Transcript of The Cost of Corporate Silence on ICE, Trump's Health, and TikTok USA

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swischer. Scott is somewhere on a plane. We did an emergency pod yesterday, and I'm glad you all. Listen to it. We thought it was critical to do it. So today, I'm joined by a friend of the pod, the one, the only, Anthony Scaramucci, also known as the Much. Anthony, welcome.

Eric, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me. I saw Scott last week in Davos. I enjoyed his commentary, and I enjoy your commentary.

Thank you, Anthony. Anyway, I'm going to call you Anthony, not the Much anymore. Okay. I like that better. You sit up straight when I say Anthony.

I'm sitting up straight. You yelled at me before we started to sit up Great. Thanks, Mom.

Anytime. But we are in a serious zone today. Actually, I'm glad to have you heard because I do want to talk about business people and their reaction to what's happening in Minnesota and elsewhere. But before we do anything, I'd like to point out that as the episode drops, it's 39 days since the deadline passed for the DAJ to release all the Epstein files. Again, Pam Bondi is in violation of Allah, and they have not released them. And part of this, what's happening has to do with this, too. So let's not forget that they are out there, and probably, as someone noted on one of the social media sites, they're safer than anything in America right now are the Epstein files. Anyway, we've got a lot to discuss, so let's get to it. Donald Trump says his administration is reviewing everything surrounding the shooting of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretty in Minneapolis this weekend. He's also now sending his border Tsar Tom Holman to Minneapolis. The leading GOP candidate for Minnesota governor just dropped out of the racing. He can't support the National Republican retribution on the citizens of his state. As we record, a federal judge is hearing arguments on temporarily halting the immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

On the latest episode of On with Kara Swisher, I spoke with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Fry. This was before the Alex Freddie shooting, but Frey knew another incident was inevitable. Let's listen.

For over a month before Renee Good was shot, the chief of police and I were both privately and publicly expressing concerns that somebody was going to get shot or killed, that either a civilian, a resident, a police officer, or an ICE agent was going to get shot and killed. And tragically, that happened. And then it happened again. And by the way, it's going to happen again on on top of that because this is the conduct that we're seeing that inevitably will lead to people getting hurt. It's deeply concerned. But it's not just Minneapolis that should be concerned right now. I have a deep concern for the endurance of our Republic when the constitutional norms and these mainstays of good governing principles are thrown in the trash can.

Unfortunately, he was pressy, and although I think a lot of people did understand the escalating tensions there, I'll also note, I've been calling out CEOs for their silence on this. As comedian Steve Hofstater put it on threads, If speaking out against When your brand's fascism damages your brand, that means your brand is fascism. But since our last recording, some execs are speaking out, at least in Minnesota, on Sunday, more than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies, including Target, Best Buy, and 3M, release a letter calling for de-escalation. It took them long enough. More than 450 tech workers from Google, Metta, OpenAI, and other companies have signed a letter urging CEOs to demand ICE, leave cities, and cancel company contracts with ICE. Scott and I talked about what happened this weekend as a turning point. Anthony, I'd love your thoughts on this because, again, you were just at Davos, tons of business leaders. You obviously are tuned into the political system. You are a Republican who is turned away from the Republican Party. Very early, I would add. Talk about what is happening here. Obviously, we're all worried about the Republic itself as the mayor had, but it's an on the ground moving situation.

So I'd love you to look at it from the business point of view, from Trump's point of view, and your own.

Well, I think it's important to understand what they were trying to do and how it backfired. Then we'll talk about the business people. So what they were trying to do, because I know these sons of bitches, is they were trying to set up a great media exposition for themselves in the culture war. I hear the narrative. The Minnesota blue state, blue state is bad. Corruption in the blue state is conjoined. This is that conspiracy nonsense. This is the smaller thing. Yeah, exactly. But it's a conspiracy where the- It is the greatest issue our nation faces, a group of people who committed fraud.

You should just look at the White House on any given day. But go ahead.

I understand the pushback, and we can talk about the Democrats, how they should be responding better to it. But I want you to understand what they're doing. So they're sitting there saying, Okay, this is great. We're going to send the ICE people up there. They're going to rough these people up, and this is going to be great for our culture war. We're going to send a signal to our red meat eating law abiding people that we're getting tough on people, particularly in the blue states, where they're doing, quote, unquote, all the fraud. Now, they send inexperienced ICE agents up there. And we saw the videos, and Trump saw the videos, which is why he panicked, and they murdered the guy. I mean, that's basically what happened. And now the whole thing is blown back on them. And so this media imagery that they were looking for has been a negative media imagery.

The problem- So just pictures. You're saying just photos?

They wanted a Fox News day of programming where the day set from the A block for 12 hours, look at the Trump administration, how tough-ass they are in action. And we're defending the Republic against fraud, and we're mean, and we're tough, and we're taking five-year-olds because that's what we're supposed supposed to be doing. And their tone deaf to the overall optics. And then they created a Kent State-like moment. For the older listeners, the younger listeners, a National Guardsman shot a student at Kent State, and it flipped the entire political landscape at that time. And so what's happening here is the landscape is starting to flip. But concomitant to this is the chilling effect that Donald Trump and his Department of Justice Justice, and his jackbooted people have on business leaders. So hear me out for a second. If you're on a corporate board and you have a public CEO, you're telling the guy or the woman, chill out, take it back seat. There's 1,000 days left for Trump. If you're the managing partner of a law firm, negotiate with him. If you're a president of a university, negotiate with him. He's not Adolf Hitler. He's a lame duck President.

And while he's flexing on you, take it. Don't overly criticize him because he could do damage to our long term brand and damage to our long term stock market performance. Short term, actually. Short term. But that's up against the stuff that you just said about your brand is fascism. So the mistake that they're all making is you have to reject Donald Trump. If you don't flex on Donald Trump and reject Donald Trump, you'll be at a disadvantage. He'll continue to roll you. European leaders, wake up. Business leaders, wake up. Somebody pick up the phone and call Mark Carny, the Prime Minister of Canada, and get some executive coaching, some leadership coaching from him because he gets it. Okay. Newsom is close, by the way. Newsom would be number two in terms of getting it. You have to shove and push Trump back if you're going to get any respect from Donald Trump.

Can I ask you, you're a Let me just say, I talk to them behind the scenes, including people that are close to Trump. Let me just say, it's so close that they could be on the other side of him. They abhor him. At one point, it was with two people, I ran into him on a plane, and they spent 20 minutes trying to tell me, No, we really can't stand him. I go, You need to shut the fuck up if you're not going to say it publicly, because you're not going to win my love because what you're doing is so complicit. Talk a little bit about that because you're at Davos. They obviously... Do they still shrug and say... Because initially, it was the shruggies with business. We'll have to deal with it, and then he'll be gone. This, too, will pass. Did that change at all? No, it's got worse. It's got worse. It's got worse.

Tell me why. No, Scott Morse. Because he's willing to do things that other politicians were not willing to do. He's willing to fudge the Constitution. He's willing to overstep. He's willing to to detain you at the airport. He's willing to put a sanction against your business. He's willing to do things that are outside of the realm of due process. You have to remember, to be in a safe and free society, you have to be subordinate to a set of laws, and you have to have due process. Did the young man that was murdered this past weekend have due process? No, he did not. They made a decision to murder him indiscriminately. That's authoritarianism. When leaders are turning guns on their citizens, they care more about power than they do their citizens. And so these corporate leaders are making a very big mistake. They're kowtowing to Trump because they feel he's got all the power, and he's going to use the power in an unpredictable, indiscriminate way to hurt them. But if they were smarter, they would all team up. The Fortune 50 would team up like the 60 CEOs in Minnesota and say, Hey, listen, I'm sorry, guy, we're not going to take this anymore.

We're going to flood the zone for democratic donations. We're going to try to get rid of your regime. And he's one man standing. You see, this is the problem.

Why don't they do that? Where are they from?

They don't do that because they're operating in their own silos. Okay. And so when you operate in your own silo, Cara, you go to your board and say, What should I do? And they say, Get out of the way. Okay. But if you were operating- Either duck or supportive. If the law firm, Paul Weiss, called 50 other law firms and said, They're coming for me. They're eventually going to come for you. What do we do? And they all teamed up. Now they've got a voice, then they can push back. If the Fortune 100 got together, like the Minnesota CEOs. You see, he got frightened. I know the son of a bitch. He's a baby. Most bullies are. He looked at the video, he said, Holy shit, we murdered the guy, which is why he told the Wall Street Journal last night he's reviewing everything. He called Governor Walsh this morning, and he put out a friendly truth social about Governor Walsh because he knows he's in trouble. Now he's got these CEOs. He's looking at that saying, Whoa, that's 3M, that's Target. These are big companies. If they're coming for me and I get wiped out in the midterms, or they start to reject Republicanism, I just took a couple of billion dollars for myself.

I'm going to end up, and my family is going to end up in wild investigations. So you see what he's doing. He's pulling back. That's Trump's nature. Okay.

Let me. And yet they continue. On the day of the shooting, this happened in the morning. All these CEOs, including Tim Cook, who is getting blowback like you can't believe, for being at this Melania movie. Have you seen it, Anthony?

The Melania, it's not on my list, actually. But if you see it, you can report back to me.

It's selling out, according to Donald Trump.

It's selling out. Yeah, of course it is.

It's like a one old lady lady with Alzheimer's who wandered in by accident is the group of people watching.

I want to tell you something from history that your viewers and listeners should think about. When Chamberlain headed for Munich to discuss with Adolf Hitler, his annexation and what was going on there. The German bureaucrats, we discovered this in their diaries 50, 60, 80 years later. The German bureaucrats were with great relief. They were writing to each other and in their diaries, Oh, this is great. The British Empire is coming to Munich, represented by Neville Chamberlain, and they're going to flex on Adolf Hitler. It's going to scare the daylight out of him, and it's going to knock him out of power. Thank God, this last five years have been a disaster for Germany, and he's going to get tough and knock Adolf Hitler on his ass. Did that happen, Cara? No, it did not happen. He went there and he totally capitulated. And he came back with a sheet of paper and said, Peace in our time. And Churchill said, This is ridiculous. You're allowing him this birth of authoritarianism. Then five, six, seven, three years later, two years later, you're in war. Five, six, seven years later, 60 million people are killed. I'm not comparing Trump to Hitler.

I'm just talking about behavior. If these CEOs and these business leaders and political leaders got together and said, F you, we're not going to take this anymore, they'll scare Mike Johnson. They'll scare the Republicans in the Senate. They'll push back. And they'll flip it. But they won't do it. As long as Trump is intimidating you one on one, Cara, he's going to beat you because he's got the force of the presidency and the federal government. But you have the economy. If you're Why? See, Jamie Dimon- Whom he's suing.

Whom he's suing. Oh, yeah.

Well, let's just talk about this for a second. He said three or four things that Trump did not like. Okay, number one, he wants the Fed to be independent. He doesn't like the lawsuit in the criminal investigation against Jerome Powell. Number two, he said, I'm not giving money to the ballroom because if I give money to the ballroom, the next administration is going to say, Hey, Jackass, you were trying to blackmail. You were getting blackmailed and you were paying bribe money to the President. So he's pretty open, pretty honest guy. I, full disclosure, I know Jamie personally. I love Jamie. I think he's one of the more brilliant financial services executives in our history. So he, pretty honest. And then what does Trump do? You're going to bring the hammer down on him. He's going to bring a $5 million lawsuit, which, of course, he'll lose. And he's bringing a lawsuit against Jamie personally and the bank. He'll lose the lawsuit. But this is a massive chilling effect.

Does it? Or would Jamie say, you're going to fucking lose? No, no, no.

Massive chilling effect. Did you see what he just did to Jamie Dimon? Listen to me.

Yeah, but he didn't do it. Nothing is going to happen. That's the thing. I don't know why they don't get the next step.

Cara, you grew up like I did. You're Italian. You don't give a shit, okay? You know I don't give a shit. I'm ready to fight because I grew up here on Long Island. We were doing pushups in the parking lot outside of Disco, getting ready to fight people, I don't give a shit. I will fight Trump every step of the way, okay? Which is probably why he hasn't come after me, because he knows, okay, if he sued me, we're going to have a great time. I'm going to pick up a million Twitter followers. Let's go. These guys are afraid of him because they see themselves as having too much to lose. But what they're missing is society has too much to lose if they don't get together and they don't coalesce with each other.

I don't even think that. I mean, he's suing Capital One, too, for people who don't know. And again, this comes after Diamond warned Trump not to interfere with the Fed and called his proposal, by the way, the third thing, to cap credit interest rates and economic disaster. So he was critical. Normally, as any CEO is allowed to be. But I just...

It's like, he's not going to lose. But, Cara, you understand human nature. I've read your books, Burn Book, you understand human nature better than you're letting on. There's an impulsive weakness up against authoritarianism. There is. I get it.

Someone like Jamie Dimon, I'm surprised if he's not pushing back behind the scenes very strongly. I think he is.

Oh, no, I think he is.

He doesn't look like he's easily cowed.

No, he's looking at the situation snickering, and he's like, I'm going to wait this guy out, which he's going to do, and he'll win the case, which he will. But it's It's a message. It's a message to others. You don't want to get in my crosshairs. When a cabinet member from Trump One comes to my office, sits on the sofa and says, Listen, most cabinet members are trying to avoid a Trump tweet and some level of humiliation. Why is that, sir? Well, it could be career-ruining for us if we do that. No. Okay, but, Cara, that's how they think, Cara.

I get it. It's so too bad. You got to know how they think. I want to play poker with these people. Now, let me ask you about... You mentioned the Democrats. The business leaders are going to acquiesce. The ones that I think are in trouble are like a Tim Cook because Apple has a different set of values that it's pushed for so long, and here he is doing this, and particularly, he's standing next to Brett Ratner, that piece of shit. At a movie, nobody wants to see. I get that he wants the tarot sauce. I get that he wants things, but you You don't have to go this far. You can hide. Like a Bob Iger, you don't see him. He doesn't show up there. He doesn't say much, but he's not there. He's not present. Why be present is what I want to understand.

Okay, so in Patrick McGee's book, Apple in China, we learn... Okay, it's a phenomenal book. I thought it was the business book of the year. And he talks about how entrenched Apple is in China. Yes. And so So Tim is saying to himself, I got to get Trump off my back and Apple's back because I'm minting money with this iPhone 17. I've got new products coming out. Whether people like it or not, most of the manufacturing is in China. I can virtue signal that it's moving to India or other places, but that's where it is. And if Trump is off my back, that's really good for my shareholders. But where is the line? And you're better at drawing the line than he is, obviously, because he's looking around and saying, no problem, I'll show up at the screening. But he happens to be showing up at the screening where there's a murder, where there's a murder taking place. He happens to show up at a screening where Trump is telling our NATO allies that he's going to invade Greenland, and he's sending out maps on social media where he's got the provinces of Canada flagged alongside of Venezuela, Cuba, and And Greenland, right?

And also Iceland. I don't know if you notice that Iceland was in there as well. That's because it confuses them.

That makes it easier.

That's the trolling of Donald Trump. I get it. He's a culture warrior. He wants to troll everybody. He wants to set all the liberal's hair on fire. I get all of that. But where Tim is sitting there, he's saying to himself, I'm going to give this guy a gold emulate like I did a couple of months ago. I'm going to shove my whole head up his ass because of the situation that's- That's the next season of heated rivalry.

Go ahead.

No, but I mean, come on. You can barely see Tim's ankles hanging out of Trump's ass, right? I mean, you know that, okay? Okay. To me, I'm not their advisor, and they would never take any advice from me, but maybe they would take advice from Mark Carny, because to me, if you collectively push back on him, he folds like a paper suit. He looked at the letter coming in from Minnesota. He looked at the video He said, I got to move out Jailhouse Barbie, Christine Noem. I got to get Jailhouse Barbie off the playing field. We're going to take the bribe Honen back on the playing field, the 50 grand in cash. Junkle. I call him Junkle. Okay. All right. We're going to put him back in. I'm going to acquiesce here, and I'm going to find a way to exit this disastrous situation. But you see, the real question, though, for me, is how are we letting Steven Miller, who Who couldn't get confirmed as a dog catcher. Forget about anything else.

So you explain you were there with him.

How? Well, I'm going to tell you how, because Steven Miller bought call-ups on the worst day of Trump's political life, which was January 6, 2021, where Kevin McCarthy said he's finished, McDonald said he's finished. They told Pelosi, We don't need to impeach and remove him from office because he's politically finished after what he did. Mr. Miller bought call Call Options on Trump's electoral success in 2024. Nobody else bought those Call Options. And then Miller said, This is fantastic. I'm an evil guy. I hate people, and I want to inflict pain on people. And Trump is my empty vessel to get back into the White House. And oh, by the way, we're going to have four years to prepare ourselves to be even more dastardly and more evil and to remove more normal people out of the checks and balances of Trump. One, We're going to have lap dogs in Trump two, like dissent and butt lick or nut lick, whatever the biggest asshole on Earth. We're going to have these people in position. Okay. And then I'm going to rule the roost. I'm writing all the speeches. You can throw the shit through ChatGPT. You say, who does this sound like?

It's the writings of Steven Miller. And so he's writing the speeches. He's promulgating the policy.

How is he doing? Because he bought those call options.

Does he see that? He bought those call options. Does Trump not see that?

I mean, he is whatever He's like an old crocodile.

He's got to see that. The only way Trump will see it is if you start saying, Trump is the lapdog of Steven Miller. The administration is being run by Steven Miller. Trump will absolutely hate that. It's like when they were saying President Banon, when the President Banon Time magazine cover came out, he got hit with a ray gun, knocked out of the administration. But Miller is running the administration. He's running the domestic policy. He's running international policy. He's writing the speeches about Venezuela in Greenland. And he is sitting- Does he have any foe internally?

Give us one insight into him. You have spent time with him, so give us one insight.

Look, I used to fight with the guy- Besides that, he looks like a cartoon Nazi villain. Him and I were not friends. I used to fight with him left and right. There was one situation in the 2016 campaign where I called him up and read him the riot act because he was treating donors with this lack of emotional attention in this caustic, arrogant, supercilious way. Look, he's a terrible person. I think we can stipulate that just by his behavior and his actions. But it fits Trump's narrative, okay? Because Trump likes hurting people. Trump likes humiliating people. He likes hurting people. He wants to denigrate people and make them feel bad. And then when he gets himself in trouble, he will walk it back like he did with the UK war veterans. He had to send out a missive to Stormer because it was ridiculous, the heat that he was getting. But this is what these people are like. And the problem is the waiting it out strategy. If you're a corporate board official and you are on one of these corporate boards, Fortune 500, and you listen to Cara and Scott, let me tell you what you got to do.

You got to get your CEO in position to join forces and create alliances with his other CEOs, he or she, and push back on Trump. You cannot wait 1,000 days, Cara.

No, we've said that. We talked about an economic boycott.

You got to get your shit together. You got to get your shit together right now and on behalf of the American people and channel what those German bureaucrats wanted from Neville Chamberlain. Don't be a Neville Chamberlain and wait the 1,000 days too late. It's going to be too much existential damage onto your company and the United States.

And by the way, let me tell you, what they do think is the Democrats won't do anything. Trump will punish them, Democrats won't. I'm here to tell you, I want to make sure the Democrats punish you all, all you tech executives. I promise that we have long memories, as they say, and I will make certain of that. I will bother these Democrats forever. But let me ask you, what the Democrats- But the Democrats Democrats suck, though.

Let me just see. Hear me out for a second.

We all agree.

The Republicans are evil, so they suck more. But the Democrats suck because they can't get their shit together. If they could get their shit together, they would channel Newt Gindrich. And hear me out for a second because you're old enough to remember this. So 1994, Newt Gindrich said, Hey, we're going to combat Clinton. We're going to all unify, and we're going to get our ducks in an order. Here's our 10-point contract with America. Everybody's signing on to this. And then when we get power, we're going to flex. The Democrats have to have the doppelganger of the 1994 contract with America. And even though they don't like each other, and AOC doesn't see eye to eye with Gavin Newsom, get it together, fellows. Get in a room.

So they threaten to trigger a partial government shutdown with holding DHS. It's funny, but that's a small ball is what you're saying.

But not only is that small ball, that's a disaster. You're a capital markets person. Look at where the US The dollar is trading, the Japanese Yen is trading. Look at where gold and silver is trading. We're in full on currency debacement. Trump thinks he can get out there and do his reality TV nonsense without consequence, but people are pulling away from the dollar. They're forming unnatural alliances. Carny is going to China. The dollar is weakening. Gold is going up. People are finding ways to barter with each other outside of the petrodollars system. And Ray Dalio is going to be right, guys. You want to shut the government down. You're going to further weaken the US dollar. Don't do it. That is small ball.

What other choice they have? They can't fund DHS, correct? No. They also can't politically fund them. What's the choice? There is no choice, correct?

Cara, there's no choice because we're in accordion not with each other. But if they shut the government down, I would rather have them fund DHS and have the help of corporate CEOs and law enforcement. You know that local law enforcement is against ICE? Oh, hate us. No, trust me. Get together people, okay? Develop a communication strategy, fund it, but have an overwhelming group of people push back on it. You don't want to shut the government down when we are facing our own economic peril. We're sitting on a debt time bomb that's running towards $40 trillion.

Doesn't that hurt Trump more? You have to sacrifice the village to save the country.

I don't. It's not going to hurt Trump himself more. It's going to hurt the man on the street more. Correct. Our dollar has lost 28% of its value since January in 2020. Okay, if you own assets, Cara, you're fine. But if you're like my dad, my deceased father, who worked an hour and got an hourly wage and had no assets, you took 30% of his life Drive away from him. We've got three or four things happening in parallel tracks that we can control the card table and we can maintain our mantle of financial services leadership and our mantle of global leadership, but we've got to change the narrative. And the way you change the narrative is through coordinated opposition. Trump is banking on the fact that the liberals are so self-righteous and so piquy with each other, that they'll have internecine fights with each other as opposed to coordinate and go after him. But they could do that. They could go to the cooks, they could go to the CEO of 3M, and they could say, Okay, listen, this is not good for America. We don't want our people murdered in the street. It's bad for economic innovation.

It's bad for capital flows into America. We have to fight back. There are two people, Steven Miller and Donald Trump, and there's us. There's a force majeure of us that can overwhelm them if we coordinate with each other.

What's the actual move then? Besides, let's coordinate what precisely from a business. Scott and I talked about an economic boycott, et cetera.

Holi and totally denounced ICE alongside a local law enforcement, push back on them. You create resistance, civil resistance zones, alongside of citizens that are willing to protest. They got to show up unarmed, so there's no excuse to shoot at them. You then have to push the President into a box, and you have to go to the Republicans and say, Sorry, no more money for Republicans for re-election, because all these people really care about, cares the money going into their re-election.

So the way to affect those business leaders could be an economic boycott, a really sustained one, for example. We're going to get... The Democrats have to say, We will hurt you also in different ways.

I just think, and I heard you guys, and And I understand where Scott's coming from, and he's right. It's a very good civil, disobedient move. I would like to try something else first before we go there, because that's going to harm the people that we don't want to harm the most. Do you understand what I'm saying? I get it. And I understand what you're saying. You got to burn down the village sometimes to save the whole state. I get all that. But let's try something different. These are two people. We know this from the schoolyard. The bullies, when you team up against the Bully. Yes, we've seen that movie. You knock the bully into next week.

All right, last question. Is there anybody in that White House that has control other than Steven Miller? Susie Wiles doesn't seem to. She tried to get out, it looked like.

Susie Wiles doesn't give a shit. She's looking for her next lobbying gig. You know that? Read the interview. She's like, I'm trying to say this shit about these people so that when I get out on the outside, you think I'm quasi-normal.

By the way, Susie, we see you.

No, come on. I mean, Mrs. Dauphier, this lady is at her. This lady ruined herself. No, come on.

I'm just curious.

The only good news here is that just dumb Vance, JD Vance, is so delusional. He thinks he's the heir to Trump, and he thinks he's going to be the '48 President. I'm telling you that J. D. Vance is actually sitting on a bomb that's going to blow up on him. Just give it a year or two, and this whole thing is going to blow up on him. He's going to the poster child for the Trump menagerie of evil. And so that is good news, by the way, because he'll get- I think he doesn't like himself very much. Well, he's going to get knocked out of the game. Okay, so that's very good news.

I called him the cyber truck of politicians. But go ahead.

Tell me why.

Because he repels people. He repels voters. I'm telling you, when you see a cyber truck, you could see people pull back when they see it. Whatever you think of Elon, it's still a repellent vehicle, right? You may like him, and you don't like that thing. I was driving a Volkswagen ID buzz, and everybody runs towards you because it looks like a dinosaur driving down the street, unhappy dinosaur.

I'm a minor player in all I say, but when you used to light my ass up on Twitter, I used to laugh. But I got to tell you, when you're lighting Elon Musk up on Twitter or you're saying this shit about him on the podcast, I don't think he's laughing, okay? I think you're like, You know what?

Inside he is. I think you're deeply under the guy's skin. There's a little boy inside who is missing the love of his parents who's laughing.

Trust me. All right. Well, maybe someday-Not that I want to help him at all. If you ever repair your relationship with Elon, I want to be there to smoke a peace pipe with you. Never. I knew that was going to be the answer.

Not happening. You took it well. That's all I'll say. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, what Trump is saying about his health or lack thereof. Die Insolvenzzahlen steigen. Was steckt hinter dieser Entwicklung und was bedeutet sie für den Mittelstand? In Folge 6 von Endstation Insolvenz erläutert Patrick Ludwig-Hansch, Leiter der Wirtschaftsforschung bei Kreditreform, warum Geschäftsmodelle heute schneller an ihre Grenzen stoßen und weshalb Insolvenzen, so hart sie auch sind, eine funktionierende Marktwirtschaft sichern.

Im Podcast-Kanal, Gute Geschäfte von Kreditreform.

Überall, wo es Podcasts gibt. Support for this show comes from DeleteMe. The new year can be a perfect time to get your digital house in order, and a great way to do that is by making sure your data is protected. Deleteme makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Deleteme does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. All you need to do is sign up, share the details you want removed, and their experts take it from there. And it's not a one-time fix. Deleteme will continually monitor and remove the personal data you don't want online throughout the year. I've used delete me, and I really like it. I did it again at the beginning of the year, and I'm always shocked to see how much information is about me out there, and I am a privacy nut, but it's always out there. A lot of it inaccurate, but a lot of it gathered in ways that are troubling. I get updates all the time, and I really think their dashboard is easy to use, which is why Wirecutter named delete me, their top pick for data removal services.

You can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for delete me. Now to special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to joindeleteme. Com/pivot and use the promo code pivot at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme. Com/pivot and enter code pivot at checkout. That's joindeleteme. Com/pivotcodepivot. Support for this show comes from Vanta. Customer trust can make or break your business, and the more your business grows, the more complex your security and compliance tools get. It can turn into chaos, and chaos isn't a security strategy. That's where Vanta comes in. Think of Vanta as your always on AI-powered security expert who scales with you. Vanta automates compliance, continuously monitors your controls, and gives you a single source of truth for compliance and risk. So whether you're a fast-growing startup like CURSOR or an enterprise like Snowflake, Vanta fits easily into your existing workflows so you can keep growing a company your customers can trust. Get started at vanta. Com That's V-A-N-T-A. Com/pivot. Vanta. Com/pivot. Anthony, we're back with more news. There's been speculation about Trump's health for months, and a news story in New York magazine has him going on the record about it.

Trump talks about his father's medical history at one point struggling to come up with the word Alzheimer's, then insisting he does not have it. He also blames women's fingernails and rings for cuts on his hands. Trump's doctor says he actually did not have an MRI, but an MRI-like scan of his chest and abdomen. I don't know what that is. The results were, quote, perfect. Of course, Trump threatens to sue the ass off New York magazine if he decides he doesn't like the story. I don't think New York magazine as one of the shareholders gives a shit. So what do you think is really going on here with this? He's got to face the health care stuff, right? Because Biden didn't.

He's physically... I mean, listen, you're It's prima facia. He's unwell. If someone gets busted on a football field and the bone is sticking out of the uniform, you don't have to be an orthopedic surgeon to know that the bone is broken. It's not like that. The guy is unwell. He's unwell physically. He has an unsteady gait. They put the red carpet out for him in Davos. He wobble down the carpet like he did in August with Putin. He's got bruises all over his hands, which looks like they're infusion bruises. They're You're not bumping up against a signing desk when you have that level of contusion on your hand. He looks terrible. If you look at the orange makeup and you contrast it to the polar of his hands, he looks absolutely terrible. I'm not a doctor. I'm just telling you, prima facia, he looks unwell. He's forgetful. He doesn't remember the word Alzheimer's. He doesn't remember people standing in front of him. He's getting interviewed and they say, You said the following. He said, I never said that. Then they play the recording of him saying it. But he looks like he's telling the truth, meaning he's demented in a way where- He doesn't remember it.

Yeah, he's demented in a way you could probably pass the lie detector test.

I mean, he's Liar, but it seems to me that he doesn't remember it, actually.

Yeah, I'm sure he's lying knowingly, but I think there's also lies coming out of his mouth where he doesn't remember anymore. Also, the New York Times reported something which I think is very critical and very similar to Biden. They're managing his schedule for five hours a day. They said it's 12: 00 to 5: 00, and then they pull him out of there. Or if he's got to go late night, they'll start him at 5: 00 and they'll end him at 10: 00. He's an elderly man. He's about to turn 80. It's arguably the toughest job in the world. He hauls himself around. He's moving himself from National Football Game Championships to Davos, back to Florida, back to Washington. He's moving himself around a lot, and that in itself is tiring and dehydrating. To me, they're going to lie about it like the Biden people lied about it. That's just the facts of it. This is why I'm saying Miller advantage to Miller. Because if Trump's got five... And again, whatever you think of Trump, I can tell you, if you show Trump a video of a guy getting innocently murdered, even his ego-maniac narcissism is like, Shit, That's not good for me.

He's looking at the video. He may not have any compassion for that man or the man's family, but he's smart enough to know, That ain't good for me. Steven Miller is not smart enough to know that. He's calling the guy an assassin and a domestic terrorist and all this idiocy. But the point about the illness that people should really focus on is that if he's only got five hours a day where he's present, the other 19 hours are going to Steven Miller. Don't forget that. Okay, Steven Miller is writing the policy. Steven Miller is talking to ICE. Steven Miller is on the phone with Marco Rubio. The joke inside the White House is, Hey, Steven, we got a question for you. We're going to make you viceroy of Venezuela. But then when you get down there, where are you going to deport this Venezuelans to? That's the joke inside the White House. And of course, Miller looks at them and he's all pissed and he doesn't answer them. But the point The point is, Trump's weakness, there's a vacuum, and the void is being filled by a very horrible person. I mean, by a very evil person.

This MF, he couldn't get dog catcher confirmation, this MF, okay? And he's sitting there. We had a 250-year experiment with the Republic with real checks and balances. And this guy, because he was hated in high school and he still wants to take it out on the rest of us, is going to run rough shot over all of us because you have willing accomplices, Cara. And those willing accomplices are the Republicans, and the secondary willing accomplices are the private sector, smarty-pants billionaires that are afraid of Steven Miller. How could you guys be afraid of Steven Miller? Are you guys serious? Are you that big of a nerd group in the high school cafeteria to be afraid of Steven Miller? What are you guys doing? Take on Steven Miller.

Back to his health, what do they do when it becomes... I mean, it is apparent that he's... I've been saying this for a year because I have relatives. I've seen it. I've seen friends who had Alzheimer's, and the signs are rather significant of some dementia. But what do they do when it gets Is there something that could... Besides him falling down, which seems inevitable and breaking a hip, what's the next thing if five hours is all you can get? It doesn't matter? They just hold him up like Weekend of Bernie's thing?

Do your reporting. You've got excellent sources. We know that Vance met with Musk and told Musk, please cool out on America's party. Trump's time is coming. I'm going to be the 48th President, likely by default, and all the tech proligarks will be in there with me. Drop the America's party, and Musk said, no problem. They're all statisticians. They're looking at 1,000 days, and they're looking at a declining mental acuity of a president. They're saying, Is it a year from now where people look around and say, Hey, man, 25th Amendment, and comes Vance? Is it two years from now? Can Trump make it the three years? I think he'll be alive in three years. But the question is, will he be mentally cognitive to the point where it's not overwhelmingly obvious to everybody how bad it is? I don't know the answer to that. But if I'm a betting person, there's a percentage. If you're a tech pro-legark, you're like, okay, just a 10 % to 30 % chance that Vance is going to serve out Trump's term and run for re-election in '28. And that's also another reason why they're not fighting as hard as they should be because they're waiting the thing out.

Right. Because of an actuarial tailblows is what you're talking about, essentially. Exactly. As Scott says, biology is undefeated. Let It's a terrible choice to have to make, but if you could pick Trump being in office in a disabled way versus Vance becoming President, which one would you choose?

Okay, let me get the vomit bag out first. Let me blow chow into the vomit bag. Hold on a second.

That game you play. Which one would you rather?

Okay, all right. Now, let me tell you what. You got to go with Vance. Okay, let me tell you why, okay? All right. Because Vance has no power. And Even if he's President of the United States, he doesn't have a personality cult around him. Okay. And Vance cannot keep that coalition together. He doesn't understand how to do it. Trump kept nick Fuentes, Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson in the same coalition. Imagine that. Okay. Because it's the strength of his personality and the personality cult around him as a political figure. Vance has none of that. Let me give a A specific example. When they were fighting over the beef quotas, the Argentinian beef quotas, and they were fighting over the beef coming in from Argentina, they excoriated Vance in the Senate. They would never do that to Donald Trump because they're afraid Donald Trump would send out a tweet and say, I'm now supporting this person to the far right of Bill Cassidy. I'm no longer supporting Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana.

Who found balls recently somehow.

Well, thank God, him and a few others.

Very small.

Okay, but you know what? When someone finds their balls, I'll take it.

Let's give him a fucking magnifying- I'm not one of those leftists that's like, No, you shouldn't ever come in. I'm like, Come on in.

Cara, send him a magnifying glass. The balls will look bigger in the fucking scope Okay, let's go here. But honestly, Vance does not have the power, and they will push back on him, and they will flex on him. Now, the negative to Vance is he's tied to some evil doer, Brolygarks. Yeah. Okay. And the negative to Vance is that they're going to pump him with money and they're going to get executive orders from the society. The problem with this nation's tech, Brolygarks, they don't give a shit. They only care about themselves and their mission quest to make a trillion dollars. If they were a smarter group of people, they would think about what Henry Ford once said, which is I'm going to make stuff. My workers are going to make stuff that they can afford. I'm going to pay them enough money so they can afford it. They're going to have a family house and a good school system so they don't attack me with tiki torches and pitchforks in my dearborn Michigan mansion when I'm eating caviar and carving my filet mignon.

And being an anti-Semite, but go ahead.

Well, he was a bad guy, but he understood social engineering.

I would agree with you.

I think I was with one of them. These guys don't.

What are you guys doing? I literally was like, You know they're coming to get you if you don't start acting more generous. I literally have had more arguments with them about this. I'm like, You will... I said, Look at him. They don't read history. Anthony doesn't. They don't read history. It's really fascinating in a lot of ways. They think they're in you.

Self-absorbed.

They'll get in a rocket ship. Anyway, we're going to go on a quick break, and we come back to TikTok strikes a US deal. This is really interesting.

Right now in the world of AI, two things are happening simultaneously. One, the technology is getting better fast. People are finding new uses for it. It's more popular than ever. And two, every company that makes AI is absolutely hemorrhaging cash. On the VergeCast this week, we're talking about what OpenAI and other companies are doing to try to finally figure out how to make some money off of this technology. Spoiler alert, it's mostly ads. And we're talking about whether any of it's actually going to work. All that, plus some stories about the Chinese company that appears to be beating Tesla on The VergeCast, wherever you get podcasts.

Anthony, we're back with more news. Tiktok has dodged a potential ban and sealed the deal to create new American entity with investors like Oracle, 15% and Silver Lake, also 15%, I believe. In the deal, ByteDance keeps a small stake around 20%, but the algorithm will be retrained on US data to address national security concerns about Chinese control. Oracle has been doing this for a while, by the way. And by Oracle, I mean Larry Ellison. President Trump praised the deal and thanked China's President Xi for proving it, something he hopes to be remembered by TikTok users for making it happen. But the service is enormously buggy in its first couple of days out with users reporting login issues and feed disruptions, other people see a conspiracy theory in Larry Ellison trying to shut down anti-ice stuff. I am not of that camp. I think it's just buggy and they're having problems. I wouldn't put it past them to do all manner shitty things. But in this case, I think it's just this shift over. Talk about this because there are also indications that TikTok's user base is declining and that its momentum is declining. Talk a little bit about this because a lot of people are worried about it becoming a propaganda tool.

I am less worried because I feel like it has... I know I'm going to get a call from Zenya Mujet in a second, but I feel like it has a MySpace vibe to it. But your thoughts, it's It's still enormous, but I think Metta has the momentum with Instagram and threads, et cetera.

Well, a couple of things. I mean, they've neutered TikTok, so it would be like taking your dog to get spayed. The virility of TikTok is over. And so maybe it'll work, and maybe that's a good investment for these people. I don't know.

They got a discount.

But here's what I do know. I do know when I was in the White House for that very short period of time, The intelligence stuff was TikTok was weapons-grade intelligence gathering, and it was weapons-grade crowd propaganda. 30% of the white males below the age of 21, they don't think the moon landing happened. 15% of the white males below 30. I think Osama bin Laden is a freedom warrior. All this stuff being generated by the algorithm on TikTok and all this stuff fomenting Conspiracy theories which caused people to doubt and distrust their government and caused them to doubt and to trust the institutions of our democracy. All of that worked to the point where the court said, Shut it down, the Biden administration said, Shut it down, and it was getting It went down. But some of the owners of TikTok had a lot of money. They gave the money to Donald Trump, and Trump defied the court orders, and he kept TikTok open. We're sitting here now where I don't think the secret sauce of TikTok, despite what they're saying, is going to get replicated. It's not going to get transferred. We do know in the deal, and I believe this is the case, because intelligence agencies in this country still have teeth, even though Trump, I guess, is uberalis.

But the intelligence agencies are telling us that by dance is walled off from the information now. They own 19. 9% of the company, and they're not going to get the information from the US anymore. So they have other back doors, by the way. Chinese intelligence has other back doors. So I'm not worried about Chinese intelligence gathering. But I think this has been spade, to use a veterinary analogy. And I think these guys are going to wake up five years from now. It may not be 100 % my space, but it could be like a Yahoo that was very prominent in 1998, is still with us in 2026, but really isn't relevant to the way it was once relevant. That's my guess. That's my guess with TikTok.

Yeah, I would agree. I think the energy is dragged out of it. The question is what's effective as these things? As much as you know, I have so much disdain from Mark Zuckerberg, although he has an opportunity. See, I was thinking this. Remember when Gates, everyone hated Gates, he was Dorf Vader, et cetera. Mark has an opportunity to turn himself around. That's my feeling. With these products that are quite good. Obviously, he had a real a real fuck up on the metaverse and spend a lot of money and wasted it. Here's one thing I love. This guy spent 56 billion dollars on a mistake, and then all these tech people complain about the government misusing funds. They misuse funds all the time. It's their own money, but that's fine. It's actually shareholder money. If he wanted to, Zuckerberg, to me, especially with Musk behaving like a cartoon villain, has an opportunity, especially with these products, threads and Instagram, et cetera, to really dominate in a way that he already does. But I don't know. I have this notion that if he decided to stop being such a ridiculous figure, that he could certainly revive himself.

That's not an opening for him. But I think the hiring of Dina Powell was interesting. I thought a very smooth operator, as you know. It just is an interesting time. But TikTok, I think, really is. You're right. I think It's not on the upswing, that's for sure, when these guys are buying it. Again, they got it a discount, so who cares?

I'll say something that people... It's a little contrary. So just hear me out for a second, okay? I think that prima facia, you put Dana White on the board because you think he's a Trump guy, and you're sending a message to Trump that you're no longer going to bash Trump. You put Dean on the board. Her husband's a senator from Pennsylvania. She was on the board, but you put her in that presidency vice chairman position, sends a message to the right. But I'm going to say something about both those people. I think they're less Trumpy than people think. Oh, absolutely. Dana has already told people, I'm done with the politics. I'll do the UFC fight with Trump on the 14th of June, but I'm done with the politics. Dana is more of a libertarian, okay? And Dana, if you really follow her life, she is a Trump whisperer today, but she's really more of a garden variety. And so was David, by the way, a Republican. So there could come a moment here, one, two, three years out, where Zuckerberg is influenced by these people, okay? And you could be right. And so I think the prima facia look is, oh, he's putting Trump lackeys in place to calm down Trump.

No, I don't believe that. I agree with you on that.

But they're not Trump lackeys. If you really know their personalities. Listen, I don't know Dana. I've met Dana a few times, but I know Dina very, very well. David and I know each other very well. Dina and I have worked together, and she was polite enough to call me, give me the heads up the Sunday night before the job was announced. She's a special person. I like her, and I think that this could be a positive result for her.

Just interesting choices. Everyone's like, Trump thing. I'm like, This is not what's happening here. It isn't. Just to be clear, Dina left the White House early in the first term, and I think probably Charlottesville and other issues were impactful to her in lots of ways. But I do think it's much more complicated. I thought it was an interesting and probably the best move of Zuckerberg to bring himself back into the light. I guess he wasn't ever in the light.

Listen, David Solomon, Lloyd Blank, fine. There's a reason why Dina was at the top of the food chain in and around the hoop. She's got good judgment. She's a very smart person, and she also has good diplomacy skills. Okay, and so let's see what happens. I like her a great deal, and I wish her well at that new job.

But the TikTok thing gives, to me, Metta the biggest opportunity here to return itself. Although I do think it's too much- I know it's your podcast, but can I ask you a question.

Sure. The international version of TikTok, in my opinion, is now going to be way more robust than the American algorithm. Absolutely. Okay. And so then the question is, where does the real innovation live? Does it live outside of the United States?

In China, along with electric cars, along with all kinds of things.

I think that's important for your viewers and listeners to hear that message. You see, because for all of our bravado and all the nonsense and jingoism, take a look at the Chinese cars, take a look at the Chinese algorithm, take a look at the Chinese AI process that's in place. And the thing that upsets me the most is take a look at the 10, 15, 20, and 25-year plans that China has Where the US government has UGATs. You know what that means. Yes. Your viewers can look it up what it means. But we've got UGATs because we are playing to the cable news cycle as opposed to a 15, 20 or 30-year plan. But I just think it's very important people to understand that issue, the innovation and the excitement. You agree with me, right?

Yeah. I put more to the point. I think that Trump has done more damage to the technology industry. They've done it to themselves, let me just say, by their lack of interest in safety. But what's coming for them, they were so scared of Biden, who was toothless as far as I could tell. Said a lot of things, and maybe we'll pull back on crypto a little bit, and that's over, obviously. But writ large, I think Trump is more damaging to the tech industry and his reputation than anything else, and it's set them back. I think China has moved into the breach. Mark Zuckerberg used to always talk about the challenge from China. And in affiliating so tightly with Trump, I think it creates a backlash that's going to be sustained, especially not doing anything about teen girls, about kids, around chat bots, around everything. I think they're essentially putting themselves as the bad guy, the baddies, and they don't have to be. There's an opportunity for them to... I suppose Carnegie did that, as evil as all those people were. As As you said, they moved into a more- No, no, no, no, police oblige.

They realized that they had to take care of people. But, Cara, let me just say this to you and get you to react to it. If I'm a CEO and I'm spending 0 to 15% of my time thinking about how to handle Trump, 0 to 20% of my time, isn't that less time of me thinking about how to innovate and how to create plans? Do you see the drag on effect of Donald Trump for all these companies? Exactly.

That's exactly, except for the true believers who are just terrible people. When this happens, our tech industry has been the leader in terms of the stock market. Where does this go? Because the numbers still stay. Even Tesla, with sales numbers, are falling off the cliff. And obviously, that's a meme stock, so there's nothing to be done about that. But what happens with these tech numbers, even as they grow higher?

The Fed is going to drive this, in my opinion. So if you're telling me, and I know Rick Reader a long time, if he's going to become the Fed share, there, and he's a dollar realist, if you read any of his work or look at any of his PowerPoint presentations, but if he's going to cow to Trump in order to get the job and drop rates, stock market is going higher. The stock market is not going higher priced in gold. Stock market is not going higher priced than silver, but a weakening US dollar, the stock market is going higher. I'm worried about the market because of the concentration. I'm worried about the market because Mr. Buffett took $400 billion out of the market when he looks at certain levels of valuation metrics that he looks at. And I'm worried about the market because Trump single-handedly is taking the marginal dollar that used to flow into America's safe and secure markets and liquid markets where rule of law was predictable. And people now want to punish America. You talk about a boycott, an economic boycott. I'm talking about a capital boycott. You think the sovereign wealth fund of Norway is like, okay, let me put my incremental dollar into America right now?

I'm telling you, they're not. They're like, hey, F you guys. We'll find other places to go with the money. And look at the tourism numbers are down. Look at the flights from Europe, look at the flights from Canada into Florida.

Tourism is a bigger industry than manufacturing, everybody. Let's just say that.

Exactly. So to me, what I'm worried about is the knock-on effects of Donald Trump. I think the tech guys are going to be okay, probably for the next 12 months because of where race are going. Unless you're telling me, Rick Reader is getting the job and he turns to you and says something that a traditional Fed chairman would say, which is, Hey, I'm probably raising rates 50 basis points. Wait, what? Well, gold is at 5,000. The dollar is falling. The Yen carry trade is Fekakta. I'm going to raise rates here to put the thing back in equipoise. Okay, so the market is not sensing that. And by the way, Bitcoin is not doing well because for the market, it's not structural. If you told me that this is a structural end to the dollar, then Bitcoin would be whack-a-doodly rattling. What's happening right now is it's a short-term crisis, and so that's why people are piling into gold and silver. Bitcoin is the next step. That's when people say, Okay, full on currency disbacement. The dollar is now the Zimbabwe dollar. We got to get the hell out of the dollar. I have one of those.

Look, I'm a... Hey, you better be nice to me. I am a billionaire in Zimbabwe, okay? I have a $10 billion note in my wallet. But my point is the money is there to drive the market higher for the tech people.

Yeah, if they behave. Anyway. All right, Anthony, one more quick break. We'll be back for Wins and Fails. Anthony, let's hear some Wins and Fails. You go first.

Okay, so you're not going to like this one, but the win of the week is actually Elon Musk, and I'm going to tell you why. He shows up with a haircut. It looks like he lost a little bit of weight. They give him 31 minutes of air time at the World Economic Forum, a place that he distained and criticized woefully for a decade. His buddy Larry Fink, who's now the interim chairman, brings him on stage, and he was articulate. He explained the vision for these data centers up in space. He was the normal Elon, and he was the aspirational Elon on. You could like him or dislike him, but that's the win for the week.

The only thing I'm saying is a lot of his predictions, he makes them up. You know that. You could track them. At this point, he said it so much, I'm going to have robots in your house in a year, and then 10 years goes.

I understand that, but I'm talking about imagery, and the world is about imagery. I think you want... Do you want the loss or you want to go for the win? All right, go ahead, Wendy.

I'll give it to you.

I'll give it to you. Okay, all right.

I heard his robots were cool.

The loss. The loss is actually Donald Trump. Neil Ferguson said that he won Davos, and he explained this MAGA-esque way that he won Davos, but he actually lost Davos. I agree. Carny won Davos. He would have been number two on the win category for me, although Carny is going to have a harder time because of where he sits north of the American border. But Donald Trump lost this week. He lost because he looked like an imbecile on Greenland. He lost because the marginal dollar is now moving away from the United States because of his imbecility. And the situation in ICE, the situation, the tragedy in Minnesota, Trump has lost that, too, because he's smart enough to know that the public opinion, he's negative 17 on ICE and immigration in the United States, and he's got a 36% approval rating. But when people ask their friends about Trump, they don't like what's happening to their neighbors. And so Trump is losing right now, and we're not even addressing his health issues. So that's the win and that's the loss. Despite the appearance that Trump, quote, unquote, won, and all the MAGA people like Butt Lick would say that he won, he did not win.

He lost. You call him Nut Lick, too. No, not that much better. I cannot believe it's the same person that I was talking to at Davos 10 years ago. I mean, dude, you lost it, man. You're never coming back from this, by the way. You're never coming back from this.

You're never coming back from this. All right, my fail. I'm going to do the other side of the Elon thing. The EU regulators are investigating X over sexualized AI images. Any reporter who does not ask them about in every interview, is not doing their jobs. What is happening on X is repulsive. I have four children. You have children. You have many children. Five of them. Five of them. The fact that he has not gotten a hold of this on this one issue, I will continue to pound. I hope he gets investigated everywhere over these sexualized AI images because they have to stop. They have to stop. Whether they're a non-consensual AI images of women, especially a child, pornography is what it is. To be known as a child pornographer is not the image you want. That's what I would say. I'm going to take the other side on that. I think it's very people are sick of this shit, of this, and it's enough. It's enough with them running roughshot over us. They're not going to sexualize our children. I'm not a QAnon person. It's just so dangerous to do this. My win, you're also not going to like, but I'm going to do it.

Zora Mamdani telling New Yorkers to stay home and read Heed and Rivalent during a snowstorm I thought was very funny, and actually did a good job on his first snowstorm. He did, Anthony, you'll have to say. He's focusing it on New Yorkers.

Let me tell you. I am a New Yorker. I am not moving to Florida. I've got my home here in New York. I've been a New Yorker for 62 years. I want him to do well. Okay? Honestly, if he does well, it's better for the rest of us.

I agree. I think he handled the snowstorm beautifully. He put out great information. He knows what his job is right now, which is making all Newyorkers have a better life. I think that's a really- If he does that, he'll win real election, and God bless him.

I just want the city to be safe for all the obvious reasons.

Yeah, I love New York City. Anyway, I'm questioning, have you watched Eater Rivalry, Anthony?

I haven't. No. Is that something I need to do?

You need to do it. Yeah. I've been watching it. It might be vaguely uncomfortable for you, but I think you'll like it.

No. Why would it be? Why do you think I'm homophobic? I know.

I don't. But there's a lot of sex happening.

There's Baby, I want everybody to be happy, okay?

All right. You should watch Eater Rivalry, and we'll have a discussion about it. You are a pleasure to talk to.

I always enjoy talking. I can't be quiet at this point in my life. It's like my kids say, Dad, you got to speak up because you got to help people speak up. I think what I love about you and Scott is you're helping people speak up. You're providing a little bit of a ceiling for people to come in under.

God bless you for that.

Yes, absolutely.

God bless you for that. And God bless the people of Minnesota who are doing that. I'm just They're not organized protesters. They're not being paid for by George Soros. These are people who are seeing what's happening in their community, and they won't put up with it.

Trump would not be responding the way he responded this morning if that were the case, Garry. Trust me, he would have gone crazy with evidence related to that. He's looking at the situation saying, I'm losing here. I got to pull this back.

What a decent group of people and helping their fellow citizens in Minnesota. He's actually breathed life into Tim Walls again. I have to tell you, it's incredible. We'll see.

That's one way to look at it. Yeah.

Well, actually, he's handled himself well. Just so you know, I urge everyone to listen to my Jacob Frey interview. Very interesting interview. Unfortunately, he did predict exactly what was going to happen, and let's hope it doesn't happen again. My heart goes out to the family of Alex Pretty and also the family of Renee Good and all the families who are subject to brutality in this manner. It's repulsive.

Can't have your government killing its own citizens. That is correct. And not form some level of coordinated resistance to that.

Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag. Com/pivot to send a question for the show or call 855-51-pivot. Thank you, as always. Never a dull moment. And thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday. I will read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kate Galliger. Ernie Enderdat engineered this episode. Rich Shibly edited the video. Nishat Krua is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag. Com/pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks, Cara.