0:00:06 What’s up, y’all? It’s Kenny Beach, and we are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can’t even remember when.
0:00:09 This is what we’ve been waiting for all season long.
0:00:20 And on my show, Small Ball, I’ll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy, and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
0:00:24 New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:27 Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beach, so you don’t miss a thing.
0:00:32 Welcome to Office Hours with Prof. G.
0:00:40 Today we’re continuing our special three-part series, Prof. G. on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today.
0:00:44 What a thrill. Let’s bust right into it.
0:00:48 Okay, what do we have here? Our first question comes from Dom on Instagram.
0:00:49 He asks,
0:00:54 More and more companies are taking political stances as part of their branding.
0:01:04 Growing up, I was told that businesses should never talk about religion or politics in order to stay out of trouble and not segment customers.
0:01:06 Does this hurt companies in the long run?
0:01:10 Do you think it is smart that businesses are moving in this direction?
0:01:13 This is going to require some nuance.
0:01:16 So I’ve served on a bunch of public company boards, seven.
0:01:17 I’m kind of a big deal.
0:01:18 Kind of a big deal.
0:01:21 And probably 24 private company boards.
0:01:26 And my general view on political statements is that it’s mostly virtue signaling from the CEO.
0:01:33 It likes to get in front, especially about three or four years ago, maybe five years ago, get in front of a younger workforce and talk about all this woke nonsense.
0:01:36 Because why it was nonsense is because they didn’t believe it themselves.
0:01:39 They were just trying to score, like, acquire virtue.
0:01:45 Like, I don’t have enough Gulf Streams or shares or options here, so I want to capture social status.
0:01:47 I think that’s actually a pretty decent criticism of the Democratic Party.
0:01:58 Instead of focusing on the material and emotional well-being of consumers, they want to pretend that they’re grabbing virtue rather than actually getting any fucking thing done at the ground level in terms of what actually impacts people.
0:02:04 So I generally think it’s a good idea to stay out of politics.
0:02:07 I try to separate the person from the politics.
0:02:15 I live just south of Palm Beach, and a lot of my friends are Republicans, and I just think they’re batshit crazy.
0:02:19 I just don’t understand how they can tolerate some of this nonsense.
0:02:23 But at the same time, I also recognize they’re thoughtful, nice people, and I enjoy their friendship.
0:02:31 So I try to ignore it when they put out a reel saying, oh, finally, the truth that these food products cause autism.
0:02:33 And I want to write, dude, didn’t we go to college together?
0:02:35 Are you really that fucking stupid?
0:02:37 Because I know that will damage the friendship.
0:02:39 So I try to separate that.
0:02:41 I also try to separate the company from politics.
0:02:42 Now, Prop2 doesn’t do that.
0:02:44 You know, we’re a media company.
0:02:45 We’re a small company.
0:02:52 We are highly political because a lot of what we do is putting out thought leadership, opinion, et cetera.
0:02:58 And still, we would probably be a bigger company if I just focused on business and tech rather than taking political stance.
0:03:00 But at this point in my life, I get to do whatever the fuck I want.
0:03:01 See above.
0:03:01 I’m going to talk about.
0:03:08 My favorite is when people say in my newsletter, they write, oh, get back to talking about business or things you know.
0:03:11 Basically, I got a lot of like stay in your lane.
0:03:12 Well, you know what my lane is?
0:03:14 Whatever the fuck I want to talk about.
0:03:15 And I’ve earned that.
0:03:16 And I’m finally there.
0:03:21 Anyways, anywho, for most big public companies, you do want to avoid politics.
0:03:25 Now, having said that, occasionally an opportunity comes along.
0:03:29 Race relations in the U.S. were capturing a lot of attention.
0:03:40 Colin Kaepernick was a great quarterback, two-thirds of Nike’s customer base under the age of 30, not kind of on board with how race relations were going in the United States.
0:03:46 Anyone who was upset about them embracing Colin Kaepernick, who burnt their Nikes, had to go out and buy their first pair of Nikes.
0:03:48 It was a very smart move.
0:03:58 They probably alienated somewhere between 5% and 10% of their TAM to embolden or entrench or inspire 90% of their addressable market.
0:03:59 That’s a really good tradeoff.
0:04:01 We are in that moment right now.
0:04:09 And essentially, I think that things have gotten so out of control where we’re rounding up people with the wrong tattoo, doing really stupid shit around tariffs.
0:04:14 It’s going to do nothing but elegantly reduce our prosperity, put thousands of small businesses out of business.
0:04:20 Doge, which was nothing but literally like, okay, how stupid can you be?
0:04:21 We’re going to cut $2 trillion.
0:04:23 No, I meant $150 million.
0:04:24 No, I meant $60 billion.
0:04:27 No, I meant less than the subsidies to Tesla.
0:04:39 I mean, that has been handled so poorly, so poorly that Americans are so fed up that the biggest commercial opportunity in a decade, and I said this last week and I’ll say it again.
0:04:57 I said it in the last office hours and I’ll say it again, is to come out not against Trump so much, but to come out in favor of American values of decency, of competition, of being thoughtful around our economic policy, of embracing our great immigrant population, PhD students, of rule of law, of due process.
0:05:00 All the things that we’ve come to expect are American.
0:05:05 That company, that company will register a torrent of new business.
0:05:10 I mean, for God’s sakes, this guy is flailing, literally flailing.
0:05:14 This is the biggest commercial opportunity in the last decade.
0:05:24 In sum, with rare exception though, let me finish where I started, you generally want to avoid politics because you are likely going to alienate 50% of the population.
0:05:29 Having said that, on a risk-adjusted basis, this is a calculated risk worth taking.
0:05:32 Our next question comes from Instagram.
0:05:34 Ambreen asks,
0:05:49 Each year we pick sort of a strategic imperative.
0:05:53 I think it’s important to have one thing that you’re like, this is the one box we have to check this year.
0:05:58 Because I think being an effective leader is not deciding what to do, it’s deciding what not to do.
0:06:00 And that is, you only have so much wood.
0:06:03 So I think it’s important every year to say, this is our strategic imperative.
0:06:04 We’ve got to check this box.
0:06:13 For 2025, the strategic imperative for Prop G Media is to get much better and dramatically increase our video views.
0:06:23 What I found just fascinating and kind of blew my mind was that the primary channel of distribution for podcasts right now is not Apple, it’s not Spotify, it’s YouTube.
0:06:33 20% of the listens of this program right now will be listened to on a television or watched on a television, which isn’t a good idea.
0:06:36 All of a sudden I get very self-conscious because listen to my voice.
0:06:38 My voice, ooh, hello, dreamy.
0:06:40 I’m handsome, handsome voice.
0:06:41 Brad Pitt of voices.
0:06:44 Face, for those of you watching on TV, not so much.
0:06:45 Not so much.
0:06:48 See above, lost virginity when he was 19.
0:06:55 Anyways, so my skills play well to audio, but here’s the bottom line.
0:06:57 Podcasts are moving towards video.
0:07:04 Podcasts are essentially becoming TV shows with strong audio components where you can just listen to the audio.
0:07:09 If you look at, I think the next Joe Rogan is a kid named Steve Bartlett.
0:07:16 When I moved to London two and a half years ago, the first thing I did was drive to the studio in Ipswich or Norwich or whatever the cool part of town is.
0:07:20 And he had this incredible studio with eight people, cameras everywhere.
0:07:26 And I’m like, this is like Charlie Rose, but much more deft production quality.
0:07:28 And he was basically doing a TV show.
0:07:33 And if you’ll notice, in the last two and a half years, Stephen has busted into the top 10.
0:07:36 He used to be in the top 10 in the UK, and now he’s in the top 10 globally.
0:07:38 I think he’s probably going to be the biggest podcaster in the world.
0:07:49 And if you look at the top 100 podcasts of the 1.6 million that are out there and the 600,000 that put out content every week, the top 100, there’s been huge churn.
0:07:53 50 new entrants into the top 100, 50 have dropped out.
0:07:56 And what is the arbiter of who has churned in and churned out?
0:07:58 It’s their video game.
0:08:07 So we have spent a lot of time trying to think about, we hired a kid named Billy Bennett who used to work for us, who’s now, was at CNN and is now working with us, just focusing on video.
0:08:13 We have a full-time tech guy, our tech guy, Drew, who’s sort of our head of engineering and has known us for about 15 years.
0:08:20 The woman who runs my business, Catherine Dillon, is a creative at heart and edits and thinks about video.
0:08:27 The hard part is that the thing that played to my strengths in terms of video from a personal standpoint is I’m on the road about 150 days a year.
0:08:31 So my studio was basically a dop kit that I could set up.
0:08:31 I didn’t even have a ring light.
0:08:36 I would just try and find a nice part of the hotel room I was staying in and do a reasonable job of video.
0:08:38 And that’s no longer going to cut it.
0:08:48 So we’ve spent a bunch of money on studios that we’re replicating in the different places I spent a lot of time in, specifically New York, Florida, and London.
0:08:50 But I’m not sure that’s enough.
0:08:58 So we’re trying to be really thoughtful about marketing, pushing people to our videos, using more sound effects, usually using more visual effects.
0:09:03 The fastest growing part of our franchise or our portfolio, if you will, is Prop G Markets.
0:09:08 And that’s because it is tailor-made for graphic overlays because we talk a lot about stocks in the market.
0:09:12 And Ed’s in the same place so they can create better production values.
0:09:22 In sum, the assumption we made was that the new arbiter of who moves up in the world of podcasting and who moves out is going to be how strong your video game is.
0:09:26 Now, your question is what would happen if that changed?
0:09:27 I don’t know.
0:09:32 I guess we just have to pivot and be agile and try and figure out what that next thing is.
0:09:35 I think the next thing, YouTube is the new channel.
0:09:44 I believe that in 2026, and I’m already starting to think about a strategy here, that the new arbiter of success in podcasting is not going to be Spotify.
0:09:46 It’s not going to be Apple.
0:09:47 It’ll still be YouTube.
0:09:55 But more than anything, or the new player, if you will, that creates the difference between numbering number 300 and number 30 is the following, Reddit.
0:10:01 I think Reddit is literally out of central casting in terms of its niche domains.
0:10:12 It’s the viscosity of how they become a platform for taking pieces of podcasts and threading them into different comments on Reddit.
0:10:17 I think Reddit is going to be the new platform that kind of picks winners and losers.
0:10:24 A possible second to that on 26 is going to be Netflix, who’s decided to get into the game.
0:10:41 And Netflix just has, with 350 million consumers, with custody of 350 million home screens, if they decide that they want to distribute Mel Robbins’ podcast or Raging Moderates, that podcast will immediately shoot into the top 20 of podcasts globally.
0:10:45 So they have so much custody of the consumer that they perhaps could be the new arbiter.
0:10:52 In sum, I’m trying to think about not only what’s in front of our face, but think around the corner and make bets accordingly.
0:10:53 But I think about this stuff a lot.
0:10:56 So in sum, you’ve got to make a bet.
0:11:10 You’ve got to have a strategic imperative and hold people accountable and invest additional resources in that imperative such that you can give people the resources to move against or act against what you think is important and where the puck is headed.
0:11:15 And also think about, you know, looking beyond the second corner.
0:11:18 So what’s the corner we’re moving towards or where’s the puck going?
0:11:19 Video, hands down.
0:11:21 Where do we think it might be headed?
0:11:23 Reddit and possibly Netflix.
0:11:24 Thanks for the question.
0:11:27 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:12:55 I started my career in big agencies back in the early aughts when the internet was young.
0:13:01 However, even then we were talking about how the media was splintering and how it was getting harder to get noticed.
0:13:03 As you know, the trend has gone into overdrive.
0:13:14 Audience attention is splintered across endless platforms and micro-communities, and trust is shifting, from institutions to individuals, from brands to influencers.
0:13:16 I keep coming back to this question.
0:13:21 How does the humble media planner or marketer even navigate this reality?
0:13:26 The age of the all-powerful, monolithic brand feels like it’s fading fast.
0:13:33 And now, resonance doesn’t come from one big message, but from a thousand fragments finding the right ears.
0:13:35 Yeah, I agree.
0:13:48 So, it used to be, if you think about it, not that long ago, you could capture a third of America in about four nights, because two-thirds of America was watching one of three channels five hours a day.
0:13:52 Now, that media landscape has fragmented just wildly.
0:13:55 And not only that, the costs have gone way up.
0:14:01 So, we didn’t realize how inexpensive broadcast advertising was, how cheap it was.
0:14:15 You could capture, essentially, a 30-second spot on the Academy Awards 30 years ago was about a fifth of the price, and it reached three times as many people as it does today.
0:14:21 So, it was 15 times, you have 15 times the ROI, and yet people still do it.
0:14:22 We didn’t realize how cheap it was.
0:14:39 So, the fact that media was so inexpensive from, like, 1945 to 1995, maybe in 2000, created an ecosystem where the algorithm for creating shareholder value was to have a mediocre truck, salty snack, sugary drink, shoe, or car.
0:14:59 Build an OK slash shitty car, the K car, or out of Detroit, and wrap it in amazing brand codes of tough like a rock or apple pie, whatever it might be, or find soap, then craft it with OK materials or ingredients, and then talk about European elegance.
0:15:06 Create a shitty beer and convince people that if they drink this beer, they’re going to be hot and have a six-pack and be more attractive to potential mates.
0:15:17 And you could infuse these incredible brand codes really inexpensively using some creative agency of guys who wore black and gave you awards if you spent enough money on their ad campaign and can every year.
0:15:19 That ship has sailed.
0:15:22 That dog just doesn’t hunt anymore.
0:15:27 Because now we have these weapons of mass diligence that say, OK, and this is the example I always use.
0:15:30 I usually used to stay at the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton, or the Mandarin Oriental.
0:15:32 One, because someone else was paying.
0:15:34 I was usually there speaking or with a client.
0:15:35 And two, they always deliver an eight.
0:15:41 But the reality is the Mandarin Oriental in Istanbul is just not where I want to stay.
0:15:47 The core associations of these hotel brands meant that they delivered, you know, always an eight.
0:15:54 But then my social graph, TripAdvisor, friends, Weapons of Mass Diligence, Google, OpenAI.
0:15:57 I go to OpenAI now and say, I’m going to South by Southwest in Austin.
0:16:01 I’m in the midst of a midlife crisis, and I want to hang out with younger, cooler people.
0:16:04 And it literally comes back with stay at the Austin proper.
0:16:05 Boom.
0:16:06 I don’t need the brand.
0:16:07 I’ve never heard of the brand.
0:16:11 I just know that I trust these weapons of mass diligence more than the brand.
0:16:13 So what do you have?
0:16:17 You have people trying to figure out how to gain these algorithms in search.
0:16:21 You have influencers, the rise of the influencer generation, the rise of Instagram.
0:16:24 Do you know how much influence Instagram now has?
0:16:30 Also, at the end of the day, and this sounds very passé, the era of Don Draper is just over.
0:16:34 The sun has passed midday on the bullshit of thinking you’re going to have a mediocre product
0:16:35 and a great brand.
0:16:37 Now the product is the brand.
0:16:39 And that sounds very passé, but it’s true.
0:16:43 The companies that have developed the most market capitalization over the last 20 years
0:16:45 have really been victories, not in brand, but in supply chain.
0:16:50 Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix’s supply chain.
0:16:54 They went direct to consumer with DVDs by mail, and then they went direct to consumer using
0:16:54 broadband.
0:16:55 How much money?
0:16:58 What do the most valuable companies in the world have in common?
0:17:00 They don’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:00 Why?
0:17:02 Because they’ve put all their money into the product.
0:17:05 And oftentimes, it’s not just about the product.
0:17:08 It’s how you deliver it and discover it, i.e. supply chain.
0:17:09 So what do you do if you’re a marketer?
0:17:17 You think about, okay, where’s my core customer finding and doing diligence on my product?
0:17:20 Sometimes the best CMO comes back and says, folks, I got to be honest.
0:17:24 We should put all our money into innovation around digital to unlock new features with our
0:17:24 product.
0:17:27 Tesla doesn’t spend a lot of money on advertising.
0:17:31 And the bottom line is, their brand has gone way down because Elon Musk is an enormous
0:17:35 asshole, but also because the product has gotten really stale, right?
0:17:40 So consumers can find the best product now using these weapons of mass diligence.
0:17:43 So whatever you’re going to see, you’re going to see reallocation of capital out of traditional
0:17:49 marketing into supply chain, into influencers, into social, and into product itself.
0:17:51 And this is hand-to-hand combat.
0:17:53 There’s no single platform.
0:17:58 If you wanted to bet on any two platforms, I don’t know, you’d probably bet on TikTok
0:18:00 and Instagram and also maybe YouTube.
0:18:02 I mean, there’s a cumulative effect here, right?
0:18:06 You got to kind of do it all, but you want to have influencers.
0:18:07 You want to have evangelists.
0:18:12 You want to over-serve a core customer base such that there’s word of mouth and they absolutely
0:18:13 fall in love with your product.
0:18:18 I used to use Norelco or Braun or these shitty brands to clip my head.
0:18:23 And then I found this clipper from a former East German factory that used to make propellers
0:18:26 from Messerschmitts and they make this incredible clipper.
0:18:29 And I went online and I found out where it was and I ordered them and they’re more expensive,
0:18:30 which is a pricing signal.
0:18:35 But you can now find the best product or discover it online.
0:18:40 So look, I’m not sure I’m saying anything revolutionary here, but the CMO that’s like the second
0:18:44 lieutenant in Vietnam that gets shot in the forehead within six to 18 months is the one
0:18:48 that comes in and wants to do the brand identity and hire a big agency and talk about traditional
0:18:48 media.
0:18:50 Boss, that ship has sailed.
0:18:56 This is hand-to-hand combat that is a combination of a better product with digital unlocks, huge
0:19:00 supply chain investments if you have access to cheap capital, and then trying to identify
0:19:04 evangelists slash influencers who can weaponize these platforms to your advantage.
0:19:06 That was a mouthful.
0:19:08 Thanks for the question.
0:19:10 That’s all for this episode.
0:19:13 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours of
0:19:14 propertymedia.com.
0:19:16 That’s officehours of propertymedia.com.
0:19:21 Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit,
0:19:23 and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.
0:19:34 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
0:19:35 Our intern is Dan Shallon.
0:19:38 Drew Burrows is our technical director.
0:19:41 Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:19:45 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn.
0:19:51 And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
0:19:52 and Thursday.

0:00:06 What’s up, y’all? It’s Kenny Beach, and we are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can’t even remember when.
0:00:09 This is what we’ve been waiting for all season long.
0:00:20 And on my show, Small Ball, I’ll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy, and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
0:00:24 New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:27 Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beach so you don’t miss a thing.
0:00:30 Support for the show comes from BetterHelp.
0:00:33 While mental health awareness is growing, there’s still a lot of progress to be made.
0:00:37 This Mental Health Awareness Month, you can take steps to take care of your own well-being and help break the stigma.
0:00:44 With BetterHelp, you can choose from over 30,000 therapists completely online, and you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost.
0:00:49 Serving over 5 million people, BetterHelp makes therapy affordable and convenient worldwide.
0:00:50 We’re all better with help.
0:00:54 You can visit BetterHelp.com slash Prof G to get 10% off your first month.
0:00:57 That’s BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Prof G.
0:01:02 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:03 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:04 And I’m Jess Katarlov.
0:01:05 Jess, how are you?
0:01:05 I’m great.
0:01:06 Yeah?
0:01:08 I’m refreshed from my vacation.
0:01:09 Oh, how was that?
0:01:10 You were in Italy, right?
0:01:11 It was really good.
0:01:11 Well…
0:01:12 Spain.
0:01:14 Traveling with a three- and one-year-old is brutal.
0:01:15 Yeah.
0:01:22 And I have many thoughts on how much nicer it is in Europe vis-a-vis having little kids.
0:01:24 Like, they don’t make you feel terrible about it.
0:01:30 And at the airport, there’s a special line for families that are just, like, covered in strollers and diapers.
0:01:35 And you feel at one with those of you who’ve taken the little kid plunge.
0:01:37 But it was a great trip.
0:01:38 How was your week?
0:01:39 Really nice.
0:01:40 Back in London.
0:01:41 And it’s sunny here.
0:01:44 So London, when it’s sunny, is the nicest city in the world.
0:01:47 So for a good, like, 15, 18 days a year, it’s a fantastic city.
0:01:51 But what you said about family in Europe, it does really resonate.
0:02:01 The example I would use, it kind of typifies what I’ll call a more focused concentration or respect for families, is in Germany, there are these beer gardens everywhere.
0:02:05 But they also have trampolines and carousels.
0:02:06 So it’s like there’s something for everybody.
0:02:09 You go get a beer, and then your kids go crazy.
0:02:12 And maybe it’s because the cities I’ve lived in, it’s pretty segregated.
0:02:19 It’s like people who are cursed with families and paying that price, you need to go over here, and then adults only over here.
0:02:25 And it seems like Europe does a much better job of integrating or of a hybrid model, if you will.
0:02:25 Yeah.
0:02:29 You know, you bring your kid out to dinner no matter the time, and they fall asleep in the stroller.
0:02:30 Yeah, it’s fine.
0:02:33 There’s stroller parking, and no one’s giving you the side eye.
0:02:37 It’s the kind of stuff, I know, in life, everyone’s talking about these falling birth rates.
0:02:40 But I was like, do we want a third?
0:02:41 Like, am I ovulating?
0:02:42 We could do this.
0:02:44 And then, no dice.
0:02:45 There is no third baby.
0:02:46 Tables for five are much harder.
0:02:47 Four is much easier.
0:02:56 And by the way, just along those lines, I’m convinced that you’d get much more passive hostility if you bring your kid to a restaurant where I live in Soho than a dog.
0:02:58 Because dogs are cool, right?
0:03:01 It’s like, oh, we have water bowls, but no children allowed.
0:03:02 No children allowed.
0:03:03 I totally agree.
0:03:11 Anyways, today, we’re discussing Biden’s cancer diagnosis and a new book about his cover-up, The Future of the GOP’s Megabill.
0:03:12 And we have Preet Bharara.
0:03:15 Preet, my good, good friend, my one call.
0:03:17 Also, I got a story about Preet.
0:03:19 Do you know that scene from Tootsie?
0:03:21 You’re probably too young to have seen the movie Tootsie.
0:03:22 No, I love Tootsie.
0:03:32 And Bill Murray is like, just got such a great rap and all these people are surrounding him and raptured and rubbing his shoulders and all these women are just like looking fondly and adoringly at him.
0:03:35 Vox had this, or was it a code conference?
0:03:40 Something care pulled together where she got Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos and, I don’t know, everybody.
0:03:42 Just casually got Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos.
0:03:49 And there was a party afterwards, and I saw this semicircle of people enraptured by this guy.
0:03:55 And I walk over, and there was Preet in his suit and his dreamy blue eyes swirling around a glass of wine.
0:03:56 And I’m not exaggerating.
0:03:57 It was like that scene.
0:04:00 Everyone was just hanging on his every word.
0:04:01 I don’t know.
0:04:06 He’s like the sexiest man alive or the sexiest former Southern District, head of the Southern District.
0:04:06 Anyways.
0:04:08 Well, that’s a much more limited group.
0:04:10 I would give him even bigger than just S-D-N-Y.
0:04:11 Low bar.
0:04:17 But he is, for people who are attracted to intelligence, there’s like a lane.
0:04:18 What’s it called?
0:04:20 People attracted to smart men.
0:04:21 No, that’s like everybody.
0:04:24 But there’s like, oh, sapiosexual.
0:04:25 Sapiosexual.
0:04:26 Okay.
0:04:31 We could have spent two years with this uncomfortable pause, and I wouldn’t have gotten to sapiosexual.
0:04:32 So I’m fascinated by meaning.
0:04:33 Just a quick review.
0:04:39 The three things that women find most sexually attractive in a man are, one, his ability to signal future resources, not even just current resources.
0:04:40 You have to have a plan.
0:04:43 Two, intellect, to your point.
0:04:45 You know the fastest way to communicate intellect, Jess?
0:04:47 I don’t know.
0:04:48 Humor.
0:04:48 Oh.
0:04:50 Humor is the fastest way.
0:04:51 Is that why you’re so funny?
0:04:52 It’s the only way I had game.
0:04:57 If you can make a woman laugh, she will have coffee and go on a date with you.
0:04:58 And laugh in bed, too.
0:04:59 I get that.
0:05:06 When people are like, oh, it’s supposed to be so serious, I’m like, what is funnier than sex or, like, the weird stuff that goes on around it?
0:05:07 A hundred percent.
0:05:15 And then the third thing, because I’m trying to dig my way out of this hole, the third thing is kindness, which is the most underrated.
0:05:30 It’s the thing that men don’t realize is actually very attractive, is how you treat service people, your clear commitment to your parents, because women at some point know deep down that they might be vulnerable during gestation or raising kids and they want someone who’s kind.
0:05:34 Anyways, that’s nothing to do with anything we’re talking about today.
0:05:35 Well, kind of.
0:05:37 I mean, we’re talking about humanity and this is humanity.
0:05:37 There we go.
0:05:38 All right, let’s get into it.
0:05:40 It’s been another wild week in politics.
0:05:47 While Trump was overseas and getting the world treatment from the Saudis during his Middle East trip, his legislative parties were falling apart back home.
0:05:56 And Washington conservative hardliners in the House Budget Committee sank a key vote on Trump’s domestic bill, only to reverse course late Sunday after GOP leaders promised changes.
0:06:04 Those include stricter Medicaid work requirements, cutting Biden-era green energy tax credits and removing Medicaid access for undocumented immigrants.
0:06:08 But of course, Trump wasn’t about to let the chaos back home steal the spotlight.
0:06:14 During a business stop in the UAE, he pivoted back to one of his favorite topics, tariffs, and not just talk.
0:06:25 He announced his administration plans to skip negotiations entirely and slap new tariffs on dozens of countries, a move that could rattle global markets and strain relations with key U.S. allies in Europe and Asia.
0:06:34 And if that were enough political whiplash, on Sunday, it was announced that Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.
0:06:47 The news comes just days before the release of a new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, which raises fresh questions about what the public didn’t know and what insiders did know about Biden’s physical condition during the 2024 campaign.
0:06:59 According to the reporting, Biden’s health was deteriorating so rapidly that aides feared he might need a wheelchair if he won re-election, but they kept it quiet, taking every possible step to keep him upright until he eventually dropped out.
0:07:03 Jess, let’s start with Biden’s tragic news for him and his family.
0:07:04 What do you make of it all?
0:07:09 Well, it’s incredibly sad to hear that he has cancer.
0:07:11 It’s something that touches all of our lives.
0:07:13 I lost my dad to cancer.
0:07:21 And reading that it’s a very aggressive form that’s already permeated the bones, that’s terrible news all around.
0:07:37 And I hope that he and his family are able to spend some time tuned out from what is to be a savage week in politics because of the release of this book and the Robert Hurr special counsel tapes that came out as well.
0:07:40 And a lot of people are jumping on that bad wagon.
0:07:44 So I hope that they can find some time for themselves, and I trust that they’re getting great medical care.
0:07:59 It also is opening up this Pandora’s box even further about cover-ups and how it’s possible that he has progressed so far without telling the public what’s been going on.
0:08:00 Was he sick while he was in office?
0:08:09 Dr. Zeke Emanuel, one of the Emanuel brothers, was on Morning Joe Monday morning and said his expectation would be that he would have had this for 10 years.
0:08:22 I didn’t know a lot about prostate cancer, and I’m not going to pretend that I’m any sort of expert, but I didn’t even know that you—it’s now advised that you not get checked your PSA levels after you turn 70.
0:08:25 He’s an 82-year-old man, so has he been not checking this?
0:08:27 He has a Gleason score of 9.
0:08:30 It goes from 2 to 10, which seems very advanced.
0:08:34 They found out that he was sick through a UTI.
0:08:37 Has he not had a UTI for the past several years?
0:08:49 There’s a lot of open-ended questions, and I mostly want him and his family to feel good and secure and get the care that they need, and also for this week to not be as ugly as I expect that it is going to be.
0:08:50 What about you?
0:08:57 Yeah, look, he’s a good man, and anytime you hear about someone who gets this kind of news, you have empathy for them and their family.
0:09:02 I go more to what it means for the nation and sort of what we can draw from it.
0:09:07 An 82-year-old diagnosed with prostate cancer is not an unusual diagnosis.
0:09:13 I mean, basically, what was strange here and is a bit of a wake-up call is that it had gotten so advanced.
0:09:19 You’d think the president would have, I just joined one of these high-end medical concierge clinics, and basically, they just scan you all the time.
0:09:30 And I’m just shocked that it would have gotten that far, that a Gleason of 9, if anyone should catch stuff early, I would have thought it was the president.
0:09:32 It’s a terrible diagnosis.
0:09:37 I’m not a doctor, but it just doesn’t, you know, this is very bad news for the Biden family.
0:09:41 I think on a larger level, I think we need age limits.
0:09:53 If he had been reelected, he will probably spend the next one, two, five years severely impaired, not only because he’s going to be 83, 84, 85, but he’s going to be fighting a devastating illness.
0:09:57 And let’s hope that he survives and maybe even beats it.
0:09:59 But what would that have meant if he was the president?
0:10:02 It would have meant that he couldn’t take foreign trips.
0:10:04 It would have meant that no one trusted him to make decisions.
0:10:07 It would have meant constant lying.
0:10:19 There would have been a full-time spin protection lying circle, an informal cabinet doing nothing but trying to protect him and continue to lie about his faculties and abilities.
0:10:22 Well, it would have been President Kamala Harris.
0:10:23 Would it have been?
0:10:25 Do you think, see, this is what I’m not sure of, Jess.
0:10:27 I think the guy is a good man.
0:10:32 I also think he’s a raging fucking narcissist, as is many of the people who get to D.C.
0:10:34 Do you think he would have handed over the mantle?
0:10:35 I’m not sure he would have.
0:10:41 I think he would be more likely to, having at least clocked that he won the second term and beaten Donald Trump again.
0:10:46 But people are doing a lot of reassessments of who they think Joe Biden is.
0:10:49 And yes, fundamentally, a good man.
0:11:06 But even the people who love him the most, like there was a very moving piece by Steve Shale, longtime Democratic consultant, Florida, worked for the Biden campaign 2020, saying like it’s a special kind of ego to run for president and to do it multiple times.
0:11:12 Right. And then to do it even in the face of the headwinds that we’re seeing when you are 78, 79, 80 years old.
0:11:21 The best thing that he can do is kind of recede from public life at this point, because every interview makes it worse for the rest of us.
0:11:33 Like the session on The View where Dr. Jill is still, you know, hopping in when necessary because he trails off or whatever is going on is really bleak.
0:11:49 But as someone caring for a dad who’s about to be 95 and has also had to had very uncomfortable conversations with CEOs who’ve done an amazing job for a company for 20 years and have to say to them, you’re too old.
0:11:51 We’re asking you to step down.
0:11:56 And they see it as, all right, you’re basically telling me to go home and die.
0:11:57 That’s how they see it.
0:12:03 You have to sort of almost shove all this goodwill and loyalty aside and do what’s best for the shareholders.
0:12:06 You know, these are really uncomfortable conversations.
0:12:13 Anyone who’s had an aging parent, they’re under the impression and they’re not bad people that, no, I can continue to live on my own.
0:12:17 And this is people much younger than President Biden.
0:12:23 And then when you have people around you enabling it, you can absolutely see how this happens.
0:12:33 And that it’s not, I don’t want to say it’s not their fault, but you can understand how an individual believes with the right people around me, I can continue to do the best job and I beat them once, I’ll beat them again.
0:12:37 And that’s why we need age limits on both sides.
0:12:48 There are 34-year-olds I know who are incredible, who would be, in my opinion, have the neurological, physical, emotional, and mental strength to be president.
0:12:51 And yet, they’re not eligible, though.
0:13:00 We’ve decided their body of experience, their brain development, their judgment and reasoning and their faculties are not up to the task of the highest office in the land.
0:13:05 But an 85-year-old at the end of his term is?
0:13:07 I don’t know anyone who’s beat biology.
0:13:10 Biology is undefeated.
0:13:17 And the notion that we’re just going to ignore it on the high end, we need age limits for the Supreme Court.
0:13:25 And we need, okay, if you cannot be an elected office beyond, I would pick 70, but okay, maybe 75.
0:13:28 And here’s the thing, it’s also the kindest thing to do.
0:13:38 Because what I’ve seen of corporations is when they have mandatory retirement and they have mandatory tenure limits on the directors, you want to talk about people who have fucking nothing going on.
0:13:43 But occasionally, they get to show up to a board meeting and have a free dinner and think big thoughts.
0:13:50 And you’ve got to tell these people whose companies kicked them out a long time ago, no, you can’t be on this board any longer.
0:13:54 That is such an uncomfortable conversation that nobody wants to have it.
0:13:58 So what’s great is you have boards that have tenure limits.
0:14:01 You can be on this board for no more than 8, 10, or 12 years.
0:14:06 Not only will it be best for the country, but I think the kindest thing to do is not make it a question or an issue.
0:14:14 Once you hit 70 or 75, you go home a hero, and you spend time with your grandkids, and we’re done.
0:14:19 And I think that’s the conversation we should be having instead of like, it was some sort of malicious cover-up.
0:14:21 No, we’re all covering for our old aging parents.
0:14:29 We’re all trying to pretend and talk ourselves into believing that they’re okay, that they’re better than they are, and you see them at their best moments.
0:14:38 So I hope this inspires a productive conversation where we say, okay, Britain has age limits on their Supreme Court justices here.
0:14:40 Most countries or a lot of countries have them.
0:14:49 Let’s have an age limit on the presidency, our senators, our Congress people, and our Supreme Court justices.
0:14:56 It puts the country at risk when you have people this old with literally their finger on the button.
0:14:57 Your thoughts?
0:14:59 Yeah, I agree with you.
0:15:05 And I’ve had multiple conversations around this issue, and people push about, oh, you’re being ageist, et cetera.
0:15:08 If we’re talking about 75, I don’t think that’s that ageist.
0:15:12 If I said something like, oh, you know, you can’t even be 60, that would be ludicrous.
0:15:28 But if you’re talking about people where there is biology very clear about how your brain changes, how your body shuts down, that this is what we can expect at that stage in your life, why would you want that person as the leader of the free world?
0:15:33 Or why would you want that person as one of the nine most important legal minds in the country?
0:15:38 I think that people will come around to those kinds of conversations.
0:15:42 The issue is, will the folks who are still filling those positions get out of the way?
0:15:49 Because there are all of these older Democrats that are retiring, like Dick Durbin, right, who’s, you know, passing the torch, Gene Shaheen, et cetera.
0:16:00 And then you have someone who has the stamina and energy of a 30-year-old like Bernie Sanders, but in his 80s, who’s not slowing down or stopping.
0:16:10 The inconsistency on this issue is what’s really difficult for me because there are people that you can point to, like a Joe Biden, who seem very fit, right?
0:16:12 He’s out riding a bike.
0:16:13 He goes for jogs, et cetera.
0:16:23 And then you read some of the coverage from Original Sin from Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, and you see moments of a completely different Biden.
0:16:32 And I’ve been struggling with this personally because I do feel guilty as someone with an important role in the media.
0:16:34 And I defended Joe Biden.
0:16:40 I certainly was honest about what I was seeing, you know, like if he was falling or going, you know, in a weird direction.
0:16:43 I never got into that’s a cheap fake or a deep fake, for instance.
0:16:56 But certainly once that State of the Union speech came around where he went for like an hour and a half and then he was doing the rope line and making fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene and owning the room, I was like, Biden is back.
0:16:59 And that’s when Ezra Klein changed how he felt, Matt Ecclesias, et cetera.
0:17:19 And perhaps I shouldn’t have thought that Dean Phillips was out of his mind or been part of a chorus, more like what you were talking about, where he said it’s OK for somebody who might have a serious chance at winning the nomination or at least inspiring the Democratic Party to open their eyes and do some real self-reflection to get in there.
0:17:23 Because Dean Phillips was clear that he didn’t think that he was supposed to be the guy.
0:17:34 He wanted Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Wes Moore, these people that we talk about for 2028 to get in there earlier, but no one was raising their hand.
0:17:47 And some of that was probably that Biden wasn’t bad all the time, that you could have a meeting with him and he would be the same that he was 2019, 2020 when he won the presidency decidedly.
0:17:56 But a lot of it seems to have been just abject terror about the wrath of the party and the establishment when it turns on you.
0:18:04 Yeah. So I’m the original ageist. Bill Maher called me an ageist. And I said, yeah. And you know who else is ageist? Biology.
0:18:12 I think my 14-year-old makes really bad decisions. And I think my dad, left to his own devices, would make even more bad decisions.
0:18:17 And at some point we had to tell him he could no longer drive because he was going to kill someone.
0:18:24 Do you realize that people, I think it’s people over the age of 75, are dramatically more dangerous behind the wheel than a brand new 16-year-old?
0:18:28 We always talk about how dangerous new kids are and they drink and…
0:18:31 Well, their reflexes, right, are just completely gone?
0:18:32 Yeah. They’re really fucking old.
0:18:33 Yeah.
0:18:39 My reflexes aren’t what they used to be. I’m like, I can’t get over the fact that how my reflexes are degrading.
0:18:48 Anyways, in addition, the other benefit of having age limits is that we need to clear out more room for younger voices.
0:18:52 I see this every day in higher education.
0:19:00 There are so many young, outstanding academics who can’t get traction in their career and oftentimes end up leaving the profession
0:19:09 because some 84-year-old who was the bomb in Gap 1 accounting in 1973 won’t get the fuck out of the way because of tenure and won’t go home.
0:19:12 And it creates more uncomfortable conversations.
0:19:15 I mean, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey are great at this.
0:19:21 And that is, once you literally hit 45, they start politely nudging you out of the firm.
0:19:29 A, the firms are incredibly profitable, but they start creating basically retirement funds and you can access them once you retire.
0:19:42 They want you out because the only way they can continue to attract the type of human capital that continues to make their organizations perform at the highest level is it creates room for young people.
0:19:48 And one of the nice things about D.C. is it does attract a ton of young, incredible talent at a staff level.
0:20:03 But there are too many great young people in the Senate and the House who are thinking about running who don’t run because some fucking 85-year-old won’t get out of the way, who just shouldn’t be there.
0:20:20 But because they’ve been taking money from special interest groups forever, because the party will always support the incumbent because the incumbent does have the biggest chance of winning, we end up with a cross between the walking dead and the golden girls deciding public policy.
0:20:28 So I hope this inspires a more serious conversation, not about, oh, the Biden family, they did something wrong.
0:20:29 No, they didn’t.
0:20:30 They do what every family does.
0:20:33 They were trying to protect their loved one and they saw the best side of him.
0:20:38 But we need to have an honest conversation around age limits, which won’t happen.
0:20:51 We also have to have a serious conversation around the political strategy for navigating the fallout from this book and the continued conversations around the Biden era because it is not going away.
0:20:52 Oh, you think it’s a big deal.
0:20:53 So I think it’ll come and go.
0:20:56 I work at Fox News.
0:20:57 This ain’t going anywhere.
0:21:05 It will lead every newscast until there’s some feedback that the viewers aren’t into it anymore.
0:21:17 And the viewers are not going to not be into stories about Joe Biden not knowing who George Clooney was, even if that’s disputed by some people or that they were going to use a wheelchair or whatever else is to come.
0:21:18 And I haven’t read the book.
0:21:19 I’ve only read excerpts of it.
0:21:28 If you have people like Van Jones saying this is a crime against the republic, like the shouts are coming from within the House or whatever the term is for it.
0:21:35 I firmly believe that this cannot be allowed to become the main narrative.
0:21:36 It just absolutely can’t.
0:21:45 Like we have a moment where Trump is tanking our economy, where they’re pushing through this bill that’s going to cut $880 billion to Medicaid.
0:21:47 Americans are pessimistic about the economy.
0:21:50 We do have an election coming up in 2026.
0:21:55 It feels like forever away, but no, it really does feel like forever away, but it is coming.
0:22:01 And Democrats and myself included are always up for self-flagellation.
0:22:04 Republicans do no inward thinking, right?
0:22:05 Oh, we lost.
0:22:06 Let’s move on.
0:22:08 Sometimes let’s just even continue doing the same exact thing.
0:22:09 We didn’t lose.
0:22:10 The election was rigged.
0:22:15 And we’ll sit there and browbeat ourselves into oblivion.
0:22:23 And that’s what fills me with fear at this moment that we’re going to, you know, not just take the book for what it is, you know, read it, consume it.
0:22:26 Maybe you go see Tapper Speak Live or whatever.
0:22:28 I think it’s going to be at the 92nd Street Y next month.
0:22:37 But that we allow this to become the narrative and don’t own our own election campaign because Republicans get to set our agenda.
0:22:38 That’s freaking me out.
0:22:40 Well, here’s the thing.
0:22:41 This is a pretty safe prediction.
0:22:43 Age and cognitive decline.
0:22:44 It’s not linear.
0:22:47 And Donald Trump presents as more robust.
0:22:51 The next three and a half years are not good years for people that age.
0:22:51 Yeah.
0:22:56 If you just look at actuarial tables and obese, what is he, 78 or 79?
0:22:59 There’s like a one in three chance he dies while in office.
0:23:07 So the same things they were trying to cover up, the Democratic machine and the Biden family, are likely going to show up in this White House.
0:23:09 Because guess what, folks?
0:23:11 Biology always wins.
0:23:14 Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:23:14 Stay with us.
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0:25:45 Donald Trump’s been back in office long enough to shock or surprise just about anyone who voted for him at this point.
0:25:53 Be it the Signal scandal or the tariff turnarounds, the Janine Pirro of it all, the way he talks about Ozempic.
0:25:56 And he takes the fat, the fat shot drug.
0:25:57 So rude.
0:26:02 I’m in London, and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take.
0:26:03 I said, it’s not working.
0:26:10 On Today Explained, we’re asking if any of his voters are experiencing voters’ remorse.
0:26:15 Especially those ones who are newer to his winning coalition.
0:26:18 Younger voters, black voters, Latin voters.
0:26:23 We’re heading to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to ask them if regrets?
0:26:24 Do they have a few?
0:26:28 And just by way of spoiler, to get this out of the way, the answer is yes.
0:26:29 They do.
0:26:34 And he takes the fat, the fat shot drug.
0:26:38 Welcome back.
0:26:40 Let’s turn to Congress.
0:26:43 What do you think is the path forward for Trump’s mega bill, or is there a path forward?
0:26:50 There’s always a path forward in Donald Trump’s Republican Party because they only care about pleasing him.
0:26:53 So they have a very slim majority, five votes.
0:26:58 It was a big setback on Friday when the bill failed out of the Budget Committee.
0:27:02 Chip Roy and four other GOP hardliners voted for the Democrats against it.
0:27:05 But lo and behold, Sunday night, now they’re for it.
0:27:06 Or they voted present.
0:27:09 Chip Roy has his moments, and then he caves.
0:27:16 And that’s the story for basically everyone in the Republican Party, save for Thomas Massey, who usually means what he says.
0:27:18 They’re going to move forward with this.
0:27:21 They’re going to increase the deficit by $3 trillion if it gets passed.
0:27:23 The big cut to Medicaid I already mentioned.
0:27:30 Now that the CBO has actually had time with the bill, some of these stats that are coming out would send you reeling.
0:27:35 You actually can’t process how somebody could be for a bill like this.
0:27:41 Like, people making between $17,000 and $51,000 could lose an average of $700 in after-tax income.
0:27:46 Those making $4.3 million or more would gain an average of $389,000.
0:27:51 The bottom 60% of taxpayers would get an average tax cut of $700 under the plan.
0:27:54 But over $10 million would lose their health insurance.
0:27:58 And I’m pretty sure that your health insurance is worth more than $700 in your pocket.
0:28:07 And I guess in a bright spot, if you take them at your word, which is always difficult, this bill is dead on arrival in the Senate.
0:28:10 You know, Josh Hawley had a New York Times op-ed saying you can’t cut Medicaid.
0:28:13 Ron Johnson wants more cut.
0:28:13 That’s my favorite.
0:28:17 The people who are like, no, I can’t be for this because it doesn’t cut enough.
0:28:19 But, you know, I’ll take it.
0:28:23 Susan Collins, Jerry Moran, all the rural hospitals are going to be gone.
0:28:27 It’s going to wipe out rural medical care in this country.
0:28:31 And every once in a while, it’s a good time to be a Democrat.
0:28:39 And in this case, it is because you have all of these Republicans whose feet are going to be held to the fire because they represent rural states.
0:28:43 And they’ve got millions of constituents that are saying, I’m going to have nowhere to go.
0:28:45 A, won’t have health care in the first place.
0:28:49 But then if I do get sick, I can’t even get to a hospital to get the care that I need.
0:28:50 Yeah.
0:28:52 And I think that’s the correct framing.
0:28:59 What I have seen is that it’s a tax cut for the top 5 percent and it’s a tax hike for the lower 95.
0:29:06 And in addition, the thing that I harp on about is it’s going to add what I’ve seen, about $4.5 or $5 trillion to the deficit.
0:29:08 I’ve seen numbers that are much bigger.
0:29:09 I’m taking the more conservative one.
0:29:13 That’s about $30,000 per household.
0:29:25 And keep in mind, the deficits that we’re racking up are not being used to fund education or fund technical development or make investments in infrastructure that could ultimately pay off for future generations.
0:29:31 It’s essentially to extend corporate tax cuts and increase defense spending.
0:29:38 And they’re trying to minimize some of that deficit reduction by cutting social services or, you know, as you said, Medicaid.
0:29:49 I uploaded my W-2s from last year into three different LLMs and said, how is the proposed Trump tax bill going to affect me?
0:29:51 And they came back with things.
0:29:53 I’m going to get wealthier.
0:29:56 And one even started off with, good news.
0:30:08 So, essentially, this is young people get to borrow money, $4.5 trillion, because the thing is, our credit is fine for probably 10, 20, maybe 30 years.
0:30:11 People are crying that, oh, yeah, interest rates will go up.
0:30:12 They already are.
0:30:16 We just lost our AAA credit rating from, I think it was Moody’s.
0:30:17 Moody’s, yeah.
0:30:26 So, we saw the 10-year go up, which means student loans, mortgages, everything, companies’ ability to borrow money to pay for additional factories.
0:30:30 So, basically, everyone in America is going to pay slightly more money for everything.
0:30:36 That’s what an increased interest rates do, such that we can fund a tax cut for the top 5%.
0:30:40 And our credit will be fine for a while.
0:30:42 I don’t think that there’s going to be a failed Treasury auction for a while.
0:30:53 But, effectively, what this is is people under the age of, call it 40, have to borrow an additional $5 trillion to pay for tax cuts for the old and the wealthy.
0:30:58 And people say, to me, it was the time, Scott, it’s not young versus old, it’s poor versus rich.
0:30:59 They’re the same fucking thing.
0:31:04 Because if you look at the people who would benefit most from this tax cut, yeah, they’re the rich.
0:31:07 But they usually are people in their 60s and 70s.
0:31:22 I think the Democrats need to do a better job of, you realize, this is like a household that’s taking on, right now the household makes $50,000, spends $70,000, has $370,000 in debt, and is about to take on another $50,000 in debt.
0:31:29 And, by the way, when mom and dad die, they’ll have spent all that time going to Cabo and partying and buying, you know, a Lexus.
0:31:33 But that debt is going to be inherited by their children.
0:31:38 It just, it strikes me as just such a criminal act against the young.
0:31:41 And we don’t frame it that way.
0:31:43 We say, okay, we need to lower taxes.
0:31:52 And also, I think if you came to the table and said, there are really some hard decisions to be made around our biggest entitlement program, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
0:31:56 You know, we have to make really ugly, severe cuts.
0:32:10 And we’re going to match those cuts proportionate or two to one with tax increases on corporations who are paying the lowest taxes since 1929, or in the very wealthy who continue to see a regressive or enjoy a regressive tax rate.
0:32:16 I think you could make a moral and an economic argument for making those types of really deep, terrible cuts.
0:32:29 And then said, OK, because there’s some hard decisions to be made and we’re going to start a path towards fiscal responsibility, which will ultimately lower the interest costs on our debt, which will ultimately lower the costs for everybody.
0:32:36 But, folks, we can’t afford to keep spending the way we’re spending and we can’t afford to not bring in more revenues.
0:32:43 I think I could have gotten on board with that, but instead they’re like, no, let’s cut people’s health care so we can give the top five percent tax cut.
0:32:53 And the Republicans pushing back on this thing for their TikTok moment, they did talk about the deficit, but it was all through the lens of the cuts don’t go deep enough.
0:32:56 And I’m like, Jesus Christ.
0:32:57 Yeah.
0:32:59 You don’t think these cuts are going deep enough?
0:33:01 That’s where you’re going with this?
0:33:03 The cruelty is the point.
0:33:10 In every aspect of Republican policymaking, the cruelty is the point.
0:33:12 And you’re totally right.
0:33:22 Contextualizing the deficit in real terms would be an enormous public service that if any of these politicians would like to get on board with, I would certainly amplify it.
0:33:25 I want to know about what it means for my mortgage rate.
0:33:27 I want to know what it means for my grocery bill.
0:33:37 I want to know what it means for, you know, how fast my 529 for my kids so that they can go to college is going to grow or be slowed by the deficit, et cetera.
0:33:38 All of that stuff.
0:33:43 But I think that you really need to make it as simple as possible.
0:33:46 Like, if you do this, you lose this.
0:33:51 We can choose a tax cut for the wealthy or nutritional assistance.
0:33:56 We can choose a tax cut for the wealthy or your Medicaid coverage.
0:33:57 We can choose.
0:34:02 I mean, remember, I mean, we were sold so many lies during the confirmation hearings.
0:34:05 But all this talk about it, we’re going to actually do an audit of the Pentagon.
0:34:07 Now, Secretary Hicks has told us that.
0:34:11 And lo and behold, there are no cuts to the Pentagon.
0:34:12 They’re increasing the budgets.
0:34:15 Republicans are never going to cut defense spending.
0:34:20 That is a lie that they tell you every single time, along with we actually care about the debt and the deficit as well.
0:34:37 So I really want Democrats to get, like, super simple, like, pretend you’re telling my 3-year-old what’s actually in this bill and draw that straight line from the tax cuts to the loss of services that matter to the lives of the average American.
0:34:41 And that’s not to say that the Americans aren’t getting it.
0:34:43 Trump is underwater in terms of how he’s handling the economy.
0:34:45 This bill is hugely unpopular.
0:34:48 But they live only for the day, right?
0:34:49 They love the one you’re with.
0:34:53 They’re not thinking about what happens in 26 or in 28.
0:34:59 They’re just trying to cram as much junk down our throats as possible, as quickly as possible.
0:35:01 And then they’re going to worry about the repercussions later.
0:35:01 Yeah.
0:35:04 So just let me cement my reputation as an ageist.
0:35:07 It really is old people fucking this country.
0:35:15 I mean, first off, if passed, this tax bill would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history.
0:35:17 And it’s much more fun to create a class war.
0:35:19 But who are the rich again?
0:35:24 There aren’t a lot of 26-year-olds thinking, wow, this tax cut’s going to be great for me.
0:35:30 If you look at who owns shares, who benefits from these tax cuts, it’s the old.
0:35:31 And here’s the problem.
0:35:34 The old continue to have figured out a way to vote themselves more money.
0:35:35 Oh, and guess what?
0:35:37 We’re talking about cutting Medicaid.
0:35:42 But we’re not talking about cutting Medicare or Social Security, right?
0:35:44 Because that’s old people.
0:35:45 And old rich people.
0:35:46 Old rich people.
0:35:48 Because old rich people still use their Medicare.
0:35:50 Well, yeah, they still love their Medicare.
0:35:52 It’s great health care at a low price.
0:35:54 They still want, you know, I paid into it.
0:36:00 By the way, the majority of people who, once they take out Social Security, take out more than they put in.
0:36:02 And it’s not called a Social Security pension fund.
0:36:07 It’s called a Social Security tax, meaning it may not benefit you directly.
0:36:10 And then people say, Scott, but it’s not a deficit issue.
0:36:11 Well, of course it’s similar.
0:36:13 It’s a tax on young people.
0:36:19 When Social Security was initially conceived, there were 12 young people supporting every retiree.
0:36:24 Now it’s three to one and people are working and living 20 or 30 years longer.
0:36:29 And Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway should not get Social Security.
0:36:32 And here’s the problem going back to we need age limits in Congress.
0:36:42 Say we’re able to continue to live irresponsibly and live beyond our means and continue to take advantage of the full faith and credit of the U.S. government,
0:36:51 which has been earned through hard work and fiscal responsibility over 225 years, in 30 years, 75 percent of Congress will be dead.
0:36:53 See, above, they’re too fucking old.
0:36:58 So they don’t have a vested interest in the future of America.
0:36:59 I’ll be dead by then.
0:37:01 I mean, I know this firsthand.
0:37:07 I believe where I live in Florida will probably be underwater at some point.
0:37:10 But it’s probably going to be 50 years and I’ve done the math.
0:37:12 I’m just not that damn worried about it.
0:37:15 Whereas a 25-year-old is more concerned with climate change.
0:37:16 I understand that.
0:37:23 And we need more 25-year-olds in Congress such that we can be a little bit more future forward,
0:37:33 such that we can be thinking about the requisite long-term investments to ensure our kids and grandkids have the same types of opportunities we do.
0:37:37 So what is the incentive for people in Congress who are really fucking old?
0:37:37 Well, whatever.
0:37:42 Future generations will deal with warming oceans and an unsustainable debt load.
0:37:52 As long as my credit card continues to be accepted and I can continue feeding at the trough until I’m dead, I’m down with these ridiculously short-term policies.
0:37:58 These tax cuts, which largely benefit the wealthy, Republicans aren’t cutting defense spending, Social Security or Medicare,
0:38:00 all which would be unpopular with the constituents.
0:38:07 Instead, they’re going after the health and nutrition programs for the poorest Americans, which again is Latin for the youngest Americans.
0:38:13 So I’ve, again, this is, the bill just, it goes from bad to worse here.
0:38:15 The bill proposes cutting SNAP spending by 30%.
0:38:20 I can’t imagine a better investment than SNAP.
0:38:30 Okay, stop a kid from being obese such that he doesn’t have to spend $1,000 a month for a Zympic, is not clinically depressed, is able to make more money.
0:38:32 People who are obese make less money.
0:38:40 They’re more likely to need knee and hip replacements and be on kidney dialysis when they get older, which is really, really expensive.
0:38:43 SNAP beneficiaries only receive about $2 per meal.
0:38:55 The federal government spent $113 billion on SNAP in fiscal year 2023, making the 27 increased AMT exemptions permanent will reduce revenues by $140 billion a year.
0:39:03 So you could, essentially, if you just made the AMT exemptions, if you said they’re not permanent, if you had an alternative minimum tax,
0:39:09 such that wealthy people had to pay at least a certain amount, by the way, that amount isn’t high, it would fund SNAP.
0:39:16 And the thing about it is, distinct of the moral argument, you know, distinct of the sob argument, which Democrats scream into TikTok about,
0:39:23 we’ll have more money, we won’t have to spend as much money if we have a semi-healthy populace.
0:39:26 I’m done with the morality argument, they’re just stupid.
0:39:30 We’ve literally decided, okay, guys, give us your credit card, we’re going to run up.
0:39:33 It’s like that film Leaving Las Vegas, where Nicolas Cage says,
0:39:40 I’m such a fucking raging alcoholic, I am so addicted to alcohol, that I’ve given up any hope of rehab.
0:39:49 I’m just going to cash my last check for my severance pay, and I’m going to hang out with a prostitute and party like there’s no, you know, like it’s 1999, because I’m going to be dead soon.
0:39:52 That is how we are approaching our government right now.
0:39:55 We are Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.
0:39:59 Elizabeth Shue was my dad’s number one crush in the entire world.
0:40:01 Oh, I feel so old, me and your dad.
0:40:04 Well, Andy’s dead on top of that, right?
0:40:05 She made a comeback.
0:40:08 He was much older, not much older, he would have been 72.
0:40:09 That’s bringing the conversation down.
0:40:12 She just did make a comeback, though, in the Karate, what’s it called?
0:40:14 The Karate Kid 100.
0:40:19 I didn’t see it, but you’re totally right about the investment part of it.
0:40:20 Like, just make the economic argument.
0:40:23 And, you know, I love the cruelty is the point.
0:40:24 I go back to it all the time.
0:40:27 Like, when Republicans oppose school lunches.
0:40:34 And you think, like, how is that physically possible, that you could say it’s a bad idea for kids to have food in their bellies?
0:40:35 Just make the argument, then.
0:40:38 You’re so concerned about how well we perform.
0:40:41 Guess when you can’t do any learning and you can’t function?
0:40:42 When you’re hungry.
0:40:47 So just give them a sandwich and let them do better in school.
0:40:50 It’s always the easiest stuff.
0:40:51 Like, the simple things.
0:40:56 And because they’re morally bankrupt, they won’t go with it.
0:41:04 It’s a really boring detail, but I just wanted to note that in the Energy and Commerce Committee last week, they went 26 hours straight.
0:41:07 Like, overnight, and Democrats introduced 33 amendments.
0:41:11 And all of them failed, which they knew because we didn’t have the numbers.
0:41:21 But they brought in all of these people who are on Medicaid to tell their stories about what would happen to them or the people who are close to them if the programs got cut.
0:41:24 And watching—I didn’t stay up all night for it.
0:41:26 C-SPAN had great coverage of it.
0:41:39 But watching democracy actually happening live in front of us and people using the process, I thought, A, this is a way that Democrats are fighting back and at least getting these stories out there to amplify.
0:41:57 But B, if we have that kind of energy across all of these committees and in the press and all of the social media posts surrounding this reconciliation bill, maybe it gets through the House, but it will be impossible for it to get through the Senate, at least in its current form.
0:42:00 Our producer, David, gave us some great data here.
0:42:07 So, essentially, one study found that children with access to Medicaid grew up healthier and less dependent on government benefits.
0:42:11 Medicaid spending delivered a 2% to 7% annual return on investment.
0:42:14 The sphere of the children ended up receiving disability payments.
0:42:23 And studies also show an association between SNAP participation and a reduction in health care costs by as much as $5,000 per person per year.
0:42:26 So, in sum, these are great investments.
0:42:27 It’s good business.
0:42:39 And then on the other side, the other thing that really pisses me off and people just don’t grasp, the estate tax exemption is going to be increased from $15 million to $30 million for married couples next year.
0:42:45 What that means is if you’re wealthy, you put stuff in an estate and it transfers tax-free down to your heirs.
0:42:51 And one of the things that distinguishes America from Europe is that we’ve always been somewhat against dynastic wealth.
0:43:00 And we tax the states such that we can make forward-leaning investments that give a ton of young people incentive to work hard such that they can make it.
0:43:07 Because the government is able to make great investments in technology, whether it’s the Internet or GPS or education, they give them a shot at being rich.
0:43:11 And Europe’s always been about kind of inherited family wealth.
0:43:14 Europe is now less dynastic on many levels than we are.
0:43:29 And the thing that is so insane about this is that if you look at studies on the relationship between money and happiness, once you get above, call it $30 million in wealth, you have no incremental happiness.
0:43:34 And what people don’t understand about these trusts, they value it at $30 million based on the value when it goes into the trust.
0:43:40 If it grows to be worth $100 million over 20 or 30 years, which isn’t unlikely, it all transfers tax-free.
0:44:04 So as someone who’s worked really hard and has aggregated some economic security, one of the things I want as a reward for my good fortune and my hard work is I want to give my kids a better life than the average kid.
0:44:06 Let me just come out of the closet.
0:44:12 I want to give my kids enough money so they can have a house and know that they don’t have to worry about education costs.
0:44:13 All right?
0:44:15 You can easily do that.
0:44:19 Easily do that with $10 million.
0:44:20 You don’t need $30 million.
0:44:22 You don’t even need really $10 million.
0:44:29 To give your kid a head start because you think, I’ve worked so fucking hard, I want to give my kids advantage.
0:44:31 I think that is a natural instinct.
0:44:34 All my friends who talk a big game about, well, I’m going to pay through their college and then they’re on their own.
0:44:36 None of them do that.
0:44:37 Their kid is a good kid.
0:44:40 They can’t pursue their dreams without help from mom and dad.
0:44:42 Mom and dad want them to live near them.
0:44:45 Inflation, they end up giving their kids money.
0:44:45 Fine.
0:44:50 I think that’s one of the benefits in what we work so hard when we’re parents is such that we can help our kids out.
0:44:57 But anything above, call it $5 million or $10 million, not even that much, you think that gives your kid incremental happiness?
0:44:58 It doesn’t.
0:45:02 Well, a lot of people feel like it hurts them in the long term.
0:45:07 Like the Bill Gateses of the world, obviously we’re talking about billions of dollars now, but he’s not giving them anything, right?
0:45:10 Or they each get a million dollars or something like that?
0:45:10 Yeah.
0:45:12 I mean, there’s different ways to cut the cat there.
0:45:18 I mean, my guess is they’re getting indirectly a lot of Bill Gates’s kid gets a leg up on a lot of levels economically.
0:45:21 But anyways, my point is, let’s call it a million bucks.
0:45:23 You know, the kid’s not going to go hungry.
0:45:25 You know, the kid can afford education.
0:45:30 Probably that’s going to help in terms of a down payment towards the house, right?
0:45:33 Anything above that, you get no incremental happiness.
0:45:34 You get none.
0:45:44 So, and it goes back to the notion, I think there should be an AMT tax of 50 to 70% on anything above $10 million because it’s not going to get you an incremental happiness.
0:45:51 Whereas making forward-leaning investments with that capital to give younger people more of a shot, that gives a lot of people a lot of happiness.
0:45:58 But all of this shit is not only giveaways, but it doesn’t create any incremental value for anybody.
0:46:09 The difference between holding on to $11 million of your $15 million in earnings versus being able to hold on to $9 million of your $15 million in earnings, no incremental benefit to you or your family.
0:46:13 There’s nothing you’re going to be able to do that you weren’t able to do before.
0:46:15 It’s not going to increase your health, your well-being.
0:46:17 It’s not going to lessen any more of your anxiety.
0:46:18 You’re just going to be richer.
0:46:19 You’re just going to have a bigger number.
0:46:33 What I find so disappointing about this tax bill is, okay, I understand that the top 1% and in most instances the 0.1% want a bigger number, but you’re not going to increase the well-being of anybody.
0:46:35 You’re not going to increase the happiness.
0:47:01 All you’re going to do is create tremendous anxiety and despair among those people losing their Medicaid and create additional costs for everybody through higher interest rates because it’s irresponsible, racking up deficits, and increase taxation or reliance on government services and nonprofits when all of these people start getting their toes and their fingers cut off because of full-blown diabetes that wasn’t arrested earlier in their life or that they didn’t get treatment for.
0:47:06 So we make the moral argument all the time as Democrats.
0:47:11 I think we need to start making the economic argument that this is just going to cost us a lot more down the road.
0:47:24 All we’re doing is creating a fiscal disaster for the government and for the people who are still going to be around, i.e. 25% of Congress will still survive, still be around.
0:47:25 And we don’t do that.
0:47:29 We just scream and cry about the morality of it all.
0:47:31 We need to move to the economic side.
0:47:37 Yeah, and also emphasize that we’re talking about a difference in a tax rate from 37 to 39%, right?
0:47:42 This isn’t like we’re suddenly going to be raiding your coffers at a level that you can’t withstand.
0:47:52 And I wish that more rich people would talk about these issues the way that you are or, like, you know, Ro Khanna represents the most billionaires of any district in the country.
0:47:56 He says constantly, we need to tax the rich more, tax the rich more.
0:47:58 And they still send him back.
0:47:59 These are not people who are stupid.
0:48:01 These are not people who are economically illiterate.
0:48:05 They’re obviously seeing something more to the story.
0:48:16 And maybe we should get them on a roadshow to talk about why it’s important to support policies that are more evenly distributed across different social classes.
0:48:18 Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:48:19 Stay with us.
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0:49:29 Welcome back.
0:49:34 Joining us today is a former federal prosecutor and host of the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast.
0:49:35 Welcome to the show.
0:49:36 A good friend.
0:49:40 And my one—this is true.
0:49:42 This is—here we go.
0:49:42 Look at Preet.
0:49:43 Okay.
0:49:44 My one phone call.
0:49:59 When shit gets real for the dog, which it will at some point, and I find myself in a very unfortunate situation, I have one call and I have told Preet that he is my one call and that if he ever sees my phone or my caller ID come up, he is to answer immediately.
0:50:00 Must take it.
0:50:07 He is both a sharp political or sharp legal mind, I should say, but also just very smart, very calm kind of guy you want in your corner.
0:50:08 Anyways, good to see you, Preet.
0:50:08 Good to see you.
0:50:15 I have to apologize, given that introduction, that I’m not in my usual barrister uniform.
0:50:16 I’m a little casual today.
0:50:17 Oh, that’s good.
0:50:18 Yeah.
0:50:22 If and when you should call upon me for my legal duties, I will have the proper attire.
0:50:24 I appreciate that.
0:50:25 What’s on your mind?
0:50:30 So the reason I reached out to you, well, we’re good, good friends.
0:50:35 And in addition, we’ve been talking a lot about how to more effectively push back.
0:50:40 I think like a lot of Democrats, we share a real frustration that there is a more robust pushback.
0:51:04 And one of the ideas, I won’t say we, that I’ve suggested is that if you are essentially shipping people to black sites or what, in my opinion, fits the definition of concentration camps outside, sending people outside of a, to a place where they’re no longer subject to the same rights they would have on their domestic territory or where they’re shipped off from, that you are subject to criminal prosecution.
0:51:13 And that people who engage in illegal incarceration or corruption or fraud are still subject to, at some point, prosecution.
0:51:17 And I have said this with absolutely no legal domain expertise.
0:51:19 Why should that stop you ever, Scott?
0:51:20 There you go.
0:51:20 There you go.
0:51:21 It’s perfect for 2025.
0:51:23 There you go.
0:51:25 So you are that domain expertise.
0:51:30 Is this a viable strategy or am I just barking at the moon here?
0:51:33 So a couple of, I’m a lawyer, so a couple of prefatory things.
0:51:35 It depends on what you’re talking about.
0:51:37 It depends on what the conduct is.
0:51:39 It depends on what an investigation reveals.
0:51:55 I was just thinking as you were speaking, literally about black sites, there was a lot of debate after the second Bush administration about whether or not people who were acting on orders, literally to take people to black sites, whether CIA officers should be subject to investigation and prosecution.
0:52:04 And Barack Obama, you know, Democrat, liberal, decided in consultation with his aides that that would not be an appropriate use of the Justice Department’s resources.
0:52:07 And people can debate that and go back and forth on that.
0:52:11 There’s not a profoundly deep history in recent times of doing that sort of thing.
0:52:19 The other thing I’d point out, it sounds like, from what you were postulating in your question, is something that’s going to take place in three and a half years.
0:52:30 Something that would take place in a future administration that doesn’t do a lot to solve the violations of not just norms and not just regulations, but statutes that may be going on.
0:52:40 The third thing I would say is, you know, to the extent people want accountability and fairness and the rule of law to be back in the seat, that’s all well and good.
0:52:50 I will say that to the extent people are thinking about that, as some people listening to this might be, as a political strategy, that has been not borne out, right?
0:52:54 Donald Trump was, in fact, subjected to multiple criminal investigations.
0:52:58 He was subjected to two impeachments, and it didn’t stop him politically.
0:53:06 So I guess it depends on what, you know, if we’re talking about proper rule of law accountability, that’s one thing, which would be not for a while.
0:53:08 And we can talk about the particulars of that.
0:53:18 But the idea that there are some parties now, given the Justice Department, that’s in the full control, more than it’s ever been, in the hands of a sitting president, those things are not viable for a while.
0:53:30 And as a political matter, they can backfire, as I think there’s a decent argument that they did with respect to the prosecutions of Donald Trump, even the one that was completed and successful by the Manhattan DA’s office.
0:53:33 So have I—is that enough cold water?
0:53:35 Let me just—
0:53:35 Scott’s depressed.
0:53:38 He’s going to start crying any moment now that you’ve—
0:53:39 Well, it is a weekday.
0:53:45 Let me just double-click on that or push—the only place I would offer pushback is that I think it’s a political strategy,
0:53:51 reminding people that many of the crimes that may or may not be committed right now, under the prosecution of the full letter of the law,
0:53:55 probably have a statute of limitations that is greater than three years and nine months.
0:53:55 Yeah.
0:54:01 And there’s a political consideration, and I’ve suggested that at some point, if we retake control of Congress,
0:54:06 that we draft legislation that probably won’t pass or be vetoed that says, you know, El Salvador,
0:54:13 keep in mind when the House slips back or when governments change, if we find that you, in fact,
0:54:17 were incarcerating U.S. citizens, regardless of whether you thought it was a good deal with the president,
0:54:20 that you’ll be subject to economic sanctions.
0:54:28 I would outline that right now, that I think a certain reminder that America’s memory is long and our reach is far
0:54:36 might actually temper some of what I believe is extraordinarily unethical at a minimum and likely illegal,
0:54:38 that it actually might be effective.
0:54:43 But what you’re pushing back on is, no, to date, it hasn’t been.
0:54:44 It’s been the opposite.
0:54:45 It’s been ineffective.
0:54:46 Is that accurate?
0:54:48 Yeah, but like, you know, hope springs eternal.
0:54:51 I will say also, just a couple more things.
0:54:57 One, people should stand up for the rule of law and call out potential violations and transgressions where they see them.
0:55:02 Point one is, these guys act like they’re always going to be in power.
0:55:07 They act like there’s never going to be a next administration, and it’s certainly not going to be a democratic administration.
0:55:10 And that is just not so.
0:55:12 We’ll see what happens in 2028.
0:55:18 But there is a, you know, mathematically speaking, a 50% chance that he succeeded by a democratic administration.
0:55:26 And all the precedents that he has set and his people have set for the threshold and the standard for not just prosecuting,
0:55:33 but opening up a difficult and aggressive investigation are fair game for the other side, right?
0:55:38 I’m not saying that there should be a tit for tat and that if there was over-aggressive weaponization of the Justice Department,
0:55:40 that the next folks should do the same thing.
0:55:45 But, you know, people are human beings, and people might want to do that, and that’s a distinct possibility.
0:55:54 If you look at the standard set by the Trump administration for when they see fit to send FBI agents or ICE agents or Secret Service agents to someone’s door
0:56:00 and look at someone, whether it’s Ed Martin, the departing U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia,
0:56:12 or a cabinet-level position like DNI Tulsi Gabbard, the way they’re talking about what prompts a criminal investigation and more than that,
0:56:18 what prompts a declaration that someone is guilty before being investigated, before being charged, and before being convicted is quite low.
0:56:26 I mean, just take a look at the example of, since we’re in the wake of the controversy over former FBI Director Jim Coen.
0:56:26 Seashell Gate?
0:56:27 Seashell Gate.
0:56:28 Yeah.
0:56:29 That’s a great name.
0:56:30 I hadn’t thought of that.
0:56:31 My gift to you.
0:56:32 Thank you.
0:56:34 Was it a dumb thing to do?
0:56:35 Should he have thought better of it?
0:56:39 Should he have been aware of the fact that some people would interpret 86 to mean something other than,
0:56:41 you know, get rid of somebody who’s in public office?
0:56:42 Sure.
0:56:49 But you had Tulsi Gabbard, who is a Senate-confirmed, considerably important, powerful person in the Trump administration,
0:56:55 who says outright, based on that ambiguous Instagram post,
0:57:02 that Jim Comey must not only be investigated, but has already declared and decided that he should be imprisoned and should go to jail,
0:57:04 you know, tells you what their standards are.
0:57:08 And if that’s the standard for investigation, there are a whole host of people already.
0:57:14 And I would be willing to bet a lot of money, if not all my money, that there will be further targets on the other side, on the Trump side,
0:57:18 who have said and done things that constitute less ambiguous threats.
0:57:21 Trump himself has used violent imagery, violent language.
0:57:27 Donald Trump’s son has used violent imagery and language with respect to, among other people, Nancy Pelosi’s husband,
0:57:29 who was brutally beaten within an inch of his life.
0:57:36 You have other supporters of Donald Trump who have themselves used the 86 term with respect to Joe Biden.
0:57:38 So what’s fair for one is fair for the other.
0:57:43 And so I don’t see a problem with people raising the specter of that,
0:57:48 given the low, low standard that’s being set for investigation and prosecution by the Trump folks.
0:57:54 I know Scott is very interested in kind of the personal revenge tour of this,
0:57:56 or what could be coming down the pipe.
0:57:58 I’m not advocating that.
0:58:00 That’s not how I would frame it, Jess, but go ahead.
0:58:03 No, like what could happen to these people?
0:58:06 Like we finally grow up here and start pushing back.
0:58:07 We start thinking like them.
0:58:07 That tour?
0:58:08 That tour.
0:58:13 And I’m buying a ticket for that tour, no matter how much it costs.
0:58:14 You’ve made me defensive, Jess.
0:58:14 Sorry.
0:58:15 I’m sorry.
0:58:15 Go ahead.
0:58:16 I apologize.
0:58:17 I feel like this is our first time.
0:58:18 I’m calling Freet.
0:58:19 I’m calling my one call.
0:58:22 But if you’re calling right now, I’m busy.
0:58:22 I’m already here.
0:58:24 Well, he’s already here.
0:58:24 There you go.
0:58:25 Take advantage.
0:58:30 A couple of things that I’m curious about, not so much on the individual front, but I
0:58:35 hear a lot of the courts are doing their job right now, at least when it comes to policy
0:58:40 issues, especially in the realm of immigration, where it feels like, you know, every level from
0:58:44 local judges up to the Supreme Court are saying, no, you can’t do this, right?
0:58:46 You can’t be using the Alien Enemies Act, et cetera.
0:58:53 How would you rate the level of pushback or effectiveness that we’re seeing from the courts
0:58:54 right now on the policy front?
0:58:59 I think pretty good, but it depends on how you’re grading them.
0:59:03 It’s like saying, you know, a math teacher is holding ground by telling a student that
0:59:05 2 plus 2 does not equal 5, right?
0:59:07 Yeah, we should applaud that.
0:59:12 In an Orwellian environment in which there are school teachers teaching and accepting an
0:59:17 answer of 5 being the sum of 2 plus 2, judges saying otherwise are doing a great job, and
0:59:17 it’s important.
0:59:22 But let’s not lose sight of the fact that we’re in a crazy time when people have to explain
0:59:22 that.
0:59:28 We’re at a crazy time when the Supreme Court that’s loaded with conservatives, three of
0:59:35 whom have been appointed by Trump himself, have decided, you know, literally, not so fast.
0:59:38 If you’re going to deport someone, you’ve got to look at what the law says.
0:59:42 And Supreme Court case after Supreme Court case has interpreted the Constitution to mean there’s
0:59:44 got to be some due process.
0:59:48 It doesn’t have to be a full-blown trial, like we’re being scared with, but some due process
0:59:51 is to make sure that you’ve got the right person, and the person is deportable, and is
0:59:54 deportable to the place where you’re saying, and it’s got to be more than 24 hours.
1:00:02 So, you know, that I think is a good sign, and I don’t mean to denigrate it or downplay
1:00:08 it at all, but it’s a little bit like 2 plus 2 equals 5, and it’s refreshing in a black-is-white,
1:00:15 fake-news, up-is-down universe for people to say, you know, you know what, math is math,
1:00:16 and the Constitution is the Constitution.
1:00:17 It’s good.
1:00:18 Good.
1:00:19 We have some good news.
1:00:20 I’m just curious.
1:00:25 I imagine you’re still close with it, certainly in touch with people still at SDNY or, you know,
1:00:27 from your former life.
1:00:27 Yeah.
1:00:32 How do people who are in the business of doing justice, which is what your book was called,
1:00:39 feeling right now about getting up and going to work and figuring all of this out in the
1:00:40 Trump era?
1:00:40 Yeah.
1:00:42 You know, there are two sides to the coin.
1:00:48 I still think it is the case that the massive work being done by federal prosecutors in the
1:00:53 country and Department of Justice lawyers, whether in Washington or in the various U.S.
1:00:59 attorneys’ offices, is apolitical, continues apace, whether it’s violent crime prosecutions
1:01:02 or fraud prosecutions and the like.
1:01:05 You know, there are different priorities and emphases that Pam Bondi has put forward in
1:01:07 various memos since she started.
1:01:10 But the bread and butter of the office is probably the same.
1:01:15 Now, with respect to certain fraught prosecutions and investigations that get a lot of outsized
1:01:21 attention, like of people who are or may be in the president’s ambit or who are elected
1:01:23 officials, you know, maybe it’s a little bit different.
1:01:30 And, you know, everyone can feel unhappy, even if it’s not one of their cases, if they think
1:01:35 there’s a thumb on the scale or they think that people are being, you know, unduly harassed.
1:01:40 I think there is a certain amount of trepidation on the part of a lot of people at the Department
1:01:40 of Justice.
1:01:45 But I still think that the majority of folks are just keeping their heads down and doing
1:01:48 their job, even if they’re not so thrilled at what’s going on at the top.
1:01:54 So I have a question that requires more political judgment and legal expertise, although it does
1:01:55 involve the law.
1:01:59 And you referenced earlier that I just called it seashell gate.
1:02:05 I love what Yuval Noah Harari said, that democracies thrive on trust while dictatorships are built
1:02:06 on fear.
1:02:12 My sense is this is a perfect example of that, that this will be swatted away under
1:02:16 any sort of responsible legal scrutiny, you know, free speech.
1:02:24 I just think this is a ridiculous attempt to intimidate and create an atmosphere of fear such
1:02:30 that people do not speak out and they silence any criticism of the president.
1:02:33 What are your thoughts around that notion, Preet?
1:02:35 I think that’s exactly correct.
1:02:41 I’ve been saying for some time that the only logic behind, or at least one of the principal
1:02:49 pieces of logic behind bringing completely ridiculous, stupid, unprecedented, unconstitutional,
1:02:55 two plus two equals five claims, which is what Trump has done under the Alien Enemies Act,
1:02:57 under these executive orders against law firms.
1:03:01 And there’s a whole bunch of other issues along these lines as well.
1:03:02 They’re doomed to failure.
1:03:08 Nobody on the right or the left or the middle who is schooled in the law or wears a robe,
1:03:11 really, with very, very, very small exceptions, think otherwise.
1:03:14 Birthright citizenship is another that I left off the list.
1:03:20 But the point is to have the fight, to have the political debate, and to chill the actions
1:03:21 of other people.
1:03:26 With the law firm executive orders, in which my firm was a subject, the point seems to be,
1:03:30 even though every court that’s addressed it has issued an immediate temporary restraining
1:03:34 order, one court has issued a permanent injunction, it’s not going to fly.
1:03:38 It violates the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, various provisions of some
1:03:39 of those amendments.
1:03:41 The point is to make people think twice.
1:03:50 Should I spend time and energy and represent a cause or a person who is adverse to the president
1:03:52 of the United States or the president’s party?
1:03:53 That’s just one example.
1:03:55 And it goes to exactly what you were saying.
1:04:01 If you can broadcast to the world that it may be the case that even if you’re born in this country,
1:04:05 you will not have the privileges and rights that the Constitution has said from the beginning
1:04:07 are due and owing to you.
1:04:08 Maybe you won’t come here.
1:04:12 So they’re fighting a political battle, a policy battle.
1:04:18 They’re trying to beat their chests and say, we don’t care what the courts say up to a point,
1:04:20 and we’ll see what happens when we get to that point.
1:04:21 We don’t care.
1:04:23 Our view is the right one.
1:04:24 We have the army.
1:04:25 The courts don’t.
1:04:30 And so that is going to have a chilling effect on reasonable people to do that,
1:04:32 which they have always understood was constitutional, lawful, and proper.
1:04:38 So in addition to being a federal prosecutor, you’ve worked with really prestigious law firms.
1:04:39 Yeah.
1:04:43 And something that was really chilling and disappointing, quite frankly,
1:04:47 and maybe it’s been misrepresented in the media, and I’m very open to learning here,
1:04:51 because I think you have more insight into actually what went down here.
1:04:54 So I’ve been really disappointed in what I’ll call this domino of cowardice,
1:05:00 and that is corporations have said, okay, it’s easier for, with respect to shareholder value,
1:05:04 to just give a million bucks the inauguration campaign and pay $40 million for some lame
1:05:08 documentary for the first lady and basically just kiss his ass to stay out of his way.
1:05:11 I can sort of empathize with that viewpoint.
1:05:17 What was even more disappointing, though, was certain really prestigious law firms doing what I
1:05:24 would loosely categorize as bending a knee and saying, all right, we’ll do pro bono work for the family,
1:05:26 or we won’t take on certain clients.
1:05:32 It just seems so, such an entire, like, puncturing or rupturing of the legal system
1:05:36 and what it’s supposed to stand for in terms of justice being blind.
1:05:39 Am I exaggerating what happened here?
1:05:44 Give us your thoughts on the context here and whether I’m being, as always, overly emotional here.
1:05:48 So I want to be careful because I am in the legal firmament.
1:05:54 I work for a firm that did not, it’s not just your phrase, it’s the phrase that Donald Trump uses,
1:06:00 which makes you more than wince if you’re a practicing lawyer or if you’re anyone who cares
1:06:00 about the rule of law.
1:06:05 We did not bend the knee, and I’m very proud of that fact, and I continue to work there as
1:06:08 a partner in part because of that fact.
1:06:15 I don’t want to be impolitic or impolite about saying anything disparaging about the firms that
1:06:18 did, in your phrase, not my phrase, in the president’s phrase, not my phrase, bend the knee.
1:06:22 You can imagine how I might think about that given my first statement.
1:06:24 These are tough decisions.
1:06:27 There’s a lot of force and power on the side of the government.
1:06:30 There’s a lot of force and power on the side of the president of the United States.
1:06:37 I think that what you have said is not outside of the mainstream of thought of people both in the
1:06:39 legal profession and outside the legal profession.
1:06:45 On its face, as has been evidenced by the court decisions that were rendered very quickly that I
1:06:51 mentioned a minute ago, the executive orders are unlawful, unconstitutional, and I always like
1:06:52 to add to that, un-American.
1:06:53 They will never pass muster.
1:06:56 They will never be a thing in the future.
1:07:01 It’s another example of, this is 2 plus 2 equals 96, and I think that the better and
1:07:06 more correct and more righteous course, not just the right course, but the more righteous
1:07:12 course, if we can use that word still, in 2025, was to fight because these executive orders
1:07:18 are, I don’t think it’s too strong a word to say, tyrannical and abusive and should not
1:07:19 be allowed to stand.
1:07:22 So I’m glad that my firm and some other firms are taking that approach.
1:07:28 And Preet is much more polite and gentlemanly than I am.
1:07:34 The Demand Justice site has this article called Standing Up to Big Law Cowards, and this is
1:07:38 law firms that have pledged almost a billion dollars in free work to Trump, and they include
1:07:45 A&O, Sherman, Cadwallader, I believe the name is, Kirkland, Latham and Watkins, Milbank,
1:07:51 Paul Weiss, Simpson, Thatcher, Skadden and Wilkie are all firms that have decided to do pro bono
1:07:55 work and legal work to appease Trump.
1:07:59 And I don’t know how much you can say about this from a personal perspective since you’re
1:08:08 working in this field actively, but how legitimate do you think individual lawyers or firms’ fears
1:08:13 about continuing on with the good work that they’re doing are warranted or justified in this
1:08:14 environment.
1:08:20 I have a very good friend who represents undocumented immigrants here, mostly Venezuelans, a lot of
1:08:27 Ukrainians, and she’s very scared to continue her work as they, you know, set about essentially
1:08:29 criminalizing practicing law.
1:08:32 Well, kudos to your friend.
1:08:33 I think that’s important work.
1:08:37 Look, I think we still live in America.
1:08:43 We said before that the judges are doing a good job of holding the fort all the way up to the
1:08:43 Supreme Court.
1:08:49 I think it does take a little bit more courage now and resolve to do that kind of work than
1:08:50 it may have taken before.
1:08:56 And I don’t think we’re at the point yet where individual actions will be taken or could be
1:08:59 taken, although, you know, check back with me in six months or 10 months.
1:09:01 That work can continue.
1:09:06 Certainly, it’s the case that certain kinds of representations are probably less likely
1:09:11 to be blessed and green-lighted at firms that have decided to settle with the president.
1:09:19 The fear will always exist that you don’t want to further upset the apple cart or upset the
1:09:21 person at the top of the government.
1:09:23 I mean, that’s what got you in the soup in the first place, right?
1:09:29 Like my firm, once upon a time we had as our partner, someone I greatly respect, Bob Mueller,
1:09:35 former FBI director and special counsel, and had the temerity to hire one of the great lawmen of the
1:09:37 past century in our office.
1:09:41 That’s the thing that put us on the wrong side of Donald Trump.
1:09:46 And so there’s a natural tendency for there to be a chilling effect if you’re going to do things
1:09:48 that are going to put you on the wrong side of Donald Trump.
1:09:53 So all I’m going to say is good luck to her and all the people who are doing that.
1:09:55 You can’t let up in the face of that kind of intimidation.
1:10:00 Well, she’s a huge fan and she’s definitely listening, so she’ll be excited to hear your
1:10:00 encouragement.
1:10:01 Good.
1:10:02 One last question.
1:10:03 We ask all our guests this.
1:10:03 Uh-oh.
1:10:07 What’s one issue that makes you rage and one thing that you think we should all chill out
1:10:08 about?
1:10:09 Oh, gosh.
1:10:13 I mean, obviously the rule of law stuff makes me rage.
1:10:19 Everything we’ve been talking about, I speak, I try to speak in conmeasured tones, but the
1:10:24 attacks on law firms enrage me because I’m a member of the profession and I’m an officer
1:10:29 of the court and it’s a manipulation of, you know, the psychology of people who are not
1:10:34 just lawyers and officers of the court, but also members of businesses, right?
1:10:35 These are not charities.
1:10:43 And I hate the fact that Trump and his people are deviously clever enough to put people on
1:10:44 the back foot.
1:10:50 And again, not speaking about any particular person or entity in particular, what causes
1:10:55 me rage is, you know, if this were a play or a novel, one of the lessons you would learn
1:11:04 from it, that if you have someone who is as devilish and unprincipled and amoral, not just
1:11:12 amoral, but amoral as Donald Trump come to town, the sad truth is that he often, and we’ve seen
1:11:16 this again and again and again, will often reveal the lack of courage, the lack of principle
1:11:19 and the lack of virtue in his rivals.
1:11:21 And that is, you know, a fact of life.
1:11:24 And if this were just a story or an allegory, that would be one thing.
1:11:26 But I think about that a lot.
1:11:34 His opponents are often shown to be maybe, if not as impure and unprincipled as him, but
1:11:36 wanting, wanting.
1:11:41 And that’s why people who fight back and have the courage and the tenacity to fight back in
1:11:45 this environment, like your friend and others, are to be valued and encouraged and supported
1:11:46 more than ever before.
1:11:49 Oh, and what do we, what should we chill out about?
1:11:52 Yeah, you know, a lot of the dumb stuff that Trump does.
1:11:58 In the first term, I tell the story about how I tweeted, after Donald Trump said that the
1:12:04 White House was a shithole, or some such derogatory term, lots of people took offense.
1:12:07 Lots of people who were quote-unquote members of the resistance said, that’s, you know, horrific.
1:12:09 He shouldn’t talk like that.
1:12:14 And I posted a tweet back when Twitter had some people on the other side of the fence on
1:12:19 it, that, you know, of the top 50 things we need to worry about from this president, his
1:12:21 insult to the White House is not one of them.
1:12:25 And in response after response after response, people said, that’s not true.
1:12:26 We can multitask.
1:12:27 It’s all important.
1:12:32 It’s not, proportionality is a word that I’ve been using more lately.
1:12:34 You know, attention is limited.
1:12:35 Resources are limited.
1:12:39 I hate the phrase, pick your battles, but, you know, order your priorities.
1:12:44 He’s going to say a lot of stupid shit that can occupy five minutes of airtime.
1:12:46 It’s not worth the five minutes of airtime.
1:12:49 Think about what the kinds of things that you folks are talking about, that Scott was talking
1:12:54 about earlier, the rendering of people over the objection of actual judges’ rulings, the
1:13:00 distortion and disrespect of the Constitution by the people who keep pointing to the Constitution
1:13:01 and say they revere the Constitution.
1:13:02 They don’t.
1:13:05 Those are the things that we need to focus on and keep our eyes on.
1:13:13 Preet Bharara is an American lawyer and former federal prosecutor who served as the United
1:13:17 States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017.
1:13:22 As of 2025, he’s a partner at the Wilmer Hale Law Firm.
1:13:26 He’s also the host and founder of Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara.
1:13:29 Preet, I always love hearing from you.
1:13:34 And for those of you, it’s not easy to make a podcast about the legal profession interesting,
1:13:37 and I actually listen to your podcast.
1:13:38 Thank you, sir.
1:13:38 And you know what?
1:13:38 Guess what?
1:13:39 Can I plug something else?
1:13:40 Sure.
1:13:45 As of one week ago today, Stay Tuned with Preet is now on Substack, too, as I know lots of
1:13:46 people are.
1:13:46 Oh, amazing.
1:13:47 Check us out there.
1:13:48 Check us out everywhere.
1:13:49 Good.
1:13:51 Always appreciate your time, Preet.
1:13:51 Thanks, folks.
1:13:52 Thank you.
1:13:54 All right, Jess, that’s it.
1:13:55 That’s it for this episode.
1:13:57 Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.
1:14:00 Our producers are David Toledo and Eric Jenakes.
1:14:02 I mangled that.
1:14:03 I’m sorry, Eric.
1:14:03 I’m old.
1:14:08 I shouldn’t be president, and I can’t pronounce the name of all these wonderful new employees
1:14:09 we have.
1:14:11 Our technical director is Drew Burroughs.
1:14:13 Only took me seven years to figure that one out.
1:14:14 You can now find Raging Moderates.
1:14:16 Put my finger on the button.
1:14:17 My brain’s shrinking.
1:14:21 I can absolutely validate my prostate is the size of a grapefruit.
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1:14:27 That’s right, its own feed.
1:14:31 That means exclusive interviews with sharp political minds you won’t hear anywhere else.
1:14:34 This week, we’re talking with Larry Sabato about Trump’s threat to democracy.
1:14:36 Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
1:14:37 You don’t miss an episode.
1:14:40 Just have a great rest of the week.
1:14:40 You too.

0:00:06 What’s up, y’all? It’s Kenny Beach, and we are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can’t even remember when.
0:00:09 This is what we’ve been waiting for all season long.
0:00:20 And on my show, Small Ball, I’ll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy, and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
0:00:24 New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:27 Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beach, so you don’t miss a thing.
0:00:34 Today’s number one. This week is the one-year anniversary of the Prof. G. Markets feed.
0:00:38 Speaking of babies, Ed, when someone hands me their baby, you know what I say?
0:00:39 What do you say?
0:00:40 Sorry, I’m a vegetarian.
0:00:57 Weird joke, and we weren’t speaking about babies. Or I guess one-year anniversary. I’ll put it together.
0:01:00 Ed, what sexual position guarantees the ugliest baby?
0:01:01 What?
0:01:02 Ask your father.
0:01:04 Ask your father, Ed.
0:01:06 Ask your father.
0:01:07 That’s good.
0:01:07 How are you, Ed?
0:01:09 Happy anniversary.
0:01:10 I like that.
0:01:11 Yeah, happy anniversary.
0:01:15 What kind of emotions does this bring up for you?
0:01:17 We’ve been doing this for a year now, at least.
0:01:19 We’ve been doing this dedicated podcast for a year.
0:01:22 It’s just exceptionally rewarding to watch your growth and the growth of the team.
0:01:29 And I’m so used to virtue signaling.
0:01:34 I can’t even, I can’t even like, I’m so used to being full of shit.
0:01:40 By the way, the FT is doing a, the FT is no joke, doing a profile.
0:01:41 Let’s get back to me.
0:01:44 The FT is doing a profile on me and they can’t.
0:01:45 The FT really likes us.
0:01:48 They let me write an article for them a few weeks ago.
0:01:48 Did they really?
0:01:49 Oh, and by the way.
0:01:50 So anyway, back to me.
0:01:51 Who the fuck cares about you?
0:01:53 Stop acting like me and turning it back to you.
0:01:55 Something came over me.
0:01:56 I don’t know what happened.
0:02:03 The FT is doing a profile on me and they came over and they were like taking photos and all
0:02:04 the stuff.
0:02:08 So I feel like that is literally the closest to British royalty I will ever get.
0:02:10 The FT is doing a profile on me.
0:02:14 I’m going to be one of these guys that spends a billion, like something like half the Lords
0:02:16 and the Knights are billionaires.
0:02:17 Yeah, but it’s not, it’s not a pay for play thing.
0:02:21 Don’t think that, but I figure like things are cheaper here.
0:02:25 So I’m wondering if like two or three million bucks, I can be like one of these honorary
0:02:28 princes that gets a title.
0:02:32 So I want to be some sort of Lord or Prince of Wales and I’m going to change my name to
0:02:35 Shamu and I’ll be Shamu Prince of Wales.
0:02:39 That’s worth a few million dollars.
0:02:42 I think you could easily, easily get knighted.
0:02:45 Just throw your money around, become friends with the right people.
0:02:47 That’s certainly in your future.
0:02:51 I told you they, right when I moved there, they invited me to 11 Downing Street.
0:02:53 Hold on, hold on, hold on, Scott.
0:02:54 Yeah?
0:02:55 It’s 10 Downing Street.
0:02:56 10 Downing, 11 Downing?
0:02:58 Oh, maybe that’s why they didn’t invite me back.
0:03:00 It’s 10 Downing?
0:03:01 Thank you.
0:03:02 Thank you.
0:03:03 It’s good to have some local knowledge.
0:03:08 Anyways, the, so I went down at first time I went down, they didn’t have me on the guest
0:03:09 list.
0:03:10 Thought I was so important.
0:03:10 Went down.
0:03:12 They’re like, and I, the woman called me, oh, I’m so sorry.
0:03:13 We forgot you were coming in.
0:03:19 Went in and they wanted to put me on the governing body for UK football.
0:03:19 Really?
0:03:20 Yeah.
0:03:23 I thought, I know nothing about football, but it sounds like a shit ton of fun and I get
0:03:24 to go to games.
0:03:24 Oh my God.
0:03:26 You didn’t tell me that, Paul.
0:03:26 Oh yeah.
0:03:30 First they wanted me on the, it’s called the OFC, the Office of Communications, where you
0:03:34 regulate, I don’t know, you regulate Facebook and all that shit.
0:03:36 And I’m like, oh my God, that sounds awful.
0:03:40 And they’re like, well, we’re putting together a governing body for UK for, for the Premier
0:03:41 League.
0:03:42 And I’m like, I am so win.
0:03:43 I’ll be hated.
0:03:46 The American making bad decisions around UK at the sports pastime.
0:03:46 Yeah.
0:03:48 The Todd Bowley of governance will be good.
0:03:51 I know this is going to come as a shock, but they haven’t called me back.
0:03:55 So I think this pot has something to do with it.
0:03:58 You didn’t look the pot, I guess.
0:03:59 I’m not in the British government.
0:04:00 Let’s talk about us.
0:04:01 One year, one year.
0:04:05 What are your reflections on the incredible opportunity afforded, afforded you?
0:04:07 It’s been a very good year.
0:04:09 I’ve been sort of been a transformative year for me.
0:04:14 One thing I was thinking, we’re coming up on four years of me working for you.
0:04:17 I started working for you in June, 2021.
0:04:20 And that to me is really shocking.
0:04:23 That feels like a really long time that I’ve been working for you.
0:04:25 I’m not sure how it feels for you.
0:04:28 Yeah, it’s shocking.
0:04:32 I thought you were frozen.
0:04:34 I’m dazed.
0:04:35 I stopped talking because I thought you were frozen.
0:04:37 Your face was so still.
0:04:39 Zero reaction or emotion.
0:04:41 I’m thinking clear and have migraines.
0:04:42 That was definitely shocking.
0:04:43 That’s a long time, no?
0:04:45 It feels like a long time for me.
0:04:46 It has been a while.
0:04:49 It’s been your, this has been your only job since you got out of college, right?
0:04:50 Yep.
0:04:51 No, it’s amazing how fast it’s gone.
0:04:56 So you came to work with a, I, again, love the story about Joanna Coles calling me and saying,
0:04:58 I have a gift for you.
0:04:59 I’m like, oh, great.
0:05:02 And she’s like, Ed Elson.
0:05:04 And I’m like, yeah?
0:05:05 Remember the name.
0:05:10 She’s like, he’s my son’s best friend and you have to hire him tomorrow.
0:05:11 You’re welcome.
0:05:13 And I’m like, well, what role did it?
0:05:13 It doesn’t matter.
0:05:15 It doesn’t matter.
0:05:20 So you literally bullied me into hiring you.
0:05:21 Anyways.
0:05:22 And it panned out.
0:05:33 Prop G Markets is now, it’s our fastest growing pod in the pod-willing franchise, which is the LLC I just invented to put all this shit in so I could engage in massive attacks of age.
0:05:38 I mean, just bring some synergies together around the back end and the infrastructure.
0:05:51 And because our average age is 34, to reach as many 34-year-old males on CNBC, you’d have to watch CNBC until 2088 to reach as many young men.
0:05:57 By the way, as you recognize, I had my very first TV appearance last week.
0:05:58 You were fantastic.
0:06:00 They got your name wrong in the chyron.
0:06:01 That’s the first thing I noted.
0:06:04 They called me Ed Olson.
0:06:05 And I said, you know what?
0:06:06 Who cares?
0:06:09 I’m like, wow, this Ed Olson guy looks a lot like Ed Elson.
0:06:12 You were outstanding.
0:06:13 You were measured.
0:06:13 Thank you.
0:06:18 And they had all these, you know, the average age, by the way, I love Katie Tour.
0:06:18 Yeah.
0:06:20 Right out of Central Casting to be a-
0:06:21 Great host.
0:06:21 Yeah.
0:06:24 A great host for 70-year-old men to be like, oh, where’s Katie?
0:06:27 Where’s that young whippersnapper Katie?
0:06:31 Where’s my oxygen tank?
0:06:37 One year.
0:06:38 One year.
0:06:45 You’re just imitating yourself at this point.
0:06:51 I’m telling you, I got this new brand of edibles and it’s working.
0:06:52 It’s working.
0:06:57 I did it last night and I called a friend I and talked to in about three years and she went,
0:06:58 are you all right?
0:06:59 I could not stop talking.
0:07:02 I could not stop talking.
0:07:07 This is fun, but we should really, we should really get to the show, right?
0:07:08 That’s my line.
0:07:08 I’m sorry.
0:07:11 Just tell me a little bit more about your appearance on MSNBC.
0:07:12 Very-
0:07:13 Okay, that’s enough.
0:07:14 Let’s get to the headlines.
0:07:17 Hit it.
0:07:22 Actually, before that, I have to make one announcement and this is a big announcement.
0:07:28 And that is that Prof G Markets is going to air on the Prof G pod feed.
0:07:33 That’s the main feed where you see Scott’s face with the turquoise for the final time on June 9th.
0:07:38 And after that, this show is going to be exclusively on the Prof G Markets feed.
0:07:39 That’s the feed.
0:07:41 If you type in Prof G Markets, it’s the green.
0:07:43 It’s got me and Scott hanging out in a living room.
0:07:47 And we’re going to be publishing this show every single day of the week.
0:07:48 We’re going daily.
0:07:53 Monday through Friday, you can get your fix for Prof G Markets.
0:07:57 It’ll be the most up-to-date coverage of the markets from the Prof G team.
0:08:03 So I would encourage you, if you’re listening on the main podcast feed, the Prof G pod, take the opportunity now.
0:08:06 Go follow the Prof G Markets feed wherever you get your podcasts.
0:08:12 That’s where you’re going to be getting this show and you’re going to be hearing it every single day.
0:08:14 Because who wouldn’t want more of us, right?
0:08:19 All I got to say is we’re doing this because it’s rewarding and CNBC, we’re coming for your bitch ass.
0:08:20 That’s right.
0:08:21 And we’re taking Josh Brown with us.
0:08:23 Your star talent, we’re taking him with us.
0:08:25 Oh, we love Josh Brown.
0:08:25 All right.
0:08:28 Let’s start with the weekly review of Market Vitals.
0:08:38 The S&P 500 rallied on news of US-China negotiations.
0:08:41 The dollar jumped before giving up those gains as optimism faded.
0:08:45 Bitcoin fell and the yield on 10-year treasuries increased.
0:08:47 Shifting to the headlines.
0:08:52 UnitedHealth Group had a terrible week, first dropping as much as 18%
0:08:55 after the company pulled its guidance and announced its CEO is stepping down.
0:09:03 Then two days later, the stock fell 17% on news that the Justice Department is investigating the company for Medicare fraud.
0:09:07 At the time of this recording, shares are at a five-year low.
0:09:12 Warner Brothers Discovery announced it’s bringing back the HBO Max name for its streaming platform.
0:09:14 The change will take effect this summer.
0:09:18 It will reverse the rebrand they introduced just two years ago.
0:09:22 And this marks the platform’s fifth name change in just five years.
0:09:31 And finally, Airbnb is expanding its offerings by allowing travelers to book services such as spa treatments and personal training right at their rental.
0:09:38 The company is also reimagining Airbnb experiences by placing a greater focus on authentic, locally-led activities.
0:09:39 Okay.
0:09:40 UnitedHealth.
0:09:44 Crazy dramatic month for this company.
0:09:50 I mean, first, they had that bad earnings report in April, and that was their first miss since 2008.
0:09:51 They cut guidance.
0:09:52 The stock fell 20%.
0:09:56 Then, last week, the CEO steps down.
0:09:57 They pull their guidance.
0:09:59 The stock falls another 18%.
0:10:06 Then, Wall Street Journal, two days later, reports they’re being investigative of Medicare fraud, down another 17%.
0:10:16 So, we’re now looking at, in just one month, a 57% destruction in value for what was one of the top 15 most valuable companies in the world.
0:10:21 So, I think if anyone’s wondering, like, why is the stock falling so much?
0:10:28 It’s a combination of there are real issues that the company is dealing with, but also these were all surprises.
0:10:30 Like, the CEO stepping down, that was a surprise.
0:10:34 The suspension of the guidance, an even bigger surprise.
0:10:37 And then, the kicker, of course, is this Medicare fraud investigation.
0:10:41 And as we’ve discussed, Wall Street hates surprises.
0:10:50 But I think the other side of this that is worth thinking about, you know, UnitedHealth is kind of a bellwether for the healthcare industry.
0:10:54 So, you know, when it goes up, so do the other healthcare stocks.
0:10:56 When it goes down, so do the other healthcare stocks.
0:11:01 And that’s what we saw here, where CVS dropped, Elevance dropped, Humana dropped.
0:11:03 Lots of other healthcare stocks fell with it.
0:11:12 And so, I think the question people are asking now is, are the problems that this company is facing, are they specific to the company, or are they industry-wide?
0:11:17 And the market appears to believe they’re somewhat industry-wide.
0:11:21 That’s why you’re seeing the devaluations in these other stocks.
0:11:24 And I think that probably has to do with what we’re seeing in politics.
0:11:32 You know, we’re seeing talks about lowering drug prices, increasing price transparency, giving Medicare more negotiating power.
0:11:39 All these things that would be great for consumers, as we’ve talked about, but that would, you know, hurt the healthcare industry, hurt the bottom line.
0:11:45 My view is, if history is any guide, healthcare investors have nothing to worry about.
0:11:49 Because what history would tell you is that lobbying ultimately wins.
0:11:52 And who is the greatest lobbyist in America?
0:11:53 It’s the healthcare industry.
0:11:56 $300 million on lobbying last year, more than any other sector.
0:11:59 More than double what oil and gas spent.
0:12:03 Never underestimate the power of lobbying and what it can do for your stock price.
0:12:05 So I look at what’s happening with UnitedHealth.
0:12:08 I see this as a company-specific problem.
0:12:10 They’re dealing with internal issues.
0:12:16 They have the PR crisis with the shooting of the CEO a few months ago.
0:12:22 They’re also uniquely exposed to Medicare and these higher costs that are coming with it.
0:12:27 So, to me, this is a UnitedHealth problem, not a healthcare problem.
0:12:28 A lot there.
0:12:35 I agree with you, and I hate to say this, this is probably a buying opportunity.
0:12:42 For this stock to get cut in half, it’s probably because, to your point, there’s so much regulatory capture.
0:12:48 I mean, these are American companies donating money to American politicians such that they can implement laws such that
0:12:54 we have to pay more for drugs that were invented and manufactured here than they pay in Mexico or Canada,
0:13:05 such that these American companies and their CEOs and their shareholders can get rich through incremental price gouging of American households,
0:13:09 where we have ended up with 40% of American households have some sort of medical or dental debt.
0:13:15 And in America, we pay $13,000 per capita per consumer for our healthcare.
0:13:19 The UK, Canada, Australia, all the other G6 nations average around $6,500.
0:13:29 So, we’re paying $6,500 more per person, and we’re more obese and die earlier and have more diabetes and more anxiety and depression.
0:13:32 So, we pay double for a product that is worse.
0:13:40 So, if you were to figure out a way to bring those costs in line with the rest of the G6 who have better outcomes,
0:13:48 355 million people times $6,500, I think it’s somewhere around $2.2 or $2.4 trillion.
0:13:54 And those costs flow through our entitlements and drive up the cost to government.
0:14:02 In addition, the amount of money and misery that people who have to work too hard, people who can’t go to work because they’re unhealthy,
0:14:09 all of this bullshit around make America healthy again is nothing but a distraction to talk about dyes and vaccines.
0:14:13 It’s a distraction from the real problems of the thing that is hurting America’s income inequality.
0:14:18 If you really wanted to make America healthier again, raise minimum wage to $25 an hour.
0:14:24 You know, there are just too many people who are obese, and the reason they’re obese is because they work so damn hard.
0:14:32 They don’t have time to get to the gym, and they don’t have enough money, so they have to stuff themselves with the cheapest form of calories, which is fast food.
0:14:34 But we don’t want to have those difficult conversations.
0:14:38 So, we have to go after health care.
0:14:45 And the only way you’re going to go after health care is through figuring out Citizens United and getting lobbyists out of the picture here
0:14:55 because they are literally raping and molesting the U.S. consumer and creating 40% of America has dental or medical debt.
0:15:03 Can you imagine the tax that puts on people’s psyche and their levels of just prosperity and well-being and mental wellness?
0:15:05 And then you come back.
0:15:14 I think what’s happened is I think people are so pissed off at these companies that anytime someone in the DOJ or the FTC or whoever raises their hand and says,
0:15:16 Should we investigate these guys?
0:15:18 I think they’re very inclined to investigate these guys.
0:15:21 I think they are pissed off at these companies.
0:15:22 So, there’s two ways to look at it.
0:15:32 Is this the chickens coming home to roost, or is this just a temporary blip where the Americans will move on to something else
0:15:39 and the lobbyists will figure out a way to continue to charge Americans double what they pay anywhere else in the world for worse health outcomes
0:15:44 such that the shareholders and the management of these companies can continue to soak America.
0:15:49 And the story that brings it all home for me, I read the most heartbreaking story.
0:15:54 So, the New York Times has this section called Recent Weddings.
0:15:54 Have you seen it?
0:16:02 And it’s just this lovely section where they have a nice picture of two people in Central Park and it talks about their nuptials.
0:16:16 They bended the rules for the first time and they did a wedding announcement of a young woman and a man and did the whole full write-up and she was in her gown and they weren’t getting married.
0:16:20 And the reason they made an exception is this woman has a glioblastoma.
0:16:22 She has an incurable brain cancer, right?
0:16:32 And she’s decided that they’re going to get married, they’re going to have a ceremony, but they’re not going to get legally married because she’s worried he would inherit her medical debt.
0:16:38 And I mean, you hear this shit and you’re just like, Jesus Christ, this is the most prosperous nation in the world?
0:16:42 And we’re loving that, like, that kind of misery on people?
0:16:54 Anyways, that brings home the American healthcare system is not only making us sicker physically, it is loving so much strain and pressure on people.
0:16:57 And I just love that these companies are getting kicked in the nuts.
0:17:01 But again, it’s just, it’s company, and this is sort of my point.
0:17:17 It’s like, UnitedHealth has its own set of problems that they’re dealing with, one of them being one of the executives of their company got murdered, plus the fact that their business is, they’re very much tied to Medicare.
0:17:31 And what they’re dealing with right now is that there are all these old people who didn’t get these treatments that they were thinking of getting during COVID, and suddenly they all come now, and they need knee replacements and hip replacements, etc.
0:17:36 And this is a problem for UnitedHealth because now they have to actually pay for those treatments.
0:17:40 Before, they were barely paying for treatments and then still collecting all the insurance.
0:17:44 So that’s the UnitedHealth-specific problem, and now you have this investigation.
0:17:55 But I think the things that you get out there are important, and I think the question is, how do you fix it?
0:18:00 And the only way you really fix it right now, it’s about getting the cost of drugs down.
0:18:13 And the most obvious way you do that is you increase price transparency, and you create laws that force these companies and these PBMs to publish what the price is.
0:18:17 You wrote a really good, you’re no mercy this week is really good, I read it.
0:18:29 And you cite this presentation by this guy, Brian Lawrence, where he basically says that, you know, health insurance today, it’s akin to using auto insurance to buy gasoline.
0:18:35 Like, it doesn’t make sense that we don’t even know what we’re paying for when we sign up for these treatments until after the fact.
0:18:38 And we can never figure out what these medical bills are.
0:18:46 So we need more price transparency, which, by the way, Biden worked on, and actually Trump worked on a little bit too.
0:18:48 But we haven’t really seen that come to any fruition.
0:18:57 And then we need Medicare to be able to have the ability to negotiate on prices, which is what every other country has, and we don’t have it for some reason.
0:19:07 Again, Biden changed that in the Inflation Reduction Act, but we still haven’t seen really any reduction in the price of drugs, I think, because it hasn’t been properly enforced.
0:19:29 And the last thing I will say, I looked back at our conversation with Jonathan Cantor, who’s the previous head of the antitrust division of the DOJ, and we asked him the question, what is the one industry that most needs regulation and increased regulatory enforcement, specifically from an antitrust perspective?
0:19:32 And his number one answer was healthcare.
0:19:54 You talk about Medicare, for example, there have been studies by the Wall Street Journal and reports about massive billions upon billions of dollars in overcharging due to things called upcoding, which is when an insurance company goes in, they take someone on Medicare, make them look really sick, and then they get to bill for all that.
0:19:58 But then they don’t necessarily reimburse for all that, and they keep the money in between.
0:20:04 These are the kinds of areas you would focus if you were actually trying to make government less expensive and more efficient.
0:20:16 He talked about a company like UnitedHealth is placing itself on both sides of the trade, in a lot of cases where they’re offering the insurance, but then they’re also a pharmacy benefit manager at the same time.
0:20:20 So they’re sort of buying and selling from its own, from itself.
0:20:23 But I think it was really interesting that he said that.
0:20:30 And I hope that what we will see is some increase in regulating this industry.
0:20:36 But again, I don’t see this as totally structural yet, because I still look at the money in lobbying.
0:20:43 And the fact that it’s $300 million last year that was spent on healthcare lobbying, I just am not that optimistic at a structural level.
0:20:51 So I think over time, the only way to really do that, and I hate to say it because I always have this gag reflex, I’m not a man, I’m not a macho, I’m not a capitalist.
0:20:56 If I recommend socialized medicine, for God’s sakes, we need socialized medicine.
0:20:59 The only way to solve the deficit, in my opinion, is to move to socialized medicine.
0:21:08 And the only way we do that is to figure out a series of executive actions, or some sort of legislation, or the right Supreme Court justices to overturn Citizens United.
0:21:17 Because money has just, I mean, the greatest investment, return on investment in our economy, is when these healthcare companies give money to politicians.
0:21:23 I would encourage everyone to go look at Senate Bill 3548, which was supposed to address all of this.
0:21:25 And it was actually backed by both sides.
0:21:29 And you look at what happened, it was proposed, and now suddenly it’s just dead.
0:21:32 And you try to ask the question, what happened to the bill?
0:21:39 And everyone says, oh, it just sort of didn’t get reviewed, and it just got kind of held up in Congress, and so now we’re not, now it’s dead.
0:21:43 It’s unbelievable how you just see this happen.
0:21:47 How the money in politics actually does just grind these things to a halt.
0:21:53 And then you don’t really know it, because it’s such a soft and unceremonious death.
0:21:56 Like, you sort of forget about the issue.
0:21:59 But go look up that bill, because that addresses everything we’re talking about.
0:22:00 Price negotiations, price transparency.
0:22:02 And I just sort of flopped in Congress.
0:22:04 Let’s move on.
0:22:06 Very different vibe.
0:22:08 HBO is doing another rebrand.
0:22:11 Their fifth rebrand in five years.
0:22:16 We had HBO Go, then HBO Now, then HBO Max, then Max.
0:22:18 And we are back to HBO Max.
0:22:23 Scott, our producer Claire, has a clip that she wants to play where I’m going to look very foolish.
0:22:26 HBO Max.
0:22:31 HBO Max, this will go down in history as a first ballot, Hall of Fame, head up your ass, brand strategy move.
0:22:34 There’s something in brand strategy.
0:22:40 We spent two sessions in my brand strategy course at NYU called brand architecture.
0:22:46 HBO, a brand is a series of intangible associations that result in a rational trial or margin.
0:22:53 You could have infinite capital and you couldn’t build a brand like HBO in two, three, five, maybe even 10 years.
0:22:58 And they’re taking that brand and immolating it so they can call it Max.
0:23:03 I mean, this is just, this is an outrage, Ash.
0:23:04 I actually like this rebrand.
0:23:06 I said I liked it on Twitter.
0:23:08 I said I just think it sounds cleaner.
0:23:13 And I got a lot of pushback, a lot of unfollows, interestingly.
0:23:18 But the way I see it, there are all of these other production companies.
0:23:24 They have to now transition getting the Discovery Plus content onto the Max platform.
0:23:28 Don’t you think that Max is just kind of cleaner?
0:23:37 Well, first off, let’s nod to your logic and let’s change the name of your educational institution to Prince because it’s cleaner, Ed.
0:23:38 It’s cleaner.
0:23:39 Take it away.
0:23:40 Wow, this is my one year.
0:23:41 This is my birthday.
0:23:43 You admitting you were wrong and I was right.
0:23:45 That doesn’t happen very often here.
0:23:51 HBO has developed such, it is the artisanal brand.
0:23:52 It is the Hermes.
0:23:54 It is the Ferrari.
0:23:59 It is, you know, it is the Beverly Hills Hotel of hotels.
0:24:03 It is the premier artisanal brand in media.
0:24:19 And their ability to attract the best talent, and they’ve been able to maintain this culture that attracts the best talent, has resulted in a streaming network that is, if there’s people talking about a zeitgeist cultural moment, it’s usually because of a show on HBO.
0:24:26 Whether it’s Succession, whether it’s The Last of Us, I mean, or Game of Thrones, or The Sopranos.
0:24:29 Or The White Lotus featuring Scott Galloway.
0:24:29 Thank you very much.
0:24:30 You’re welcome.
0:24:41 They have figured out a way to capture lightning in a bottle more often than any other firm on $2.5 billion in content budget versus Netflix at $18 billion.
0:24:48 To take that brand and fuck with it like this shows that you are a terrible fiduciary for shareholder value.
0:24:52 It means no one on the board, a board kind of has three jobs.
0:24:54 One, if and when to sell the company.
0:24:56 Two, hiring and firing the CEO, make sure you have the right guy or gal.
0:25:03 But also three, you should have some domain expertise on the board such that you can save the CEO from him or herself.
0:25:07 You can occasionally weigh in and go, you may want to think this through.
0:25:09 Or they call on you if you have a really good relationship.
0:25:11 They call you and say, what are your thoughts around this?
0:25:26 The fact that they did five brand changes in five years and they decided to do away with what is one of the greatest brands in the history of media shows there is no one on the board that has any sense of marketing or branding.
0:25:34 What is even worse about all of this is that this is probably the worst board in media.
0:25:41 Warner Brothers’ discovery, since the merger, the stock is down 62%.
0:25:42 All right?
0:25:43 That’s bad.
0:25:44 They faced a lot of headwinds.
0:25:57 Despite shareholders losing almost two-thirds of their value, the board has decided to pay their CEO, David Zaslav, $387 million over the last four and a half years.
0:26:15 So, shareholders, you give us a dollar, we’ll give you back, we’ll give you back 38 cents, but we’re going to give our CEO, who oversaw this destruction in shareholder value, a third of a billion dollars.
0:26:21 This is an absolute destruction in shareholder value.
0:26:27 It shows that the people who are some of the most creative people in the world can’t save themselves from themselves.
0:26:31 And I will say this.
0:26:33 A step back from the wrong direction does a step in the right direction.
0:26:34 So, good for them.
0:26:36 They probably realized they really needed HBO.
0:26:47 I’m triggered by this because HBO has literally garnered some of it, in my opinion, has inspired some of the most incredible moments in creative history.
0:26:56 When, you know, when Jon Snow and Ygritte, when Ygritte comes to her end in Game of Thrones, I think there’s some incredible love stories in there.
0:27:03 Plus, Game of Thrones, hands down, everyone always said, what about a porno if it was a really good story with high production values?
0:27:04 Congratulations, that’s called Game of Thrones.
0:27:08 My son, true story, my son did not refuse to have the sex talk with me.
0:27:10 I said, okay, it’s time for your sex talk.
0:27:12 He screamed out no and started running from me.
0:27:19 He literally just refused to have the talk and said, okay, we don’t have to have this talk, but you’re watching Game of Thrones with me for eight seasons.
0:27:23 That’s basically sex education for any 15 or 16-year-old.
0:27:26 And it starts with a scene where you have sex with your sister, right?
0:27:27 Oh, that’s right.
0:27:30 Not the greatest education.
0:27:36 Yeah, but if there’s one message from Game of Thrones, if there’s one moral, it’s that family comes first.
0:27:38 That’s good.
0:27:40 That’s good.
0:27:42 One of your first relevant sex jokes.
0:27:43 I love it.
0:27:44 What’s your favorite HBO series?
0:27:46 I love Last of Us.
0:27:49 I, yeah, I watched season one.
0:27:49 I thought it was great.
0:27:51 I’m watching season two.
0:27:53 But I’m not a huge TV consumption guy.
0:27:55 And that’s part of the issue.
0:28:14 I think why I was wrong about all of this is that I don’t, the HBO brand doesn’t resonate for me in the way it does for you because I’m less of a TV guy, which is why I shouldn’t really be weighing in on what HBO Max should be doing in terms of branding because I’m not really the target consumer.
0:28:31 But what is striking to me is it just sort of reverses all of the intention behind the merger in the first place, where the idea was we’re going to merge with Discovery, take all of the Discovery product offering and all the Discovery IP, and we’re going to kind of try to blend it together.
0:28:34 And the way we’ll do that is by calling it all Max.
0:28:39 And this is basically them admitting, wait, all the shows on Discovery suck.
0:28:42 They’re kind of cheap, shitty shows.
0:28:50 Meanwhile, we have all the shows on HBO, which are beloved and high quality and are sort of the luxury brand of streaming media.
0:28:54 We shouldn’t really be meshing or merging these two together.
0:28:59 So let’s sort of walk things back and go back to the HBO Max brand.
0:29:06 And the fact that the architects of Max, the fact they’re giving up on the name, I think it shows that you were right.
0:29:12 And that the importance here is that you maintain the brand positioning that you built up for years in HBO.
0:29:18 Let’s move on to Airbnb, yeah?
0:29:18 Yeah.
0:29:23 So Airbnb is getting into services and experiences.
0:29:25 This is sort of a complete revamp of the app.
0:29:28 It was a place where you book vacation rentals.
0:29:30 Now it’s much more.
0:29:33 You can book chefs and tour guides and personal trainers.
0:29:39 Basically, anything that you’d be offered at a nice hotel, you can now get on Airbnb.
0:29:42 Brian Chesky, the CEO, is calling it Airbnb for everything.
0:29:47 People are calling it Airbnb’s attempt to become the everything app.
0:29:49 The stock rose almost 3%.
0:29:51 You give us the analysis here.
0:29:52 What do you think of this move?
0:29:58 I would imagine they have figured out that there’s a target market of pretty wealthy consumers with a lot of disposable income.
0:30:02 And specifically, corporate travelers who like the amenities of hotels.
0:30:04 And so they’re starting to add them.
0:30:06 I think it’s a great idea, but it’s high margin revenue.
0:30:11 I talked to Brian on a semi-regular basis and brainstorm.
0:30:13 This was not my idea.
0:30:27 The idea I had for Brian is if you’re in Munich and you say you’re 29 and you’re working for Salesforce and you’re on London sales team and you’re in Munich meeting with, you know, I don’t know, BMW or whoever.
0:30:37 You can turn on a switch that says you’re visible and there’s groups or coordinators, almost like a Reddit page manager that says we’re all meeting at the Hofbrauhaus tonight and everyone’s welcome.
0:30:43 Because what I found when I was your age, Ed, and you don’t do as much business travel as I did.
0:30:47 When I was your age, it was literally already molesting the earth trying to sell brand strategy services.
0:30:56 I would find myself in an amazing city, staying at an amazing hotel with a little bit of money, and I had nothing to do.
0:31:03 And sure, I could walk around the city on my own, but I would have loved to have gotten together with a like-minded group of people.
0:31:06 And Airbnb, I think it’s a really nice community.
0:31:14 The people, you know, my sense of people who engage in Airbnb are professionals or culturally interesting people in their 20s and 30s.
0:31:15 That’s my sense of the populace.
0:31:16 I don’t know if that’s true.
0:31:17 Oh, that’s right.
0:31:29 But to give them another reason or to create an added feature where when I travel with Airbnb, I get stitched into this really cool community of people where I can make friends, find professional contacts.
0:31:32 I mean, that’s what you should be doing, create a community.
0:31:35 My question, that sounds nice, and I agree it would be nice for society.
0:31:36 How does it make money?
0:31:37 I think it’s just another feature.
0:31:39 I don’t think it’s a money-making thing.
0:31:45 I think what you could do is turn it into Airbnb Plus, and it creates the ability to go visible.
0:31:48 And you charge, I mean, if you want, I didn’t see this as a moneymaker.
0:31:52 I saw it as another feature that creates a more sticky brand where people go, I always go.
0:32:01 What it does also is it takes advantage of their scale, because I bet at any given time, there’s 4, 7, 1,100 people staying in Berlin that night at an Airbnb.
0:32:03 And no one else can do that.
0:32:05 Anyways, that was my idea.
0:32:06 He didn’t do it.
0:32:10 That’s why he’s a billionaire, and I’m here stuck with you celebrating our one-year anniversary.
0:32:12 You want friends.
0:32:13 I want money.
0:32:16 So I’m thinking about how does this company make money?
0:32:19 They’ve kind of maxed out on growth at the moment.
0:32:22 Like, they created this category, sort of, which is vacation rentals.
0:32:24 They conquered that category.
0:32:26 They executed practically to perfection.
0:32:29 But the growth of that business is slowing.
0:32:37 And if they want to be a $100, $200, $300 billion company, which I think is what he wants, then they need to go after new businesses.
0:32:42 And so their answer to that question here is, we’re just going to go after all services.
0:32:47 You were saying it feels more like a sort of they’re trying to become a hotel.
0:32:51 The vibe I was getting, and by the way, I actually prefer that as a strategy.
0:32:58 The vibe I’m getting from Brian Chesky and from the announcement is he wants it to be just Airbnb for everything.
0:33:00 It’s almost like Craigslist meets Uber.
0:33:08 If you have any sort of service that you can provide, you just sort of rent out your service on Airbnb.
0:33:12 I think it’s almost too ambitious.
0:33:19 Like, they’re kind of, instead of going after one additional category, they’re going after, like, 15 to 20 at the same time.
0:33:23 But at the same time, it’s like, I respect the ambition.
0:33:28 And it shows me that they want to be bigger than they actually are right now.
0:33:31 It shows me that they’re thinking big picture.
0:33:34 And I think the market sees it that way, too.
0:33:36 And that’s why you saw the increase in the stock.
0:33:42 I don’t think it will work, but I don’t really have a problem with that because they’re trying things out.
0:33:44 And if it doesn’t work, they can just pivot.
0:33:47 I think a lot of hotels live and die by this ancillary revenue.
0:33:55 And that is, when I stay at a hotel, I bet I spend, you know, probably 50, say the hotel costs $1,000 a night.
0:34:02 I bet I spend, you know, another $400 or $500 on food services and stuff.
0:34:03 Is it that much?
0:34:09 Maybe, I don’t know, maybe not that much, but hotels, 30% of the revenue comes from ancillary.
0:34:11 And I bet at high-end hotels, it’s more than that.
0:34:24 And by the way, that story that you’re telling me there, I actually think is more compelling than the story that I was hearing from Brian Chesky, which is it’s just trying to be, offer hotel services.
0:34:29 But the story Brian Chesky is telling is, we’re going to offer all services.
0:34:34 We’ll start here with, like, we’ll give you, like, a tour guide.
0:34:35 We’ll come and take you to the Eiffel Tower.
0:34:37 But ultimately, we want to do everything.
0:34:40 And that’s the story I don’t buy as much.
0:34:42 Your story, you’re telling me, I’m totally with you.
0:34:47 Yeah, for me, I would start, I would just say, okay, are you looking to cook dinner?
0:34:52 We have a service where we have a chef or we have someone just get your groceries.
0:34:54 Tell us what you want when we get your groceries, right?
0:34:57 Do you want us to make restaurant reservations for you?
0:35:02 Actually, we should bring in, I think Claire and Mia did one of these services when they were at an Airbnb.
0:35:04 Claire, do you want to tell us about it?
0:35:16 Yeah, Mia and I were in Mexico City a few years back, and we did a tour of the temples right outside of Mexico City with this local guy who lived nearby.
0:35:23 He also had a home where he was making chocolate, so he took us over to show us how he makes chocolate.
0:35:30 We got to meet a bunch of other tourists who were there kind of doing the same thing, just checking out the city for the first time.
0:35:34 And then he took us underground into this cave.
0:35:45 It was a very kind of magical, unexpected experience, and it was nice because we actually got to interact with other people, even though we were kind of traveling solo.
0:35:48 I’m in awe of the fact that you are literally a different species.
0:36:00 If someone said to me, you have to go with a strange man to his apartment and see how he makes chocolates, and then he’s going to take you to a cave, but you have to pay $10,000 not to do it?
0:36:02 I’d be like, I’ll pay $11,000 not to do it.
0:36:03 I can’t.
0:36:06 Your generation is so different than mine.
0:36:07 That’s incredible.
0:36:12 I mean, it sounds very kind of hip and millennial and free to be you and me.
0:36:14 You guys weren’t doing mushroom chocolates or anything?
0:36:15 Not on this trip.
0:36:17 You decided to do this sober.
0:36:18 It wasn’t you weren’t.
0:36:19 Wow.
0:36:20 That’s super interesting.
0:36:22 Anyways, that’s why Brian Chesky is a billionaire.
0:36:28 He probably did a focus group with Claire and Mia and figured out what it is they’re looking for.
0:36:30 I think that sounds – I mean, it sounds – I’m being serious.
0:36:33 I think that sounds really, really cool.
0:36:34 It was.
0:36:36 And thank you, Alejandro, if you’re out there.
0:36:37 I still remember the guy’s name.
0:36:41 We’ll be right back after the break with a look at Chinese tech earnings.
0:36:45 If you’re enjoying the show so far and you haven’t subscribed, be sure to give the Prof.GMarkets
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0:39:29 Donald Trump’s been back in office long enough to shock or surprise just about anyone who voted for him at this point,
0:39:37 be it the Signal scandal or the tariff turnarounds, the Janine Pirro of it all, the way he talks about Ozempic.
0:39:40 And he takes the fat, the fat shot drug.
0:39:41 So rude.
0:39:46 I’m in London, and I just paid for this damn fat drug I take.
0:39:47 I said, it’s not working.
0:39:54 On Today Explained, we’re asking if any of his voters are experiencing voters’ remorse.
0:39:59 Especially those ones who are newer to his winning coalition.
0:40:02 Younger voters, black voters, Latin voters.
0:40:08 We’re heading to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to ask them if regrets, do they have a few?
0:40:14 And just by way of spoiler, to get this out of the way, the answer is yes, they do.
0:40:18 And he takes the fat, the fat shot drug.
0:40:26 We’re back with Profity Markets.
0:40:32 Chinese tech leaders Alibaba and Tencent reported earnings this week, offering a mixed picture of the sector.
0:40:38 Tencent posted its fastest revenue growth in over three years, fueled by strong performance in its gaming and advertising segments.
0:40:47 Net profit rose 14%, while capital expenditures surged 91% year over year, largely due to increased AI investment.
0:40:55 Alibaba, meanwhile, missed expectations on the top and bottom lines as it continues to rethink strategies to drive consumer spending.
0:41:06 Still, the company reported a 7% year over year revenue increase, with cloud revenue climbing 18%, despite the growth shares fell around 5% in pre-market trading.
0:41:09 So Scott, let’s start with Alibaba.
0:41:14 You predicted the company would beat, and that the shares would pop.
0:41:15 That did not happen.
0:41:18 It was, in fact, a miss on the top and bottom.
0:41:20 Shares dropped around 5%.
0:41:24 I think it’s worth asking the question, how bad was this miss?
0:41:26 And the answer is not really bad at all.
0:41:28 They barely missed on revenue.
0:41:36 Net income was a miss, but it was mostly an accounting issue, because they got rid of some of their subsidiaries, and they had to account for those losses in this quarter.
0:41:47 But I think the thing that Wall Street really didn’t like, I think Wall Street, like you, believes that this company is now kind of an AI company.
0:41:57 And similar to Amazon, similar to Google, they’re mostly excited about the cloud unit, and they’re mostly excited about the AI prospects.
0:42:02 And that’s why they expected, as you did, that the company would beat expectations.
0:42:09 They wanted to see the AI business come in and just pleasantly surprise us, give us something really great that exceeded expectations.
0:42:11 That’s not what happened.
0:42:14 It was strong, but not crazy strong.
0:42:15 Cloud revenue up 18%.
0:42:21 Now, I’ll give you a chance to respond to the earnings, but I just want to tell you what I think you missed with this prediction.
0:42:43 You know, all the global shifts we’ve been discussing, the turning of foreign nations away from America towards China, increased trade partnerships with China, the turbo boosting of AI self-sufficiency in China, which Xi Jinping’s been talking about, you know, the AI chip investments from Huawei and all these other Chinese companies.
0:42:46 All of that is so recent.
0:42:53 And if all of that is happening, I just don’t think you would have seen it in this earnings report.
0:42:58 I think if it’s happening, you’re going to see it in the next report, i.e. the current quarter.
0:43:02 And even then, you’ll only start to see the beginning of it.
0:43:10 And if it’s all happening, I think really, if it’s going to be really fully and truly reflected, it would probably be the report after that.
0:43:15 And so what I would argue is that your prediction here was directionally correct, but I think the timing was wrong.
0:43:27 And I think if you were to make the prediction again for fiscal Q1 this next quarter, I would back that because I do believe we are about to see a transformation in AI in China.
0:43:30 And I do believe that will ultimately benefit Alibaba.
0:43:33 But for now, I think it’s too early.
0:43:34 Yeah, I got this wrong.
0:43:44 I think that I’m still seriously considering buying the stock because I think that they’re making the same transition, but they’re sort of three, four years behind that Amazon made.
0:43:49 Essentially, Amazon is a cloud company now with a retail unit and it trades.
0:43:54 It’s experienced multiple expansion because it’s not considered a cloud company with much better margins.
0:43:55 It’s just a much better business.
0:44:03 I have in the data here that their AI cloud-related product revenue grew over 100% for the seventh consecutive quarter.
0:44:03 Is that accurate?
0:44:09 Yes, but those AI-related numbers, they don’t actually break out what the number actually is.
0:44:17 So I’m always a little bit, eh, when they say AI-related growth, and it’s definitely coming off a very small base.
0:44:26 So I think what we should really be looking at is just cloud revenue, which is up 18%, and that’s good.
0:44:29 But I think it tells more of the story.
0:44:41 I think until 100 days ago, the idea of being a Western company in Canada, Australia, or Germany and using cloud-based products from a Chinese company was unthinkable.
0:44:48 I think as of today, it’s less unthinkable because it’s now choosing between the lesser of two evils.
0:44:53 And the thesis I’m trying to figure out a way to make money off of is the following.
0:44:55 And there’s always one piece of data that just blows my mind.
0:44:58 And I’m like, this is going to have huge ripple effects to the economy.
0:45:00 And I try and think about, how do I make money from this?
0:45:01 And that is the following.
0:45:13 For the first time in history, global consumers or global citizens, on average, believe that China is a better force or a bigger force for good in the world than America.
0:45:33 And I think that means how I drill down to that is I think there’s going to be a lot of Western companies or companies in Latin America who are going to decide to use cloud services from a firm like Alibaba and not immediately defer to AWS or Azure cloud services or Google’s cloud.
0:45:37 So I think that these Chinese companies are specifically Alibaba.
0:45:39 I’m disappointed in that 18% number.
0:45:41 I don’t know what that 100% year-on-year number was.
0:45:46 I took it and extrapolated it out and said this will be a cloud company pretty quickly if it can maintain that growth.
0:45:48 But your deeper analysis is the better one.
0:45:49 I just think it’s early.
0:45:51 I think it’s a very small base that we’re looking at.
0:45:53 So we shouldn’t take 100% too seriously.
0:45:54 But there’s some issues here.
0:45:56 The domestic economy isn’t very strong.
0:46:05 Your analysis is the correct one, that the impact or the slowdown from exports is probably not going to show up until next quarter.
0:46:07 But maybe the market’s already anticipating that.
0:46:17 I just I get the sense that I think these companies are going to find a lot more foreign buyers contemplating and doing meetings with them than would have would have four months ago.
0:46:18 But there’s just no getting around it.
0:46:20 I missed this one, but I still might.
0:46:24 I thought, well, if I liked it yesterday, why wouldn’t I like it now that it’s off?
0:46:25 There we go.
0:46:26 There’s the Warren Buffett in you.
0:46:27 Five or seven percent.
0:46:28 Yeah, there you go.
0:46:28 Yeah.
0:46:30 And let’s just quickly talk about Tencent.
0:46:35 Missed on profit, but beat on revenue.
0:46:37 The stock slips slightly, but not massively.
0:46:39 There’s honestly not that much to say with these earnings.
0:46:45 But the thing that jumped out to me was their CapEx number, which almost doubled up 91%.
0:46:48 And almost all of that is, of course, AI spending.
0:46:54 So to me, the takeaway is Tencent is jumping headfirst into the AI race.
0:46:56 They’re stockpiling up on chips.
0:46:57 They’re building data centers.
0:46:59 They’re developing these proprietary models.
0:47:04 And they’re perfectly suited to do this because it’s primarily a gaming company.
0:47:05 That’s their main business.
0:47:10 But it’s also an advertising company because, remember, Tencent owns WeChat.
0:47:17 And I think what we’ve seen so far is that the main beneficiary of AI in terms of actual revenue growth is advertising.
0:47:21 If you have great AI, you have better, more accurate ad targeting.
0:47:25 And that’s what we’ve seen with Meta, which is why Meta is on such a tear right now.
0:47:28 So I think we will probably see the same thing with Tencent.
0:47:30 I think it was pretty good earnings from Tencent.
0:47:38 But the larger story to me is AI, as indicated by what Tencent is doing and Alibaba in terms of their spending and their investment in AI.
0:47:40 AI in China is coming.
0:47:43 It’s coming very hard, very fast.
0:47:48 I think this should generally make you bullish on China, specifically the Chinese tech sector.
0:47:52 And I should point out just the PE multiples again.
0:47:59 China, we got 15x average compared to the U.S. at 27.
0:48:04 And, you know, that’s despite the fact that the Hang Seng is up 20% year-to-date.
0:48:12 It’s been a great year for the Chinese market, but you’re still looking at really low multiples when you compare it to the U.S.
0:48:20 So, you know, we’ve been balancing this U.S. versus China argument all year.
0:48:29 And it’s beginning to become less clear what’s really happening because now you’ve got the S&P back up above where it was before Liberation Day.
0:48:34 So the whole global rotation thesis, I would say, is on hold for now.
0:48:36 I’m not sure if it’s dead.
0:48:42 But I think just if you look at just pure earnings growth, forget the multiples.
0:48:45 I think there’s a lot happening in China.
0:48:47 I think there’s a lot of reasons to be bullish.
0:48:48 I agree with all of that.
0:48:50 We’ll be right back after the break.
0:48:52 with a look at the Republicans’ tax bill.
0:48:56 If you’re enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on the Prof G Markets feed.
0:49:10 Listen, I get it.
0:49:11 Naming a streaming service is hard.
0:49:12 There’s a lot to choose from.
0:49:14 Most of the words are nonsensical.
0:49:20 But there is simply no excuse for the fact that Warner Brothers Discovery got rid of the name HBO
0:49:27 one of the best brands in television, only to decide a few years later that, oh, actually, it should have been called HBO Max all along.
0:49:34 This week on The Vergecast, we talk about how this branding disaster at HBO came to be and what might happen next.
0:49:41 Plus, everything happening at ESPN, the future of Fox, and what happens if you get ants in your Sonos speaker.
0:49:44 All that and more on The Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts.
0:49:56 We’re back with Prof G Markets.
0:50:03 House Republicans’ new tax plan cleared its first hurdle last week, with the House Ways and Means Committee voting to advance the bill.
0:50:11 The plan includes several major provisions, including increased defense spending, cuts to federal Medicaid funding, and a higher exemption for the estate tax.
0:50:16 The bill is still in the early stages and is likely to undergo changes as it moves through Congress.
0:50:20 House Speaker Mike Johnson is aiming to send it to the Senate by Memorial Day.
0:50:31 I’d like for us to really investigate this, because, you know, I think about everything that we’ve talked about over the past few years, and I specifically think about your TED Talk.
0:50:32 Okay.
0:50:34 I’d start us with a question.
0:50:35 Do we love our children?
0:50:37 Sounds like an illegitimate question, right?
0:50:39 Well, I’m going to try and convince you otherwise.
0:50:48 Essentially, as we go down generations, we’re seeing that for the last two generations, people are making less money on an inflation-adjusted basis.
0:50:52 In addition, the cost of buying a home, the cost of pursuing education…
0:50:54 And it was the most popular talk of the year.
0:50:57 We’re seeing more and more discussions about these issues.
0:51:03 We even had a week ago where Trump said that he was okay with increasing taxes on the rich.
0:51:05 But I look at this plan here.
0:51:12 This plan basically does the opposite of everything we have advocated for in the past three or four years.
0:51:17 And I’m seriously not being political or sensationalist here.
0:51:23 It genuinely does the opposite of what everything we’ve been talking about.
0:51:24 I’ll just go through a few of them here.
0:51:27 For starters, massively increases the deficit.
0:51:31 It’s going to reduce federal revenue by $5 trillion over 10 years.
0:51:35 Does not make up for those losses with spending cuts.
0:51:37 There are cuts, but we’ll go over them.
0:51:38 The cuts are very misguided.
0:51:39 So what does that mean?
0:51:42 Larger deficits, more debt, increased interest payments.
0:51:46 We’re screwing over the next generation of Americans who are going to have to pay the bill
0:51:49 when our parents and our grandparents are all dead.
0:51:53 The carried interest loophole is staying.
0:51:56 Trump talked a big game about getting rid of it.
0:51:59 This nonsensical tax break for private equity, it’s staying in there.
0:52:02 We’re getting tax breaks for old people.
0:52:07 If you’re over the age of 65, you’re now going to get a larger standard deduction than you did before.
0:52:12 The worst part of the plan, in my view, the estate tax exemption.
0:52:18 Wealth inequality has gone totally haywire, out of control in America.
0:52:20 We’ve discussed it a lot.
0:52:29 And the question we have all been trying to answer is, how do you redistribute that wealth that has been sequestered into the top 0.001%?
0:52:41 How do you redistribute the wealth in a way that is fair, in a way that isn’t crazy, and in a way that doesn’t mean showing up to rich people’s doorsteps with a shotgun and a pitchfork?
0:52:47 My view on this has always been, the easy answer is, just tax it when they die.
0:52:51 You’ve got $124 trillion that are going to be passed on in 2048.
0:52:54 Greatest generational wealth transfer in history.
0:53:00 That’s the moment to redistribute the wealth without making everyone upset.
0:53:03 And how do you do that with an estate tax?
0:53:04 It’s very simple.
0:53:08 You’re not going to just seize all the assets, but you’re just going to tax it at a normal rate.
0:53:19 So I was, I couldn’t believe it when I saw this plan, where they are actually going to increase the estate tax exemption, which is already absurdly high in America.
0:53:26 They’re increasing it to $30 million, which means you can pass $30 million on to your children tax-free.
0:53:29 In other words, we’re deciding we actually like the inequality.
0:53:36 We want to maintain it, not just for this generation, which seemed like an anomaly, but for many generations to come.
0:53:43 We want the children of rich people and their children to keep on ruling and ruling over many generations of society.
0:53:48 And by the way, the way we’re going to do that, we’re going to subsidize that by cutting healthcare spending for poor people.
0:53:52 What the fuck is going on, Scott?
0:54:00 The most powerful in America have formed a coalition where their rights are a function of their wealth and their rights are respected anywhere in the world.
0:54:13 I can get access to family planning, lawyers, healthcare, good schools for my kids, because there’s now kind of a different class of oligarchs that consists of both Democrats and Republicans.
0:54:18 And as a result, the most powerful people don’t feel a vested interest in the long-term success of America.
0:54:22 And it’s from both sides.
0:54:28 Now, it took Republicans to be the vessel to do it, but it’s been a slow creep of both Democrats and Republicans.
0:54:32 Just to be clear, during the Biden administration, taxes were lowered.
0:54:41 For all the railing of Senators Warren and Sanders, when we controlled all three houses of government and President Biden was president, taxes went down.
0:54:52 So there are a lot of co-conspirators here, including many of my friends who claim to have democratic ideals and clutch their pearls about, you know, how awful it is, what’s going on.
0:54:57 But this really is, this is another extension of it.
0:55:05 And as you know, I was supposed to be on Bill Maher with Steve Bannon, and I decided to back out because I couldn’t figure out a way to not confront him about a Nazi salute without grandstanding.
0:55:19 I was watching it with my 17-year-old, and I said, he’s lying.
0:55:25 There’s no way Donald Trump is not going to cut taxes on the rich.
0:55:27 That’s just what he does.
0:55:30 And he is not a good business person.
0:55:34 His attitude of debt is anyone who’s willing to loan you money is a fucking sucker.
0:55:40 I genuinely think there’s a decent chance that Trump, in the back of his mind, is just not that worried about America going bankrupt.
0:55:42 He’s gone bankrupt a bunch, and he’s still a billionaire.
0:55:45 But what about all the—what about everyone else?
0:55:51 I mean, we know he’s insane for many reasons, but what about everyone in Congress?
0:55:59 Like, I don’t understand how anyone would be okay with we’re going to cut Medicaid spending.
0:56:02 I mean, that argument alone, I’m willing to have that conversation.
0:56:16 But then pair that with, oh, and by the way, we need to increase the amount of money that rich people, ultra-rich people, can pass on to their kids tax-free from $27 million to $30 million because of inflation.
0:56:19 Bridge that gap for me.
0:56:29 The way the Democrats should frame this, and it’s the truth, is people of my generation who are wealthy are asking your generation to loan us $24 trillion.
0:56:32 And we’re not going to pay it back.
0:56:34 You’re going to assume the loan.
0:56:37 That’s what we’re asking right now.
0:56:40 And that’s how the Democrats should be positioning it.
0:56:56 Now, as it relates to trusts, as someone who has a trust, the trust has gone from, I think it was a maximum of $11 million, then it went to $23 or $24, and now they’re talking about raising it to $30, meaning you can shield from all taxation $30 million.
0:57:08 But it’s even worse than that, because the way estates work is if you put money in and it grows, it grows tax-deferred and it grows, you might end up with a trust that ends up being worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
0:57:17 But my understanding is as long as it’s worth less than $30 when you put the assets into the trust, it can grow, and then you can pass it along tax-free.
0:57:18 What’s the point of all of this?
0:57:25 The point is to have a purpose in your life and to have a good life and to be happy and to have reward.
0:57:33 And I would argue that most of that is around relationships and potentially finding the right partner and maybe deciding to have a family with that partner.
0:57:34 I think that’s the whole shooting match.
0:57:40 And money plays a big role in that, because middle-income people are happier than lower-income.
0:57:43 Upper-income people are happier than middle-income.
0:57:44 Money does by happiness.
0:57:52 But as Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli-American psychologist, proved, above a certain point, there’s no incremental happiness.
0:57:55 And I can validate this firsthand.
0:58:04 As someone who has worked really hard and been very lucky and aggregated some wealth, I believe that I have the right to pass on some of that good fortune and wealth to my kids.
0:58:06 Okay, fine.
0:58:14 But above a certain amount, much less than $30 million, my kids are going to get no incremental happiness.
0:58:25 And so if the whole point is prosperity and happiness and purpose and meaning, then there really isn’t a reason to increase the cap on the estate tax.
0:58:32 You should be lowering it and even increasing the tax rate, which I think now is 40%, because nobody loses.
0:58:45 And that is, if you redistribute that income for things like a child tax credit, for a great public school system, for K-12, such that kids grow up and can be a little bit more critical thinkers and maybe think,
0:58:48 Am I voting for people that have my best interest at heart?
0:59:00 All of these wonderful things, right, can be taken from estates and there’s no degradation and happiness or purpose among your offspring.
0:59:02 But no one wins here.
0:59:04 No one wins.
0:59:17 The only people that lose are the future generations that need that tax revenue because what we have to come to grips with is the reality that there has been a myth fomented in America that the middle class is a natural self-healing occurring organism.
0:59:18 It isn’t.
0:59:28 If you don’t massively invest in it, let me use the R word, if you don’t redistribute money from corporations and rich people to the middle class, it starts to wither and die.
0:59:36 Look, if you want to give your kids $10 million tax-free, and I’m one of those people, I get it.
0:59:40 I want my kids to have a certain amount of economic floor.
0:59:42 I’ve worked too hard for my kids to go through.
0:59:46 And a lot of people, a lot of parents will say, I want my kids to make it like I did.
0:59:47 I don’t.
0:59:49 I work so fucking hard.
0:59:50 I don’t want my kids to be fearful about money.
0:59:56 I don’t want, if someone in their life is sick, I don’t want them to have the same fears I had when I had someone in my life sick.
0:59:57 I want to give them that.
0:59:59 If it makes them spoiled, so be it.
1:00:01 But they don’t need more than $30 million.
1:00:04 That’s not going to do anything for them.
1:00:05 It’s unbelievable.
1:00:17 And by the way, we’re almost talking about it as if the thing that’s on the table is just having a total cutoff rate for the amount that a child can inherit from their parents.
1:00:18 We’re talking about an exemption.
1:00:26 It’s like you get the $30 million tax-free, and then everything beyond that point is 40% taxed.
1:00:30 So you’re still going to make, I mean, these kids are going to inherit literally hundreds of millions of dollars.
1:00:36 And the question is, why are we increasing the tax-free exemption?
1:00:38 Why is that such an important thing?
1:00:43 And when you’re saying, like, who wins here, it honestly feels like the only ones who win.
1:00:43 I agree with you.
1:00:45 I don’t think the kids win.
1:00:50 I don’t think you win because you got $10 million more tax-free from your parents.
1:00:58 I think you’ll probably just become more of a douchebag, less in touch with reality, probably live a worse life, as you put it.
1:01:06 I think the only people winning here are the parents who have this perceived sense of, I fucking crushed it.
1:01:11 And I worked so hard, and I made all these hundreds of millions of dollars.
1:01:18 And because I worked so hard, I need to do everything I can to hoard that wealth and to protect it.
1:01:21 And I’m not going to be able to spend it over the course of my lifetime.
1:01:22 I’ve got, what, 20 years left.
1:01:25 What am I going to spend $200 million on?
1:01:34 So the only other option is to say, oh, well, the last thing left to conquer is to make sure that the most amount possible can go to my children.
1:01:39 The thing that summarizes America right now is what Bill Gates said.
1:01:41 And it’s the following.
1:01:43 And it was such a rattling statement.
1:01:47 I thought, oh, my God, that’s so accurate and so puncturing and so upsetting.
1:01:53 Bill Gates said, the world’s richest man is killing the world’s poorest children.
1:01:55 And that’s what we’re doing here.
1:02:06 America is tolerating the world’s wealthiest man worth $400 billion, cutting massive amounts of aid to literally the poorest children in the world.
1:02:09 And America seems to be okay with it.
1:02:20 There is a lack of a value system in America where people are deciding what makes me feel good, what gets me richer, as opposed to any resemblance or any semblance of values.
1:02:23 And this runs so deep in America.
1:02:32 And I think it’s because we have had such prosperity and we have been so divided by social media algorithms that we don’t recognize how fortunate we are.
1:02:38 We don’t recognize that we should be serving in the agency of each other and that we’re Americans first before we’re gay, before we’re Republican.
1:02:40 We are Americans first.
1:02:52 And that the whole idea of America is that once you make it, you are absolutely going to start investing in the fertile lands behind you, such that as many people as possible can enjoy the same blessings you registered.
1:03:01 Instead, everyone’s like, no, I just want the shit in front of me to be laced in cocaine fields and see if I can figure out a way to create clouds that rain champagne.
1:03:03 I mean, it has gotten out of control.
1:03:06 But they lie about what their intentions are.
1:03:14 And I think that’s what we’re seeing with this tax plan, which is what is so upsetting, is how easy it is to lie and how many people believe you.
1:03:21 I mean, the whole point of this administration from the get-go, or at least the fiscal plan, was fiscal responsibility.
1:03:23 The whole thing was, let’s balance the budget.
1:03:24 Just look at the fucking plan.
1:03:29 It does the opposite of what was intended.
1:03:30 Look at Bannon’s comments.
1:03:31 We’re going to tax the rich.
1:03:32 Look at Trump’s comments.
1:03:33 I’m OK with taxing the rich.
1:03:34 I would love to do it, frankly.
1:03:38 But what we’ll do is that, you know, they’ll go around saying, oh, this is so terrible.
1:03:39 Would you do it?
1:03:47 Is you’re giving up something up top in order to make people in the middle income and the lower income brackets save more.
1:03:49 So it’s really a redistribution.
1:03:53 And I’m willing to do it if they want.
1:03:55 And you look at this, all these exemptions here.
1:03:59 It’s like, in addition to that, they’re now lying about it.
1:04:03 And I’m hoping people sort of see through the lie.
1:04:06 So that’s why I really want to talk about this.
1:04:15 It’s like, this is just proof here that it’s all been lies in terms of what they’ve been promising and the direction they want to take this country.
1:04:19 The whole thing with the reshoring, the jobs, and it’s all about middle class Americans.
1:04:21 Read this tax plan.
1:04:23 This is not about middle class Americans at all.
1:04:25 And it’s actually insane.
1:04:28 The extent to which this is catered to rich people.
1:04:30 Just a few details.
1:04:38 If the changes from this tax cut pass, about 8.6 million people stand to lose their health coverage in the next nine years.
1:04:44 And by the way, Medicaid provides health care coverage to one in five Americans, including 40% of all children.
1:04:48 It’s also the largest funder of mental health and substance use disorder care.
1:04:49 You want to cut that funding?
1:04:52 That just means you’re going to pay more for incarceration, folks.
1:04:53 Oh, but guess what?
1:05:00 There’s a private company with shareholders waiting to incarcerate people at $70,000 to $90,000 a year.
1:05:12 Look, you want to cut Social Security for the wealthiest quartile of seniors, or you want to extend the age qualification from 65 to 68 to 70, 72 to recognize that people are living longer and working longer?
1:05:14 That shit makes sense.
1:05:20 But when you start cutting costs on things like SNAP, you’re just going to end up paying more in other ways.
1:05:26 Having said all that, there are a few little good things that I will just go over just to end on a positive note.
1:05:31 They want to increase the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500.
1:05:32 I think that’s good.
1:05:33 Yippee.
1:05:35 But, you know, you know.
1:05:36 It’s something.
1:05:37 Okay, let’s take it.
1:05:44 The estate tax exemption is going from $15 million to $30 million, but we’re increasing the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500.
1:05:45 Okay, that’s something.
1:05:47 They want to create savings accounts for babies.
1:05:50 Newborns will receive $1,000 in a tax-free account.
1:05:54 This is actually what we discussed with Brad Gostner, who wanted those America accounts.
1:05:59 And Bill Ackman’s idea and Alex von Furstenberg has proposed something similar.
1:06:00 Australia has.
1:06:01 I think it’s the super fund.
1:06:04 I love this idea.
1:06:06 I would give every kid $7,000.
1:06:07 That’d be $40 billion.
1:06:15 And then in 30 years, you’d start to see a crash in interest rates because you would announce in the next 30 years, we’re not going to have Social Security because every kid’s going to have approximately a million dollars.
1:06:17 And I wouldn’t let them sell it.
1:06:18 I’d treat them.
1:06:19 I’d be very paternal.
1:06:22 And say, no Social Security on your 65th birthday.
1:06:23 You get a million bucks.
1:06:25 Put it in an account at 4% or 6%.
1:06:26 You get $40 or $60,000.
1:06:28 If you want to blow it, it sucks to be stupid.
1:06:29 That’s up to you.
1:06:30 But I like this.
1:06:31 I like this idea a lot.
1:06:36 They also want to eliminate the EV tax credit, which I also agree with.
1:06:38 I think the EV industry is well in its way.
1:06:40 We don’t need to be subsidizing it.
1:06:45 If we’re having tough conversations about cutting spending, then I agree.
1:06:46 Let’s get rid of the EV tax credit.
1:06:53 And then finally, they want to increase taxes on private colleges with endowments exceeding $2 million per student.
1:06:59 Those colleges will pay 21% on net investment income, up from 1.4%.
1:07:01 Again, I think that’s great.
1:07:04 And it targets what we’ve talked about.
1:07:04 And spend it.
1:07:05 Spend your endowment.
1:07:06 Spend it.
1:07:06 Exactly.
1:07:07 Bring it down.
1:07:10 The only trouble is, they also go after the less wealthy colleges, too.
1:07:15 So if you have an endowment of $750,000 per student, your taxes are also going up.
1:07:21 And then the other thing that I think is bad is that for whatever reason, they’re exempting religious schools.
1:07:25 And I assume they’re just kind of throwing meat to the evangelicals where it’s like,
1:07:26 oh, you guys, we like you.
1:07:29 You’re not Harvard and Princeton.
1:07:31 So you guys don’t have to pay taxes.
1:07:33 That’ll create some really unnatural acts, though.
1:07:34 It’s like, what are we going to do?
1:07:41 Like, before algebra at sophomore year at UCLA, we’re going to go, praise Jesus, and then we’re a religious institution?
1:07:44 Yeah, and we’re going to do that so that we don’t have to pay taxes.
1:07:46 It’s weird.
1:07:56 Anyway, the outcome I actually think is good, but I think they’re probably doing it for the wrong reasons, which is, again, they want to own the libs or own the Ivy League schools.
1:07:57 But whatever.
1:07:59 The Ivy League schools probably have it coming for them.
1:08:01 Those are the good things.
1:08:04 Otherwise, terrible plan.
1:08:05 My God.
1:08:06 Ed Olsen has had it.
1:08:09 He’s had it.
1:08:10 Ed Olsen.
1:08:13 Let’s take a look at the week ahead, Scott.
1:08:18 We’ll see new and existing home sales for April, as well as earnings from Home Depot and Target.
1:08:21 Do you have any predictions for us?
1:08:21 I have predictions.
1:08:22 It’s kind of boring.
1:08:28 I was thinking I’m just so triggered by this plane being given this $450 million plane.
1:08:37 I think that’s so embarrassing that the president of the wealthiest nation in the world needs to have someone else pay for a plane manufactured here.
1:08:57 It’s not going to happen for a very mundane reason, and that is it would take, I think, very little C4 planted somewhere with a pretty sophisticated and small detonation device to put kind of, you know, I won’t call it Air Force One, but Qatar’s Bitch Two, whatever you want to call this plane.
1:09:01 You could sabotage this plane.
1:09:15 You could put in, I mean, these, a 747 Supermax, whatever it’s called, is basically like a small city in terms of wiring and electronics and fuselage and paneling.
1:09:24 There would be so many places to hide listening devices, espionage devices, or even worse, some sort of detonation device.
1:09:44 And to think that Qatar would have the ability to take down Air Force One means the only way the NSA, the Secret Service, who’s charged with the president’s safety, would get comfortable with this is if they disassembled the plane down to every bolt and screw and then reassembled that.
1:09:48 And the cost of that is estimated to be $2.1 billion.
1:09:53 And you don’t think Trump would have an ability to say, shut up, it’s fine?
1:09:59 I think they’re going to sit him down and I say, look, boss, we can’t have you flying on something.
1:10:04 I mean, that the Qataris could have easily weaponized.
1:10:08 I think they’re just going to say, we can’t guarantee your safety on this thing.
1:10:13 So we were stupid enough to let Russia build our embassy in Moscow.
1:10:23 And when they opened it, a couple reporters went in there with like just a sledgehammer and into one of the unfinished rooms and just did a little bit of sledgehamming.
1:10:25 And they found like seven listening devices every square foot.
1:10:28 I didn’t know that.
1:10:29 The perfect example.
1:10:30 Oh, yeah, it was hilarious.
1:10:34 And they basically said, they basically said, demolish the thing.
1:10:34 We can’t.
1:10:38 We have to bring in our own contractors and we have to build it.
1:10:40 We can’t have the Russians build our embassy.
1:10:41 That really isn’t any different.
1:10:47 Anyway, so a long-winded way of saying my prediction is that the 747 gift is not going to happen.
1:10:54 This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
1:10:55 Our associate producer is Alison Weiss.
1:10:57 Mia Silverio is our research lead.
1:10:58 Isabella Kinsel is our research associate.
1:11:00 Dan Shallon is our intern.
1:11:02 Drew Burrows is our technical director.
1:11:04 And Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.
1:11:07 Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
1:11:11 Join us on Thursday for our conversation with Scott Goodwin.
1:11:13 Only on Prof G Markets.
1:11:55 The FD is doing a profile on me and they can’t, there’s someone outside.
1:11:57 Home invasion.
1:11:58 Here they come.
1:12:01 At this point, just do me in the ass.
1:12:02 Just take me.
1:12:04 Anyway.

0:00:09 Over the last 20 years, at-home DNA tests have helped millions of people connect with family members they didn’t know they had.
0:00:13 I want to see someone else whose face looks like mine.
0:00:17 I want to see someone else whose eyes look like mine.
0:00:22 So what happens to all the genetic data for all those Americans if the company goes away?
0:00:24 That’s this week on Explain It To Me.
0:00:28 New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:36 What’s up, y’all? It’s Kenny Beach, and we are currently watching the best playoff basketball since I can’t even remember when.
0:00:40 This is what we’ve been waiting for all season long.
0:00:50 And on my show, Small Ball, I’ll be breaking down the series matchups, major performances, in-game coaching decisions, and game strategy, and so much more for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar.
0:00:54 New episodes through the playoffs available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:57 Subscribe to Small Ball with Kenny Beach, so you don’t miss a thing.
0:01:02 I’m Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice.
0:01:08 We are borrowing trillions of dollars from young people in the form of deficits.
0:01:14 If we want to get serious about deficits, all paths lead to the same place.
0:01:17 We need to reduce healthcare costs.
0:01:20 The Fix, as read by George Hahn.
0:01:46 This week, President Trump signed an executive order to lower drug prices, demanding the U.S. receive most favored nation status from pharmaceutical companies, that they charge Americans the lowest price paid abroad.
0:01:50 Trump said his policy would cut drug prices by 59%.
0:01:56 Quote, whoever is paying the lowest price, that’s the price that we’re going to get, unquote.
0:01:57 One issue, though.
0:01:57 One issue, though.
0:01:59 It’s bullshit.
0:02:08 Pharma stocks fell initially, but they more than recovered once the market realized the executive order is voluntary.
0:02:12 The market saw the order as a Mack truck season insect.
0:02:13 Barely.
0:02:19 The announcement is laughable when set against the regulatory capture of the U.S. healthcare industry.
0:02:26 In the Wall Street Journal, historian Niall Ferguson wrote, quote,
0:02:34 Any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power, unquote.
0:02:46 Sooner or later, the interest on the debt crowds out a nation’s capacity to do anything else, fight wars, survive pandemics, build infrastructure, fund social safety nets, etc.
0:03:00 In fiscal year 2024, the federal budget earmarked $877 billion for defense and $878 billion to pay the interest on our debt.
0:03:03 As Ferguson explained, quote,
0:03:09 America’s fiscal position is far more constrained today than ever before, unquote.
0:03:18 In fact, he argued, we’re facing a debt crisis similar to the ones that contributed to the downfalls of the Spanish, French, and British empires.
0:03:23 As I previously wrote, countries typically are not conquered.
0:03:24 They go broke.
0:03:27 America is up against it.
0:03:32 Reigning in our debt should be a national priority, but it isn’t.
0:03:43 Congressional Republicans are working to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent, which would add $9 trillion to the debt, three times the national debt of Germany.
0:03:49 During the campaign, Elon Musk said he’d cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.
0:03:54 More recently, Doge claimed to have saved $160 billion.
0:04:05 But a nonpartisan analysis determined those cuts came at a cost of $135 billion, netting savings of $25 billion.
0:04:13 The GOP refuses to acknowledge math and believes the nation will grow if we cut taxes to zero.
0:04:20 Meanwhile, nearly all Democrats oppose entitlement cuts, and most also oppose cutting defense spending,
0:04:24 believing instead that we can tax our way out of debt.
0:04:28 This bipartisan kabuki dance is juvenile.
0:04:33 Just as parents tell themselves their kid doesn’t need college in today’s world,
0:04:36 we’ve decided there is a free lunch,
0:04:40 governments with their own reserve currency don’t risk default,
0:04:42 and we’re not headed toward a cliff.
0:04:48 Modern monetary theory is the latest consensual hallucination
0:04:51 between policymakers who want to excuse their past behavior
0:04:54 and those who want an excuse to spend more.
0:04:58 They believe a perpetual motion machine does exist.
0:05:01 Spoiler alert, it doesn’t.
0:05:07 I received a degree in economics, weak flex as I graduated with a 2.27,
0:05:13 taught macro and microeconomics in grad school, better flex,
0:05:17 worked in fixed income for Morgan Stanley, getting weaker again,
0:05:21 and have written several books on economics and finance.
0:05:23 You decide.
0:05:27 It’s dangerous to be certain, and I’m not an economist,
0:05:31 but I am certain that MMT is fucking stupid,
0:05:38 and any economist espousing this intellectual trafe makes RFK Jr. seem like Jonas Salk.
0:05:41 Anyway, when the adults show up,
0:05:45 we should have a serious sit-down regarding closing the fiscal gap,
0:05:51 the amount the government needs to raise taxes and or cut spending as a share of GDP
0:05:54 to stabilize our fiscal health.
0:06:00 The Treasury estimates the current fiscal gap is 4.3% of GDP.
0:06:05 Stanley Druckenmiller, famous for betting against the British pound
0:06:09 and delivering 30% annual returns over three decades,
0:06:13 puts the gap at 7.7%.
0:06:19 U.S. debt-to-GDP currently stands at 120%,
0:06:26 with the CBO projecting it could rise to 160% by the 2050s.
0:06:31 But in a presentation that should be required viewing for Congress,
0:06:37 Oak Cliff Capital CEO Brian Lawrence points out that the CBO projections
0:06:40 include a number of unrealistic assumptions.
0:06:44 No recessions, no wars, no pandemics,
0:06:48 4% interest on treasuries, 2% inflation,
0:06:50 a birth rate of 1.9,
0:06:54 the addition of 1.9 million immigrants per year,
0:06:57 and Trump’s tax cuts expiring.
0:07:01 What we should focus on, Lawrence argues,
0:07:06 is the 2% real growth in health care costs per capita.
0:07:12 A one-percentage-point reduction in the growth of health care costs per capita
0:07:15 translates to 3% of GDP.
0:07:17 According to Lawrence,
0:07:22 that gets us halfway to our goal of eliminating the fiscal gap,
0:07:26 which he estimates to be 6% of GDP.
0:07:31 In sum, reducing health care costs isn’t the best option.
0:07:34 It’s the only option.
0:07:37 Every election cycle,
0:07:42 candidates tell Americans their health care system is expensive and broken.
0:07:45 Yes, Americans know this.
0:07:47 Incomprehensible insurance bills,
0:07:52 medical and dental debt haunting 40% of U.S. households,
0:07:56 and trips to Canada or Mexico for cheaper prescription drugs
0:07:58 have turned our health care system
0:08:02 into one of our biggest sources of emotional distress.
0:08:08 U.S. health care is a $4.9 trillion corrupt cop.
0:08:15 In a report that looked at costs and outcomes across 10 industrialized nations,
0:08:18 researchers at the Commonwealth Fund wrote,
0:08:19 quote,
0:08:23 the U.S. continues to be in a class by itself
0:08:27 in the underperformance of its health care sector, unquote.
0:08:30 For those in the back of the class,
0:08:33 that’s the wrong kind of exceptionalism.
0:08:36 According to the most recent data,
0:08:43 the U.S. spends $13,432 per capita on health care,
0:08:47 more than twice what the average comparable nation spends.
0:08:53 We pay eight times what Germany and Switzerland pay for Ozempic
0:08:56 and seven times what they pay for Humira.
0:09:00 Insulin, which has been in mass production since the 1930s,
0:09:05 costs eight times more in the U.S. than it does in Greece.
0:09:11 The median cost of a coronary bypass in the U.S. is $89,000,
0:09:19 approximately 8x and 5x what the procedure costs in Spain and Australia, respectively.
0:09:26 In the U.S., a childbirth with a C-section costs four times what it does in South Africa.
0:09:31 An appendectomy in the U.S. costs three times what it does in the U.K.
0:09:37 For what we spend, we should be the healthiest nation among our peers.
0:09:38 We aren’t.
0:09:44 We pay significantly more for dramatically poorer outcomes.
0:09:53 This week, House Republicans floated $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade
0:09:58 to help pay for Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut.
0:10:02 Even by Washington standards, the math doesn’t math.
0:10:06 But considering the GOP’s slim congressional majority
0:10:12 and the political fallout from throwing an estimated 8 million people off the health insurance rolls,
0:10:15 the proposal likely won’t go anywhere.
0:10:18 These aren’t serious people.
0:10:23 A serious person would ask a simple question.
0:10:29 Where does the money the U.S. spends in excess of what other nations spend on health care go?
0:10:31 Answer?
0:10:37 30% of it goes to administrative costs, split evenly between providers and insurers.
0:10:41 Another 10% goes to prescription drugs.
0:10:47 Higher salaries for U.S. doctors and nurses and investments in medical equipment account for the rest.
0:10:55 There’s no silver bullet to lowering costs.
0:11:16 The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, worst name ever, granted Medicare the power, for the first time, to negotiate drug prices.
0:11:24 Based on a complicated formula, Health and Human Services selected 10 drugs covered under Medicare Part D.
0:11:28 The discounts range from 38% to 79%.
0:11:34 When these prices take effect next year, Medicare will save an estimated $6 billion,
0:11:41 and Medicare beneficiaries will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs.
0:11:50 In the final days of the administration, Biden’s HHS secretary announced another 15 drugs, including Ozempic,
0:11:52 would be eligible for Medicare negotiation.
0:11:54 Question.
0:12:03 Why isn’t the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals on the planet able to negotiate costs, like everyone else, on all drugs?
0:12:05 Answer?
0:12:07 Fuck if I know.
0:12:14 The insurance industrial complex imprints two ideas into the zeitgeist.
0:12:18 First, you’re irresponsible if you don’t have health insurance.
0:12:25 Second, the best companies offer employees gold-plated plans as a point of differentiation.
0:12:35 As an entrepreneur, I noticed that my firm’s health insurance premiums increased by two or four points above inflation every year.
0:12:38 Those costs were effectively non-negotiable.
0:12:47 So when I had the means to do so, I went naked, saving my family $50,000 per year in premiums.
0:12:50 Note, I’m not suggesting you do this.
0:12:53 I’m fortunate to be able to absorb any health care costs.
0:13:00 Total U.S. health care expenditures were $4.9 trillion in 2023.
0:13:03 Think about the previous sentence.
0:13:10 The U.S. health care industrial complex is bigger than the entire German economy.
0:13:19 Private businesses accounted for 18% of total expenditures, with three-quarters of that money going toward insurance premiums.
0:13:34 American households, two-thirds of which have employer-sponsored plans, picked up another 27% of total expenditures via employee contributions to premiums, co-pays, and out-of-pocket expenses.
0:13:42 In a functioning market, consumers would allocate their dollars toward lower costs and better outcomes.
0:13:51 In the U.S. health care market, however, consumers are left in the dark, while insurers and providers maximize profits.
0:13:57 More than 90% of Americans support greater health care price transparency.
0:14:05 I don’t know what the other 10% of Americans are thinking, but I do know that roughly the same share of Americans work in health care.
0:14:07 Probably just a coincidence.
0:14:16 Injecting price transparency into health care could save an estimated $1 trillion annually,
0:14:24 as employers and consumers could harness the power of markets to lower costs and inspire better outcomes.
0:14:34 Senate Republicans, Democrats, and even the chamber’s lone socialists support the Health Care Price Transparency Act 2.0.
0:14:36 So why hasn’t it become law?
0:14:39 Because money is speech.
0:14:43 And the health care industry and its lobbyists have told Congress,
0:14:49 give us America’s wallet or we will fucking kill you, i.e. get you booted out of office.
0:14:56 In 2024, U.S. businesses spent $4.4 billion on lobbying.
0:15:01 It may be the greatest ROI in economic history.
0:15:12 One study found that lobbying connected to a 2004 law that created a one-time tax holiday for repatriated profits
0:15:15 delivered a 22,000% return.
0:15:26 In 2013, Amgen spent $5 million lobbying Congress for a two-year reprieve from Medicare price controls on a single drug.
0:15:33 That effort resulted in $500 million of Medicare payments to Amgen.
0:15:40 No other industry embodies regulatory capture like the health care industrial complex.
0:15:44 I’m watching season two of Andor.
0:15:51 It’s the best television show so far in the Star Wars franchise, but even if the Force isn’t strong with you,
0:15:55 Andor is an illuminating case study in how revolutions begin.
0:16:00 When we meet Cash in Andor, he’s a petty thief.
0:16:09 But as the Empire steps up pressure across the galaxy, our hero, and others like him, evolve into revolutionaries.
0:16:15 Luigi Mangione, who allegedly murdered a health insurance CEO, isn’t a revolutionary.
0:16:18 But he’s become a folk hero.
0:16:26 His crowdfunded legal defense fund recently topped $1 million, with an average donation of $20.
0:16:33 That a murderer would be seen as a hero is depraved and revealing.
0:16:41 Given everything America has lived through, deindustrialization, two forever wars in the Middle East,
0:16:48 the Great Recession, an opioid epidemic, the highest per capita pandemic death rate among comparable industrialized nations,
0:16:54 the largest generational wealth transfer in history, and millions of young men failing to launch,
0:17:00 It’s not surprising that voters chose a felon who promised that he alone could fix it.
0:17:02 He can’t.
0:17:12 But if we don’t fix it, the wealth inequality at the root of America’s pain will self-correct via war, famine, or revolution.
0:17:14 A story that haunts me.
0:17:21 For the first time, the New York Times announced the wedding of a young couple who weren’t legally getting married,
0:17:23 just having a ceremony.
0:17:33 The bride was suffering from terminal brain cancer and didn’t want her husband to inherit her medical debt when she died.
0:17:38 We live in the most prosperous nation in history.
0:17:46 We shouldn’t be asking our kids to borrow money to support their parents’ and grandparents’ lifestyle.
0:17:52 And our daughters, everyone, should be able to get married.
0:17:58 Life is so rich.

0:00:03 What’s better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue?
0:00:10 A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door.
0:00:14 A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.
0:00:18 Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered.
0:00:23 Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.
0:00:26 Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply.
0:00:29 Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver.
0:00:39 Over the last 20 years, at-home DNA tests have helped millions of people connect with family members they didn’t know they had.
0:00:43 I want to see someone else whose face looks like mine.
0:00:47 I want to see someone else whose eyes look like mine.
0:00:52 So, what happens to all the genetic data for all those Americans if the company goes away?
0:00:54 That’s this week on Explain It To Me.
0:00:58 New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:03 We used to have big ideals and dreams when we were still in university.
0:01:10 We wrote these beautiful application essays about how we were going to fix tax avoidance and tax evasion,
0:01:13 how we’re going to tackle global hunger and work at the United Nations.
0:01:15 And look at us. What has happened?
0:01:17 What has happened?
0:01:21 This week on The Gray Area, we’re talking about our moral ambition.
0:01:23 Where did it go?
0:01:25 And what we can do to get it back?
0:01:28 New episodes of The Gray Area drop on Mondays.
0:01:29 Available everywhere.
0:01:37 348.
0:01:38 348 is the country code belonging to Hungary.
0:01:41 In 1948, NASCAR was founded.
0:01:45 I broke up with my last girlfriend because she refused to go to NASCAR, only to Formula One.
0:01:48 I can’t be with a racist.
0:01:53 Oh, it’s getting desperate around here.
0:01:56 Go! Go! Go!
0:01:56 Go!
0:01:56 Go!
0:02:06 Yes, that’s right. We’re keeping it clean here. Prop to you.
0:02:10 We’ve decided that at this point in my life, I need to tone down the profanity.
0:02:12 There’s no reason for unnecessary vulgarity.
0:02:14 It’s really inappropriate.
0:02:15 It diminishes my credibility.
0:02:21 And a lot of our listeners love our content, but get offended by some of the off-color jokes.
0:02:23 Anyways, I hope you’re well.
0:02:30 I’m at home, and my son’s about to head to school where he’s very excited about the Catholic Church’s new archaeology class.
0:02:32 But all he’s been saying is a bunch of old bones.
0:02:36 He’s back, ladies and gentlemen.
0:02:40 By the way, unsubscribe now if you don’t like profanity and vulgarity.
0:02:42 And I will send you a full refund.
0:02:44 That’s my favorite when people say they’re unsubscribing.
0:02:46 They’re just, they’ve had enough.
0:02:47 They’re unsubscribing.
0:02:51 Take my eyes, but don’t unsubscribe.
0:02:53 Anyways, back to me.
0:02:55 I am in New York, super excited.
0:02:56 I come to New York.
0:02:57 I love it here.
0:03:07 I have a place here that is essentially looks like it’s been decorated by a northern European architect who has severe depression and is worried about slipping and falling and cutting himself.
0:03:10 There’s almost nothing in my place, and I love it.
0:03:11 It is so fucking gangster.
0:03:13 I do a self-care day when I’m here.
0:03:15 I get everything done.
0:03:16 So this was my Friday.
0:03:21 I went into Dr. Robert Anilak, who is a dermatologist from the stars, and overcharges me.
0:03:22 He overcharges me.
0:03:26 He’s a lovely guy, super lovely guy, hard not to like.
0:03:28 And he literally molests me financially.
0:03:33 And I go in there because I’m very struck on looking 59 and seven-eighths again.
0:03:41 And I had something called a fractal laser, where basically it burns off the exterior layer of your subdermis.
0:03:42 Remember, there’s seven layers of skin.
0:03:43 I can name one.
0:03:46 Anyways, he burns off one of them, maybe two of them.
0:03:47 I don’t know, the way I felt three.
0:03:55 And I look like that character from The Mandalorian with beet red skin, Skeletor with a bad sunburn.
0:03:56 It was frightening.
0:03:59 My face was on fuego.
0:04:03 And then I headed up to this guy I absolutely love, Dr. Eric Lindor.
0:04:04 I’m going to set this guy up.
0:04:08 This guy’s got to be the most eligible man in all of Manhattan.
0:04:10 He’s handsome.
0:04:13 He’s the orthopedic something for the rangers.
0:04:15 He looks like he’s late 30s, early 40s.
0:04:18 He’s from South Dakota.
0:04:19 He just couldn’t be nicer.
0:04:22 And he takes a six-inch needle.
0:04:26 Well, first, a very nice man who’s a technician comes in and draws blood from me.
0:04:27 And then they spin it.
0:04:28 It’s called PRP.
0:04:32 And then they take your platelets, which I guess have some sort of restorative effect.
0:04:34 And they create inflammation wherever they’re injected.
0:04:35 And that inflammation is actually quite healing.
0:04:36 I did not know that.
0:04:40 Anyways, so I’ve had problems with my shoulders.
0:04:45 I’ve been injury-free my whole life, and I was doing some cleans and CrossFit.
0:04:48 And all of a sudden, both shoulders hurt like hell.
0:04:48 It’s weird.
0:04:49 They started talking to each other.
0:04:50 Hey, I’m hurting.
0:04:51 Well, I’ll hurt too.
0:04:57 But anyways, back to my poncierge medical services and my PRP shots.
0:04:59 This is the problem with the wealthy.
0:05:14 And that is we all complain under our breath about the digression into fascism and kleptocracy and what is probably best described as a kakistocracy, where we have village idiots running the government as opposed to, this is a crime family now.
0:05:23 It’s 100% a mob family creating incentives where, if you say anything bad or critical, he goes after you, weaponizes the DOJ, sues you, whatever.
0:05:24 What the fuck are we thinking?
0:05:26 This is part of the problem.
0:05:32 The Republicans in Congress are corrupt, or at least cultists willing to turn a blind eye to corruption because they’re so scared of this guy.
0:05:40 But even worse, in my mind, even worse or almost as worse, is all these fucking Democrats who claim to be patriots who are neutered and weak.
0:05:40 Yeah.
0:05:47 Jesus Christ, have you ever met a more neutered, feckless, ineffective group of people in your life?
0:05:48 And here’s the thing, the sad thing.
0:05:50 He’d be reelected today.
0:05:51 He’d be reelected today.
0:05:51 Why?
0:05:56 Because Americans would rather have an autocrat and a kleptocrat than a weak, neutered party.
0:06:03 So back to why it’s so dangerous to have Democrats who are wealthy or this wealthy, and it all comes back to income inequality.
0:06:14 Those of us who are blessed and fortunate and worked hard and aggregated some wealth because we were born at the right time or the right place or with the right skin color or the right outdoor plumbing, I have all of those things.
0:06:15 And by the way, I’m not humble.
0:06:16 I’m a fucking monster.
0:06:21 But with all of these skills, I wouldn’t have been able to attain this type of economic security in any other nation.
0:06:30 So you’d think that people would have some fidelity to those values, rule of law, consistency, civil rights, opportunities for family planning.
0:06:32 I wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t family planning in this country.
0:06:40 If me and my mom had lived in deepest, darkest Mississippi, my mom wouldn’t have been able to abort a pregnancy when I was 17 and she was 47.
0:06:42 And I would have had to go to fucking work.
0:06:43 I wouldn’t have gone to UCLA.
0:06:44 Wouldn’t have gone to business school.
0:06:45 Wouldn’t have started firms.
0:06:46 Wouldn’t have taken a company public.
0:06:53 Wouldn’t be here right now complaining about PRP shots that cost $1,500 jabbed into my shoulders.
0:06:57 All of the things that got us here are being eroded slowly but surely.
0:07:01 The great trade agreements because of consistency and rule of law are literally going out the fucking window.
0:07:14 And the 1% of Democrats who claim to give a shit and scream into TikTok and complain at dinner parties or talk to each other at Chez Margot at Foquets about how terrible things are and aren’t really doing that much.
0:07:15 Are you really doing anything?
0:07:18 Are you really reaching out to your congressperson?
0:07:21 Are you creating content?
0:07:24 Are you about to get involved in the congressional election?
0:07:25 Are you really doing anything?
0:07:25 No.
0:07:26 Why?
0:07:27 Because we’re getting richer.
0:07:28 And guess what?
0:07:29 We don’t need the government.
0:07:31 We have our own rights.
0:07:33 Anyone comes to me, I can lawyer up like no tomorrow.
0:07:37 Anyone in my life gets pregnant or has an unwanted pregnancy, I can figure it out.
0:07:38 Why?
0:07:39 Because I have money.
0:07:43 If they start rounding up Jews again, which I don’t think is unthinkable at this point.
0:07:45 I love how everyone’s like, oh, it couldn’t happen in America.
0:07:47 Well, it’s kind of happening right now.
0:07:48 We’re rounding up people.
0:07:50 We are literally rounding up people with the wrong tattoo.
0:07:55 We have sent U.S. citizens to foreign concentration camps.
0:07:57 What’s the definition of a concentration camp?
0:08:01 A place that is outside your nation where laws do not protect.
0:08:07 This is where you send people where the laws domestically cannot justify the incarceration of them.
0:08:09 That is the definition of a concentration camp.
0:08:11 And that’s what these prisons in El Salvador are.
0:08:13 And now they’re talking about sending people to Libya.
0:08:14 Oh, that sounds very American.
0:08:21 We’re going to deny habeas corpus and due process and find people in America and send them to some hellscape in Libya.
0:08:23 But you don’t need to worry if you’re rich.
0:08:24 Why?
0:08:25 Because we have our own laws.
0:08:28 We’re protected by the law, but we’re not bound by it.
0:08:29 We have our own medical.
0:08:30 I can go to Atria.
0:08:35 I don’t need to worry about Medicare or Medicaid or them cutting it to pay for tax cuts.
0:08:38 No, I don’t need to worry about that because I have my own medical care.
0:08:40 I don’t need to worry about schools.
0:08:45 I don’t need to worry about them getting the Department of Education because I have enough money for my own kids’ schools.
0:08:54 And this is the problem with income inequality is there are too many people who carry too much power who no longer have a vested interest in the success of America.
0:08:55 It is really income.
0:08:59 Almost every problem in the United States can be reverse engineered to income inequality.
0:09:16 It is – this is creating two societies where the one society that has all the power is in an unwritten, unspoken conspiracy with the Trump administration despite their political views that they’re going to be just fine and to shut the fuck up and not put up any real resistance.
0:09:24 So, yeah, is it bad that we have a Republican Party that is acquiescing to a fascist, a kleptocrat, and a kakastokrasat?
0:09:25 I don’t know what the word would be.
0:09:26 Yeah, that’s bad.
0:09:30 What’s worse is the Democrats aren’t doing a fucking thing.
0:09:32 All right.
0:09:33 So what else are we going to do about here?
0:09:35 We’ve got to get into today’s episode.
0:09:40 I want to mention that the first two episodes of The Lost Boys dropped today in its own feed.
0:09:41 The Lost Boys is a new limited series.
0:09:46 I’m co-hosting with Anthony Scaramucci about all the struggles young men are facing in America.
0:09:50 I did this because Anthony – it was actually Anthony’s vision, and I wanted to figure out a way to work with Anthony.
0:09:51 I really like him.
0:09:54 I think he’s smart, well-read, good person, and courageous.
0:10:06 In episode one, we speak with my Yoda, literally probably the person I parent most in my life and who kind of – I had sort of an awakening around a calling, I thought.
0:10:10 Richard Reeves started talking about – he was at Brookings, and he started talking about the struggles of young men.
0:10:16 And I was just so kind of overwhelmed and fascinated by the data, and I could feel it, and I could sense it.
0:10:26 And I thought, okay, this is finally time where I can actually maybe, I don’t know, do some good other than highlighting some of the wonderful dick jokes out there, which is important, which is important.
0:10:28 And Richard has been my Yoda around this stuff.
0:10:33 Anyways, in our first episode, we speak with Richard about the data behind the crisis.
0:10:37 And in episode two, we explore why no one’s talking about it.
0:10:40 Search for The Lost Boys wherever you get your podcasts.
0:10:44 Again, The Lost Boys, or check out the link in the show notes.
0:10:45 Okay, moving on.
0:10:52 In today’s episode, we speak with Timothy Snyder, a leading historian on authoritarianism, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe.
0:10:55 He’s also the author of various books, including On Freedom and On Tyranny.
0:11:01 After over two decades at Yale, he’s now joining the University of Toronto’s Monk School of Global Affairs.
0:11:08 We discuss with Timothy the threats to American democracy, echoes of 1930s fascism, and what still gives him hope.
0:11:11 With that, here’s our conversation with Timothy Snyder.
0:11:22 Tim, where does this podcast find you?
0:11:23 I’m in Toronto.
0:11:31 We were excited to have you on the pod because your book, On Tyranny, is a 20-point guide to Dictator Proofing Yourself,
0:11:34 which you published shortly after Trump was elected the first time around.
0:11:38 And it’s a New York Times bestseller again.
0:11:44 Can you point to one or two moments in history that most mimic where we are now,
0:11:48 and who reminds you most of Trump, and what it tells us about where things might be headed?
0:11:53 I want to start the answer by saying that it’s important to think about history as something that
0:11:56 opens us up rather than closes us down.
0:12:04 The danger of thinking about history in terms of analogy or repeating, or even rhyming, as Mark Twain said,
0:12:06 is that it then puts you out of the story.
0:12:09 And the whole point of history is that humans are in the story.
0:12:14 There isn’t any overwhelming objective factor, which means things have to go in a certain direction.
0:12:19 That said, as I think about it, we’re in a kind of second globalization.
0:12:26 And the moment is much like the 1890s to the 1920s, in that suddenly the globe is united.
0:12:27 People are overwhelmed.
0:12:29 There are new communication technologies.
0:12:34 There are certain kinds of fears about demographics, about things changing too quickly,
0:12:36 about not being in touch with your children, and so on.
0:12:41 And those anxieties can be used by certain kinds of politicians who manage to combine
0:12:44 a view of the future with nostalgia for the past.
0:12:49 So in general, I think it’s 1890s to 1920s is pretty similar.
0:12:53 As far as Trump, I don’t think there is actually a perfect analog.
0:12:57 I mean, in my view, he’s a fascist, but he’s a different sort of fascist,
0:13:01 in that I think he cares in an odd way.
0:13:04 He cares much less about the community than the first round of fascists did.
0:13:09 And unlike the first round of fascists, he’s actually very concerned about personal wealth,
0:13:14 which what everyone wants to say about them was generally not their case.
0:13:19 So I don’t think there’s a perfect analogy for him, but it helps a lot to know the history
0:13:22 of the 1920s and 1930s at this point, I’d say.
0:13:25 And in a recent Substack post, you wrote that the current administration,
0:13:29 open quote, invites a terror attack, close quote.
0:13:31 That’s a bold statement.
0:13:32 What did you mean by that?
0:13:35 I mean, I don’t think it is, actually.
0:13:38 I think the opposite thesis would be very bold.
0:13:42 Like, the idea that the administration is doing what it can to prevent a terror attack
0:13:45 is absolutely grotesque, right?
0:13:49 And so one way to consider the thesis is to consider the antithesis.
0:13:52 And like, we would all like to think that we have a government which is doing the normal
0:13:54 things to prevent abnormal catastrophes.
0:13:57 And I’m afraid that’s just obviously not the case.
0:14:02 When you put Kash Patel in charge of the FBI, when you put Tulsi Gabbard in charge of intelligence,
0:14:08 when you put Pete Hegseth in charge of defense, when you fire the head of the NSA for no reason
0:14:12 except that Laura Loomer told you to do so, when you demoralize the ranks of all the security
0:14:17 agencies, when you fire the mid-level people under dubious pretexts, these are all things
0:14:20 that make it much easier to attack the United States.
0:14:25 And I think you just have to be looking away pretty determinedly not to notice it.
0:14:27 So that’s what I mean when I say they’re inviting a terror attack.
0:14:30 There is ambient danger all of the time.
0:14:35 And what they’re choosing to do is to ignore the actual danger, this is the second part,
0:14:40 and to focus their eyes and ours on invented things, right?
0:14:46 So suddenly, like, Tesla is the center of terrorism, or, you know, El Salvador and guys in Maryland
0:14:47 are the focus of terrorism.
0:14:51 And when you create big lies around stuff like that, when you focus the energy on stuff
0:14:53 like that, it actually turns the head of the media.
0:14:57 It turns the head of your own institutions in such a way that you’re much more vulnerable
0:14:59 to the real threats that are out there.
0:15:05 Do you think that also the reduction in soft power, whether it’s canceling USAID or just generally
0:15:11 kind of declaring war, it feels like on everyone all at once, that that also increases the likelihood
0:15:16 that maybe not even of a terrorist attack, but somebody decides to say they’re so distracted,
0:15:23 maybe I’ll invade Taiwan, or I’ll start setting off more missiles over the coast of Japan from
0:15:24 North Korea?
0:15:27 I mean, if this sounds like a comment, phrase is a question, it is.
0:15:28 So let me just say the comment.
0:15:34 I would argue that we’re, every world leader is thinking if this is a time to divide it in
0:15:36 an indistracted America, it would be now.
0:15:41 Yeah, no, I want to affirm both the major and the minor thesis in that comment, and I’m happy
0:15:43 to treat your comments as questions.
0:15:49 I mean, the minor thesis is that when we make enemies unnecessarily, we are encouraging terrorism.
0:15:53 So it’s not just that we’re putting our defenses down, which we’re clearly doing, it’s also that
0:15:56 we’re inviting the offense, which we’re also clearly doing.
0:16:03 I mean, one can’t be precise about what combination of motives is going to spark people, but we
0:16:08 have a combination now of Trump giving permission, Trump and the people around him giving permission
0:16:15 to at least right-wing domestic terrorists because he is pardoning them, right, and creating an
0:16:17 atmosphere which normalizes their behavior.
0:16:23 Many of their views are now held inside the White House, but he’s also randomly alienating
0:16:29 almost everybody at the same time around the world, and the people he isn’t alienating, like
0:16:34 the Russians, aren’t going to stop operations inside the United States just because he’s trying
0:16:35 to be friends with them, right?
0:16:40 So it’s a cocktail of all the worst things at the same time.
0:16:46 And then to pick up your major thesis, yeah, this is also true at the level of conventional
0:16:51 national security, what the Trump people are doing is draining American power out of the
0:16:55 system because the international system, our power in the national system depended upon,
0:17:00 among other things, relationships, trust, alliances, reliability, treaties.
0:17:06 We’re breaking all of those things, thereby draining our own power out of the system, but everybody
0:17:07 else’s power remains.
0:17:11 Everybody else is now more relatively powerful with respect to us, and so of course they can
0:17:15 now afford to think about interventions and adventures, which they wouldn’t have been able
0:17:16 to think about before.
0:17:16 I agree completely.
0:17:23 If the risk profile has gone up for the U.S. and we sort of have high blood pressure or
0:17:27 incredibly high cholesterol, meaning we’re more prone to some sort of exogenous event or
0:17:33 opportunistic infection, who do you think, one, is there or are there winners and who are
0:17:37 they from America’s distraction and what feels like own goal?
0:17:40 Yeah, wonderful question.
0:17:44 The most obvious winner, of course, is Vladimir Putin in Russia.
0:17:50 The Russians started a war that they couldn’t win without American assistance.
0:17:57 And then for the last year or so, in 2024, they made it very plain that their game plan, such
0:18:01 as it was, was to keep the war going in the hope and expectation that Donald Trump would return
0:18:02 into power.
0:18:07 And now that Donald Trump is in power, he’s conceded on behalf of the Ukrainians, so to
0:18:13 speak, pretty much every major issue, territory, NATO, Russia’s legitimacy in the international
0:18:15 system, trade with Russia.
0:18:21 He’s conceded all of these things without asking for any concession from Russia, and meanwhile
0:18:25 pressured the Ukrainians to take a much worse deal that even the military facts on the ground
0:18:27 would dictate that they should take.
0:18:33 And in general, Trump and the people around him treat Russia as though it were a great power,
0:18:38 a superpower, a power on the scale of the world, which it really isn’t unless you make it so.
0:18:42 And the Russians are, of course, eating this up, and they’re extremely happy about it.
0:18:44 So there’s that.
0:18:45 That’s one set of winner would be Russia.
0:18:49 But I would say that Russia overlaps with another set of winners, which is transnational
0:18:50 oligarchs in general.
0:18:55 You can think of Putin as the leader of Russia, but you can also think of him as part of a clan
0:19:00 of transnational oligarchs, which would include South Africans who are very important in the United
0:19:04 States, such as Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or David Sachs, right?
0:19:09 That Putin is kind of in that tribe that Trump wants to join.
0:19:11 Like, Trump really wants to be a rich transnational oligarch.
0:19:13 He’s just never quite made it.
0:19:17 And now with like two chances of being president of the United States, he can finally make it into
0:19:18 that club.
0:19:21 But in general, those folks are doing a lot better.
0:19:25 The people who will, the people who want not just American state power not really to work
0:19:30 or to apply to them, but want state power around the world generally not to work or not to apply
0:19:30 to them.
0:19:33 Those people in general are definitely winners out of this.
0:19:38 And a third set of winners would seem to be, at first glance, the people that we call, I
0:19:44 think, wrongly populists or, you know, far-right people, far-right extremists, quasi-fascists
0:19:49 or fascists, they would seem to be the winner because Vance and Trump are explicitly on their
0:19:50 side.
0:19:55 But that said, so long as they’re democratic elections, the fact that Vance and Trump are
0:19:57 on your side is probably not going to help you.
0:20:00 It’s going to hurt you, again, so long as there are democratic elections.
0:20:05 I feel as if Democrats were just such wimps, we’re afraid to call this fascism when every
0:20:10 key component or definition of fascism perfectly fits, in my view, what is going on right now.
0:20:15 Demonization of immigrants, refusal to condemn political violence, extreme nationalism.
0:20:18 It’s literally, it feels like this is the definition of fascism.
0:20:22 And yet on the left, we’re afraid to use these words for fear.
0:20:26 Like we have this need to empathize and take the higher ground.
0:20:33 Can you point to a point in history or best practices around when a democracy moves towards
0:20:40 some sort of authoritarianism or oligarchy or fascism, what can you point to and what lessons
0:20:47 can we take from who’s been most effective and what are the components of that pushback when
0:20:51 a country has flirted with fascism and then has been pulled back from the brink?
0:20:54 What are the components of pulling back or pushing back?
0:21:00 Let me break that question down into two parts because I think there are two things that work
0:21:02 together that help us to answer it.
0:21:07 So the question, why aren’t we allowed to say fascism, I think is directly related to the answer.
0:21:14 So as you say, it’s patently obvious that there has been a return of fascism around the world
0:21:15 for quite some time.
0:21:20 I started writing about it more than 10 years ago using the word.
0:21:25 And then as you quite rightly say, that one can agree or disagree about how big it is and
0:21:26 just who exactly is in it.
0:21:31 But I think it’s palpably grotesque to deny that there has been a world return of fascism
0:21:32 and that didn’t begin yesterday.
0:21:39 And so then as you say, if we were confronted with all these empirical signs of fascism, and
0:21:43 again, one can disagree about exactly what fascism is, but the signs, no matter whose definition
0:21:48 you take are overwhelming, it doesn’t matter whose definition you take, the signs are overwhelming,
0:21:48 they’re there.
0:21:51 And so why do we not accept that?
0:21:53 And I think that has to do with the second part, right?
0:21:59 Because if you accept that it’s fascism, then you have to organize and you have to organize
0:22:02 with people that you might not necessarily like.
0:22:06 Denying that it’s fascism is a purely academic pursuit, right?
0:22:11 If you deny it’s fascism, what you can do is you can sit at your office and you can edit
0:22:13 the volume about how it’s not fascism.
0:22:14 That’s just about my colleagues.
0:22:19 But more broadly speaking, if you deny it’s fascism, then you can imagine, okay, the normal
0:22:22 pathways of politics are going to work.
0:22:23 Somehow things are going to self-correct.
0:22:27 The moment you accept that it’s fascism, you have to organize.
0:22:31 You have to take action, you have to organize, and you have to organize with people who agree
0:22:33 with you and people who don’t completely agree with you.
0:22:37 And this is part of the answer now to the question, because the way that you beat fascism is with
0:22:38 coalitions.
0:22:43 The way that you beat fascism is that you get to a majority by including people who don’t
0:22:44 agree about everything.
0:22:50 A clear majority, and it has to be a clear majority, because they’re ruthless and also they may control
0:22:52 political aspects of the state.
0:22:55 So the way that you pull back is that you get a coalition, right?
0:22:57 This is Poland in 2023, for example.
0:23:00 The way that you pull back is you get a coalition which can win an election.
0:23:02 But this goes to the Democrats.
0:23:08 I take the point about the Democrats, but it’s very important for us who are not activists in
0:23:15 the Democratic Party to remember that we have to not make the same mistake that they’re making.
0:23:19 The fact that they are inactive, or they don’t use a word, is not an excuse for us to be
0:23:21 inactive, and not use the word.
0:23:28 We have to create all possible bridges, pageantry opportunities for those of them who want to
0:23:29 make a move.
0:23:33 So the more civil society activism there is, the more protesting there is, the more chance
0:23:38 there is that you pull the establishment party or important elements of it in your direction.
0:23:42 So they have a role to play, but the only way for them to play that role is for them to be
0:23:46 drawn by things that other people are in fact organizing.
0:23:47 The town halls are a good example of this.
0:23:51 It was great that several Democrats go out to these town halls, but they didn’t organize
0:23:53 those things themselves, right?
0:23:55 That had to come from somewhere else.
0:23:58 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
0:24:11 So if I’m being an alarmist or paranoid, it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
0:24:14 And I want you to tell me if I’m wrong.
0:24:21 But I look at 1920s Germany, thriving gay community, appreciation for academics, the arts, a progressive
0:24:26 culture, welcomed immigrants, an economic shock, a move towards fascism.
0:24:31 And then something that really struck me, there was a 10-second TikTok where a guy just said,
0:24:33 remember that Auschwitz was in Poland.
0:24:35 And I look at what’s going on here.
0:24:39 And when you start rounding up people, it takes on a different complexion.
0:24:44 But I would argue we’re one economic shock away in the U.S. from accelerating what we already
0:24:50 I would term as rounding up people for the wrong tattoo and shipping them off to another country
0:24:55 such that we don’t have to hold to the same standards of due process or humanity.
0:25:00 One, am I being an alarmist, believing that we’re actually not as far as people would like
0:25:03 to think from a really, really ugly situation?
0:25:08 And does this have echoes of different situations?
0:25:15 Do you see another nation at this point in history and where, you know, that helps kind of
0:25:18 draw or fill in the blanks around where this is going?
0:25:22 Let me zoom way back out and then let me zoom in.
0:25:31 So the comparison to Germany in the first third of the 20th century can be very helpful in
0:25:32 the following way.
0:25:39 The 20th century, as your question already suggests, could have been Germany’s century.
0:25:43 There was an awful lot working in their favor.
0:25:46 There was a very rich and heterogeneous civil society.
0:25:55 There were the best scientists and engineers probably in the world active before the early
0:25:56 30s in Germany.
0:26:03 There was a flawed but nevertheless plausible parliamentary system.
0:26:09 There was an economy which, pound for pound, was overtaking everybody else’s, right?
0:26:14 So the United States was going to be a big deal in the 20th century, but there’s a way
0:26:16 in which the 20th century could have belonged to Germany.
0:26:21 And they did the one thing, in my view, the one thing which could have prevented that, which
0:26:28 was have someone who was the most extreme version of an extreme party come to power with the
0:26:35 connivance of business elites and with the misunderstanding or willful misunderstanding of conservatives that
0:26:36 somehow he could be controlled.
0:26:39 That was the one thing, and they did it.
0:26:44 And so when you look at the U.S. in the 21st century, one way to look at this is the 21st
0:26:46 century probably should belong to the U.S.
0:26:48 There are all sorts of positive things.
0:26:52 There’s the technology, the civil society, the universities, et cetera, et cetera.
0:26:58 But there is one thing we can do to prevent that from happening, and we seem to be doing
0:27:00 that one thing.
0:27:02 Okay, now let me zoom in.
0:27:04 So the big thing about Auschwitz in Poland, it’s important.
0:27:09 I have to contest that formulation because there wasn’t a Poland at the time.
0:27:14 By the time that Auschwitz was established on the territory of what had been a Polish army
0:27:17 base at Auschwitz, Poland had been destroyed.
0:27:21 But this helps to make the point just in a slightly more subtle way, which is important.
0:27:25 The killing of Jews in Germany didn’t happen in Germany.
0:27:33 It happened in zones which the Germans decided were stateless, in zones where the law didn’t
0:27:33 apply.
0:27:36 And so that could be a concentration camp.
0:27:38 The definition of a concentration camp is a lawless zone.
0:27:43 But it could also be a broad swath of territory to the east where the Germans said, we’ve destroyed
0:27:47 the state, whether it’s Poland or the Soviet Union, we’ve destroyed the state.
0:27:49 And so the rules don’t apply.
0:27:51 That, for me, is the dangerous thing, right?
0:27:56 Not exactly another country, although that’s important, but the idea of statelessness.
0:28:01 The notion that what we’re going to do is we’re going to decide that certain people are beyond
0:28:02 the protection of the state in general.
0:28:06 Once you do that, then it becomes much easier to ship them away and it becomes much easier
0:28:07 to kill them.
0:28:09 It’s chilling.
0:28:15 You had mentioned something about, I forgot the word you used, the cooperation between
0:28:19 Hitler and the industrial base or corporations or corporate leadership.
0:28:26 And I don’t think enough people know the history around the alliance between, I think it was
0:28:30 loosely corporations asked, said, Hitler, if you crush the trade unions, we’ll support you.
0:28:32 And then it just ran away from them.
0:28:38 And I see real parallels here and now, and that is, I’m not exaggerating, I’ve probably
0:28:44 talked to a dozen Fortune 500 CEOs who are just so angry and upset and think what Trump
0:28:50 is doing is so wrong and not a goddamn one of them has spoken out because they think, short
0:28:54 term, my obligation is to shareholders and the easiest thing to do is bend a knee, send a
0:28:57 million dollars to the inauguration committee and not speak out.
0:29:04 And this feels eerily similar to the same type of enablement or loose cooperation or conspiracy
0:29:06 between corporate leaders in Germany.
0:29:10 Any thoughts on whether there are parallels there?
0:29:13 That’s such an interesting question.
0:29:19 And it, you know, I feel like just pivoting a little bit, Scott, this is really a moment
0:29:21 when it would help if Americans listened to other people.
0:29:25 So like, it’s all well and good and I’m glad to do it for us to, for, for us to be sitting
0:29:30 here and talking about historical parallels, but there are actually lots of German, you
0:29:35 know, businessmen and women today and German foundations who act on the basis of what they
0:29:37 think they learned in the 1930s.
0:29:41 And so, I mean, maybe I’m wrong in something like this has already happened, but there’s
0:29:46 probably much to be said for some kind of summit precisely among American and German CEOs to talk
0:29:49 about the question that you’ve just asked.
0:29:54 Because, you know, there are plenty of people now in Germany who are running corporations
0:29:59 extremely well, but you have these kinds of lessons on their mind all the time.
0:30:04 And that’s also, for me, a broader lesson, if you’ll just forgive me, you know, to extend
0:30:04 the pivot.
0:30:07 It’s a broader lesson about resistance in the U.S.
0:30:08 now in general.
0:30:14 There are a lot of folks from Ukraine or Poland, you know, successful cases, or even people
0:30:21 from mixed cases, like Slovenia or Hungary, who have an experience that is really relevant
0:30:21 to this moment.
0:30:26 And I feel like we don’t do enough to reach out to them and to get that relevant experience.
0:30:30 We tend to be trapped in our own exceptionalism and say, okay, something’s happened.
0:30:31 It’s never happened to anybody before.
0:30:33 What could we possibly learn?
0:30:36 And then we spend that moment obsessing about ourselves, and then we move on to the next
0:30:37 moment.
0:30:42 Yeah, but getting back to your question, there were sort of two stages to this.
0:30:46 The first is that you think it’s okay because he’s against the labor unions.
0:30:52 And that really was the problem the first time around, that German businesses were against,
0:30:56 I mean, this is a little bit stronger, but they were against democracy because they thought
0:30:58 in democracy, the labor unions were too strong.
0:31:04 And so that’s not exactly the case now, but it’s something that CEOs should be thinking about.
0:31:07 Am I being drawn towards something because I think these are the ones who are harder on
0:31:09 the trade unions than the other ones?
0:31:14 And then the second move, which you also already see, is the solicitation of specific companies
0:31:19 on the premise that they can make money under this regime in a way they couldn’t have made
0:31:22 it before, like Auschwitz, to use something you mentioned earlier.
0:31:26 German companies are brought to Auschwitz on the principle that, look, there’s going to
0:31:27 be cheap, controlled labor.
0:31:29 There’s access to water.
0:31:31 You know, we can do chemical manufacturing here.
0:31:32 This is a good site.
0:31:33 It’s going to be profitable.
0:31:37 And of course, there’s also money to be made by rounding up American migrants.
0:31:41 There’s money to be made by creating a surveillance state.
0:31:45 And so particular companies are being recruited into that.
0:31:50 So yeah, there’s, I mean, capitalism doesn’t push obviously one way or another, right?
0:31:53 Like it’s wrong to think that capitalism automatically generates fascism.
0:31:58 It’s certainly also wrong to think that capitalism automatically generates democracy.
0:32:03 The people who are in charge of companies are historical actors.
0:32:07 And we know not just from the history of Germany, but from the history of coups and counter coups
0:32:12 in general, that how the leaders of industry react matters a great deal to how things turn
0:32:13 out.
0:32:21 So we’ve been talking a lot about Trump, any historical reference or analogies explaining
0:32:29 or, or comparing similar situations to what’s going on with Elon Musk, wealthiest man in
0:32:38 the world, the seizure of what I would argue is a power that’s not constitutional at the approval
0:32:43 of the president in just, I haven’t seen anything like this in my lifetime.
0:32:49 What, what historical references can you ground Elon Musk in, if any?
0:32:51 Number one, it’s fine.
0:32:56 We’ve been talking about the twenties and the thirties and the, um, the Marxist analysis of
0:33:02 fascism back then was that it had to do with the wealthiest of people, which it wasn’t true.
0:33:09 I mean, as we’ve talked about, certainly, certainly capitalists played a role in the
0:33:10 rise of Hitler to power.
0:33:15 And then certain capitalists profited in certain ways, which are worth remembering from Nazi
0:33:19 rule, but it wasn’t actually the oligarchs of the world, right?
0:33:23 There was no overall plan of global capitalism to bring people like Hitler to power.
0:33:27 A hundred years later, there is that’s, that’s the ironic thing.
0:33:33 Like a hundred years later, we do have people like Elon Musk who do have huge amounts of global
0:33:38 power and who are quite literally trying to bring fascists to power around the world.
0:33:40 And maybe it’s, you know, maybe it’s for reasons of ideology.
0:33:44 Maybe it’s reasons of convenience because they don’t like state power and state because state
0:33:46 power can regulate their companies.
0:33:49 But we actually now do have a thing, which was, I think, talked about a hundred years ago,
0:33:50 but not real.
0:33:55 And that was real, but not talked about, which is, you know, not that all oligarchs are fascists.
0:33:58 I mean, there are oligarchs all over the place politically, but we do have fascist oligarchs
0:34:01 and we have fascist promoting oligarchs.
0:34:03 We have oligarchs who are promoting fascism.
0:34:06 So that’s not exactly historical precedence, more like historical irony that we have the
0:34:06 thing now.
0:34:12 I gave a lecture a couple of weeks ago in New York at the public library about, um, about
0:34:18 paganism, which was, um, you know, a little bit bold on my part, but it, it, and a little
0:34:21 bit, a little bit humorous because I think we need humor.
0:34:27 But I think the kinds of politics we’re talking about where people worship a leader, that’s
0:34:28 fascist, right?
0:34:34 The way that people worship Elon Musk is fascist, but the way that Musk and Trump and so on operate
0:34:40 by giving out gifts, the sort of everyday corruption, or if you want to put it in an anthropologically
0:34:45 neutral way, uh, a gift giving culture where politics is reduced to there’s a chieftain at
0:34:50 the center and the chieftain has the authority to give gifts and expects gifts in return.
0:34:54 I think there’s a reason why that’s not familiar historically or, you know, personally to you
0:34:55 or to me.
0:35:00 And that’s because that’s essentially a, you know, pre-Christian or a pre-state way of
0:35:01 doing things.
0:35:02 They’re chieftains.
0:35:03 They come and go.
0:35:06 Their power depends upon charisma, plus the ability to give gifts.
0:35:08 I think that’s, that’s where we are.
0:35:13 And it’s an almost pre-historical way of doing politics, which is why history flails a little
0:35:16 bit when you, when you try to find historical analogies for it.
0:35:18 We’ll be right back.
0:35:30 We’re back with more from Timothy Snyder.
0:35:38 So something I’ve just been unable to wrap my head around, and I’m, rather than just attacking
0:35:45 them for, for these actions or these gestures, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, in my view, purposely
0:35:46 gave Nazi salutes.
0:35:50 And I’m trying to wrap my head around, what are the objectives there?
0:35:57 Is it just to show a certain level of macho and thumbing your finger in the face of convention?
0:36:01 Is it an attempt to rally a group of people around a fascist ideology?
0:36:08 Curious what ran through your head when once, not once, but twice, a person who’s a senior
0:36:13 advisor to the president, the wealthiest man in the world, gave what looked like to me, Nazi
0:36:13 salutes.
0:36:18 When you saw that, what ran through your head?
0:36:23 I’m going to start in a place which I think is more interesting than my head.
0:36:32 And not long after that, I was in Berlin, and I was talking to a very courageous and consistent
0:36:36 left-wing organizer friend.
0:36:42 We were at a bar, we were having a drink, and he said, I think he’s right.
0:36:46 He said, you know, eventually they always do it.
0:36:48 Like, they have to do it.
0:36:49 And I knew what he meant.
0:36:54 He meant Musk and the Hitlergruss, you know, that salute.
0:36:59 That like, so I just want to, I want to take a step sort of below your question about what
0:37:01 they’re thinking and what the calculations are.
0:37:05 I think it may be something more fundamental than that, which is that they like to do it.
0:37:09 It makes them feel like they are who they are when they do it.
0:37:14 My friend’s point was that there’s something in the shape of their lives which eventually
0:37:16 leads them to give that salute.
0:37:20 And I think we shouldn’t discount that and think about it just in terms of the signal they’re
0:37:24 sending or where it goes politically or what it means to, you know, people like me.
0:37:29 I think that that’s a big part of it, that like that performing with your body in a way
0:37:37 which is unambiguous, which is not rejecting reason, which is calling forth a similar salute
0:37:38 from other people.
0:37:45 And since we know the history is also referring to the very heart of fascism the last time around,
0:37:50 I think that the sheer pleasure of doing that is probably close to a complete explanation.
0:37:56 I think, you know, the secondary thing would be the normalization of it, that you’re trying
0:37:57 to break all the taboos.
0:38:00 And of course, when you do it, you then, you know, this is the 21st century part.
0:38:04 You do it, then you deny it, you say it was just a joke, you say it never happened, whatever.
0:38:05 It was a wave.
0:38:07 Yeah, exactly.
0:38:12 Yeah, you just, but what you’re after though is you’re trying to change normality, right?
0:38:14 You’re trying to turn every taboo into a joke.
0:38:20 And, you know, the taboos around liberalism, rule of law, democracy are built on notions of human
0:38:23 indecency, protection of the private sphere, respect, truth, and so on.
0:38:26 And so you’re trying to turn those taboos into a joke.
0:38:27 I think that’s the secondary bit.
0:38:31 So you were at Yale and you moved to Toronto.
0:38:34 Why?
0:38:35 Why have you moved to Canada?
0:38:40 I mean, there’s a baseball team that plays downtown.
0:38:47 I’m, I’m theoretically a French speaker and they speak French here, at least in this, in
0:38:47 this country.
0:38:54 Um, I was there, like there, the major considerations had to do with, you know, family things, which
0:38:56 I’m not particularly keen to talk about.
0:38:59 So lifestyle, it’s a lifestyle move, not ideological.
0:39:00 We don’t need to read any.
0:39:05 Well, no, I mean, if any, no, I mean, there’s this weird timing thing now where I’m kind
0:39:07 of caught in this local juncture and feel a little helpless about that.
0:39:10 But I had already moved to Toronto.
0:39:14 I had been, I’ve been recruited for three years, actually more like 10.
0:39:14 Enough said.
0:39:16 No one needs an excuse to move to Toronto.
0:39:17 It’s a wonderful city.
0:39:19 I moved to London and it’s, and it’s been great.
0:39:22 And it, it, it’s neither here nor there in terms of politics.
0:39:23 And I think that’s what you’re saying.
0:39:23 Is that accurate?
0:39:23 Yeah.
0:39:27 No, I mean, sorry if I sound offensive, but it’s like, yeah, I moved here for reasons which
0:39:30 had to do with time of life, essentially.
0:39:35 And now that I am here, I’m going to continue to do, you know, what I, what I can.
0:39:39 I tend to think that people like a lot, if I have anything views to say, it has to do with
0:39:43 experiences outside the United States, but I’m going to make, you know, really sure that
0:39:46 I also spent a lot of time inside the United States.
0:39:49 This, things have not turned out the way that I hope they would turn out, but now that they
0:39:51 have turned out this way, you know, now I have to stay engaged.
0:39:52 So I will.
0:39:57 So it almost feels sort of inconsequential or somewhat trivial compared to the things we’ve
0:40:04 been talking about, but these tariffs and the sort of declaring war on everyone all at
0:40:05 once.
0:40:07 And I’m, I can tell how old I’m getting.
0:40:09 I’m totally fascinated with the world war two.
0:40:12 And I’d like to, I’ve set everything against the context of world war two.
0:40:17 And I think of, you know, Hitler’s big mistake was essentially declaring war on everyone all
0:40:22 at once, specifically declaring war on Russia when he didn’t need to help me understand if
0:40:28 we can understand these tariffs and an individual and what analogies or what historical context
0:40:33 there is for this sort of economic multi-front declaration of war against everyone all at
0:40:34 once.
0:40:38 Well, before, I mean, before we get to that, I just want to say something much more, much
0:40:45 more boring, which, which is that whatever the motive of tariffs are, they do have an objective
0:40:48 effect and that objective effect.
0:40:51 We’re not actually really feeling yet in the United States.
0:40:57 The, the knockoff effects on supply chains are just now starting to take hold and they
0:41:01 will be felt more and more severely in coming weeks and months.
0:41:06 So whatever Trump thinks he’s doing, um, one lesson of the 1920s and 1930s, of course, is
0:41:10 that if you, if you wreck the economy of our way of tariffs, you’re setting the stage for
0:41:13 more radical things to happen.
0:41:23 So as far as attacking everybody all at once, my take is that they think that the way power
0:41:30 works is by way of these kind of one-off demonstrations of like masculine barking, where you do like
0:41:33 you, you bluster, like you take it, you know, you, you stick out your chest and you bluster and
0:41:35 use lots of big words and stuff.
0:41:40 And then the notion is that the other person makes concessions and you’re better off in the
0:41:40 end.
0:41:44 And I think they think that’s how American businesses will react to tariffs because everybody will
0:41:48 look for a carve out and in looking for a carve out, going back to your earlier question, they
0:41:51 will then be less likely to speak up against the regime.
0:41:55 And they think that other countries will do the same thing, that other countries are by
0:41:59 definition weaker than the U S and so therefore they have to immediately react.
0:42:01 I think it’s, I think that’s the theory.
0:42:07 It’s a, I think it’s, it’s a dumb theory of course, because you end up minimizing U S power
0:42:11 because no one takes you seriously, including they don’t take you seriously also when you
0:42:12 propose a remedy, right?
0:42:17 You’re never, you’re never trusted again in the same way, but it’s also a dumb theory because
0:42:19 it just overestimates the scale of U S power.
0:42:23 And this gives me an occasion to say something I wanted to say and forgot in response to your
0:42:23 earlier question.
0:42:26 I mentioned when you asked, who does this benefit?
0:42:32 It, I mentioned Russia and I mentioned oligarchs, but the big winner, the big long-term winner
0:42:37 is obviously China because what, what we have done is we’ve said to the world, Hey, look,
0:42:41 China is a more reliable trade partner than we are.
0:42:42 Right?
0:42:47 So we’ve bailed Russia out in the short term in Ukraine, and we’ve bailed China out in the
0:42:49 long-term on the scale of the world.
0:42:53 Recognizing none of us have a crystal ball.
0:42:59 Are you comfortable making any sort of predictions as to what you think the likely scenarios are
0:43:02 in America over the next, uh, two, three years?
0:43:05 There’s so many variables.
0:43:09 There’s so many things bouncing up against one another.
0:43:13 It’s like, like, if you think about different historical moments, like there are moments where
0:43:15 more things are possible than usual.
0:43:20 So, like after the first world war, what I’d like to think of as the, the bandwidth of possibility
0:43:22 was just much broader, right?
0:43:26 Things like Lenin and, and, and things like Hitler were possible then, and they wouldn’t
0:43:30 have been possible at other times because you’d had this globalization with its hopes and then
0:43:32 with its collapse around a major war.
0:43:36 And now, you know, now we’re in this other globalization, which is also facing its collapse.
0:43:39 Um, the major, you know, the war isn’t as major.
0:43:45 The Russo-Ukrainian war is a horribly great, is a horribly huge war, but it’s not on the
0:43:45 scale of the great war.
0:43:50 Um, but it’s also facing its collapse in the person of, of somebody like Trump.
0:43:53 And so there’s just things are possible now that weren’t possible before.
0:43:58 I worry a great deal about an exogenous shock, like the terror attack that we were talking
0:44:00 about earlier and what that would set off.
0:44:05 And I think it’s, it’s, we have to kind of internalize that possibility because we have
0:44:10 to recognize that in the scenarios we’re talking about, it’s almost, I mean, you can’t be certain
0:44:15 about anything historically, but as certain as you can be that Trump, Vance, Musk would
0:44:20 treat such an exogenous event as a reason to try to finish off the Republic, um, completely.
0:44:28 I, I, another thing I worry about is that because the Trump people overestimate the power of bluster
0:44:32 and the power of the United States federal government in general, because they don’t really understand
0:44:37 that institutions, institutions don’t work just on the basis of like charisma and giving
0:44:42 orders that they’re going to get us to a situation where federal institutions are going to break
0:44:46 down or that federal institutions in state, the institutions of the 50 States are going
0:44:48 to be in irreconcilable clashes.
0:44:50 I worry about that a great deal.
0:44:54 I think that’s a scenario that has been understated that institutions, the federal government will
0:44:59 just stop working and that States will then begin to wonder what we’re getting out of all
0:45:03 of this and that there will be some kind of crisis within our own federal system.
0:45:07 That’s, that’s, I guess, the second, a second scenario that I worry about.
0:45:10 In addition, in addition to like the obvious thing that we’ve been talking about the whole
0:45:17 time, which is Trump, Musk, that milieu seeking to somehow get around the rule of law and, you
0:45:19 know, these, and the things are married to each other.
0:45:23 You can get around the rule of law, you know, you can, you can change the nature of the federal
0:45:27 government, but what you can’t do is then predictably know what’s going to come next.
0:45:31 And it isn’t all internationally or nationally going to be in your favor.
0:45:35 You can slam the door on democracy and you can, you know, you can break everything inside the
0:45:35 house of democracy.
0:45:40 But then when you walk out into that brave new world that you’re created, it’s not like the
0:45:42 weather is always going to be beautiful and in your favor.
0:45:47 So I apologize for jumping around, but you’re one of the leading historians on Ukraine and
0:45:49 I’d be remiss not to ask before you go.
0:45:55 The optimist looking at the glass half empty, is this an opportunity that sort of Uncle Sam
0:45:59 is not only inconsistent, but crazy and can no longer be dependent upon?
0:46:04 And is this an opportunity for Europe to actually become a union, $19 trillion collective economy
0:46:09 versus $2 trillion in Russia and provide Ukraine with the support such that they can continue
0:46:10 to push back on Russia?
0:46:13 Or am I being naive?
0:46:15 That’s the one rational hope.
0:46:20 And if, you know, regardless of whether there’s a ceasefire or whether there’s a quote unquote
0:46:26 peace deal, I really hate the way that the noun deal is now being attached to everything as
0:46:30 though, you know, deal making is the highest human achievement.
0:46:36 But regardless of whether on paper there’s, you know, some kind of accord, the threat of Russia
0:46:41 Russia and the possibility or the reality of Russia making war on Ukraine or other European
0:46:46 countries is going to be very real and imminent into the indefinite future, at least until Putin
0:46:52 loses power, which means that Europe has to respond in some way if it wishes to exist.
0:46:58 Because the attack on Ukraine was also an attack on the broader principles of the existence of the
0:47:05 European Union, namely that there is a post-imperial way of doing politics, that one can share sovereignty
0:47:12 rather than violate sovereignty, that you can have bureaucratic, boring, ritualistic, bureaucratic,
0:47:18 iterative relationships as opposed to martial, military, destructive relationships and so on.
0:47:23 And the Russians are very explicit about this. The whole Russian doctrine of foreign policy is that
0:47:28 the EU is an artificial creation which has no right to exist because in fact the only thing that matters
0:47:34 are empires and a multipolar world and so on. So if they want to exist, they have to step up with
0:47:41 respect to Ukraine. I would add to that that I think the EU only exists by enlarging. That has to be part of
0:47:47 its process as well. And I realize it’s complicated inside various countries and so on, but a European Union
0:47:53 which had Great Britain and Ukraine as members would be an even larger, more secure, and more
0:47:57 interestingly internally diverse economic unit than the current European Union.
0:48:02 So we only have you for a couple more minutes. You’ve been very generous with your time. Just
0:48:06 kind of a lightning around here. What are the biggest risks we’re not paying attention to and what are you
0:48:12 most optimistic about? I’m optimistic about American protests. I’m optimistic about people who haven’t
0:48:18 protested before who are protesting now. I’m optimistic about, or hopeful is a better word, about elected
0:48:29 representatives who are actually talking about the way the world actually is. I’m hopeful about your,
0:48:38 I think a set of European leaders, Macron, Starmer, Merz, in Poland, Donald Tusk. That’s, I mean, I don’t agree
0:48:42 with all of them about everything, of course, but I think as a set of European leaders, that’s a pretty good
0:48:48 quartet and a better one than one has had for quite a long time, at least on the kinds of issues that we’ve
0:48:56 been talking about, European security and durability. I’m hopeful about, I’m hopeful because of the kinds of
0:49:01 categorical or conceptual conversations that we’ve been having, because I really believe that you can’t,
0:49:07 you can’t organize and resist without conceptual work. And it’s, it’s hopeful to me that the people
0:49:12 who I know who are organizers are getting maybe closer to the people who I know who are, who are
0:49:16 conceptualizers and that the organizers are conceptualizing and some of the conceptualizing
0:49:20 organizing, that, that all gives me, that all gives me some, that all gives me some hope.
0:49:27 Uh, you, you’re obviously hugely successful. You have what appears to be just a great job and have
0:49:32 carved out a really nice piece of the world for yourself. What advice would you give, uh, uh, to
0:49:38 your 25-year-old self and more generally advice to young men who want to someday be, you know, be,
0:49:41 be Timothy Snyder and have a really cool job?
0:49:47 I mean, that’s a funny question because the only, I mean, the only, like I did gig work for six years
0:49:53 after, after I got my doctorate and I stayed on, I stayed on the market the entire time and I only got
0:49:58 a job at Yale basically because of luck. I mean, I may have had some qualifications for it, but the job
0:50:04 was only available because of luck. And so if I find it hard to like say, Oh, I’ve have some kind of like
0:50:09 path that other people can follow. In general, you know, I, I learned to do a bunch of other things.
0:50:11 Resilience, perseverance. It sounds like you’re going in there.
0:50:17 Maybe. I think, I mean, I think having different things that you’re pretty good at and not just
0:50:22 one thing that you’re very good at. If you’re going to be an academic, be, be international in,
0:50:26 in some way, because that allows you to, I mean, I couldn’t have been able to do the things I did
0:50:31 even before I had a job without being international in, in some way. And I think being willing,
0:50:36 like if you’re going to be an academic, think always about what else you could do besides being,
0:50:42 besides having a tenure track job in, in, in universities. Um, yeah, I mean, I don’t know.
0:50:47 I always had female bosses. I think that’s, you know, that’s, I’m not sure if that’s a piece of
0:50:53 advice, but it’s been, it’s been kind of helpful along the way. I mean, no getting along with different
0:50:59 sort of folks. And, um, but yeah, uh, advice. I don’t know, man, I feel like I’ve been, I feel
0:51:04 like I’ve been really lucky and, um, and, and, and it’s in times were tough when I was on the job
0:51:10 market and they’re, they’re a lot tougher now for all kinds of different reasons. I don’t think people
0:51:15 should get PhDs unless they really, really love what they’re doing. Cause you’re going to, you have
0:51:19 to, you have to take a lot of time to do it. And then once you do it, you have to love what you’re
0:51:23 doing enough to try to, to be aware that you might have to do it somewhere else besides the academy.
0:51:27 So anyway, I, you caught me off guard with that one. That’s the best I could do.
0:51:31 Timothy Snyder is a leading historian of authoritarianism, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe.
0:51:36 He’s the author of various books, including On Freedom, On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom,
0:51:41 and Bloodlands. After over two decades at Yale, he joined the University of Toronto’s
0:51:45 Monk School of Global Affairs. He joins us from the great city of Toronto.
0:51:49 I could do this for three hours. Really appreciate your time.
0:51:53 And an open invitation, although I’m inviting myself, I want to come to Toronto. I want to
0:51:58 do a mini, I love Canada tour, and I would love to interview you on stage somewhere. I think
0:52:02 your, I think your, your work has never been more relevant. I really appreciate your time,
0:52:05 professor. I would, I’d love to see in person. So when you’re in Canada, you just drop a line
0:52:07 and we’ll do that. A hundred percent. Thanks again.
0:52:28 Algebra of happiness. We just had mother’s day. I’m a six-year-old man who hasn’t gotten over the
0:52:32 death of his mother. I miss her a great deal. I can’t talk about it without getting emotional.
0:52:40 It was me and my mom against the world. My dad left and my mom raised me on her own on a secretary
0:52:45 salary. It’s not a sob story. We actually had a nice life because back then I think America kind of
0:52:51 loved unremarkable people. We used to take vacations. We lived in a decent place. You know,
0:52:57 I lived, actually, we had the worst house in a nice neighborhood and it was pretty obvious to me early
0:53:01 on that we didn’t have as much money, but that was fine. I actually think that one of the reasons I have
0:53:07 a lot of money now is because I had less money than my friends back then. But like missing your mom,
0:53:15 you know, it’s, it’s something that I’ve leaned into and I hope that my boys miss me as much as I miss
0:53:22 my mom. And something I’m, one of the things I’m really proud of, I was, uh, I’m a good dad. I’d like
0:53:26 to think, you know, I’m very proud of professional success. I don’t know, also a lot of things I’m not
0:53:33 proud of, but something I did really well. I spent a lot of time with my mom the last 10 years of her
0:53:38 life, but I started finally registering some success in my thirties. And I used to share a lot of that
0:53:44 success with my mom, not only giving her stuff or, or, or trying to buy nice things for her or make sure she
0:53:52 was comfortable, but I used to call my mom after every, every success. You know, I did well on a test in
0:53:57 graduate school, or I got, I was interested in a woman and, you know, got her number or went out,
0:54:03 had a nice date, or I did well at work or, you know, something good happened to me. And I used to
0:54:09 just call my mom that moment and tell her that it had happened. And, you know, mom’s love, like your mom,
0:54:15 and I guess to a certain extent, your dad are the only people who ever you’ll ever meet, who want you to
0:54:21 be more successful than them. And they just get so much reward out of nice things happening. And I didn’t
0:54:26 figure that out until I was a little bit older, but I would, um, absolutely, uh, make sure that my mom
0:54:33 could share in my success. Uh, I was really good at spending a lot of time with my mom and just finding
0:54:39 reasons to call her. I spoke to my mom almost every day and it’s something I look back on and I just
0:54:45 treasure because up until that point in my life, I just wasn’t a very kind person. I didn’t share a lot
0:54:49 with a lot of people. I didn’t go out of my way to make people feel good. I didn’t donate money. I wasn’t
0:54:57 concerned with the world. Um, I basically saw most people as a kind of a vehicle for a transaction
0:55:03 such that I could be more awesome and more wealthy. I didn’t, wasn’t a mean person, but I think kindness
0:55:08 is a practice. And the more you practice it, the easier it comes to you and it starts becoming second
0:55:14 nature. And I started with my mom. I was kind and loving and spent a ton of time with her.
0:55:21 It’s all a long winded way of saying, uh, the gap between thinking about your mom or something good
0:55:26 happening to you and reaching out to your mom and telling her about it, just eliminate that gap.
0:55:30 Your mom is never too busy to hear from you. And she might say, I need to call you back, but
0:55:37 what does your mom want to tell her friends? Well, what is, what is the biggest source of pride? Is it that
0:55:43 you’re a doctor or that, um, or that you’ve married someone nice or that you have great grandkids? That’s
0:55:49 all great. But more than anything, what moms want to brag about to their friends is that you choose
0:55:55 them, that you call them all the time, that anytime something happens to you, you reach out to them.
0:55:59 And I think it’s especially important for sons because we’re not like best friends with our
0:56:03 mothers. It’s not like that. I love you. I hate you kind of dynamic sometimes that mothers and
0:56:11 daughters have with each other’s best friends. You’re just their son. And that is, you know,
0:56:22 the nicest thing I’ve ever done for anybody was every day giving a lot of me to my mom.
0:56:29 Anyway, try and make every day a little bit of Mother’s Day.
0:56:47 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shallon. Drew Burroughs is our
0:56:51 technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:56:57 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow
0:57:02 our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.

0:00:01 Hi, I’m Frances Frey.
0:00:02 And I’m Anne Morris.
0:00:06 And we are the hosts of a new TED podcast called Fixable.
0:00:09 We’ve helped leaders at some of the world’s most competitive companies
0:00:11 solve all kinds of problems.
0:00:15 On our show, we’ll pull back the curtain and give you the type of honest,
0:00:18 unfiltered advice we usually reserve for top executives.
0:00:21 Maybe you have a co-worker with boundary issues,
0:00:24 or you want to know how to inspire and motivate your team.
0:00:26 No problem is too big or too small.
0:00:29 Give us a call and we’ll help you solve the problems you’re stuck on.
0:00:32 Find Fixable wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:00:38 Welcome back to Office Hours with Prop G.
0:00:40 Today we’re kicking off a special three-part series,
0:00:43 Prop G on Marketing, where we answer questions from business leaders
0:00:47 about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today.
0:00:48 What a thrill!
0:00:50 I’m a little bit self-conscious.
0:00:52 My whole career, not my whole career,
0:00:56 most of my career was about brand strategy and working with CMOs and CEOs,
0:00:58 but I am so out of shape.
0:01:00 I haven’t taught in over a year,
0:01:03 and my kind of brand strategy muscles are atrophying.
0:01:05 I’m worried about the next class I teach,
0:01:08 I’m going to be one of those guys that should have been put on an ice flow about 15 years ago,
0:01:11 i.e. most of the faculty at elite institutions.
0:01:14 Anyways, a little self-conscious, but I’m going to try and get over that.
0:01:15 Let’s bust right into it.
0:01:16 Let’s get into it.
0:01:18 He’s an imposter, but he’s your imposter.
0:01:24 How do you market to a world that doesn’t want to be bothered?
0:01:27 Nobody answers phone calls, texts, etc.
0:01:29 What medium drives engagement?
0:01:31 That’s a good question.
0:01:36 By the way, that question comes from teleheaddogfan on Reddit.
0:01:38 My subreddit is very entertaining.
0:01:39 Entertaining and upsetting.
0:01:41 I sometimes go on there and I think,
0:01:42 I’m not like that.
0:01:43 I’m a nice guy.
0:01:44 Say hi.
0:01:45 I’m a nice guy.
0:01:47 Anyways, okay, teleheaddogfan.
0:01:51 The mediums that drive engagement, there’s just no getting around it.
0:01:59 If you want to build a personal brand, if you want to build an aspirational brand, you have to allocate more money to social.
0:02:02 I think about just the amount of time.
0:02:04 I mean, you are where you spend your time.
0:02:09 One of the reasons I got off X is I found that I was speaking in 140 characters and I was becoming terse
0:02:16 and constantly looking for the weak point in people’s arguments such that I could weigh in and press on the soft tissue
0:02:20 and make a character or a cartoon of their comments such that I could feel good about myself.
0:02:22 In other words, I was becoming an asshole.
0:02:24 I mean, that’s literally what X is.
0:02:28 It’s like an asshole turns into a social media platform.
0:02:29 And I thought, you know what?
0:02:31 I already have too much tendency to be an asshole.
0:02:35 I don’t need an environment that turns me into an even bigger a-hole.
0:02:38 So you want to go where people are spending their time.
0:02:41 And the bottom line is social media is where everyone is spending their time.
0:02:47 In addition, the people who kind of set the trend for most aspirational brands are youth, right?
0:02:50 Once your dad starts wearing Nikes, the young people stop wearing them.
0:02:55 So everybody wants to kind of follow the lead of an 18 to 30-year-old aspirational male or female.
0:02:59 And those people are spending way too much time on social media.
0:03:02 So I would say that social is engagement.
0:03:04 I think events create a lot of engagement.
0:03:06 Content marketing, if you’re B2B.
0:03:12 At L2, we used to put out these weekly videos that went on one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, YouTube.
0:03:15 And we built essentially our own mic.
0:03:19 Instead of paying some PR agency $10,000 a month to get me on Bloomberg or whatever it was,
0:03:22 we went straight to consumer.
0:03:24 We went direct to consumer with our own media channels.
0:03:30 And we would put out thoughtful research and interesting data that a ton of consumer brands was focused on CMOs.
0:03:32 We’d watch the video.
0:03:35 And we were constantly in the selection set.
0:03:43 So when they thought, you know, I’d really like to benchmark my digital footprint relative to Clorox or Unilever or whoever’s in the competitive set of P&G.
0:03:46 P&G would think, well, call that crazy dude and his firm L2.
0:03:55 And within about seven years of launch, we were working with a third of the global 100 or the 100 biggest companies in the consumer world.
0:04:01 So B2C, I think you’ve got to be a master of social and find a voice and create two-way engagement.
0:04:05 B2B, I think it’s content marketing or thought leadership.
0:04:07 That’s my kind of quick and dirty answer.
0:04:09 Thank you so much, Telehead dog fan.
0:04:10 Question number two.
0:04:14 Our next question also comes from Reddit, user mxt240.
0:04:19 I work for a giant software company.
0:04:23 I do nerd work, not face work or management, and I am damn good at it.
0:04:27 Every so often, I get emails telling me to build my personal brand.
0:04:29 What the fuck does that actually mean?
0:04:31 Should I always wear cardigans?
0:04:33 Do I need a catchphrase?
0:04:35 Inspirational bullshit in my email signature?
0:04:38 I’m well-respected and well-liked by my peers.
0:04:41 And I take time to unofficially mentor those less experienced.
0:04:45 Isn’t there value in hyper-exclusive brands that don’t advertise?
0:04:48 Mike C240, so thanks for the question.
0:04:51 I teach an entire class on building a personal brand.
0:04:56 A lot of people think a lot about the brand of the company they’re working for, but they don’t actually take the time to think about their own brand.
0:04:59 And they might think, well, I’m not interested in building a brand.
0:05:01 You have a brand whether you want one or not.
0:05:11 A brand is essentially the promise or the associations that are linked to you and linked to your name, linked to your visual identity, linked to you when you show up.
0:05:16 Everybody has a certain preset set of expectations, the promise you present, if you will.
0:05:19 And then you have to deliver, hopefully, against that performance.
0:05:28 And ideally, you want to differentiate a brand such that when there’s an opportunity for a promotion or an assignment and they have five different cereal boxes, i.e. people to pick from, they pick you.
0:05:30 So how do you go about that?
0:05:35 The first thing is I think it’s helpful to think of what are your core associations?
0:05:37 What do you want to be known for professionally?
0:05:45 And that is the two or three kind of adjectives, descriptors that sort of identify, do you want to be known as especially empathetic?
0:05:46 That’s important.
0:05:47 Those people make great managers.
0:05:49 Do you want to be known as especially strategic?
0:05:52 And that is there’s a role for those people, all right?
0:05:55 Put them on figuring out our six- or 12-month plan.
0:05:56 Are you kind of no-nonsense?
0:06:07 All right, send that person, and kind of harsh, quite frankly, and good with numbers, send that person to the branch in Houston and have them do the analysis and come back and give it to me straight on what’s going on with that business.
0:06:22 There’s all sorts of qualities, features, attributes that are positive or differentiate someone in the work world, and I think it’s helpful to kind of identify what those three things are, those two or three things are, such that they can serve as sort of a guiding light or a religion.
0:06:23 Think about religion.
0:06:33 It’s a set of rules that you try and shape your actions and your life around, such that you behave in a way that reinforces the teaching of Jesus Christo, right?
0:06:34 What would Jesus do?
0:06:36 I remember that question in Sunday school.
0:06:38 By the way, rest in peace, El Papa.
0:06:39 Rest in peace.
0:06:42 Anyways, so think of some core associations.
0:06:50 If you want to be really formal about it, find some people in your life you trust and say, what do you think of when you hear me in a professional context, tell me you’re going through this process?
0:06:55 And not only think about the positive things, but also find out if there’s anything negative.
0:06:59 And here’s how you know if that criticism is valid.
0:07:04 If you feel as if you’ve been punched in the gut, that means it’s true.
0:07:07 If they say something stupid and it’s mean or whatever, you can write it off.
0:07:12 But if it’s like I remember in some of my student reviews, they said that use profanity too much.
0:07:13 And as a result, it reduces your credibility.
0:07:15 And it really upset me.
0:07:16 Why did it really upset me?
0:07:17 Because it’s probably true.
0:07:19 And I kind of deep down know that it’s true.
0:07:21 Now, have I done anything about it?
0:07:21 Fuck no.
0:07:23 Well, a little bit.
0:07:24 In class, I try to tone it down.
0:07:28 But anyways, we’re going to think about if there’s any negatives that get in the way of us.
0:07:30 Then we’re going to think about visual metaphors.
0:07:32 We are a very visual species.
0:07:35 You need to lean into your visual metaphors.
0:07:35 Are you losing your hair?
0:07:38 Then shape your fucking hair like the dog when he was 30 years old.
0:07:45 And all of a sudden back then, in whatever it was, 2004, 1994, it was seen as aggressive and different, right?
0:07:46 Are you in good shape?
0:07:48 Then get in fucking crazy shape.
0:07:50 Do you have really wonderful frizzy hair?
0:07:52 Then have out of control frizzy hair.
0:07:53 Do you like glasses?
0:07:57 Then wear big Sally, Jesse, Raphael glasses.
0:07:59 Visual metaphors are so powerful.
0:08:00 What’s the most powerful thing about Nike?
0:08:06 Some people would argue it’s the advertising or, you know, landmark endorsements from Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan.
0:08:07 I don’t think so.
0:08:08 I think it’s the goddamn swoosh.
0:08:10 I can recognize the swoosh in my peripheral vision.
0:08:14 Can you recognize the Reebok logo in your peripheral vision or Puma?
0:08:15 No, swoosh, yes.
0:08:16 What does that mean?
0:08:24 It means billions of times they’re getting unearned media from people on the street who recognize that swoosh without even thinking about it consciously.
0:08:25 What is your visual metaphor?
0:08:28 What is your medium?
0:08:30 Are you really good at giving text?
0:08:32 Are you a great writer?
0:08:33 Are you fantastic on TikTok?
0:08:35 Can you put out PowerPoint?
0:08:37 Are you fantastic speaking in front of people?
0:08:47 Whatever your medium is, you need to identify it and then find every opportunity to display your expertise in that meeting and develop a following.
0:08:49 I am really good in front of a lot of people.
0:08:50 I’m not great one-on-one.
0:08:54 I’m very good on video and decent on social media.
0:08:55 I’m not that good on the phone.
0:09:03 So I try and shape my interactions and my contact with others around those mediums and specifically avoid the ones I’m not good at.
0:09:06 What is the one thing, the product you’re going to own?
0:09:09 You have to be known as the go-to person on one thing.
0:09:14 When it comes to pivot tables, looking at forecasting, our customer acquisition strategy.
0:09:15 Oh, we got to go to Lisa.
0:09:16 Okay.
0:09:27 When it comes to recruiting, sending someone to Carnegie Mellon to do recruiting and talk about the firm, you know, Bob is just so good, so young, so handsome, so excited about the firm.
0:09:29 That’s the person we want in front of the people.
0:09:32 Well, what about someone who knows how to manage people?
0:09:33 They’re just very good.
0:09:34 They’re a player or coach.
0:09:35 Okay, that’s Catherine.
0:09:38 We got to put Catherine in charge of this group and we’ll get better work out of them.
0:09:43 What is the one thing you are going to own?
0:09:45 Core associations, positives.
0:09:51 A negative association that might be getting in the way of people getting to the core associations, the positive ones that you need to dial down.
0:09:53 What is your medium?
0:09:55 What is your visual metaphor?
0:09:57 And what are you going to own?
0:09:58 Right?
0:10:00 And then we’re going to apply three hurdles.
0:10:01 First, is it differentiated?
0:10:04 Is that being able to do pivot tables and being known as empathetic?
0:10:06 Is that really differentiated in this firm?
0:10:07 You want to be different.
0:10:09 Two, does anyone care?
0:10:11 Is it relevant to what you do every day?
0:10:13 And then third, what are you going to do to make it sustainable?
0:10:23 What are you going to do to invest in it such that you pull away from the rest of the pack and consistently get better and go deeper and deeper and deeper in those chosen kind of domains which you want to own?
0:10:24 All right, that’s it.
0:10:25 Boom, your brand is done.
0:10:27 And yeah, it’s absolutely worth it, boss.
0:10:29 And be clear, you have a brand.
0:10:32 It’s just a question of whether you want to manage it or not.
0:10:33 Thanks for the question.
0:10:36 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
0:10:49 In most ways, Google and Apple are ruthless competitors.
0:10:59 But then a high-powered Apple executive gets up on the stand at the trial that might break up Google and argues that actually Google’s fine and the best thing you can do is leave it alone.
0:11:01 Why?
0:11:06 Because Google being left alone means $20 billion a year for Apple.
0:11:15 On the VergeCast this week, we talk all about what’s going on at the Google trial, plus the latest from the efforts to break up Meta, what’s going on with Netflix, and lots more.
0:11:17 All that on the VergeCast, wherever you get podcasts.
0:11:24 Question three.
0:11:25 Welcome back.
0:11:28 Our final question comes from Proof of Profits on Threads.
0:11:34 American companies are known for their great marketing.
0:11:38 They’ve been so effective that we’ve seen genericized trademarks.
0:11:42 How much of a role has this played into the monopolization of America?
0:11:45 And are America’s duopolies bad for consumers?
0:11:48 If so, what can we do to change it?
0:11:58 I think what you’re asking is, has great marketing led to the concentration of industries where we have monopolies or duopolies that extract unfair rents from other businesses or consumers?
0:12:00 I don’t think it’s a great marketing.
0:12:07 I think it’s mostly regulatory capture and a lack of FTC or DOJ who’s been essentially in a slumber for about 30 or 40 years.
0:12:27 The bottom line is, when you have one company that controls two-thirds of all social media, Meta, one company that controls 92% of search, Google, one company that controls 50% of all e-commerce, Amazon, and one company that controls, I don’t know, 50% of all smartphones and 90% of the revenues from smartphones, Apple.
0:12:34 It probably means we’d be better off if we broke these companies up, such that there’d be more entities trying to rent people’s labor.
0:12:35 Wages would go up.
0:12:41 They’d be more focused and more risk-taking because they wouldn’t be coordinating and cooperating with each other.
0:12:43 How did Google let OpenAI ever exist?
0:12:43 Why?
0:12:52 Because despite the fact that the majority of AI IP resided within Alphabet, they didn’t want to risk the existential threat.
0:12:54 They didn’t want to disrupt their own search business.
0:13:01 So they weren’t excited to kind of put out an AI product that might disrupt or cannibalize their Google search.
0:13:02 So what happened?
0:13:05 They left the door open or they left the garage door open.
0:13:09 And Sam Altman walked right in and took their AI.
0:13:12 In some, you’ve got to eat your own young or someone else will.
0:13:16 So effectively, what’s happened in breakups is that they’ve been good for shareholders.
0:13:37 I would argue the biggest increase in rents from Meta have been the rents on parents who have to put up with social media that is making their kids feel shittier and shittier about themselves.
0:13:38 There’s no real options.
0:13:42 And when you say, well, it’s bad parenting, just get them off of Instagram or just get them off of Snap.
0:13:44 Well, here’s the problem.
0:13:47 They end up more depressed because everybody is on Snap or Instagram.
0:13:49 And if they’re not on it, they feel ostracized.
0:13:54 So we’re in sort of this prisoner’s dilemma where we don’t know what to do as parents.
0:14:01 But we see a consolidation across majority of industries where they weaponize government and say, let us be regulated monopolies.
0:14:05 They buy off senators and congresspeople from both sides of the aisle.
0:14:10 And the DOJ and the FTC have been neutered and you have a concentration of industry.
0:14:12 I would want to do that.
0:14:12 I wouldn’t.
0:14:13 Why?
0:14:14 Peter Thiel said it.
0:14:16 Competition is for idiots.
0:14:17 You don’t want competition.
0:14:19 You want to figure out a way to have access to cheap capital.
0:14:25 Establish yourself as a leader, which gives you more cheap capital such that you can just pull away from the competition.
0:14:40 And then you start investing in D.C. where they basically say, despite the fact you have 93% share of search, despite the fact that you’re radicalizing young men on Google, we’re not going to move in and we’re not going to break you up because there are so many really charming, highly paid people.
0:14:48 Do you realize there are more full-time lobbyists in Washington, D.C., living in Washington, D.C., who work for Amazon than there are sitting U.S. senators?
0:14:50 Let me repeat that.
0:14:54 There are more full-time lobbyists, really well-paid.
0:15:08 They make a lot more than any senator whose entire job is to be likable and take senators to lunch and take them golfing and give their money for the campaign and have really thoughtful conversations about the future of e-commerce and why they should not break up Amazon.
0:15:09 And here’s the thing.
0:15:13 When you’re paid not to understand something, you’re never going to understand it.
0:15:19 So when you’re paid not to understand why that concentration of power is bad, you’re never going to understand it.
0:15:20 So what do we have?
0:15:21 Wireless.
0:15:24 Verizon and AT&T control 70% of the U.S. market.
0:15:28 Soft drinks, Coke and Pepsi, 70% of the U.S. soda market.
0:15:29 E-commerce.
0:15:30 Amazon.
0:15:33 Again, somewhere between 40% and 50%, depending on how you account for it.
0:15:39 According to the Brookings Institution, 75% of U.S. industries have seen an increase in concentration over the past two decades.
0:15:43 It’s everything from home improvement to big chicken to big pharma.
0:15:47 And what do they do when they have a lack of competition or they kind of wink at each other and cooperate?
0:15:48 They raise prices.
0:15:58 In some, there’s been a transfer of wealth from lower and middle-income households that don’t have a lot of stocks to these companies in the form of higher prices.
0:16:00 Why do you think inflation is so fucking out of control?
0:16:04 Every year, companies get more productive, which means they should be able to pass on the savings to the consumer.
0:16:06 But instead, they increase their profits.
0:16:09 And by the way, there’s some ancillary benefit to that.
0:16:10 It’s great to be a shareholder.
0:16:11 But what’s happened to wages?
0:16:12 Boom.
0:16:13 They haven’t moved at all.
0:16:14 Right?
0:16:15 What’s happened to household wealth?
0:16:19 Well, the average has gone way up because the top 10%, the shareholders are killing it.
0:16:26 So essentially, there’s been a transfer of wealth from the lower and middle-class households to the households that own shares.
0:16:31 So if you’ve made the jump from widespread from being an earner to an owner, you’ve done really well.
0:16:36 But the earners now have higher costs and can never make that jump to being an owner.
0:16:37 What’s the result?
0:16:39 Dynastic caste system.
0:16:41 Alphabet should be three companies.
0:16:45 It should be YouTube, it should be their advertising, and then it’s search and other companies.
0:16:47 It might even spin off Waymo.
0:16:50 Apple Services should be a different company from Apple.
0:16:55 Instagram should be an independent company, as should WhatsApp, for God’s sakes.
0:17:04 AWS should be an independent company, not part of Amazon where they cooperate and coordinate and get cheap capital to put every online retailer out of business.
0:17:05 What would we have?
0:17:06 Who wins?
0:17:06 Shareholders.
0:17:08 Who wins?
0:17:08 Employees.
0:17:10 Who wins?
0:17:12 Society, lower rents.
0:17:13 Who wins?
0:17:14 The tax base.
0:17:14 Who loses?
0:17:21 The one person who has dual-class supervoting shares who wants to sit on the iron throne of all seven realms, not just Westeros.
0:17:30 We absolutely need an absolute breakup palooza to bring costs down, to bring rents down on consumers.
0:17:36 The concentration of industry in the United States is the culprit around inflation.
0:17:38 Thanks for the question.
0:17:40 That’s all for this episode.
0:17:45 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at propertymedia.com.
0:17:47 That’s officehours at propertymedia.com.
0:17:54 Or, if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.
0:18:05 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
0:18:07 Our intern is Dan Shallon.
0:18:09 Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:18:12 Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:18:17 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn.
0:18:23 And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.
0:18:23 Thank you.

0:00:01 Hi, I’m Frances Frey.
0:00:02 And I’m Anne Morris.
0:00:06 And we are the hosts of a new TED podcast called Fixable.
0:00:09 We’ve helped leaders at some of the world’s most competitive companies
0:00:11 solve all kinds of problems.
0:00:13 On our show, we’ll pull back the curtain
0:00:16 and give you the type of honest, unfiltered advice
0:00:18 we usually reserve for top executives.
0:00:21 Maybe you have a coworker with boundary issues
0:00:24 or you want to know how to inspire and motivate your team.
0:00:26 No problem is too big or too small.
0:00:29 Give us a call and we’ll help you solve the problems you’re stuck on.
0:00:32 Find Fixable wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:00:37 Support for the show comes from Yonder.
0:00:40 While technology can be incredibly helpful for teaching and learning,
0:00:43 it can also be a source of seemingly endless screens and distractions.
0:00:47 And those distractions can keep us from being present and focused in the moment,
0:00:49 especially in places like school.
0:00:52 Yonder says they are committed to fostering phone-free schools
0:00:55 so students can learn without distractions, social media pressure,
0:00:56 or worries about being filmed.
0:00:59 Yonder has put its years of experience forward
0:01:01 so they can support schools through the whole process,
0:01:04 from policy and planning to culture transition and launch.
0:01:07 Learn more at overyonder.com.
0:01:11 That’s O-V-E-R-Y-O-N-D-R.com.
0:01:13 Overyonder.com.
0:01:21 We used to have big ideals and dreams when we were still in university.
0:01:24 We wrote these beautiful application essays
0:01:28 about how we were going to fix tax avoidance and tax evasion,
0:01:31 how we’re going to tackle global hunger and work at the United Nations.
0:01:33 And look at us.
0:01:33 What has happened?
0:01:35 What has happened?
0:01:39 This week on The Gray Area, we’re talking about our moral ambition.
0:01:41 Where did it go?
0:01:43 And what we can do to get it back?
0:01:46 New episodes of The Gray Area drop on Mondays.
0:01:47 Available everywhere.
0:01:56 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:57 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:02:00 Jessica is jet-setting across Europe this week,
0:02:03 which I think is awfully nervy given she’s a new employee.
0:02:08 Our vacation policy is you don’t take vacation the first couple of years here at a
0:02:10 Galloway-sponsored corporation.
0:02:16 But anyways, she has decided to head to Europe where I think she’s in Italy or something like that.
0:02:18 But our loss is our gain.
0:02:21 On with us is literally our favorite side piece.
0:02:23 The Bulwarks’ own Tim Miller.
0:02:26 Tim is literally our favorite three and threesome.
0:02:29 We have become the same person or the same podcast, Tim.
0:02:31 If I’m on something, you’re on it before.
0:02:33 You’re on with Jess a lot.
0:02:35 Anyways, it’s great to have you, Tim.
0:02:35 How are you?
0:02:37 I love being a third, you know?
0:02:39 So I really appreciate it.
0:02:40 You know, it spices things up.
0:02:41 And we are.
0:02:42 We are becoming the same person.
0:02:44 I had your sidekick, Ed.
0:02:45 That’s right.
0:02:48 On my Gen Z podcast, like last week, I love Ed.
0:02:52 I’m thinking about kicking my co-host, Cameron Kasky, off and replacing him with Ed.
0:02:56 So if you have any problems with him, if he’s taking too much vacation, I might poach him.
0:02:57 I watched that.
0:02:58 How old is your young guy?
0:02:59 I love how we both-
0:02:59 He’s 24.
0:03:00 He’s 24?
0:03:01 Wow.
0:03:02 Yeah.
0:03:02 Ed is 26.
0:03:04 Yeah.
0:03:05 But you’re a kid, too.
0:03:06 I think it’s more adorable.
0:03:08 Because I have the grandfather thing.
0:03:09 You’re just like the big brother.
0:03:09 Yeah.
0:03:10 Little big brother vibe.
0:03:12 Got to keep making them behave.
0:03:12 There you go.
0:03:14 Are you in New Orleans today?
0:03:14 Where are you?
0:03:15 I’m in New Orleans, yeah.
0:03:18 I was in New York over the weekend, back in New Orleans.
0:03:20 I’m here for a couple weeks.
0:03:24 And then we got a live show in Chicago and Nashville, if any Raging Moderates listeners want to come.
0:03:26 May 27th and 28th.
0:03:26 Look at me.
0:03:28 I’m just plugging, baby.
0:03:29 Tell me a little bit about the live shows.
0:03:30 How many people do you get?
0:03:31 What’s the business model?
0:03:32 Do you enjoy it?
0:03:33 I just lied.
0:03:34 It’s May 28th and 29th.
0:03:35 28th and Chicago, 29th and Nashville.
0:03:37 I love them.
0:03:37 We love them.
0:03:41 We are getting, I think, almost 1,000 people in Chicago.
0:03:46 And they’re closer to like 400 in Nashville, kind of a small, you know, big market, small market thing.
0:03:54 And we haven’t quite figured out on the business, Scott Brain, we haven’t like really quite figured out how to monetize them in a way that is that useful to the bottom line.
0:03:57 But I think it’s still useful because it’s cool for the community.
0:03:59 People love it.
0:04:03 They like, especially in kind of our world, people love like, when I see people on the street, I’m sure you get this too.
0:04:09 It’s just like, I just like listening to you because I feel like I’m going insane and it makes me feel sane to listen.
0:04:15 And so then it makes you feel even more sane when you’re around other sane people that you can kind of vent to about the craziness of the world.
0:04:17 And so I think it’s good for the community side of things.
0:04:18 I like being out with the people.
0:04:23 I feel a little bit disconnected sometimes when I’m up here in my hole in New Orleans.
0:04:25 I can’t leave my little studio hole.
0:04:27 And so it’s nice to have human contact.
0:04:31 One of my colleagues, Jonathan Last, doesn’t like human contact.
0:04:33 So it’s not a plus for him, but it is a plus for me.
0:04:34 So it’s kind of invigorating.
0:04:35 So I dig it.
0:04:39 I mean, I think that, you know, we only do maybe six a year, seven a year.
0:04:43 So it would become a burden if you’re like, we’re doing a real tour, like a rock and roll tour.
0:04:49 Yeah, I’ve always said that it’s really a shame that these LLMs and AI is crawling the digital world and not crawling the real world.
0:04:55 Because I find online people not so nice, but people out in the wild couldn’t be more lovely.
0:04:55 Totally.
0:04:57 Well, it’s not because people are cowards.
0:05:04 And so there are some people that you see in public that are lovely, that are nuts online, you know.
0:05:17 Some of it is that and other others of it is just like online draws in like the people who want to be engaged for the most part, present company excluded are like, I think it draws people in with mental illness.
0:05:18 I don’t know.
0:05:25 I just like I like, for example, I just think back to, you know, something like after the Biden debate when I was super critical of him because it was just obvious.
0:05:34 I the commenters on my social media and on the blog were really mad at me, like the lefty commenters are like, no, I don’t you understand the assignment.
0:05:35 I got a lot of that, too.
0:05:42 Yeah, but then out in the real world or on my email or text message in private communications, everybody was like, thank God you’re saying this.
0:05:43 I mean, this is crazy.
0:05:44 Like, that was insane.
0:05:45 I couldn’t even watch it.
0:05:46 It was so painful to watch, right?
0:05:48 And that’s just one example.
0:05:49 There are a million examples of this.
0:05:54 I do think that social media kind of draws in the most mentally ill people to be the most active.
0:05:55 I don’t know.
0:05:57 I maybe need to reflect on that myself, possibly.
0:06:04 But also, I think that just being alone makes you more mentally ill and makes you more isolated and makes you less empathetic and more angry.
0:06:13 And I think those are the people who have a disproportionate share or voice online because, quite frankly, they’re home and they’ve got not a lot else to do.
0:06:18 I think a lot of what ails us is the social isolation and the fact that we don’t recognize we’re mammals.
0:06:22 And, you know, you put an orc on a tank alone, it literally goes crazy.
0:06:26 And, you know, a Cape buffalo gets excommunicated from the herd.
0:06:28 It usually goes crazy or gets eaten and dies.
0:06:29 Totally agree with that.
0:06:32 I could not be more human contact, just pro-human contact.
0:06:34 It’s just another thing that, you know, we’re aligned on.
0:06:35 Good.
0:06:40 So, in today’s episode, we’re going to be discussing the Qataris may gift Trump a luxury jet.
0:06:44 Tell me that thing probably doesn’t look like an Iraqi whorehouse inside.
0:06:45 What do you think the decor looks like inside?
0:06:50 Yeah, I mean, it probably looks like the Uday and Kuse suite in the palace, for sure.
0:06:58 And, look, there’s so much horrifying about this story, but the funny part of it is, I guess it was parked at the West Palm Beach FBO in February.
0:07:01 And Trump was like, I want to go check that out.
0:07:08 He’s, like, immediately drawn to the opulence of the Qatari, you know, whorehouse in the sky.
0:07:12 And that, I guess, is what started us down this path to this bribe coming through.
0:07:16 And, you know, that is just very Trumpy, you know, a very Trumpy origin story.
0:07:19 But it’s really, I mean, obviously, it’s just bad on the corruption front.
0:07:28 Like, the idea that our country should be taking a $400 million bribe for another country that we have a complicated geopolitical relationship with is insane.
0:07:38 Simultaneously to that, if the corruption of the government part isn’t bad enough, Eric Trump signed a deal for, like, a golf course in Qatar for, I think, $5 billion.
0:07:44 So, there’s private corruption on top of the public corruption that is happening with Qatar.
0:07:51 And it’s particularly jarring, and I think it’ll be interesting to see what the kind of pro-Israel right folks say about this.
0:07:55 Like, Qatar was funding Hamas and was funding the campus protests.
0:08:05 So, in addition to just the corruption part, there’s the hypocrisy of, we are currently taking away the green cards and jailing people who participated in the campus protests.
0:08:13 At the same time, as we’re taking an Air Force One bribe from the country that was funding the same protests.
0:08:15 And the whole thing is just preposterous.
0:08:22 I have a chat group or a text group with some of my friends from the fraternity at UCLA, and the majority of them are Jewish.
0:08:24 And a lot of them voted for Trump.
0:08:30 I think most of them voted for Trump because, quite frankly, he’s seen as viewed as more resolute on Israel.
0:08:32 And I said, be clear.
0:08:37 You know, this guy likes Jews the way that hardcore evangelicals like Jews.
0:08:41 If you kind of go one layer deeper, their plan for us is not all that great.
0:08:43 You know, it’s all about the rapture.
0:08:46 When Jesus comes back, then they decide to kill most of us.
0:09:00 And the fact that, essentially, we have the Qataris giving the president a $400 million plane and sort of turning this into kind of, you know, the ultimate frequent flyer program.
0:09:09 I mean, first off, it’s embarrassing that America needs to take a plane manufactured in the U.S. from the Qatari government, that that’s where we are.
0:09:29 But also, the notion that you have the primary sponsor of Hamas and the political mouthpiece, and you have a country that has given about $4.8 billion of the $14 billion we have received from foreign governments to sponsor, quote, unquote, Middle Eastern studies departments.
0:09:42 I mean, Jews have to get past the fact that this notion that the president is going after universities because of anti-Semitism is just fucking ridiculous.
0:09:44 It has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
0:09:59 It’s him attacking progressive institutions and trying to implement thought leadership, that if he really cared about anti-Semitism, he wouldn’t be taking $400 million bribes from the primary sponsor of a group that murdered 1,200 Jews.
0:10:02 And I’m like, you guys don’t see this?
0:10:09 You don’t see the inconsistency here in that this isn’t about—I mean, we have totally become, at this point, pay for play.
0:10:11 The question I would put forward to you—
0:10:12 Do they see it?
0:10:14 Has the tech chain fired up since last night?
0:10:16 What they see is they see that it’s problematic.
0:10:28 What they see more, Tim is one of the guys in our group who’s this wonderful high-integrity guy, has this great small business that does specialty products.
0:10:33 You know those products—you go to a conference and you see those banners and the mugs and the water bottle with logos.
0:10:37 He has that kind of business, and he does—it’s a great business.
0:10:42 Fifteen million bucks, good living for 200 or 300 people, has put kids through college on it.
0:10:43 It’s a family business.
0:10:57 And his business is basically shut down overnight because of the ridiculous, sclerotic, reckless, like, approach to negotiating, where we’re negotiating against ourselves and both sides are losing around China.
0:11:01 And my friends are very—I don’t want to say economically focused.
0:11:02 Is that fair?
0:11:05 I’d say they’re more focused on America as a platform for prosperity.
0:11:06 I think they’re like most voters.
0:11:08 They think about who’s going to put more money in my pocket.
0:11:15 They think that essentially Washington is feckless and useless around social issues, and they’re focused on who they think is better for the economy.
0:11:28 And to have kind of one of us have our, you know, one of our close friends’ business basically just, like, turned off like it was a tap and threaten, you know, a multi-generational business, I think that hits hard.
0:11:30 I think that hits them at home.
0:11:42 The question I would have for you is I’m kind of—I want to move beyond the part of the program where we’re, like, screaming into TikTok about the corruption here and the obvious fraud or whatever you want to call it.
0:11:45 I have, like, seven more minutes of TikTok bits, though, but it’s fine.
0:11:47 We can move on quicker than you wanted.
0:11:47 It’s your show.
0:11:52 I guess I want to move to the part of the program where how do the Democrats become the party and not fucking around?
0:12:08 And this is my idea, and I’m curious what you think, that we should draft legislation, the, you know, Foreign Enemies Act, Part 2, 2.0, that says if you’re operating black sites in your country, El Salvador, if you’re trying to bribe our public officials, Qatar,
0:12:16 even if the president at that moment agrees with it, it doesn’t mean you’re not guilty of a crime or a violation of Emoluments Act or whatever.
0:12:25 And in three years and nine months, we are going to implement significant economic sanctions and rethink our geopolitical relationship with you.
0:12:31 And also be clear, in America, the White House and the branches of government or Congress tends to turn over.
0:12:35 I don’t think there’s any shaming the Trump administration and his acolytes.
0:12:54 So I’m about how do we start sending a chill down the backbone of some of these foreign governments and also some of the lower level people of these organizations that say, if you’re illegally incarcerating people, whether the president or whether the current head of ICE says that is okay, it doesn’t mean you’re not committing a crime.
0:13:00 I’m trying to figure out how we, quite frankly, move from the strongly worded letter to being a little bit more aggressive.
0:13:02 Any ideas or thoughts?
0:13:03 Yeah, I do.
0:13:03 I have a couple of thoughts on that.
0:13:07 And I was literally just talking to Bill Kristol about just on the Qatari plane thing.
0:13:10 Again, this is more of a strongly worded letter side of things.
0:13:12 And I have additional thoughts on top of it.
0:13:21 But I do think, just at minimum, somebody in the House, among the Democrats, should try to put forth through a privileged resolution creating a vote on the new Air Force One.
0:13:24 Like, make the Republicans actually vote to codify this.
0:13:26 Like, you have a majority, right?
0:13:33 Just say, look, if you guys want to take a $400 million bribe from the funder of Hamas, then put your money where your mouth is and vote for it.
0:13:46 Because, you know, we’re already seeing everybody from Ari Fleischer, who is Bush’s spokesperson, who’s been pro-Trump, to Laura Loomer, the insane MAGA conspiracy theorist, to the Free Press, which has been kind of like anti-anti-Trump, the Bari Weiss outfit.
0:13:49 Like, all of them are out this morning criticizing the Qatari plane thing today.
0:13:53 So I would at least force these Republicans to actually have to codify it.
0:13:53 That’s one.
0:14:01 The thing I liked about your El Salvador idea, legal is not my background, so I don’t have a lot of deep thoughts on how you can scare people into feeling like they might go to jail.
0:14:03 Although I like where your head’s at on that.
0:14:24 Economically, though, I mean, I think it would make sense for, you know, Democratic leaders either in or out of government right now to be talking with the EU and Carney and, like, I just got reelected in Australia about isolating El Salvador and saying that when we come back in charge, we’ll isolate El Salvador too.
0:14:28 Like, we will turn you into Nicaragua or Venezuela if you want to.
0:14:36 Like, if you want to be completely isolated from the world community, I know you’re very happy about this deal you’ve done with Donald Trump and his crime family, but they’re not going to be around forever.
0:14:50 And if you want the El Salvador economy to look like the North Korea, Nicaragua, or Venezuela economy, then keep going down this path of having, you know, of violating the Human Rights Council and what they’ve already signed and agreed to.
0:15:01 Like, you know, you cannot be part of the, you know, liberal, small L liberal world of nations if you are going to put somebody in a hole in a torture camp and not give them access to a lawyer.
0:15:07 Like, that’s just, that’s a no-go and we’ll stop doing trade with you and we’ll stop doing tourism with you.
0:15:19 And it would be hard to actually impact the El Salvador economy in a big way without the U.S. being involved, but you could start to lay the groundwork down for it in a way that might make Bukele start to think twice.
0:15:25 I think we’ve got to say to these folks, look, the president does not provide blanket immunity from economic sanctions or even criminality.
0:15:27 Just to say, look, you’re right.
0:15:32 Well, you’re good for three years, eight months and two weeks.
0:15:41 But after that, be clear, if the Democrats get control back, which there’s always a good chance at some point they will, it’s going to be really ugly for you.
0:15:55 Because I think we’ve got to go after the infrastructure and the enablers and the co-conspirators at this point, as opposed to, because it’s just pretty clear we’re not going to shame him or our current branches of government who have been weaponized and politicized.
0:15:57 That’s just not an effective strategy.
0:15:59 So let’s move on to the tariffs here.
0:16:00 All right.
0:16:07 So back in Washington, Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Chairman Powell, warned that Trump’s escalating trade war could drive the U.S. towards stagflation.
0:16:10 That’s probably a word you don’t know because you’re too young.
0:16:12 We haven’t had it since the 70s.
0:16:13 I’ve read about it in history.
0:16:13 You’ve read about it?
0:16:22 Well, I mean, as a Reagan fan, you know, as in high school Republicans, people talked about, you know, how he ran against stagflation.
0:16:23 So I’m familiar with it in that context.
0:16:30 So it’s this toxic mix of rising prices and rising unemployment where basically interest rates go up and the economy slows down.
0:16:36 And it’s sort of stagflation is sort of a step or a bridge to a depression.
0:16:40 But on Thursday, Trump announced a new trade framework with the U.K. that lowers tariffs,
0:16:43 but only on luxury cars, including a Rolls-Royce and Bentley.
0:16:43 Well, thank God.
0:16:46 And plane engines, I think, got thrown in there, too.
0:16:48 I think Rolls-Royce has given us some plane engines, too.
0:16:52 Toys, including Barbie and Hot Wheels, will face 100 percent tariff.
0:16:54 Then over the weekend, there was a surprise detour.
0:17:00 The U.S. and China agreed to a 90-day truce, temporarily rolling back some of the steep tariffs that had been hammering both economies.
0:17:11 By May 14th, the U.S. will slash its tariff on Chinese goods from 145 to 30 percent, while China will lower its own tariffs on American products from 125 percent to just 10 percent.
0:17:14 The move helped calm global markets.
0:17:17 But it’s anyone guess if the pause will hold.
0:17:19 They now have 90 days to make a deal.
0:17:21 What do you think will come out of this?
0:17:23 What’s your impression of what’s happened as of this morning, Tim?
0:17:28 Well, for starters, like, obviously, Trump linked and had very serious concerns about the economy.
0:17:37 I mean, if you just look at the broad contours of this, so a 30 percent tariff now in China is 20 percentage points higher than it was under Biden, right?
0:17:40 So it was at 10, and now it’s up to 30.
0:17:48 And so we’ve added the 20 percent tax on consumers who consume Chinese goods in exchange for nothing.
0:17:50 I mean, the Chinese didn’t even.
0:17:53 There were some, I guess, promises around fentanyl or something.
0:18:00 You know, in the past, you know, in the first Trump term when they did the tariffs to China, there was also a deal where, like, they were buying our soybeans.
0:18:03 And, you know, there are other, and maybe that’ll come over the next 90 days.
0:18:03 I don’t know.
0:18:10 But as of right now, you know, we still put a 20 percent, essentially, sales tax increase on Americans, like, for nothing.
0:18:13 Just so that Donnie could, like, feel tough for a little bit.
0:18:15 So how does it go from here?
0:18:21 I don’t, I mean, I think that I’d be interested in your take on, like, I noticed the markets are up quite a bit today.
0:18:33 I just generally think, and it’s maybe my pessimistic nature, that, like, the markets and business leaders have been, like, a little bit too sanguine about, like, kind of where we’re heading.
0:18:37 I think that this is going to be, like, relatively ugly.
0:18:46 Like, this move away from a total trade embargo on China has, like, walked us away from the brink of, like, a worst-case scenario economically, at least temporarily.
0:18:57 But even still, and if you would have went to any of these people in October and said, hey, I’m from May 2025, and here’s what the economic outlook’s going to look like then.
0:19:02 We’re going to have a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on everybody, 30 percent on China increased.
0:19:08 The tax bill that you guys were counting on is going to be floundering in Congress, and we’ll see what happens with that.
0:19:14 But we haven’t really made any meaningful progress of it yet on May, and, you know, GDP growth will be down to zero.
0:19:22 I feel like everybody would think that was – like, I feel like business people outside of politics would say that that’s, like, almost a worst-case imaginable scenario.
0:19:34 And that’s where we are now, but people are kind of spinning it as a positive because it ends up being better than what the worst-case scenario was that we were staring down the pike of had they kept the 145 percent in.
0:19:35 So, I don’t know.
0:19:36 What do you make of that?
0:19:40 Well, he’s definitely – so, he’s pulled the knife out of the back sort of halfway.
0:19:42 That’s the good news.
0:19:59 The bad news is the injury is going to take, I think, decades to heal because even worse than the tariffs themselves, which obviously increase consumer prices and slow the economy, I think the most lasting damage here is that we have now become the land or the economy of toxic uncertainty.
0:20:02 And that is people don’t even know how to plan their businesses.
0:20:19 And the U.S. S&P trades at a price earnings multiple of around 26, meaning for every dollar of profits that our great American companies generate, the world rewards us with $26 in value, which flows right into not only the pockets of shareholders but employees.
0:20:21 It lowers interest rates.
0:20:23 We can borrow money at a much lower rate.
0:20:29 The U.S. dollar is kind of the reserve currency because everybody wants to buy American stocks, so there’s greater demand for dollars.
0:20:40 And the U.S. being the reserve currency globally, literally lowers on average the interest rate that you pay across your student loans, your mortgages, and your carb loans, somewhere between half and 1%.
0:20:50 So, that’s just literally hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings that the Americans enjoy because of the fact that our markets trade at a higher multiple on earnings.
0:20:52 Now, why do they trade at a higher multiple?
0:20:53 A lot of reasons.
0:20:55 We’re more risk-aggressive.
0:20:56 Our technology is better.
0:20:59 We have more of a zeitgeist or a culture of entrepreneurship.
0:21:01 We have great universities, great intellectual property.
0:21:04 But we also have rule of law and consistency.
0:21:06 We’re seen as good trading partners.
0:21:08 We’re seen as people we can count on.
0:21:16 We’re seen as a place where there isn’t going to be a ton of corruption where you come and, say, open a bunch of restaurants, and then the government shows up one day and says, sorry, we now own them.
0:21:18 And that happens in other countries around the world.
0:21:24 Rule of law and consistency have been thrown out the window in just 110 days.
0:21:28 And you’re starting to see a reduction in the price earnings multiple.
0:21:35 And I believe over the next several years, we’re going to see a re-rating down of our price earnings multiple, which effectively increases the costs on all American businesses and consumers.
0:21:44 Because, and the market has sort of said this to a certain extent, the market has said, we don’t really know what this guy is going to do and we don’t trust him.
0:21:46 145% tariff.
0:21:49 I mean, this is what a bad negotiator is.
0:21:52 The first thing we need to do is dispel the myth that this guy is a good business person.
0:21:58 He would be wealthier if he’d taken his massive inheritance and invested it in index funds.
0:22:04 His business career includes a trail of bankruptcies and unpaid subcontractors.
0:22:11 To be fair, he’s an outstanding reality talk show host, made several hundred million dollars hosting and envisioning a reality talk show.
0:22:14 As a business person, he’s not very good.
0:22:18 And in terms of negotiating, he’s negotiating himself at this point.
0:22:27 He put on 145% tariff and then a few days later, without any counter from the Chinese, other than this is unacceptable and we’re not even going to talk, he said they’re unsustainable.
0:22:30 It’s like, well, boss, you’re the one that did it.
0:22:37 So to go to 145% and then to go down to 30%, and effectively what you have is the Chinese are divesting away.
0:22:40 This will keep the factories sort of humming in China.
0:22:46 This will basically loosen up or cancel the trade embargo for the time being.
0:22:50 But also in negotiation, you have to understand your leverage and the amount of leverage you have.
0:22:57 And what is typical of America and Donald Trump is that we’re under the impression we’re much more powerful than we are.
0:23:02 People think of us as, you know, we’re the only customer at the taco stand here.
0:23:04 And that without us, they go out of business.
0:23:06 We’re the third largest trading partner.
0:23:12 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the EU are bigger trading partners with China.
0:23:15 China has been divesting away from us.
0:23:17 This is kind of, I think this is good for them.
0:23:25 They get to continue to sell not as many products, but still not the shock that this trade embargo was going to implement on them.
0:23:29 At the same time, they will slowly but surely continue to divest away from us.
0:23:31 And that is what the whole world is doing, Tim.
0:23:36 The whole world is rerouting their supply chain around the United States, not even because of tariffs,
0:23:40 but because they don’t know how to plan their business with us because of this toxic uncertainty.
0:23:48 And I think these, that resupplying or that rerouting of the supply chain will take years, if not decades, to reheal.
0:23:57 And I do think the Americans have taken for granted, the American public, of just how inexpensive our goods are because of the supply chain that runs through the U.S.
0:24:01 of every major economy because they trust us and think there’s rule of law.
0:24:04 And those things are no longer a given with us.
0:24:09 The scariest data I’ve seen is that I think it was Pew or the Hoover.
0:24:15 Some polling organization did a poll of global citizens, took a statistically significant sampling.
0:24:23 And for the first time in the history, more people around the world think that China is a greater force for good in the world than the U.S.
0:24:28 Which says to me, people are much more inclined to do business with China than they are with the U.S.
0:24:31 And as someone who has run businesses, I’ve run businesses my whole life.
0:24:34 They’ve always been global businesses because they’ve been strategy and brand firms.
0:24:43 When I walk in and meet with LVMH or Samsung or, you know, I don’t know, Tata Motors, we’re taken seriously.
0:24:46 And also, when they do business with us, they want to do business with us.
0:24:55 If I’d started a brand strategy firm in Pakistan or even in Thailand, they’re just less inclined to do business with you because they don’t know you.
0:24:56 They don’t trust you as much.
0:24:58 They don’t think you’re as innovative.
0:25:01 They probably don’t think your employees are as good.
0:25:05 They’re not as confident you’re going to uphold your side of a legal contract.
0:25:12 The legal contracts aren’t as easily agreed to because they’re not as consistent with the kind of American or Western law.
0:25:16 All of that, we have had massive benefit from.
0:25:20 And I don’t think American consumers realize how much they benefited from that.
0:25:25 And they’re going to realize it when everything just gets a little bit more difficult.
0:25:25 Your thoughts?
0:25:26 You know, I agree with most of that.
0:25:29 I’ll just defer to your expertise on the economy side of things.
0:25:31 I concur with it.
0:25:35 I just like putting on my former Republican hat just on like the China hawk side of it.
0:25:48 I remember we used to have kind of a Republican Party that was strong against communism and that felt like, you know, wanted to use more of a Reaganite policy, you know, tour and great power struggles.
0:25:52 We’ve seen these guys basically fold in the face of China.
0:25:59 And I just think broadly, think about the advantages China has gained over the past five months.
0:26:11 I mean, in addition to the stuff you just laid out, the fact that we’ve totally gutted USAID and we’ve eliminated any soft power we have throughout the world and created a huge opportunity for China to fill that void.
0:26:26 To your point on the economic trading partner side of things, I think that if you are one of those Asian countries like Thailand that you just mentioned, like, I mean, don’t you feel like you can trust China a little bit more as a trading partner than you could have five months ago?
0:26:27 For sure.
0:26:29 Then you look at the policy side of things.
0:26:31 Just look at talk about leverage and weakness.
0:26:36 I mean, we completely fold on the, you know, Liberation Day tariffs.
0:26:53 Meanwhile, we also completely fold when it comes to TikTok and like the U.S. government puts into law a TikTok ban, but Donald Trump and this administration won’t enforce it because they’re afraid of the backlash from the American population.
0:27:07 So, like, China has been so successful in infiltrating American culture through TikTok that, and the power of that is so great that, like, the U.S. government is scared.
0:27:11 Let’s just be honest, scared to, like, enforce its own laws when it comes to banning TikTok.
0:27:13 You know, China State TV this morning, I saw this.
0:27:14 They put this out.
0:27:20 The outcome of trade talks with Trump team shows China’s firm countermeasures and resolute stance have been highly effective.
0:27:24 China gets nearly all tariffs off for doing very little other than agreeing to talk.
0:27:26 That’s their spin this morning.
0:27:35 So, I just think across every metric, we have made China stronger over the past five months in ways that, as you say, are going to be hard to unravel.
0:27:43 And there isn’t really any evidence that we are trying to, like, win a great power struggle with them.
0:27:54 And I guess I would add just the last thing I’d say on it is, if you’re China, I don’t, I’ve, it’s hard for me to get inside the head of Xi Jinping, but, and I don’t know what their plans are with regards to Taiwan or their timing.
0:28:09 But I just do not think they could look at America right now and think that we would put up any real resistance to their efforts to overtake Taiwan if they wanted to do it, based on how we’ve acted with regards to Ukraine, how we’ve acted with regards to this trade war.
0:28:16 So, I just think that we’ve weakened ourselves pretty noticeably across, you know, a variety of different metrics vis-a-vis China.
0:28:20 Yeah, I think the short-term winner is Europe because China wants to keep these factories humming.
0:28:24 So, they’ll have a lot of excess supply that they’ll be willing to sell at a discounted rate.
0:28:30 And I think the EU is about to get a massive amount, kind of, for sale on a ton of products.
0:28:33 The medium and the long-term winner, I actually think I agree with you, is China.
0:28:39 I know firsthand that their commerce executives and business people are roaming around Europe and Latin America saying,
0:28:43 hey, you may not like us, but you can trust us.
0:28:44 We do what we say we’re going to do.
0:28:48 And I was actually at dinner with the CEO of one of the largest companies in China.
0:28:53 And you said, yeah, for the first time, we’re talking to European companies about providing cloud services.
0:28:58 And the general reaction was always, we don’t trust China to store our data in the Chinese cloud.
0:29:03 And now the question is, okay, we don’t trust you, but we don’t necessarily trust American companies now either.
0:29:04 Look at the Elon Musk Starlink.
0:29:08 Like, they’re like, you know, are we going to trust Elon Musk with the internet access?
0:29:13 Obviously, I think that there are going to be some countries, they’re going to look at that both ways now.
0:29:19 Some will want to do that deal because they feel like it might be a way to get good favor of the Trump administration.
0:29:25 But I think others are going to feel about that the way they might have felt about China a couple of years ago.
0:29:26 You also have to do a better job as Democrats.
0:29:30 I think of who has been good at pushing back on autocrats.
0:29:32 I learned this, I did an interview with Anna Applebaum.
0:29:40 And she said, if you take Alexander Navalny as an example of someone who was able to push back on an emerging kleptocracy or an autocrat,
0:29:46 it was because he was able to connect it to people’s lives, that he had this sort of motto when he was running against Putin,
0:29:49 that, okay, they’re getting rich and there’s still potholes in Moscow.
0:29:54 And Elizabeth Warren or Senator Warren kind of summarized it nicely by saying,
0:29:58 they’re getting rich and you’re getting your health care taken away.
0:30:05 And I don’t think we’ve done a really good job of explaining to the American people that a kleptocracy creates a small number of very rich people,
0:30:11 whether it’s the people who are tipped off to the launch of the Trump coin the Friday night before inauguration,
0:30:16 small number of wallets, like 30 wallets made $800 million, thing spikes, they dumped the bag.
0:30:22 And then over the course of the next several weeks, 800,000 smaller investors lost billions.
0:30:32 And we haven’t done a good enough job connecting that, okay, when Elon Musk, as part of our negotiation with UK around tariffs, gets a Starlink deal,
0:30:35 that means every other American tech company, every other small business,
0:30:41 and by the way, 98% of the companies that make their living from import and export in the United States are small and medium-sized businesses
0:30:45 who create two-thirds of the jobs in America, but don’t have lobbyists.
0:30:55 And they don’t have enough money to get on Trump’s lunch calendar or be part of Eric’s executive, like, you know, $500,000 a year kind of fraternity, if you will.
0:30:57 Those are the people that get hurt the most.
0:31:03 And we, I don’t think we as Democrats have done a good enough job connecting the dots there.
0:31:14 Or that say, look, kleptocracy is a small tax and then a medium tax on everyone such that we can funnel a massive amount of money to a small number of people.
0:31:17 All right, let’s move on here.
0:31:18 We’ll take one quick break.
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0:33:03 Welcome back.
0:33:13 On the immigration front, a federal judge has blocked what may be one of the Trump administration’s most extreme efforts yet, the planned deportation of detainees to Libya.
0:33:27 ISIS detained Asian nationals in Texas and allegedly pressured them to voluntarily agree to be transferred to prisons controlled by armed militia in eastern Libya, despite widespread reports of torture and human rights abuses in those facilities.
0:33:34 At the same time, Trump is touting a 95% drop in illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border compared to last year.
0:33:41 Tim, is this a fear tactic designed to intimidate future migrants into staying away or self-deporting?
0:33:42 What do you think is going on here?
0:33:47 There definitely is a desire to try to intimidate people into self-deporting, and they’re actively doing this.
0:33:52 They’re running ads calling on people to self-deport right now throughout the country.
0:33:53 So there is that.
0:34:00 I think there is a little bit of a sadism to the Stephen Miller wing of the Trump administration.
0:34:11 I think some of them like the idea of doing these kind of outlandish types of deportation plans because, A, it’s intimidating.
0:34:17 B, I think they get some kind of pleasure out of it, maybe erotic pleasure.
0:34:17 I don’t know.
0:34:20 But, you know, it’s hard to keep track of all this stuff.
0:34:21 But the Libya thing is the latest.
0:34:29 There’s another story, I guess a week or two ago, of a guy, Omar Amin, who got deported to Rwanda.
0:34:41 He was from Iraq and had been pretty thinly and I think quite clearly falsely accused of being part of ISIS when he was in Iraq.
0:34:49 He had come to America, brought his whole family here, went through the refugee vetting process, was living in Sacramento, was working, did not have any crimes in America.
0:34:56 But, you know, there was some cable where he was on a list of people that were ISIS members.
0:34:59 You know, he, him and his lawyer says that’s false.
0:35:06 Anyway, he gets jailed during the first Trump administration, has been jailed since then, and we just sent him to Rwanda, you know, where he’s not from.
0:35:14 And, you know, we have the – there’s another situation I was just reading this morning in New York with these two guys who are 19 and 20, graduated high school, were from El Salvador.
0:35:24 You know, their parents brought him here when they were kids, they hadn’t broken any laws, were good students, spoke English, and they went to their immigration checkup.
0:35:32 They ended up getting shackled, sent to Louisiana, and now are about to be sent back to El Salvador where they, you know, they don’t remember or know anybody in El Salvador.
0:35:42 So, like, all of this, you know, is part of the broader effort to, yes, intimidate and to send a signal to the world that people aren’t welcome here anymore.
0:35:44 And that’s what they want, right?
0:35:49 I mean, look, the only people they’re going to welcome into this country are white Afrikaners from South Africa.
0:35:54 I mean, I don’t think you’ve got to, you know, read between the lines too much on that.
0:35:55 And it’s outrageous.
0:36:14 And I think that, you know, part of this stuff, to your point in the last thing about Democrats, I think that the more Democrats can just speak, whether it’s about the economy or whether it’s about this stuff, in normal language and focus on things that people understand, people really don’t want kids that were brought here where there are four to be sent back to El Salvador.
0:36:16 Like, that is not a popular policy.
0:36:24 They don’t want people to be grabbed off the street by masked agents and sent to a prison camp in El Salvador or a prison camp in Libya.
0:36:26 Like, those are not popular things.
0:36:38 And I think that you can talk about those things in regular language that speak to American values while also, you know, not going down crazy lefty open borders like territory.
0:36:40 And I think that it’s important to be able to do both.
0:36:42 Yeah, I feel I’m of two minds on this.
0:36:44 The first is this is still his most popular policy.
0:36:47 And there’s just no getting around it.
0:36:52 I feel like a lot of this was the Democrats sticking their chin out and just waiting to get tagged hard.
0:36:56 And a quarter of a million people crossed the border in December of 23.
0:36:57 We were just sort of asking for it.
0:37:07 And then they see, OK, them getting Trump, you know, or Biden-Harris hats and free phone cards and hotel rooms and Americans saying, OK, there’s something wrong here.
0:37:16 But I’ve never understood about this whole argument or where I feel Americans fail to see what’s going on is that immigration is obviously the secret sauce of America.
0:37:19 But I’ve always thought I’m kind of where Friedman was on this.
0:37:27 And that is the most profitable part of immigration is illegal immigration because they’re essentially the most flexible, inexpensive workforce in history.
0:37:35 When there’s crops to be picked or old people to be taken care of or dishes to be washed and we can’t afford or find domestic workers.
0:37:39 The reason why it’s fairly inexpensive to eat out is because of illegal immigration.
0:37:45 And in some cities, somewhere between 15, 25 percent of fast food workers are undocumented workers.
0:37:54 And in addition, they generate a surplus of 100 billion dollars in the Social Security program because most of them are younger and they don’t stick around for Social Security.
0:37:56 They pay their taxes and they pay their taxes and then they go back.
0:38:03 A mass deportation effort, some estimates, put at 4 to 7 percent loss or reduction in GDP.
0:38:09 And also there, 90 percent of undocumented, of the undocumented population is working age.
0:38:16 About a third of agricultural workers, a quarter of ground maintenance workers, and about a quarter of all food service workers are undocumented.
0:38:19 So, I mean, you’re just – your prices are going to go up, folks.
0:38:22 And there’s this trope and there are some very bad people.
0:38:24 I do not believe in open borders.
0:38:25 I believe you have to have a country.
0:38:35 But the question I would have for you because I don’t feel as if I am very knowledgeable or have a deep domain expertise around immigration is that we want to demonize immigrants.
0:38:46 But wouldn’t the fastest way to solve this problem to be to go to the demand side and that is say to Chipotle or lawn care companies, we’re doing random audits.
0:38:53 And based on the percentage of people who are clearly undocumented, we’re going to find you $10,000 a day because they don’t come here to rape.
0:38:56 These immigrants don’t come here to commit crimes or to start gang warfare.
0:38:58 They come here for jobs.
0:39:12 And if you went on the demand side and basically hit those nice American people with real fines such that they started implementing – and they could do this with biometrics or, you know, just simple documentation, verification.
0:39:19 If there’s no jobs, if it’s like, okay, I’m sorry, I can’t hire you, they melt back to where they came from.
0:39:20 But we don’t want to do that, do we?
0:39:22 Yeah, two thoughts on this.
0:39:28 One is – and I think that it reveals a lot about why they’re targeting, who they’re targeting, what the motivations are.
0:39:34 They don’t – this administration doesn’t want to go after business owners directly, right?
0:39:37 And if they get hurt by the tariffs because Trump’s obsessed with tariffs, that’s one thing.
0:39:42 But they’re not trying to make enemies of people that they think voted for them or possibly voted for them, small business owners.
0:39:51 Plus on top of that, Donald Trump is an employer of illegal immigrants who worked at, you know, his hotels and golf courses, which he knows.
0:39:53 So they don’t have any interest in doing that.
0:39:54 You’re exactly right.
0:39:55 They could – there’s e-verification.
0:40:00 I mean this has been something that like border hawks, immigration hawks have been proposing ever since I’ve been in politics.
0:40:07 In fact, many of the candidates I worked for like supported that as something that’s on your policy agenda in the campaign.
0:40:15 But then you don’t actually put into place in government e-verify because you don’t want to actually punish the small business owners that are likely Republican voters.
0:40:19 So what they’re doing now is they feel like low risk, right?
0:40:33 Like who is – sure, there are probably some working class Hispanic voters that moved over to Trump that are starting to have a – maybe a change of heart because they had a cousin or a friend or something who is not a criminal, who’s been deported, or they know somebody who has.
0:40:49 But broadly speaking, if you take an 18- and 19-year-old El Salvador kid that was brought here that can’t vote, brought here illegally by their parents, and you send them back to El Salvador, you’re not paying a political price for that in any meaningful way.
0:40:50 And it is immoral.
0:40:58 It’s an affront to what the country is supposed to be about, and it’s affront to the very American ethos of people wanting to come here and have an opportunity.
0:41:00 But you’re not paying a political price there.
0:41:03 So I just think that they’re doing it.
0:41:07 There’s obviously some racial elements to it as referenced earlier with the white Afrikaners.
0:41:19 But it’s also just they feel like it’s much more politically palatable to go after 18- and 19-year-old kids that would have been dreamers or whatever than it is to go after American business owners.
0:41:21 And just one really quick thing on the economy.
0:41:22 I agree.
0:41:23 This all takes time.
0:41:24 This is going to happen now.
0:41:32 But just adding on to what we talked about earlier with tariffs, you add on to that, we’re deporting a bunch of people that are working, doing cheap work.
0:41:35 We’re not bringing in nearly as many people as we were.
0:41:43 So the shutting down of the border is good in that it’s shutting down some of the fentanyl traffic and some of the gang labor, but it’s also shutting down people that were coming here to work.
0:41:48 And then on top of that, we’re firing a lot of people in the federal workforce or putting them on the sidelines.
0:41:53 They’re probably going to end up getting paid anyway, so we’re going to be paying them to do nothing while that goes to the courts.
0:42:00 And it’s harder for recent college grads to get jobs, you know, in a lot of these areas because people don’t know what’s going to be happening with the government.
0:42:09 I just think that there are a lot of economic factors there that are pointing to a pretty bad situation, you know, once it all, you know, starts to hum through the economy.
0:42:10 Curious.
0:42:11 Let me put forward a thesis.
0:42:12 I want to get your response to it.
0:42:14 So I have a 17-year-old son.
0:42:28 And there’s been reports in verification of actual people who aren’t criminals, people who were brought here, grew up here, being deported, some ending up in these hellscapes, prisons, and also reports of U.S. citizens.
0:42:40 My view is unfortunately that a lot of Democrats who are very wealthy clutch their pearls and say at dinner parties how outraged they are.
0:42:48 But they don’t really do a fucking thing about it because there’s this emerging what I’ll call transnational oligarchy, a togarks.
0:42:53 And that’s if you’re in the 1%, A, you have a disproportionate amount of power.
0:42:56 And without you, it’s very hard to get anything done without your support.
0:42:59 And so it’s easy to complain about it at dinner parties.
0:43:04 But the reality is in America that your rights have become a function of your wealth.
0:43:09 My kid is not going to be sequestered by ICE and sent to El Salvador.
0:43:11 There’s just zero chance that could happen.
0:43:16 I will not be silenced because I have the money to lawyer up.
0:43:25 Anyone in my life that becomes pregnant, I don’t care if I’m in deepest, reddest Mississippi, I can get access to family planning because I have money.
0:43:34 And if shit really gets real and on the unlikely chance we start rounding up Jews and I got on the wrong list, well before that, I have the money to peace out to Milan or Dubai.
0:43:45 And what that creates is this lack of incentive or this divesting of the most powerful interests in America.
0:43:52 And that is, whereas before, I think the really wealthy thought, I’m going to stay here.
0:43:54 If this could happen to them, it could happen to us.
0:44:05 But now there’s a feeling amongst me, well, I always turn this back to me, but among the really wealthy, they were insulated from some of this, that it really doesn’t impact us.
0:44:07 So we have our own schools.
0:44:08 We have our own security.
0:44:10 We have our own health care.
0:44:12 We have our own legal rights.
0:44:14 We’re protected by the law, but we’re not bound by it.
0:44:29 And it creates this really unhealthy ecosystem where the most powerful in our nation, even who claim to have progressive values, really don’t feel that same sense of vested interest in the maintenance and fidelity to American values.
0:44:34 Because at the end of the day, we’re kind of global citizens and our governance is the dollar.
0:44:37 We’re basically how much money we have.
0:44:40 And we can find those rights somewhere else, even if they’re violated here.
0:44:41 Your thoughts?
0:44:42 I think that there’s some of that.
0:44:46 You know, I mean, look, you’re always going to paint with a broad brush in these sort of situations.
0:44:52 Like there are certainly rich liberals that are out there doing what they can and others that feel like how you did.
0:44:59 And there’s – and I hear from Bulwark listeners, like upper middle class people that will come up to me and say that they’re thinking of leaving.
0:45:02 Like I said, a woman just over the weekend that was like, I’m thinking about moving to Australia.
0:45:04 My husband is a citizen or something.
0:45:06 And I was like, don’t leave.
0:45:07 I’m not going anywhere.
0:45:09 You know, you’re fine here.
0:45:17 You actually – because of what you just laid out, Scott, like if you’re a citizen of this country that has enough money for a lawyer, like you’re in pretty good shape right now.
0:45:21 We’ll see how things look when Donald Trump is deteriorating at age 81 in 2027.
0:45:23 Maybe my assessment will change on that.
0:45:26 But as of right now, you’re fine and you should be staying here and should be fighting.
0:45:28 So I do.
0:45:29 I think there’s a little bit of that.
0:45:35 I also think the Democratic Party – and this is going to go against what like my policy preferences is probably.
0:45:38 But I just – I think that from a political standpoint, this is important.
0:45:52 Like the Democratic Party has not done a particularly great job of recruiting people that are from the working class, that are from the non-globalist parts of America to be spokespersons for the party.
0:45:58 A lot of times those people are probably going to be more – they’re probably going to have different views from me on social and economic issues, right?
0:46:01 Like I’m kind of a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, whatever cliche.
0:46:17 Like the Democrats should probably be recruiting people that are more – that are more fiscally left than me and have some maybe contrarian social views because that is like the most popular, you know, combination of political views for people – for working class people.
0:46:31 And I think the Democrats have done a lot of recruiting of people that like are maybe from somewhere in America and then were the valedictorian and then went to a fancy school and then worked at McKinsey and then went back to where they came from or, you know.
0:46:34 And nothing against any of those people.
0:46:39 But they’re going to have a set of views that are closer to what you just lined out that have a more of a globalist kind of mindset.
0:46:50 And I do think it would help the Democrats to have people that like authentically sound like they are from the communities that are going to be hurt by this.
0:46:51 Yeah, they claim to represent.
0:46:54 Yeah, it’s just if they’re setting to the kind of the purity test.
0:46:56 And we’re going off script here, but I can’t help it.
0:47:05 It shocked me a couple of days ago there was a new poll showing that if the election were held again today that Harris would still lose or that Trump would win.
0:47:07 In my sense is –
0:47:07 I’m not shocked by that.
0:47:11 I was shocked by that, especially when you see the swing among young people.
0:47:13 But, I mean, it is what it is.
0:47:16 And as unpopular as Trump is, the Democratic Party is less popular.
0:47:30 And I think as we sit, again, crying into TikTok, the reality is where the – the analogy I used to use was that the panzer tanks come rolling into Poland and we’re fighting Democrats, whereas Democrats were fighting them on horseback.
0:47:33 And then someone reminded me, actually, that was a successful military operation.
0:47:36 I should stop disparaging the heroes of the Polish army in World War II.
0:47:46 So – but my point is the only thing that feels more corrupt than the Trump administration or kind of coarse and cruel right now is just how weak the Democratic Party is.
0:47:48 Well, it’s not more corrupt, but it’s sadder.
0:47:49 And it has more impact.
0:47:50 No, no, no.
0:47:52 More weak.
0:47:53 Yeah, more weak for sure.
0:47:57 Well, isn’t America basically saying they’d rather have a corrupt autocrat than a weak Democratic Party?
0:48:02 A lot of Americans are – and here’s the – and this goes to your screaming the TikTok thing, which I do a lot, so I’ll defend it.
0:48:04 I’ll defend the honor of it.
0:48:06 But I do think it has its limitations, which is this.
0:48:27 Like – and this is why I bet you get pushback sometimes from people when you say this because there is a not nothing – you know, there’s 40 percent of the country, maybe 33 percent of the country who are super engaged in politics, are decently well off, middle class to upper middle class, went to college, read the news, you know, listen to podcasts or watch, you know, cable or do – or read the newspaper.
0:48:37 Read magazine, whatever, engaged, know who their representative is, and are mad about what’s happening, are legitimately mad about it, and are trying to figure out what to do about it.
0:48:41 And the good news for Democrats is those people show up in these special elections and local elections.
0:48:44 That’s why Democrats are trying to do better in those than in the national elections.
0:48:51 The problem is there’s just another huge part of the country that are less informed, and I don’t really even say that as a pejorative.
0:48:54 It’s just like they don’t engage in political news.
0:48:57 Maybe for some of them it’s because they’re working too damn hard and don’t have time.
0:49:01 Maybe for others it’s because they’d rather play video games for eight hours a day.
0:49:03 But either way, like that is happening.
0:49:12 And the Democrats have been – like to that demographic, the Democrats feel very weak and they feel very disconnected and out of touch and not fighting for them.
0:49:22 And it is just an absolute necessity that Democrats figure out how to find a voice that can connect with people that don’t read the New York Times.
0:49:37 And part of that I think is, as I just mentioned in the last answer, is like recruiting people, you know, not who play video games eight hours a day, but who like look and sound and feel more like folks that are not part of that class of the one-third of the country that’s super engaged.
0:49:38 Well, let me ask you then.
0:49:46 Right now, if you had to say who are the leaders of the Democratic Party, you would point to minority leader Jeffries and minority – or Senate minority leader Schumer.
0:49:49 And I’m a fan of leader Jeffries.
0:49:52 I don’t think he is the leader we need right now.
0:49:54 And I think Senator Schumer is a fucking disaster.
0:50:00 Who do you think, in your view, who are some of those emerging – everyone keeps saying we have such a strong bench.
0:50:04 And then they say – they point to Westmore and the list runs shallow.
0:50:09 And then everyone was getting excited about John Fetterman and there’s all these stories coming out saying that he’s struggling.
0:50:13 Who do you see as kind of the up-and-coming draft choices in the Democratic Party?
0:50:15 I am on the weak bench side of this.
0:50:16 Me and Carville argue about this.
0:50:19 Carville feels very – like the bench is really good.
0:50:20 I don’t really think so.
0:50:22 But I do like Westmore.
0:50:27 I think that you’ve seen like the AOC and Bernie are actually channeling something.
0:50:29 I don’t – obviously Bernie’s really old.
0:50:30 Let me just push a pause there.
0:50:32 My thesis is they’re great.
0:50:33 They’re inspiring.
0:50:36 There’s no fucking way America is going to elect either of them.
0:50:36 Yeah.
0:50:37 It was funny.
0:50:42 I was at a panel – and this is part of like getting again outside of these pockets of –
0:50:46 Republicans are praying that Bernie or AOC are the nominee.
0:50:50 I was on a panel here in Louisiana and I got the same question.
0:50:51 I was giving the same answer I’m giving right now.
0:50:53 And then I mentioned AOC.
0:50:58 And a guy who I know who’s an older guy who’s a Democrat, Louisiana Democrat, came up to me and he’s just like,
0:51:04 my party is more insane than I even thought it was if they think that AOC can win this country.
0:51:07 It’s just like people that are outside of certain worlds just don’t see things differently.
0:51:10 That said, they’ve showed leadership and I just wanted to mention it.
0:51:11 They’re inspiring.
0:51:11 Yeah.
0:51:13 But look, here’s what I think, man.
0:51:18 Look, if this is May – where it’s May 12, 2025.
0:51:26 If you took us to May 12, 2013 and said Donald Trump is going to be the Republican Party leader, everybody would say you’re insane.
0:51:33 If you took us to May 12, 2005 and said that Barack Hussein Obama is going to be the Democratic Party leader, everybody would say you’d be insane.
0:51:36 And I think a lot of times people have limits on their imaginations.
0:51:37 Same with Clinton.
0:51:38 Nobody knew who Clinton was.
0:51:38 Yeah.
0:51:43 And I think that you look at – like the two names that – two examples I just come up with that are just totally different.
0:51:45 Neither of these guys are going to be the leader of the Democratic Party.
0:51:53 But Dan Osborne ran for Senate in Nebraska, way overperformed as kind of a working class, socially conservative, fiscally liberal guy.
0:51:56 And, like, Democrats should recruit guys like that to run the midterms.
0:51:58 Mark Cuban is, like, the inverse of him.
0:51:59 There’s, like, a business guy.
0:52:06 And you could tell me that, like, either of those types of people could be the Democratic nominee in four years – three years, and I would believe you.
0:52:07 And so, I don’t know.
0:52:08 I like Wes Moore fine.
0:52:11 I like Josh Shapiro fine.
0:52:12 You know?
0:52:22 I mean, there are other – Pete, I hate – you know, I think that I don’t compete, like, as a seven-language-speaking grad student grad who worked at McKinsey.
0:52:25 Maybe he really, like, reached the working class people I’ve been talking about.
0:52:25 I don’t know.
0:52:29 But he did pretty damn well on that bro podcast, that Andrew Schultz podcast the other day.
0:52:31 So, maybe he can do better than I think.
0:52:33 So, there are people out there.
0:52:34 But it’s going to take, you know, real work.
0:52:37 Scott Galloway, if he didn’t live in London, might be an example.
0:52:39 Yeah, that shows just how desperate we are.
0:52:45 Well, let me ask you this, just so we can fill the comment section up with people calling me names.
0:52:48 I think America is ready for a gay president.
0:52:49 I don’t know if the Democratic Party is.
0:53:00 I think the way the Democratic primaries are held, that there are certain elements of the Democratic Party that would have an issue with Secretary Buttigieg as evidenced by his poor performance.
0:53:01 You’re talking about black voters?
0:53:01 Thank you.
0:53:02 This is just a truth.
0:53:04 I’m just going to say this.
0:53:05 Like, I have plenty of friends at the Pete campaign.
0:53:11 And, like, Pete had some of his own issues with black voters in South Bend that might be totally unrelated to gay issues.
0:53:13 But, like, they did focus groups with black voters.
0:53:17 And in all those focus groups, there were some black voters that weren’t cool with it.
0:53:18 And that’s just, like, that’s just a fact.
0:53:19 That’s just reality.
0:53:22 There are more white people that hate gays than black, you know what I mean?
0:53:24 So, I’m not, like, trying to make it a racial thing.
0:53:25 That’s just kind of a fact.
0:53:26 And that would be a challenge for him.
0:53:28 Is that going to be still the true in three years?
0:53:29 I don’t know.
0:53:31 Is it something about Pete himself?
0:53:37 Again, like, Carville’s line is always, like, the person that wins the Democratic primary is the one that can win the black church.
0:53:43 And it’s, like, I could maybe imagine a gay candidate that would be able to do better in a black church than Pete.
0:53:45 It’s just, like, is that, like, his natural space?
0:53:46 Like, probably not.
0:53:48 But maybe so, by the way.
0:53:49 I don’t know.
0:53:52 Like, maybe he could really surprise and prove himself.
0:53:55 I didn’t think he’d do that well on that podcast.
0:53:56 Pete has surprised at every turn.
0:53:58 So, you know, I don’t know.
0:54:05 I think that, broadly speaking, even outside of black voters, Democrats are, like, what’s the fucking old saying?
0:54:07 Twice bit, thrice bits, once, whatever.
0:54:08 Just about.
0:54:20 I think that they’ll probably want to go for a straight white guy or a straight black guy just because, like, after Hillary and Kamala experienced, I think that a lot of Democrats are just going to be freaked out about nominating somebody.
0:54:22 And I don’t know if that’s true or right.
0:54:23 I think there are other issues there.
0:54:25 But I do think that there will be some of that.
0:54:30 Yeah, I think the Democratic Party at this point is like, okay, we absolutely need a female president.
0:54:32 And we will have a female president.
0:54:38 She’ll be a Republican who has a reputation for likely drone striking your entire family if you run a stop sign.
0:54:41 That’s who’s going to be the first female president.
0:54:52 Christy, no, she’ll have a whole new face, you know, and she’ll have murdered a dog and have a pinup photo shoot in front of, you know, in front of El Salvador torture prison.
0:54:58 Well, I hope and trust that she’ll be out of government soon, but she’s going to slipstream right into some sort of Cinemax prison film.
0:55:04 I mean, that picture of her where it looked like a Sephora had exploded on her face and she was in front of a bunch of half-naked dudes.
0:55:10 It literally felt like those prison films I used to watch in the 90s after my parents had gone to sleep on Cinemax.
0:55:12 Okay, let’s take a quick break.
0:55:13 Stay with us.
0:55:18 Welcome back.
0:55:23 History was made last week as Cardinal Robert Previce became Pope Leo XIV, the first American to lead the Catholic Church.
0:55:32 Born in Chicago and shaped by decades of missionary work in Peru, Leo stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica Sunday to deliver his first blessing.
0:55:39 He called for peace in Ukraine and Gaza, urged leaders to reject war, and emphasized caring for young people and the vulnerable.
0:55:44 His message and background signal a potentially progressive path forward.
0:55:51 Tim, what does the new pope’s background and his first public message tell you about the direction that he may take the church?
0:55:53 I’ve got to tell you, my mother couldn’t be more thrilled.
0:55:55 I’m a little bit of a lapsed Catholic myself.
0:56:00 As we were just talking about the gay stuff, but there were some jokes on the internet that he was the bulwark pope.
0:56:07 And it was like right in my mom’s lane because he was, you know, he voted in Republican primaries, I guess, in 2012, up until 2016.
0:56:12 And then he stopped, and then he had multiple tweets criticizing Trump and Vance.
0:56:15 It’s pretty wild that we can go through the pope’s tweet history now.
0:56:17 We are in a different world.
0:56:19 He also graduated Villanova, where my little brother went.
0:56:23 So, like, touching a lot of bases for my daily church-going mother.
0:56:25 Very thrilled.
0:56:25 That’s huge.
0:56:26 Yeah, very thrilled.
0:56:27 Good for the Miller family.
0:56:29 Big weekend for the Miller family.
0:56:30 Well, the broader thing, I don’t know.
0:56:38 You know, I think that the College of Cardinals probably had a lot of things in their minds, not just the fact that this person was American or our domestic political concerns.
0:56:40 And, frankly, he hasn’t even been in America that much.
0:56:45 He was in Peru and Italy for most of his service to the church.
0:56:46 And so, I don’t know.
0:56:47 I will say this.
0:57:02 Whether they intended this or not, I do think it is nice to have an American on the world stage that is offering a counter view about what it means to be a person and a human than our president.
0:57:10 And, you know, I don’t know that he’s going to be, like, the woke pope of every lefty’s dreams on a variety of issues.
0:57:18 You know, like, the Catholic Church still has the Catholic Church’s views on gender and sexuality and abortion and women priests and all that.
0:57:26 I think that he is someone that is just—it’s very clear that he actually cares about his fellow humans.
0:57:27 He cares about humanity.
0:57:33 And that is in direct contrast to the president who only cares about himself.
0:57:37 And so, I don’t—you know, we’ll see what exactly it means for the Catholic Church.
0:57:45 I think probably a continuation of Francis more than any big, massive changes based on my—the Catholics in good standing in my life.
0:57:47 TBD, a little bit on all that.
0:57:55 But just from a—as a former PS2 PR, marketing and PR people, like, it’s nice PR for America at a time where our PR is pretty shitty.
0:57:55 Yeah.
0:57:59 My thesis is that this is the third world leader that got elected by Trump.
0:58:05 Anthony Albanese, Mark Carney were both supposed to lose.
0:58:07 Especially Carney, overcame a 25-point deficit.
0:58:16 And I think there is such a gag reflex globally around Donald Trump that he is electing world leaders, just not the world leaders that he’s hoping would be elected.
0:58:17 And I think this is another example.
0:58:23 When—I think the papacy is really strategic and says, where can we have the most impact?
0:58:33 And part of that is which region is struggling and would benefit most and get the most attention around these very humanistic values and code of decency.
0:58:36 And when the Eastern Bloc was struggling, they’d pick someone from Poland.
0:58:51 And I don’t think it’s any accident that they picked an American pope, that they said, if we—we are really troubled by what this lack of humanity—the call sign or I think the statement that literally identifies America right now is the following.
0:58:55 And it was made by Bill Gates, and I’m paraphrasing, but it’s thematically the same.
0:59:00 The world’s richest man is killing the world’s poorest people.
0:59:07 And that to me—like, when Bill Gates said that, it was one of those moments where I thought—it, like, just hit me so hard in the gut.
0:59:09 I thought, wow, that’s what we’ve become?
0:59:11 Like, literally, that’s us now.
0:59:22 And so I think they see an opportunity, not only for attention, but a chance to restore and have influence on Americans who obviously disproportionately carry weight and gravity and influence around the world.
0:59:41 For, I think, more Americans and more elected officials will pay closer attention to what this pope says, and that a restoration, a rejuvenation, an EpiPen, a Narcan to the American value system is really needed right now.
0:59:47 And this guy, in addition to understanding technology and referencing AI, he is unafraid.
0:59:50 He’s called Putin’s actions wicked.
0:59:52 Which is an upgrade from Francis, worth mentioning.
0:59:53 There you go.
0:59:57 But I think, again, Trump has gotten another world leader elected.
1:00:06 And I think they see a big opportunity here to have an American pope who will, again, get probably greater sort of bandwidth or airtime because of his origins.
1:00:11 And that America is really in need of sort of a values upgrade, if you will.
1:00:13 Thoughts?
1:00:13 Bad, but true.
1:00:14 It’s hard to argue.
1:00:20 Again, I don’t claim to, you know—I could give you a lot better analysis of the Electoral College than the College of Cardinals.
1:00:22 And so it’s hard for me to get inside there.
1:00:24 They do get branding, though, don’t they?
1:00:25 White smoke?
1:00:27 Yeah, maybe it’s more interpersonal.
1:00:27 You know what I mean?
1:00:29 I just—I don’t really know.
1:00:35 But I think that the impact of what you’re saying, whether or not the intention was there, is definitely correct.
1:00:35 I agree with the analysis.
1:00:40 And I’m sure that for certain members of the college, it was part of it.
1:00:46 And Francis, to my understanding, did put in a lot more people in his mold, you know, into that college.
1:00:57 And so I wouldn’t be surprised if at least among some of them they thought that this was a nice contrast to the American president, particularly at a time of, you know, where America is struggling.
1:01:01 And I’m glad you mentioned that Bill Gates quote because that also hit me like a ton of bricks.
1:01:02 It’s just—it’s terrible.
1:01:05 The USAID thing is so unimaginably terrible.
1:01:11 And it’s like, you know, you run out of reasons to talk about it on shows like this, right?
1:01:13 Because there’s no, like, new news about it.
1:01:25 But it is truly abhorrent that we took something that was a tenth of a penny in our federal budget that was, you know, giving HIV medicines to people in Africa and feeding the poor.
1:01:32 And we’ve cut it because Elon Musk, like, broke his brain by, like, reading too many tweets.
1:01:34 It’s a truly deplorable state of affairs.
1:01:46 Well, we’ve spent 80 years developing an expensive and worthwhile brand association that, in the short term, we make a lot of mistakes, but it’s mostly out of stupidity or naivete.
1:01:48 This brand association is real, though.
1:01:54 I just—so I worked for McCain, and I talked to Mark Salters, his ghostwriter and longtime speechwriter, and traveled the whole world with him.
1:02:06 And Salters said, like, the American brand, you would go with McCain to these random corners where people were fighting against autocrats or where there had been a big natural disaster.
1:02:16 And he would travel there, and he’s like, you know, people in random villages and, you know, in small towns and remote corners of the world would be like, America, John McCain, John McCain.
1:02:27 Like, that brand was that strong, and I do think that we’ve essentially just ruined it forever, certainly tarnished it in a matter of five months.
1:02:34 We’ve said it back decades, but that association, one of the core associations on a very basic level is I’ve always felt like we’re the good guys.
1:02:36 That, yeah, do we make dumb mistakes?
1:02:38 Are we gluttonous?
1:02:39 Are we obnoxious?
1:02:40 Yeah, but we’re the good guys.
1:02:42 Our heart’s in the right place.
1:02:46 And I think in just probably in three and a half months, we’re no longer the good guys.
1:02:52 And there’s this notion that in regions where there’s no investment, you get just such an enormous return on investment.
1:02:54 It’s basic economic theory.
1:03:06 We were getting such enormous ROI on these small investments in terms of preventing kids from getting infected, having AIDS transmitted from their mothers to them, which is some very inexpensive, wiping out malaria,
1:03:14 toilets to such that thousands, even millions of young boys and girls didn’t die of dysentery.
1:03:20 And we’ve taken what is probably the greatest ROI investment because there’s so little investment in these regions.
1:03:22 No other nation would make those investments.
1:03:25 And we decided those are the investments that we’re going to pull back.
1:03:26 It really is depraved.
1:03:35 But circling back, I do think that the papacy recognized this and decided that they could have the most impact with a pope that more Americans would listen to.
1:03:38 So, Tim, I want to go off script for a minute.
1:03:40 I’m fascinated by Tim Miller.
1:03:48 I have found myself just so drawn to your content and how you bring the strength and fearlessness and real emotion and real empathy.
1:03:50 What’s your origin story?
1:03:52 I don’t know that much about you.
1:03:55 How did Tim Miller get to here right now?
1:03:56 I appreciate that.
1:04:02 I don’t know about you, but this is not false modesty because I can be a narcissist like any other content creator.
1:04:07 But I do find it weird to process people consuming my stuff all the time, right?
1:04:15 Because when I try to just emote and be authentic and just say what I really think and not actually think about the audience as much as possible,
1:04:22 And so I do sometimes it makes me uncomfortable when I start hearing about, you know, thinking about Scott Galloway consuming my rants.
1:04:24 But so I was Republican operative.
1:04:29 I was just a PR flack, essentially, for Republicans, usually moderate Republicans, but I was also a hired gun.
1:04:32 So I have some shameful Republicans on my resume as well.
1:04:36 And, you know, I came out of the closet during that process.
1:04:47 And so I was probably like the most, there have been a lot of prominent Republicans who like were either outed or became gay after, like when they retired, like Ken Melman or Larry Craig or like, you know, whatever.
1:04:55 But as an active person in the party, like right around all the time of the gay marriage stuff, I was like the most like visible.
1:04:59 And so I do think that gave me just kind of a relationship with all of it.
1:05:01 Those may be a little bit different than other hired guns.
1:05:09 Like I had dealt with like being separate from the party on something that was very core to me, you know, throughout this process.
1:05:11 And so when Trump came along, I don’t know.
1:05:15 I just part of that, I think it was made it easier for me just to say, no, fuck this.
1:05:27 And as part of my hired gun process, a bunch of rich guys hired me in 2016 to be the point, like the face of a basically Republicans against Trump effort, like anybody, like it’s like whoever it is.
1:05:31 So I just went on cable and argued with Trumpers and pitched negative stories about Trump to people.
1:05:37 And then when Trump won, I went through a massive midlife crisis about what the hell to do with my life.
1:05:38 Pretty early midlife.
1:05:40 Yeah, early midlife crisis.
1:05:43 I had a very early midlife crisis and an extended one.
1:05:47 And I started doing some of these podcast stuff on the side, literally.
1:05:48 And I was like, you know, I was lost.
1:05:51 I was like, should I do corporate PR?
1:05:53 We adopted a kid at that time.
1:06:03 I was like, should I just be a nine to five, you know, guy and like do PR for Clorox bleach or something and like have a regular job and coach the kids sports teams and forget all this?
1:06:08 Should I, whatever, do like figure out, like try to fight within the party against Trump?
1:06:10 And I was like totally lost.
1:06:16 And my colleague, Sarah Longwell, who was an old friend of mine, started the Bulwark and I started kind of doing Bulwark stuff for fun.
1:06:17 And I don’t know, man.
1:06:33 I just, I think that people were, there’s something about the fact that I think that I was lost and did not have like a little birdie in the back of my head saying, hey, you know, think about your career and like what other job, you know, you might be White House press secretary in the future.
1:06:36 You might want, you know, who knows what will happen after Trump ends.
1:06:37 Like I just didn’t have that.
1:06:40 I was a little bit unfettered, I think.
1:06:46 And, and so we created at the Bulwark with Sarah and JVL and others, like a community of people who really liked that.
1:06:51 And I think that was important to them, like the ROGs, because they were also kind of lost.
1:06:55 And so, I don’t know, man, that’s how I ended up doing this.
1:07:10 And I think there is something freeing about being a former Republican versus being somebody who comes up as a Democrat in their background, because, you know, I just don’t, A, I have some of the, like the Republican traits of aggressiveness.
1:07:15 I’ve not been beaten down by the Democratic traits of community building.
1:07:16 So, I think that has helped.
1:07:26 And also, I just don’t, like, you know, I’m not plotting who might hire me for the 2028 primary in the way that maybe some Democratic commentators are.
1:07:27 So, I don’t know.
1:07:27 Is that good?
1:07:29 Was that a good backstory for me?
1:07:31 Curious if you, I have trouble.
1:07:34 I would say that from zero to 30, I didn’t have enough stress.
1:07:36 Almost failed out of UCLA a couple times.
1:07:36 Didn’t bother me.
1:07:39 Was on the verge of being kicked out of UCLA, which would have been really bad for me.
1:07:40 I didn’t really care.
1:07:42 Almost lost a couple businesses.
1:07:46 Was very reckless with my relationships.
1:07:49 Just didn’t have as much anxiety, quite frankly, as I should.
1:07:51 I think from 30 to 40, I had the perfect amount of anxiety.
1:07:55 Worried enough to be successful, but not worried enough where I couldn’t sleep.
1:07:57 And now I have too much anxiety.
1:07:59 I worry about everything.
1:08:00 And you have a kid.
1:08:03 Like, if I’m not anxious about one of my kids during the day, something’s wrong.
1:08:05 That makes me anxious.
1:08:06 I feel like I’m missing something.
1:08:12 And I’ve had trouble disassociating from what is going on with America and our government right now.
1:08:16 For the first time, politics is really sort of rattling me and taking a toll on me emotionally.
1:08:19 Do you struggle with the same thing?
1:08:21 Sometimes when I watch your content, I get the sense.
1:08:22 I can hear it in your voice.
1:08:25 Like, this shit really upsets you.
1:08:27 Like, it really rattles you.
1:08:30 One is, am I sensing that correctly?
1:08:40 And two, how do you attempt to disassociate and or keep things in perspective and get about your day and focus on your family and progress at the pull work?
1:08:46 I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing, which got me into trouble in that past life that I talked about earlier.
1:08:51 Like, I probably shouldn’t have compartmentalized with the fact that I was gay with the fact that I was a spokesman for Republicans.
1:08:52 But I was able to do it then.
1:08:57 It’s serving me a little bit now because I do get – I get rattled emotional and very mad.
1:09:01 And, like, probably three times during the day I get very mad.
1:09:07 And when I get actually mad, I try to channel that into the content because I said this after the election.
1:09:10 I was like, I’m not going to do the fake mad thing.
1:09:11 Like, I’m not.
1:09:13 I’m not going to pretend to care about things I don’t care about.
1:09:31 And, like, sometimes there’s Trump stuff that makes other people really mad that I just either don’t talk about or will talk about a little bit just because I’m like, I just – I can’t – I don’t have any room in my body for the anger over this thing because – in part because I’m so mad about the immigration stuff and some of – and in particular the immigration stuff.
1:09:33 But also other things they’re doing.
1:09:35 The trans military ban is one that got me recently.
1:09:39 I try to just be – to have my honest emotions with people.
1:09:42 Outside of that, A, I’m drinking too much.
1:09:44 But I’m trying to go.
1:09:45 I live in New Orleans.
1:09:47 I knew we were brothers from another mother.
1:09:47 Yeah.
1:09:50 I’m trying to go to – and I live in New Orleans.
1:09:51 So I’m going to show.
1:09:52 I’m going to see music.
1:09:55 And when I’m there, I’m drinking too much bourbon.
1:09:58 But it is allowing me – and I’m enjoying my time there.
1:10:03 And I’m being with – I have a lot of buddies here who don’t stress me out about politics.
1:10:04 And I appreciate all of them.
1:10:06 And that is good.
1:10:10 I have a couple hours a day where I take on the parenting and I just try to parent.
1:10:11 And I’m like, I’m here.
1:10:12 We’re going to play.
1:10:13 We’re going to go to the basketball court.
1:10:15 We’re going to – whatever.
1:10:15 Do your homework.
1:10:16 We’re going to be silly.
1:10:20 And I try to do that and not think about it.
1:10:23 Every once in a while, bad thoughts come through when I’m parenting or drinking.
1:10:24 But usually not.
1:10:26 Like I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing it.
1:10:31 A therapist might tell me that this strategy is eventually going to fail.
1:10:37 And like those three parts of my brain are going to collide in a way that will create crippling anxiety.
1:10:38 But that hasn’t happened so far.
1:10:41 Most importantly, what did you do for Mother’s Day yesterday?
1:10:41 Nothing.
1:10:46 One of the great joys of being gay is that we don’t have to do Mother’s Day.
1:10:49 I mean I sent my mother a gift and we did a FaceTime with her.
1:10:51 She lives in Colorado and I have a great mother.
1:10:52 Yeah.
1:10:54 It’s nice.
1:10:56 I feel like we get a little bit freed from the conventions.
1:11:02 So, you know, some people trying to be nice and woke like will wish us a happy Mother’s Day.
1:11:03 And I’m like, no, it’s cool.
1:11:03 No worries.
1:11:05 And by the way, I don’t even have to do a happy Father’s Day.
1:11:06 It’s fine.
1:11:08 Like we have a little different family style.
1:11:14 We went and had crawfish at Klessis, which if you find yourself in New Orleans during crawfish season, I got to shout out Klessis.
1:11:15 It’s the best spot.
1:11:16 I watched the Nuggets game.
1:11:18 It was a loss, unfortunately.
1:11:23 And, you know, I yelled at the YouTube camera, took the kid to the park.
1:11:23 It was great.
1:11:24 It was a wonderful day.
1:11:25 What about you?
1:11:26 I had a wonderful Mother’s Day.
1:11:27 I did nothing.
1:11:31 I’m here in New York on my own and I walked around Soho.
1:11:32 I went to Jack’s Wife Frida.
1:11:35 I went to San Vicente Bungalows for brunch.
1:11:37 It was, you know, just.
1:11:40 You weren’t guilt-trapped by the mothers in your life over that?
1:11:41 My mom is gone.
1:11:49 The mother of my children is, I don’t want to say it’s Mother’s Day every day, but we’re pretty much in awe of her and we plan a lot of stuff.
1:11:49 And do a lot of stuff.
1:11:52 But we had some stuff planned for her to make sure that she felt loved.
1:11:56 And quite frankly, she said that she just wanted to be alone, that that was her Mother’s Day gift.
1:11:58 She just wanted all.
1:12:00 She has three kids.
1:12:09 But, look, one of the really wonderful things about getting older as a man is you develop these really nice kind of paternal instincts or fraternal instincts.
1:12:12 where you’re happy for people, you’re happy for younger men.
1:12:14 I have gotten real reward.
1:12:18 I don’t know you that well, but I’ve gotten real reward from watching you in this moment.
1:12:23 I think you are so authentic and so courageous and have such great command of the medium.
1:12:27 I get reward from watching your success.
1:12:28 I’m really happy for you.
1:12:31 I think you’re doing a great job and your voice is really important.
1:12:41 And I just – I hope that you take time with your husband and your kid to pause and recognize how successful you are and what a difference you’re making.
1:12:44 And it’s just fun to just observe it and watch it.
1:12:47 Really appreciate all that you do and very much appreciate you coming on the show today.
1:12:48 Thank you, Scott.
1:12:49 I genuinely appreciate that.
1:12:50 It means a lot.
1:12:51 I’m getting tingly.
1:12:52 I also – it sucks.
1:12:53 I don’t know about you.
1:12:57 I do get uncomfortable with the compliments, especially when so much shit is happening.
1:12:58 And I’m like, I don’t know.
1:12:59 I’m doing the best I can.
1:13:01 But I do appreciate it very much.
1:13:02 It means a lot.
1:13:02 All right.
1:13:03 That’s all for this episode.
1:13:05 Thank you for listening to Raging Moderates.
1:13:07 Our producers are David Toledo and Shinianye Onike.
1:13:09 Our technical director is Drew Burrows.
1:13:13 You can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday and Friday.
1:13:14 That’s right.
1:13:15 Its own feed.
1:13:21 That means exclusive interviews with sharp political minds, including this one who joined us today, that you won’t hear anywhere else.
1:13:23 This week, we have another anti-Trump Republican.
1:13:27 Jess is talking with former Congressman Charlie Dent.
1:13:31 Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss an episode.
1:13:33 And, Tim, where can they find more, Tim?
1:13:34 I’m everywhere.
1:13:35 The Bulwark YouTube.
1:13:36 You’re everywhere.
1:13:37 To resist is futile.
1:13:37 Yeah.
1:13:39 The Bulwark YouTube.
1:13:43 Nicole Wallace’s show sometimes at MSNBC and some others.
1:13:45 And, you know, Twitter, TimODC.
1:13:46 I’m still suffering through X.
1:13:47 I think you left.
1:13:48 Instagram.
1:13:49 Everywhere.
1:13:50 I’m everywhere, baby.
1:13:51 Get off of X.
1:13:51 Get off of X.
1:13:52 Trust me on this.
1:13:55 The most accretive thing you can do for your mental health is to get off of X.
1:13:56 That’s good advice.
1:13:57 All right.
1:13:58 Thanks again, Tim.
1:13:59 Thanks, man.
1:13:59 Thanks, man.