Big Tech Earnings, Trump Media Stock Plunge, and Guest Margaret Brennan

Summary

Pivot Podcast Summary: Big Tech Earnings, Trump Media Stock Plunge, and Guest Margaret Brennan

Hosted by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this episode of "Pivot" delves into the latest developments in the tech industry, the tumultuous state of Trump Media's stock, and insights from political analyst Margaret Brennan as the U.S. approaches the pivotal 2024 election.

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1. Big Tech Earnings Roundup

Microsoft: Microsoft reported a 16% increase in revenue and an 11% rise in net income, surpassing expectations. Despite this strong performance, the stock dipped by 4% due to forecasts of slower growth ahead. CFO Amy Hood highlighted an anticipated $1.5 billion loss mainly from investments in OpenAI. Notably, Microsoft's AI segment is on track to exceed a $10 billion annual run rate next quarter. Additionally, Xbox content and services revenue surged by 61%, driven by the Activision acquisition.

"AI Satya said 70% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365 Copilot for at least some employees."
— Scott Galloway [03:17]

Meta (Facebook): Meta showcased impressive growth with 19% revenue increase and a 35% rise in profits, yet its shares fell by 2%. The company's boost was primarily fueled by advancements in advertising targeting through AI investments. Meta also raised its annual spending forecast to $38-40 billion, primarily directed towards AI initiatives, which unsettled Wall Street despite the strong financials.

"The growth is already driven by advancements in advertising targeting, which the company says comes from its investments in AI."
— Kara Swisher [04:58]

Snap and Reddit: Snap's stock surged by 21% over five days following a 15% increase in sales and a reduction in net losses from $368 million to $153 million. Reddit experienced a 68% jump in revenue, achieving profitability for the first time and pushing its shares above $100. Both companies defied expectations, reflecting robust performance despite market skepticism.

"Reddit shares on or near $100 for the first time after reporting a 68% jump in revenue and turning profitable."
— Kara Swisher [19:22]

Apple’s AI Push: Apple introduced its first set of AI features dubbed Apple Intelligence, enhancing notification summaries, text writing tools, and image editing across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. While the reception was lukewarm, critics argue that Apple's AI offerings lack originality, merely replicating existing functionalities available from competitors. CEO Tim Cook emphasized that Apple aims to iterate on technology rather than lead the AI arms race, positioning itself to leverage partnerships rather than developing proprietary large language models (LLMs).

"Apple Intelligence isn't about being first but best. They're not investing like others but leveraging existing innovations."
— Scott Galloway [17:12]

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2. Trump Media Stock Volatility

The episode delves into the erratic performance of Trump Media's stock, which briefly surpassed Elon Musk's X but has since been declining. The parent company faced a $16 million loss in the June quarter, with minimal workforce numbers exacerbating concerns about its fundamental business health. Trump himself saw a $1.3 billion loss in net worth following the company's tumultuous trading days.

Kara and Scott discuss potential manipulation theories behind the stock's volatility, citing Wash Trading—a strategy where shares are rapidly bought and sold to create a false sense of market activity. Investigations by blockchain firms Chaos Labs and Inca Digital revealed signs of such manipulative activities within Polymarket’s presidential market.

"Wash trading constituted around 1/3 of trading volume in Polymarket's presidential market."
— Kara Swisher [12:30]

Scott explores theories suggesting that betting platforms could be manipulated either to amplify Trump's chances or to dissuade Republican engagement, drawing parallels to past market manipulations.

"The most obvious explanation is that the people betting on these sites are predominantly younger males, skewing heavily towards Trump support."
— Scott Galloway [08:27]

The hosts express skepticism about the stock’s movements being driven by genuine investor sentiment, emphasizing the need for transparency in trading activities to ascertain the true drivers behind the volatility.

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3. Apple Intelligence: Innovation or Iteration?

Apple's latest AI features, Apple Intelligence, aim to enhance user experience but have received mixed reviews. The new tools include:

• Graphics Cues: Indicating AI involvement in apps.
• Writing Tools: Assisting in composing texts.
• AI Eraser: For photo editing.
• Notification Summaries: Streamlining message notifications.

Despite these additions, critics argue that Apple’s approach lacks groundbreaking innovation, offering only incremental improvements over existing technologies. Tim Cook acknowledged that the technology requires further refinement and emphasized Apple's strategy to focus on quality rather than speed.

"It's not like you turned on AI and thought, wow, AI is really changing things. It's incremental upgrades."
— Scott Galloway [17:12]

Galloway points out that Apple's business model, which avoids heavy investment in in-house AI development, is a strategic move to capitalize on existing AI advancements without direct competition.

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4. Political Climate and Election Insights

As the U.S. approaches the 2024 election, significant tension and polarization are palpable. Scott recounts a fundraiser incident where a Trump supporter and an opposing spectator clashed, highlighting the nation's divisive state.

Biden’s Remarks: President Biden faced backlash after appearing to dismiss Trump supporters as "garbage," a comment he later clarified was referencing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's hateful language. This gaffe has strained Democratic efforts, with Kamala Harris attempting to distance herself from Biden's remarks.

"Biden later said he was describing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's hateful language as garbage."
— Kara Swisher [32:59]

Trump’s Comments: Trump continued his controversial rhetoric, making unsettling remarks about women, which further polarized public opinion. The hosts discuss how these statements overshadow substantive policy discussions, contributing to an "existential" crisis in national unity.

"I'm going to protect the women of our country. Whether they like it or not."
— Trump [34:36]

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5. Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post Controversy

Jeff Bezos published an op-ed defending the Washington Post's decision not to endorse a presidential candidate, denying any quid pro quo. However, the move led to significant backlash, with the newspaper experiencing a 250,000 subscriber loss and a $30 million revenue hit.

Kara criticizes Bezos' handling of the situation, arguing that his response lacked accountability and failed to address the broader implications of media manipulation and business conflicts of interest.

"His response was well written, but I don't believe him. It all stinks."
— Scott Galloway [43:15]

The hosts discuss the challenges billionaires face when acquiring media properties, highlighting past failures and the inherent difficulties in maintaining journalistic integrity under heavy ownership influence.

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6. Insights from Margaret Brennan on Election Security and Voter Behavior

Guest: Margaret Brennan, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for CBS and moderator of "Face the Nation."

Brennan provides a calm and measured analysis of the upcoming election, focusing on voter turnout and the potential for election-related violence. She emphasizes that:

• Economy as a Primary Issue: Economic concerns remain the top priority for voters, overshadowing other issues.

  "The economy is the number one issue. That's not surprising to me."
  — Margaret Brennan [54:37]

• Voter Turnout: Both parties are heavily focused on mobilizing their base, with Democrats particularly concerned about low-propensity voters.

• Potential for Violence: Brennan expresses concerns about political violence, noting alarming polling data indicating a willingness among some voters to justify violence to influence the election outcome.

  "I'm really concerned about political violence. We see it in our polling that we do here at CBS."
  — Margaret Brennan [63:40]

• Media Environment: The proliferation of misinformation and social media's role in stoking chaos is a significant worry, affecting public trust in institutions and democratic processes.

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7. Predictions and Future Outlook

Scott Galloway’s Prediction: Galloway anticipates Kamala Harris winning the election, citing factors such as organizational strength among female voters and potential missteps by the Trump campaign related to voter mobilization in key states like Pennsylvania.

"I think Vice President Harris is going to win the election."
— Scott Galloway [73:30]

Kara Swisher’s Commentary: Swisher echoes concerns about election security and the influence of influential figures like Jeff Bezos in media, advocating for broader accountability and integrity within media ownership.

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8. Closing Remarks and Guest Appreciation

Kara and Scott express their appreciation for Margaret Brennan's insights, highlighting the importance of balanced journalism in turbulent political times. They reiterate the critical role of media in shaping and informing public opinion, especially as the nation braces for a potentially historic and closely contested election.

"You always make a great calming presence, Margaret. Thank you for joining us."
— Kara Swisher [53:11]

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Notable Quotes with Attributions

• Kara Swisher [03:05]: "Why did they do that? Why did that Trump person do that?"

• Scott Galloway [08:27]: "The most obvious explanation is that the people betting on these sites are predominantly younger males, skewing heavily towards Trump support."

• Margaret Brennan [63:40]: "I'm really concerned about political violence. We see it in our polling that we do here at CBS."

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Conclusion

This episode of "Pivot" provides a comprehensive analysis of the current tech earnings landscape, the mysterious fluctuations in Trump Media's stock, and the rising political tensions as the 2024 election looms. With expert insights from Margaret Brennan, the hosts offer a nuanced perspective on the interplay between technology, media, and politics, emphasizing the critical need for informed participation and vigilance in safeguarding democratic processes.

For those seeking to stay informed on the intersection of tech, business, and politics, this episode serves as a valuable resource, offering both depth and clarity in its discussions.

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. I'm Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief Fixed Income Strategist. And I'm Liz Ann Sonders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist. Between us, we have decades of experience studying the indicators that drive the economy and how they can have a direct impact on your investments. We know that investors have a lot of questions about the markets and the economy, and we're here to help. So download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for Pivot comes from ATT what's it like to get a new iPhone 16 Pro with at and T Next up any time. It's like when you first light up the grill and think of all of the mouth watering possibilities. Learn how to get your new iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on AT and T and the latest iPhone every year with AT and T. Next up Anytime ATT Connecting changes everything. Apple Intelligence is coming in fall 2024 with Siri and device languages set to US English. Some features and languages will be coming over the next year. $0 offer may not be available on future iPhones. Next Up Anytime feature may be discontinued at any time, subject to change additional fees. Terms and restrictions apply. See att.com iPhone for details.

[Scott Galloway]

Support for Pivot comes from Solidigm. Creating highly advanced AI is complicated, especially if you don't have the right storage. A critical but often overlooked catalyst for AI infrastructures. Solidym Storage Optimized for the AI era, offering bigger, faster and more energy efficient solid state storage. Solidigm delivers the capability to meet capacity, performance and energy demands across your AI data workloads. AI requires a different approach to storage. Solidigm is ready for everything the AI era demands. Learn [e-mail].

[Kara Swisher]

I love Scott being irritated by me. And I love being irritated by Scott. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

[Scott Galloway]

And I'm Scott Galloway.

[Kara Swisher]

Scott, are you back in London?

[Scott Galloway]

I am and I'm actually happy to be here. I really. I don't know if. Well, it's hard for you to notice this, but being back in London and being in the US for two and a half weeks, I was surprised. Surprise. Well noticed. It is visibly, observably tense in the US right now.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes indeed.

[Scott Galloway]

I was at a fundraiser on Saturday for Jed, which focuses on. It's a wonderful nonprofit that focuses on Works with high schools to help with teen mental health and suicide prevention. And I was giving a talk, and out of the blue, someone from a Corner yelled, Trump 2024. And then someone else on the other side felt compelled to start booing him. I mean, this is a fundraiser for teen mental health, Right?

[Kara Swisher]

Why did they do that? Why did that Trump person do that?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I don't know, but everyone you talk to seems very tense, very polarized, very on edge. One of the things I really appreciate about the UK is that here elections run six weeks from start to finish. It does seem that everyone just sort of is, like, kind of nonplussed a little bit by the results, and then they just keep calm and carry on. I could not get over how tense it felt in the U.S. do you feel that?

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Everywhere you go, it's really nuts. It's really crazy. It's very hard to find humor in it. Sometimes there's humor in political campaigns, but I think the ugliness level led by the Republicans really has gotten to a point. And then the Democrats respond. I don't think politics. Politics should be funny, but it also should feel like you're one country, I guess, in some regard. And it doesn't feel like that. Like, on either side, they win. Feel like the people have been ginned up so much that Kamala Harris is the devil, essentially, and the people on the other side are, you know, another Trump administration's disastrous for our country. I think it's really. They feel like it's existential in some weird way. I mean, not weird way. It is. It is. It feels. In fact, it feels existential. Including people who are. Not that. I wouldn't say dramatic. Are saying that. Are very worried. And I think the inclusion of the world's richest man. I'm sorry, with the money. Feels like he's buying an election. Right. That's weird. You say it's a podcast election. I say it's an Elon election. Right. Can billionaires buy their way? I mean, rich people always have, but not in this explicit and naked. An attempt to help their own interests.

[Margaret Brennan]

Right.

[Scott Galloway]

You don't think people would say that about Kennedy and his father and what happened in.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, but it wasn't. This is naked. Like, I guess we always knew it, but this feels so naked and explicit and transactional that it's, you know, I guess we kind of. Kind of believe a little bit that we're, like, not like that. But then here it is. Right. I think that's really what's. I think created. The real tension in this situation is that the richest man in the world who is an immigrant to this country is displaying so much rancor, creating so much division, even more so than Trump. I can't believe it, if that's possible. And I think that's what's sort of getting on people's nerves. It's sort of. I was saying this to someone. It's ironic that a week before, on Halloween week, all the masks are off.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I'm, I recognize that my kids know very little about elections, so I've been trying to teach them about democracy. So just as an exercise, last night I let them vote on dinner and they picked pizza, but then I ordered Indian because we don't live in a swing state.

[Kara Swisher]

Very funny, Scott. Trying to calm the mood. Trying to lighten the mood.

[Scott Galloway]

Trying to lighten the mood.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyway, we got a lot to get to today, including the latest earnings from Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta. With just a few days until the election, Joe Biden creates a headache for Democrats which I think is not, is a nothing burger, but he did it. And Donald Trump makes some creepy new comments about women, which is, was, you know, par for the course. Just another Tuesday. Plus we'll get some last minute political analysts from our friend of pivot Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan. But first, former President Trump's true social was briefly worth more than Elon Musk X which has been declining in value as we've talked about before. 2 Social parent company was short valued over $10 billion while X Holdings is valued at $9.4 billion. And that's probably being generous. The Trump Media stock was briefly halted several times this week for moving so sharply. It's gone up and down. Really is interesting. There's a lot of weird movement in this stock. I'd love to really actually see the transactions. Meanwhile, the parent company lost more than $16 million in the quarter ending June and doesn't have very many people on it, which of course this is not about its, its fundamental business issues. However, on Wednesday, Trump himself lost $1.3 billion in net worth after the worst trading day ever for the company. We do disagree on why this is happening. I think there's a lot of gaming going on here and I would love to see the logs of who's buying and selling.

[Scott Galloway]

Say more about what you mean by that.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, if you're someone who wants to support Trump, like these poly markets, everyone's like, oh, Peter Thiel owns it. Turned out there was one trade in France from one guy that made it go up. So we're all like, oh, Trump's win. But he's not, because one guy did it, right? And so I worry this stock is being manipulated by Trump adjacent people and who knows who they could be to make it go up and down. I don't think this is a bunch of like, maybe it's Wall street gaming, the situation. It feels very gamed, like on some level the way it's gone up, because getting away from the fundamentals of this company, which both of us absolutely agree is a piece of shit, right? It's a shit sandwich inside a shit, you know, pie, whatever. It seems unusual that this is happening. I don't think it's popular sentiment. It's some other sentiment. And you think differently? You think differently.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, it's an interesting thesis and that is that if a stock or a poll indicates that Trump is likely to win, that it gives people confidence or incentive or momentum on the Trump side. And then I've also heard a counter theory and that is it's being manipulated by a wealthy Democrat who wants to give Republican voters a sense it's in the bag, such that people stay on the couch. I can see.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I didn't hear that one. That's fascinating.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, that was my friend Whitney Tilson who sends out a really thoughtful email almost every day. So I can see someone manipulating. Well, let me back up. This is what I think is going on polymarket Kelsha, Is that what it's called?

[Kara Swisher]

Something like that, yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

Anyways, there's a bunch of them that are basically wagering sites where you can bet on, amongst other things, every state you can bet on margin of victory and you can bet on the election. And Right now on Polymarket, it has Trump at 62, approximately 62 or 63, and Harris at 37 or 38%. That is a wide margin. And I think the logical thesis, or the most obvious one and kind of Occam's Razor, I think the one that probably is correct is that the kind of person that goes to a site and bets on an election is probably younger, probably more male. And those people skew heavily Trump. Because if you look at the actual data, I mean, the majority of the data across the A list polling sites says that it's pretty much a toss up. And so if you were a betting person, I mean, I'm actually thinking of doing this just for fun, I might put some money on Harris Polymarket, because this is what it means. If you bet $100 on Harris and she wins, you get approximately $287 or almost triple your money. And if someone said to you, kara, bet on this coin flip and you don't know, and I would describe the election right now, just the data I see trying to be as unemotional as possible as a coin flip. But if someone said you care, you bet $100 and you pick heads or tails and win, you get 287, you would do that because it's asymmetric upside.

[Kara Swisher]

Absolutely. In fact, let's do it. Let's do it.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, that's actually what I'm thinking because not that I'm hopeful, but I'm not that confident. I think it's literally a coin flip. But if on a coin flip you're getting $287, then again you have disproportionate upside. So I think the thesis that these markets are driven by who bets which way or the other, the most obvious explanation is that the people, it's like, do you remember when Floyd Mayweather fought Conor McGregor, the UFC? I do know, anyways, this UFC fighter, this whiter than white guy, red hair, Irish guy, who's actually not that great an MMA fighter. He's just very loud and obnoxious. Well, anyways, and he fought Floyd Mayweather, who arguably has the fastest hands in the history of boxing. But the odds were much tighter because I think, I think people still like the idea. I think there's some unconscious racism where people like the idea of the white guy beating up or winning the, you know, beating the black guy. There's always, throughout the history of boxing, there's always a little bit of bias for the white guy, the great white hope, so to speak.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Scott Galloway]

And the best bet or the easiest bet was on Floyd Mayweather fighting an OK MMA fighter that has never boxed before. Anyway, did he lose? My point is you're getting asymmetric upside to the notion of who won that thing.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't even know.

[Scott Galloway]

To Conor McGregor's credit, he fought a competent fight, but Floyd Mayweather dominated and won as he should have. But the thing that I don't think is being manipulated for Trump's favor is the stock, because the stock was almost at 100 a couple years ago, it's been as low as 12. So I don't know if that's sending signals into the marketplace.

[Kara Swisher]

Why not? Why couldn't one or ten? Listen to this. This is an interesting. Fortune had a really interesting investigation. In separate investigations completed by the blockchain firms Chaos Labs and Inca Digital and shared exclusively with Fortune, analysts found that Poly market activity exhibits signs of WASH trading, a form of market manipulation where shares are bought and sold, often simultaneously and repeatedly to create a false impression of volume of activity. Chaos Labs found that wash trading constituted around 1/3 of trading volume in polymarket's presidential market, while Inga Digital found that a significant portion of the volum in the market could be attributed to potential WASH trading. The other ones, they're looking at those too. And I think you could do the same thing with this stock. Very little needs to trade to make it go up. And if you wanted, I was intrigued by the democratic thing. Make them feel confident and then put $100 for each of us on that. Will you do that? Will you do that?

[Scott Galloway]

And I'll owe you 100%? I might do a little bit more than that, but anyways, I buy the thesis around the polls because around the betting sites, because a lot of media reports on the betting sites and when the media reports that according to Polymarket or Kalshi that Trump is almost 2 to 1 favored, that sends a signal that's probably on the whole good for the Trump campaign. Where the stock is, I don't think does much around a signal or confidence or lack thereof. I don't think it creates much of a echo effect in favor of one candidate or the other.

[Kara Swisher]

I would short that stock like nobody's business. You wouldn't like. Well, it could rise. Yeah, you could. No, you could rise.

[Scott Galloway]

You got to be very careful shorting a stock like that because if he wins, it's a neat stock. Well, if there's a scenario where it goes to 100 bucks on November 6th and the dangerous thing about short selling is your losses are unlimited.

[Kara Swisher]

Yep, that's true.

[Scott Galloway]

Anyways. But I guess what I'm saying is I absolutely buy your thesis around manipulating and the incentive around manipulating the betting markets. I'm not sure I see the connection and incentive around manipulating stock 1, 2.

[Kara Swisher]

It doesn't need that many. I'd love to see it. I'd like to actually see the trading anyway. We'll see what happens when we go forward. Let's move on to other things. Apple released its first set of Apple intelligence features for the iPhone, iPad and Mac this week. The road includes notification and email summaries, text writing tools, image editing, and improved series stuff we're kind of used to already. The response, of course, has not been overwhelmingly positive, with a number of views calling new features underwhelming. And I think they are because we've been using them on Google and everything else. But as Tim Cook noted in an interview with WSJ magazine last week, the technology would take some iteration. It's not about being first but best. Apple intelligence help, iPhone sales and how long do they have? They need to deliver real changes to Apple phones to make technology worth. Well they aren't making the investment other people are. They're just using the investments other people are making. So probably a good bet from what I can tell.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, well we talked about this. The concept that Apple I think the reason that the stock is trading at an old, you know, historic high in terms of multiple on earnings, its all time high in terms of the actual stock price is that one, it continues to be sort of a safe place for growth and continued dominance. Great execution, great management, unbelievable cash flows. The most profitable product in the history of mankind is on a gross profit level, the iPhone and maybe the app store on a gross margin basis. But what I think people got excited about was the business model. Basically they said Apple is going to not get into this arms race. It's going to be a weapons manufacturer, it's going to be on the right side of this arms race and that is it will ultimately position their Apple intelligence as someone who they co brand and probably get some enormous licensing fee from. And they're not entering into this multi 10, 20, $50 billion arms race trying to develop their own unique LLM strategy. They're going to leverage every other one's capex. But in terms of the actual product offering, underwhelming is probably the right term so far it really isn't. I mean it's not like you turned on, you pull up iOS and think wow, AI is really changing things. It's not. Things like main features unveiled include graphic cues to indicate the presence of AI in apps, writing tools. Okay, an AI eraser in photos for editing and notification summaries. If they hadn't said AI, you would have just thought these were kind of small incremental upgrades. Wouldn't have even noticed. And so look, but it's the business model that's got people that they don't.

[Kara Swisher]

Have to pay so much for the benefit.

[Scott Galloway]

Well they've said we're not getting into this arms. I mean to be viable in this thing you have to be, you have to be allocating 10, 50, $100 billion over the next three, five years. And Apple said I have an idea, rather than investing 10, 50 or $100 billion, why don't we collect 10 or 20 billion a year from whoever wants their logo in front of the billion wealthiest consumers yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

And Apple shares are up the last six months and year to date by quite a bit, 25% because they aren't making these massive investments. We'll see how they roll it out. And of course, as most people know, these things get better as they're used. Right. And they figure out. And I think they'll probably do the best job of deploying the usages. I find a lot of the I say I use Gmail, I find their. Can you want me to help you write this? You want me to say it? I find it annoying and not helpful. I wish I could turn it off for the most part, including in the search where they give me an an that I wasn't looking for. I just don't think it's yet yielded what maybe it will help us do. And I suspect Apple will be the best place for doing that. But it is underwhelming so far. And speaking of all the investments, let's get to our first big story. Scott. It's been a big week for tech earnings. I'm going to focus in on tech earnings. First up, Microsoft Stock is down 4% after beating expectations for quarterly revenue and earnings, but forecasting slower than expected growth. The company's revenue increased 16%. Net income rose 11% percent. Very strong performance. Microsoft said its AI business is on track to surpass an annual run rate of $10 billion the next quarter. But CFO Amy Hood says she expects Microsoft to take a $1.5 billion hit to income, mostly because of expected loss from OpenAI. As for gaming, Microsoft said Xbox content and services revenue grew 61%, driven by Activision acquisition. So I suppose we could ignore that pretty much this. AI Satya said 70% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365 copilot for at least some employees. Just a lot of big spending here for what they're doing, right from what I can tell.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, why don't we. Let's just do a quick kind of round the world on the tech earnings here because there was a bunch of them.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, let me go to Meta then. Okay. Meta shares are down 2%. The company's revenue is up 19% to $40.6 billion in profit was up 35%. Very impressive. The growth is already driven by advancements in advertising targeting, which the company says comes from its investments in AI. That's the real plus here. But the company also raised its annual spending forecast to 38 to 40 billion dollars. Incredible. It spooked Wall Street. The spending on AI essentially moving to Alphabet. The company's revenue grew 15% and its cloud revenue grew almost 35%. The company said its growth is due to, you guessed it, its AI offerings. Google search business revenue is up 12.3% and remains the biggest contributor to revenue growth. A couple more Snapstock is up 21% in the last five days after sales jumped 15% and company's net loss narrowed to 153 million from 368 million. And Reddit shares on or tear topped $100 for the first time after reporting 68% jump in revenue and turning profitable. You recently talked to its CEO and I just saw him at this event I was at with Reid Hoffman. Apple and Amazon will report earnings after we tape on Thursday. But that's a, that's a good look at some of these. Please, please go on, Scott.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, there's just no getting around it. It was an outstanding, just an outstanding quarter for tech companies. And what's become clear is that expectations are no longer expectations. Essentially Meta exceeded revenue and earnings expectations. Its revenues were up 19%, its earnings up 35% and the stock is down because now the expectations, Kara, in this market in tech, the expectation is that you're going to beat expectations. So it's just the people are so used to quarters where these companies just blow away expectations that when they just sort of mildly beat expectations, that's not enough. And the thing that people love about Meta, if you will, is that it's AI driven. Feed and video recommendations led to an 8% increase in time spent on the core platform and 6% increase on Instagram. And so when you take increased time on the platform, growth in the platform and an increase in ad rates, Nitro meet glycerin meet C4 or whatever it is, ad impressions increased 7% year on year and price per ad increased 11%. Also in contrast to what we were talking about with Apple, people look at Meta and say what spooked it while it has much stronger earnings, much stronger revenue growth and say a company like Apple, people are spooked by the fact that Meta has said no, we're entering into this arms race and we're going to take CapEx up and we're going to go after. We're not decreasing the spend in this ridiculous AR thing that everyone was hoping, but we're going to increase substantially our spending in these AI wars. Microsoft revenue and earnings beat, but the stock down 4%, total revenue up 17%. That's incredible. And the revenue mix is really good.

[Kara Swisher]

These old companies remain, these are old.

[Scott Galloway]

Companies on a huge basis. When you grow a company 17% on 62 billion, you're growing your top line revenue. You have incremental revenue growth of $10 billion. The revenues from Azure, Microsoft Cloud offering increased 33%, which probably increased their margin mix. Then the company that is probably the best performing IPO in tech of the last several years, Reddit recognized revenue growth of 68%. The company became profitable. The stock soared 22%. The stock has tripled since its IPO a couple months ago. Daily active users increased 47% year on year. And get this, it was the sixth most Googled word in the US. It's now being translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese and German, going global. And international users grew 44%. And then even the little engine that's been struggling is doing well. And that is Snap.

[Kara Swisher]

That was interesting.

[Scott Galloway]

And what's interesting here is Snap didn't have nearly the quarter of the other folks, but its stock jumped 10%. Why? Because the expectations, everyone's kind of waiting for Snap to get sort of crushed, right? And they occasionally pop up and say, no, things are pretty good here. And when they do, the stock goes up. The sales were up 15%. Losses narrowed to 150 million from about 370. The reported daily active users were up 9%. And they also announced a stock repurchase program, which doesn't make sense to me when the company is losing money, but anyways, there's just no getting around it. Kara, tech is eating the planet. And what you look at here, just to link it to something else, I had dinner with a household name amazing anchor on cable TV who makes tens of millions of dollars. And this person told me that all the negotiations that are coming up this year between the stars and the cable networks, they're being offered salary cuts of 50, 60 and 70%. Why? Because when every tech driven media platform is growing their top line by 3, 5, $10 billion, guess where that's coming from. The traditional media ecosystem and the two are absolutely linked. This money isn't being invented. There is some growth in the economy, are spending more time online, but more than anything, there is a bit of a zero sum game here. And if you're in the ad supported media game and you don't have an AI ad stack where a third of the planet is already on it, you are just fucked right now. And the only ad supported medium that is growing and bucking the trend is what Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway do right now. Podcasts are blowing up.

[Kara Swisher]

They haven't AI'd us yet. Scott they haven't.

[Scott Galloway]

They will so far. So far we're holding our own, but it's. The media ecosystem right now is really going under fundamental change. And speaking of media ecosystem, the only thing I'll finish with here because I don't think people really consider what's going on here. If you think, what is the number one streaming player? What do you think?

[Kara Swisher]

I don't know. Probably Netflix, right?

[Scott Galloway]

I think everyone would say 90% would say Netflix, but it's not. The number one streaming platform is YouTube.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, YouTube.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, you're right.

[Kara Swisher]

They're right. You're right.

[Scott Galloway]

It's funny, right? We don't even think of it that way. I would have said the same thing. But they're beating them. Their combined ad and subscription revenue over the past four quarters has surpassed 50 billion. That makes them the number one highest growing video app. Netflix is 37 billion. So get this, YouTube at 50, Netflix at 37. And I think they're. There's a decent chance if Alphabet gets really scared, they may offer as a peace offering, even though it's not what the DOJ wants. Well, if they spun YouTube and they got the same multiple that's been assigned to Netflix. Oh yeah, this is a company. YouTube as an independent stock would be worth approximately a half a trillion dollars, which is real, real cabbage.

[Kara Swisher]

I'll tell you, my kids, that's what they watch. That's what they watch. YouTube. They use Reddit. They use Reddit, YouTube, Snapchat. It's really interesting to watch their behaviors. Yeah, that's really interesting. Very good analysis, Scott. We'll see. So very quickly, two sentences. Would you buy or sell with stock right now? With the downward push around expectations.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm sorry, which stock, Karen?

[Kara Swisher]

Would you buy all of them? The basket of tech stocks?

[Scott Galloway]

Not only would I buy all of these companies, my financial advice is I wouldn't buy these six companies. I buy these six companies and the other 494 in the S and P. Buy them all. You don't need to be a hero. Don't try and find the needle in the haystack. Buy the whole haystack. These companies are on fire right now, but they're also trading at really rich multiples. Meaning if there is a recession, if all of a sudden a big company.

[Kara Swisher]

Announces tariffs, say suddenly we have tariffs.

[Scott Galloway]

Or probably more realistically, if a big company that's been a big purchasers of GPUs or is a corporate user of AI announces they're reducing their purchases of GPUs or that AI is not living up to their expectations. You are going to see the water flow out like a tsunami is coming. The ripple effect across all of these companies would be dramatic. So yeah, is Pepsi or is Ford or whoever it is or is Exxon? Are these boring companies? Yeah, it's unlikely they're going to go down 40 or 60%. A company like Nvidia could absolutely go up 50%. It could, could easily go down 50%. So you want to diversify them by.

[Kara Swisher]

All of them diversified. So buy us some Carmela stock. Okay. Buy us in the heading markets. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break and we come back how Joe Biden created a last minute mess for the Democrats. We'll get some election insights and calm from Face the Nation's Margaret Brennan. Support for Pivot comes from Fundrise Investing in private market real estate is unique. You're not dealing with the yo yoing whims of the stock market. Instead, you can create consistent income and unlock long term earning potential. Take the current real estate market for example. Interest rates are high, demand is low and so are the prices. It's a situation that fundrise is trying to make the most of, which means you can too. The Fundrise Flagship Fund is a $1.1 billion private real estate portfolio and right now fundrise is looking to expand it. It's a fund that's designed to deliver that long term earning potential that makes real estate investing so unique. You can get in on a diversified portfolio of some of the tried and true real estate investment strategies. You can add Fundrise Flagship Fund to your portfolio in minutes by visiting fundrise.com pivot that's f u n d r I-e.com pivot carefully consider the investment objectives, risk charges and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's perspective at Fundrise. This is a paid advertisement. Support for this show comes from Mercury. It's time banking did more and now it can. Your bank account is no longer just a place to hold money. With Mercury, your account powers all of your critical financial operations, giving you greater control, precision and speed. Pay bills the moment you need to and maximize your cash flow. Close the books faster by categorizing and syncing transactions effortlessly. Send invoices and track what you're owed. Share the spending power while keeping spend in check with corporate cards and get complete and accurate visibility into it all, all in one powerful account. Apply [e-mail] to experience how Mercury is transforming banking. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve bank and Trust members. FDIC support for Pivot comes from AT&T. What does it feel like to get a new iPhone 16 Pro with ATT? Next up anytime. It's like when you first pick up those tongs and now you're the one running the grill. It's indescribable, like something you've never felt before. All the mouthwatering anticipation of new possibilities, whether it's making a perfect cheeseburger or treating your family to a grand grilled baked potato, which you know will forever change the way they look at potatoes with att. Next up Anytime you can feel this way again and again. Learn how to get a new iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on AT and T and the latest iPhone every year with att. Next up Anytime ATT Connecting changes everything. Apple intelligence coming fall 2024 with Siri and device language set to US English. Some features and languages will be coming over the next year. $0 offer may not be available on future iPhones. Next up Anytime feature may be discontinued at any time, subject to change additional fees. Terms and restrictions apply. See att.com iPhone for details. Scott we're back with our second big story. Inevitably given next time we talk it'll be Election Day. Is what's going on that because it'll affect technology, it'll affect everybody. President Biden may be off the ballot, but he's back in the spotlight this week after appearing to say Trump supporters were garbage. He didn't quite say that on a call with Latino voters. Doesn't really matter. Biden later said he was describing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe's hateful language as garbage. And it was, I think that's it looks like that's what he said, but he has a problem talking sometimes. Kamala Harris has tried to distance herself from the remarks. She did indeed distance herself. But Trump sees on him dressing up as a garbage man, which I thought was a bad idea because he said he had garbage too. So now I'm like, oh, now you're making fun of. I don't think any of them are. Well, Kamala Harris tried to get out of it, but both Trump and Biden look like crazy old men. And also Trump stumbled, visibly stumbled when trying to get into the garbage truck, which has even got a lot of attention. He looks really old this week, I have to say. Suddenly he looked like my mother. I just, I don't know what happened. He suddenly, you know, the flat, just older, just older. My mother's 90 compared to Trump's 78, I guess. Are Biden's comments really matter? I don't think they do. I don't think anyone's thinking of Biden. I don't know.

[Scott Galloway]

It was a dumb thing to say late in the campaign. He should probably be saying nothing at this point. So it was kind of an unforced error and I have to catch all of this. I'm really trying to moderate my bias, and I realize it's impossible at this point, but I think that Tony Hinchcliffe's comments may in fact have a real impact on the ground. From what I hear, there are some Latino voters and Puerto Ricans who are pretty pissed off, and they do see some early signs that some of these folks, Folks are more excited to vote for Harris than they were previous to these comments. Biden's comments, I don't know. I don't know if that's.

[Kara Swisher]

Everyone was like. I was like, is he still here? What? Huh? Oh, there he is. I don't even believe. But I have to say Trump did once again, because I think he's the real fucked up saying things person in this particular part of the election. Biden was the winner on that when he was running, but now Trump is really kind of lapping him quite a bit with comments he made at a rally on Wednesday because women are scared of him. So what does he say? Listen, four weeks ago, I was saying, no, I want to protect the people. I want to protect the women of our country. I want to protect the women. Sir, please don't say that. Why? They said, we think it's. We think it's very inappropriate for you to say so. Why? I'm president. I want to protect the women of our country. They said. They said, sir, I just think it's inappropriate for you to say, pay these guys a lot of money. Can you believe it? They said, well, I'm going to do it. Whether the women like it or not.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm going to protect them.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm going to protect them from migrants coming in. I'm going to protect them from foreign countries that want to hit it, hit us with missiles and lots of other things. Oh, creepy. That gave me the creeps. Whether they like it or not, which is kind of his brand, right? I'm going to grab them by the pussy. Whether they like it or not, I'm going to do whatever I want. There's two more allegations of groping, which is like, just added to the pile of groping allegations, which I think are entirely true. Any thoughts?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I don't, you know, I talk about men's natural instinct should be a move to protection. This is not what we mean.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I don't think that's what you're talking about.

[Scott Galloway]

So look, I don't think these things matter. And unfortunately, again, I believe that these outrageous comments actually help them because they crowd out any serious conversation around their policies. Whether it's economic growth, whether it's what's inflationary, whether it's expanding services such that the sandwich generation can have an easier time taking care of their parents, whether it's trying to figure out a way to ensure the deficit does not result in massive interest rates on the next generation. You reverse any, any serious policy discussion, reverse engineers to whether you like it or not. Perfect is not on the menu that you should vote for Harris. But we don't have a serious conversation because all the oxygen is about fucking garbage trucks.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyway. Interesting. Joe Rogan, you've been talking about it being the podcast election, I assume I'm saying it's the Elon election. Has clarified that an interview with Kamala Harris is not off the table. Rogan posted on X that he declined the Harris campaign's offer to record an interview because he didn't want to travel to her and would have gotten only an hour to talk. He loves to go on for a while, which they should have known, honestly. He talks for like nine hours sometimes. He discussed it a little more on his podcast. Let's listen.

[Scott Galloway]

You could look at this and you.

[Kara Swisher]

Say, oh, you're being a diva.

[Scott Galloway]

But she had an opportunity to come here when she was in Texas and I literally gave them an open invitation. I said, anytime. I said, if she's done at 10 o'clock, we'll come back here at 10 o'clock. I go, I'll do it at 9.

[Kara Swisher]

In the morning, I'll do it at.

[Scott Galloway]

10Pm I'll do it at midnight. She's up, she wants to, you know, drink a Red Bull. Fucking party on.

[Kara Swisher]

I think she should try to talk to him. Still. Trump sat down with Rogan for a three hour interview, which really didn't move any needle, I don't think. I don't think he did very well on it.

[Scott Galloway]

He actually, I would disagree with that if you listen to it.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, I think he sounded old. I did listen to the old.

[Scott Galloway]

I do think it softened his image. I think that was a win for the Trump.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I felt like he felt old. That's what I got from it. Old man. Old man talking JD Vance recorded an episode on Wednesday. He was probably pretty good. Cause she's sharp on those things. So you think she should still try to talk to him? Is it too late?

[Scott Galloway]

Well, whatever's required, she should do it because look, we keep repeating this. Her going on rogue, he's not a gotcha kind of person. I think she'll do well in that format. I think sometimes when she's hard pressed on the spot for a snappy, quick, Obama like or buttigieg response, she's not good at that. In that format. And the fact that Joe, I think, tries to position people in their best light, present them in their best light.

[Kara Swisher]

No matter what they're saying. No matter what they're saying.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Kara Swisher]

Regardless of measles. You know, measles, vaccines too.

[Scott Galloway]

Don't worry about it.

[Kara Swisher]

You're a good guy. A friend of measles. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

But having said that, the thing I find a little bit off putting, quite frankly, is that as important as Joe is, as wealthy as he is, I do like valuing your time. I get it. If the Vice president, if you've interviewed one candidate, you're about to interview the.

[Kara Swisher]

Vp, you should go out of your way.

[Scott Galloway]

If the vice president calls you and says, I'd like to be on your podcast, you get on a fucking plane. I do think that's a little diva ish on his part. Now, having said that, that's his right. And given that's the conditions he's laid out, her going on that podcast is the same exposure as if she went on msnbc, CNN and Fox every night during primetime for a week. So should he get on a plane? Yes. He's not. Which means she should get on a plane. It's worth it.

[Kara Swisher]

She should. She should have done it then. I think it was a mistake. I think it's a mistake. He's very controversial. We get it. Doesn't matter. Just get on there and throw down with him. Drink a Red Bull. He'll love you. He'll tell you. Wait a minute. Maybe you all should vote. It'll definitely muddy the waters, that's for sure. That's what it'll do. And that's what you kind of want. And a followup to our discussion from earlier this week. Jeff Bezos has spoken out on the Washington Post decision not to endorse a presidential candidate. In an op ed that was in desperate need of editing for the post, Bezos said no quid pro quo of any kind was at work. We didn't necessarily think that. Acknowledge when it Comes to the appearance of conflict. I'm not an ideal owner of the Washington Post. I called that a no sh, Sherlock comment. He also called out podcasts and social media posts for spreading misinformation division. I feel like he was talking about us, Scott, but I don't know, maybe, maybe all of us. I feel like off the cuff podcast. That sounds like us. What did you think of his attempts at cleaning up the mess? They've now gotten to 250,000 subscribers since the announcement that there would be no endorsement. $30 million in revenue that they lost them.

[Scott Galloway]

That's about 12% of their subscribers have.

[Kara Swisher]

Digital subscriber base right now. But it's probably more. It's probably accelerated. Boy, has he shit the bed. And let me just tell you, it's not the reporters of the Washington Post, not some of the editors. Some of the editors have been sort of weak, weak kneed as far as I'm concerned. But boys, he made a mess of this, man. And that piece was very obnoxious, I thought, and very old school. I was like, oh, really? The media's not liked. Did you just check into this problem we've got and never mentioned Trump's attacks on the media, never mentioned social and search's impact on the media, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[Scott Galloway]

His response was well written. He attempted to debunk the notion that there was any connection between. He claims that he had no idea that Blue Origin was meeting with the Trump campaign. There's no getting around it. The optics are really bad. And generally speaking, in terms of governance, when you own a media property going into an election and you're the owner and you are not the publisher, you're not like Arthur Sulzberger in the building involved every day, you are just a, quote, unquote, passive owner. You stay the fuck out of their knitting. Leading up to an election of this. Of this anxiety and importance, where you.

[Kara Swisher]

Have a lot of business interests that are clear.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, you just. You have conflict. You want plausible. I love the term plausible deniability. So if they had screwed up and they decided to do this or not do it or whatever they did, he can say, folks, I spent $350 million of my own money because I think this is an important institution. Was it 250. Wow. He got it for a song, didn't he?

[Kara Swisher]

He did, yes.

[Scott Galloway]

Anyways, he spent $250 million to get a big fucking headache anyways. But if he'd said, I believe in this, and I think his initial motivation was actually Pretty noble here. And I would argue he's been a decent steward because he's kept his hands out. He should not be making editorial decisions. As a passive owner that occasionally shows up to talk to people, you know, to flex his biceps and talk to people and give them a rally speech, he should be able to say what, you know, I get to decide who runs the thing and then beyond that, they get to do what they think is best.

[Kara Swisher]

Let me just, let me make a further argument. Owners do this. They do, they do insert themselves. But for one, he never had. And to do it a week before the, you know, 10 days before the election was astonishing. Like, that he never had. And then he does right now. And then he's like, oh, it was like bad times or bad planning, terrible. I'm like, you know what? You were at a Katy Perry party. I saw pictures of you at sunset. You had no time, sir. He had plenty of time to, if this really meant a lot to him, to do it. I don't think he knew Dave Limp was meeting with Trump. I don't necessarily. But I do know that there doesn't have to be a quid pro quo to understand that your business interests are problematic here at best. Right? Not even at best. They are problematic. Second thing is his tone in this piece was someone who has just checked into the media ecosystem. I was literally like, 2008 is calling and wants its billionaire back, essentially. It was such an old idea of the media and without leaving in other factors that are so obvious to someone as smart as this guy was sort of perplexing. And then the tsk tone was really like, it's. Couldn't he have just said, did I make a fuck up? Because this is my fault. Clearly, this is all my fault.

[Scott Galloway]

I didn't read it that way.

[Kara Swisher]

I read it this as.

[Scott Galloway]

I read it as a solid letter with the right tone. The issue was, as you read it.

[Kara Swisher]

Though, nobody in media liked it, I can tell you that. It was like daddy was lecturing us about his own fuck up. He smashed the car into the wall. And it's not us. We didn't smash the wall into the car.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, okay, just one person's opinion. I read it.

[Kara Swisher]

No, everybody's opinion. But go ahead, go ahead. Your person.

[Scott Galloway]

Okay, so far as. As far as I know, I do have domain over my own opinion. All right, so this person's opinion is that the tone and it was well written and you made the points you needed to make. The problem is, if you look at the fact pattern and you look at the timeline. You read it and if you've been following this as I have, quite frankly, Jeff, it sounds as if you're lying. And so I thought the tone was right. I thought he made the right points. But quite frankly, after reading it, I just don't believe him. I don't believe this was all a coincidence and that he kind of. It just, it all stinks. And again, for me, it goes back to governance. When you're worth $150 billion and you're off doing other things which you deserve to do, have the right to do, and you buy a media company, you stay the fuck out of their heading. Especially two weeks before the election.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I don't know why he just didn't say I made a mistake. The guy who ran PR for him says he has convenient principles. Classic, he said A longtime advisor to Bezos who was around a long he was very much right with Bezos criticized his cowardly last minute decision by the washmost leadership to abandon presidential endorsements. That he believes the move reflected classic Bezos business principle about protecting your self interest by avoiding unnecessary mistakes. He said it was convenient principles. And I think he was right. I think this guy's a business guy. He didn't. This is Bezos. Anytime there was a mistake at Amazon and an actual mistake they made, Bezos never apologized and never and was indignant. And that's why I think I react this way because he used to do this all the time. When they made clear mistakes, it was our fault. It was always someone else's fault but himself, which is very classic tech, bro. But he can't do that here. I'm just saying here is the wrong place to do it.

[Scott Galloway]

But let's go meta on the notion or the concept of apologizing. Traditionally in business, when you said I own this, I got this wrong. I'm going to make this right. That was an opportunity to increase trust amongst your constituents. Unfortunately, in this ecosystem still with business, I do think it makes sense to apologize. But unfortunately most of the incentives now are to never apologize. And because the people you pissed off don't forgive you and everyone else is like, see, I told you all the incentives kind of line up around not only not apologizing but quite frankly doubling down. And until people, until, until people start saying good on him, he apologized, I'm subscribing back. But they don't it piss. I remember when, and this is a totally different thing, but when I was doing the show for Bloomberg Television and they asked me to do promos and I went and did these what I thought were funny and what they initially really liked.

[Kara Swisher]

You thought they were funny.

[Scott Galloway]

I appreciate that. And then they came out, they said, we have, Houston, we have a problem. You've offended some people in the newsroom. So we need you to say that you did this without our knowledge and we need you to apologize. And I said, I'll absolutely do the former. I'm not doing the latter because I'm not sorry and it wouldn't help anyone. So because apologizing one, I do believe in apologizing. I just apologized to my kids the other day and I do think that in business you have to say, I'm doing a business meeting today. I bet on a concept for our company that took everyone off track. I was wrong. I'm not going to apologize, but I'm going to acknowledge the mistake and say, I own this. I think in business good leaders do that. Unfortunately, with social media and the media, all you do is keep the cycle going. You know, admits mistake, admits it was a blunder. People attack you from both sides.

[Kara Swisher]

Could he have just taken it like this was my decision. I see the impact. I'm sorry to the. I see the internal. I've been called by dozens of Washington Post people, they really love this newspaper. And I just think he doesn't. He's acting like the Amazon CEO. I remember him to be in a situation that he cannot do that in. This is a very different creature. He did not buy it to make a lot of money. He can't treat it like it's Amazon and just leave. Get out, get out, get out. If you don't like it.

[Scott Galloway]

Every billionaire that goes into media leaves regretting it.

[Kara Swisher]

They should.

[Scott Galloway]

There's a wonderful movie all quiet on, on the Western front.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, it's a great movie.

[Scott Galloway]

And you know, it's just such an incredibly tragic story about these 17, 18 year old German kids who basically think they're going to be play a sport and end up in just the most brutal trench warfare watching their friends be maimed as they fight over the same hundred yards or 100 meters of land. And this is. I don't in any one way want to diminish what their experience but every. I can't think of a billionaire that's gone into media and thought that was fun. I mean you own a football team, you might end up selling it.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, he should have bought a football. He should have bought the baseball team.

[Scott Galloway]

You know, occasionally your fans don't like you, but on the whole, I think most billionaires who Buy a basketball or football team, think, yeah, that was a kick in the ass. And I got to hang out with players and it was fun. And all my friends thought I was cool. I name a billionaire, and there's probably been a dozen billionaires who have bought a media company recently.

[Kara Swisher]

Recently.

[Scott Galloway]

Name one who thought, wow, that was a great idea.

[Kara Swisher]

I agree, I agree. I think it's got to be in the hands, you know, here I'm giving a comment to Rupert Murdoc. He runs his things because he understands media. He does not. You may listen, he manipulates the Post, New York Post and stuff like that. I never had a problem with him at the. Never, never in a million years would he do this.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, he understands the Journal. He understands his position.

[Kara Swisher]

He does. He understands media. These guys think, if there's a nail, I'll hit it with a hammer. And the last part is, the problem is he's perpetrated a number of difficulties on this paper, including the hiring of Will Lewis with all that controversy. Right. So they've gone through that. That they've now gone through this. This is in a very short amount of time. It's just like making trouble here for these people who are trying their very best in a very difficult, speaking of political partisanship environment. And he's just brought nothing but shame on them in that regard, or mistakes. And you know, who's going to pay for this because he's not ponying up the money would be my guess, because he's quite cheap in many ways, is they're going to lay off reporters and then the quality of the product gets worse and then, you know, that's. It's unfortunate, Jeff. You can do better. This is not. This is not your Amazon warehouse or the people. Don't make them work on a door, Jeff. That was his big thing. Remember, we work on doors because we're cheap. Don't do that here. And you don't have to over fund this, but don't be such a. Just don't behave the way you're naturally inclined to here and maybe give these people a Falcon break because they're doing a great job.

[Scott Galloway]

But let's just review a few of these purchases and purchasers and think, did this work out? Remember when Jared bought the Observer? Yeah. Do you remember when Sam Zell bought the Tribune?

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, that was a mess. Yeah. He's also a jerk, but go ahead.

[Scott Galloway]

Do you remember that kid Chris Hughes who bought the New Republic?

[Kara Swisher]

He's a nice guy. Oh, that was a mess, wasn't it?

[Scott Galloway]

I think Lorraine Powell Jobs has done a good job. You know her better than I do. If she could go back in time, would she buy the Atlantic again?

[Kara Swisher]

I think so. I think she feels good. I think she's got some good people in place. I think she's. If you had to pick one, she's the best one. But it's a small property. Right.

[Scott Galloway]

Let's think must in Twitter. I'm not sure he would do it again. He's immolated $30 billion.

[Kara Swisher]

I understand, but I think he loves. He's got the attention.

[Scott Galloway]

It's worth attention. So much money.

[Kara Swisher]

It's a good investment. It's a small investment.

[Scott Galloway]

Benioff in time, maybe, but he bought that for scrap.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. These things are just Patrick Soon Chong.

[Scott Galloway]

Well. And we have a couple friends who we really like who just bought the Daily Beast or partnered with Barry Diller. I'll be curious what they think in a year or two years, because you have. You're trying to stem the flow of a river. I mean, you are swimming upstream in these traditional media companies. And in addition, the few times I've been in a newsroom, I've been struck about how talented these people are, how hardworking they are, and how fucking precious they think they are and that they shouldn't be subject to the same economic realities the rest of us are.

[Kara Swisher]

No, that is not. They get it now. They have gotten it now. I don't agree. I left the Post because of that. And I think every single person in media does understand that. They do not think they're special. They think they're less than special. I would disagree with you on that. In any case, we'll see where it goes. Maybe Kara Swisher will buy the Washington Post. That's. Apparently, it was written about recently, the.

[Scott Galloway]

Way the Washington Post. It should be a group of very wealthy people who see like a civic value, which the Washington Post does ask. They put together a trust of multiple parties. So no one personality gets crucified.

[Kara Swisher]

That's right.

[Scott Galloway]

They get to hire and fire the guy or gal who runs it. And that's it. That's it.

[Kara Swisher]

That's it.

[Scott Galloway]

And if they want to raise money or if they want to sell the Post, they have to come to this trust. But other than that, the trust is like a star chamber of people, safety in numbers.

[Kara Swisher]

Rich people, safety in numbers. And then say, have people like Karen Scott there to take the shit. We're good at it. And we can push around other reporters. You know, stuff like that.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm done being on boards I'm done.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, yes. No, I was thinking more my assistant for you. Anyway, let's bring in our friend of pivot. Margaret Brennan is the moderator of Face the Nation and cbs. This is chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret. Welcome.

[Margaret Brennan]

Thank you.

[Kara Swisher]

We've brought you here because we need to calm the fuck down. And you are. We always feel good when we go on Margaret Brennan's show. Cause you're so, like even handed and very clear and calming. So that's what your job here is.

[Margaret Brennan]

Thank you. I went to Catholic school all my life. So I just keep it all inside.

[Kara Swisher]

You keep it inside and later it.

[Margaret Brennan]

Comes out, it's all sublimated and then.

[Kara Swisher]

Rage comes out later. You know, rage eat or rage exercise or whatever. So Election day is fast approaching. Do think anything is going to change the minds of people who haven't voted yet? Everything is 50, 50, 50, 50, 50,. And I actually, it seems like it is indeed this time. 50, 50, right.

[Margaret Brennan]

That question of are there any unpersuaded voters left in a country that is this divided? I don't know the answer to that. What I can say is the fraction of the populace that I think the campaigns are most focused on are the voters who are on, on the line about whether or not they get in the car and they bother to go and show up on November 5th. The low propensity voter. So their minds might be made up, but they might feel fine just liking tweets or whatever from their couch. Whether or not they cast the vote is what particularly Democrats are concerned about. And that is where the campaigns are putting their emphasis because it's going to come down to turnout in a 50, 50 election and just an election potentially won on the margins, potentially here, one of the closest presidential races in history.

[Kara Swisher]

So why aren't the Republicans concerned about low propensity voters? Because, you know, this is the bro dude that doesn't get off the couch and may be in fact stoned. Like, you know, it's that gang who doesn't vote at all. Like, I know lots of those people.

[Margaret Brennan]

Well, what's kind of amazing, and it hit me in particular when I was out at the RNC this summer in Milwaukee, was realizing what Trump has done for his movement, not necessarily the Republican movement, which is to activate a lot of those low propensity voters. You know, the folks who are not Bush Republicans but are the Kid Rock Republicans who were loving that at the rnc, who were chanting the mass deportation now chants with the signs. He has activated that. And that is that base vote that at least says they are going to show up for him, even if they didn't show up in 2022 during the down ballot races. So congressional races where traditional Republicans were perhaps more concerned about showing up, and maybe that is a way of explaining why there wasn't that red wave in 2022. But there could be a difference. Different factor at play. The Trump factor himself in 2020.

[Kara Swisher]

They love him and want to vote for him.

[Margaret Brennan]

Exactly.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. Good to see you, Margaret. So inflation, bodily autonomy, immigration, kind of the issues that have been getting the most attention as the premier issues in the media. Do you think there's any one of those that will play a bigger or a smaller role than expected? Or is there anything we're not talking about, the media's not talking about that you think is going to play a bigger role?

[Margaret Brennan]

We see in our polling data that the economy is the number one issue. That's not surprising to me. I mean, like any country I've ever gone to and covered social unrest or political strife, it's always a kitchen table issue. So that's not surprising. What is surprising is the degree to which it is in Donald Trump's favor and the fact that people are so frustrated with the moment they're in that they have a bit of amnesia as to what the law last year and a half of the Trump administration was when the economy was shut down. That's surprising to me. The selective memory portion of this in terms of factors that people are voting around or could influence the vote, particularly in the past few days, I've been inundated with warnings and messages of concern about an exponential increase in attempts to manipulate the minds of voters. And we need to talk about that to make the public aware. I don't want to over index that and make people somehow anxiety ridden about their votes. But the degree to which there is there are foreign actors trying to hack people's minds, as some US Officials call it, is of concern and may be a real factor in, in the confidence level in our institutions and in the process. That concerns me because that's a day after November 5th story. That's the do we see violence the 6th of November or the 6th of January question.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. Once again, whether they get manipulated, they feel like it was stolen and they've been listen, it's been articulated by podcasters that have been paid by Russia. It's been articulated by podcasters who haven't been paid by Russia. Right now there's a story, story up about major podcasts on the Washington Post about major podcasts that are doing election denialism on repeat, constant repeat, which is a real problem. In terms of early voting, over 58 million people have cast their ballots, either in person or by mail. Very strong. Are there takeaways or indications how things might go from these early voting numbers? Now? More Republicans are now participating because Trump isn't saying not to. In terms of the gender gap, women account for roughly 55% of the early vote, while men are at 45%, according to Politico. Anything you're seeing, or does this seem normal, this amount of early voting? Just. There's more Republicans doing it there.

[Margaret Brennan]

There are more people showing up early. There are also more states who have made that possible. You know, so, like, there are changes that have happened between 2020 and 2024 to just have people go and get this out of their systems before November 5th, that will be a factor. Just in terms of that early impression of the vote vote, you can't say which party is up or down necessarily based on this early snapshot. You just can't. Each county, each state, many places, processes things in a different way, so it can look like a blue wave that then turns red the next day. So I'd stay away from that. But I would say it is interesting to me to see people show up early because that would suggest they're activated, which would suggest they're not apathetic or.

[Kara Swisher]

They don't want to deal with Election Day because they're worried about violence. That's one issue I have. I'm like, oh, really want to be.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm like, who knows? Not here where I am, I guess. But it definitely went through my brain, like, what possible horrible thing could happen on Election Day?

[Margaret Brennan]

Yeah. I mean, that might be how my brain is wired, frankly, to worry about those scenarios. But I've been trying to make an effort on our program, at least lately, to turn to Secretaries of State from these battlegrounds who we know are going to be so heavily litigated, like Pennsylvania.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. And most of them are fantastic. By the way, I did an interview with Brad Raffensperger and Adrian Fontes, and it was great. And they both were the same in a lot of ways, which was fantastic in that regard.

[Margaret Brennan]

It gives you confidence.

[Kara Swisher]

It does. It did. I was like, oh, phew.

[Scott Galloway]

And, Margaret, you've covered a lot of elections and you're in broadcast, which is struggling economically, but it's still relevant. How has the coverage of this election, just using it as a marker of time, how has the business of covering elections changed? What's different about your day to day job and what does it say about the state of media and how we report and shape people's views on the election.

[Margaret Brennan]

It's a great question, an anxiety inducing question. I mean there are a few different ways of answering it. But in terms of like how I think about my job on Sundays, I argue and I believe that the platform we have, the hour I have on Sundays is more important than ever. Because first of all, every single week I have to prove to the audience that they need to continue to have faith and trust in me because I'm really concerned about the. A winnowing away of trust in our institutions. And I make journalism one of those, the fourth estate, one of those that you need to be able to trust that I am accurately reporting to you what the Secretary of State and that state is doing and that your vote was counted, for example, or during COVID when there's a mass pandemic and I can actually tell you what the CDC is saying or not. You need to have that faith in me. So that is what motivates me and concerns me. And it's also frankly the one way I can exert control in an environment where we don't have much over the media environment writ large. I can control what comes out of my mouth and the hour I have and the territory we have and just try to amplify truth at the same time. It is now expected of me as a journalist to actively negate lies. Right. It's not just amplifying truth, it's a have to do that. And then also this other job of being able to fact check on the fly, all of that environment that we are in, in terms of information at your fingertips has changed the job that I have to do as a moderator because it's changed the politics and how politicians seek to engage.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. You push back rather well, but it's still a waste of your time. You're not getting to actual things. You're.

[Margaret Brennan]

It's frustrating.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you do it in a very classy way. There's so much screaming now that I find you're program. I don't mean calming, but it's definitely clear headed. Right. But it still wastes your time. I sometimes think is why does Margaret have to deal with this shit?

[Margaret Brennan]

Stop.

[Kara Swisher]

Just let's talk about the thing. So we're not likely going to know the results. Election day on November 5th. That's what people think. But who knows, it could be days or weeks where winners determine. What's your sense of what will happen. In terms of people challenging results, I don't know how much you have gotten out and how ugly it might get. What's your sense from doing a lot of these interviews? Again, I think a lot of the elected officials are incredibly competent, both Republican and Democrat, especially on the ground. They're really small localities and they're trying their best. But you've got these both. We've got very aggressive efforts by the Trump people in legal challenges would be my guess, if they fall behind. And obviously Kamala Harris is going to do the same. She's a lawyer by training, and obviously she's not gonna let this one get away from her if she thinks she's won. So what do you imagine is gonna happen? And we've already been through one insurrection and some real ugliness. Where do you see it going?

[Margaret Brennan]

I'm really concerned. I'm really concerned about political violence. We see it in our polling that we do here at cbs, concern not just if Donald Trump wins, if Donald Trump loses, like either scenario, the other party believes that there is potential for violence. There's some interesting data that Robert Pape, this professor at the University of Chicago has done where he saw on the left this polling question he put was, is violence justified to prevent Donald Trump from taking office? And it was pretty remarkable to see the number of yeses he got to that question. So it just reflects. Reflects the level of tension there is in this country where I've had some very concerning conversations with former officials in particular who were involved in 2020 and saw things up close, who are warning, look, this is very possible, but local police should be able to mostly handle security. We shouldn't be back at a scenario where we're looking at 2020, like protests with violence in major cities.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, there's certainly organizing. I've spent a lot of time recently on Facebook, on the militia sites. They're quite preparing themselves. It's really. And of course, Mark's letting them go right ahead and do it.

[Margaret Brennan]

Well, that's. I mean, this is a story, Kara. I mean, you know the space so well. But I've been talking to officials recently about that of like, how do you deal with the fact, like after. After January 6th, you saw Twitter and you saw Facebook, then what, try to take Donald Trump offline or actors who were promoting violence because they saw it actually realized all that seems to be gone. There are no speed bumps there, and it's a cesspool. And I'm concerned when I read FBI bulletins out there warning that it's Journalists is poll workers. These are election workers. I talked to these secretaries of state and they've got security. I mean, in Maricopa County, I asked the Secretary of State if they were putting snipers on the roof in Maricopa county because there was a news story in the United States of America.

[Kara Swisher]

Amazing. Astonishing.

[Margaret Brennan]

It is. And it concerns me, the information environment we are in, that there are voices who want to stoke that chaos and be chaos a and can be, you know, amplified by bad actors. And so I think in terms of having a calm voice, we need to acknowledge that. We need to call it out, but it is concerning for all of us.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Taking down the temperature, Scott.

[Scott Galloway]

Question, Margaret. Where do you get your news?

[Margaret Brennan]

I'm a news junkie, so I'm constantly reading. I read the Journal, I read the Times, I read the Washington Post, I read Politico. I read. Because of my time covering Wall Street, I still get some, you know, newsletters from financial analysts who I also really like. I like people who can bottom line things for me. So I read a lot of that the ft. But I go to trusted journalists and journalism sources. I do have to use X as an aggregate, but I had to take myself off of it when we did the vice presidential debate because of just the vitriol and the hate.

[Kara Swisher]

You don't have to be on it. Trust me. I had probably had four times the amount of followers. You don't need to be on it, but that's just me.

[Margaret Brennan]

Do you use it for intake or.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't. I don't use it at all. I don't use it at all. I don't find any difference. I can find it on all the news organizations and you know, we didn't talk about this earlier, but Threads has grown now to 275 million. It's gotten better. And I'm not a biggest fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but it's a clean place. You know what I mean? It's a relatively. There's a lot of tsk, tsk on it with a lot of on the left, but I don't mind that. They're just like, how dare you? And that's like, okay, I dare. But the stuff on Twitter is toxic and ugly and violent. So I'm not interested in it. Doesn't help me or help me get more insight at all. News reporters have got to get off of it right away. That's my feeling. What is your plans for election night? There's all kinds of different ways people are getting their news. But what are you all doing. And is it again, as Scott said, the money is tight at your organization. Although you've got a better new owner than others, let me say. I happen to know him. It's a low bar, but that's the facts. How are you preparing to cover it? And I assume you're assuming it's going to be a week long thing.

[Margaret Brennan]

We, we do assume that. And you know, in terms of allocation of resources, you still gotta have reporters in the field. So we are doing that. We are gonna have people in all the battlegrounds, the reporters. I'll be up in New York at our election studio that has been built out with all sorts of new technology to help us explain things more. I think we put a lot of deliberate thought into explaining to people, for example, in a super tight race, stop paying attention to the popular vote. Let's remind people the path to 270 electoral votes. Right. Be very deliberate in reminding people of the benchmarks they need to watch in the battlegrounds, in particular the seven states we're watching. So we'll be doing that. I'm digging into, because I'm a bit of a policy nerd, into some of the things that are at play, like the 10 states where reproductive health care initiatives are on the ballot, the degree to which that'll impact voter turnout, or not digging into the economy in particular. I mean, it's amazing that, you know, I was out in Erie, Pennsylvania last weekend and you look at western Pennsylvania and the perception of the economy is very different than what the economic data would tell you on a national scale. So understanding regionally what's impacting how people feel about the country we're in right now is something I've been putting thought into. And of course, national security, the world is on fire. So connecting those dots is something I'm going to be trying to do on election night with Nora O'Donnell and Maurice Dubois and John Dickerson and our whole team.

[Kara Swisher]

Right. Got a great team. And we're glad you're there, Margaret. We really are. You can catch Margaret every Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation. And she'll of course be part of the cbs, as she noted, election night coverage. And we look forward to watching.

[Margaret Brennan]

Thank you for having me. I love listening to the podcast.

[Scott Galloway]

Thanks, Margaret.

[Kara Swisher]

All right, Scott. Isn't she the best? I love Margaret.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, she's is.

[Kara Swisher]

She really is a pro.

[Scott Galloway]

Total pro.

[Kara Swisher]

Pro is how I think of her. Absolutely. She just makes connects, dots, which is why I like her. And not, not all these people do. All right, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Support for Pivot comes from Netflix. The critically acclaimed series the Diplomat, which I love, returns for its second season, starring Keri Russell, whom I adore. Door A deadly explosion in the heart of London shatters US Ambassador Kate Wyler's world. As she struggles to rebuild the lives that broke and help her team that's been split apart, Kate's worst fears unfold. The attack may have come from inside the British government. Watch the Diplomat, now playing only on Netflix. And after you binge the series, listen to the Diplomat, the official podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Scott Galloway]

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[Kara Swisher]

Case.

[Scott Galloway]

If you're trying to crack a problem involving advanced reasoning, need to distill the essence of complex images or graphs, or generate heaps of secure code, Claude is a great way to save time and money. Plus, the Anthropic leadership team was founded in AI research and built Claude with an emphasis on safety. To learn more, visit anthropic.com Claude that's anthropic.com Claude Support for the show comes from HubSpot. Picture this. You're at a party and someone asks you what you do as a marketer. How do you even begin to describe it? You have to generate leads, score them, contact them, create content, gather data, and tomorrow do it all again and wonder if it's even working. Marketers are spread way too thin, but HubSpot has a better way. With the help of Breeze and tools including Content Remix, now you can turn one piece of content into a suite of assets. Pinpoint the best prospects with Predictive lead scoring and level up your campaign's KPIs with a new analytics suite so your day to day becomes less busy work and more driving revenue through the roof. And most importantly, you'll have a way easier time describing what you do at parties. Visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction from you.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I don't know. Prediction aspiration wish. I do think that I think Vice President Harris is going to win the election. I think there's a few things that will carry her across the finish line. One, when I look at the attributes of this will be sexist girls. They're more organized. They are a little bit more meticulous. And I think when it comes to election day, I think a lot of young women are going to find a way to schedule time and get to the booth. And a lot of young men just bottom line, as someone who's raising young men, I affectionately call them dopes. Their prefrontal cortex does not catch up until the age of 25.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, they're not voting. Right. Because they're too young. That would be. Well, yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

117. I asked him who would you vote for? And he goes, well, I vote for Harris because you're voting for it. And I'm like, I hate and love that answer. I agree. Anyways. But my point is I think that you're going to see more. I think women are motivated, quite frankly. They're more organized, they're more meticulous. And I think, I don't want to say they take their civic response. They're just more organized. It's like girls do better in school. I think girls or young women are going to do better at showing going up on Wednesday. I bet more of them have already. And I don't have the data here too. I'd like to think that young men are getting the message around a need to protect or I'd like to think that that's a theme that's resonating here, that they do see that there is a certain level of demonization and attack for special interest groups. And I'd like to think they're stepping up. And three, and again, this might be confirmation bias. I'm just too emotional here. But I think the self inflicted unforced error around Puerto Rico with 4 to 500,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania could be very, very problematic. Could be a big issue.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. And it's so close to the election. It really is still close.

[Scott Galloway]

And again, my gut might be overridden by my emotions here, but my gut is that she's going to pull this out. That's my prediction.

[Kara Swisher]

Let me just read something. I'm going to pile onto thing. By the way, everyone should read Scott's endorsement of Kamala Harris. It's essentially if you want to have sex, vote for. If you want to be an incel, vote for Donald Trump. I think I pretty much boiled that down. Right. Is that correct? It's a very funny.

[Scott Galloway]

Lots more. And I knew this was going to happen. Lost more subscribers than I've ever lost in a single day.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh well, I think it's very funny and fun to read. I love that it's worth it.

[Scott Galloway]

What's the point of being wealthy and having people who love you if you don't speak your mind?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I know. But it also is a really good read. I think it's a great text. Someone, even Amanda was like, like I thought, Scott, what? And then I'm like, oh, good argument, Scott. She often goes, Scott, what? And then she's like, I must give it to him. In any case, I'll tell you, I have. Let me read this to you this. Wall street executives, political gamblers and cryptocurrency traders are piling on their bets that former President Donald Trump is returning to the White House. But the stock market may be telling a different story. US stocks have been on a tear with the bellwether S&P 500 climbing more than 10% since August. While the stock market is not necessarily representative of the broader economy, the S&P100's performance in a run up to election has historically been a strong indicator of whether the incumbent party's candidate will retain control of the White House, correctly forecasting all but four presidential races over the last 96 years. So interesting. So that's the actual stock market, which is very hard to manipulate. Is saying. And that's the one I would test. I have one quick prediction. I went and saw. I'm interviewing the director of Wicked soon, John Chu, who I love. I went to see Wicked yesterday and Amanda came with the movie Wicked. The movie Wicked.

[Scott Galloway]

It is. Oh, good for you.

[Kara Swisher]

Fucking spectacular. It's gonna win every Oscar. I gotta tell you, one of the best.

[Scott Galloway]

Who's in it?

[Kara Swisher]

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are the main characters. I have to tell you, both of them are. They are spec. It's like Barbie times two. I don't know what it is, but it has so much weight. Feels very Harry Potter in a way. All the other characters are astonishing. Also around Michelle Yeoh, Bo and Yang is in it. There's all these astonishing Jeff Gold Goldblum. It's an amazing movie and it's substantive. It is beautiful. The costumes, the special effects, and at the heart, a female. Speaking of females bringing it female friendship. These two Ariana Grande blew me the frig away. Erivo is the anchor of this movie, but they are so electric together as a relationship. It's gonna win all the Oscars. That's my prediction. Huge hit coming for Univers. I have to say I did not expect it. I thought it would be good because it's a good story. But it is something really fantastic. I recommend and it's going to be like a Taylor Swift concert for girls. And I think a lot of boys will go because it's got a Harry Potter vibe to it too. Anyway, that's our show. I want to mention several people reached out following our conversation last week about a mother suing character AI over her teenage son's death. A few of you pointed out a part of the story that was perhaps even more troubling. Let's listen.

[Scott Galloway]

While it was an excellent critique on character AI, you failed to mention the.

[Kara Swisher]

Role of the gun. The gun thing's a bit beyond us here, outside the US and for it to not even be part of the story really does send chills.

[Margaret Brennan]

Kevin Roos's full story detailed how the.

[Kara Swisher]

Parents knew prior to his death that their son was depressed and yet his stepdad left a gun unlocked in a drawer in the home.

[Scott Galloway]

Wasn't the step father contributing factor in this tragedy for not properly securing the.

[Kara Swisher]

Weapon in the first place? Place the story could have been about a tragic suicide attempt connected to character AI, but instead he is dead. Parents can't monitor their kids online activity 24. 7 but they can and they must keep guns out of their children's reach at all times. Those clips were from Steve Sachs, Kate Darrow, and Sierra Fox, and we really appreciate it. It was a very good point to make in in a terrible, terrible story. Not just about AI but about about guns in this country. Thanks to everyone who called in. We want to always hear from you and you're always incredibly thoughtful, most of you. So send us your questions about business, tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com pivot to by the.

[Scott Galloway]

Way, most is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

[Kara Swisher]

Just well, those are just letters to you, Scott, and I'm glad you did that endorsement. Scott. Fuck people if they. You know what? It was good. Go read It. Everybody.

[Scott Galloway]

And by the way, everyone, I just want to say everyone who owns some full refund coming your way.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, that's it.

[Scott Galloway]

Full refund.

[Kara Swisher]

And I endorse Scott Galloway. I have nothing to sell you.

[Scott Galloway]

There you go.

[Kara Swisher]

You can't unsubscribe. You don't have to listen to me. That's wrong.

[Scott Galloway]

I don't wanna be right.

[Kara Swisher]

Also, go to nymag.com pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. And don't forget to send us your photos of you dressed up as me or Scott on threads. One last note. Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, Scott, you talked with your favorite geopolitical expert, Ian Bremmer, on Prof. G. This week. Really, smart guy. Let's hear a quick clip.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, I'm talking in part about the.

[Kara Swisher]

Relationship between China and the United States that. I mean, we are heading towards confrontation, but both countries are trying to avoid sudden crises and ensure through a lot of high level communication that the relationship doesn't deteriorate any faster than it needs.

[Scott Galloway]

To to and any more broadly than it needs to.

[Kara Swisher]

The Americans are doing that, I think, in part because we've got our hands full with a couple of different wars and an election cycle. The Chinese are doing that because their economy is performing worse than I've ever seen it. Certainly since the early 90s, maybe since the 70s. I was just in Beijing a couple of weeks ago. I spent the week there and every provincial government is bankrupt. That's very thoughtful. From his mouth to everybody's ears. We cannot get in a war with China. Any kind of war.

[Scott Galloway]

Nice guy, too. More importantly, he's a good guy to have drinks with. Nice man.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Great. It was a great show. It was really good. And I urge everyone to go listen.

[Scott Galloway]

To it because Ian's smart, you're stressed and generous today. It's a unique cocktail I'm not used to. You are very high, strong and also generous.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. What do you want? Why wouldn't I be generous? If it was shitty, I would say it was shitty. But it's not shitty. Don't be shitty, Scott. That's all. Your take on Bezos is wrong. That's good advice on that essay. It was so badly written and I'm gonna go through it line by line with you. Okay, Just copy editing. Just copy editing. I'm just.

[Scott Galloway]

That sounds like torture.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I know, I know. My kids hate it when I do that. All right, Scott, that's the show we'll be back on. Tuesday with more Pivot. Please read us out.

[Scott Galloway]

Today's show was produced by Lara Neiman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertot and engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burroughs, Mia Saverio and Dan Schulon. Nishat Kirwat is Vox Media's Executive Producer of Audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the [e-mail] pod we'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and take stock of the blessings of the best decision they've ever made and that is to live and vote in America.

[Margaret Brennan]

Support for the show comes from AT and T. What does it feel like to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with AT and T Next up Anytime? It's like when you first light up the grill and think of all the mouth watering possibilities. Learn how to get the new iPhone 16 Pro with Apple Intelligence on AT and T and the latest iPhone every year with AT and T next up anytime ATT connecting changes everything. Apple Intelligence coming fall 2024 with Siri and device language set to US English. Some features and languages will be coming over the next year. $0 offer may not be available on future iPhones Next up Anytime feature may be discontinued continued at any time, subject to change additional fees terms and Restrictions apply. See att.com iPhone for details. Food insecurity still affects millions of individuals around the globe and Nestle, a global leader in nutrition, health and wellness, understands the importance of working together to create lasting change. Nestle's partnerships extend beyond just financial support, from building urban urban hoop houses to producing custom seasoning for food banks, Nestle and their partners actively engage with local communities, listening to their needs and working together to find innovative solutions. Nestle is committed to helping support thriving, resilient communities today and for generations to come. Together we can help to build stronger, healthier communities. Learn [e-mail].