AI transcript
This week on Prof. G Markets, we speak with Morgan Howsell, partner at the Collaborative
Fund and best-selling author of The Psychology of Money.
We discussed the path to wealth creation while balancing a life well spent.
I think once you suppress your desire, then you are almost a victim of your money.
You are a slave to it because you’re saying, “I want to do X,” and you’re saying, “Well,
your money’s telling you no.
You can’t do that.
You want to go on a vacation, but you can’t do it.”
I think people should really follow what their personality leads them to do.
You can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the Prof. G Markets feed.
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Episode 303, 303 is here.
I go covering parts of Colorado in 1903.
Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company.
True story.
I left my Adderall and my Ford Fiesta.
I came back and it’s a Ford Focus.
True story.
I was a brand strategy consultant and engaged by Ford Motor to help sell more cars.
My idea, add anal to every brand.
Anal Charger, Anal Challenger, Anal Expedition and Anal Fiesta.
Go, go, go!
Welcome to the 313rd episode of the Prof. G Pop.
313th?
It feels like if I say that three times, some sort of poltergeist is going to show up and
turn me into, I don’t know, the 59-year-old is angry, depressed and has erectile dysfunction.
No way no poltergeist needed.
Anyways, in today’s episode, we speak with Jessica Tarlov, a co-host on the Five, Fox’s
weeknight news program to hear about Trump’s conviction and what it means for American
politics.
You are going to say that you heard about Jess here, if you don’t watch Fox.
On Fox, she’s a bit of a superstar, but I just love that her star is literally the shooting
star and she’s, I don’t know her well, but I do know her and she’s just an impressive,
cool woman.
Anyways, Jessica has become our go-to Yoda for all things politics.
I find that she kind of hits it up the middle.
She’s an unabashed Democrat, but she comes from a background of consulting and data,
and oh my gosh, you want to see just her.
I just love, my favorite moment is when the five or four of the five say something just
fucking ridiculous and she just punctures them in the middle of the forehead with a bunch
of data and they all sit there looking as if they’ve just been caught masturbating.
I mean, they have the strangest looks on their face like, “Who the fuck invited this smart
Democrat to come in and make us look like idiots?”
Anyways, she’s fantastic.
What else is happening?
The dog is back in London.
I went to the UEFA finals.
I saw Dortmund play Real Madrid, by the way, Mbappe, not that you care about football.
By the way, it’s called football, folks.
3 billion people can’t be wrong.
It’s called football.
Have hired Mbappe, who’s arguably the best, maybe the best player in the world right now.
I’ll probably get shit for that.
All fans are very, very serious about their football, but Real Madrid did not need Mbappe.
They’re going to be dominant now.
Anyways, took my two sons and their friends, Santi from Florida, who came all the way over
just for three days.
You can do that when you’re, literally no jet lag when you’re 16.
No jet lag.
I go come up early in the morning.
No problem.
Time to go to sleep.
No problem going to sleep.
So little bit different.
A little bit different when you enter your sixth or seventh decade.
It’s great to be back here.
When I say great, it’s just good.
It’s not great.
It’s sort of good.
It’s a beautiful day here for London.
It’s like almost hit 60 degrees for a moment.
And I think I saw this round orange thing in the side, although I will say I do love
London in June as the days go on forever.
It’s really nice.
It’s also nice to be back, see my kids, you know, nice to be home, get back, get back
in the swing of things.
Anyways, let’s move on to some news.
The Wall Street Journal reported that New York State is proposing a bill that would
prohibit social media companies from serving up algorithmically driven feeds to minors
and prevent them from delivering notifications during the wee hours of the night without
parental consent.
Governor Cathy Hockel believes this measure is needed in order to make these platforms
less addictive and to address the growing crisis of teens in distress.
According to the journal, opponents that is industry leaders and trade groups have questions
about the constitutionality of the proposal and believe media literacy would have a more
immediate impact.
What the fuck does that even mean?
They’re supposed to read about how terrible these social media platforms are.
Look, when we look back on this era of big tech, we’re going to regret the income inequality,
we’re going to regret the monopoly abuse, we’re going to regret the weaponization of
our elections, we’re going to regret the deep fakes, the shallow fakes, but more than anything,
more than anything.
We’re going to ask ourselves, how the fuck did we let this happen to our kids?
My colleague at NYU, Jonathan Hightison, great work basically demonstrating irrefutably
that levels of self-harm, depression and suicide have gone up, especially among girls, since
social went on mobile and as a parent and someone who you would think would be really
mindful of this stuff, I got to be honest, we’re failing.
My kid struggles with device addiction, he’s on social media too much and people say, “Well,
just take it away or just get them off the social media platform,” said anyone who does
not have kids.
This is how they get their homework.
This is how they communicate with their friends.
I would bet that one-third, at least one-third, sometimes two-thirds of all the anxiety in
our house focuses on social media or devices.
These things are a fucking cancer and I also worry that a lot of my creativity, a lot of
my risk-taking came from the fact that I did not have this amazing casino, movie theater,
dopa machine, crack pipe in my pocket that I could just sit on the couch all day that
I would call people, I would call friends that I didn’t know well or potential friends
and say, “Hey, let’s meet at the park,” where I would go, I used to go to Westwood Park
and play in pickup games when I was 10 and 11 years old.
That wasn’t easy, it was kind of intimidating and the kids were all bigger than me, but
I was so fucking bored I had to get out of the house and this is the problem.
Kids aren’t bored now, they’re just at home and they go down these rabbit holes.
I have seen some of the shit that these kids say to each other.
You want to talk about overprotecting offline and underprotecting online, oh my god.
Any parent out there, demand that you get passwords for your kids’ social media and
go on there and see how these kids are talking to each other, it is pretty, pretty scary.
I think that this is something that is going to be fixed, I think parents are catching
on to just how incredibly damaging this has been and that the mendacious Fox who run these
companies will pretend that they give a good goddamn about your children, they don’t.
They pretend about their own wealth and their own ability to get their kids into the right
schools and a lot of them, a lot of them, see above Steve Jobs didn’t allow their kids
to be on devices because they know firsthand just how incredibly damaging these things
can be.
So let’s talk about what platforms they’re using.
Percentage of US teens ages 13 to 17 who say they visit or use the following apps or sites.
This is from Pew, number one is YouTube with 71% of US teens 13 to 3 out of 4 teens are
on YouTube every day.
Think about that every day and 54% over half, over half of 13 to 17 year olds say they are
either almost constantly or several times a day on YouTube and for TikTok it is 49%.
Just half of American teenagers are on TikTok either almost constantly or several times
a day and we have the added bonus with a platform influenced by the CCP of knowing they’re seeing
the world through a frame that is being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.
What could go wrong?
What could go wrong?
And then Sam Chat which I would argue is the least mendacious of the mendacious Fox, it’s
about 43%.
Then we go to Instagram at 35% and this isn’t the total number.
This is the percentage of teens who say they’re using it almost constantly or several times
a day and then Facebook, which I guess is turned into the new Lamo one only has a total
of 19% or only about 10% are using it constantly or several times a day.
This is the frame through which our kids are developing their brain.
This is what is rewiring when your kid from 13 to 17 their brain gets rewired.
My kid is sort of the same person, but not really in terms of where he was at 12 and
where he was now, their brain gets rewired, the hormones kick in, the prefrontal cortex
finally starts to grow.
They start perceiving things, reacting to them, their social capital shows up and they
start thinking about, well, maybe my parents don’t know everything, who do I find or what
are the sources of information that influence who I am and my view of the world.
That is mostly, I’d like to believe still their peer group interesting study across parents.
We like to think that we’re engineers of the sheep, we’re not.
We’re herders, we’re shepherds, we get to choose the field they graze on, we get to
choose what food they get, we get to choose what direction they graze in, but the sheep
comes to us, right?
We’re not engineers.
Just ask yourself, what would the CCP want?
So we have this device or this platform or this media that is not only depressing our
kids, but is giving them a fucked up view of the world.
You don’t think the zombie apocalypse of useful idiots on campus has something to do with
the frame through which they perceive the world.
Are you totally confused as to how they would even get there?
Well, see above, tick and talk.
Okay, moving on to a lesson on brand.
The aforementioned Wall Street Journal who broke the news about New York’s social media
legislation is going through a multi-million dollar rebranding campaign.
Axios reported that the journal is introducing a new tagline.
It’s your business as it looks to attract a broader audience beyond the uber-finance
centric people and C-suite executives.
To achieve this rebranding, the journal is investing heavily in paid marketing.
You’ll likely see their efforts on billboards and office buildings and social media.
Okay, does this make sense?
Keep in mind, I’m biased or I should be biased.
I have spent my entire professional career, that’s not true, the first three quarters of
my professional career based on the following algorithm.
From the end of World War II to essentially the introduction of Google, the way you printed
money, the algorithm for creating shareholder value was the following.
Find a mediocre product you can produce at the lowest cost at scale, a mediocre salty
snack, sugary drink, car, tennis shoe, and then wrap it in these amazing brand codes
of youth, American masculinity, European elegance, sacks, never goes out of style, paternal care,
maternal love.
Why?
Why should you spend $3.30 on $.30 worth of peanut butter paste?
Because choosing moms choose Jiff.
You love your kids more, why?
And how do you prove it?
Buy branded toothpaste.
And this was licensed to print money.
Sell a product with 80 or 90 points of margin.
The can is the most expensive thing about Coca-Cola in terms of the actual product, but the real
expense and the real genius is the brand code that you are American and youthful and you’d
like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
Or you’re like Michael Jackson if you drink Pepsi, what have you, just drink more Coors
Light and you’re going to be hot and on the beach playing volleyball with other hot people.
By the way, that has not happened to me.
I’ve consumed a great deal of beer in my life and modest volleyball player and just don’t
look the same way on the court.
Anyways, this was the brand code.
This was the algorithm for creating shareholder values.
He’s incredibly efficient and cheap broadcast vehicles.
You hire very talented people who show up wearing black, who are very attractive and you love
to hang out with after hours who come up with these amazing stories.
They tell these stories on these very efficient mediums that get huge scale, infuse this mediocre
product that they can produce at scale, edit a low cost with these incredible brand associations
and brand codes and then boom, stuff the channel with it, other people’s channels that they
spend the capital and they’re good at retail and we print money.
We’re Procter and Gamble.
We’re Chevy.
We’re like a rock.
We’re a unilever.
I mean, these companies were ABN Bev, right?
Oh my God, aren’t those frogs just ridiculously fucking cute.
And then, and then Google came along and we no longer needed to defer to the shorthand
that is brand.
That’s what brand is.
I don’t have time to do diligence on every hotel, so I will defer to the Mandarin Oriental
in the four seasons.
Why?
Because usually when I travel, someone else’s O is paying and it’s O as an eight.
But now I no longer need the shorthand of brand.
I no longer need advertising.
What can I do?
I can go on my social graph.
I can go on TripAdvisor.
I can Google and go to AI.
And what I find out is that when I’m in London, I want to stay at the Chiltern Firehouse.
Why?
Because I am that douchebag that likes to hang out with people who are much younger and much
hotter than him.
And I’m willing to put up with a substandard room, which they are in their choppy, to stay
in an Andrew Bilaz Hotel.
He’s got the algorithm down, underinvest in the actual hotel room, overinvest in the public
spaces, create the illusion of scarcity and cool, and people will pay 800 pounds such that
they have access to this really cool room.
This is the conversion of the brand age to the innovation age to the social age, where
your social graph and these new digital mechanisms of getting you to exactly the right product.
Think about the waste of any broadcast commercial.
What percentage of people watching Rachel Maddow tonight really have opioid-induced
constipation?
Well, not a lot.
Hopefully not a lot.
Jesus Christ, I hope not a lot.
Anyways, this is, this is the problem.
Because if I have opioid-induced constipation, I type it into Google or AI, and I get exact
information.
It’s one-to-one.
It’s pull versus push.
So the brand era is over.
Let’s bring this back to the Wall Street Journal, Scott.
I don’t think this is a great idea.
I think maybe a little bit of it to announce the rebranding, I would try and get free or
earn media.
But how do you know?
How do you know you’re a company that is not going to add 10, 50, or $100 billion in
market capitalization over the next 12 months?
See, you advertise.
That’s it.
Professor of Brand Strategy, NYU Stern, founder of Profit Brand Strategy, I have made my living
preaching about the power of brand.
It outs you now in this era is not getting it.
Branding in the traditional sense, and that is trying to fill an empty vessel of a mediocre
product or these brand associations, the sun has passed midday on that.
Don Draper has been drawn and quartered.
We are in an innovation age now where it’s about the product.
It’s mostly about supply chain, in my view, and I’ll come back to that at a later date.
But to think that rebranding something is going to reignite the structural decline being
felt by newspapers and content companies, boss, you’re watching too much TV.
We’ll be right back for our conversation with Jessica Tarloff.
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Welcome back.
Here’s our conversation with Jessica Tarloff, a co-host on the Fox’s weeknight news program.
Jess, where did this podcast find you?
At home in New York City, in the middle of my maternity leave, so I’m thrilled to talk
to an adult about something.
Maternity leave.
Oh my gosh.
How long is that?
I am entitled to 16 weeks paid maternity leave.
Good for you.
Yeah.
That’s a whole other talk.
Which everyone should be.
Yes, it is.
I would love to do a childcare conversation for sure.
By the way, does your husband get paternity leave?
He does.
They don’t have a formal policy.
It’s just kind of like a take what you need situation and I still, because he works in
finance, I still think that they are a little uneasy with taking a lot of time, but people
seem to be splitting it up.
Like they take a bit at the beginning and then when they really want to be off, like
in August, they’re like, “Oh, I’m on paternity leave.”
So it’s kind of a mixed bag.
Did you take time with yours?
So just to you know, I’ve always had my own businesses, but that take as much as you need
is a trick.
I used to do the same thing.
I used to tell people, people say, “What’s your vacation policy?”
I’m like, “You need a vacation, take a vacation.”
And people in a high achiever firm all feel this implicit pressure to take no time.
So I found it was the perfect model to make sure that no one took any time.
How’s that from being a terrible boss?
I mean, it’s honestly how you keep up, but again, it’s a whole other story, but I lived,
I think you know.
Yeah, well, we’ve talked about it.
When I lived in London, I did an internship for someone who was doing a maternity cover,
which can be up to a year over there.
And then the woman came back.
They didn’t want to get rid of the guy who had subbed in and had done such a fantastic
job.
And in the end, the woman ended up getting pushed out a couple years later because there
really wasn’t a role for her left, but they legally couldn’t let her come, not come back
after a year off.
And it turned into this whole mess of a thing.
So they’re big politics with it to say the least.
Kids ruin everything.
All right, let’s get to the serious stuff here.
So 34 felon accounts, what do you make of this historic verdict?
Well, it seems like it was the correct verdict, and everyone has really been parsing the difference
between what the jury did and whether this was politically motivated or if this was the
right thing to bring the case.
It seems like the jury did a fantastic job.
They evaluated the evidence, they won, they made a timely decision.
I was following really closely, at least on social media, all the questions that they
were asking, all of the legal commentators kept saying, “Those are the right questions
to be asking, paid great attention,” et cetera.
And Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s lawyer, did a bunch of interviews, and he said, “We
expected that this could happen.
We made all of our decisions together about how to present our case.
We obviously approved the jurors and the alternates, and this is the way that it goes sometimes.”
We’ll see how the appeal process goes.
The other side of the coin, which is, should Alvin Bragg have brought this case?
And I was listening to your latest episode of Pivot before we got on, so I know that
you had Eli Hone gone, who obviously has a bit of a counter-opinion to a lot of Democrats
who are seething about even mentioning the fact that this was a case that perhaps should
not have been brought and that bringing it up to a federal charge with the campaign finance
fraud, essentially, was not the right way to go, is the other side of the coin.
And that’s where I think the really interesting stuff is.
Well, let’s put forward that thesis.
My fear is that this is going to help the president get elected, that the majority of
the voting public will see this as basically about sex, and that if they figured out a
way to elevate and attempt to cover up sex or hush money to a felony, that they’re going
to need more courts, that there are a lot of people who pay off mistresses or end up
doing things that are illegal under the context of trying to keep affairs discreet or quiet,
and that this is selective prosecution, and that this will be further play into the whole
narrative of the deep state is coming after me, rally his base.
My understanding is he raised a record amount of money or a lot of money post-Sovietic.
Distinct of the merits of when you bring a case or don’t, just strategically, if you
don’t want Trump to be president, do you think this helps or hurts us?
I think it’s going to take a few weeks to a month to understand that, and the polling
is really fuzzy at this moment, and some people are just ingesting the information.
Some people haven’t even paid attention to it yet, and the Biden campaign is still figuring
out how they want to approach this.
How often do you want to call him Donald Trump, and how often do you want to call him convicted
felon Donald Trump?
And that’s something that the communications people are struggling with as we speak.
But I actually am less pessimistic about it than you are, and the reason for that is that
I only care about a small subset of voters.
The bases of the parties don’t matter to me at this point, and I know that Biden’s polling
has been softer with African-Americans and Latino voters and some young voters, but that
happened in 2020 as well, and people came home.
So I’m putting that to the side now and thinking, okay, who is my focus?
Moderate Republicans and independent voters.
And there have been a few surveys taken since the verdict, and we’ll get more and more,
but ABC, Ipsos, was out there in the field, and they got that 52% of independents say
that he should withdraw from the race, and 16% of Republicans, and 16% might seem like
a low number, but there’s your swung election, right?
Those are your swing states, potentially.
Morning console got basically a mirror image of that result.
CBS also something similar.
So if you think about how many people are actually up for grabs, how few we have to
persuade that this matters and that this isn’t just a one-off that he lied about this, but
that he is a chronic liar, and that has been a thread through the Eugene Carroll case,
the Civil Fraud case, and if we ever get to the Marquis cases, which obviously I would
have preferred if we were talking about the nuclear secrets that are hanging out in the
toilet at Mar-a-Lago or January 6th before we were talking about the Hush Money case.
I think that you can persuade a lot of people with that to just say, you know what, maybe
I was thinking about giving him another shot, but the guy is such an effin liar.
You work with, I mean, you work with a conservative network, or what is the vibe when you talk
to people off camera, are they, do they generally believe this is another example of the deep
state going after, you know, as a function of Trump derangement syndrome, or are they,
this is bad for us?
What’s the vibe off-mic or off-camera among conservatives?
I think that they actually feel both of those things, and that we’re always trying to put
people into one box, and it’s actually a lot more complex than that.
So yes, the deep state is real, and they’ll go back and try to relitigate, quote, “Rush
a gate with me,” and then I’ll get all hot and bothered again about Hillary Clinton,
and they’ll be like, “Actually, I don’t want to talk to you about this anymore.”
And then they also understand the fact that this does not help their case.
And you can tell that Republicans know that it’s a bad thing from the type of panic and
the way that they’re speaking about him being a convicted felon.
A, they want to raise a ton of money, which they did, I mean, we’ll see what the actual
figures are, but they’re reporting $141 million, which is astronomical.
They will not say what it will be used for, which I’m always paying attention to.
So okay, you’ve got all this money now, are you going to open a field office, and then
they’re like, “Actually, maybe we’ll just pay Donald Trump’s legal fees.”
So that’s somewhere the Democrats still have a huge advantage.
But they know that this isn’t helpful.
No one ever wants to be indicted.
No one ever wants to be convicted.
And something that I don’t think folks are paying as much attention to as they should
be, every day that Donald Trump is out there just grievances, wall to wall, “I’m a political
prisoner,” whatever else he’s talking about, he’s not talking about the issues.
And the issues are the ones that are going to sway that little group of people, though
you’re talking about the independents and the Republicans, who have decided either he
is this guy and we don’t care, or he is this guy, and I’d like to hear something, a plan
for the economy, a plan for the border.
So I think that that does lead to an advantage for the Democrats and disappointment for my
wonderful colleagues, who I look forward to rejoining in Milwaukee in July, which is a
crazy first week back.
That’s going to be really interesting, the convention, Ryan.
It’s going to be…
I’m actually a little scared.
I live right by the courthouse in Manhattan, and it was remarkably low-key.
I saw a few, and I wouldn’t call them parades, but a bunch of Trump cars that had Blue Lives
Matter flags, and now the upside down American flag, because Samuel Alito is some sort of
hero for a quote not standing up to his wife, who did that all by herself or whatever.
So when Trump was coming in and out, they drive with him, but going to the convention
four days after the sentencing, I think it could get a little wild.
I’m not saying January 6 levels, but you have to be ready for anything to happen, especially
if he’s given jail time.
But that’s…
So it’s just some anecdotal evidence, and I’m curious if you’ve picked up on the same
thing.
I find one of the most encouraging things, or a signal, and granted, I’m looking for
signals that this is going to help get Biden reelected.
But when…
I was living in Florida in Delray Beach, and right after the election, there was a parade
for a stop-to-steal parade.
And Delray is actually kind of purplish/blue, but there is…
You go three miles inland, and it’s deep red.
I could not get over the number of people in the passion around the stop-to-steal, and
they had a desk set up, information, and just for fun, I walked over and had them explain.
And these were people who were deeply committed and believed that the election had been stolen.
I thought, “I’m just so out of touch with America.”
And the passion they felt, the number of people…
When the case…
When the verdict came down, I was encouraged at how what I’ll call “little agita” grievance
or rage among the general populace was.
I see it as there is rage fatigue, that people are starting to think, “You know what?
I’m still going to vote for them, but I’m not going to storm the Capitol.
Did you sense the same thing?”
I mean, that’s the hope, but we’re also far out from the election.
I think the vibe in October is going to be a lot more heightened on both sides of this.
I was surprised that there weren’t more lefties showing up at the courthouse to troll him,
right?
Or standing outside of Trump Tower and the New Tiffany’s, which is gorgeous, and trying
to do it that way.
So I think that we’re just a bit too far out for it, but I think it will be less, because
people probably have learned a lesson or two from the number of January Sixers who have
gotten pretty serious sentences, and the number of people who have been very forthcoming with
their transition out of being a Trump supporter and talking about how they were manipulated,
how they were brainwashed, how they fed him a bunch of lies.
And my hope is that Democrats will be able to connect what he’s saying about this Alvin
Bratt case to the supposition that Donald Trump lies to you at every single turn.
Fox is doing some really cool new polling work.
They have a new issues tracker, and they also have this deal breaker question, which I think
is so awesome.
What are the deal breaker issues for you?
Number one was abortion.
I think Democrats need to get back to talking about preserving female reproductive rights,
that that’s something that’s always going to win for them.
But on the issues tracker, Biden has a 15-point advantage on honesty and trustworthiness, and
I don’t think they’re leaning into it enough.
So before you became kind of a household name, you were a consultant around messaging.
So I want you to do sort of kind of arm-share consulting.
We’re the Republican Party.
What is our messaging around this issue moving forward?
I think that you’ve really got to split it up, and you got to pick your best voices that
are going to be out there kind of parroting what Donald Trump wants to hear.
So it seems like JD Vance, Marco Rubio are taking the mantle for that.
They’re both high up in the VP search.
I think JD Vance is probably ahead of Rubio in that and let them, people who are respected
as being intelligent folks, talk about it.
And the rest of the party really has got to get back to talking about the issues.
I saw how Larry Hogan was totally maligned for saying something pretty normal.
Let’s respect the jury decision.
He didn’t even say what he thought about Donald Trump, even though we all know what
it is that he thinks.
And people like Kevin McCarthy, who has found some courage since he’s been out of office,
was on Fox talking about it and said, “What are we doing going after Larry Hogan?
That might be our chance to actually win a Senate majority.”
And whatever Donald Trump wants to talk about, it doesn’t change the fact that there is an
election where people are going to turn up and they’re going to vote on the economy, crime
and policing, abortion for sure.
And if the only message coming out of the Republican Party is Donald Trump is a victim
when everyone can see that that’s not really what a victim looks like, it’s not going to
go well.
Now, do Democrats, what do you think the messaging, do you think they play up President Biden’s
positives as you reference or do you think they go on offense and start calling this
guy a felon?
I mean, the risk is it makes President Biden look less presidential, less bipartisan, less
statesman-like.
It lowers the contrast between him and Trump, because we know what Trump will do.
Do you go on offense or do you try and maintain a statesman-like demeanor?
Well, I think this is where you can separate Biden from his surrogates, and he has some
fantastic surrogates who need to be out there more.
I mean, John Fetterman has become the darling of the party.
He went from vegetable to, “Can we get this guy to come to my rally?”
And Republicans saying to me, I had a very funny off-air conversation with a colleague
who was like, “I like John Fetterman now.
What is that?”
And I was like, “Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t have been so shitty about him.”
He’s actually kind of always been that way.
You just didn’t ask him about Israel.
Yeah, but that isn’t that he threads the needle, right?
Oh, totally.
He throws a bone to the Republicans by saying, “I’m unapologetically pro-Israel.”
Had this guy as a crook.
Yeah, and he doesn’t think about it that way.
That’s the thing about John Fetterman is he doesn’t have the vibe of anyone who is calculating
what they’re saying.
And you can say that you look at his outfit, right?
No one picked that out, right?
No one said, “This is coordinated.”
And he just speaks from the heart.
And I think that that’s something that’s really resonating with folks, and you see it with
Gretchen Whitmer as well, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore is becoming a superstar this way.
So I think that those folks can be out there threading the needle.
And Biden has dabbled in the convicted felon jargon a little, but in general, I want to
see more of the interviews like he’s on the cover of Time that came out this morning.
I want to see more of that, him talking about the policy issues, what he’s actually done
in the Middle East.
He’s pretty critical of Netanyahu, actually, which is something that I think will not only
appease the left side of the party, but a lot of the people like me were pretty moderate
in the middle, want Israel to do everything that they possibly can to get the hostages
back and to bring peace, but to recognize that Netanyahu is a bad actor and all of that.
So I think Biden stays a statesman, but he unleashes the beast underneath that and makes
sure that every one of those gettable voters knows what the alternative is, and that they
also are aware of the fact that if they sit it out, if they were a Nikki Haley voter or
a Chris Christie voter, that that is another vote for Trump.
He brought up a key word and something I’ve been thinking about a lot, surrogates.
And I’m disappointed that he hasn’t weaponized more surrogates.
I don’t see Mayor Pete out there.
I don’t see … John Fetterman wasn’t planned.
No, it’s total surprise.
And it strikes me that there are 50 or 100 incredible surrogates that could be out there.
Governor Newsom is really good on his feet.
I would argue that he might be a better candidate than an actual politician, but it strikes
me that why have they not put these people in, so to speak, put me in, coach?
Why have they not weaponized them?
And also, one thing I’m disappointed is that typically the person that goes on the attack
is the vice president.
And why has that not … Is it because they don’t see her as effective?
Is it because she is in fact ineffective?
And also, where’s the weaponization in the surrogate strategy here?
Yeah, so we are still early in campaign mode.
And I think that the fact that they moved up the debates puts them further on their heels.
You’ve got to go faster if you’ve decided that you want to have a debate June 27th.
So we’ve got to see that Kamala Harris, it’s been tough.
And we talked about the last time that you had me on.
She has not panned out as the superstar that a lot of Democrats hoped that she would be.
I was personally not a tremendous Kamala fan.
And the primary, and I think it said something that she dropped out before Iowa, right?
She didn’t even get the opportunity to have a vote cast for her.
And the Democratic base was sending a signal that she wasn’t what they thought she was
or what they had hoped that she was going to be.
So I think there’s a little bit of anxiety about that.
And I think that also she is, to give her credit, doing well talking to younger bases.
She’s doing a huge amount of college tours, for instance, and we know that the turnout
in these college towns, especially in conservative states, you know, you hear about a conservative
state and then suddenly there was this boom turnout for a referendum on women’s reproductive
rights.
And it’s like, oh, is there a big college town in there?
So she’s doing that.
And also, I think that she is the best representative of the administration unsurprisingly to talk
about women’s health.
And she’s been doing that really well.
So that’s really been her focus.
But I think that she has to get in on this, especially with her law enforcement background.
She was the top cop, right, in California.
And I think, you know, if we want to get away from, to fund the police, which I wish had
never happened, and move more towards, we’re the party of law and order, and we can make
that claim now, right?
They don’t respect any judicial decisions at this point.
They think the Supreme Court is on tap for them.
You know, Mike Johnson out there saying like, you know, I think they’ll step in, I called
my buddies over there and they’ll do something that she has a real role to play.
The surrogate strategy, it’ll be rolled out as the campaign gets going, but I would love
to see it more.
And I’m hugely enthusiastic about Democrats showing up, especially in conservative media,
because that’s where the persuadable voters are.
They’re not watching MSNBC.
They’re not watching CNN.
So they’re tuning into Vox.
And when Mayor Pete comes on, I still can’t call him Secretary Pete, it just feels unnatural.
When he comes on, he does great.
Yeah, he does great.
So, I’m with you on that.
Same with Governor Newsom, right?
Oh, he’s so charming.
It’s interesting that you said that though.
Oh, he’s so charming.
Yeah.
He’s very likable.
He’s very likable.
I remember 25 years ago, I was in San Francisco and I was thinking, I filled out the paperwork
to run for supervisor and I brought my friend, and we met then, I think, Supervisor Newsom.
And we talked to him for about two minutes, and then he walked away, and then me and my
friend looked at each other and I’m like, “I have no chance if that’s the competition.”
There’s just, my career is over before it started.
You meet that guy and you’re like, “I’m not even sure what he’s saying.
I just know I want him to be, I want to vote for him or give him money.”
What do you make of, you just said something very interesting, that you think there’s more,
that there’s more influence, more moderate or more swingable voters watching Vox.
I can see, I agree, than MSNBC, but you think that more moderates watch Vox and CNN.
Yeah.
Well, the Nielsen data actually bears it out.
So we have more Democrats and more independents who are by nature, they’re persuadables,
right?
Because they’re not going with one way or the other.
I tend to think a social issue usually pushes you into one bucket and now it’s abortion.
But yeah, the numbers bear that out and also, like, CNN’s ratings, and I love a lot of the
people at CNN and I think there’s a lot of really good commentary, but they just don’t
get many viewers technically.
So the percentages of persuadables has to be even less, and obviously they’re going
through a bit of an identity crisis and I think they have some amazing people who are
now anchoring big shows like the Caitlyn Collins’s of the world and Abby Phillip.
But they’re searching for their base and Fox has a conservative base, but we also have
this persuadable base and they’re the people most apt to reach out to me, right?
It will say, you know, I may lean towards Jesse Waters’ perspective or Greg Gutfeld’s
perspective, these people on the five with me, but I really appreciate your fact-based
commentary or that you always come to represent the Democratic side in a reasonable way.
And that’s the key to all of this.
Just be reasonable.
You know, don’t be unhinged and right now the Republicans look unhinged.
So before we cut you loose here, just handicap or give us your best guess or prediction on
what you think going back to Trump happens with sentencing.
So I’m not a lawyer and it’s a tough one.
I’ve tried to ingest as much information about this as possible.
I do come down on the side of that there will be a recommendation for jail time, but I was
listening to Preet Bihar’s podcast and he had a really interesting suggestion for Alvin
Bragg, which was to show the judge how this particular crime had been sentenced the last
five years, for instance, to say, these are the sentences that have been given out before
and then to put it more in Judge Merchan’s court than to make the straight recommendation.
But I don’t expect any serving of time if he’s sentenced to jail and he’s elected.
And then certainly it would be after the election, they’re not going to stop him from running
his campaign, but I think it’s over 50% likelihood and a lot of people who work in the system
and know the players in this really well think that that is the expectation, which is absolutely
unbelievable.
If anything, the Fulton County case was going to be the jail case that we would be hearing
about, but we’re not even going to see that this year.
Sorry.
Well, it feels as if Trump is daring the judge to send him to prison, and I found that it’s
not typically a good strategy for convicted felons.
No, it’s not.
And I don’t think that he’s going to like the result of it.
I mean, it’s a famous germaphobe prison is not nice.
And if you get the best treatment, even if you’re at Danbury playing tennis a couple
times a day.
So I think that he needs to be really careful about what he wishes for and what he thinks
is going to become an electoral advantage.
They clearly think that there’s some possibility that he’s going to be a civil rights leader
in all of this.
And we could spend hours discussing how offensive it is that he thinks that black people are
going to like him more now that this has happened to him, but you know, be careful what you
wish for because the other side of it isn’t just like a night at home alone eating pizza.
It’s being in jail.
Jessica Tarlove is a co-host on the five Fox’s weeknight news program.
She also offers political analysis across the Fox News channel and Fox Business Networks
programming.
Jessica is also the vice president of research and consumer insight for Bustle Digital Group.
She joins us from her home in New York where she is enjoying her maternity leave and has
just welcomed a new seven week old girl.
Congratulations on everything.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
And thanks for having me.
We’ll be right back.
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Algebra of Happiness.
I went to my first wedding in a long time a few years ago.
I remember I was, I’m now at the point where my friend’s kids are getting married, and
it took me back to this time when I was in my late 20s, early 30s, and your fellow,
you were going, you know, summer was like six weddings, and I had the privilege to give
a bunch of toast at a bunch of different weddings, and I revisited that toast.
And I think it holds the test of time.
And this is the advice I would give to the groom, and that is there are three keys to
a successful relationship.
The first is never let your spouse be hungry or cold.
And everyone would laugh at that and say, “Okay, that’s funny,” but I actually think
that’s true.
I do believe that there is a difference between the gender, and for some reason every woman
I’ve ever hung out with is impossibly cold all of the time, and that the majority of
really big fights when I look back on it, the individual was either very cold or very
hungry.
So, I literally used to have in my trunk a pashmina and protein bars and invest in
dual climate technology.
Never let someone you care about be hungry or cold.
Two, express physical and sexual desire as often as possible, and I know that sounds
very base, but I think the thing that distinguishes you from a friend is sex.
Sex says, “I choose you.”
And I think it is wonderful to be in a relationship with someone, and I encourage people, especially
as they, you know, some of that “lust” wanes, to every time you have physical desire, every
time you feel romantic, every time you want to express affection, which oftentimes I think
is more important than sex, that you do it, and that you have an inclination, especially
as a dude.
I think affection maybe doesn’t come as easily to us, to grab their hand, to express desire.
Like, I just don’t think there’s, let me get in more trouble.
I think women want to be wanted.
I think we all want to be wanted physically.
I think it makes us feel good.
You know, make that person know that you choose them.
You choose them physically, and that you want them.
And then finally, the third thing, put away the scorecard.
And this is the most important thing I have learned in any key relationship, and that
is your natural inclination will be to register the contribution and the reward you’re getting
from your partner, your colleague, your spouse, your boyfriend, you know, whatever it might
be, your coworker, your co-investor.
And here’s the problem.
Sometimes you will inflate your contribution and overlook or not notice their contributions
or minimize theirs.
And if you were stupid like me, you would inject anger and disappointment into the relationship
based on the fact that you didn’t think they were living up to their end of the bargain.
I’m not suggesting you let people walk all over you.
On a regular basis, I shed people, I shed friends.
If I’m not getting something from a relationship or someone I feel, especially professionally,
has not treated me well, I don’t get angry, I just cut them out of my life.
But for the most part, what I do in the majority of my relationships is I ask myself the following
thing.
What kind of son do I want to be?
I used to dwell on the fact that my father wasn’t very involved in my life growing up.
In my mom and dad got divorced and he immediately moved to Ohio.
And I think deep down, I’ve always held him responsible for that and I’ve always been
kind of angry at him and have questioned the extent to which I should be involved in his
life now.
And then I put that bullshit score card aside and I said, okay, what kind of son do I want
to be?
And this is the reality.
I want to be a loving and generous son.
That’s it.
That’s where it stops.
That’s the only question.
And so I try to be that.
I am a loving, generous son.
Am I there for him as much as I was there for my mom who woke me up or who every morning
with a soft voice or stayed up all night telling me math problems because I was so anxious
because I had these, these radically scary nosebleeds for some reason in my teen years.
No, I did make more of an effort with my mom, but, but I am a loving and generous son because
I’ve put the score card away.
Decide what kind of partner you want to be.
Decide what kind of spouse you want to be.
Decide what kind of girlfriend you want to be and just be that person.
Put away the score card.
Never let anyone be cold or hungry.
Express physical desire.
I want and I choose you and put away the scorecard.
This episode was produced by Caroline Shadron.
Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Jew Burroughs is our technical director.
Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice as read by George Hahn.
And please follow our PropG Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
and Thursday.
Our PropG Markets Pod is already the number one pod in business in America.
Fund and best-selling author of The Psychology of Money.
We discussed the path to wealth creation while balancing a life well spent.
I think once you suppress your desire, then you are almost a victim of your money.
You are a slave to it because you’re saying, “I want to do X,” and you’re saying, “Well,
your money’s telling you no.
You can’t do that.
You want to go on a vacation, but you can’t do it.”
I think people should really follow what their personality leads them to do.
You can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the Prof. G Markets feed.
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Episode 303, 303 is here.
I go covering parts of Colorado in 1903.
Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company.
True story.
I left my Adderall and my Ford Fiesta.
I came back and it’s a Ford Focus.
True story.
I was a brand strategy consultant and engaged by Ford Motor to help sell more cars.
My idea, add anal to every brand.
Anal Charger, Anal Challenger, Anal Expedition and Anal Fiesta.
Go, go, go!
Welcome to the 313rd episode of the Prof. G Pop.
313th?
It feels like if I say that three times, some sort of poltergeist is going to show up and
turn me into, I don’t know, the 59-year-old is angry, depressed and has erectile dysfunction.
No way no poltergeist needed.
Anyways, in today’s episode, we speak with Jessica Tarlov, a co-host on the Five, Fox’s
weeknight news program to hear about Trump’s conviction and what it means for American
politics.
You are going to say that you heard about Jess here, if you don’t watch Fox.
On Fox, she’s a bit of a superstar, but I just love that her star is literally the shooting
star and she’s, I don’t know her well, but I do know her and she’s just an impressive,
cool woman.
Anyways, Jessica has become our go-to Yoda for all things politics.
I find that she kind of hits it up the middle.
She’s an unabashed Democrat, but she comes from a background of consulting and data,
and oh my gosh, you want to see just her.
I just love, my favorite moment is when the five or four of the five say something just
fucking ridiculous and she just punctures them in the middle of the forehead with a bunch
of data and they all sit there looking as if they’ve just been caught masturbating.
I mean, they have the strangest looks on their face like, “Who the fuck invited this smart
Democrat to come in and make us look like idiots?”
Anyways, she’s fantastic.
What else is happening?
The dog is back in London.
I went to the UEFA finals.
I saw Dortmund play Real Madrid, by the way, Mbappe, not that you care about football.
By the way, it’s called football, folks.
3 billion people can’t be wrong.
It’s called football.
Have hired Mbappe, who’s arguably the best, maybe the best player in the world right now.
I’ll probably get shit for that.
All fans are very, very serious about their football, but Real Madrid did not need Mbappe.
They’re going to be dominant now.
Anyways, took my two sons and their friends, Santi from Florida, who came all the way over
just for three days.
You can do that when you’re, literally no jet lag when you’re 16.
No jet lag.
I go come up early in the morning.
No problem.
Time to go to sleep.
No problem going to sleep.
So little bit different.
A little bit different when you enter your sixth or seventh decade.
It’s great to be back here.
When I say great, it’s just good.
It’s not great.
It’s sort of good.
It’s a beautiful day here for London.
It’s like almost hit 60 degrees for a moment.
And I think I saw this round orange thing in the side, although I will say I do love
London in June as the days go on forever.
It’s really nice.
It’s also nice to be back, see my kids, you know, nice to be home, get back, get back
in the swing of things.
Anyways, let’s move on to some news.
The Wall Street Journal reported that New York State is proposing a bill that would
prohibit social media companies from serving up algorithmically driven feeds to minors
and prevent them from delivering notifications during the wee hours of the night without
parental consent.
Governor Cathy Hockel believes this measure is needed in order to make these platforms
less addictive and to address the growing crisis of teens in distress.
According to the journal, opponents that is industry leaders and trade groups have questions
about the constitutionality of the proposal and believe media literacy would have a more
immediate impact.
What the fuck does that even mean?
They’re supposed to read about how terrible these social media platforms are.
Look, when we look back on this era of big tech, we’re going to regret the income inequality,
we’re going to regret the monopoly abuse, we’re going to regret the weaponization of
our elections, we’re going to regret the deep fakes, the shallow fakes, but more than anything,
more than anything.
We’re going to ask ourselves, how the fuck did we let this happen to our kids?
My colleague at NYU, Jonathan Hightison, great work basically demonstrating irrefutably
that levels of self-harm, depression and suicide have gone up, especially among girls, since
social went on mobile and as a parent and someone who you would think would be really
mindful of this stuff, I got to be honest, we’re failing.
My kid struggles with device addiction, he’s on social media too much and people say, “Well,
just take it away or just get them off the social media platform,” said anyone who does
not have kids.
This is how they get their homework.
This is how they communicate with their friends.
I would bet that one-third, at least one-third, sometimes two-thirds of all the anxiety in
our house focuses on social media or devices.
These things are a fucking cancer and I also worry that a lot of my creativity, a lot of
my risk-taking came from the fact that I did not have this amazing casino, movie theater,
dopa machine, crack pipe in my pocket that I could just sit on the couch all day that
I would call people, I would call friends that I didn’t know well or potential friends
and say, “Hey, let’s meet at the park,” where I would go, I used to go to Westwood Park
and play in pickup games when I was 10 and 11 years old.
That wasn’t easy, it was kind of intimidating and the kids were all bigger than me, but
I was so fucking bored I had to get out of the house and this is the problem.
Kids aren’t bored now, they’re just at home and they go down these rabbit holes.
I have seen some of the shit that these kids say to each other.
You want to talk about overprotecting offline and underprotecting online, oh my god.
Any parent out there, demand that you get passwords for your kids’ social media and
go on there and see how these kids are talking to each other, it is pretty, pretty scary.
I think that this is something that is going to be fixed, I think parents are catching
on to just how incredibly damaging this has been and that the mendacious Fox who run these
companies will pretend that they give a good goddamn about your children, they don’t.
They pretend about their own wealth and their own ability to get their kids into the right
schools and a lot of them, a lot of them, see above Steve Jobs didn’t allow their kids
to be on devices because they know firsthand just how incredibly damaging these things
can be.
So let’s talk about what platforms they’re using.
Percentage of US teens ages 13 to 17 who say they visit or use the following apps or sites.
This is from Pew, number one is YouTube with 71% of US teens 13 to 3 out of 4 teens are
on YouTube every day.
Think about that every day and 54% over half, over half of 13 to 17 year olds say they are
either almost constantly or several times a day on YouTube and for TikTok it is 49%.
Just half of American teenagers are on TikTok either almost constantly or several times
a day and we have the added bonus with a platform influenced by the CCP of knowing they’re seeing
the world through a frame that is being influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.
What could go wrong?
What could go wrong?
And then Sam Chat which I would argue is the least mendacious of the mendacious Fox, it’s
about 43%.
Then we go to Instagram at 35% and this isn’t the total number.
This is the percentage of teens who say they’re using it almost constantly or several times
a day and then Facebook, which I guess is turned into the new Lamo one only has a total
of 19% or only about 10% are using it constantly or several times a day.
This is the frame through which our kids are developing their brain.
This is what is rewiring when your kid from 13 to 17 their brain gets rewired.
My kid is sort of the same person, but not really in terms of where he was at 12 and
where he was now, their brain gets rewired, the hormones kick in, the prefrontal cortex
finally starts to grow.
They start perceiving things, reacting to them, their social capital shows up and they
start thinking about, well, maybe my parents don’t know everything, who do I find or what
are the sources of information that influence who I am and my view of the world.
That is mostly, I’d like to believe still their peer group interesting study across parents.
We like to think that we’re engineers of the sheep, we’re not.
We’re herders, we’re shepherds, we get to choose the field they graze on, we get to
choose what food they get, we get to choose what direction they graze in, but the sheep
comes to us, right?
We’re not engineers.
Just ask yourself, what would the CCP want?
So we have this device or this platform or this media that is not only depressing our
kids, but is giving them a fucked up view of the world.
You don’t think the zombie apocalypse of useful idiots on campus has something to do with
the frame through which they perceive the world.
Are you totally confused as to how they would even get there?
Well, see above, tick and talk.
Okay, moving on to a lesson on brand.
The aforementioned Wall Street Journal who broke the news about New York’s social media
legislation is going through a multi-million dollar rebranding campaign.
Axios reported that the journal is introducing a new tagline.
It’s your business as it looks to attract a broader audience beyond the uber-finance
centric people and C-suite executives.
To achieve this rebranding, the journal is investing heavily in paid marketing.
You’ll likely see their efforts on billboards and office buildings and social media.
Okay, does this make sense?
Keep in mind, I’m biased or I should be biased.
I have spent my entire professional career, that’s not true, the first three quarters of
my professional career based on the following algorithm.
From the end of World War II to essentially the introduction of Google, the way you printed
money, the algorithm for creating shareholder value was the following.
Find a mediocre product you can produce at the lowest cost at scale, a mediocre salty
snack, sugary drink, car, tennis shoe, and then wrap it in these amazing brand codes
of youth, American masculinity, European elegance, sacks, never goes out of style, paternal care,
maternal love.
Why?
Why should you spend $3.30 on $.30 worth of peanut butter paste?
Because choosing moms choose Jiff.
You love your kids more, why?
And how do you prove it?
Buy branded toothpaste.
And this was licensed to print money.
Sell a product with 80 or 90 points of margin.
The can is the most expensive thing about Coca-Cola in terms of the actual product, but the real
expense and the real genius is the brand code that you are American and youthful and you’d
like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
Or you’re like Michael Jackson if you drink Pepsi, what have you, just drink more Coors
Light and you’re going to be hot and on the beach playing volleyball with other hot people.
By the way, that has not happened to me.
I’ve consumed a great deal of beer in my life and modest volleyball player and just don’t
look the same way on the court.
Anyways, this was the brand code.
This was the algorithm for creating shareholder values.
He’s incredibly efficient and cheap broadcast vehicles.
You hire very talented people who show up wearing black, who are very attractive and you love
to hang out with after hours who come up with these amazing stories.
They tell these stories on these very efficient mediums that get huge scale, infuse this mediocre
product that they can produce at scale, edit a low cost with these incredible brand associations
and brand codes and then boom, stuff the channel with it, other people’s channels that they
spend the capital and they’re good at retail and we print money.
We’re Procter and Gamble.
We’re Chevy.
We’re like a rock.
We’re a unilever.
I mean, these companies were ABN Bev, right?
Oh my God, aren’t those frogs just ridiculously fucking cute.
And then, and then Google came along and we no longer needed to defer to the shorthand
that is brand.
That’s what brand is.
I don’t have time to do diligence on every hotel, so I will defer to the Mandarin Oriental
in the four seasons.
Why?
Because usually when I travel, someone else’s O is paying and it’s O as an eight.
But now I no longer need the shorthand of brand.
I no longer need advertising.
What can I do?
I can go on my social graph.
I can go on TripAdvisor.
I can Google and go to AI.
And what I find out is that when I’m in London, I want to stay at the Chiltern Firehouse.
Why?
Because I am that douchebag that likes to hang out with people who are much younger and much
hotter than him.
And I’m willing to put up with a substandard room, which they are in their choppy, to stay
in an Andrew Bilaz Hotel.
He’s got the algorithm down, underinvest in the actual hotel room, overinvest in the public
spaces, create the illusion of scarcity and cool, and people will pay 800 pounds such that
they have access to this really cool room.
This is the conversion of the brand age to the innovation age to the social age, where
your social graph and these new digital mechanisms of getting you to exactly the right product.
Think about the waste of any broadcast commercial.
What percentage of people watching Rachel Maddow tonight really have opioid-induced
constipation?
Well, not a lot.
Hopefully not a lot.
Jesus Christ, I hope not a lot.
Anyways, this is, this is the problem.
Because if I have opioid-induced constipation, I type it into Google or AI, and I get exact
information.
It’s one-to-one.
It’s pull versus push.
So the brand era is over.
Let’s bring this back to the Wall Street Journal, Scott.
I don’t think this is a great idea.
I think maybe a little bit of it to announce the rebranding, I would try and get free or
earn media.
But how do you know?
How do you know you’re a company that is not going to add 10, 50, or $100 billion in
market capitalization over the next 12 months?
See, you advertise.
That’s it.
Professor of Brand Strategy, NYU Stern, founder of Profit Brand Strategy, I have made my living
preaching about the power of brand.
It outs you now in this era is not getting it.
Branding in the traditional sense, and that is trying to fill an empty vessel of a mediocre
product or these brand associations, the sun has passed midday on that.
Don Draper has been drawn and quartered.
We are in an innovation age now where it’s about the product.
It’s mostly about supply chain, in my view, and I’ll come back to that at a later date.
But to think that rebranding something is going to reignite the structural decline being
felt by newspapers and content companies, boss, you’re watching too much TV.
We’ll be right back for our conversation with Jessica Tarloff.
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Welcome back.
Here’s our conversation with Jessica Tarloff, a co-host on the Fox’s weeknight news program.
Jess, where did this podcast find you?
At home in New York City, in the middle of my maternity leave, so I’m thrilled to talk
to an adult about something.
Maternity leave.
Oh my gosh.
How long is that?
I am entitled to 16 weeks paid maternity leave.
Good for you.
Yeah.
That’s a whole other talk.
Which everyone should be.
Yes, it is.
I would love to do a childcare conversation for sure.
By the way, does your husband get paternity leave?
He does.
They don’t have a formal policy.
It’s just kind of like a take what you need situation and I still, because he works in
finance, I still think that they are a little uneasy with taking a lot of time, but people
seem to be splitting it up.
Like they take a bit at the beginning and then when they really want to be off, like
in August, they’re like, “Oh, I’m on paternity leave.”
So it’s kind of a mixed bag.
Did you take time with yours?
So just to you know, I’ve always had my own businesses, but that take as much as you need
is a trick.
I used to do the same thing.
I used to tell people, people say, “What’s your vacation policy?”
I’m like, “You need a vacation, take a vacation.”
And people in a high achiever firm all feel this implicit pressure to take no time.
So I found it was the perfect model to make sure that no one took any time.
How’s that from being a terrible boss?
I mean, it’s honestly how you keep up, but again, it’s a whole other story, but I lived,
I think you know.
Yeah, well, we’ve talked about it.
When I lived in London, I did an internship for someone who was doing a maternity cover,
which can be up to a year over there.
And then the woman came back.
They didn’t want to get rid of the guy who had subbed in and had done such a fantastic
job.
And in the end, the woman ended up getting pushed out a couple years later because there
really wasn’t a role for her left, but they legally couldn’t let her come, not come back
after a year off.
And it turned into this whole mess of a thing.
So they’re big politics with it to say the least.
Kids ruin everything.
All right, let’s get to the serious stuff here.
So 34 felon accounts, what do you make of this historic verdict?
Well, it seems like it was the correct verdict, and everyone has really been parsing the difference
between what the jury did and whether this was politically motivated or if this was the
right thing to bring the case.
It seems like the jury did a fantastic job.
They evaluated the evidence, they won, they made a timely decision.
I was following really closely, at least on social media, all the questions that they
were asking, all of the legal commentators kept saying, “Those are the right questions
to be asking, paid great attention,” et cetera.
And Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s lawyer, did a bunch of interviews, and he said, “We
expected that this could happen.
We made all of our decisions together about how to present our case.
We obviously approved the jurors and the alternates, and this is the way that it goes sometimes.”
We’ll see how the appeal process goes.
The other side of the coin, which is, should Alvin Bragg have brought this case?
And I was listening to your latest episode of Pivot before we got on, so I know that
you had Eli Hone gone, who obviously has a bit of a counter-opinion to a lot of Democrats
who are seething about even mentioning the fact that this was a case that perhaps should
not have been brought and that bringing it up to a federal charge with the campaign finance
fraud, essentially, was not the right way to go, is the other side of the coin.
And that’s where I think the really interesting stuff is.
Well, let’s put forward that thesis.
My fear is that this is going to help the president get elected, that the majority of
the voting public will see this as basically about sex, and that if they figured out a
way to elevate and attempt to cover up sex or hush money to a felony, that they’re going
to need more courts, that there are a lot of people who pay off mistresses or end up
doing things that are illegal under the context of trying to keep affairs discreet or quiet,
and that this is selective prosecution, and that this will be further play into the whole
narrative of the deep state is coming after me, rally his base.
My understanding is he raised a record amount of money or a lot of money post-Sovietic.
Distinct of the merits of when you bring a case or don’t, just strategically, if you
don’t want Trump to be president, do you think this helps or hurts us?
I think it’s going to take a few weeks to a month to understand that, and the polling
is really fuzzy at this moment, and some people are just ingesting the information.
Some people haven’t even paid attention to it yet, and the Biden campaign is still figuring
out how they want to approach this.
How often do you want to call him Donald Trump, and how often do you want to call him convicted
felon Donald Trump?
And that’s something that the communications people are struggling with as we speak.
But I actually am less pessimistic about it than you are, and the reason for that is that
I only care about a small subset of voters.
The bases of the parties don’t matter to me at this point, and I know that Biden’s polling
has been softer with African-Americans and Latino voters and some young voters, but that
happened in 2020 as well, and people came home.
So I’m putting that to the side now and thinking, okay, who is my focus?
Moderate Republicans and independent voters.
And there have been a few surveys taken since the verdict, and we’ll get more and more,
but ABC, Ipsos, was out there in the field, and they got that 52% of independents say
that he should withdraw from the race, and 16% of Republicans, and 16% might seem like
a low number, but there’s your swung election, right?
Those are your swing states, potentially.
Morning console got basically a mirror image of that result.
CBS also something similar.
So if you think about how many people are actually up for grabs, how few we have to
persuade that this matters and that this isn’t just a one-off that he lied about this, but
that he is a chronic liar, and that has been a thread through the Eugene Carroll case,
the Civil Fraud case, and if we ever get to the Marquis cases, which obviously I would
have preferred if we were talking about the nuclear secrets that are hanging out in the
toilet at Mar-a-Lago or January 6th before we were talking about the Hush Money case.
I think that you can persuade a lot of people with that to just say, you know what, maybe
I was thinking about giving him another shot, but the guy is such an effin liar.
You work with, I mean, you work with a conservative network, or what is the vibe when you talk
to people off camera, are they, do they generally believe this is another example of the deep
state going after, you know, as a function of Trump derangement syndrome, or are they,
this is bad for us?
What’s the vibe off-mic or off-camera among conservatives?
I think that they actually feel both of those things, and that we’re always trying to put
people into one box, and it’s actually a lot more complex than that.
So yes, the deep state is real, and they’ll go back and try to relitigate, quote, “Rush
a gate with me,” and then I’ll get all hot and bothered again about Hillary Clinton,
and they’ll be like, “Actually, I don’t want to talk to you about this anymore.”
And then they also understand the fact that this does not help their case.
And you can tell that Republicans know that it’s a bad thing from the type of panic and
the way that they’re speaking about him being a convicted felon.
A, they want to raise a ton of money, which they did, I mean, we’ll see what the actual
figures are, but they’re reporting $141 million, which is astronomical.
They will not say what it will be used for, which I’m always paying attention to.
So okay, you’ve got all this money now, are you going to open a field office, and then
they’re like, “Actually, maybe we’ll just pay Donald Trump’s legal fees.”
So that’s somewhere the Democrats still have a huge advantage.
But they know that this isn’t helpful.
No one ever wants to be indicted.
No one ever wants to be convicted.
And something that I don’t think folks are paying as much attention to as they should
be, every day that Donald Trump is out there just grievances, wall to wall, “I’m a political
prisoner,” whatever else he’s talking about, he’s not talking about the issues.
And the issues are the ones that are going to sway that little group of people, though
you’re talking about the independents and the Republicans, who have decided either he
is this guy and we don’t care, or he is this guy, and I’d like to hear something, a plan
for the economy, a plan for the border.
So I think that that does lead to an advantage for the Democrats and disappointment for my
wonderful colleagues, who I look forward to rejoining in Milwaukee in July, which is a
crazy first week back.
That’s going to be really interesting, the convention, Ryan.
It’s going to be…
I’m actually a little scared.
I live right by the courthouse in Manhattan, and it was remarkably low-key.
I saw a few, and I wouldn’t call them parades, but a bunch of Trump cars that had Blue Lives
Matter flags, and now the upside down American flag, because Samuel Alito is some sort of
hero for a quote not standing up to his wife, who did that all by herself or whatever.
So when Trump was coming in and out, they drive with him, but going to the convention
four days after the sentencing, I think it could get a little wild.
I’m not saying January 6 levels, but you have to be ready for anything to happen, especially
if he’s given jail time.
But that’s…
So it’s just some anecdotal evidence, and I’m curious if you’ve picked up on the same
thing.
I find one of the most encouraging things, or a signal, and granted, I’m looking for
signals that this is going to help get Biden reelected.
But when…
I was living in Florida in Delray Beach, and right after the election, there was a parade
for a stop-to-steal parade.
And Delray is actually kind of purplish/blue, but there is…
You go three miles inland, and it’s deep red.
I could not get over the number of people in the passion around the stop-to-steal, and
they had a desk set up, information, and just for fun, I walked over and had them explain.
And these were people who were deeply committed and believed that the election had been stolen.
I thought, “I’m just so out of touch with America.”
And the passion they felt, the number of people…
When the case…
When the verdict came down, I was encouraged at how what I’ll call “little agita” grievance
or rage among the general populace was.
I see it as there is rage fatigue, that people are starting to think, “You know what?
I’m still going to vote for them, but I’m not going to storm the Capitol.
Did you sense the same thing?”
I mean, that’s the hope, but we’re also far out from the election.
I think the vibe in October is going to be a lot more heightened on both sides of this.
I was surprised that there weren’t more lefties showing up at the courthouse to troll him,
right?
Or standing outside of Trump Tower and the New Tiffany’s, which is gorgeous, and trying
to do it that way.
So I think that we’re just a bit too far out for it, but I think it will be less, because
people probably have learned a lesson or two from the number of January Sixers who have
gotten pretty serious sentences, and the number of people who have been very forthcoming with
their transition out of being a Trump supporter and talking about how they were manipulated,
how they were brainwashed, how they fed him a bunch of lies.
And my hope is that Democrats will be able to connect what he’s saying about this Alvin
Bratt case to the supposition that Donald Trump lies to you at every single turn.
Fox is doing some really cool new polling work.
They have a new issues tracker, and they also have this deal breaker question, which I think
is so awesome.
What are the deal breaker issues for you?
Number one was abortion.
I think Democrats need to get back to talking about preserving female reproductive rights,
that that’s something that’s always going to win for them.
But on the issues tracker, Biden has a 15-point advantage on honesty and trustworthiness, and
I don’t think they’re leaning into it enough.
So before you became kind of a household name, you were a consultant around messaging.
So I want you to do sort of kind of arm-share consulting.
We’re the Republican Party.
What is our messaging around this issue moving forward?
I think that you’ve really got to split it up, and you got to pick your best voices that
are going to be out there kind of parroting what Donald Trump wants to hear.
So it seems like JD Vance, Marco Rubio are taking the mantle for that.
They’re both high up in the VP search.
I think JD Vance is probably ahead of Rubio in that and let them, people who are respected
as being intelligent folks, talk about it.
And the rest of the party really has got to get back to talking about the issues.
I saw how Larry Hogan was totally maligned for saying something pretty normal.
Let’s respect the jury decision.
He didn’t even say what he thought about Donald Trump, even though we all know what
it is that he thinks.
And people like Kevin McCarthy, who has found some courage since he’s been out of office,
was on Fox talking about it and said, “What are we doing going after Larry Hogan?
That might be our chance to actually win a Senate majority.”
And whatever Donald Trump wants to talk about, it doesn’t change the fact that there is an
election where people are going to turn up and they’re going to vote on the economy, crime
and policing, abortion for sure.
And if the only message coming out of the Republican Party is Donald Trump is a victim
when everyone can see that that’s not really what a victim looks like, it’s not going to
go well.
Now, do Democrats, what do you think the messaging, do you think they play up President Biden’s
positives as you reference or do you think they go on offense and start calling this
guy a felon?
I mean, the risk is it makes President Biden look less presidential, less bipartisan, less
statesman-like.
It lowers the contrast between him and Trump, because we know what Trump will do.
Do you go on offense or do you try and maintain a statesman-like demeanor?
Well, I think this is where you can separate Biden from his surrogates, and he has some
fantastic surrogates who need to be out there more.
I mean, John Fetterman has become the darling of the party.
He went from vegetable to, “Can we get this guy to come to my rally?”
And Republicans saying to me, I had a very funny off-air conversation with a colleague
who was like, “I like John Fetterman now.
What is that?”
And I was like, “Yeah, maybe you shouldn’t have been so shitty about him.”
He’s actually kind of always been that way.
You just didn’t ask him about Israel.
Yeah, but that isn’t that he threads the needle, right?
Oh, totally.
He throws a bone to the Republicans by saying, “I’m unapologetically pro-Israel.”
Had this guy as a crook.
Yeah, and he doesn’t think about it that way.
That’s the thing about John Fetterman is he doesn’t have the vibe of anyone who is calculating
what they’re saying.
And you can say that you look at his outfit, right?
No one picked that out, right?
No one said, “This is coordinated.”
And he just speaks from the heart.
And I think that that’s something that’s really resonating with folks, and you see it with
Gretchen Whitmer as well, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore is becoming a superstar this way.
So I think that those folks can be out there threading the needle.
And Biden has dabbled in the convicted felon jargon a little, but in general, I want to
see more of the interviews like he’s on the cover of Time that came out this morning.
I want to see more of that, him talking about the policy issues, what he’s actually done
in the Middle East.
He’s pretty critical of Netanyahu, actually, which is something that I think will not only
appease the left side of the party, but a lot of the people like me were pretty moderate
in the middle, want Israel to do everything that they possibly can to get the hostages
back and to bring peace, but to recognize that Netanyahu is a bad actor and all of that.
So I think Biden stays a statesman, but he unleashes the beast underneath that and makes
sure that every one of those gettable voters knows what the alternative is, and that they
also are aware of the fact that if they sit it out, if they were a Nikki Haley voter or
a Chris Christie voter, that that is another vote for Trump.
He brought up a key word and something I’ve been thinking about a lot, surrogates.
And I’m disappointed that he hasn’t weaponized more surrogates.
I don’t see Mayor Pete out there.
I don’t see … John Fetterman wasn’t planned.
No, it’s total surprise.
And it strikes me that there are 50 or 100 incredible surrogates that could be out there.
Governor Newsom is really good on his feet.
I would argue that he might be a better candidate than an actual politician, but it strikes
me that why have they not put these people in, so to speak, put me in, coach?
Why have they not weaponized them?
And also, one thing I’m disappointed is that typically the person that goes on the attack
is the vice president.
And why has that not … Is it because they don’t see her as effective?
Is it because she is in fact ineffective?
And also, where’s the weaponization in the surrogate strategy here?
Yeah, so we are still early in campaign mode.
And I think that the fact that they moved up the debates puts them further on their heels.
You’ve got to go faster if you’ve decided that you want to have a debate June 27th.
So we’ve got to see that Kamala Harris, it’s been tough.
And we talked about the last time that you had me on.
She has not panned out as the superstar that a lot of Democrats hoped that she would be.
I was personally not a tremendous Kamala fan.
And the primary, and I think it said something that she dropped out before Iowa, right?
She didn’t even get the opportunity to have a vote cast for her.
And the Democratic base was sending a signal that she wasn’t what they thought she was
or what they had hoped that she was going to be.
So I think there’s a little bit of anxiety about that.
And I think that also she is, to give her credit, doing well talking to younger bases.
She’s doing a huge amount of college tours, for instance, and we know that the turnout
in these college towns, especially in conservative states, you know, you hear about a conservative
state and then suddenly there was this boom turnout for a referendum on women’s reproductive
rights.
And it’s like, oh, is there a big college town in there?
So she’s doing that.
And also, I think that she is the best representative of the administration unsurprisingly to talk
about women’s health.
And she’s been doing that really well.
So that’s really been her focus.
But I think that she has to get in on this, especially with her law enforcement background.
She was the top cop, right, in California.
And I think, you know, if we want to get away from, to fund the police, which I wish had
never happened, and move more towards, we’re the party of law and order, and we can make
that claim now, right?
They don’t respect any judicial decisions at this point.
They think the Supreme Court is on tap for them.
You know, Mike Johnson out there saying like, you know, I think they’ll step in, I called
my buddies over there and they’ll do something that she has a real role to play.
The surrogate strategy, it’ll be rolled out as the campaign gets going, but I would love
to see it more.
And I’m hugely enthusiastic about Democrats showing up, especially in conservative media,
because that’s where the persuadable voters are.
They’re not watching MSNBC.
They’re not watching CNN.
So they’re tuning into Vox.
And when Mayor Pete comes on, I still can’t call him Secretary Pete, it just feels unnatural.
When he comes on, he does great.
Yeah, he does great.
So, I’m with you on that.
Same with Governor Newsom, right?
Oh, he’s so charming.
It’s interesting that you said that though.
Oh, he’s so charming.
Yeah.
He’s very likable.
He’s very likable.
I remember 25 years ago, I was in San Francisco and I was thinking, I filled out the paperwork
to run for supervisor and I brought my friend, and we met then, I think, Supervisor Newsom.
And we talked to him for about two minutes, and then he walked away, and then me and my
friend looked at each other and I’m like, “I have no chance if that’s the competition.”
There’s just, my career is over before it started.
You meet that guy and you’re like, “I’m not even sure what he’s saying.
I just know I want him to be, I want to vote for him or give him money.”
What do you make of, you just said something very interesting, that you think there’s more,
that there’s more influence, more moderate or more swingable voters watching Vox.
I can see, I agree, than MSNBC, but you think that more moderates watch Vox and CNN.
Yeah.
Well, the Nielsen data actually bears it out.
So we have more Democrats and more independents who are by nature, they’re persuadables,
right?
Because they’re not going with one way or the other.
I tend to think a social issue usually pushes you into one bucket and now it’s abortion.
But yeah, the numbers bear that out and also, like, CNN’s ratings, and I love a lot of the
people at CNN and I think there’s a lot of really good commentary, but they just don’t
get many viewers technically.
So the percentages of persuadables has to be even less, and obviously they’re going
through a bit of an identity crisis and I think they have some amazing people who are
now anchoring big shows like the Caitlyn Collins’s of the world and Abby Phillip.
But they’re searching for their base and Fox has a conservative base, but we also have
this persuadable base and they’re the people most apt to reach out to me, right?
It will say, you know, I may lean towards Jesse Waters’ perspective or Greg Gutfeld’s
perspective, these people on the five with me, but I really appreciate your fact-based
commentary or that you always come to represent the Democratic side in a reasonable way.
And that’s the key to all of this.
Just be reasonable.
You know, don’t be unhinged and right now the Republicans look unhinged.
So before we cut you loose here, just handicap or give us your best guess or prediction on
what you think going back to Trump happens with sentencing.
So I’m not a lawyer and it’s a tough one.
I’ve tried to ingest as much information about this as possible.
I do come down on the side of that there will be a recommendation for jail time, but I was
listening to Preet Bihar’s podcast and he had a really interesting suggestion for Alvin
Bragg, which was to show the judge how this particular crime had been sentenced the last
five years, for instance, to say, these are the sentences that have been given out before
and then to put it more in Judge Merchan’s court than to make the straight recommendation.
But I don’t expect any serving of time if he’s sentenced to jail and he’s elected.
And then certainly it would be after the election, they’re not going to stop him from running
his campaign, but I think it’s over 50% likelihood and a lot of people who work in the system
and know the players in this really well think that that is the expectation, which is absolutely
unbelievable.
If anything, the Fulton County case was going to be the jail case that we would be hearing
about, but we’re not even going to see that this year.
Sorry.
Well, it feels as if Trump is daring the judge to send him to prison, and I found that it’s
not typically a good strategy for convicted felons.
No, it’s not.
And I don’t think that he’s going to like the result of it.
I mean, it’s a famous germaphobe prison is not nice.
And if you get the best treatment, even if you’re at Danbury playing tennis a couple
times a day.
So I think that he needs to be really careful about what he wishes for and what he thinks
is going to become an electoral advantage.
They clearly think that there’s some possibility that he’s going to be a civil rights leader
in all of this.
And we could spend hours discussing how offensive it is that he thinks that black people are
going to like him more now that this has happened to him, but you know, be careful what you
wish for because the other side of it isn’t just like a night at home alone eating pizza.
It’s being in jail.
Jessica Tarlove is a co-host on the five Fox’s weeknight news program.
She also offers political analysis across the Fox News channel and Fox Business Networks
programming.
Jessica is also the vice president of research and consumer insight for Bustle Digital Group.
She joins us from her home in New York where she is enjoying her maternity leave and has
just welcomed a new seven week old girl.
Congratulations on everything.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
And thanks for having me.
We’ll be right back.
Support for this show comes from Funrise.
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Algebra of Happiness.
I went to my first wedding in a long time a few years ago.
I remember I was, I’m now at the point where my friend’s kids are getting married, and
it took me back to this time when I was in my late 20s, early 30s, and your fellow,
you were going, you know, summer was like six weddings, and I had the privilege to give
a bunch of toast at a bunch of different weddings, and I revisited that toast.
And I think it holds the test of time.
And this is the advice I would give to the groom, and that is there are three keys to
a successful relationship.
The first is never let your spouse be hungry or cold.
And everyone would laugh at that and say, “Okay, that’s funny,” but I actually think
that’s true.
I do believe that there is a difference between the gender, and for some reason every woman
I’ve ever hung out with is impossibly cold all of the time, and that the majority of
really big fights when I look back on it, the individual was either very cold or very
hungry.
So, I literally used to have in my trunk a pashmina and protein bars and invest in
dual climate technology.
Never let someone you care about be hungry or cold.
Two, express physical and sexual desire as often as possible, and I know that sounds
very base, but I think the thing that distinguishes you from a friend is sex.
Sex says, “I choose you.”
And I think it is wonderful to be in a relationship with someone, and I encourage people, especially
as they, you know, some of that “lust” wanes, to every time you have physical desire, every
time you feel romantic, every time you want to express affection, which oftentimes I think
is more important than sex, that you do it, and that you have an inclination, especially
as a dude.
I think affection maybe doesn’t come as easily to us, to grab their hand, to express desire.
Like, I just don’t think there’s, let me get in more trouble.
I think women want to be wanted.
I think we all want to be wanted physically.
I think it makes us feel good.
You know, make that person know that you choose them.
You choose them physically, and that you want them.
And then finally, the third thing, put away the scorecard.
And this is the most important thing I have learned in any key relationship, and that
is your natural inclination will be to register the contribution and the reward you’re getting
from your partner, your colleague, your spouse, your boyfriend, you know, whatever it might
be, your coworker, your co-investor.
And here’s the problem.
Sometimes you will inflate your contribution and overlook or not notice their contributions
or minimize theirs.
And if you were stupid like me, you would inject anger and disappointment into the relationship
based on the fact that you didn’t think they were living up to their end of the bargain.
I’m not suggesting you let people walk all over you.
On a regular basis, I shed people, I shed friends.
If I’m not getting something from a relationship or someone I feel, especially professionally,
has not treated me well, I don’t get angry, I just cut them out of my life.
But for the most part, what I do in the majority of my relationships is I ask myself the following
thing.
What kind of son do I want to be?
I used to dwell on the fact that my father wasn’t very involved in my life growing up.
In my mom and dad got divorced and he immediately moved to Ohio.
And I think deep down, I’ve always held him responsible for that and I’ve always been
kind of angry at him and have questioned the extent to which I should be involved in his
life now.
And then I put that bullshit score card aside and I said, okay, what kind of son do I want
to be?
And this is the reality.
I want to be a loving and generous son.
That’s it.
That’s where it stops.
That’s the only question.
And so I try to be that.
I am a loving, generous son.
Am I there for him as much as I was there for my mom who woke me up or who every morning
with a soft voice or stayed up all night telling me math problems because I was so anxious
because I had these, these radically scary nosebleeds for some reason in my teen years.
No, I did make more of an effort with my mom, but, but I am a loving and generous son because
I’ve put the score card away.
Decide what kind of partner you want to be.
Decide what kind of spouse you want to be.
Decide what kind of girlfriend you want to be and just be that person.
Put away the score card.
Never let anyone be cold or hungry.
Express physical desire.
I want and I choose you and put away the scorecard.
This episode was produced by Caroline Shadron.
Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Jew Burroughs is our technical director.
Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice as read by George Hahn.
And please follow our PropG Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
and Thursday.
Our PropG Markets Pod is already the number one pod in business in America.
Jessica Tarlov, a co-host on The Five, Fox’s weeknight news program, joins Scott to speak about Trump’s conviction and what it means for American politics. Follow Jessica on X, @JessicaTarlov.
Scott opens with his thoughts on New York’s potential legislation to protect minors from the harms of social media. He then gives a lesson on brand, specifically whether the WSJ’s rebranding campaign is a good idea.
Algebra of Happiness: a word of advice on relationships.
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