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Scott Galloway
Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Galloway.
Jessica Tarleff
And I'm Jessica Tarleff.
Scott Galloway
If you aren't already, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page to stay up to date on all the political news. All right, let's let's bust into it. Iran says it has no plans for another round of peace talks after the US Seized an Iranian cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman over the weekend, further clouding negotiations. U.S. officials, led by Vice President J.D. vance, are reportedly heading to Pakistan this week, but Iran hasn't agreed to participate and the 10 day ceasefire expires Wednesday. At the same time, the US is dealing with a major economic reversal, the Supreme Court of the United States has struck down Trump era tariffs, triggering up to 166 billion in refunds for more than 300 money that could eventually reach consumers. And the fallout isn't just domestic allies are starting to rethink their reliance on the US In a striking address, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that Canada's deep economic ties to the US Are now a weakness that must be corrected. Let's listen to a clip from the weekend. There are some who say there's no need for a comprehensive plan. They believe we should wait it out in the hope that the United States will return to normal, that the good old days will come back. But hope isn't a plan, and nostalgia is not a strategy.
Jessica Tarleff
Sigh.
Scott Galloway
There you go.
Jessica Tarleff
Yeah.
Scott Galloway
So first off, it seems as if it's pretty difficult to keep up. I can't tell. Ceasefire or not ceasefire. I'm not sure what J.D. vance is gonna do in Pakistan other than by himself. Yeah, try to look presidential and then leave and blame the Iranians and insult them. I don't give us what you think the state of play is here.
Jessica Tarleff
Well, the state of play that I'm sure of is that President Trump is abusing the bully pulpit to make us think that we are on the precipice of something major here. It was a complete concoction what happened on Friday with the Strait of Hormuz being open and no mention of the fact that they still had the ability to toll ships that were going through. And I understand that some of the Iranians confirmed that, but not enough of them. Which I think brings us to the central issue today and kind of the only thing that I've been focusing on as the linchpin for whether we may get our deal or not, which is that the Iranians are divided amongst themselves and that it seems impossible for us to get anything done in this current posture. I'm not sure why this wasn't more reported when the first round of talks was going on last Saturday with J.D. vance, but over 80 people came from the Iranian delegation and arranged from the guy who negotiated the 2015 JCPOA with John Kerry under the Obama administration to the hardliners, one of whom said that we can't have a deal at all. And that refers to the U.S. as a, quote, vicious yellow dog. So the with the Iranians being so divided amongst themselves, this is within the IRGC and then also the regime, we don't really have a good handle on what the new Ayatollah thinks is going to be like in practice, he's, you know, wounded and weak at this moment. But it seems like there is a hardening going on within Iran and kind of harkens back to maybe a better time to have done something. And I'm not talking about necessarily a military incursion, but to have sort of support of the people of Iran was actually at the beginning of the year when there were natural uprisings in the streets and the regime was weak with a leader who was dying of cancer and in his late 80s versus someone in their mid-50s who is more of a hardliner. And this level of division within the, you know, how many are in the IRGC? 180,000, I think that it is. So that's what I've been trying to parse out because I think that's where the clues lie as to what kind of deal, if any, we're going to be able to get or if we're just going to be shifting back to either a series of airstrikes. And Trump's out there again with the, you know, we're going to bomb everything, calling up every reporter saying it's going to be bridge and power plant day again to a ground invasion. Because, you know, we're all sitting here talking about this on our podcasts and on our TV stations, but at the same time, thousands of American troops continue to come into the theater and we are behaving as if a ground invasion is possible. And with someone like Donald Trump in charge, you could see a scenario where we do end up there.
Scott Galloway
Yeah, it feels as if. So I'm more optimistic about the medium and long term benefits of military action. I do think that neutering their ability to continue to fund proxies that terrorize the region, a diminishment or diminishing their launch capabilities, their navy, I think all of this has real long term benefit. I think that the IRGC is obviously not mortally wounded, but significantly, their capacity for terror has been significantly diminished. And I think that's good for the region and good for the world. Having said that, this is where incompetence bubbles up. We have no diplomats on the ground.
Jessica Tarleff
Nope.
Scott Galloway
We know what's gonna happen in Pakistan and that it's fucking nothing. And one of the definitions or proxies I use to kind of discern masculinity is the same around diplomacy and good leadership. And that is, are you optimizing for attention or for service? And JD Van's heading to Pakistan while having no diplomats doing the hard work of diplomacy while not enlisting any allies while not having any consistent policy, while saying things like, the war is over soon. Oh, wait, but not before we bomb them to the point where we end their civilization having what looks like a glass jaw. And that is not accomplishing any of your objectives, which keep switching and then saying, we're done, we're pulling out. There are so many things we have taken for granted, and that is the difficult work of diplomats, the difficult work of negotiation, how important it is. As Winston Churchill said, the only thing worse than fighting with your allies is fighting without your allies. We are now fighting and negotiating without our allies. And we don't have any diplomatic intelligence. The bottom line is when the successful negotiations and diplomatic meetings, summits, 95% of the work has been done before they set foot on the ground. And then it's just photo ops and arguing over or debating over a few points or a framework or what have you. And this is, in my opinion, another example of if you were to describe the operation Operational Excellence with strategic incompetence, and we just have no idea where it's going, it feels like it's a giant distraction again from the Epstein files. And the only thing I'm certain of is that we're going to see massive volatility in the markets and a ton of money being made by somebody in this crime family or extended crime family based on announcements there will be abnormal options trading in the oil markets before the next announcement. That sends the markets way up or way down. But we continue to lose allies, we continue to lose credibility, we continue to put civilians and infrastructure and our own military personnel at unnecessary risk. The only thing I think the media, or one thing I think the media is missing, is that the IRGC has connected cessation of hostilities in Lebanon to a ceasefire. And people aren't talking about that. And that's kind of an interesting moment around whether if the US decides they want the ceasefire, whether they can force the Israelis to stop their military action against Hezbollah and in Lebanon, I don't think there's enough reporting on that. It'll be interesting to see what that says about the dynamic between, in the power fulcrum between the US and Israel. But this is almost becoming sort of powerful. And the way it all bubbles up is that I think it's in the IRGC's best interests to continue to not agree to a ceasefire. I will say that I thought it was a good move to take control of the Straits of Hormuz and sequester any inbound or outbound traffic from Iranian ports. I do think that's the leverage. And just to wrap up this word salad, the most powerful lever we've always had was not military action, it was economic action. And we are sort of doing that. But I think that would have probably, in retrospect, been more effective here than military action. Any other thoughts on this, Jess?
Jessica Tarleff
Yeah, I'm going to try to address all of the ingredients of the salad, because there was a lot in there that I was interested in, the blockading, the blockade. I just think we can't lose sight of the fact that we are trying to reopen something that we didn't realize that they could close to talk about the incompetence that underpinned all of this, that there. And there's been extensive reporting on this, that the assumption was that the Iranians would never close the Strait of Hormuz. And now, no matter what happens in the next 10, 20, 30 days, they know that they have that kind of leverage over the entire world. It's not even over the region. And that's a pretty big tool to have in your toolbox that you were not using before because it was free flow. Right. You know, anyone could come through there. So I think that's really important. Just to keep in mind, you talked about the operational excellence, and I think that's absolutely true for the first month of this. But during the ceasefire, we have essentially given them two weeks to do as they please. Right? To rebuild, to rearm. And yes, we've taken out a lot of their missile sites, but they have the capacity to rebuild with time, and they haven't lost any friends. Right. Vladimir Putin's not less into them. Xi Jinping is certainly not less into them. And if anything, China in particular has gained more friends out of this because of our alienating of our allies. And so they will be even stronger. You know, when you have Mark Carney standing shoulder to shoulder with Xi Jinping, when you have Macron making speeches about how it makes more sense to have a strategic partnership with China, that's all bad news for us. So the operational excellence, I think it deteriorates as this goes on and that we don't get a deal. Then there's the question of what does this deal look like? Will it just be the JCPOA, the 2026 version? And then how does that get explained to anybody? Right? Like, why shouldn't we have just been in the second round of renegotiations, where we are giving them money? There'll be a financial component and there'll be sunset Clauses which were the brass tax of the original deal there, will the right accept it because they railed against the jcpoa. And we're talking about more money being exchanged than we did back during the Obama administration. You're talking about $20 billion versus $1.7 billion. It's an enormous difference. And I think the pressure that Trump is now feeling domestically over the war can't be underestimated. NBC's poll this weekend, new second term low of just 37% approval, 67% disapprove of his handling of the war with Iran. But what was really interesting to me because you know, we talk about whether these influencers are actually representative of the base at all. You know, Tucker Carlson being out there, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens, Meg and Kelly saying this war is ludicrous. Now we have 13% of self described supporters of the MAGA movement disapproving of Trump on Iran and 26% of Republicans overall. So that includes the Mitt Romney Republicans and also the MAGA Republicans. But that's still more of a fissure than we have seen before. And I think his panic, you know, calling in to reporters this morning and saying we're going to have a deal today when no one I think is even going to be on the ground today in Islamabad to be able to even try and cut a deal shows how desperate he's getting or that it's
Scott Galloway
just, it's just purely performative in the
Jessica Tarleff
or that he's just a TV guy that's saying whatever he wants.
Scott Galloway
I want to go there, act presidential, blame it on the Iranians and hit the tarmac, make some indignant speech and then left and nothing will be accomplished except to further inflame the relationship. I used to think that Russia was the biggest winner because it's given them tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars of incremental capital, continue to fund an invasion of Europe. But now I'm beginning to believe over the medium and long term, despite the short term energy risks, because of the majority of the oil coming out of the Strait of Hormones was headed towards China. I do think they're a winner over the medium and the long term here because in addition to the economic benefits of moving to a renewables energy infrastructure, it just creates incredible energy independence, just strategically is so important regardless of the price of oil. And I can't imagine that you're just not going to see a dramatic uptick in investments, I mean huge investments, renewable energy, which says, okay, who is the most sophisticated producer of renewables? And let's look at that. 80% of the world's solar panels are produced by One Nation, China. 70% of the world's EVs produced by One Nation, China. And 60% of windmills are produced in One Nation, China. So their advanced manufacturing, their long term thinking, their long term investments are about to afford decade long massive ROI as nations all over the world, from developing nations to G7 nations, massively increase their investments in renewables. And One Nation is going to benefit from that and be able to leverage it not only economically but geopolitically to emerging nations and to say to Canada, hey Canada, you don't need to depend upon the US and their sclerotic economic policies. We will not only provide you with the best renewables, we'll finance it. We are a trusting partner. You can rely on us. So I think this might be a pivot point. And people keep predicting pivot points for the US and the US keeps coming back stronger and stronger. But the other thing that people aren't watching, it'll be very interesting to see over the next 12 months if the percentage of reserve currencies globally that are the US dollar begins to go down in favor of another currency, specifically the renminbi, that would be a destruction or an erosion in what has been the greatest aircraft carrier strike force in history. And that is the US dollar where our economic sanctions have real teeth. We can print money on a dime. Not like when the UK decided it was going to print more money and lower taxes. The country almost went into default. The Prime Minister was out in 11 weeks. We don't have the problem. We can basically, at least in the short and medium term, print money like crazy. We have sanctions. We get to see the flow of capital anywhere in the world because it has to come through our systems. I think that's the metric that we should be tracking. But again, I see this. This is nothing but the slow leak of credibility out of the US and into China. And it feels like at this point the IRGC is winning. And it is just so difficult to predict anything over the next seven days except somebody who is not us and somebody who has a direct information pipeline from the White House is going to make a shit ton of money as they are going to front run a bunch of trades.
Jessica Tarleff
I wanted to ask you before we move on, on that theme. I mean first of all, can you imagine, is Donald Trump just going to start calling Xi Jinping woke and weak because of his interest in renewables and windmills and solar panels and all the things that the right Tell us are just a colossal waste of money and that we should just, you know, I'm
Scott Galloway
not sure she really cares. I'm building a home and I'm about to.
Jessica Tarleff
Yeah, no, but I'm saying, like, how do people back here explain dumping on the technologies of the future that someone like Xi Jinping, who's a complete authoritarian and cares about nothing but making money, right? He has a million people in a concentration camp, for God's sake. And he's like, actually, windmills are good, you know, solar panels are good.
Scott Galloway
There you go.
Jessica Tarleff
But the thing I wanted to ask you is from the Mark Carney clip or the piece of his speech, Was it a 10 minute televised address? I think it is very meaningful that our allies like Carney want to sit down direct to camera and tell us that we don't matter anymore and that the relationship is irreparably broken. Because it's one thing to do things behind our back. Obviously we find out about it because it's being reported on. But it hits different, at least to me, to see him sit there and to tell his people and the rest of the world. And some of the European leaders, by the way, are talking about how Canada would be a great partner for the eu, not part of Europe. Right. But they're like, we're completely aligned with this guy and the way that Canada is going. So I thought that that was a meaningful shift, frankly, that he did it that way. I don't know what you thought 100%.
Scott Galloway
It's, it's unusual or strange, but I think the Canadian Prime Minister is effectively. The EU has always said, and people have always said, what the EU lacks is a leader to speak for them in a definitive voice. And it looks as if they found that person. It's the Prime Minister of Canada that he sort of is representing the G7 outside of the US and he's forceful, yet dignified. And it's a very basic premise. And that is, whereas we used to control and have the votes of two thirds of the world's economy, now it's one third and we're just in a minority position now. And the other third isn't looking to align with China and Russia, they're looking to create their own multipolar influence and speak for themselves and not to be dependent on the US military umbrella or US trade relationships. That is just an enormous erosion in power and influence. And Carney, if you will, in a weird way reminds me of. I've always found this fact interesting. 70% of divorce filings are filed by Women. And so I've always said that there's more divorce energy coming from women than from men. But I had the divorce attorney on the podcast, really thoughtful guy. And he basically said that number's misleading because effectively a lot of men vacate or exit the relationship and it's just the woman who decides to actually file for divorce. But that the. But that the male side of the relationship kind of gave up on the marriage or was. Has been absent for a long time. It's just that women are more organized and decisive and actually file the paperwork.
Jessica Tarleff
Another thing we have to do that we have to actually go file yet another paperwork.
Scott Galloway
Yet another thing. And then this reminded me of this and that is everyone or a lot of people administration are criticizing or people on the right. Carney's divorce from the U.S. it's like, no, be clear. He's filed the paperwork. But we're the ones that stuck up the middle finger and started banging our assistant and not showing up for the kids spring concert. Right? We have divorced from these nations. They're just making it official and filing. But this is. I just don't. The game theory here is they'll call it 4D chess. He's not. It's not even checkers. He's eating the pieces. None of this makes any sense. No idea what to expect. Except we know that we have alienated our allies. We're now creating a world where it's a third people who are our adversaries. A third that used to be our allies, but now feel they can no longer trust us and no longer feel a need to coordinate with us. And then we're going to be sitting here recognizing, wow, things like allies really really mattered. Things like diplomacy really mattered. Things like when you commit to war, you don't start talking about saying that it's over as a means of negotiation before you achieve any sort of well articulated objectives. But this has been. It is hard to imagine the American brand eroding. I would say the two biggest brand erosions of the last 12 months have been AI it was going to save us. Now everyone's convinced it's gone from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader and a destruction in the US brand. Abroad we're seen as just unpredictable, sclerotic bullying. No real strategy. And our allies are just freaked out and thinking, okay, enough is enough. We have this drunk uncle at a barbecue practicing his karate moves, trying to intimidate everybody and all the cousins and everyone has lined up and said, no, we're not inviting Uncle Shithead to Thanksgiving next year. We've got to have our own family and make our own decisions, be responsible for our own mortgage, be responsible for our own alarm system, make friends with the neighbors, start a different pta and this person cannot be trusted to organize, you know, whatever it is, neighborhood alert or what have you. I'm making a terrible analogies here. Should we move on?
Jessica Tarleff
It worked and it is reminding me and then I want to move on because you actually segued nicely into the next topics about AI. But how it feels right now and what my chats look like with all my friends from Europe, from living abroad feels like it did back during the bush years where before we had hope and change come and kind of save the global consciousness that we hadn't totally lost our minds and that we weren't going to drag everyone into needless wars.
Scott Galloway
Okay, let's take a quick break. Stay with us.
Jessica Tarleff
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Scott Galloway
So every election cycle usually adopts a new technology. With Obama, he mastered, if you will Google and search. They say that Trump mastered was the social media election. It looks like the last election may have been deemed a podcast election and people are saying that this is about to be the midterms are about to be the coming out party for AI. A lot of these accounts are pretty obviously fake or scammy AI bots, but how much does that actually matter? With AI? The scale here does feel different. It only costs a few dollars to generate a post. You could flood the zone with content and potentially game the algorithm at every level we really seen before. What are your thoughts on the Democrats fighting fire with fire to create these kind of accounts to spread misinformation or at least the liberal agenda? What do you think of AI's impact and how dirty we should get or the progressives should get trying to respond to what feels like a plethora or an explosion in AI bots online?
Jessica Tarleff
Jess well, first I would encourage everyone to read the big New York Times piece on these accounts. There are hundreds of new MAGA accounts that our AI and TikTok of course has, you know, told us we're doing everything that we can to get them off. And apparently there's no foreign influence there though. I mean, TikTok itself is foreign influence, so I would say implicitly it is, but that they're just there for mining engagement. At this point I'm, I really struggle with this one because I want to win elections very, very badly. But at the same time I'm really not supportive of us creating fake people to trick folks, you know, scrolling through their feeds into thinking things that aren't true, that they're connecting with people who don't actually exist, and possibly just telling straight up lies about what reality is, what the agenda looks like. And Donald Trump has actually reposted even one of these fake AI accounts that's in The Times piece, I believe it was an attractive blonde woman, so no surprise there that he stopped and double clicked on that one. But I. I'm very pro getting in the dirt with the Republicans where we can. But this might feel like a bridge too far for me. And I think we desperately need some government regulation in this front. And as always, the law is always too slow to keep up with the technology. And I'm super freaked out for what happens in 2026 because it feels right now. You know, you look at a president with a 37% approval rating, odds of even the Dems taking the Senate over 50% now, and you think, well, what could screw that up? An army of fake influencers telling you that, you know, all we care about is paying for sex changes for people who are here illegally?
Scott Galloway
Yeah, I say we go fucking gangster. I just. I see this as. And this may sound paranoid, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong. Whenever I talk about Ukraine, I have so many comments, and the really vile ones, really trying to attack my academic credibility or whatever, trying to undermine just any. Any credibility you might have online. I click on it. The really vile shit, and it's Dog Mom Wisconsin with three followers. It's a bot. It's AI driven. I recognize the language. I've been putting all these comments into AI and say, what percentage are AI? And the platforms have an economic incentive to just let chaos reign. And I'm sick of. I want to move from the Democratic Party that has our virtue to stand on as we continue to lose elections and see bodily autonomy and income inequality be attacked and get worse respectively. I'm like, let's go fucking gangster. Let's fight. They show up with a gun, let's show up with a bigger gun. They show up with a bigger gun, let's show up with a fucking nuclear weapon. And I think people have no idea the extent to which their views have been shaped by the comments of bad actors. And my idea is to take Mom Donnie's team and put them in charge of social media for the Democrats. Because every time I said anything about Mom Donnie that wasn't like, oh, he's fucking amazing. In the next generation hero. Hundreds of comments about what a boomer and an idiot I was, and then again, I click on them. His campaign clearly had weaponized thousands of fake accounts. Was it unethical? Was it wrong? Yes. And it was the right thing to do. Put him in charge of social media for the Democrats. They play fucking dirty, and I am here for it because as long as they're playing dirty. I'm not going to disarm unilaterally if the Republicans. You know, I'm just so sick of virtuous Democrats who continually lose power. Railing against billionaires and talking about how the wealthy need to pay their fair share as they've been in Congress fucking 20 or 30 years. Senators Warren and Sanders, as taxes have gone down on corporations and the wealthy. Bring, bring fucking steel knuckles to this fight. Overwhelm, flood the zone such that no one believes anything on these shitty platforms. Fine. But the notion that we should be. We should be more dignified and rise above it. Yeah, fuck that. Fuck that. I am ready to go bare knuckle here. I want to weaponize hundreds of fake accounts, if not hundreds of thousands. Put the Mom Donna campaign in charge because they were absolutely doing it. Yeah. Am I accusing you of unethical behavior online? Yes, and I'm here for it. Put them in charge of the DNC's social media strategy. There's my TED Talk. Any closing thoughts here, Jess?
Jessica Tarleff
My closing thought is I don't think that Mayor Mandani is going to be coming on raging moderates. Not that he wanted to anyway. But I. There's merit to your argument. I am still afraid of the damage that all of it reaps, but I do want to win elections. So I'm open to the proposal. But yes, completely taking the social media teams from the candidates that are really resonating like John Ossoff's team. Hello. I would love to have you work for more people if he's elevate them. Like Mom Donnie. I mean Mom Donnie and Obama doing the wheels on the bus injected into my veins. Right. Like. And just put it everywhere. So I guess I could be a gangster too.
Scott Galloway
Millions of millions of fake accounts circulating that moment with Mamdani and Obama. I am just. Oh, by the way, you said Ossoff. I was on Huberman's podcast and he asked me, who do you think will be the nominee? And we should keep a running tally here. My two front runners are Bashir and Ossoff. I think that the two of them are well known enough to be liked, but not well known enough such that everyone's attacking them right now. But I think Ossoff is giving off serious presidential energy right now. Your quick thoughts before we wrap up?
Jessica Tarleff
100%. He is nailing the type of rhetoric that we were talking about with the election in Hungary last week as well, where it's all about us versus them. Talking about the corruption and to the point where you talk about the insider trading and the Trump family making all of this money. He's the only one standing up there and saying, has anyone checked Jared Kushner's bank account lately? Does anyone know what Steve Witkoff and his kids seek to benefit from when they're out there making these kinds of deals? I think it's spot on. And he looks the part too, you know, and the way that they're filming him and cutting these clips.
Scott Galloway
He's young. Yeah. All of it.
Jessica Tarleff
Yeah.
Scott Galloway
It'll come off moments 100%.
Jessica Tarleff
I was saying this to a progressive friend. What's really interesting is, you know, he's a moderate guy. He's one in Georgia, but nobody cares. Like Hassan Piker loves him too. Right? Because he's hitting the right notes on this corruption argument and relentlessly going after the Trump administration and doesn't play in the infighting to the point about being ruthless. He's like, I don't need to waste my time talking about what some other Democrat is doing. Like, we got bigger problems than this. So very pro.
Scott Galloway
And just to check in, according to Kalshee, get this, it says there's a 2/3 chance that Kash Patel will be out as FBI director by June 1. Any 50% chance that Pete Hacks s will leave his job this year. There's also currently, get this, a 62% chance, almost 2/3, according to betters, that Trump will be impeached by January 2028. The overall odds that Trump will be impeached again hit 72 over the weekend, an all time high. And I would just remind everyone that Kalshi in these prediction markets seem to be much better at predicting political outcomes than any pollsters or any media polls. Those were striking numbers to me.
Jessica Tarleff
Calling Pete and Cash the liquor cabinet now. I love that, but Cash is suing the Atlantic for $250 million, by the way, for defamation. I'll be interested how that. Well, they lose those lawsuits all the time. The impeachment seems high to me, though.
Scott Galloway
That's crazy high. I would probably take the other side of that. All right, let's leave it there. Jess, before we go, a reminder. The Raging Moderates is now on Substack subscribers get ad free episode. A place to connect with me, Jess, and the rest of the community. And access to the new Raging Moderates newsletter, the Monday Rage, which is out now. Plus, we're going to be hosting some live streams, some AMAs that will only be viewable to our substack subscribers. So get joined up, find us all@ragingmoderates. Prof. Gmedia.com just a quick note. A good friend of the podcast and a very decent man and an outstanding public servant, Senator Warner's daughter Madison lost a decades long fight with diabetes. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to the Warner family. That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us today. Have a good rest of the week. Jess.
Jessica Tarleff
Cool. I'll see you tomorrow.
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Scott Galloway
Adobe Acrobat.
Jessica Tarleff
Your team's home base.
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Scott Galloway
You've got your docs, your plans, your specs and then invite the crew to
Jessica Tarleff
build what's next to talk up the team.
Scott Galloway
Words they think that this design could be a contender. When somebody wonders what's the next steps, AI helps you finish the rest.
Jessica Tarleff
Bolts are tight now your plan's refined.
Scott Galloway
Run a smoother business when you're all aligned. Do that with Acrobat.
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Date: April 20, 2026
Network: Vox Media Podcast Network
In this episode, Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov dig into the tumultuous international and domestic landscape facing President Trump, focusing on Iran's refusal to rejoin peace talks and the resulting geopolitical fallout. The hosts also discuss the erosion of US global influence, economic repercussions, the rise of AI-driven disinformation, and shifting political winds at home and abroad. With their signature mix of frustration, honesty, and humor, they grapple with what it means to be a moderate as chaos seems to deepen.
[02:17 – 10:46]
[06:52 – 10:46]
[10:46 – 14:13]
[14:13 – 19:15]
[18:20 – 20:48]
[20:48 – 23:23]
[25:43 – 33:55]
[25:43 – 32:09]
[32:09 – 34:51]
Jessica Tarlov on Iran’s Internal Divisions
03:54 – “The Iranians are divided amongst themselves… It seems impossible for us to get anything done in this current posture.”
Scott Galloway on Lost Diplomacy
07:26 – “We have no diplomats on the ground… We are now fighting and negotiating without our allies.”
Jessica Tarlov on Trump’s Domestic Weakness
13:51 – “That's still more of a fissure than we have seen before. And I think his panic, you know, calling in to reporters this morning and saying we're going to have a deal today...”
Scott Galloway on the American Brand
22:28 – “We have this drunk uncle at a barbecue practicing his karate moves, trying to intimidate everybody and all the cousins... we've got to have our own family and make our own decisions.”
Scott Galloway’s Call to Play Dirty with AI
29:05 – “Let’s go fucking gangster... Put the Mom Donna campaign in charge because they were absolutely doing it. Yeah. Am I accusing you of unethical behavior online? Yes, and I'm here for it.”
Galloway and Tarlov speak candidly and often with biting sarcasm and exasperation, never shying from strong language, colorful analogies, or calling out both left and right. They balance earnest warnings about US decline and algorithmic chaos with dark humor, frustration, and flashes of hope for new leadership styles.
This episode underscores the mounting uncertainty facing American moderates: Iran’s diplomatic collapse, the dangers of improvisational foreign policy, fading alliances, an AI-driven information war, a polarized electorate, and the specter of powerful new global actors. Through sharp commentary, the hosts spotlight not just the crises, but the urgent need for new strategies and leadership—whether that means embracing tougher campaigning methods, or learning hard lessons about diplomacy and credibility on the world stage.