Elon's Tesla Board Drama, Microsoft and Meta Earnings, and Bezos Bends the Knee

Summary

Pivot Podcast Summary

Title: Elon's Tesla Board Drama, Microsoft and Meta Earnings, and Bezos Bends the Knee
Hosts: Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway
Release Date: May 2, 2025

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1. Banter and Introductions ([01:39] - [07:03])

Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway kick off the episode with their characteristic banter, setting a lively and informal tone. They discuss upcoming engagements, including Scott's charity event and their interactions with notable personalities like Cheech and Chong. Their playful exchanges also touch on personal anecdotes, establishing a relatable and engaging rapport for listeners.

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2. Tesla's Board Drama and Elon Musk's Leadership ([07:04] - [16:52])

Key Points:

• Board Frustration: According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Tesla's board was dissatisfied with Elon Musk's focus on politics over the company's core business, particularly after falling sales figures. The board allegedly signaled Musk to dedicate more time to Tesla publicly.
• Board Chair Denial: Robin Denholm, Tesla's board chair, vehemently denied these reports via a statement on X (formerly Twitter), calling them "absolutely false" ([10:44] Scott Galloway).
• Impact on Stock and Leadership: Scott suggests that the board's potential search for a new CEO indicates serious concerns about Tesla's future, highlighting that it's unprecedented for a board to act against a high-performing CEO like Musk.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher ([10:17]): “The whole product pipeline that is going to stop this company from crashing. That it's about, it's going to go.”
• Scott Galloway ([10:44]): “They have to be open to lawsuits and everything else, even if Elon runs the place. But the numbers don't lie.”

Discussion: Kara and Scott delve into the implications of the board's reported actions, debating the veracity of the leaks and what it means for Tesla's governance. They ponder potential successors from the automotive sector and discuss the challenges of replacing a multifaceted CEO like Elon Musk.

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3. President Trump's 100-Day Mark and Press Interactions ([16:53] - [23:56])

Key Points:

• Contentious Interview: President Trump engaged in a challenging interview with ABC’s Terry Moran, marked by accusations and controversial statements.
• Handling of Images: Trump referenced a photoshopped image depicting a defendant with MS-13 gang tattoos, which was proven to be manipulated, showcasing his tendency to disseminate misinformation.
• Host Commentary: Kara praises Terry Moran for maintaining professionalism despite Trump's provocations, while Scott criticizes Trump's approach and highlights his propensity to lie.

Notable Quotes:

• Trump's Statement ([08:55] Kara Swisher): “The American people voted for secure borders, safe cities and sensible spending, and that's what they've gotten.”
• Kara Swisher ([19:59]): “It reminded me of that interview on CNBC with Deidre Bolson and Keith Rabois where basically Keith committed securities fraud...”

Discussion: The hosts analyze Trump's interview performance, emphasizing the challenges journalists face when interrogating a president who frequently resorts to falsehoods. They commend Terry Moran's ability to navigate the interview with dignity and critique Trump's administrative strategies and public statements.

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4. Apple’s App Store Antitrust Ruling ([23:57] - [27:17])

Key Points:

• Judge's Ruling: A federal judge ruled against Apple's App Store practices, stating that Apple violated antitrust laws by enforcing a 27% commission on external sales, contrary to previous orders allowing external payment options.
• Impact on Apple: This decision threatens a significant portion of Apple's $100 billion annual services revenue, potentially forcing Apple to adjust its App Store policies.
• Market Reaction: Kara and Scott discuss the implications for Apple's dominance and the broader tech ecosystem, pondering whether Apple will comply or appeal the decision.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher ([24:47]): “The biggest toll booths in the world are Google and arguably Apple's App Store.”
• Scott Galloway ([25:55]): “I have no idea. It seems like they just don't want to do it.”

Discussion: The hosts explore the ramifications of the antitrust ruling on Apple, debating whether the company will adhere to the judge's orders or seek legal appeals. They consider the potential for increased competition in the app marketplace and the broader implications for digital commerce.

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5. Microsoft and Meta’s Impressive Earnings ([30:09] - [35:40])

Key Points:

• Microsoft's Growth: Microsoft reported a 13% increase in revenues, with its Azure cloud unit experiencing a 33% revenue surge. The company is praised for its diversified and robust business model, making it resilient against economic slowdowns.
• Meta’s Performance: Meta saw a 16% revenue growth, driven by AI advancements and targeted advertising. Despite a $4.2 billion loss in its Reality Labs division, Meta remains optimistic with its CapEx forecasts.
• AI Integration: Both companies are heavily investing in AI, with Meta launching its Meta AI app to compete with ChatGPT, leveraging its vast data and advanced recommendation engines.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott Galloway ([31:17]): “Microsoft has exposure to the cloud. It's a very diversified, robust business. It's really well managed.”
• Kara Swisher ([32:52]): “Their recommendation engine is contributed to a 35% increase in time spent on Threads...”

Discussion: Kara and Scott delve into the strong earnings reports from Microsoft and Meta, highlighting how their investments in AI and cloud computing are paying off. They commend Microsoft's leadership under Satya Nadella and Meta's strategic focus on AI-driven advertising and product development despite challenges in its Reality Labs division.

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6. Economic Impacts of Tariffs and Supply Chain Disruptions ([35:41] - [45:43])

Key Points:

• Tariff Effects: The Trump administration's tariffs are blamed for contracting the US economy, with significant impacts on supply chains, particularly affecting ports like Los Angeles.
• GDP Contraction: A negative GDP growth in Q1 2025 is discussed, attributed to reduced consumption and increased imports due to tariffs.
• Impact on Businesses: Small and medium-sized businesses are disproportionately affected as they lack the lobbying power to secure exemptions from tariffs, leading to supply chain paralysis and potential layoffs.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher ([39:58]): “American. America is the land of Stuff, we love our shit.”
• Scott Galloway ([43:47]): “Truckers, unloaders, people around it, restaurants around it...”

Discussion: The hosts analyze the broader economic ramifications of the Trump administration's tariff policies, emphasizing the strain on small businesses and the impending shortages in retail due to disrupted supply chains. They discuss the likelihood of continued economic contraction and the social impacts of reduced consumer spending power.

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7. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Tariff Plans, and Trump’s Interference ([45:57] - [53:59])

Key Points:

• Amazon's Pricing Strategy: Amazon considered displaying tariff costs transparently on product pages, leading to backlash from the Trump administration, which labeled it a political act.
• Bezos’s Response: Jeff Bezos reverted Amazon's stance, clarifying that the pricing changes were not approved and would not be implemented as planned.
• Political Pressure: Kara criticizes the Trump administration for pressuring large corporations like Amazon through personal interventions, disadvantaging small businesses.
• Amazon vs. Starlink Competition: Discussion on Amazon's Project Cooper—a $10 billion satellite initiative aimed at rivaling SpaceX’s Starlink network—highlighting the competitive dynamics in the satellite internet sector.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher ([50:31]): “Airbnb and Amazon have all come under criticism for not putting on.”
• Scott Galloway ([52:46]): “He's such a caver. He wants all the Trumps to be at his wedding.”

Discussion: Kara and Scott explore the intersect between corporate strategies and political interference, using Amazon's failed tariff transparency initiative as a case study. They critique how political pressure can undermine corporate policies and fairness, particularly disadvantaging smaller enterprises. Additionally, they discuss Amazon's ambitious Project Cooper, positing it as a formidable competitor to SpaceX's Starlink.

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8. Predictions and Future Outlook ([54:37] - [59:28])

Key Points:

• Project Cooper: Kara predicts that Amazon's Project Cooper will become a major brand by the end of the year, challenging SpaceX's Starlink dominance in the satellite internet market.
• Market Competition: Scott highlights the increasing competition for Elon Musk's ventures, suggesting that Tesla and SpaceX will face more rivals aiming to emulate their success.
• Brand Awareness: Emphasis on the importance of brand awareness in driving consumer purchases and future monetization, with Project Cooper poised to leverage Amazon's Prime ecosystem for widespread adoption.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher ([55:26]): “The best data... Meta has more coal to throw into the furnace to process and learn from.”
• Scott Galloway ([56:43]): “You can't take your eye off the ball...”

Discussion: In the prediction segment, Kara anticipates strong growth and brand establishment for Amazon's Project Cooper, forecasting its impact on both consumer and investment landscapes. Scott agrees, noting the competitive pressures on Musk's enterprises and the strategic moves by big tech companies to maintain market leadership through innovation and diversification.

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9. Conclusion and Final Remarks ([59:29] - [62:53])

Key Points:

• Team Dynamics: Both hosts acknowledge the importance of strong support teams, referencing their own production teams and praising colleagues for their contributions.
• Final Thoughts: Kara underscores the significance of competition in fostering innovation and preventing monopolistic dominance. Scott reiterates the potential of Project Cooper and the necessity for regulatory bodies like the FTC and DOJ to ensure fair competition.
• Closing Remarks: The episode wraps up with acknowledgments to the production team and a tease for future discussions on tech and business topics.

Notable Quotes:

• Kara Swisher ([62:23]): “The key to success is the ability to attract and retain people more talented than yourself.”
• Scott Galloway ([62:04]): “We should go on a tour. We should do Pivot. Live pivots in a strip club.”

Discussion: Kara and Scott conclude the episode by highlighting the critical role of effective team collaboration in achieving success. They emphasize the need for continuous competition to drive technological advancements and maintain market dynamism. The hosts also encourage listener engagement through predictions, fostering an interactive community around the podcast.

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Key Takeaways:

• Corporate Governance: Tesla's alleged board actions against Elon Musk signal potential leadership challenges, reflecting broader issues of CEO-board dynamics in high-growth companies.
• Political Influence on Business: The Trump administration's interference in corporate policies, particularly with Amazon, underscores the tension between business autonomy and political agendas.
• Antitrust and Market Regulations: Apple's antitrust ruling represents a significant shift in digital commerce regulations, potentially paving the way for increased competition and reduced monopolistic practices.
• Tech Earnings and AI Investments: Microsoft and Meta's robust earnings, driven by AI and cloud services, highlight the ongoing transformation and investment trends within the tech industry.
• Economic Policies and Supply Chains: Tariff-induced economic contractions and supply chain disruptions pose substantial challenges for US businesses, particularly SMEs, emphasizing the need for strategic policy adjustments.
• Future of Satellite Internet: Amazon's Project Cooper emerges as a key competitor to SpaceX's Starlink, indicating an intensifying race in satellite-based internet services.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Kara Swisher ([10:17]): "The whole product pipeline that is going to stop this company from crashing. That it's about, it's going to go."
• Scott Galloway ([10:44]): "They have to be open to lawsuits and everything else, even if Elon runs the place. But the numbers don't lie."
• Kara Swisher ([19:59]): “It reminded me of that interview on CNBC with Deidre Bolson and Keith Rabois where basically Keith committed securities fraud...”
• Kara Swisher ([24:47]): “The biggest toll booths in the world are Google and arguably Apple's App Store.”
• Scott Galloway ([25:55]): “I have no idea. It seems like they just don't want to do it.”
• Kara Swisher ([32:52]): “Their recommendation engine is contributed to a 35% increase in time spent on Threads...”
• Kara Swisher ([39:58]): “American. America is the land of Stuff, we love our shit.”
• Scott Galloway ([43:47]): “Truckers, unloaders, people around it, restaurants around it...”
• Kara Swisher ([50:31]): “Airbnb and Amazon have all come under criticism for not putting on.”
• Scott Galloway ([52:46]): “He's such a caver. He wants all the Trumps to be at his wedding.”
• Kara Swisher ([55:26]): “The best data... Meta has more coal to throw into the furnace to process and learn from.”
• Scott Galloway ([56:43]): “You can't take your eye off the ball...”
• Kara Swisher ([62:23]): “The key to success is the ability to attract and retain people more talented than yourself.”

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This episode of Pivot offers a comprehensive analysis of significant developments in the tech and political realms, providing listeners with insightful commentary and expert predictions. Whether discussing the intricacies of corporate leadership at Tesla, the influence of political figures on major businesses, or the latest earnings reports from giants like Microsoft and Meta, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway deliver a nuanced exploration of the forces shaping today's economy and technology landscape.

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

Support for the show comes from Better Help. Good mental health resources are more available than ever, but for many people, getting help is still a challenge. This Mental Health Awareness month could be a great time to check in on yourself. BetterHelp has over 10 years of experience matching people with the right therapists from their diverse network of more than 30,000 licensed therapists. Plus, BetterHelp is completely online, helping people access affordable, convenient therapy wherever they are. We we're all better with help. Head to betterhelp.com pivot to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H E L p.com pivot this episode.

[Scott Galloway]

Is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist. And I'm Liz Ann Saunders, 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.

[Scott Galloway]

Impact on your investments.

[Kara Swisher]

We know that investors have a lot.

[Scott Galloway]

Of questions about the markets and the.

[Kara Swisher]

Economy, and we're here to help. So download the latest episode and [e-mail] oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Scott Galloway]

Support for this show comes from HubSpot. Growing a business can feel impossible, but HubSpot's customer platform can help. It's powered by Breez, their suite of AI tools, so you can generate more leads, close more deals, and scale your service fast. With breeze agents handling the busy work, customers are cutting sales cycles in half and saving hours on work each week. Best of all, you see the results in days, not months. Visit HubSpot.comai to learn more.

[Kara Swisher]

Cheech and Chong what is the likelihood someone's going to spark up?

[Scott Galloway]

I'm going to get a whole bag of weed. That's what I'm going to do. Hi everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. I flew all night and boy, are my arms tired. I did a joke.

[Kara Swisher]

Where did you come in from?

[Scott Galloway]

D.C. to San Francisco.

[Kara Swisher]

D.C. to. Oh, you're in your favorite place, San Francisco.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, indeed. I'm so excited.

[Kara Swisher]

And you're collecting a bunch of awards. And you're also look what I'm wearing.

[Scott Galloway]

I know you're wearing the Bill Maher thing. It's very attractive.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm wearing a Bill Maher shirt because I know you're going on Bill Maher. Hugely jelly. And I'm also wearing my Beverly Hills Hotel Hat. And I need you to go down to the pool, go to the polo lounge, have a few makers and gingers, say hello to Jorge, the concierge there, and any Russian woman that gives you eye contact, return her eye contact, go down to the counter for breakfast, go to the pool, put on a big pair of black sunglasses and any modestly attractive woman that walks by and put an unlit cigarette in your mouth and go, jackie, marry me. I make you very happy woman.

[Scott Galloway]

I am none of this. I am in and out.

[Kara Swisher]

So good there.

[Scott Galloway]

Out. I am in and out. I come back to San Francisco because I have to get a second board on Saturday and also do a charity.

[Kara Swisher]

A charity like this? Stop it.

[Scott Galloway]

I am. I'm doing a charity.

[Kara Swisher]

I do so, by the way, Cheech and Chong and Kara Swisher. That was not the crossover I was expecting.

[Scott Galloway]

Yes. Oh, they're the main guests. Yeah. And then Kevin McCarthy and I are on the.

[Kara Swisher]

Kevin McCarthy. Well, at least one of you has a dick and it's not the former speaker.

[Scott Galloway]

What? What? I don't even know. I don't get it. It's fine, whatever.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm saying that you bring more masculine energy than Kevin McCarthy in the dark. Lacks a bad backbone and testicles that produce testosterone, which make you more risk aggressive and have certain leadership sk. Which he brought none of.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I know. I don't know why. I don't know why. Well, we'll see.

[Kara Swisher]

And it really paid off for the guy. All that ass kissing really paid off.

[Scott Galloway]

If he does an ass kiss the way the Trump cabinet did yesterday to him, the suckuppery, it was like, you know, Ann Coulter even was like. It was like Kim Jong Il.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, but she's getting paid. They all find their backbone when they're out of his orbit, which does us no fucking good. You watch, tomorrow he'll be. Or Friday he'll be really reasonable. And because they all find sanity and all realize I want to go on. I want to be a guest on msnbc. I want a corporate board to hire me and realize I'm not as fucking crazy when it mat than when it actually mattered. When I'm supposed to be saying, I don't know.

[Scott Galloway]

I think these people sound like they believe it. They do. They were such suck ups. And then Crazy RFK Jr. You noted that the whole thing about child trafficking.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, the guy who said that when he was a child, he. There were no kids with diabetes. My favorite one was that the Spanish flu was a vaccine induced pandemic.

[Scott Galloway]

And then the whole child trafficking Thing. What was he talking about? What on earth? They must sit there and be like, that's like one of the. It's so weird. It is like. It's like North Korea. It was crazy. And then himself with the dolls. Nobody can have any dolls. You can't have two dolls. Oh, yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

But let me ask you this. Do you think there's any veracity to the notion that Trump says, all right, I want people to look away from the fact that I'm crashing the economy and deporting 4 year olds with stage 4 cancer, so just be as fucking crazy as you want. If people want to have their hair on fire about the stupid shit you say, have at it. Anything that distracts them from the fact that I am crashing the global economy. The US Is literally going to be like, in a state sale where there's no will and people just show up and fight over mom's Sub Zero refrigerator. Every country in the world is now saying, oh, we want that part of your trade. Oh, we want your PhD students.

[Scott Galloway]

It was something. It was something. And we'll talk about it more. But seriously, it was so, like, I've never seen. I mean, you're supposed to be sort of peppy at those cabinet meetings, but not like that. It was like, ew. And the thing is, Donald Trump was the craziest of them. And I was like, this is like they were competing for crazy. And once again, he wins. He wins the prize. In this case, like when he's always saying he wins at the golf club, this time he won. On that particular praising himself, he kept adding to their, oh, don't forget the firemen. Don't forget the.

[Kara Swisher]

This. I don't know. I'm excited to see you with Speaker McCarthy. He reminds me of my dog. And that is when I ask him to speak. He will, but it doesn't mean fucking.

[Scott Galloway]

Anything if he depends it and blames.

[Kara Swisher]

That was a joke. You didn't even give me a laugh on that.

[Scott Galloway]

No, I didn't. Sorry. Go say it again.

[Kara Swisher]

When?

[Scott Galloway]

Go ahead. Go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Speaker McCarthy is similar to my dog. And that is when I ask him to speak. He will, but it doesn't mean anything. I think that's really good. I think that's really good. I expected a laugh from you. I need your affirmation, Kara Swisher, by the way. I want to go to that Bill Maher after party with Cheech and Chong. What is the likelihood someone's gonna spark.

[Scott Galloway]

Up, get a whole bag of weed? That's what I'm gonna do. Listen, they invited you. Speaking of weed, they invited you to Club Random. They want you in that little. You should go for your book tour.

[Kara Swisher]

That intimidates me.

[Scott Galloway]

No, it's like, up in the hills at this beautiful house.

[Kara Swisher]

No, no, no. But they get high. Bill. Bill gets smarter when he gets high. If I got high, he'd wanna talk about transhumanism. I'd be like, dude, you got any frozen Snicker bars? I just don't. I get dumber.

[Scott Galloway]

No, no, you need. It's comfortable, you'd like it. You could have drinking. You don't have to get high. I didn't get him.

[Kara Swisher]

He intimidates me. I don't really know the guy. He doesn't hang out. He hangs out with everyone after the show but me, and I don't really know him. He kind of intimidates me. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, my God, Scott.

[Kara Swisher]

And then on five, everything happened to.

[Scott Galloway]

You in high school. And it continues to this day.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, you think I think what?

[Scott Galloway]

You think.

[Kara Swisher]

You think Amy Atkins not letting me French kiss her and then going to the prom with some other guy that was three years older? You think I still remember that? You think that still makes me insecure?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

You think the four women I asked a prom who said, no, you don't. You think that doesn't have resonance?

[Scott Galloway]

Prom thing. I'm not gonna. I told you, I went to four proms each year, but I'm not gonna go.

[Kara Swisher]

Here we fucking go.

[Scott Galloway]

Here we go.

[Kara Swisher]

In between collecting awards and having sex with straight men.

[Scott Galloway]

And I'm not even gay. I'm straight, but go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Sorry, that was my problem. I'm way too straight. How awesome a gay man would I make? Oh, my God.

[Scott Galloway]

I know.

[Kara Swisher]

My ex used to say, gay by day, straight by night.

[Scott Galloway]

Okay, okay. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. I'm a little slow because it's early here in California. Beautiful sunrise happening right now. Lots going on. Microsoft and Meta's latest earnings. Wow, those were pretty impressive. And Donald Trump getting pissed with Amazon. And then when they kissed his ass, it was fine. But first, Tesla's board was reportedly looking for a successor to Elon Musk last month, according to the Wall Street Journal. Journal says the board got frustrated with falling sales in Musk's D.C. focus. You think? And told Elon he needed to publicly announce he would spend more time on Tesla. Tesla's board chair, Robin Denholm, denies the reports. She has almost no credibility. She just backs up her back her trunk, and they fill it with money. Posting on X that they are absolutely false. Not just false, but absolutely false. Meanwhile, Musk said goodbye to the President Trump's cabinet on Wednesday, claiming Doge has so far saved $160 billion. It's pathetic, actually, and most people think that number is not even accurate. He so wearing not one, but two Trump hats. It was so, so, so painful. Let's listen to the goodbye.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, they say I wear a lot of hats, and as you can see, it's true. Even my hat has a hat. You know, the American people voted for secure borders, safe cities and sensible spending, and that's what they've gotten. A tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first hundred days. As everyone has said, it's more than has been accomplished in any administration before ever. Period.

[Scott Galloway]

More lies. More lies. Must have had things.

[Kara Swisher]

I do agree that more has been accomplished. It's just how you would define accomplished. I think in 100 days, the entire world economy is being reshaped around. I mean, the kind of post World War II order has absolutely been. Is being reshaped. And you're going to see. I mean, first off, Prime Minister Carney was elected because of Trump. And you're about to see the same thing happen in Australia because the other party has become associated with, you know, the other party went on kind of this dei. They were trying to take a page out of Trump's notebook and they realized, oh, this isn't working out well.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. Even though, you know, they would do well there, they were Murdoch there and stuff like that. So. So the Tesla, the hat thing, I just. It's so painful. He's worn seven. Remember, he wore the big hat and then he had the gothic. Like, it's sad. He's 53 years old and we talk.

[Kara Swisher]

About him as if he's a teenager. He's about to start getting AARP mail.

[Scott Galloway]

I mean, honestly, tell me about the Tesla board thing. Now, they're denying it, but it makes. They have got to be open to lawsuits and everything else, even if Elon runs the place. But the numbers don't lie. I mean, gravity is a thing. Like, I believe they were looking for a CEO, or I believe they told him he needed to publicly say he's gonna spend more time at Tesla.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I don't. So I don't know. Obviously, we don't know if this is true or not. And if it is true, it reflects a couple things. One, there's someone leaking it. Two, it probably means the stock is. And this isn't financial advice is a really great short. Right. Now because it means that they're going to cut this guy a lot of slack because he's built an incredible company and they've all made a shit ton of money because of Elon Musk. And so there's gotta be a ton of goodwill just based on what they've put up with so far. They have put up with more aberrance, unacceptable behavior from a CEO than any board in history. And so for them to cross the line means that there's absolutely nothing in the product pipeline that is going to stop this company from crashing. That it's about. It's going to go. Sometimes it's darkest before it's pitch black. It feels like if they are in fact looking for, taking the bold step of looking for a CEO, it means that they look at this company like, wow, there is. We are in really big trouble. And I mean it just. But the thing I didn't agree with is that people said who would take that job. A lot of people would take that job.

[Scott Galloway]

Okay, before I get to that, tell me you've been on board. I have not. Give me the strategy of leaking something like this. I think it. The Journal has been right about the drug use. It was right about. They did a lot of board stuff. So they know that board that has been very accurate has turned out to be accurate. They even did a story about him sleeping with Sergey Brinley. Wife at the time accurate.

[Kara Swisher]

The vice presidential candidate.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, right, her. Anyway, I just feel like they wouldn't write this if they didn't have it. I have a lot of regard for the Journal and so someone on that board was telling them or more than one person or there was some messaging happening here to Elon himself. So if you're on a board, how does this look?

[Kara Swisher]

Leaks usually are. Okay. Our stocks getting so on a meta level, it is amazing how much boards will put up with when the stock is going up. And it's amazing how much unfair blame they'll put on the CEO when the stock is going down. This notion that boards, this bullshit virtue signaling narrative that they adopted and the odds that it's about stakeholder value, it's not. It's about shareholder value. If the shares are going up in price, you know, he can be banging his assistant and her dog and will find reasons to, to, you know, say you, you're going to rehab, but it's better now and you know, we'll figure out a reason to bring you back or maintain you're the CEO and call you chairman when the stock's Going down, you're in trouble, you're on the Green Mile all the time. At least for two or three years. A new CEO gets two to three years. And a lot of CEOs that are there for a long time will populate the board with their golf buddies and the board becomes ineffective in terms of actual leaks. Sometimes it's a board level thing where they say, all right, there's a narrative out there that we're an irresponsible board and that we need to find a new CEO. And so let's leak it that we're looking for a new CEO. I don't think he would have wanted this message to be leaked because it makes him look bad. When you have. I've been on boards where there's leaks, where there's a proxy fight and the board is at each other's throat and then one or more people start leaking shit. That's when boards start to really digress and dissolve into chaos because nobody trusts each other. Everyone's like, okay, who the fuck here is leaking? And most of the boards I have been on, generally speaking, they don't leak. They don't. They just don't. They realize it's bad for the governance. It creates tremendous distrust within and among board members. They don't want to work with each other. You know, there's two board meetings, one of the people on X side, one on Y side. So I don't. I'm confused a little bit by this because they don't want to announce this until they have a new CEO. So someone leaking this, I don't think it's on the board. I don't think it came from the board.

[Scott Galloway]

You don't? Okay, so when you. Who would be the CEO? You said that. I mean, who would do this? And more to the point, if he's running it, what does he do? What does he do except go on and on and try to do this hypnotic thing? And by the way, Henry Blodgett wrote a piece about my idea and likes it. The idea of merging Tesla with xai. FYI, I said I rendered you speechless. Which I did.

[Kara Swisher]

I did. Which isn't easy to do.

[Scott Galloway]

So who would be the CEO? Or what should Elon do as CEO? Should they replace him? And if they don't, and he is the CEO and he stays, what should he do? Because he seems entirely uninterested in the business, or pretending it's another business. We're going to have millions of Optimus Primes. This is a data company or we're Going to have Robo taxis, none of which exist. No products exist. It feels like a cybertruck part two, essentially. Which was a huge dud, by the way.

[Kara Swisher]

Who should run it? So first off, he shouldn't have been CEO two or three years ago when he started committing securities fraud and started getting really awful accusations and decided that he wanted to be CEO of three or four companies who shouldn't have been CEO. They should have said, all right, he.

[Scott Galloway]

Has many hats, in case you're interested.

[Kara Swisher]

If you want to do this, you can be chairman and have huge input. But we need to bring in a full time person who's CEO and has the license to make decisions and has accountability for these decisions. In terms of who should be CEO, I think it needs to be someone from the automobile sector. And there's a lot of great. There are a lot of great leaders in the automobile sector. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being someone from outside of the U.S. i think that person in their contract says I have total support of the board and if something goes wrong and you fire me because I'm not getting along with Elon, I'm getting the most ridiculous fucking severance package. Because this guy's going to need or gal is going to need the mother of all kind of parachutes. They could go more design or more cool product or something around manufacturing. Pick someone from the cloud or something. But I think the automobile sector is so much about. I think it's such a unique industry and so complicated and so much about supply chain that I think they would want someone from the automobile sector. This is a long winded way of saying I don't know.

[Scott Galloway]

And what if he stays? Very briefly, what if he stays? What should he do? Because he keeps. He's the only can do his flim flammery around the robots and the.

[Kara Swisher]

He should do what you're suggesting. He should do a sleight of hand and merge it with Xai and pretend that it's not an automobile company to get people to look away from the fact that his automobile sale, his pipeline is weak and his sales are crashing.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. We'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm sure he looks like unhappy to be back working on that. He seems entirely unexcited by it, which is hard to do. I understand that feeling. If you don't want to keep doing the same thing. But tell me about it. But he made a disaster at doge, so he's gonna make another disaster here. Cause he's uninterested Speaking of flimflammery, President Trump sat down for a contentious interview marking 100 days in office with ABC News Terry Moran, who he's never heard of, apparently. It was so ridiculous. Some highlights. I gave you this chance, Terry, and you fucked me. In regards to Pete Hegseth, the President remained optimistic, but when asked, he wouldn't say he had 100% confidence in him. Calling it a stupid question, which is his go to. Trump dismissed backlash to tariff, saying they were just what people voted for and everyone's going to be just fine. When discussing the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. This was a whopper. When the administration, whom the administration sent to El Salvador in error, Trump referred to a photoshopped image of MS.13 on Garcia's knuckles. Let's listen and you'll pick out one man.

[Kara Swisher]

But even the man that you picked out, he's got a.

[Scott Galloway]

He said he wasn't a member of a gang. And then they looked and on his knuckle he had ms, there's a dispute. Wait a minute, wait a minute. He had MS.13 on his knuckle.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, he had some tattoos that are interpreted that way.

[Scott Galloway]

But let's move on. Wait a minute. Okay, Terry, Terry, Terry. He did not have the letter MS.13. It says MS.13.

[Kara Swisher]

That was photoshopped.

[Scott Galloway]

So let me.

[Kara Swisher]

That was Photoshop Terry. You had. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime.

[Scott Galloway]

You know, you're doing the interview. I picked you because frankly I, I never heard of you. But that's okay. Oh my God, he's such a negger. It's so amazing. Like neg, nag, neg. But let me say it was photoshopped. He doesn't know that that was trying to say the tattoos there represented Ms. 13 and someone put those to give reference. And he's insisting that Ms. 13 was actually on there. It was total addlement. Or just lying almost continually. Everything he does, he breathes, he lies. Any thoughts on that interview?

[Kara Swisher]

The thing that struck out for me was first off, Terry Moran is a world class journalist. He's been covering the Supreme Court and I believe the White House for a while. He's in this. I thought he put on a master class. And I think the big winner here was Terry because this is an impossible position. You have to maintain some decorum and dignity and respect for the office. And so when the President says, no, you gotta trust me on this, it's this, it's hard, it's really hard to push back and he was forceful yet dignified and attempted to show grace and not just say, okay, Mr. President, stop fucking lying. Stop lying, please.

[Scott Galloway]

See, that's what I would have done. Yeah, but I would have had the picture.

[Kara Swisher]

But that's why you'll never interview the President. Because that's correct. So these people have to walk a very fine line and that is they get criticized if they don't push back on obvious lies. At the same time, they have to maintain a certain decorum that respects the office. Terry, thread that needle perfectly. It reminded me of that interview on CNBC with Deidre Bolson and Keith Rabois where basically Keith committed securities fraud over and over and over about Opendoor claiming it was profitable and she real time fact checked him in a very kind of dignified, non combative way. By the way, I think that Stock's off like 70 or 90% since he went on. Journalists who want to give people the benefit of the doubt want to show some decorum. And you have to show the President a certain amount of grace. Otherwise you're here.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm gonna push back on these. I'm an interviewer, so I feel like in that case, the constant lying. This is Biden's GDP drop. This is this. It's just you cannot let him continue to make things up. Although what I got the vibe was as an old person, it literally brought me to an argument I had with my mom, like, no, it's this. No, it's absolutely this. And I was like, it's not.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, but he got. Don't you think Terry made it clear to Anyone with an IQ over I don't 40, he is lying or uninformed.

[Scott Galloway]

He did. He did. I was going back and forth on it. I think he should have pulled the picture out and said, Mr. President, these numbers were put on by Photoshop to indicate and been polite that way. This was not actually on his fingers. Here's the picture of his actual fingers.

[Kara Swisher]

It's interesting what the media focuses on. The media's focus on that. I thought by far the most interesting and damning part of the interview was when he asked him what the Declaration of Independence meant to him.

[Scott Galloway]

Desi Lydic make fun of it.

[Kara Swisher]

And it was hilarious. And the look that Terry Moran gave was the same look. And Desi Lydic said this, that when a school teacher decides a kid needs to see an adolescent psychotherapist, it was the look. He was like, he's like, oh my God, we're in worse trouble than I thought. Like this person Needs help, you know.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Break glass. This is an emergency. Yeah, I know.

[Scott Galloway]

Because he said the declaration of pens was about unity and Desi ladic, like that is the only thing it wasn't about.

[Kara Swisher]

What's interesting though is that just to call some of balls and strikes here, the people around Biden clearly knew he was cognitively impaired and they hid him from the media. I think the people around Trump would probably, or anyone smart would like to say let's pull back on the media appearances. But there's no way. He thinks he's doing great. He thinks he's doing, you know, with Biden, they said, no, don't go on Jon Stewart. We're just going to reheat your soup and Nana's coming home. And he listened and he was a.

[Scott Galloway]

I told you, the well behaved guy in the old folks home. And Trump's the one that's like, where's the soup? I ordered soup.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, he's the guy leading water aerobics.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Joe's leading water aerobics today. And regarding the stories of Korea. Yeah. And how he fought a Tyrannosaurus rex. Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

He's something. He does think he's doing great. It's really something.

[Kara Swisher]

No, he thinks he's killing it. He thinks he's killing it.

[Scott Galloway]

He feels really old. Everybody. He's.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't get that. I think he feels crazy. I don't see the physical impairment you see or the.

[Scott Galloway]

No, but it's like, well, you don't have an elderly parent you're dealing with who's absolutely certain they didn't block Amanda on the phone. I did not. Like, she blocked my son. She pushes somebody. It's the longest running argument we ever have. I'm like, you did it. No, I did not. The phone did it. That's what it feels like. Anyway, I'm not gonna go into it, but that was a long argument and I don't know why I have to be right. I should be like Terry Moore and like, okay, let's move on, let's move on.

[Kara Swisher]

Just again, shout out. Terry Moran was fantastic. He handled a very difficult situation very well, I thought.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah. Anyway. Lastly, a federal judge dismantling Apple's control of the App Store ruling said the Apple violated orders in a five year antitrust case bought by Epic. In a previous ruling, the judge ordered Apple to allow apps to use external payments to avoid 30% commission charges. The judge accused executives of lying, saying Apple created a new system forcing external sales to be charged 27% commission. Now the judge says Apple may no longer take commissions from sales outside the App Store. Let me just say I do not understand this, because Apple won almost everything except this one thing, and they did not follow it along. Now, the App Store is a large part of Apple's $100 billion annual services revenue. I don't imagine it's an enorm because it's difficult to do those outside external sales, but seemed like a real error on Apple's part here to do something like petulant like this, given how much they won.

[Kara Swisher]

The biggest toll booths in the world are Google and arguably Apple's App Store. And to think your buddy Barry Diller summarized it perfectly. This is like a credit card company. The App Store provides infrastructure, payment technology, security, safety, a certain level of assurance that if something goes wrong, they vet the stores, they vet the consumers. Credit card Companies charge between 1.8 and 3%. Apple charges 30 or 15, I think, if it's recurring revenue. But they have such a lock, even though they have, I think, about 40 or 50% market share in the U.S. i think they have closer to 80 or 90% of actual revenue volume because anyone with any money has an iOS or, or people with the most money, haven't I iOS. So I've been saying this for a while. The best ways to oxygenate the economy would be to one, for China and the US to kiss and make up because everything would get 10% cheaper around the world. But two, to basically bust up these toll booths and have other toll roads or other players. I mean, I don't know if you saw in the wake of just monster earnings from Meta and Alphabet.

[Scott Galloway]

We'll talk about that in a minute, but go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Pinterest and Snap are just dying a slow death. I mean, no one can compete with their scale. So in the App Store is just another example. I mean, you could easily break a great company in terms of a breakup would be Apple Services, which would probably be the App Store, their media.

[Scott Galloway]

So why would they do this, given they really did sort of win in this case, except for this one.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't understand. What do you think? I think you know them better than I do.

[Scott Galloway]

I have no idea. It seems like, well, they just don't want to do it. I just don't want to do it. Like they're going to just challenge it. And now of course, the judge is saying, well, they'll appeal it. These people know how to appeal. I guess I assume that's what they're going to do anyway. It seems to be a real unusual error. On their part to do something petulant. I mean, I can see petulance from Mark Zuckerberg or Bezos or any of them, but not Tim Cook. But here we are.

[Kara Swisher]

A real winner though, and a player in this, and I have an investment in them is epic. I don't know if their movie Minecraft, it's one of the highest grossing movies.

[Scott Galloway]

Killing it. FYI.

[Kara Swisher]

It's one of the highest grossing movies in history. And who would have thought the Minecraft movie.

[Scott Galloway]

My kids were obsessed with it.

[Kara Swisher]

I could. Yeah, it's just. And they went up against Apple and sort of. I don't know if you'd say they won, but they didn't back down.

[Scott Galloway]

And it doesn't appear they didn't really win. It was more in Apple's favor. But in this case, now they're able to do what they want. We'll see how much that sticks. I mean, I think Apple's playing the very long game with Trump and everything else. The quiet long game anyway. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. Going it back, Microsoft and Met earnings, which we will discuss because they were pretty fantastic and why Trump is getting compared to the Grinch who stole Christmas. Support for today's show comes from Chevrolet. Whether it's a quick jaunt or a long journey, no matter where you're going, the all electric Equinox EV allows you to travel with confidence, comfort and connectivity. Equinox EV comes equipped with a standard 17.7 inch diagonal color display touchscreen, making it the largest center screen among EVs in its class. Its sleek lines and a commanding stance define the exterior of Equinox ev, while the no compromises Interior has a cargo room and storage that let you do you at a starting price of around $34,995. Equinox EV a vehicle you know, value you expect and a dealer right down the street, you can go EV without changing a thing. Learn [e-mail] Equinox EV based on latest competitive data, the manufacturer's suggested retail price excludes tax, title, license, dealer fees and optional equipment. Dealer sets final price.

[Kara Swisher]

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is with thumbtack. You don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app Download today. Direwolves not just a thing from Game of Thrones, not just Jon Snow's bat friend. Dire wolves walked the Americas for millennia, up until about 14,000 years ago, when maybe their primary food source dried up or humans hunted them to extinction. No one was taking notes. But we know they were a bit bigger than gray wolves. They ate a lot of meat and their bite could crush bones. And now we know that apparently dire wolves are back. A startup called Colossal says they've brought these pups back from extinction.

[Scott Galloway]

They say they've got three of them.

[Kara Swisher]

But are these dire wolves they brought back actually dire wolves? And whether they are or aren't, should we be trying to bring dire wolves back? Like, why? Join us for answers over at Today Explained.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott we're back Microsoft and Meta shares are up, both after companies reported quarterly earnings that beat Wall street expectations on Wednesday and how Microsoft sales surpassed $70 billion, up 13% from a year ago. The company's Azure cloud unit posted a 33% revenue gain. Meta sales grew by 16% year over year to $42 billion. Net income was 16 billion. The company isn't slowing down on CapEx spending either, boosting its forecast as high as 72 billion do. This is mostly around AI, of course. The weak spot continues to be that first shift that Mark made. Meta reported $4.2 billion in losses from its Reality Labs division. That's why they call themselves Meta. It also announced the launch of Meta AI this week. It's a standalone AI app, sort of to compete with ChatGPT. Makes sense. So far the company's avoided getting dragged down by tariff chaos, which is interesting. We'll see if it goes on. Mark Zuckerberg addressed the concerns about tariff impact in his earnings call, saying, I think we're well positioned to weather the economic uncertainty. I think advertising is an open question just for people to know. Amazon and Apple earnings coming after we record. So we'll dig into those next week. But talk a little bit about these earnings each company.

[Kara Swisher]

Let's start with Microsoft staggering revenues on a big base, up 13%. Their cloud revenue is up 20%. And what you have here and also Microsoft is probably, I don't want to say it's a defensive stock, but it's kind of most recession proof. And also it doesn't seem to be subject to real damage other than a slowdown in the economy from these tariffs. And keeping mind the majority of their biggest customers are global, so even if the US Gets hit, they're pretty well insulated. You know, Apple's going to take a hit if the tariffs continue, you know, continue to escalate. Amazon will absolutely take a hit. Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet are more insulated because they're digital marketing. But Microsoft has exposure to the cloud. It's a very diversified, robust business. It's really well managed.

[Scott Galloway]

Can I just say with Microsoft, Chacha Nadella, I think think even though he's the quietest of them, and by the way, if you've noticed, he hasn't sucked up to Trump, he's just doing his job kind of thing. And of course his job doesn't have that much. The interaction they have has to do around national security and everything else. And they do have, let me tell you, that's where their big weaknesses is, around security issues, around their software, et cetera. But I have to say he deserves much more credit than almost any CEO in terms of really making this company shine. I'm always impressed with him and especially how he handles things. He manages not to lose his soul every five minutes. But go ahead. On Meta, which I think is hugely impressive, Mark Zuckerberg really knows how to run a company. He really does.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, revenue increased 16% and even, I think even more impressive, their price per ad was up 10%. If you're looking for how AI is impacting our economy, their ability to talk, I mean, don't you increasingly have more of those moments where you're thinking, my shoulders have been bothering me and all of a sudden on reels I'm getting served ads for bands to help with my shoulders, I'm like, how the fuck did they figure that out? And the amount of time in terms of serving you up incredible ads, Their recommendation engine is contributed to a 35% increase in time spent on threads, a 7% increase in time spent on Facebook, 6% Instagram. He predicted or Zuck predicted, AI would be able to handle half of Meta's developer work. So he's able to maintain other than capex around data storage and AI. Their human capital costs have decelerated and aren't growing nearly as fast as their top line revenues, meaning that quote unquote earnings are going to explode. And just to give you a sense, I do this deck on AI. I think the AI company A 2020 is meta because first off, if you look at it, 80% of people in the world outside of China.

[Scott Galloway]

But can I just note something? It's the best data. Like think about Twitter data. It's not good data. Like, you know, it's kind of all noisy. But this is all People moving and using and relatively behaving. I mean, there's all kinds of problems on this platform, obviously, but go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, the peanut butter and chocolate, or chocolate and peanut butter of AI is loosely speaking, the chips, the processing power. They're the second biggest purchaser of chips, they're in line with the second biggest purchase order of video chips. And then the chocolate is the actual data, the input, the coal in the furnace, whatever you want to call it. Right. Grist of the mill. And just to give you a sense of just how much data is produced on Meta platforms, Reddit, which is unbelievably accelerated, has the 5th most traffic of anyone in the U.S. any site in the U.S. reddit is the source of roughly 1.3 trillion tokens of text. Right? 1.3 trillion tokens of Text. Meta, 180 trillion tokens. So Meta has more coal to throw into the furnace to process and learn from, and they're going to have the second most Nvidia chips. In addition, they not only get the benefit of saying, all right, we're going to use that to have a consumer facing product instead, or in addition to, we're going to use AI to give advertisers, there's such extraordinary targeting at the right time for the right person in the right place, that advertisers are going to be helpless not to just reallocate more and more of their budgets to Meta.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, he's too. Look, we all have our issues with Mark Zuckerberg and it's deserved, but man, can he raise. He's like a Gatesian figure. Remember how well Bill Gates ran during those many years? Brilliant businessman, brilliant business person. He wore those glasses everywhere. The Metaglasses, which are popular, I don't think they're an enormous business for them. But he does the walk. I mean, he looked. He didn't look. He wore them everywhere this week, which was smart. It was smart that he did it. He didn't look as dumb as Elon looks in a hat, but I would agree. I think it's really astonishing what's happening. Like you were noting, and I was thinking about it the rest of the week was Google has so many good businesses within this company. So does Facebook. Right. And I like threads. I do, I do. I like it for. It feels like Instagram a little bit easier, like essentially. And I'm on blue sky. I like blue sky too, by the way. But there's so many good products in this term. I think the two dings on them obviously will be their deleterious effect on the entire world. And this trial we'll see a lot of people, I've been talking to a lot of people, most people, and I agree, think it's a relatively weak case that they have competition now and they're just doing very well with the competition. But a lot of other people think they're going to lose and it's going to be like Microsoft. It's not going to really matter and they won't spin stuff off, but we'll see if they have to spin things off like an Instagram or a WhatsApp. It would certainly be interesting if they did, as you and I have talked about. Anyway, good job, Mark Zuckerberg. We have to give it to you. And again, we'll talk about Amazon and Apple earnings. We both think they're going to get hit.

[Kara Swisher]

There's only just one thing in the Microsoft earnings that I thought were interesting in the earnings call and that is their data storage expenditures coming down. And I wonder if some of them are thinking the deep seek, maybe there's an opportunity or maybe the data storage and the power consumption won't be as great as initially forecast and they'll solve it. I think a lot of them are looking at the deep seq innovation and thinking how does this impact our CapEx moving forward? But you're probably going to see in the back half of the year even more staggering earnings because it feels like they have so much momentum on the top line and yet on the expense side, I think they're going to maintain, I think their capex is going to go flat or maybe even down, which is just going to be like nitro and glycerin for their earnings.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, we'll see about that. It'll be interesting and it'll be interesting to compare Amazon and Apple with them. But speaking of economic uncertainty, President Trump is blaming former President Biden for the US economy contracting in the first quarter of 2025, suggesting in this cabinet, this ridiculous cabinet, meaning that Q2 will also be tied to Biden. He's going to blame Biden like he mentioned Biden like 912 times or not that many, but a lot. He's taking the same stance on markets, writing on Truth Social on Wednesday. This is Biden's stock market, not Trump's, even though he had claimed it was Trump's stock market back in 2024 when he wasn't president, the market was doing well. He was calling it Trump's stock market. He's also telling Americans to be patient but acknowledge there will be Some consequences from his tariffs. Let's get to the doll situation.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, somebody said, oh, the shelves.

[Scott Galloway]

Are going to be open.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30, you know, and.

[Scott Galloway]

Maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. Oh, my God. It's true. Whoever said that, this idea that, I mean, look, that may be true. I agree. I have too many fucking toys in my house and I wish I had like a many less. But it's none of his business. If people want $30, Americans are used to products on the shelves and open, whatever. Open means empty is the word he's looking for. Toy manufacturers are already warning about a Christmas toy shortage. Factories in China produce nearly 80% of all and 90% of Christmas goods sold in the U.S. he's making a point. Yes, we shouldn't consume as much. The man who consumes more than anybody, who's just like a giant maw of consumption is lecturing people. His whole administration is doing this. They're very on message. Well, you don't need that stuff. You don't need it. And that may be. But how do you think it's going to hit with people? Especially if there are empty shelves? Not open shelves, but empty shelves.

[Kara Swisher]

From a guy that golfs every third day and banks porn stars. He's talking to us about consumers. I know.

[Scott Galloway]

And then shows off his gold in that Terry Moran interview. By the way, he showed up.

[Kara Swisher]

Americans. We are the most conspicuous consumers in history. America is sort of, you'd argue an insurance company with a military, but really what it is, it's a platform for prosperity where people get material and hopefully emotional gains from an incredible operating system. And you could argue that Biden was kicked out of office because the price of eggs went too high, but he doesn't think people are going to notice. 90% of America is on a fixed budget budget. And if toys go up in price 30, 40, 50%, that means a third to a half fewer toys. You don't think that's going to hit home emotionally when the kids start noticing? Wait, that just really hits you hard. It hits on an emotion where. When you feel like you're not providing for your kids on key moments, it really rips at your soul. And people are going to get angry. Just the notion that, oh, American. That these people. That him with his. That with his tacky retrofitted 757. That somehow Americans, you know, don't need all this stuff. Well, okay, folks, Americans love their stuff. American. America is the land of Stuff, we love our shit. There's nothing wrong with it. Our Nespresso, our Netflix, we love stuff. And loosely speaking, actually, if you were to pick one thing that impacts the majority of elections in America for the last 50 years, it's kind of your safety and security around your ability to buy more stuff. It's the economy. And so that's just a ridiculous statement.

[Scott Galloway]

So why did he make it? I mean, and then it was echoed by all his people. And then blaming Biden. Obviously he's going to use Biden as, you know, 10 years from now, he's going to say Biden was the reason. What is. I mean, I don't think people are thinking of Biden anymore, you know, or mentioning. Although his voters have a very astonishing. They are now echoing this. There was a lot of interviews I saw where they're like, yeah, we gotta buck up. Like, we're in the middle of the World War II and the Nazis are headed our way. Like that kind of mood of something like that.

[Kara Swisher]

There is some truth to the notion that this GDP. So GDP was off. First negative quarter since, I think 2022. First in three years. We had a contraction. I don't think it's fair to lay that at the feet of the Trump administration. GDP is a lagging indicator. The surge in imports because of these ridiculous tariffs took a large portion of the GDP down. You're going to.

[Scott Galloway]

Consumption is down, too. Both things together. But go ahead.

[Kara Swisher]

Next quarter. There's just no excuses. He owns it. And you're going to see a contraction. I don't like gdp. I don't think it's a good measure. But you're going to see the economy contract and it's on its way. I, I'm doing a lot or a decent amount of. I have a lot of friends who are impacted by the tariffs and essentially business has come to a standstill and they're sitting around trying to guess, do we try to move, do we go to our bank, borrow a shit ton of money, cut 20, 30% of our workforce and spend the next three years trying to reroute our supply chain through Vietnam or Indonesia, or do we hope this guy pops up, wakes up tomorrow morning and goes, just kidding. But in the meantime, they're in a state of paralysis. They have stopped all shipments from most of my friends from China. Shipping volume is off anywhere, depending on how you account for between 35 and 65%. The port of Los Angeles is less crowded than it's been in recent memory, and it's the largest port in The Western hemisphere and there's a lag effect. But when the ships coming into the port are empty or they're not coming in, that means in about four to 12 weeks the stores are gonna be empty. And also you're gonna start to see layoffs.

[Scott Galloway]

Y because I just interviewed Wes Moore, who's, he's the governor of Maryland and a very handsome man, as you would say, Wes Moore. He's gonna be a presidential candidate and he was talking about the knock on effects in Baltimore in terms of like truckers, unloaders, people around it, restaurants around it. It's just gonna reverberate all over these economies in California, in Maryland, New York, you know, of course these are all blue states, but still it will have so much reverberations and then it just keeps having knock on and knock on effects. Anyway, I don't think he can keep blaming. I agree with you. He can blame him for a short time, but this is just nonsense. Lecturing people on how many dolls they should have. I agree that we shouldn't have so many choices, but that's my personal opinion. And he's the President of the United States. It's none of his business to tell people what to buy.

[Kara Swisher]

It's like that Borat film, 33 different types of cheeses. That's just who we are. The weird thing is just going back to the earnings for a moment, you're probably gonna see a increased bifurcation between the Magnificent Seven and the rest of the economy because these firms, so Amazon is the most subject to this trade war than anyone because 2/3 of their business comes within the US and a lot of their products are subject to tariffs. A company like Meta gets only one third of its business from the US and the majority of its products are not subject to tariffs. Apple, two thirds from outside the US A company like Microsoft, half their business comes from outside the U.S. so these companies are. I don't want to say they're insulated, but the big guys and the big tech companies are much more insulated. Most of the vast majority of the products are not subject to tariffs. And B, the majority of their business comes from outside of the US So who's going to get really hard here are kind of the mainline. Traditional, mainline firms.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Kara Swisher]

The Main street economy is really going to get hit hard.

[Scott Galloway]

You're absolutely right. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. Speaking of Amazon, when we get back, we'll talk about Jeff Bezos. Those bending the knee once again. It's not the first time to Trump.

[Kara Swisher]

Have you ever gotten a medical bill and thought, how am I ever going.

[Scott Galloway]

To pay for this?

[Kara Swisher]

This week on Net Worth and Chill, we're tackling the financial emergency that is the American health care system. From navigating insurance nightmares to making sure your emergency fund actually covers those emergencies, we're diving deep into the hidden healthcare.

[Scott Galloway]

Costs that no, no one warns you about.

[Kara Swisher]

Most hospitals in the US are actually non profits, which means they have to have financial assistance or charity care policies. So essentially, if you make below a certain amount, the hospital legally has to waive your medical bill up to a certain percent. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or.

[Scott Galloway]

Watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF the regular season.

[Kara Swisher]

Is in a review and now it's.

[Scott Galloway]

Time for the games that Matter the most Host.

[Kara Swisher]

This is Kenny Beachum and playoff basketball is finally here on Small Ball. We're diving deep into every series, every crunch time finish, every coaching adjustment that can make or break a championship run. Who's building for a 16 win marathon? Which superstar would submit their legacy? And which role player is about to.

[Scott Galloway]

Become a household name?

[Kara Swisher]

With so many fascinating first round matchups, will the west be the bloodbath we anticipate? Will the east be as predictable as we think? Can the Celtics defend their title? Can Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard push the young teams at the top? I'll be bringing the expertise, the passion, the genuine opinion you need for the.

[Scott Galloway]

Most exciting time of the NBA calendar. Small Ball is your essential companion for the NBA postseason. Join me, Kenny Beacham for new episodes.

[Kara Swisher]

Of Small Ball throughout the playoffs. Don't miss Small Ball with Kenny Beachum. New episodes dropping through the playoffs. Available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcast. Looking for a political show that doesn't scream from the extremes? Raging Moderates is now twice a week. What a thrill.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh my God.

[Kara Swisher]

Alert the Media. Hosted by political strategist Jess Tarlov and myself, Scott Galloway, this is the show for those who are living somewhere between the center left and the center right. You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday and Friday. That's right, twice a week. Exclusive interviews with sharp political minds you won't hear anywhere else. Also, everyone that's running for president, all of a sudden everybody wants to know our our viewpoint on thing. In other words, put me on your pod so I can run for president. Anyways, twice a week. Please sign up on our distinct feed. Follow Raging Moderates wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube so you don't miss an episode Tune in. We're not always right, but our hearts are in the right place. We're more raging than moderate.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott, we're back. President Trump is calling Jeff Bezos. Very nice and a good guy. After phoning Bezos to complain about a report that Amazon was gonna show how much of an item's cost comes from tariffs, the White House initial reaction was a press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, also known as Tracy Flake, calling Amazon's plan for a hostile and political act. And while Amazon first said the pricing plan only being considered for its budget site Amazon hall in a subsequent statement, the company know the plan was never approved and it was not going to happen. They kept changing their story. Trump later told reporters that Bezos solved the problem very quickly. So it clearly was on deck to happen who knows where in which part of Amazon. Their credibility has declined rather significantly with this incident. Bezos has of course been making nice with Trump for a while now. And back in December at the Times deal Summit, he said he was optimistic about Trump's behavior in his second term and completely wrong. Let's listen. What I've seen so far is that he is calmer than he was first time and more confident, more settled. I guess he wants him to go to his fancy wedding in Venice in June, I guess. What do you think of this? Obviously he's going to do it. You predicted the Fortune 500 CEOs and businesses were going to start standing up to Trump. This is not what happened here. And it looks like Paramount Mounts is going to do the same thing. Sherry Redstone to settle a ridiculous baseless lawsuit in order to make nice to get that merger through. Was the initial Amazon plan a good idea? Should companies be transparent about these prices and put them on? Some companies are doing this and there's an antitrust trial coming up. Obviously for Amazon, it didn't work so well for Mark to kiss up because it's still going forward. Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Bezos on Wednesday asking whether he received any promises or favors from Trump exchange for scrapping Amazon's plan. Thoughts?

[Kara Swisher]

Well, when the White House press secretary, she immediately said this was a hostile and political act and why didn't they put what the prices were because of the Biden inflation. I mean that's just such a ridiculous statement. One, in terms of Biden and inflation, that's so intellectually dishonest because of all the G7 countries, our inflation was the lowest. There was tremendous supply chain shocks from the invasion of Ukraine and Covid. And two, these guys all claim they're such free speech warriors putting what the terrible. Airbnb and Amazon have all come under criticism for not putting on. When I order from caviar, which I love in New York, it used to piss me off that I wouldn't see upfront how much delivery charge and service fee and all that. Airbnb came under fire. So Airbnb said, okay, we're to put the true cost and they started breaking it out. That's transparency and it's also free speech. It is entirely reasonable for Amazon to say, all right, this is how much the tariffs are costing. It is a bit of a political statement. It's also called free speech. And two, when you start having Biden came under fire for having one off conversations with Meta about misinformation around Covid and he got huge criticism and there's some veracity to the notion that the president, president should not be having one off conversations and putting pressure on individual companies that's supposed to have systemic solutions and laws that impact the whole industry. Otherwise it just ends up being corruption. As it is now, where I don't know if you saw the latest, auto companies are now going to be exempt from a lot of these tariffs. So if you're a big company that's on his lunch calendar or you have a popular brand, or you're gigantic, or you get to have lunch with them, you get get exemption from this ridiculous behavior. And the problem is that small and medium sized business which account for 98% of the companies that depend upon export and import are shit out of luck because they can't afford lobbyists and they're never going to go to Mar a Lago. So these individual one off conversations are corrupt. You're not supposed to have them. And also I got to be. I mean, you saw me, I was so excited about Bezos. I went out with all these threads saying good for him, good on him.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, you did.

[Kara Swisher]

And I was so excited. And then you texted me and you're like, he caved, he caved. And I'm like, oh fuck. And I had to go back and be like, well, false alarm, you know, no way.

[Scott Galloway]

He's such a caver. He's a caver. He wants all the Trumps to be at his wedding. Like, are you kidding? He's gone. Jeff Bezos never was there, but he's gone now. He's down the Mar A Lago highway and he's living down there, you know, much more so even than Elon, I think. I don't know.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I don't know, I'm actually excited, and we'll talk about it maybe next week, but I'm excited about. He's about to put a competitor into space.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I'm good with his blank slate. I'm good with the rocket stuff that he's competing with, but whatever. They never fail to disappoint these people. They really don't. They just don't. I just expect disappointment. You're like that this time. You're like, this time my boyfriend's gonna behave and show up and pick me up.

[Kara Swisher]

He's changed. He sent an Uber for me. He sent an Uber for me.

[Scott Galloway]

The stripper loves me. I swear. I swear she loves me. You can go to a strip club, squad, but she doesn't.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I haven't been to a strip Club in 20 years. I don't like strip clubs.

[Scott Galloway]

We should go.

[Kara Swisher]

No, we shouldn't.

[Scott Galloway]

We should do a tour. We should do Pivot. Live pivots in a strip club.

[Kara Swisher]

I'm not into strip clubs.

[Scott Galloway]

All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Scott gets. Have a good one. Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction. And listen up. Time for something new. We want to hear your predictions. Send us your predictions. 30 seconds or less, and we'll play them on the show if they're good and if they're well. If they're dirty, we'll probably play them, too. Go to nymag.com pivot to submit a prediction for the show or call 85551, pivot. I wanted to create some competition for Scott. So, Scott, up your game today. Let's go.

[Kara Swisher]

I don't know if mine's very good, but basically, one of the wonderful things about our economy is once a company establishes something resembling or supposedly monopoly power and can start implementing those rents on consumers, there's so much profits that that's like chum in the water. And other sharks show up. That's the basis of competition. And hopefully, if a company gets too far ahead of another, the FTC and the DOJ move in, break it up such that it can inspire more compet. Lower prices, more innovation, et cetera. Competition really is one of the secrets to America's success. And my Internet went out in London. I have to have crazy fast broadband. And I spent. I'm not exaggerating. I think I spent 50 or 60 thousand dollars to have fiber run across Regent's park to get the kind of broadband I need. And I went out.

[Scott Galloway]

You're that guy.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I'm that guy. I went out I don't have satellites. It went out this weekend and. And so everyone's scrambling, including Drew, to try and figure out a solve. And they went out and they bought one of those portable Starlinks and they set it up in about four hours. It's an incredible service. I've used Starlink on a plane before. You can do FaceTime. It really is an amazing product. I think now close to two thirds of the low Earth satellites are owned by Starlink or SpaceX. I guess it's Starlink and it really is an incredible product and I'm just thrilled to see. And I think another reason why I think Amazon's going to continue prob to outperform is that they launched their first. I don't even know how you pronounce it. Is it Cupper? K, U, I, P, E, R?

[Scott Galloway]

Cooper. I think it's Cooper. Yeah. I've met with the CEOs. They've been at it the same way they've been at the rocket stuff, but Cooper.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, Cooper. So the first batch of a planned 3,300 cooper satellites launch from Florida. The mission kicks off a race to rival SpaceX's massive Starlink network network. And Amazon can launch five more Cooper missions this year. I think the promise of that is going to take their stock up because Starlink is just such an incredible company that essentially has monopoly power right now that was run.

[Scott Galloway]

I forget who used to run that company. I met with him several times. They've been trying it like everyone's been trying to catch Starlink, obviously. And it's a great opportunity to do so.

[Kara Swisher]

Anyways, the brand we talk a lot about in brand strategy, the first kind of key asset in brand strategy is awareness about 98% of our purchases. At least until. Is that true recently. I'd like to redo this data, but up until the social graph, 98% of your purchases are from brands you've heard of before. Just think about. You're just less inclined to return the email of someone you don't know. Just having heard of somebody or having heard of a brand makes you much more. Your purchase inclination or your purchase consideration goes up exponentially. And so I would often say the first step in any brand is just to be known. And unfortunately we live in a society is the philosopher. Italian philosopher Umberto Eco said that being famous and having awareness is more important than what you're famous or have awareness for. So awareness is enormous and it's a decent proxy for future value to be monetized. And I think the brand that's about to go from 0 to 100 in the next six months is Cooper, because it's a $10 billion project that was unveiled in 2019. It's had a lot of delays and it's finally starting to get its kind of mojo. And I think you're going to see they're going to start doing a good job of showing real time footage of every launch. And then when you think about if Amazon can offer a Starlink like service with their interface, I mean, at some point, you know what they're going to do? They're going to roll it into Prime. Anyways, Cooper from Prime is about to become one of the biggest brands and also be the most formidable competitor to the most valuable private company in the world, I think, right now, which is SpaceX. So. So anyways, my prediction is the interesting. The brand you haven't heard of as of May 1, 2025, is going to be ubiquitous in the investment and consumer landscape by the end of the year, and that is Project Cooper, which is a $10 billion satellite effort from the good folks at Amazon.

[Scott Galloway]

You know what? I've touched a Cooper. They brought one to show it to me.

[Kara Swisher]

That was in high school, right? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And then you decided, no, not for me. Interesting, but not for me. Me.

[Scott Galloway]

But Starlink is handy, but as usual with Tesla, same thing. People are coming in and they're going to give him a run. And if he's not on his game, Elon Musk, he's got a lot of competitors headed his way because he's shown the way. And just because you're shown the way, Elon, the planes are covered with the bodies of pioneers, as everybody well knows.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, Starlink. To be fair, Starlink's an amazing product.

[Scott Galloway]

It is, but I'm just saying, so was Tesla three years ago, right? And. And then now there's more.

[Kara Swisher]

That's the beauty of competition. That's why, folks, we need an ofTC and a DOJ to break companies up. You need these small, scrappy star. Anyway, Project Cooper.

[Scott Galloway]

That's correct. You can't take your eye off the ball. He's lucky in that company. He has a good CEO, Gwen Chotwell, who is also much too obsequious to him, but nonetheless, she really runs that show. And that shows the good idea to have a good CEO in place.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, and I think you're going to be outstanding on Bill, Matt. I think they're gonna be outstanding. I think that'll be.

[Scott Galloway]

I could crash and burn. But I hope not. I think I will. He likes me. Like slapping him around a little bit. Like just like you do. Anyway, as I said, people, give your predictions. We wanna hear your predictions. Send in the predictions 30 seconds or less. We'll play them on the show. As I said. Go to nymag.com pivot to submit this prediction for the show and beat Professor Galloway. Or call 85551, Pivot and elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe. This week on Prof. G. Conversation, Scott spoke with David Brooks. Okay, I love.

[Kara Swisher]

How can you. Don't.

[Scott Galloway]

I do. I just.

[Kara Swisher]

He's wonderful.

[Scott Galloway]

Okay.

[Kara Swisher]

You know, how can you not love David Brooks?

[Scott Galloway]

So many people don't. Are you not paying attention on the Internet?

[Kara Swisher]

Spiritual, smart, big talk, community.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm glad you. He's very smart. You're right, he's fantastic. I'm sorry, I can be. Not a fan of David Brooks. I think he's just a lot. He's a writer also at the Atlantic too. Let's listen to a.

[Kara Swisher]

And when I look at the Trump administration, I see a massive attempt to return us to the life of dog eat dog, the life of nasty British. In short, the life where gangsters have maximum freedom to do what they want to do. And that is the evisceration of all the values of civilization that conservatism is supposed to transmit and preserve. And I think the raw lust for power that Donald Trump embodies has not only eviscerated conservatism, it's eviscerated Christianity.

[Scott Galloway]

That's a very thoughtful thought. He's right, he's right, he's right. I'm excited. I'll listen to it, I promise.

[Kara Swisher]

I really, I really enjoyed my conversation with him. I found him to be very spiritual. By the way, we were out there with Bill Maher. Say hello to my favorites. Bill doesn't hang out with me, but the executive producers do. Sheila Griffiths. Sheila Griffiths, I think, and Mark Gurvitz and Dean Johnson. They're literally Friday Night Lights parents. They're like handsome people in their.

[Scott Galloway]

It's a great team.

[Kara Swisher]

They're handsome people, like good looking people in their 40s who feel like if I ever have a big problem, I'm just calling them and saying, can you just pretend to be my parent right now? And they are so nice. And they come in, into that little green room and they're like, we're so happy to have you. They're so nice. And I get nice emails from them.

[Scott Galloway]

Good swag too. Good food, good swag.

[Kara Swisher]

And beer. I shotgunned a beer before the last one because I got so fucking nervous.

[Scott Galloway]

No, you're kidding. I'm not kidding.

[Kara Swisher]

I think that's called alcoholism. And also my Sherpa, there is a woman named Susan Bennet who's one.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, Susan's amazing.

[Kara Swisher]

She's so lovely.

[Scott Galloway]

I have to say, Bill Maher has a sav that stayed with him for a very long time, and it's a good reflection on him. Even if you don't like Bill Maher.

[Kara Swisher]

Greatness is in the agency of others, and that is a.

[Scott Galloway]

He has a team. Same thing with Scott.

[Kara Swisher]

Same thing.

[Scott Galloway]

Scott has a team with him.

[Kara Swisher]

The key to success is the ability to attract and retain people more talented than yourself. That is it. Full stop. Full stop. And having a big Cooper. And having a really big Cooper.

[Scott Galloway]

My code team at all things C team was with me for 20 years. Conference team. They were all, for the most part.

[Kara Swisher]

It's funny, the Pivot team is nodding right now. They feel nice nodding.

[Scott Galloway]

They're hoping. They're hoping. We'll see. We've changed.

[Kara Swisher]

There we go.

[Scott Galloway]

Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Read us out.

[Kara Swisher]

Today's show is produced by Lara Amen, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin and Kevin Oliver. Our intertut entered into this episode. Jim Mackle edited this video. Thanks also to Jabros, Ms. Averro and Dan Shalom. Nishat Kurwass, Vox Media's executive producer of Auto. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot of 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. Tune in to see Cheech and Chong, Speaker McCarthy and and and Kara Switcher.