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- [00:00]
Sponsor/Ad Narrator
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- [00:56]
Geico Customer
when I scraped my car in that parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it. Like a landscaper's first day trimming a hedge maze.
- [01:04]
Anthony Scaramucci
I have definitely already been here. Now, was it left, right or right? Left. Well, maybe I'll cut a path out and find my way back later.
- [01:16]
Geico Customer
But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened.
- [01:23]
Anthony Scaramucci
It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to Geico. Money markets matter.
- [01:33]
Ed Elson
If money is evil, then that building is hell. Welcome to profit markets. I'm Ed elson. It is May 19th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The S&P 500 in the NASDAQ closed in the red after a volatile session. The Dow turned positive after President Trump said he called off plans to strike Iran Tuesday. He also said, quote, serious negotiations are now taking place. Brent crude declined from a session high of $112 after those comments. Meanwhile, the yield on 10 year treasuries hit a 52 week high. Okay, what else is happening? President Trump disclosed more than 3,700 trades on major American companies during the first quarter. That's more than 40 trades each day with the transactions valued somewhere between 220 and $750 million. Trump bought at least $1 million each in Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Boeing, Costco, among others. And many of those trades were made around the same time the US Made policy affecting those very companies. The White House insists that there are, quote, no conflicts of interest involved. But ethics experts and Wall street insiders say the sheer volume of trading is unusual and unprecedented for a sitting president. So here to discuss these transactions and what this all means, we are speaking with Anthony Scaramucci, the Mooch founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us on the show. We've had you on to discuss this before, which to me tells me something about what's happening here, which is this is becoming sort of an ongoing theme, but now we're hearing them or we're seeing that the Trump administration is basically just admitting, yes, we did trade these companies, and we can get into whether it's insider trading or not. Hard to make a case that it isn't. But let's just start with your initial reactions to this news.
- [03:40]
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, you know, listen, I mean, this is the reason why everyone hates Washington. They hate politics. It's a bipartisan thing. By the way, I'm not trying to whitewash Donald Trump. This has gone on with Democrats in the House. They get inside information, they're able to trade on it. Trump is at a point in his career where he actually doesn't care anymore. He just got himself a $1.7 billion, I don't know what it's called, a lawfare restitution fund or something like that from the irs. I don't even know if that's constitutional. And hopefully there's somebody that has standing that can actually challenge that quote, unquote settlement, which just seems completely unethical and misguided. But, you know, I guess there's three things I want to say. Number one, it's disgusting. It's probably legal, Ed. That's the irony of the whole thing. They've created these loopholes for themselves, but it's absolutely disgusting, and it makes people very cynical and very turned off by politics. Number two, I think this is probably the most important thing about it, is he doesn't care, which means that worse things are on the way. You're going to see a tsunami of corruptive activity over the next two and a half years, and it's going to be put right in your face. And then the last thing, and this is the thing I really don't like, is there's nobody out there that you can point to and say, oh, that's an ethical player. Because let me tell you what happens here. They put a situation together and then they say, well, Hunter Biden sold a painting, Nancy Pelosi traded this stock, that Democrat did this, this person did that. Oh, you know, is Trump gonna pardon every one of his family members and himself on the way out. Well, most certainly is. Well, Hunter Biden was pardoned by his dad, Joseph Biden. So you know, this is as swampy as swamp gets. But I just want to remind the Prof. G Markets listeners this is not actually a swamp. This is a gold plated hot tub. Washington D.C. and they get into the hot tub together and they pass the Cristal and they pass the Cubanos which happen to be illegal and they light them up and they laugh and then they say this is so fantastic. How do I stay in the job for the longest amount of time possible? And if you want to have a Fun exercise on ChatGPT or Claude, just ask Claude to go through the 435 members of the Congress, 100 senators, and say what were their disclosed net worths before they became senator or congressman or woman and what are they now? And you'll see that this is a very lucrative place called Washington D.C. for these people.
- [06:38]
Ed Elson
Just want to go back to the thing you said earlier, that it's probably legal. There are some moments where I can see that, like just as an example, so what we learned here is that between January and March Trump bought a bunch of Palantir. And then what we also know is that in April he put out this post on social media where he was praising Palantir. And I thought the funniest thing is that he specifically mentioned the tick for Palanta pltr. He explicitly said that, which was obviously him pumping the stock. But when you think about is that insider trading, I feel like, okay, maybe you can make an argument that he's not trading on material non public information, he's just pumping a stock essentially on a situation like that, I can see how maybe it's a gray zone. But there are some other examples here that to me are just plain illegal. Starting with for example, Nvidia. January 6th, he buys up to up to a million dollars worth of Nvidia Stock. And then January 14th, just a few, few days later, he approves Nvidia to start selling chips to China. That to me is like, okay, that's a very big deal. Similar thing happens January 12, he buys a bunch of Oracle stock. A week later the deal for Oracle to buy a stake in TikTok is finalized. And of course the only reason it's finalized is because he approves it. His administration appro. Similar thing with Boeing. He buys Boeing stock and then he says that China is going to purchase all these Boeing jets. Like there are several examples here where it seems very, very plainly obvious that he had very important material, non public information. And this is just the way that the law talks about it. And then before that happens, he goes in and he buys the stock. And so in those cases, to me, I'm thinking that's just illegal. That right there.
- [08:28]
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah.
- [08:28]
Ed Elson
If you can prove that he knew something, then he's got to go to jail or he's got to be punished in some way.
- [08:33]
Anthony Scaramucci
Okay, who's going to punish Ahmed?
- [08:38]
Ed Elson
Which is an interesting point, but a different one.
- [08:41]
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, but I mean, okay, so, you know, there's, but there's, let's, let's parse everything out because I think people need to understand this. There's a 2012 stock act which prohibits some of this activity for members of Congress. It does not, for whatever reason, prohibit the President or the Vice President. So the Palantir example that you used, believe it or not, is inside the ambit of the law. Okay, he's buying Palantir and then posting about it from an official governmental capacity as President of the United States. The second one that you brought up is probably illegal. There's a statute, if you went to law school like I did, there's a statute called 10B5 which delineates what insider trading is. And if you read the statute, the President is actually included in that statute. And so he's right now guilty of insider trading. Okay, so the SEC commissioner, he stands at the appointment of the President at the leisure of the President, as does the Attorney General who's now acting, who was his personal attorney. So go ahead. Who's going to prosecute the guy? Go ahead.
- [09:51]
Ed Elson
This is the part that I agree with you on, which is that it's illegal, but he's gotten rid of the police, he's gotten rid of the sec, he's gotten rid of the doj.
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Anthony Scaramucci
Well, okay, so then the real question is, and this is why people listen to your podcast, we're delineating between what's right and wrong. And then we're saying, okay, then what would you do?
- [10:11]
Ed Elson
Right.
- [10:12]
Anthony Scaramucci
Okay. And this is where the Moody Gillibrand Senate bill, the Roy magazine or House version of that bill would include everybody. Okay, and then the question is, well, will they pass that? Well, Peter Schweitzer, way back in 2010 exposed all of this nefarious behavior. There was a 60 minute special about it. And the Congress said, oh, this is despicable behavior. We're going to denounce it and we're going to prohibit it. And then they did that. And then very quietly, nine months after they did that. They get a voice vote. They did a voice vote. So it wouldn't be on the airwaves, it wouldn't be on C span. And they did a voice vote call into this number, Ed, we're gonna vote to reinstate it. And they voted to reinstate it. And they got right back in the running to do this. So this is stuff that's going to continue unless you're telling me somebody comes in with an omnibus Ethics act equivalent to the 1978 Ethics and Government act, which technically revises everything, but then you're gonna have to put independent watchdogs and special prosecutors in permanent place or you're gonna have to take the Department of Justice out of the executive branch. It's in the Constitution that it would be in the executive branch. So I think that that's very tough to do. And so then you gotta say to yourself, well, what will the next president do? You know, he or she. Will they take Trump's playbook and say, wow, I mean, I got the job. We're going to make 4 to 10 billion over the next four years. Let me just go to section four of Trump's playbook. I'll start buying Apple and tweeting about it. Yeah, or you pick the stock. You see what I'm saying?
- [11:56]
Ed Elson
Yes.
- [11:57]
Anthony Scaramucci
We haven't even gotten into the bitcoin and crypto stuff that these guys have done. Right. Which is even more egregious. And I'm obviously a crypto enthusiast, but they've hurt the industry there because they're staining the industry with this unethical activity. So, you know, the bottom line is this is going to happen. Okay? The bottom line is, for your viewers and listeners, life is unfair. And these guys are sitting there ladling money into their own accounts for their own self interest. And it would be hypocritical of me, Ed, if I just went after the President on this. You have to go after the Democrats that are also doing this. This is a bipartisan thing. Now you can say, and this almost makes me laugh about Trump. And if Galloway was on with us right now, he would laugh at this. Cuz I know the son of a bitch Prof. G would be like, yeah, no, he's right. Trump is doing IT to the 29th power compared to these guys. Okay, so If Pelosi's taken 5 million, Trump's taken 500 million.
- [12:58]
Ed Elson
Yes.
- [12:59]
Anthony Scaramucci
So all he's done is pumped himself with unethical steroids. He took the unethical steroid needle, he pumped it into his biceps. And he's out there making billions of dollars for himself. But they're all doing it, Ed.
- [13:12]
Ed Elson
Yes.
- [13:13]
Anthony Scaramucci
And I think it would be remiss of us to pretend that it's not happening on both sides.
- [13:18]
Ed Elson
Well, I think what he's done now is he's normalized it, for one. And maybe you'd argue that it's been normalized for a while, but he's made it maybe publicly normalized. I mean, this has been very much shameless and for all to see, and so far, he's gotten away with it. But I think the other side to this is, like, there's the distinction between what is legal and what is illegal. And if he knew things before he made these trades, and of course he did, because he's the president. And then a week later, he announces these decisions which massively affect the trajectory of these businesses. So, I mean, you gotta do a lot of legwork to pretend like he didn't know what was going on. So let's just assume he did. That's illegal. But to your point, who's going to prosecute this? And just some statistics here to, to, to really illustrate the point here. Trump cut the headcount at the DOJ by 4000. And white collar crime prosecutions at the DOJ have hit a record low. SEC enforcement actions are down 30% this year. It's the lowest transition year in a decade. The old enforcement director who tried to investigate him was dismissed because she tried to investigate him. That was literally what was reported among the sec, cftc. Headcount's been cut by a fifth. Enforcement actions are down 80%. IRS headcount's down 25%. The global high wealth division has been almost cut in half. Audit rates are collapsing, et cetera, et cetera. And it seems to me that what he's done that's taken things to another level is he said, I'm going to continue to do things that are illegal, but I'm gonna make it so that there's no one out there who can prosecute me. The agencies whose job it is to go after this kind of crime, I'm gonna make it impossible for them to do their job, and I'm gonna fire anyone who tries to do it. And that, to me, is a different level.
- [15:09]
Anthony Scaramucci
Can I add a sentence to everything you just said, please? And if there's some wise guy, to use Trump's own words, that would try to prosecute me and they came close to it, I would pardon myself.
- [15:21]
Ed Elson
Right.
- [15:22]
Anthony Scaramucci
And as quoted by the Wall Street Journal, if you're in 200ft of the Oval Office, you're going to receive a pardon from me. You know, Corey Lewandowski said, hey, do whatever I want. I'm going to get pardoned. The family's certainly going to get pardoned. Hunter Biden got pardoned. And so even if you are bold enough to prosecute me, I'm going to pardon myself. Now, there is a remedy. There is one remedy which will never, ever, ever happen. But the remedy would be impeachment, okay? And what would happen under a normal system is people say, okay, this is bald face immoral and it's illegal. And we have to set a message to the American people that we have some honest accountability in the government. So we're gonna impeach the guy. Jack Schlossberg, who is JFK's grandson, has a cheeky book coming out called Profiles in Cowardice. It's the reverse of his grandfather's book, Profiles in Courage. And so if you remember the Kennedy book from the 1950s, he took 14 people who broke from their parties to do something principled in the Congress. And then people laughed at him. He won the Pulitzer Prize. And they said, well, Senator Kennedy, this book is so short. And he said, well, look, if I was writing Profiles in Cowardice, it would be the size of a phone book, okay? There's only a misfit, right? That was a big Kennedy line back in the 50s. But now Schlossberg is writing a book, Profiles and Cowardice. It won't be phone book size, though it should be. But, you know, John Thune would have to answer for this. Mitch McConnell would have to answer for this, you know, but here's what happens. Bill Cassidy, everybody on this show knows who he is. He's the senator from Louisiana. He lost the primary vote last weekend, Saturday night. And so he's now been ousted effectively from the Senate. He's not gonna be able to seek reelection. Bill Cassidy voted to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment trial. And so even though he's squared that off by voting with the President, each time in the 16 months since Donald Trump has returned to the White House, the Trump people, and Trump himself went after Bill Cassidy and. And he lost his primary. So you've got a situation now where they should impeach him. He should have been removed from office just because of the war crime. He's telling people on Easter Sunday that he's going to wipe out a civilization, that, you know, the threat is a war crime. Just wanna make sure everybody knows that. If you Threaten to wipe out a civilization. If you look at the Hague and the statues, that's a war crime. You don't have to actually wipe out the civilization.
- [18:02]
Ed Elson
That's locker room talk. I thought.
- [18:04]
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So he's committed a war crime. No one's going to prosecute him. No senators picking up the phone and saying, hey, asshole, you're making the country look bad. Could you please stop doing that? They're not going to do it. And by the way, he won in Indiana two weeks ago. He ousted five mainstream Republicans. Okay? He knocked out Crenshaw. He's given Cornyn a hard time in Texas. Knocked out Crenshaw is not going to be able to seek reelection. He just took out Cassidy. There's going to be a big fight over Tom Massie this week as to whether or not he can knock him out as well. And so he has been incredibly good at meleeing and taking out his adversary. So guess what? We just got done telling you how lucrative it is to stay in the Congress.
- [18:55]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
- [18:55]
Anthony Scaramucci
Hey, pal. Ed Elson. Anthony Scaramucci. Bye. Bye. I'm staying in the Congress. I'm not prosecuting this guy. Let him do whatever the hell he wants.
- [19:04]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
- [19:04]
Anthony Scaramucci
And so. And so that's a stain on the American system, the country that you came from. They would. This gotta be long gone. You think Keir Stormer could be trading his personal account?
- [19:17]
Ed Elson
This is what is so shocking to me, because this does seem. I'm glad you bring up impeachment. Maybe it's because we follow markets on this show, but this, to me, seems like the most clearly impeachable offense. And just to lay it out for people, what's happened? This is just. Just the latest in this headline in these insider trading scandals. We had Liberation Day last year where minutes before he tacos, the S and P options trading spikes 2000% in an hour. We had two months ago where more than half a billion dollars in oil futures changed hands 15 minutes before he said he was engaging in talks with Iran. Also, one and a half billion dollars worth of S and P futures were also traded. You also had his children investing in these drone startups. Right before we went to war. You mentioned the crypto. Trump coin gets released. 58 wallets take home over a billion dollars. Carefully timing the sales of those coins. You had Melania coin, 24 wallets bought that token minutes before it was even announced. They made $100 million. You've got the prediction markets, the polymarket account that made $400,000 betting on the Timing of the Maduro ouster, you've got another one that made half a million betting on the timing of killing Ayatollah. Like, it goes on and on and on and on. And this is just one little update. And what I don't understand is why aren't people more outraged about this? Is it because it's confusing? Is it because it's like, financy and complex? I mean, this, to me, this is it.
- [20:40]
Anthony Scaramucci
You know the answer. You know the answer. You're asking me the question, but you really, down deep, you know the answer. You know that if you are going to take the KGB's approach to spying, you're gonna do everything out in the open. And if you're gonna take the DON approach to corruption, you're going to do everything out in the open. You're going to make it so ridiculous, and you're going to make it so inundating that people's heads will be spinning. And then they get numb to it. And then once they're numb to it, you keep doing it. You know, the. The. The allegations that were made in the Epstein files and the disgusting behavior of these people in the Epstein files are an atrocity. Yet Donald Trump masterfully figured out, either through a war or other means, to bury the news and bury the lead on those files. And now Thomas Massie's up for a political fight of his life. He was for producing those files. But when you go down the list of things that voters care about, guess what? The Epstein files are at the bottom of the list. They want jobs.
- [21:50]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
- [21:50]
Anthony Scaramucci
And they want affordable jobs. Where. Excuse me. They want jobs that will allow them to afford their lifestyle, and they want low gas prices. Okay? And so Trump's corruption is not even on their radar screen, and he knows that. And he also knows that he's figured out the wormhole in the system where he can exploit the system. But do not underestimate him. He is a very formidable politician. He's got 34, 35% approval ratings lower than Herbert Hoover, but he's got nine out of 10. And in some areas of the country, ed, he's got 10 out of 10 of the people that see themselves as Republicans. And so he says bark, they say roof. He said jump. How high, sir? Well, I want you to jump and vote against Bill Cassidy. Done. I want you to vote against Thomas Massie. Done. Okay. But. But here's the irony of what he's doing, okay? Because he's such a narcissist, he's weakening the Republican Party.
- [22:51]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
- [22:51]
Anthony Scaramucci
Because Cassidy's gone now. You lost all that seniority. If Massie leaves, we've lost all of his seniority, and they're replaced by weaker, less influential Republicans. Okay, but they're doing that to serve Trump's narcissism. See, so. So you have to put this whole thing in the cauldron and say, my God, you want to talk about life being unfair? Donald Trump took a system of genteel practices. He took a system of gentlemen and gentlewoman's agreements where nothing was specifically delineated, and he steamrolled over it. Okay, because you don't have a codified law that says the president cannot do blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. The president, if he does bump, bump, bump, he gets ejected like a villain in the Aston Martin in a James Bond car. No, that doesn't happen to the president. You see what I'm saying?
- [23:46]
Ed Elson
I do.
- [23:47]
Anthony Scaramucci
And so he said, oh, this is great. I'm gonna run roughshod over this whole system. I'm gonna annihilate everybody in the system. And his family members are telling, look, we expect to be the richest family in the world when we leave.
- [24:01]
Ed Elson
Yes.
- [24:01]
Anthony Scaramucci
And so we've got a lot more to do in the next two. And. And, oh, by the way, let me put up all these disclosures right now because Ed Ellson and Anthony Scaramucci will talk about it like the, you know, the Charlie Brown teacher. And. And what difference does it make? I'll be locked and loaded doing this. And no matter who lights their hair on fire and outrage, not going to matter. And that's where we are right now. So the next president, hopefully.
- [24:30]
Ed Elson
Yes.
- [24:31]
Anthony Scaramucci
Okay. I've got to weaken myself, and I've got to weaken the presidency to make the system stronger again.
- [24:39]
Ed Elson
Yes.
- [24:39]
Anthony Scaramucci
You know, it's what Cicero once said 2400 years ago, we are slaves to the law in order to be free 2,200 years ago. But you get the point.
- [24:49]
Ed Elson
Yes.
- [24:50]
Anthony Scaramucci
You want to subordinate yourself to the process, the checks and balances of the system, because that means less cronyism, less corruption, less of a funnel at the top of illegality. Right. Can I make one last point? I know we have to hop, but I wanna make one last point. Please think about the willing billionaire sycophants. Right? These guys are all motivated by money more than anything else. Other wouldn't be billionaires. And they're sitting around saying, hey, man, I'm paying the piper here. If I pay the piper, he's gonna lay off my business. Okay? Jeff Bezos was coming at him in first term. Not doing that. Have a $40 million documentary on the wife.
- [25:28]
Ed Elson
Yeah.
- [25:29]
Anthony Scaramucci
We're going to pay for the wall. We're going to pay for this. You want to pay for the ballroom? No problem.
- [25:34]
Ed Elson
They'll get on the plane with him to China.
- [25:36]
Anthony Scaramucci
What do I got to give to the pack? No problem. Conspicuously absent from that plane ride was Jamie Dimon. Jamie Dimon said, I'm not playing ball with the ballroom. I'm not doing this. What did Trump do? He sued him. Suing the bank. Right. And he didn't make the plane ride. Jane Frazier from Citibank made the plane ride. Yeah, Citigroup. My point is, he's got all of those people between a rock and a hard place because they're like, shit, if I don't kowtow to him, he's going to hurt my shareholders. He's going to hurt my image. He's going to. He's going to hurt me with my own board. So I'm going to kowtow to the guy. And Trump understands that as well. He's used every mechanism in his game, and he's exploited every mechanism. And there's very few people at that level that are like, you know, I'm going to pass on that trip to China. Oh, you know, I don't want to be in the Great hall hanging out with Xi and the Chinese. They're all looking at each other and they're doing that, you know, manifestation of cognitive dissonance, and they're saying, hey, I got to go. It's best. Best for my country. It's best for my business. It's best for me.
- [26:47]
Ed Elson
Best for my shareholders, too. Just one last final question before you go here. I know you have to hop, but, I mean, it seems as though, say, the Democrats win.
- [26:56]
Anthony Scaramucci
I sort of feel you could have a lot more hair if you let that grow out. I mean, I could send you some.
- [27:02]
Ed Elson
A lot of people want that.
- [27:03]
Anthony Scaramucci
I'm just letting you know, I like the bucks. I got some great product for you,
- [27:07]
Ed Elson
you know, well, I'm gonna need. I'll need to get your products. You just send me your. The mooch kit.
- [27:13]
Anthony Scaramucci
I just want to point out people are looking say, hey, the kid has more hair than he's letting on. But go ahead, Elson. What were you going to say if
- [27:20]
Ed Elson
the Democrats win in the next cycle, if we have a Democratic president? It seems that a lot of people are thinking that maybe what we'll see is that someone will go after Trump and prosecute him once he's out of power. Essentially. He'll go off, they'll go after all the insider trading, they'll go after his family. Do you think that's gonna happen?
- [27:39]
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, of course it's not gonna happen. They may want it to happen, but he's gonna pardon himself and he's gonna pardon all of them.
- [27:46]
Ed Elson
But once he's out. Once he's out, I'm saying, I'm saying let's go when he's no longer president.
- [27:52]
Anthony Scaramucci
My point being, I hereby pardon myself for any crime that I could be accused of. From 1946, the day of my birth, till January 20, 2029, I am exonerated from every single crime, IRS audits, any crime that I've ever perpetrated. I have pardoned myself and I've pardoned every one of my family members. So now what are you going after? So if he makes a crime on 21st January, 2029, you can go after that, but what are you going after? You see, this is the thing that has people upset because you want there to be some form of accountability. Now at that point you could say, oh, okay, well, the state attorney generals are gonna go after him cuz he can't pardon himself at the state level. Yeah, good luck to that. Good luck to that.
- [28:47]
Ed Elson
Anthony Scaramucci is founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital and he will also be joining us on tour in New York for our live profit markets show June 2nd. I can't wait. I'm so excited.
- [28:59]
Anthony Scaramucci
By the way, I finally look cool to my adult kids and they passed on to me some Instagram promotion of this whole thing.
- [29:06]
Ed Elson
There we go. There we go. We're going to have them in the crowd.
- [29:10]
Anthony Scaramucci
I'm trying to give you a hair product sponsorship for Prop G markets.
- [29:13]
Ed Elson
Man, I would love that. Bring it to the show. Bring it to the show and I'll put it on. I'm going to put it on stage.
- [29:18]
Anthony Scaramucci
Maybe I'll bring you some hair products. Galloway's hopeless, okay? He's done about him.
- [29:22]
Ed Elson
He's done. Not going to happen.
- [29:24]
Anthony Scaramucci
We can only bring bronzer. That's it for him. But we can help you.
- [29:28]
Ed Elson
I'd love to have your bronzer. Okay. Thanksgar Moochie. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
- [29:33]
Anthony Scaramucci
Good to be on, brother.
- [29:36]
Ed Elson
After the break, Elon loses in court. And by the way, we are heading out on tour next week. So for more info and to get tickets to a show near you, head to profgmarketstour.com foreign.
- [29:54]
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- [31:04]
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- [31:39]
Ed Elson
We're back with Profg Markets. A federal jury has unanimously rejected Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, ending the drama filled legal feud. Musk had alleged that OpenAI stole a charity when it converted to a for profit. But after less than two hours of deliberations, the jurors ruled that the statute of limitations had expired. This means that OpenAI and Microsoft, which was also named as a defendant, are not liable for Musk's claims. Here to discuss this verdict, we're speaking with Mike Isaac, the New York Times technology correspondent who was in the courtroom at the trial. He has gone back to his microphone to tell us what happened at the trial. Mike, thank you so much for joining us. What did happen? What did we learn?
- [32:24]
Mike Isaac
What have we learned indeed? I feel like it's one of those scenarios where we're kind of back to where we started. We've hit the status quo, which is that, you know, Musk filed this lawsuit in 2024. It took a few years to get to court. A number of lawyers, when we were covering this trial, basically asked, why did
- [32:44]
Anthony Scaramucci
it get to court?
- [32:45]
Mike Isaac
Because why did it actually make it to trial? Because of this statute of limitations issue. But. And ultimately that was what undid Musk. What the jury found unanimously, by the way, was that Musk waited too long to file his claims and thereby, you know, is it basically struck all the rest of the claims on in his lawsuit because of that. Because he wasn't able to meet that burden.
- [33:11]
Ed Elson
Yeah, unanimously and within two hours, which I found quite striking. I mean, pretty amazing, easy decision. And so it sounds like, I mean, just this statute of limitations that basically what they're saying is you knew that this was a nonprofit that was transitioning into a for profit for a long time. You didn't sue then, but you decided to sue now. So we don't really believe that it was a problem. Am I getting that right?
- [33:39]
Mike Isaac
Yeah, 100%. And that was really a bulk of the evidence in discovery that the OpenAI side brought up was, you know, God love ancient emails that people like say as much as possible that were brought up in this trial. And it was, it was a lot of stuff that Musk or some of his sort of counterparts, including Siobhan Zillis, who was working for him now is the mother to four of his children, was on the OpenAI board and she knew about this transition. So like as far back as, like 2017, 2018, these emails go. And a reasonable person, according to the jury, would determine that Musk probably had knowledge long before the deadline, around 2021, that he would have had to make his lawsuit.
- [34:27]
Ed Elson
Right. So in a sense, he's basically just suing because he wants to harm a competitor. And that's what the jury decided in a matter of hours. I guess the question then becomes, what happens next? I assume Elon will appeal because I just assume people always appeal these days. What are the next stages?
- [34:49]
Mike Isaac
Yeah, no, that's a good assumption. And we were in the courtroom, in the hallway, outside of the courtroom, in the hallway, sort of trying to catch up with the attorneys. And Mark Toborough, who was lead counsel for Musk, turns around and literally says to us one word, appeal. Right. And so they're obviously going to appeal. I think the other thing that was left undetermined, but is unlikely to go to trial. There were also claims in Musk's suit about potential antitrust issues around Microsoft. And what he said was Microsoft behaving anti competitively by investing in this company and because of their size, basically like trying to quash AI competition. The judge said it was unlikely that she would allow that to go, especially because she dismissed the case on the spot after the jury found OpenAI not liable. But they're still going to discuss that and TBD on whether. Whether she actually dismisses that, basically.
- [35:54]
Ed Elson
So it seems like OpenAI's kind of got a clear path at this point. They're on their way to the ipo. This wasn't gonna be a real obstacle. But one question going into this trial and during the trial, there was a sense in which this wasn't so much a legal battle as much as a reputational battle. And I believe Elon said that this is essentially my way of trying to take you down and make everyone hate you. As someone who was there, who would you say won that battle of reputation, who came out looking worse?
- [36:28]
Mike Isaac
I think it's a great point, and I think it's also really a lot of what Musk's case rested on, because OpenAI, in my opinion, OpenAI had a strong case just purely on the statute of limitations stuff. And that was like, the main thing they needed to hammer home for the jury, because that would be the whole ball game once you find that he had expired, the statute of limitations had expired. So Musk had basically gone all in on ripping Altman, Sam Altman apart. You know, essentially digging up as much old evidence or pointing jurors to this. The New Yorker article that Ronan Farrow wrote a few weeks ago, like, it just really tarring and feathering Sam in the court of public opinion. And when Sam was on the stage. Sorry, was on the stand being questioned by Musk's attorney, Stephen Molo. It was brutal. His first question up was, are you trustworthy?
- [37:24]
Ed Elson
And not a good question to be asked.
- [37:28]
Mike Isaac
I know. And Sam's like, I think so. And then immediately they went after him going for the jugular. Whoa, you think so? You're not fully trust.
- [37:35]
Anthony Scaramucci
So it was.
- [37:35]
Mike Isaac
It was really a. I thought it was a referendum on their personalities. And I think they both came out looking pretty bad. And to be perfectly honest, I think this. Whoever won, there was some dirt thrown, mud thrown at both of each other, and it's going to be hard for that to get. To get off of them, especially with all the new evidence that's now in the public.
- [37:57]
Ed Elson
All right, Mike Isaac, technology correspondent for the New York Times. Mike, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, we'll see how this story unfolds. I'm not sure what else there is to unfold, but I assume we'll get the appeal. I assume you don't think it's going to work.
- [38:12]
Mike Isaac
I doubt it. I would say, yeah, exactly like judges typically, because this judge uphold. Upheld the jury's findings. Judges down the line don't typically like to overturn this stuff. But hey, who knows in this world?
- [38:27]
Ed Elson
We'll see. Yeah. Mike Isaac, tech correspondent for the New York Times, thank you so much. Thanks.
- [38:31]
Mike Isaac
I appreciate it.
- [38:36]
Ed Elson
It's graduation season, which means commencement speeches. And this year, most of those speeches have revolved around one topic and one topic only. What was it? You guessed it, AI. AI was all over commencement ceremonies this year. It was the main theme of Carnegie Mellon's commencement, where Jensen Huang spoke. Also Northeastern and Notre Dame and uva, where I actually went to watch my sister graduate. Congrats to her. But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is how students have reacted to these speeches about AI. I will cut to the chase. They have not reacted well. This is what happened when the commencement speaker at the University of Central Florida started talking about AI.
- [39:22]
Bloomberg Narrator
The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.
- [39:34]
Ed Elson
And this is what happened at Middle Tennessee State University when their commencement speaker mentioned AI.
- [39:40]
Mike Isaac
AI is rewriting production as we sit here. Deal with it. Like I said, it's a tool.
- [39:48]
Ed Elson
And this is what happened at the University of Arizona when former Google CEO Eric Schmidt started talking about AI.
- [39:56]
Anthony Scaramucci
It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have. I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you. There is a fear.
- [40:16]
Ed Elson
In sum, young people hate AI. And this can also be proven statistically. 54% of 18 to 29 year old Americans say they feel pessimistic about AI. 55% say it's unlikely AI will create economic gains that benefit everyone. And 60% say they are worried about AI taking jobs. And by the way, who can blame them? Because not only have tens of thousands of workers been laid off this year in the name of AI, but it's also become a point of pride for companies to lay off tens of thousands of workers this year in the name of AI. In other words, unless you are a significant investor in this technology, which young people aren't, well, then it's very hard to root for it. As we've said before, AI is about to become the single most important political issue of our time. And if those commencement speeches are any indication of what's to come, well, then one thing is for certain. The political future of AI is not looking too bright. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen o' Donoghue and Mia Silverio. And our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Prof. G Markets from Prof. G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.
- [41:53]
Bloomberg Narrator
Some Follow the Noise Bloomberg follows the money because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com
- [42:21]
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