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That's a word we need to reestablish as a good word to use. They use it in Britain. You live there, right? Don't they call you that all the time?
Yeah, that's one of those words that I should never ever say under any circumstance.
I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway.
And welcome to the first Resist and Unsubscribe live event at the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis.
Yeah! Whoa!
Whoa!
Man! Thank you for showing up tonight and helping us support the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. We're recording tonight's show, and we'll run it on the Pivot Podcast audio feed and on our YouTube channel. We're going to do a lot tonight. We'll talk about some headlines, just like we do on a Pivot show. And Scott will give us an update on the massive impact of Resist and Unsubscribe. People have questions, and Scott's going to answer them, and how much it's made. It really has. And I'm glad to be here to support it for him. But first, we have a special guest we're gonna chat with tonight. We always have special guests you don't know about. Please give a round of applause to Governor Tim Walz. Wow, wow. Maybe you should tell Klobuchar you changed your mind.
No, this is what happens when you don't run, I guess. I don't know.
Oh, suddenly you're popular.
Yeah. Okay.
All right. I think we're going to start. We're going to ask him a bunch of questions. We've done this on all the tours that we've had and we've had a great time and had a— we had lots of governors and various things. But first things first, what was your immediate reaction to Kristi Noem's Departure? Self-deportation?
Well, I was trying to act all serious and say, you know, I'm not a petty person. And then I checked myself and I said, in this case, I'm petty as hell. So it was— and I was saying this, that I knew Kristi Noem as a member of Congress. And when they get in the orbit of Donald Trump, because we— I think you would have considered us friends at one time. We authored some legislation around water quality and things like that. And then all of a sudden it turns into this and But I think for me, what happened here in Minneapolis was so far beyond the pale that the sense of anger I had towards her that whatever happens isn't enough. That's kind of the feeling I've had, whatever she has coming yet. So with justice, but—
You said last week that Secretary Noem should probably get used to spending more time in Minnesota because we've got we've got to get accountability. How are you planning on getting that?
Well, look, there's— and I would make my pitch to the U.S. Congress, and especially with her, I guess, replacement in Markwayne, who I know too. One name, we're all getting that. I'm making my pitch to them.
I know he's having a problem with the border between names.
Yeah, well, they can't— that's They can't, they can't do, they can't fund these people and they can't give them without putting guardrails back around. And I've been, I'm, I think Minnesotans are demanding before they do anything confirming someone else, we need to make sure they give us the investigations we need here, bringing those people back and, and holding accountability. The The both physical and moral injury that's happened to this state demands that justice be carried out. So look, whether it's, you know, whether it's county attorney with Mary Moriarty or Keith Elson, both have talked about it. Both are incredibly talented, and both of them will get justice. And it's of course with Renee and Alex, but this— people in Minnesota know there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of things that were done to Minnesotans, both physically, mentally, economically. Somebody has to pay. Somebody has to pay a price.
Do you, do you imagine trials with her? I mean, she will say she's acting, she was acting at Stephen Miller's behest or—
Well, it's out of my wheelhouse not being an attorney, but we all know in history saying you followed orders didn't get you out of anything. Just following orders didn't get you out of anything. And somebody issued those orders and she was more than happy to to tell us she was in charge as she rode her horse around telling us that. So, so yes, I think, you know, when you're in elected office and you can make mistakes or whatever, but this was not mistakes. This was a blatant violation of human constitutional rights of Minnesotans. And she, she spoke to that. And I was, I was in Congress last week, too. And Mine went a little better, I think, than hers went. Yeah, but, but she claimed that everyone knew on this. And but I will say this, that, yes, I think that we need to find out. There certainly needs to be investigations. And if those lead to indictments, trials, and imprisonment for the people who did these crimes, that, that needs to happen. But can I get one? But I would just leave with this. It all goes back to the top. This is Donald Trump started this.
Donald Trump did this.
So let me ask one question. And Scott, Scott will have one. Is they're trying to equate her with their— the right, I've noticed, is saying the fraud around this ridiculous commercials, the $200 million given to a friend of hers in some fashion, or Corley Lewandowski's. They're trying to equate it to what happened here, fraud that happened here. Like if we go for fraud there, we got to go for fraud with Christie.
There's a big difference between fraud and corruption. People stole from the people of Minnesota and those people are in jail. We'll continue to do that. Ironically, the amount that we know with the Feeding Our Future scandal is exactly what she spent on the riding the horse scandal or whatever it was. But this goes a lot deeper where people in government directing money towards their clients. These were criminals that stole from Minnesota and Minnesotans caught them and put them in jail. So it was on the pretense of this and there's folks that need to be accountable. I said to all the Minnesotans over the next 10 months, my job is to make sure again, I am not going to apologize that Minnesota has incredible social service programs that lift people up, feed hungry kids, put people in. I will— I will tell you, it is my responsibility to make sure those programs are secure as possible. And that's what we're doing. So they're not interested in any of that. And this— that's—
they were—
they go to Louisiana. But that's another—
straight up corruption of people taking money and You know, the false sense of they come here, they, you know, right-wing social media. Here in Minnesota, there are folks that invited those people here. There are people here in elected office who will not condemn what happened to Alex and Renee or Liam or anyone else. And their accountability will come in November. But there still needs to be other avenues to make sure that justice is served.
Scott, if a mayor calls you and says, we have word or suspicion that ICE is about to have an equivalent presence to what happened in Minneapolis, what advice would you have specifically? What do you think you got right? And given, you know, you were in sort of uncharted territories, what did you get wrong? What would you do more of? What would you do less of if you were advising a mayor about to face—
Well, just to be clear, or governor, excuse me, the what happened right and why they left was because of the people on the streets. It wasn't the elected officials. They left because of that. And parent-teacher organizations that turned into food banks and, you know, soccer and basketball carpools that turned into protecting children and parents surrounding schools. What I would tell them, and I don't know if you can You can't replicate it immediately. But that old adage that all politics and all action is local, Minnesotans take that to local to your house and the house next to you and the house next to you. So my take is, make sure as elected leaders that you're watching where the organic leadership is coming from. Make sure you're not doing anything to interfere with that. And we were getting a lot of feedback from folks on the streets, and to be prepared and make sure that, that you are ready to make these decisions that need to be made without any coordination. Like, everybody in this room knows, and everybody in Minnesota knows, we always work with the federal government and the FBI. Sex trafficking, you know, drug trafficking, things like that.
They came in here and tried to make the case that we don't cooperate with them. And I'm telling you this, at the end of the day, when Donald Trump and Tom Holman stand up and say, well, Minnesota finally cooperated, that's why we're leaving. We didn't change one damn thing we were doing before, because our job is not immigration reform. We are not going to spend our resources going after people who are trying to follow the path towards citizenship and get here. So my advice to them is stay in your lane. There's nothing you're going to do, like all of a sudden we would say, oh sure, we're gonna start giving you names or something like that. I, the thought of that, these states that are saying, because when the president called me, he said, well, we didn't have this problem in New Orleans or, or, you know, somewhere else. And I said, we said, I said, well, I said, you didn't shoot people in the face in those states. You didn't do things. And I said, and he asked, what's wrong with the people of Minnesota? And this was on the call. I said, not one damn thing is wrong with the people in Minnesota.
So it's It's being organized. It's being ready as elected officials. And I think what we learned in Minnesota, the coordination between different levels of government, because I think it was within a matter of minutes of Renee's murder that Mayor Frey called right away and things were starting to be put in place. But just to be very clear, state and local governments were following the leads of the organic leadership on the streets and watching what did that. And that's the advice I would give. So that's what I give.
So it's one of the most important parts of this. And I think most of the country got a lot of inspiration from it. But Minnesota and the cooperation with the federal government didn't seem at that point cooperative, at least with Greg Bevino, may he, whatever. And Pete, I know it's an easy one. He'll be on Dancing with the Nazis someday. But and with Kash Patel, as it turns out, if you'd give him a surly beer, he would have been fine. And he likes beer. He chugs it.
What?
Like, like a freshman in college. That's how he chugs. Like, like you're like, oh, you're a bad chugger.
What adult goes into a locker room that you had nothing to do with and acts like it had to do with you? You know, here's my take on this for what it's worth. I was telling them backstage, they said, well, we got to be afraid. I said, I don't care. I can say whatever I want right now. And so my thing is Here's something we have to bring back. Shame has to be something. These people don't feel shame. You have to be ashamed of yourself.
I think the problem is you're dealing with people who are shameless. And I say that about the tech people. So if they don't have shame, they are— they're shameless. So Minnesota residents, as you just noted, and activist groups say that arrests are reportedly still happening every day, particularly in the suburbs. Talk about what local authorities are doing about it. And then White House Borders are Tom Homan. Promised Minnesota would be down to 150 ICE agents by last week. Has he kept that promise?
No, no, I don't believe so. And this is the other thing, it's very difficult for us to confirm that. And one of the things is, I, again, whether there is 650 here or not, the threat of them being here and the mental stress that puts on, especially our immigrant community, it doesn't really matter whether they're here or not. It's interfering with their life, it's causing trauma, it's doing all of the same damage. And so I, no, I don't believe they probably have. They, look, all of us here know she did not get fired because of what happened here. She got fired because of those ads. And they left Minneapolis not because they did some, they thought they did something wrong. They left because it became politically damaged to them. I believe if they get an opportunity again, they will do the same thing somewhere else. And that's why Minnesotans, I tell you this, I was in Idaho last night with the Idaho Democratic Party, by the way, 1,200 people, largest it's ever been, 800 waiting to get there. Idaho, Idaho, every single one of their— they're outnumbered 102 to 13 in their legislature, the Democrats are, but they have candidates in every single district.
But when we got to town, the Minnesota flag was unfurled on buildings as a sign of resistance.
So I want to talk about the Democratic Party on a more meta level. You went from almost being vice president to facing impeachment articles in your home state. And a lot of—
good luck with that.
And a lot of people would argue that as bad as the Republican Party is, what makes a lot of progressives angry is the Democrats don't seem to quite frankly have their act together. Yeah, that We want to join a resistance, but quite frankly, we want to join a more competent, aggressive resistance. As someone who was on the front lines, right, you're the helm of the bobsled. What observations and what advice would you offer to democratic leaders around building a resistance that people are just, quite frankly, more excited to join Yeah. And have a more full-throated response to being a part of.
No, I agree. Well, look, I've said it here, and I might be the wrong person to say this because I, you know, I accept my responsibility because we would not be in this crap show if we had, if we had won. But what I think the Democratic Party is, is one, is we're prisoners to kind of norms, mores that are out there. We're prisoners to our institutions. And I will give you this, and I, the tech folks drive me as crazy as they do you. The one thing they possess, and I will tell you, I don't do this. I'm more of a rule follower. This idea of totally breaking something. Now, I would usually think if you break it, you have a better plan to go forward. Democrats tend to be, you know, we got to listen to the system. We have to send a strongly worded letter. People are sick of strongly worded letters. And I made this case. I made this case in, in '22. I said, if we're going to ask Minnesotans to vote for us and give us a trifecta, and this was with Melissa Hortman and Carrie Dietzik in the leadership there.
I said, there, yes. And those two women knew it. The Democratic Party, Scott, I think in the past has been— people want to see a direct connection to what they voted for and what they've worked for to an improvement in their life and the things they asked for. And I remember after that legislative session in '23 where we did paid family and medical leave, Fed Our Kids, you know, did Child Tax Credit, 2040, that whole list of things, new flag, All of those things. I had a young staffer who worked on my reelection campaign on that, and we did cannabis and everything. And he looks at me and he said, well, this wasn't that hard. We got all this stuff done. And I'm like, God dang, we've been at this for 20 years. But it was a real telling moment on this is if you want to get people excited, you want to have them believe, then actually do something. And here's what I say. I'm not going to give Donald Trump credit for anything. But what I have learned from what they did If they can break every institution to try and go into people's houses or to kill people on the streets or go into wars that are illegal, then we should be able to break all the norms to give universal healthcare, break them all to protect things that we want.
So who do you imagine best represents that right now in the Democratic Party?
Here's my take on this.
Wait, who?
I think right at this point, and I think it's healthy, I think we should all agree we need as as possible as we go past the— as broad as possible people out there as we move to '28. I don't know if that person's out there yet, but what I started last January, I was doing town halls in West Virginia and Ohio where I was saying, by the way, everybody's telling you, you know, the road to, you know, the road to totalitarianism, I said, is littered with people telling you you're overreacting. And I said, we're not overreacting. I was encouraging everybody to enter the fray and fill their lane because I find great joy every day I read Gavin Newsom's stuff. What he's doing. There's joy in hitting him at that. There's, there's J.B. Pritzker out there. I see people like Gretchen Whitmer. There's a lot of people out there. I don't know who's doing it, but here's what I learned. Donald Trump can suck up so much oxygen. There isn't one single person that is kind of the counterweight to that. But what we saw in Minneapolis is strength in numbers, strength in unity. And I want a bunch of folks out there.
We just have two more questions for you. What does that mean for your political future?
Well, I'm— I have 10 months to continue to build what we've done in Minnesota.
All right, month 11.
So, yeah, I think I still have a voice to go out there and make the case to get young people involved again, to get like in Idaho. That is pretty encouraging to be in there with 1,200 people in Idaho who are sick as hell of what's going on. And they were there to, you know, what can we do about it? How do we get organized? So I think for me, taking that message, getting out there, I want to get out on the road after this and do some more and to help. And my goal is just to make sure— and Scott, your point was there— is not only to elect a Democrat, I want to make sure that that person we elect, we hold them accountable to passing the things we know we need to get done. How long have we fought on this healthcare thing? The days of arguing that are over. Whoever wins in '28, in early '29, better fix the healthcare system in a way for people, better strengthen middle class. I want to be part of that.
Are you interested in that? Would New Hampshire be a place you might stop? Are you interested in running? I just interviewed Gavin and he—
no, I am not, but I am interested in being a part of it and, um, in the ambassadorship to the Bahamas if that's available.
So, all right, I have one last question.
Herschel Walker, by the way, is the ambassador to the Bahamas, just so you—
so, so the last question is, the Republicans using the scandal to— it was partially one of the reasons you left, I think, or maybe it wasn't. You can correct me, but Republicans say the scandal proves Minnesota's social safety net is broken, and Democrats say it proves we need better oversight, not fewer programs. What has concretely changed since these stories broke? And these, uh, in every state—
well, they broke 5 years ago, right? And folks were on it. And I remind people that we told the Department of Agriculture and they didn't do anything. But I, I'll own this. What's changed is, is we have pre-approvals, we have things in place. But again, as you see this, they are not interested in stopping the fraud. They're interested in taking away meals from kids. They're interested in taking away Medicaid from kids. And this is why this is not a victimless crime, and it's why I'm so angry about this, because it weakens people's trust in the institutions that are absolutely needed. What I would assure them is there's numerous things I will fix this. They won't. They've got corruption. But what I can tell you, um, we're not going to move one inch. We have the most generous social service programs, and there's a reason that we rank at the top on all new categories. So my job is to clean those programs up out, make them more secure. But I totally reject where they're at. And to be lectured by people who spend a quarter billion on horses, to be lectured by the crypto bros with Don Jr.
or whatever, to watch the Trump family make money. And I remind people on this, I was the guy who authored that members of Congress shouldn't be able to trade stocks or own stocks. And I thought it was— I'll just leave you with this, that difference between fraud and corruption. I really thought it was a flex when the Wall Street Journal did a big breaking story when I got onto the ticket and said, we believe in our analysis that Tim Walz is the poorest person to ever run for vice president. Well, you didn't elect me to get rich. You elected me to do the job. And so I'm not going to— I'll take my beating, but we're not going to do it.
So last question. You've had a rough year or you've had a stressful year. What advice would you have for young people who have this incredible ascent in their professional life, which you have had, and then you face disappointment and you face a tremendous amount of stress? I wish we were talking backstage and I said incorrectly, I always feel like I know what to do, which is dangerous. And I remember when I saw the situation here, I remember trying to put myself in the shoes of a government leader, I just would have been so flat-footed. I just wouldn't have known what to do. I can't imagine the stress and quite frankly, the disappointment you have likely registered personally in the last 12 months. How do you deal with that? What is your own process for managing stress and disappointment? And what advice would you have for young people who have mostly just known success? Yeah. And then face real stress and disappointment?
Well, I think—
By the way, you do look good.
Yeah, you look great.
Thank you.
Have you considered running for governor of California?
Yeah, there you go. No, look, I approached this job. I was 40, a schoolteacher in Mankato. I had no political experience, no money, and no connections. I approached it as an opportunity that if I had a skill set that could help— and it's the same way I told the vice president, I said, you pick the person who gets you elected. If you want me to go to Omaha and get a point, I'll do that. You just tell me what to do. So I always approached it as it's public. So if this isn't my My concern this year, and especially around making a decision to run again, my number one concern was we needed to hold the seat. Not for me to sit in the seat, but for us to hold the seat. And now Republicans are totally screwed because they're not going to win any elections in Minnesota. And so I— here's my advice to young people. And I've told my team this. In these jobs and the decisions you have to make, or whether it's at 4 AM to to know your best friend had been killed or to watch George Floyd or those things.
You elected me to make those decisions to the best of my ability, surround myself with people who could make good decisions. But I say the way you manage the stress on this is, is I know we make every decision in the best interest of Minnesotans. We try and do it as ethically and as obviously following the law as possible. That's the way you sleep at night, knowing you did the best you possibly can in it. Because I've asked, I don't know how some of these people sleep. And it might be what you said, they're shameless. They don't have a conscience. But I would tell young people, And it's what we need. They've got horrible role models right now in many cases, but there are public servants out there serving. And there's numerous ways you can do this, whether it was to be on those streets, whether it was to be in those food banks, whether it was to be standing at the bus stops helping kids, whether it was to be writing letters, whether it was to be donating to the Immigrant Law Center, who's doing incredible work. Find a way to, find a way to contribute, because I think what Donald Trump did and what social media in a modern world has done.
Why we should be more connected. We feel more isolated. And I always said this as a coach. I knew this, that people— it wasn't about the X's and O's. It was about being part of something bigger. And I know that sports gets overblown, the analogy, but you get a pass.
But go ahead.
Well, Trump figured it out. Make people go to those rallies because it's a place they want to go. He even gave them a uniform and the red hats, and he made them feel like they were part of something. What you saw in Minneapolis was community is still real. It is still there. There are still places you can go, places you can contribute. Find your community, contribute to it, make a difference. Because I think all of us know every research does this. It's, it's far better to give and to help. And Minnesotans, by the way, none of this surprised the people in this room because it's all a correlation to highest voter turnout, highest volunteer rates, highest donations to charity. It's what we do. So, and happy.
Very, very last Next question. Are they still weird?
If I had to do it again, I think I would have used harsher language, but don't norm— Yes, they are. Kash Patel, that little dude jumping around.
What's your new word?
We have to— And again, there's something about it, that belonging, whatever. And I don't want to say it like flippantly or whatever, but people want to be part of an organization that they're proud of, that things are happening. We have the capacity to do that. And one of the things that's more challenging for us, they set a small parameter and you either conform or you're out of the cult. With us, we're proud of our broad big tent, but that also means we're going to have to figure out ways to make people feel more, more a part of it. And so I think there's, there's somebody out there. Look, there's a lot of exciting people out there, which, and again, I swore this, Scott, that I would never Beto O'Rourke's one of my dearest friends. And after the last time Beto ran, I said, I'm not putting another penny in Texas, damn it. It's taken money away. Now we got James Talarico. I said, okay, I'm putting a penny in there.
So anyway, I want everybody to thank Governor Walz.
Thank you, Governor.
Yes, great. Thank you. Thank you. That was great. We really appreciate it. I liked his socks, his Minnesota socks. Did you see them? You want to see mine? A little different. Says, "100% that bitch." I'm not running anything but my mouth tonight. Anyway, all right, well, we need to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll get to some of the latest headlines.
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Scott, we're back recording live from the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis. Let's get to some news starting with Target. Target. It's one of the biggest employers here. I know, I know, I know. It's one of the biggest employers here in Minnesota. It's been getting heat for not pushing back on ICE and the Trump administration. Two Minnesota Target employees who are U.S. citizens were detained by federal agents back in January, fueling protests and boycotts. Target's new CEO gave an interview to the AP this week. He said the company is working to, quote, win back trust and the employee and guest safety is their, quote, "north star." I have never heard such fucking nonsense in my life. Like, and I interview a lot of people, and I knew Brian Cornell, who used to run it for a long time, 'cause I covered retail. And I thought that opportunity was— that interview was the worst interview I've seen in a while. It said nothing. It was all talking points. It went out on no limbs. It wasn't brave. It wasn't genuine. And people have a great emotional relationship with Target. They have over the years. I mean, there's other issues they have, but I thought it was a real missed opportunity for a CEO not to have a fresh start.
Brian had been tarnished, and rightly so, for dumping gay flags, as if that's the biggest deal in the fucking world. And it was an opportunity missed. Obviously, there's secular issues happening around retail, but Target for a while was really on a tear. Your thoughts?
Yeah, last century. Yeah. Like, Target's a great company. They carved out a great position. The last 20 years, they've returned about 7% a year. S&P's up 16%. Walmart's up 23%. So the bottom line is Target has vastly underperformed the market. And that's what's such a shame. I look at this through a shareholder lens. That was a big opportunity because I think the biggest commercial opportunity, I've been saying this for 6 months, is for someone to elegantly, in a non-personal way, basically to say no and demonstrate that we have stronger fidelity to our stakeholders and the Constitution without being personally vindictive around the Trump administration. This is a huge opportunity, and it looks like Dario Amodei is taking it. In the last week, when he's kind of refused to comply with certain Trump administration, he's since backpedaled a little bit, The annual recurring revenue of Anthropic has gone from $14 to $19 billion. So the opportunity for someone to push back was enormous. And quite frankly, the CEO of Target missed an enormous opportunity because right now what the city deserves is spine, not spin. And the— this was just such a lost opportunity. And I'm going to name drop because I'm desperate for your affirmation, but I've worked with probably 150 of the Fortune 500 CEOs at some point in my career.
And whenever they put out a press release, I know exactly what happened here. This was a press release that was gangbanged by about a dozen $800-an-hour communications consultants that were worried about— attractive— different interpretations. I used to write CEOs' press releases in their IR, and I'm like, no more than 2 people can work on this because it'll get diluted into nothingness. And also what I like to remind CEOs of is when they get stressed out about saying something or potentially offending shareholders, I'm like, dude, you're already rich and you're going to be dead soon. So why wouldn't you say something? This was such an enormous opportunity to say, to basically stand up for employees. He would have been a national hero. So many people would have said, you know what, I think I'm going to shop at Target this week. This was the mother of all missed opportunities for shareholders.
Again, besides the— I like that spine, not spin. You spent all day thinking that one up, didn't you? I like it.
I did.
I'm going to steal it. But when you have that, when they didn't do that, because again, there are secular issues around retail, we all know and we are aware of, and that even Walmart, which was the juggernaut, is only up 23% But what would you— this person had worked, has worked there most of his career, right? He's a career person. How difficult right now is it for CEOs to do things like that? Because you don't— you keep saying there's going to be more and more of them. And Dario did backpedal a little bit. Like he said, he's called Trump a dictator, which is technically accurate. Yeah, but they—
but they—
but he kind of walked back saying, I shouldn't have been so rash. He's still suing the government, suing the government for the behavior.
But we've talked about this. Look, what's needed is the following. There's a lack of leadership amongst— so I'm friends with a guy named Jeffrey Sollenfeld who runs a leadership course at Yale, who brings together the largest convocation of CEOs in the country. And I've been having a dialog with Jeff and I said, Jeff, you're the hero we need because the reality is you have to be empathetic to— it's very hard to go first right now. And that is if you go first and you say I'm the president's enemy, the largest customer in the world is the US government, and it also has the ability to basically neuter your company. And you do have a responsibility to employees and shareholders. So what's needed is collective action, and that is somebody has to get 10, 50, 100 of the Fortune 500 CEOs to basically put out, you know, a real letter saying this has just gone too far. And there are certain constitutional and democratic and civil rights that have made these companies the best-performing companies. The best-performing organization in history is the US military. The second-best-performing organization in the world is the US corporation. And one of the reasons it's performed so well is basic separation of government and business, uniform systemic laws that you get to oblige by, you're compliant to, but also you have the same treatment.
And they could just put out a fairly— a letter that says, we're just not down with what's going on. And it needs to be 50 of them, because right now what they all say, and I've heard from probably about 20% of of companies we're asking you to resist and unsubscribe from. And they all make a big point. They're like, it's really hard to go first. So there's a lack of leadership or there's an opening for someone to organize a group of them to push back. But the fact that effectively in the last week, I think Anthropic has become more valuable than OpenAI. You're going to see more nos. All of a sudden, a bunch of CEOs are gonna reach down and find these spherical things and decide to speak up.
Well, um, speaking of which, uh, let's go over Anthropic. The Pentagon has officially labeled it as a supply chain risk, but the company says it won't impact business partners as much as Pete Hegseth implies, and the ban will only apply directly to contracts with the department. I'm going to call them Department of Defense because I feel— because it's like the Gulf of America. Um, Dario Amodi is also apologizing, as I said, for a memo. He basically said the White House punished Anthropic for not offering, quote, dictator-style praise. What is happening here? There's a person, as I've talked about, a guy named Emil Michael, who is a tech person who had to leave Uber under very bad circumstances, including reporting by an organization I ran. Really, a bullying toady is how I would describe him. But Hagseth, let's use him, pretend he knows what's happening. Do you think they're going to try to go harder on Anthropic now? And what is the price? Because he did pull back some. What do you think went into that from a—
I think they're distracted. And the only thing I'm fairly certain of is that, again, I'll go back to my consulting days. There's actually a wonderful kid, Ari, who's here, who used to work with me. Kid, he's now 3 kids, lives in Minnesota.
That means you're old, but go ahead.
I always used to say before we'd go in to talk to a board or management, who's in the room that's not in the room? And that is, there's always a context or atmospherics in a room. Companies are highly politically charged places with leaders who have a disproportionate amount of influence even when they're not in the room. I'm like, we're going in and we're talking about e-commerce or shareholder value, but who's in the room that's not in the room? And I believe almost every decision being made by this administration is two people who are in the room but not in the room. And that is, whenever you see anyone dealing with the press or congressional testimony, Roy Cohn is in the room. And if you look at Roy Cohn's— Roy Cohn was Donald Trump's mentor. Attack, attack, attack, insult, lie, deny, never acknowledge, attack, attack, deny, insult. And basically, one of the greatest brand erosions of the US government is there used to be a certain decorum and civility when you testified in front of Congress. We weren't that nation that broke into fisticuffs or started throwing water each other. That's gone because Roy Cohn is in the room.
The second person that is present in every room right now around every decision is Jeffrey Epstein. And I believe, and I've said this over and over, that there are two very, or three very smart people armed with every LLM monitoring the temperature of the proximity between Trump and Epstein's name in the news. And when it goes above a certain temperature, they then ask the LLM, for what action would create the most controversy, no matter how ridiculous it is. We're taking tariffs to 50% on Spain. We're going to invade Cuba. Start calling someone racist names that will push the temperature down again. I think that Roy Cohn and Epstein are literally in every room.
So who is in Pete Hegseth's room besides Jack Daniels? No, really, is this friend from high school?
I don't—
I think And probably grammar school, looking at him.
But yeah, I, I think that Dario is going to get let off the hook because my prediction is in the next 2 to 4 weeks, other CEOs are going to step into the void, the vacuum of leadership here.
So he'll get some help.
I think he'll get some cloud cover from other firms. It'll start saying—
any prediction of what firm that would be? It's not going to be Jeff Bezos.
I don't know. I really don't know.
Feels— I feel like it might be Ted Sarandos. Someone like that, because he doesn't give a fuck now.
Yeah, Ted is in a position to do it now. I mean, in fact, we're going on a diversion here, but walking away— it's so funny, if you wrote a book called The Worst Acquisitions in History, you just might as well call it Warner Brothers.
And by the way, I wrote that book. You did not read it because you're known to mess with everything.
Oh, the book on AOL.
Yeah, I wrote two.
Yeah.
Is it called There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere?
I was having a bottle of Lancers and watching and listening to Sisko when I read that. Okay. And the English beat.
All right, finish up. I gotta know the story.
But effectively, they walked away from a $120 billion deal. So they have $120 billion. Their stock's up 24% since walking away from a deal, another $60 billion. So my suggestion to Ted is, you know what, you've just saved $182 billion. You know what's worth $178? Disney. Which has the most defensible business in all of entertainment, which is the parks. The reason I bring that up is, again, Warner Bros. is about to be the worst acquisition in history. Yeah. There's a basic rule. Shari Redstone, Edgar Bronfman Jr., now David Ellison. The wonderful thing about income inequality, unfortunately, 'cause of our tax structure, we create dynasties. But when we had a more sane tax structure where we taxed estates 'cause we didn't believe in dynasties, it had, we had, didn't have such out-of-control income inequality. 'Cause here's the thing, rich, the kids of rich people are usually fucking idiots. And they usually spend, they usually spend all of their dad's money 'cause they're under the impression that being rich makes them smart. And they start making really stupid decisions.
Yeah, that's been my experience. I always say to one of them, I can't remember who it was, one of these kids, I said, you were, you know, it's that you were born on—
The only people paying these prices in media are the children of rich people who think they know what they're doing.
No, they are, their idea is they were born on third base and they think they've hit a home run. A home run, and they haven't, and it will be a disaster. You're right. Speaking of unusual people, some Elon Musk news. He was in a courtroom this week. Investors are suing him, claiming his 2022 tweets about pausing the Twitter deal tanked the stock price and cost them a ton of money. Elon's defense: he says he put the deal on hold because he genuinely had concerns about bots and fake accounts. If the jury doesn't buy it, he could be on the hook for close to $1 billion in damages. He's managed to unctuous his way out of so many lawsuits. The pedo lawsuit, the other one where he said 420. Um, what do you think about this one? He really misbehaved in this case. He was forced to then buy it.
Of course, he literally fits the SEC definition of insider trading and market manipulation. Yeah. If I had said— if I was on the— if I was on the board of a public company and said— made an announcement, tweeted that the— we had just that I was buying the company for $420 a share at a 60% premium and the funding was secured, and that wasn't true, I would never be on a public board again, much less be an officer. And most likely I'd end up in jail. We have sent people to jail for much less than this. And this is the problem with this level of massive income inequality. And that is, generally speaking, the one way AI might help is AI might actually be a means of enforcing the law unilaterally, which it is not now. Because the reality is the top 1% are protected by the law, but they're not bound by it. And the bottom 99% are bound by the law but not protected by it. And Elon Musk represents that in spades. And so what? Because most of the penalties from the law are civil penalties, and there is no penalty big enough to get Meta to stop putting out content that convinces teenage girls to stop cutting themselves.
And there's no penalty large enough, no fine large enough for Musk to stop lying and committing the types of SEC violations that the rest of us have to play by.
So what's going to happen here to him? Because he'll say he was concerned about bots. He, he had an ironclad deal with no due diligence that he agreed to.
At some point, the laws, the penalties have to be a percentage of your wealth or the market cap of the company, because he might be fined as much as a billion dollars If you have the average household wealth of a family in America, $120,000, that's the equivalent of a $550 fine.
Yeah. And he's going to be a trillionaire with SpaceX.
So who cares? He doesn't care. And he just throws money and lawyers at it.
So do you think he'll win this case? Because he's, he's won them all.
I don't know enough about it. What do you think?
I think he might win it again. I think he always manages to squeeze out of things and he says, oh, he just didn't mean to say it and he had real concerns. And, you know, we talked about this at the time. We're like, he's going to have to buy it. We don't care what he says.
Oh, the court, the Delaware court was not impressed with him. He did not want, he tried to do everything. He realized in a manic state, ketamine, that Twitter was worth $44 billion. And then when he sobered up, he's like, uh-oh. And he did everything to try and get out of it. And the Delaware chancellor said, I'm just not that impressed by you. These agreements into the board, the board of Twitter's like, we don't care if this guy's really fucking high. If he wants to pay us this much money, just send an agreement that they are tight. And they did that and they wouldn't let him out of it 'cause they knew that he, was buying an $18 billion company for $44 billion.
Yeah, but he of course sailed out of that because the banks didn't foreclose on him. They did because they wanted the next deal.
And to be fair, the company has performed better than they thought.
And he moved it into— you don't know how it's performed.
Well, Twitter, most of the metrics are lower significantly, but my understanding is advertisers have returned. That's not your understanding?
The business sucks as it always did. And, and these numbers are down in Threads. InRoads, owned by—
Huge InRoads is now bigger, bigger, bigger than Twitter.
But still, I mean, people do still— there's a lot of politicians on it, which— and press that continue to stay on it. Scott and I left a long time ago despite enormous audiences there.
I mean this sincerely, I mean, I talk about this a lot. I struggle with anger and depression, and I try and go through a series of things that will be an unlock, and I try to keep track of what causes when I go dark. And one of the things I realized about 4 is that 20 to 25— I'm very analytical— 20 to 25% of the time when I went dark was fucking something that happened on Twitter.
Yeah, you used to get upset.
So I stopped using Twitter about 3 and a half, 3 years at last World Cup. My suggestion is one of the most accretive things you can do for your mental health is not be on Twitter.
Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. I have not missed it one bit. I had— I continually have tech bros saying, You're really missing out on what's there. And I'm like, oh, someone not calling me a cunt 50 times a day. I'm good. I'm real good with that. What?
Why does that make me happy? I don't know why that—
That's a word we need to reestablish as a good word to use. They use it in Britain. You live there, right? Don't they call you that all the time?
Yeah, that's one of those words that I should never, ever say under any circumstance.
Yeah, please don't. Please don't.
Don't even do "see you next Tuesday." You're not allowed to do that.
Anyway, you own that word.
I can, and I use it quite a bit. Anyway, all right, next story. More than 1,500 transgender people in Kansas woke up this week to find their driver's licenses are now legally invalid, all thanks to a new state law forcing them to get new IDs that reflect the gender they were assigned at birth. The law also has what critics are calling a bounty provision where anyone who encounters a trans person in a public bathroom and feels aggrieved can actually sue for damages. Courts are already pushing back with legal filing calling the law something designed to, quote, discriminate against and dehumanize transgender people. You think these anti-trans laws are popping up across the country again? Will pushing back on this be a winning or losing strategy for Democrats? Obviously, the sports stuff did stick, but as we get closer to midterms, this, this particular thing seems the most dehumanizing thing and sickening thing is trying to— you need your your license to vote, people are immediately without a license, a real ID to fly and everything else. And it's really, I think it's one of the cruelest things that I've heard to do to transgender people as yet among the many cruel things people do.
Any thoughts about how to deal with a story like this? Be careful, Scott.
There's something David Frum said to kind of summarize how I feel about the Democratic Party right now, and that is, if progressives won't enforce the border, fascists will. And we stick out our chin and we lose our fucking minds when we try to pass legislation that demands corporations have third bathrooms, or when we let a trans woman— and I realize this is the wrong crowd for this, but I want to speak as I would anywhere else— or we decide that a trans woman can compete in a women's NCAA meet, and all progressives look around cautiously and then applaud and call it inspiring. So you're telling me all medals, endorsement contracts, professional contracts, all money, college scholarships are ultimately going to go just to people born with penises? We lost our fucking minds. And then they move in and see an opportunity to demonize a community and just, quite frankly, cover it and respond with hate. So I think where the Democratic— and I'm torn on this— I think where the Democratic community needs to be thoughtful is like, look, We have civil rights. This is a community that deserves the same dignity as every other community.
But no, we're not going to make it our front and center issue. This should be settled law and move on.
But it's not settled law. They took away their licenses. This is where it goes.
That, but the law, in my opinion, my read of the law is there's no legal justification for taking away their licenses. But don't make it the platform for whoever's running for president I just think these— I think a lot about, you know, I think a lot about masculinity.
And I hadn't noticed that.
And loosely speaking, I think of it as acquiring skills and strength in the service and protection of others. You might disagree with the trans community, you might not believe in gender affirmation, whatever your beliefs are. But if you think of yourself as a man, right, and you see this kind of demonization, it doesn't matter your political views, you move to protection. This is just straight victimization. So where I land, where I land is this should be settled law. Of course you don't take their driver's license away. That's just stupid. But don't make it— don't make it the lead and opening debate for the presidential election because This is a community that—
this is—
I get it, this is a really tough one, but we really screwed up on this one. And there are a lot of Americans that have a different viewpoint on this, but in my view, this is something where we say, all right, let's be reasonable. We're going to afford this community the same rights and dignity as every other community, but it's not going to be a part of our platform that we lead with.
I do think they're trying to— definitely trying to get us to to stick our chin out. That same time, this— I think it actually is very helpful when they do this bounty provision thing. It just seems fucking mean. Like, I think just like everywhere else, persecution for no reason.
It's—
I think it had resonance here in Minnesota. I didn't live here, but that definitely—
North Dakota passed a law for no free play law, whatever it's called. So no trans athletes in high school. And then when they were asked to find a trans athlete in any high school, they couldn't find one.
Yes, that's correct. There's 6 of them. Anyway, it'll be an interesting thing going forward, but it's astonishingly cruel, and I think it will hit back at them, especially these bounties. I think there's a real trend that I think you and I talked about was a lot of people have immigration issues, a lot of people have this, and there are a lot of people who were sort of pro-Trump or voted for Trump, to me, has said, but not this way. Right. And I think there's a great deal of political strength to be seen saying Okay, you can have that view, but do you really want to do this to people? Do you really want to do that? And I think Minnesota was sort of the absolute place where people were like, are you fucking kidding me? Like that kind of thing. And I think it does have resonance, especially when the citizens fight back in a way that has a lot of dignity and grace and suffering also at the same time. So last one, this one is for you, and it's our friends at the Minnesota Star Tribune. Which we love. Minneapolis now leads the Midwest in OnlyFans subscriptions, according to new data from OnlyGuider.
I didn't even know there was like a data for OnlyFans, but out of 167 cities, Minneapolis ranks 5th in the country per capita and 6th in the world. Minneapolis residents spent more than $14 million on OnlyFans in 2025. First of all, what the fuck is going on with all of you? And Scott, will you be staying a little longer in Minneapolis?
So I'm fascinated with OnlyFans, not for the reasons you think.
It's exactly for the reasons you think.
It's just— it reflects a lot of things about our society and economics. It's so 84% of the creators are women. 80% of the revenue— I'm sorry, 80% of the creators are women. 84% of the revenue comes from men. Uh, it's the highest per-employee revenue company in the world right now. It's a bigger business than the New York Times at $7 billion. And, uh, the number of registered users is greater than the population of the United States. It's effectively a transfer of It's basically we've monetized healthcare in the United States, we've monetized rage with social media, and now we're monetizing male loneliness. And I think it's a symptom of something much more insidious and frightening, and that is young people aren't having enough sex. And a lot of it is because young men are not leveling up and taking as much— they're taking way too much risk online and they're not taking enough risk offline. And I offend people when I say this, but I hold to it. I think—
here he goes.
I think we need to celebrate young men's horniness. But we need to celebrate it offline. And what I would say is that the killers of masculinity are the indoors, a lack of exercise, blaming immigrants, blaming women, and porn, I think, are killers of masculinity. And I, like I'm very good at doing, I'm going to bring this story back to myself. When I was about 24 years ago, I was at the Raleigh Hotel at the pool on Sundays. They have a DJ day, and there was just this scorching hot woman. And I said to myself, before I leave, I promised myself I was going to speak to her. And I'm like, I'm gonna speak to her. I'm gonna make the approach. I promise I'm gonna do it. And without the benefit of alcohol, I chickened out 'cause I'm just not that interesting without alcohol. And so I went to get my car and I had the valet ticket and I thought, oh, fuck. And I ran back in and I went up to her and I showed her the valet ticket and I said, I promised myself I was gonna say hi to you and I almost left.
Anyways, 18 months later, we gave birth to a son whose middle name is Raleigh. And let me, let me be less aspirational here. I wasn't looking at her thinking, I want lower rates on auto insurance. I think embracing your horniness and wanting to have sex is a wonderful thing. It encourages you to level up. It encourages you to shower. It encourages you to have a plan. It encourages you to develop a kindness practice. It encourages you to work out. It encourages you to get girl friends who can teach you how to behave around women. And when they see you're a decent dude, maybe introduce you to some of their friends. Men need to level up. And the motivation for leveling up, quite frankly, is being so horny you're willing to take risks.
Oh, well, all right. That's your next book then.
And when And when you're quite frankly jerking off twice a day to porn, which unfortunately through AI is getting more and more lifelike and more and more seductive, it's gonna reduce your ability to do one of the most wonderful things in the world, and that is make your own bad porn. And let me just finish with this.
I'm waiting for this to end.
Okay. I'll just finish with this. I hate the incel movement. Involuntarily celibate, like it's so— you face so many obstacles that you've just given up and you wear it like a badge of honor. Well, guess what? 99% of men through 99% of history have been involuntarily celibate. I was involuntarily celibate for the first 19 years of my life. And this is what men do. What do they do? They level up such that they can be voluntarily incelibate. So the fact that, okay, welcome to the fucking work week, dudes. Level up. Women are leveling up. That means you've gotta raise, you've gotta level up, right? Develop the attributes. I coach young men. I call it the rule of threes. If you work out at least 3 times a week, and I have data on this, you spend at least 30 hours a week working outside of the house, and 3 times a month you put yourself in the company of strangers in the agency of something bigger than you— church group, writing class, nonprofit, whatever it is— and you're willing to talk to people and endure rejection and express friendship, express romantic interest. Every father has an obligation to teach his son how to express romantic interest while making that woman or that man feel safe.
That is an obligation you have. You have to— 45% of men 18 to 22 have never asked a woman out in person. And there are not enough men leveling up and realizing at some point, if you do those 3 things, you're in the top 5% of men. And what I tell these young men is that if you're in the top 5% of young men for long enough, you will be, trust me, voluntarily celibate. You are? Okay. And the most wonderful thing in life, the most wonderful thing in life is building a life with a partner. And guess where it starts? When dudes are really fucking horny. Embrace their horniness.
All right, the theory of horny from Scott Galloway.
It's why we put a man on the moon and have vaccines. It was guys who wanted to get laid.
In any case, you know, Minneapolis, we're gonna let you off the hook because it's super cold here, but now that the weather is lovely like today, you better get out there and fuck. Apparently, according— that's according to Scott Galloway. I, of course, have never had a problem attracting people, but it's not gonna happen for you tonight. I'm going back to his house tonight, but I'm not— it's never happened. No, I'm kidding.
Wouldn't that be great? You always bring this up when it's live.
I don't.
I have no interest in you whatsoever. I mean, it's like you're the reason I became a lesbian. Anyway, we'll take one more quick quick break and we'll be back with Scott's update on the impact of Resist and Unsubscribe.
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Scott, we're back recording live from Minneapolis. And the reason we're here is that back in February you started telling people how to resist and unsubscribe on our show. Now tell us how well it worked. Scott, let me tell you, you're in for a treat. Scott doing a press— he used to be a very good professor, and he's going to show you why in a second.
That's how I met him. Okay, so the agenda: why we did this, the weapon that's hiding in plain sight, what we built, what's next. Okay, so what we don't recognize is we have a weapon hiding in plain sight, and that is the most radical act in capitalism is non-participation. If you go all the way back to COVID, which is the most, quite frankly, crispest, biggest government action in history, it wasn't because tens of thousands of people were dying, it was because GDP crashed 31%. The only time the Trump administration responds is when the markets crash. So I started thinking, how can we send a signal to CEOs and to the president about our objection to what's taking place here? We want to rewire the incentives. Right now, the incentive for all CEOs in tech is to just comply, is just to be obsequious to the president. We need to figure out a way such that when CEOs, instead of complying, instead of providing data for surveillance, whatever it might be, they think there's a potential downside to this. And then also just personally, I have found that action absorbs anxiety. This is the first time in my life I've had trouble disassociating from what's going on politically.
And also I think there's way too much courage behind a mic and behind a keyboard, and more of us sort of need to have our off-mic and our off-keyboard actions foot to some of the virtue we claim to have when we get in front of a fucking keyboard. So in a capitalist society, right, consumer spending, two-thirds. We are a consumer-driven economy. And also the wealthiest among us are controlling more and more. So if you wanna hit the wealthiest, you go after stock prices. And then effectively, again, what we saw was the greatest political response in history was when GDP crashed. Wanna rewire the incentives. I apologize, I'm being, redundant here. So what's the weapon hiding in plain sight? Economic strikes. It really is a powerful lever. And this is a brief history of economic strikes. And the one I always point to is the Montgomery bus strike. And there was a very cinematic moment where a courageous woman refused to give up her seat. But actually what moved the needle, it was a 13-month economic strike where approximately 300 cars a day, organized by a young reverend named Martin Luther King, gave people carpools such that they didn't have to take the bus.
And essentially the municipal system started losing a quarter of a million dollars a month, and then after 13 months they gave in and they desegregated the bus line. So it needs to be sustained. And essentially our president does not seem to be moved by outrage, not as much by protest, not as much by the Supreme Court, not as much by even his own Republican Party. He seems to be moved, quite frankly, by market. Markets. And when he has withdrawn from discussions of annexing Greenland or of crazy tariff ideas, it has been when one thing has happened. It's been when the market has crashed. So how do we send a signal to him? What I think is the soft tissue of the market right now is it's too concentrated. And that is somewhere between a third and 40% of the stock market or the S&P is just a handful of companies. So that's the soft tissue. We go after these companies and then we go after the soft tissue of the soft tissue.. And that is subscriptions. And again, these companies make up most of the market. So when Netflix just announces that for the first time they've lost subscriptions versus gained them, they lose $58 billion in market cap.
More recently, T-Mobile was supposed to add 506,000. This is from an earnings call a couple weeks ago. They only added 495,000. So just an 11,000 delta in subscriptions. They lost $30 billion in market cap. So the amount of power we have when we strike the artery of these companies, the organs of our corpus and government with a blow around subscriptions, it really is the most impactful thing we can do relative to the amount of consumer disruption. Okay, so what you're gonna find when you go to resist and unsubscribe like me is you might even save some money. I found out out that I had 4 AT&T contracts that, uh, for BlackBerrys and iPads that would have been in landfills for 10 years. So these companies are smart and they make it very hard to unsubscribe. So basically the site is just meant to navigate you to a link such that you can unsubscribe really easily. And what we have found is that of the people who go there, approximately 5% actually unsubscribe versus 4% at an e-commerce site. And we have driven approximately 1.5 million, we're coming up actually on 2 million unique site visits without, thank you.
But the most exciting thing is we haven't spent a single dollar 'cause neither Alphabet or Meta would take my money because it was quote unquote political in nature. Yeah, anyway, so how did we drive traffic? The thing that drove the most traffic was an article posted at npr.org. I was not expecting that. We've also built a calculator where if you go on and type in who you're unsubscribing from and the size of your social media footprint, it will give you a sense for the economic impact. So I'll give you an example. If you have, if you and your family or you have a decent-sized social network and you unsubscribe from ChatGPT, $240 based on the size of your social network, if it's decent, you get another 3 people. So 4 people unsubscribing, that's $960 in lost revenue. Because this company is trading at 40 times revenues, that is essentially about a $38,000 or $40,000 hit to their market cap just with you unsubscribing and then posting it on social media. Again, this is, needs to be a sustained effort of small actions adding up. Over 13 months. So Instagram, we had huge views and pickup because we had some celebrities talk about it and then tried to, the cloud cover, actually I did, I'm doing a bunch of research on protests is media coverage.
We pelted you with this before. I've been a total whore. I'm going on everything right now. But media coverage is important 'cause if you look at when ABC acquiesced and put Kimmel back on the air, It was actually when unsubscribes were going way down, but the media coverage had picked up, 'cause it hurts morale internally. So what's next? So what I'm trying to do is figure out a way to sustain this movement, and I'm gonna be hiring someone full-time, and recognizing that we had some good momentum, and we don't wanna give it up after a month, and try and add some innovation to it, and continue to drive traffic to the site. Also, where is our kind of red line, right? Like, what is your, you know, what was your sort of last straw moment? And for me, quite frankly, it was, it happened here when we had a member of the cabinet describe a nurse taking care of veterans as a domestic terrorist. I just can't, I want you to know, and I'm fairly confident of this, I don't have research, I think there are tens of millions of Americans that just feel your fucking rage right now.
Okay.
So we have a lot of companies We're going to spend a few weeks focusing on one specifically, ChatGPT, and an unsubscribe movement around ChatGPT. Also, I think there's essentially we get poorer if we don't have systemic laws that affect all companies when we start punishing some companies and rewarding others. With one of the reasons that America trades at the highest P/E multiple. In other words, if you create a dollar at Target, The shareholders, the stakeholders get $27, whereas retailers in Japan get much less, and in Germany. And one of the reasons, great research universities, incredible risk aggressiveness, deepest pools of capital. But the reason we have the deepest pools of capital is because of those things, but also rule of law, where they believe that if they invest in a company, they know what the company is gonna get to do or be enabled to or be restricted to because the laws are supposed to be applied equally. So when we have these one-off punitive efforts that result in CEOs bending a knee to the president, it not only is embarrassing, it not only denies us of our civil rights and our civil liberties, it's going to make us poor over the long term.
And we don't realize how good we've had it for so long. Effectively, if you think of it, we have $5 million for every startup in this nation. Europe has $1 million. We have 5 times the amount of risk capital here, and I think it's in large part because until recently, we had a set of consistent systemic laws that applied to everybody in terms— if Palantir or Anduril want to make weapons or provide the government with information to surveil citizens, if it's legal, they're allowed to do it. But at the same time, if a company doesn't want to work with the Department of Defense, they're allowed to do that as well. And the big myth over the last year is that the markets have performed well. If you look at the crash in the dollar, We're 21 out of 23 right now. We have underperformed every market except for New Zealand and Denmark since President Trump was inaugurated. What I would say is one of my role models around this is Heather Cox Richardson. I think it's really easy to be bereft. I got about 2 minutes here and I'll wrap up. I think it's really easy to be resigned or bereft to the notion that we're in uniquely dark times, that this is the worst it's ever been.
That just isn't true. This nation has survived plagues, civil wars, world wars, unbelievable economic disasters. We were interning families because they were Japanese in what was effectively concentration camps not that long ago. And many of those families had sons serving in the European theater. But what happened in each of those instances is that Americans were equal to the moment, and our democracy came back stronger.? And effectively, that's the question now. Are we equal to this moment? And my fear is that people such as myself, that effectively I would describe my economic history as unprecedented typhoon-like winds in my sails while paying the lowest taxes in history, never asked to serve in the military, never really asked to volunteer, incredibly low tax rates, free education, UCLA and Berkeley, unbelievable technology paid by middle-class investors, DARPA. I got assisted lunch, I got Pell Grants, and I've paid, I think my average tax rate, and I talk openly about this, has been about 20% for the last 10 years. So in sum, and I think there's a lot of you like me in this room, we have a debt. Our objectives are to send a signal to consumers that they have a weapon hiding in plain sight.
In plain sight, and to create a series of incentives among CEOs that there's a downside to enabling this depraved behavior. The weapon hiding in plain sight is economic strikes. Most radical act in a capitalist society is non-participation. I talked a little bit about what we built, and we're going to continue to innovate around it and continue to try and drive traffic to it. I'm going to hire full-time resources and probably focus in on a narrower set of companies to send a stronger signal. And what I would ask each of us, and I think we've been inspired by some of the sacrifice that many of you have demonstrated, what I'm asking of a lot of people, especially my generation, is do you have a debt? You know, are we equal to this moment?
Thank you. Thank you, Scott. So we, again, one of the things you can go to Scott's site, Resist and Unsubscribe, unsubscribe from one thing that you don't fucking need and you don't need it all. That's all. And it does build. There is a, one of the great things about Minneapolis was there's a stone soup quality to all this. We all can contribute. There's talking to your legislators, it's talking to people at work, talking to your community, organizing community groups, things like that. And the most important thing, the absolute most important tool in your entire kit besides your wallet and everything else is to vote. Voting is the most critical and important tool in this to do. Scott always surprises me with things like this, and I think it's really important. And you can ask a million questions of why it won't work, but as Scott says, what could go right? And so that's how you should think about it.
People of Minnesota, thank you so much from the rest of us in the country.
Thank you, Minnesota. When history is written, this will be one of the main stories of this era. And I'm telling you, it's changed everybody's— it has. You don't think it has? The sacrifice has been worth it. It, even if it seems like an incredibly steep price to pay. Across the country, people are— it has inspired people in a way that is, I think, going to change things rather significantly. But it's not over. Just remember, there's still— these sons of bitches keep coming. Anyone who's in any marginalized group like gays, they keep coming. So you got to keep vigilant against what they're doing and don't assume they're ever going to go away. And so it's That's true. That too. So, so keep going, Minnesota. We have got your back. We really appreciate this. And we're so thrilled to have done this here. And we will be back this year. And you can catch tonight's show on YouTube and in your podcast feeds. That's all the time we've got for today.
Thank you, Minneapolis.
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Kara and Scott are live in Minneapolis for a special show celebrating 'Resist and Unsubscribe.' They’re joined by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to discuss how the state pushed back against Trump, ICE, and Kristi Noem — and what Democrats should be doing now. Then, Target’s political stance continues to frustrate critics, Elon Musk takes the stand, and a new Kansas law invalidates driver's licenses for transgender residents. Plus, Scott gives an update on the impact of 'Resist and Unsubscribe,' and reveals what comes next.
A special thank you to Tane Danger and Danger Boat Productions in Minneapolis!
Producers: Lara Naaman, Zoë Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Christine Driscoll
Audio Engineer: Ernie Indradat
Video Editor: Rich Shibley
Special Thanks: Drew Burrows, Mia Silverio, Dan Chiolan
Vox Media's Executive Producer of Podcasts: Nishat Kurwa
Watch this episode on the Pivot YouTube channel.
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Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast.Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or email Pivot@voxmedia.com
This episode was recorded live at The Pantages Theater in Minneapolis on March 8, 2026.
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