition?

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, my God.

[Robert]

Food does that. Are you saying you're selling food?

[Kim Kelly]

You know, all my girlfriend's from high school, I'll tell you that.

[Robert]

Yeah, yeah, right? Yeah. All the huns out there, like, before

[Kim Kelly]

all the mlm, like documentaries on netflix. Herbalife, man.

[Sophie]

Herbalife, it was massive.

[Robert]

Yeah, it's still. I mean, I think it still is, but, yeah, it's still out there. Herbalife's critics will argue, I think accurately, that the real business for herbalife. Is convincing people to become herbalife distributors. Which they are told is a great business that will change their lives. And make them financially independent. Roughly 90% of distributors either lose money. Or just barely break even. Many people argue that herbalife isn't really a business. And shouldn't be treated like one. And bill ackman is one of these people. He is in the right here, in my opinion. And it's to his credit. This is actually him deciding to do, like, real activism as an activist investor. So he has his company short herbalife by a billion dollars. Right. Which means that if things get worse for herbalife's bottom line, To a certain extent, his company Makes a bunch of money. But the company has to, like, really flatline for that to happen. And at the same time, he does the bill ackman thing, where he starts a media blitz. He has this big press release stating out, Laying out what he thinks are the fraudulent elements of herbalife's business. And saying, like, I'm pushing to have my contacts and the federal government investigate herbalife. These are the crimes that I think they're involved in. The company is clearly going to collapse in the near future. And the thing that bill is saying is he's trying to short the company. He's not just saying, I'm gonna short the company, and I think their stock value will fall by this much. He's saying, I think it's gonna fall to zero. I'm betting to short the company. But I want to destroy it. And I think it is going to be destroyed. Because they're breaking the law, and the government is going to come after them, like, in the near future, right? That's the thing that bill is putting out in the press, and that's what he very much seems to believe. And he comes into this wielding all the tools of his trade, right? He's learned at this point, you can boost or reduce a stock price with strategically applied publicity. And he uses these same skills to put downward pressure on herbalife stock value. He publicly brags that his goal is to destroy. Is to, like, you know, reduce herbalife stock price to zero, in effect, killing the company. And this is admirable. Like, herbalife's bad. I wish this had worked, and it doesn't. And ultimately, bill risks everything here On a belief that an ongoing U.S. government investigation into herbalife. Will find the company irredeemably corrupt and criminal. Right? Bill is a system loyal guy. The system has always worked out well for him, and he does. It's so sad because of all. For all that I don't like this guy. He clearly sees and recognizes how evil herbalife is, that it's just hurting people, it's destroying people's lives, it's robbing people. And he. He thinks he's like, well, the right thing to do Is to use my financial power to kill this company, and maybe I can. But he also has this belief that, well, if what they're doing is criminal, Then as soon as the government finds out about it, they'll stop it. Right? So that makes this a good investment for me. Right? And that's key. He's not just an activist Trying to do the right thing. He's trying to make Money doing the right thing. And he's betting a billion dollars on the US Government doing the right thing.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, my gosh.

[Robert]

How do we think that's gonna work?

[Kim Kelly]

Bless his heart, as they say in the south.

[Robert]

Yeah, bless his heart. So what bill doesn't understand Is that herbalife and herbalife's friends own the system. Or at least large parts of it. In 2013 alone, herbalife spent about $2 million on federal lobbying. But that only tells a small part of the story. Robert Fitzpatrick, an activist with pyramid scheme alert, Calls the association of all of these different MLMs and companies that are on the edge, or outright pyramid schemes that put money into US Politics. The pyramid lobby. This is like this vast assortment of dark money groups and industry organizations that exist, quote, not just to curry favoritism from lawmakers, but to prevent its extinction. In other words, because everything that these companies are doing ought to be illegal, Right? If they're actually being dealt with based on what they're doing to people, they'll be shut down. So in order to keep this industry from being wiped out, you have to lobby to basically keep crime legal. Right? Like, that's kind of how the pyramid lobby works, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Now, that's a good evil name, the pyramid lobby.

[Robert]

It just makes you think of the freemasonry.

[Kim Kelly]

It's like the freemason.

[Robert]

Yeah, right. Good work, fitzpatrick.

[Kim Kelly]

Spooky.

[Robert]

And as Fitzpatrick works, the only way that the pyramid lobby can prevent its extinction. Is to thwart law enforcement and consumer protection. Right. Which should be protecting people from pyramid schemes. I'm going to quote next from an article in the nation about mlm lobbying by Rick perlstein, Quote, the targets for that campaign are almost exclusively republicans. For mlm, fraudsters are a huge part of the conservative infrastructure. Of course, in the case of the mighty devos family in Michigan, the conservative infrastructure and the mlm industry almost entirely overlap. Richard DeVos, Sr. Number 60 on Forbes 2012 list of wealthiest americans, with an estimated net worth of $5 billion made ripping Americans off. Founded amway, short for American way, in 1959. In 1979, the company was forced by the federal trade commission to tell distributors that over half its distributors do not make money. And that the average distributor made less than $100 a month, a stricture they promptly violated. None of that kept the devos family from rising in republican and conservative politics. After all, between 1991 and 1997, Common Cause documented Amway affiliated companies gave 4.4 million in soft money to the republican national committee. Devos and his wife giving 1 billion in April of 1997 alone. In 2000, Amway gave 1.385 million in soft money to the RNC. Just $500 less than Enron. And devos hosted a party starring colin powell on his private yacht. At the republican national convention in 2004, DeVos and his co founder, Jay Van Andle. Gave 2 million each to the fight with. To the right with progress for America. 5, 2, 7. And in 2006, his son tried and failed to win the michigan governorship. So there's a lot of money in the pyramid scheme lobby, and they put a lot of it into politics. And ackman is not ready for this. Either he just doesn't know this, or he doesn't think about this, or he doesn't think it should matter. Because what they're doing is so obviously a pyramid scheme. But legally, it's not. Legally, herbalife is not a pyramid scheme. Legally, an mlm is distinct from that. And herbalife and their fellow businesses. Have put a lot of lobbying dollars. Into making sure that's the case. And so if you want to make the. If you're an actual activist, you would just be like, well, but it's still wrong. And I'm going to fight it, because it's wrong. Knowing that they have already bought the government. And that this is an uphill struggle, and. And that it's not a fair fight. Bill is not ready for that. And so he's totally caught off guard. When a lot of heavy artillery comes to herbalife's aid. There's this swarm of counteractivist investors, I guess you'd call them, right? So he and his activist investors Short the company by a billion dollars, basically. And then these two billionaires. Daniel loeb, you know, the guy who had been part of that bike rack.

[Kim Kelly]

His bike buddy.

[Robert]

Right, his bike buddy. And carl icahn, who is an incredibly sketchy hedge fund billionaire, right? Ye. These two guys get together on the other side of this deal, right? To fuck ackman, basically. And they're like, okay, if he's shorting it by a billion dollars, all we have to do is pump a bunch of money Buying herbalife stock to put up the stock value. Until ackman, all of his, like, his short, basically fails. And he loses all of that money, right?

[Kim Kelly]

I thought they were friends.

[Robert]

Absolutely not. Nobody likes this guy. And. Yeah. Oh, no. And that's. I'm not a finance guy, but that's all you need to know. If icon and his friends can keep herbalife stock up, Bill loses A shitload of money for pershing. Right? And it becomes immediately, once all of these other guys start putting money into herbalife. It becomes very obvious to everyone watching that bill is in trouble. That he might lose this. Because there's a lot of money arrayed against him. Bill somehow can't see it now. There's a documentary about ackman's crusade against herbalife called betting on zero. It's a good watch because if you really, when you watch it, you really get to see how arrogant bill is at the start. He's very insistent that this is going to work. Herbalife will die and the US government will punish them. And his short will work. Right? You get a good example of his rhetoric and his self confidence. And the clip that Sophie's about to play. This is from an interview that Bloomberg conducted, right? And this is by the point at which he's being interviewed for this. His company has already lost half a billion dollars on this. This failed short. So this is. This is him being interviewed by bloomberg,

[Sophie]

some other investors, and they are able to put together an lbo.

[Robert]

What is that going to mean for you?

[Bill Ackman]

More opportunity for us to be short the company? I mean, a couple of things. Number one, in order for the company to be taken private, they need to get out of the financial statements. Then they need to be able to borrow money. And if you think about the proposition from a lender or an underwriter of a bond issue, I mean, this would be a big deal, right? So the stock today has, let's say, a $7 billion market cap, an $8 billion, something close to an $8 billion enterprise value. Let's assume they paid 9 and a half or 10 billion. To offer a premium to shareholders, right? They'd have to borrow 5 billion, $6 billion of be a major LBO. You'd have to raise $5 billion of equity capital. I'm not sure Carl is really a big believer or these in this business on a very long term basis. But let's assume they could find the equity capital. It'd be very difficult to borrow the money. Assuming they could issue bonds to do it. And we were forced out of the trade because the company was taken private. We'd replace the position with credit default swaps. And we keep going. And this is not.

[Robert]

So he's. Again, it can't go wrong. Like they can't raise the money. There's no way they could do it. It's impossible for this to. Right. Like there's not a hint in his mind that all. Even half a billion dollars down. After failing at J.C. penney's in a major way. Not a doubt in his mind that this is gonna work out. It's remarkable, that kind of confidence.

[Kim Kelly]

Our guys.

[Robert]

I hate my enjoyment of this, of him being, like, really arrogant and wrong. Is ruined by the fact that he is in the right. I wish he'd killed herbalife. That would have been awesome, Right?

[Kim Kelly]

Yeah. Using your evil money for good.

[Robert]

Yeah. Yeah. But that's the thing, though. It's never quite even that. Because bill had hoped to knock herbalife out of commission. Via the strength of his own financial power. But he also wanted to get even richer doing it. And when that it is his. I'll say this. When there's initial difficulties, when it becomes clear this is not gonna be easy, he does start getting close with a lot of activists, like, long time. And these are mostly activists in the hispanic community. Who have been fighting herbalife for a long time. Because herbalife does a lot of damage to hispanic families, Right? A lot of people get conned into herbalife, and they lose everything, right? So these longstanding activists who had been pushing for change, Bill, you starts working with them. He does some joint events. And you can really see in the documentary. That after this first series of blows, and he's down half a billion, he's fucking exhausted and, like, kind of shell shocked by it. And these longtime activists are not at all surprised or concerned. Because they're activists, they know that you're losing 99% of the time. That's the business, right? That's what activism is, Is losing most every time until you win. And bill isn't really. He doesn't have what it takes to do that. Like, he can't handle it. He can't take those hits. He's just not ready for it. He's got no armor for it. He's got no. He can't handle the fact that, like, yes, it's unfair, and, yes, you're going to lose. And fortunately, because this is all tied into, like, a financial bet, he also can't afford to lose past a certain point, Right? Cause it's other people's investment money. That he's doing this with that he's losing. And, yeah, bill does. And bill did say. Cause back when he was planning to make a billion dollars doing this, he did repeatedly talk about donating any of his profits. Cause he didn't want to make. He called it blood money. He was like, I don't want to make money off of this personally. And I believe him. I actually don't doubt that he would have donated any of his personal profits. However, as the new york times noted, the clients who invest in his hedge fund, however, Would still benefit enormously. So there's no point at which he doesn't have a financial angle here. Right. And that's part of why he's not going to have much long term appetite to really keep fighting this. I found a good new york times article from around that period that discusses how bill used his influence, Particularly with democratic representative linda sanchez of california. And he lobbies her to send a letter to the ftc Demanding an investigation of herbalife. Per the times. Corporate money is forever finding new ways to influence government. But Mr. Ackman's campaign to take this fight to the end of the earth. Using every weapon in the arsenal that washington offers. In an attempt to bring ruin to one company. Is a no.

[Sophie]

1.

[Robert]

Fusing the financial markets with the political system. To pressure state and federal regulators to investigate herbalife. An act that alone could cause its stock to dive. His team has helped organize protests, News conferences, and letter writing campaigns in california, nevada, connecticut, new york and illinois. Although several of the people who signed the letters. To state and federal officials. Say they do not remember sending them, an investigation by the new york times has found out. So maybe a little sketch there, too.

[Kim Kelly]

Wow, that real grassroots organizing right there.

[Robert]

Real grassroots stuff. Now, ultimately, the weight of hedge fund guys wanting to see bill fail Was greater than the weight of money and government scrutiny that bill could bring to bear on herbalife. And this is unfortunate that he loses. I do wish that he had won here, but it's worth exploring. Because the reason he loses Is that a lot of other rich assholes Are willing to go to war with him and risk their own money. Because they feel like they can beat him and take his money. Right. And to look into that a little bit more, I want to quote from that. That article for vanity fair that cohen wrote. It's ackman's perceived arrogance that gets to his critics. The story I hear from everybody is that one can't help but be intrigued by the guy. Just because he's somewhat larger than life. But then one realizes he's just pompous and arrogant. And seems to have been born without the gene that perceives and measures risk. He seems to look at other members of society, even legends such as carl icahn, as some sort of subspecies. The disgusted, annoyed look on his face when confronted by the masses beneath him. Is like what you'd expect to see from someone confronted by a homeless person who hasn't showered in weeks. You can almost see him puckering his nostrils. So he doesn't have to smell these inferior creatures. And that's interesting. That other, like, psychopathic and carl icon. This guy defends carl as an icon. Carl's a bad person. We'll do an episode on him at some point. The fact that he's the issue these guys have is that, well, he doesn't like us either. He treats us like we're beneath him, too. Not just poor people, but other rich people. Who he doesn't think are, like, as good a people as him. He's a real dick, too, man.

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, there's no solidarity amongst thieves. But they really don't like that one specific guy.

[Robert]

No, Some of the thieves have solidarity against this specific thief.

[Kim Kelly]

Or no honor amongst. Either way, like, you gotta be a real jagoff to, like, to fail out of the rich jagoff club.

[Robert]

Yeah, it's fascinating. So this all culminates in a giant fight. Between carl icahn and bill ackman on CNBC in 2013. And Sophie's gonna play A very short segment of this very remarkable clip. You don't often get to see two billionaires. Embarrassing each other like this on live tv. It's very funny. We're just gonna play you A brief little segment of it. What? This is bill thing called me up,

[Bill Ackman]

and he literally said, you know, bill, we can be friends now.

[Robert]

I. I never said that.

[Bill Ackman]

I want to be friends with.

[Robert]

With you, bill. Okay, let's move on. I'm honest with you. Let's move on. Hey, listen, if I'm going to admit it, I'm not gonna.

[Bill Ackman]

Then I won't.

[Robert]

He called me and said he wanted to be friends. Actually, after this, we're gonna be a bill. That's bill being like, Carl called me and said, I want to be. I didn't say that to you. What?

[Kim Kelly]

You're gonna be your best friend on earth. It's incredible.

[Robert]

It's. That's so funny. That's hilarious.

[Kim Kelly]

So funny. Oh, my God.

[Robert]

It would take years for bill to give up on his crusade against herbalife. But the short summary is that he did lose badly in the end. In November of 2017, Herbalife stock ended up 51% year over year. Which is really bad if you're shorting them. This inspired ackman to cut his short position. And convert it to a put position. But that doesn't really work either. In June of 2019, he dumps all of his remaining positions, Effectively acknowledging that his one Billion dollar bet had been a failure. Herbalife Stock went up 6.3% at the news. Yeah. And we'll talk about what happens next for old bill. But first, what happens next for you is these ads. And we're back. I do feel bad that bill lost against herbalife. Like, I. I wanted him to kill him. But, yeah, it's like, who.

[Kim Kelly]

Who do you root for? You?

[Robert]

Like, I would have been happy in this case if he'd made a billion dollars fucking up herbalife. But he doesn't. He kind of does the opposite.

[Kim Kelly]

He made it stronger.

[Robert]

He makes it stronger. Kinda, yeah. Bad news again. You can't. In this case, you can't use the master's tools to dismantle the master. Right. That's a fly. Not a fully. Not a statement I always agree with. But. But certainly in this case, it's proven true. So I'm not going to spend all of the rest of these episodes. Listing all of bill's hits and failures. Right. Because he does have a lot of other hits. He's not just fuck ups, he makes a lot of money. Activist investing in chipotle. He also loses a bunch of money. He makes, like, a $200 million investment into borders, which failure fails spectacularly because, like, they file for bankruptcy not long after. And bill acknowledges this investment is a big mistake. But right after making the investment in 2010, he got on cnbc's fast money and said, I think the company has stabilized the stock trades as if it's going bankrupt. But we don't see that as a likely behavior. I think borders is much more attractive risk reward than barnes and noble. Ultimately, I think the industry may consolidate. The two companies may become one. And that again, very telling of bill, that he's like, well, the stock's acting like the company's going bankrupt. Probably not gonna happen, though. Good place to put park. $200 million.

[Kim Kelly]

This man has killed every company my grandmother loved.

[Robert]

It's funny. Yeah. So what a bastard. And the fact that none of that. Because that article is from 2010, when Bill's record was much better. But the fact that none of his predictions here are right. Makes something I found at the end of that cnbc article. Very funny. For a donation of $1,000, you could be among a small group of 200 people. Who have the opportunity to gain investment insights Directly from bill ackman during the harbor investment conference. Oh, boy. Wish I'd gotten some of those insights.

[Kim Kelly]

Damn, what a scam.

[Robert]

So by the time we start approaching the trump years, the bloom is Firmly off the rose. In terms of bill's reputation as an investor now, he's still a multi billionaire. He's worth 8 or 9 billion dollars. His fund is still worth a lot of money. He has a lot of successes. It's not like he always fails. There's always successes alongside the failures. But his big hits are about as numerous as his big failures. Central to each of these is Bill's fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the possibility that he might ever be wrong. Herbalife was definitely going to hit zero. Ron Johnson was for sure the right guy to fix J.C. penney. Borders can't go bankrupt, you know. In early 2015, Ackman's hedge fund started putting money on Valiant pharmaceuticals. Their business was acquiring small drug companies, Firing people, and then jacking up the price of medication. And Ackman thought this was a great idea. Awesome business to be in. Per an article published on LinkedIn. He believed valiant represented the future of pharmaceutical efficiency. Cutting out traditional research and development expenses. In favor of acquisitions and pricing power. Yeah, why actually figure out how to make drugs. When we can just cut up companies that are actually doing research. And selling them for scrap? The only thing I do now. Long story short, Everything goes wrong with this investment. The as soon as Bill puts money down, the sec starts scrutinizing Valeant for price gouging. And Bill, when people are like, hey, should we pull our money out? This could be an issue. Bill refuses to see it as a problem. He doubles down, increasing his stake in Valiant, Even as the stock tumbles. It's a classic case of overconfidence. And just like there's. It's this psychological trap that these guys find themselves in. Where they're like, no, the market's gotta correct, it's gotta correct, it's gotta correct. And they just never get their shit together.

[Kim Kelly]

Wow.

[Robert]

In the course of a year, Valiant stock goes from 250 bucks a share to $10 a share. Pershing Square loses like $4 billion. And Bill's reputation takes a hit. From which it has not quite recovered. But by 2019, he was in the black again. Posting a 58.1% return that year. So, again, another massive fuck up and failure to see things. But overall, in part because he's working at a big fund. He has employees like Hilal who are making good decisions. The company overall is doing really well. That's not unrelated from all of Bill's decisions. But you've seen now, he's made a lot of fuck ups too, right? For Bill, redemption for all of his Failures would come during what was for everyone else, a very bad year, 2020. In the spring of that year, not long after the first US cases of COVID 19 were confirmed, Bill began positioning himself to basically short the US economy. Over the course of 10 days, he bought a bunch of credit default swaps on corporate bonds. These are agreements where the seller pays the buyer if a specific debt defaults. They're a bet on things getting worse very quickly. As Ackman later said, there was this massive storm coming. We could see the storm, but everyone else was playing on a beach. It only cost us $27 million. We 10 days later, it became worth $2.6 billion. We took that money in March of 2020 with the market down 30% and we bought stocks. So Bill and Pershing make a fortune betting correctly on economic disruption caused by the pandemic. But Bill doesn't just put his money there. He uses his PR savvy to stoke as much fear, uncertainty and doubt as possible on the market. At least that's what some people will argue. On March 18, which is about a week into him starting to make these investments, he posts this long Twitter thread addressed to President Trump. Mr. President, the only answer is to shut down the economy for the next the country for the next 30 days and close the borders. Tell all Americans that you are putting us on an extended spring break at home with family. Keep only essential services open. The government pays wages until we reopen. And shortly thereafter, he gave an interview with CNBC in which he warned, hell is coming. As Brian Baker wrote in an article for msn, Ackman had essentially bet on the US Economy undergoing a massive short term shock due to the lockdown. And some believe his messaging induced further panic. And this is kind of morally, nothing Bill said is wrong like that is accurate. Right. Both in terms of what Trump should have done, simp kind of what he did, and also true in terms of like, yeah, hell was in fact coming for large segments of the US economy in that period. And it's not wrong to say that or urge a lockdown, but is it wrong to do that?

[Sophie]

His wallet.

[Robert]

You've shorted the economy as part of an investment strategy. Yes.

[Kim Kelly]

Right.

[Robert]

Maybe that's kind of, you know, evil. Right. Some people like to be evil. Yeah, yeah.

[Kim Kelly]

You can't be saying something that's a little bit right or a little bit helpful doesn't mean all of the evil doesn't cancel it out or the fact

[Robert]

that you're doing it to make money, not because, like, you want the country to do the right thing right, as Brian Baker wrote in an MSN article. One of Ackman's many critics was Galaxy digital CEO Mike Novogratz, who reacted to Ackman's CNBC interview with a request for the network. Please get Ackman off CNBC before people start jumping off bridges. Oh, man. Stephanie Ruley, a former banker and MSNBC correspondent, called Ackman's rhetoric wildly irresponsible. In putting on that grand show while he was getting choked up and talking about his father, he caused the markets to puke and he caused the circuit breakers to trigger, she told the Guardian, adding that it was perplexing to see Ackman cause such a scene since he was very well respected. I'm not emotional about investments, ackman once shared with the New York Times. Investing is something where you just have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making. Just the facts. And that all makes me think, yeah, Bill kind of was trying to stoke. He was not wrong. But he was also specifically wanted to stir things up because it would be good for these investments he'd made.

[Kim Kelly]

There's this whole pattern that you've laid out of him doing that a lot.

[Robert]

He does that a bunch. Yeah. It's not a conspiracy theory, really, when that's how he got rich. Yeah.

[Kim Kelly]

Like his preferred tactic, one might say.

[Robert]

That's how he makes his money. So Bill had previously been someone that you couldn't accuse. At least one thing we can say about him up to this point, not a right wing hardliner. Going after herbalife is not a conservative thing to do. Right. That's actually arguably a progressive thing to do. Not necessarily the way he did it, but we'll give some credit there. But during the Biden years, he goes on a rightward lurch that seems somewhat out of place given his enmity to a major Republican party donor. And a lot of it is explicable. A lot of his rightward tilt in the latter Biden years is explicable by the fact that on October 7, 2023, Hamas carries out a massive raid on Israel. Right. We all know about what happened there and what happens. What's that? What's continued to happen. And Ackman is a huge supporter of Israel. Right? He is. He has taken the most Israel hawk approach and interpretation of everything that's happened ever since. Right. That is the kind of guy that he is here. And when students on college campuses started protesting Israeli atrocities in response to the October 7th attacks, Bill got activated. Right. What particularly Tips him off. I mean, he's just very. He's obviously horrified at the rate itself. And then he supports Israel's response. And when it becomes clear that a lot of Americans don't and that the kind of media shield that Israel has enjoyed in a lot of its responses and a lot of, like, the violence that it's carried out over the years is failing. Right. Especially as things escalate to outright genocide. He does. Ackman cannot take that. Right. Like that. That is not a thing that he likes to see. And it's particularly all of these college student protesters that Dr. Him crazy. He is livid at the fact that there are protests on the Harvard campus. And he demands publicly that Harvard name any students who, quote, blame Israel for the attack so that he and other CEOs wouldn't inadvertently hire any of them. Right. Yeah. This is a big news, right?

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, yeah.

[Robert]

And Harvard, like, doesn't. For one thing, they don't have data on that, like. Right. It's not like. Yeah, how would they know?

[Kim Kelly]

I mean, this is why you never sign up for protest kits.

[Robert]

Right? Right. So when Harvard refuses, he grows angrier. Per an article in New York magazine by Kevin Dugan, his attacks against the university started picking up steam following the December 5th congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During questioning from Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, Harvard president Claudine Gay didn't explicitly agree that calling for genocide against Jewish people would violate Harvard's speech standards. She said it was personally abhorrent to her and later apologized. Ackman then amplified Stefanik and conservative activist Christopher Ruffo in attacking Gay, as well as Liz McGill of UPenn and Sally Kornbl of MIT for equivocating about antisemitism on campus. In this, Ackman was not quite a leader in the crusade, but a strong supporting member of the team in demanding the resignations of all three presidents. And I'm not gonna re litigate the Claudine Gay plagiarism controversy thing here. Cause honestly, I just don't find it that interesting. It should never have really been that big a deal. Right. Harvard initially promised to support her, but Ackman stayed on the attack, arguing that she had plagiarized or failed to properly cite sources more than 50 times. And gay had made some mistakes. She submitted corrections to at least three of her papers. I don't. I don't care to go to bat for her or to condemn her for a bunch of, like, mild malfeasance to moderate malfeasance in her college years. I just don't care all that much.

[Kim Kelly]

Does that even matter?

[Robert]

But Bill does. Bill is really obsessive about this and he also tweets at length About Mark Gorenberg, MIT's chairman, for reasons that are a little less clear, because Mark's not really involved in a college, you know, protest controversy thing. But Bill has issues with Mark's wife. Per Kevin Dugan writing for Vanity Fair. The connection here is that Gorenberg's wife, Kathryn Stickney, is the founder of parity.org, a non profit that advocates for women in business. To Ackman, though, parity.org is part of the larger problem on college campuses which have taken on diversity, equity and inclusion management philosophies. Under dei, one's degree of oppression is determined based on where one resides in a so called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews and Asians are deemed oppressors and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people and or women are deemed to be oppressed. Ackman wrote. In Ackman's original tweet about Gorenberg, he insinuated that Gorenberg had improperly used MIT to fund Stickney's organization. He noted that parity.org reported no revenues and received all of its funding through MIT associated funds. In short, this does not look like a legitimate nonprofit. Rather it looks like a sinecure for the wife of the chairman of nit. He wrote in a follow up tweet. So he's going hardcore and anti DEI after and you know, hardcore into protests on campus, anti Semitism on campus. He really hates the fact that this guy's wife is working for like an organization that's trying to improve equity. He's getting into all of these weird right wing like women in business are not really.

[Kim Kelly]

He doesn't like that. That's like a hard line and it is.

[Robert]

This is very. You can draw a line to that. You can draw a line to his earlier issues at Harvard while he's writing his, you know, his thesis. There's. Now Ackman ultimately backtracks on some of his allegations against Gorenberg's wife, but he continues accusing Gorenberg of tax fraud. And this doesn't really work out in the long run, but you know, it does in some of these cases. They do succeed. Bill and his fellow oligarchs succeed in getting several college presidents shit can, including gay. Although Bill is really unhappy that she doesn't get fired by the university, she's still employed as a professor Writing for the Atlantic, Kurt Anderson describes what happened next. When former President Gay was hired. I knew little about her. But I was instinctually happy for Harvard and the black community. Ackman posted while on holiday in the Caribbean. The day after he'd helped force her out over her plagiarism. But now, given her handling of the Harvard anti Israel protests, he'd realized that she was not qualified. Having been chosen by a board looking for a DEI approved candidate. And by the way, in light of the amount, nature, degree of plagiarism that had surfaced in her work. Why wasn't she also booted from her tenured Harvard professorship the very next day? Business Insider. And this. So this is the day after she's fired. He can't let up on this. He's gotta keep stomping on this woman, trying to get her career entirely destroyed. Cause she had the temerity to be like a woman who wasn't mean enough to people he didn't like. And the day after this happens, Business Insider publishes an article of their own. And this one was. This is another plagiarism investigation. This one was into plagiarism by an artist technologist. Who was also a former MIT professor named Neri Oxman. Neri Oxman just happened to be Bill Ackman's wife. This is his most recent wife.

[Kim Kelly]

I was gonna say, what happened to Karen?

[Robert]

Not in the picture anymore. We've got nary in here now.

[Kim Kelly]

She got him.

[Robert]

I try to avoid generally talking about people's families here. But this is unavoidable. Because this is a big part of the Bill Ackman story. Now, the reality is that Neri Oxman's plagiarism was, in my opinion, about as serious as Claudine Gay's. And that I, I. No one reasonable should care about this all that much. On its own. These were all pretty minor examples of people screwing up and being lazy, right? But where Ackman had seen Gay's mistakes as damning. He sees his wife's as defensible. And this is what's funny, right? And I think business Incenter was right to publish this. If none of this had happened, if Ackman hadn't gone after Gay. I would say this article would have been in bad taste. But because Ackman makes himself into this anti plagiarism activist. It's pretty relevant that his wife does the same thing that Gay did. Right?

[Kim Kelly]

That's almost cinematic. Like that's. Yeah, that feels made up. Like it's too perfect. Except I'm sure, they came with the receipts.

[Robert]

Yeah. And I gotta continue with a quote from that Vanity Fair article here. His invented euphemisms include. This is talking about how he defends his wife. His invented euphemisms include clerical errors. He invents a statistical metric as well, because only a few of the 2,774 paragraphs in her thesis contain 10 text copied from elsewhere without quotation marks. She had an error rate of 0.1141%, which is pretty darn good. And her error rate for sentences even better. At a per sentence basis. She doesn't plagiarize all that much. And he's writing like 5,000 word essays that he's like, publishing, defending his wife and talking thousands of words talking about his wife's plagiarism, but how it's not bad, but it just looks terrible for her.

[Kim Kelly]

Cause your husband's dreisand effect in the whole thing.

[Robert]

Exactly. If your husband's putting out a 6,000 word article every day about, like, how your plagiarism is defensible, doesn't make you look like a good academic. Unfortunately,

[Kim Kelly]

the lady doth protest too much. Except the lady is your wacky rich husband who everyone hates a little bit.

[Robert]

So, defending her 15 uncredited. Oh, sorry, I'm gonna continue with that quote. Defending her 15 uncredited. Cut and pastes of passages from Wikipedia of all sources. The pathos in comedy are extreme. I am sure that when Neri wrote her dissertation, she was 33. She thought that there was nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as a dictionary. He writes the day after the story broke. In his later, longer apologia, he reveals what he thinks is a gotcha loophole that exonerates her completely. The good news is that their lawyers used the Wayback Machine to discover that MIT's Academic Integrity Handbook did not require citation or even mention Wikipedia until 2013, four years after NERI wrote her dissertation. Yeah, man, that sounds good. That makes your wife sound like a serious thinker. Good work, buddy.

[Kim Kelly]

Oh, geez. Really? Just the technicalities are not helping.

[Robert]

Ouch. And again, do I think this is all the worst stuff in the world, worthy of, like, multiple investigative pieces of journalism? No, but you kind of argued that this was. And so the fact that people are doing this to your wife now kind of turned about as fair play Bill. So Bill had been reached out to for comment before the article was published, and he blamed weak WI fi for being unable to respond. In time, the Business Insider journalists had extended their deadline, but Ackman and Oxman couldn't make it because it would have required postponing their flight in their private jet to do so. And he complains this is unfair. Bill takes to Twitter to defend his wife and of course she is soon the number one trending topic because her husband will not stop tweeting about her plagiarism allegations in a very funny way.

[Sophie]

Wow.

[Kim Kelly]

You know they have wi fi on those private jets. So that's nonsense.

[Robert]

It's nonsense. In one of his early posts, he bragged that none of Business Insider's reporting would interview with Nary success because she made the brilliant decision to leave academia in some part due to her marriage with me. She made the good financial decision to marry a billionaire. So it doesn't really hurt her that she's being dragged through the mud here. Also, she's already raised a lot of money for her own startup, so though she's doing fine. Then he turns around after saying none of this has hurt us at all. He turns around and says Business Insiders reporting has been catastrophically damaging to my wife. He like threatens legal action. He goes to like the people who own the company that owns like he's trying to do everything he can to get these articles retracted, to get Business Insider to pull the piece to do damage to these report. Like he so wants this to go away and no one's willing to play ball with him. Like even the people who like should be on his side because like they're other Trumpy business people aren't willing to go to bat with him to purge this article about his wife because he's too annoying. He's too annoying and he's just like again, you can't both say this doesn't do any damage to us at all. And also I want to be able to sue for damages. He claims Business Insider's campaign to destroy Nary could have literally killed her and then insists she only survived because of profound love to and support from me. My wife would have died because of how mean your article was if I wasn't such a good husband.

[Kim Kelly]

Your mean tweets were actually bombs lobbed into our family home.

[Robert]

You have to give me more money as hell. So Bill took time in this whole embarrassing episode to lick Elon Musk's boots, posting we should all be grateful that X is owned by Musk. He insisted that he and Neri would not have been able to respond in such a rapid fashion without Musk's free speech absolutism. And then he drops this chestnut. The code of the road was that you can attack the protagonist as much as you want, but not his wife and his kids. First off, Bill, you're not the protagonist. I'm sorry, man. And second, you attacked fucking that guy at MIT's wife for no reason, man. In the 2024 election, Bill Ackman officially endorsed Donald Trump, completing his transition to MAGA guy. And the year and change since, or two years or so since, he has remade himself into a stooge of the administration. In February of 2026, he made. He was like, the Epstein files have become a McCarthy era thing. Like it's reached this McCarthy stage. Innocent people are being slandered. We got to stop looking into the Epstein files, right? More recently, like literally just like in March, like at the end of March, he made a public statement that like, this is the best time ever to buy quality stocks because of how much damn has been done to the global economy because of Trump's new Iran war. Great time to get in the stocks.

[Kim Kelly]

What is he up to? He's doing something.

[Robert]

Speaking of that war, immediately after Trump launched his new war with Iran, Bill declared it would be a very good war, per news break. Iran has been, I think, a major funder of anti American protests and kind of otherwise, Ackman told reporter Sarah Isen. I think that war is a very good one. The war is a very good one, she repeated. It's very unpopular though. Though Ackman predicted its near conclusion. I think we're almost done, he said. I think it's weeks as opposed to many months, a few months as opposed to. It's not years. This is towards the tail end of a war. On whether the war has made Ackman think differently about investment opportunities in the Middle east, he said, the Middle east has been reset in a very positive way. It's not been good to be a terrorist in the last couple of years. The greatest enemies of democracy have been set back in a dramatic way. It makes this so funny to me is that on February 11, not all that long before Trump started the war, Bill had his annual investor day and he told everybody, I don't foresee any like black swan type events on the horizon. They're gonna bring about an opportunity for cheap asymmetric trades. Like there's not gonna be a sudden massive change to like oil futures that we could take advantage of. Nothing like that's gonna happen. And then two weeks later, oil futures jumped 40% and bill totally fails to cash out. Right. This is like a Covid level market disruption and he completely fails to make a buck off of it because he's now completely been taken over by the ideological stuff. He can't actually look at the world as it is and make good decisions anymore. It all has to fit into this ideological schema that he's gotten trapped in. So he can't actually identify real weaknesses and opportunities anymore. Which is why I'm not going through all of his. He tried to launch, like a fucking investment fund that was a catastrophic, like, $25 billion failure. And he's trying to relaunch it now at like a lower cap. And it's not gonna work. Like, I think Bill is still rich and always will be. You know, he's not gonna suffer for this. Other than that, I don't think he's capable of really seeing the world in the way that he used to be able to. To make the pro. The good business decisions he was. Because he's become completely caught up in the ideology of it all. Like, he's reality more. And that's where we'll end the story for now. What a guy.

[Kim Kelly]

The business. He lost his business mojo. Now he's just a jag off.

[Robert]

Now he's just a jag off. Yeah. Anyway, that's the tale of the activist investor. How we feeling?

[Kim Kelly]

I learned a lot. Good man. I'm so. Because I had seen this Tom Fuller on Twitter. Who's this guy? Who's this jago? But just. Just the decades of buildup to him becoming this specific flavor of jago that really makes it so much sweeter to see him fail and to now know that I should actively be rooting against

[Robert]

him like everyone else should be rooting against him. Absolutely. Yes.

[Kim Kelly]

Wow.

[Sophie]

Kim, you wanna plug your books one more time for the audience here before we head out?

[Kim Kelly]

Sure. If you were listening to this and wondering, what were the workers up to? How are they doing? You might enjoy the books I've written about workers. Just the young adult or the young readers edition of my book just came out. It's called fight to win through ages like 8 and up. It's really cute, very diverse, inclusive. All these things that Bill Ackman does not like in book form for your young rebels and radicals. And a few years ago, I wrote a grown up book called fight like hell the untold history of American labor. Just kind of like a people's history of labor in America. And I think it's pretty good. It's still out there. Get it from the library. I don't care.

[Robert]

Yeah, absolutely. All right, everybody check out Kim's book. And check out. Well, don't check out Bill Ackman. Pay very little attention to Bill Ackman. Actually, that's the best bet. All right, bye, everybody. Bye.

[Sophie]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you. Statistically speaking,

[Kim Kelly]

this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.