Transcript of Trump's Putin Play, Elon's SpaceX Stock Pledge, and Netflix's Staffing Shakeup

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He's not building a car. He's building a bridge to SpaceX one thruster at a time.

Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Scott, are you sad your lady is gone? Kate Zachariah.

Ah, it was so short but so good.

Oh my God.

So good.

So short, but so good. Is that what you say about a lot of things?

Short, but so good. Oh, there you go. There we are. You made a dick joke. Now you're, now, now you're cooking with propane and gas.

I know it's true. I mean, it's sad that she's gone, but it seems like, oh well. Oh well. Who would you like to be press secretary? Who would give you some pleasure if you, if obviously not Scott Jennings, it's like, like talking to a lemon every day, but who would you like?

I think Scott's gonna get it. I, I, yeah, probably. My bet would be there's gonna be no one for a while. that they're just going to get through the midterms. And I mean, do they really need a spokesperson? Trump kind of, to his credit, he does talk a lot. So I don't, I don't, I'm going to go out on a limb here and, and say it's going to be someone who's blonde and very attractive and very aggressive. Your thoughts?

Oh, I don't really care. It is Trump. Trump is the spokeslady for the, for the administration. And so he'll just remain the spokeslady. I think that's it. He just can't go on. And if he loses the elections the way most people— I just did a panel of pollsters and other experts and they're like, ooh, this is gonna be bad. And you know, the Cook Political Report, as you said, called it a riptide. They called it an undertow.

Who did they call an undertow?

Oh, the Republican undertow rather than a Dem wave.

Oh yeah, I think it's, yeah, it's a red riptide is the way I would talk about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But supposedly, supposedly, The chancellor of Pepperdine has reached out to Katie Zachariah and asked her as a favor if she could say she graduated from San Diego State. Can you imagine?

No.

Can you imagine you're the head of admissions for Pepperdine and you're like, oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck. Jesus.

I mean, that has not been good for the Pepperdine brand.

No, it has not been good for the Pepperdine brand.

By the way, probably the 2nd or 3rd most beautiful campus in America.

It is. Pepperdine. I used to remember when the celebrities used to do their celebrity battles. of the sexes and stuff.

That was at Pepperdine?

Yeah, they did it at the beautiful Los Angeles, California from Pepperdine, stunning university.

Oh, I love that one where they bring on the angel, like the 5th angel who wasn't as big as Jacqueline Smith to run in a— where they'd have Robert Conrad in the 50-meter. And my favorite was Robert Conrad lost to Gabe Kaplan of Welcome Back, Kotter in the 400-meter.

Right, right.

I remember that.

But they always had to be like carrying a bag of donuts or something like that, you know? I don't know.

Oh, they had Lynda Carter. They had all the hotties from the '80s.

What's her name?

Morgan Fairchild.

Yeah, that was, that was fun back in the day, kids, watching celebrities.

Oh my gosh. I gotta pull those videos back up later tonight.

Beat them up. That was fun back in the day, I'll tell you that.

David Hasselhoff, the number one recording star from Germany.

People you've never heard of. So whoever's on Three's Company.

That's good.

Um, are you— but are you and Anthony Scaramucci okay? Are you attending any support groups for yourself?

Me and the Mooch? Why? Because of Katie?

He lost his— he lost his—

Oh God. Anthony is— Anthony is like— so let's be honest. I love Anthony. We've become actually pretty good friends. Anthony kind of likes a little bit of attention.

He does.

And he's getting a lot right now.

Yeah, he is. He is.

And he's super thoughtful. All these— he put out this tweet that actually she's a human and I feel for her and I just want her— he says, he says, my message to Katie is she just should spend time with her family. and recognize this isn't that big a deal. And I immediately live messaged him like, don't be so fucking mature. You're sitting there touching yourself that you're getting all this attention from like CBS Morning News.

Oh, well, that's—

The Mooch is like living his best life right now.

He is. He's in Hawaii actually of all places.

By the way, I told him, and I'm sincere, I think he should run for president, but I think he should run as a Republican.

He might though. He'd be good. He'd really mix it up. Can you imagine him on the podium with like DeSantis? I think he'd be a great addition. I hear DeSantis is back.

Like there's a lot more people heading, Rubio, DeSantis. I think Mr. J.D.

Vance is going to have a bit of a run on his thing, which is great. There's going to be 26 Democrats, which will be great. It'll be really fun.

Oh, it's going to be—

It's going to be so— it's going to be good. What did you do this weekend? I'm going to tell you what I did.

Oh, speaking of— speaking of, I love how you ask questions. You're like me. You ask a question such that you can talk about it.

But I have to talk about this. I have to tell you what I did.

Go ahead. Well, okay. But first, I will answer your question. I got up at— oh, well, I went late night Friday night to Arizona and I did a fireside with Senator Mark Kelly.

Oh, how'd that go?

It's great. Look, he kind of reeks of integrity and service. And any guy that's flown the space shuttle and combat aircraft, and he's just such a great contrast to Trump. Service, fidelity. He's just very smart, very practical.

Also snarky. He's got a snark to him too.

Not a grandstander. I got to spend some time with him and his brother in the great Sonoran Desert or wherever we were in Tucson. Anyways, I did that. That was my thing.

Yeah. Good. That's really nice. You know what I did?

What'd you do?

I put up my Halloween decorations, Scott. I don't know if you know this, but I am a massive Halloween decorations person and I bought 4 more inflatables.

I did not know that.

I already have 7. Now I have 12 inflatables. I love them so. I am a huge Halloween person. People don't understand this about me. And it is one of my greatest assets. My neighbors are like, what is happening here?

And do you dress up?

No, I don't like costumes. I love Halloween decorations. I like my, my kids and I went to every store and bought like even more. I've already got, I don't know, about 6. No, I probably have 10 cartons of Halloween decorations and I love them. Now I've gotten one for the roof. This year I got one for the roof. A big one.

Um, okay.

You don't know what to say. I love them so much.

Um, and what, so, and you'll do the whole house thing up?

I've done it. You should come and see. You'll never come to my house. I'm going to send you a picture because it's so good. Um, but once I get the one on the roof, that's a big deal. And then I'm still thinking of a Skelly, but I don't have enough storage space to do the Skelly, but it's starting to take over my storage space. And now I'm going to do Christmas the same. I'm that person.

Halloween is absolutely my favorite holiday.

Yeah, it's a great— I know it is. I know it is. You're still deciding on your outfit. I don't dress up at all. I don't like that, but I like the whole everything else about it.

So I imagine like Halloween at the Swisher household is that you don't Carve pumpkins, you disembowel them, and then post the results on Threads?

No, we do the whole thing. We are such a, like, traditional family around that. The kids love it. And now I'm teaching Clara about how to deal with all my Halloween items. So I need to train someone up for the next era. And she's good. She's really good. She's like, what about this? What do you think of this? Like, she's got a lot of ideas at 7. So I'm very pleased that I'm passing it along to my children.

I'd ask you to go as a sexy nurse, but you're more likely to go to the nurse that gives you results on your prostate exam. Like Louise Fletcher. I have a million of these.

I know you do. What did you pick between Larry David and whatever horror show?

Spider-Man? I saw my Spider-Man outfit. And I was planning on working out a lot so I'd look good in like a onesie. But I've got to hit the creatine again. And I don't know, I'm thinking Larry David.

I don't think Larry David. Have you done that before?

No, I haven't done Larry David.

Oh, do Larry David.

How about Walter White in a hazmat suit? I kind of look like Walter.

Oh, that would be good.

That's not bad? Yeah, that's good. I would have really liked to have gone as Katey Zakaria. But I made a pledge to the father of the trans girl that I would never dress up as a woman again. Yeah, you can't dress in a wig anymore. Okay, you can't do it anymore. That's off limits now. That's off limits.

It's off limits. Anyway, uh, happy Halloween everyone. I'm very excited for it. Um, we've got a lot to get to. There's so much going on besides Katie. Um, Elon Musk says he's going to give every kid in America one share of SpaceX next year, and that quote, this will be the first of many. With roughly 73 million people under the age of 18 in the U.S., that would amount to about $10.5 billion worth of stock at current prices. He didn't explain how this is going to work and whether these shares would be tied to Trump accounts. Elon's pledge comes on the of Anthropic announcing it's committing 5% of its shares for a new public benefit fund. Lots of companies do this. Elon responded to Anthropic's news by saying, I recommend giving the shares directly to the public. I recommend them all paying more taxes.

100%.

In order— and like, this seems so ridiculous waste of money. Just let them decide if they want to buy SpaceX shares. What do you make of these plans? Just additional context, Elon owns about 4.8 billion SpaceX shares according to August SEC filing. The number goes to 6.4 billion when you include unvested awards and stock options. I would really sort of like him just to be taxed correctly and give money, as does Mackenzie Scott, and let kids decide what they wanna buy. That's my whole take on the whole thing. Your thoughts?

I think you're right. So look, this is about just the numbers here. It's about $11 billion across 73 million kids, about $144 a share. It would amount to about 1.5% of Elon's 5 billion shares, or roughly 1.1% counting unvested shares. So he's kind of giving away the crumbs, not the meal, which is fine. I actually, I really like, I like Trump bonds or baby bonds. I would've done what, what Ackman suggested, and that is give $7,000 to every baby that's born and infantilize them and put it in an S&P or a low-cost index fund. And then when they're 65, assuming the market keeps performing at 9 or 10%, they have a million bucks. And in 30 years, you announce you're no longer gonna need Social Security, interest rates dive, and the whole world becomes more affordable for Americans, similar to kind of what Australia's done. So I like this. Now, as it relates to individuals creating funds, my sense is exactly your point. Let them cook, let them make as much profit as possible. They're basically deciding the moral judgments and values of their shareholders.

It's like the U2 thing being sent to you by Apple. I don't fucking want it. Like, don't, let me buy it if I want it. That's what I say. Let them buy it if they want it.

Yeah, we should have right now. So for example, because SpaceX loses so much money, not paying any taxes. Musk will pay taxes, lower tax rate after he moved to Texas from where he built his wealth in California. What we need is let— I don't even like when CEOs pretend to have virtue because they're just signaling. I think CEOs and executives should keep their priorities and their nonprofits and their politics to themselves, drive as much shareholder value as possible, and then we should have an alternative minimum tax of about 40% on anyone making over $1 million or any companies making over $1 billion. And then let elected representatives elected by Americans decide how to allocate that capital. What he's trying to do, what this is, is customer acquisition. He's trying to create 73 million retail shareholders that are rooting for SpaceX. And also—

Single share? One share?

Yeah. And Anthropic is trying to Sandberg. They're trying to say, look, we're good people and everyone's going to participate. I don't want to I don't want to be dependent. America shouldn't be dependent on the kindness of strangers. We should have a progressive tax policy. They should do what they can to make as much profits as possible and return gains to their shareholders. And we need to tax these companies at a progressive rate similar to what we did in the '80s, '90s, and throughout history.

But why doesn't he just give this money and pull 100,000 kids out of poverty? What about that? What about like funding all the kids, all the kids with AIDS in Africa?

Funding their medicine? This has Trump written all over it.

It's such ridiculousness.

This is Trump calling Musk and the Dario guy and saying, I like the idea of— I mean, to a certain extent, it's a little bit quite— it's socialism.

Yeah, it really is.

It's saying that the government is the means of production and you guys need to— this whole notion that Trump wants to take a vig by investing in Intel, I bet he called them and said, do this. No, full-body contact violence that's regulated, and then we tax them and then that people elected get to decide what to do with this money. Having said that, it's hard to fault them for this, but I don't think it's how you operate an economy.

I fault them for it. I say, give— why don't you give money away? You have a lot of money. Maybe you should give some money away to really help people today.

Well, he is, isn't he?

No, he doesn't give much money away at all.

No, no, I mean, when you get— when you give one share to every kid, I mean, that is giving money away.

Can you sell it? I don't know if you can sell it, and then you get $140. Why not give everyone $500 and to do— to like eat better or go to school or something? Like, like, why don't you Mackenzie Scott a little bit about that.

But I don't even, so Mackenzie Scott, who is my, you know, person of the year, there is, and, and I always say this, I'm a sexist. Women, women seem to have, women billionaires seem to immediately move to how can I help the world and give my money away? Male billionaires immediately go to what media platform can I buy and how can I build a bigger boat? And that's not true of all males, but there's definitely a trend among Melinda Gates. I mean, there's definitely a difference in the female and male billionaire brain here. There's just no doubt about it.

No doubt about it. You can't eat a share of stock. That's what I say. Anyway, I'm sorry. I would just like them— it literally reminds me of the U2 thing. It's a stunt. And speaking of stunts, he unveiled the new Tesla Roadster and the car— I'm not going to say it can fly because it can't. It can suction. It can suction, but sort of. The media really soiled itself in covering this. At an event last week, the Roadster drove upside down. It didn't really drive upside down on a curved track and performed stunts, including flying over a bunch of Teslas, which— Which a car back in the Bond days was able to do without thrusters. They used thrusters designed— with SpaceX, they were inside the car. They took up all the space in the car, could only do it for a few seconds. It says the car can go from 0 to 60 in just 0.81 seconds. Again, you have to have the thrusters in your car. That means no passengers and actually no passengers at all. Elon says production on the car will begin in 2028. Actually, for real, he didn't reveal the price.

Also, if you look down into the thing, he may not even deliver it even if you give him the $250,000. So he's getting loans from people for maybe a nothing burger, which he's been promising for a long, long time, this Roadster. As you predicted, Tesla stock initially jumped 5% before falling back. Shares are now up around 3% as we record. Talk about what you thought this talks about Tesla's future. I thought this is what he has to offer, not a new inexpensive car for people that he could actually make money on. And tech analyst and longtime Tesla bull Gene Munster posted his 2 takeaways from the Tesla event. It was an engineering flex with no commercial value beyond embarrassing traditional carmakers, sort of. Elon can't wait to bring Tesla and SpaceX together, which I long predicted.

Yeah, you said that for a while.

Yeah. So your thoughts?

This was a circus act, not a product release. I don't think this thing ever happens. He's been— I mean, let's just go over history here. The Roadster is the same car that was supposed to ship in 2020, 6 years ago. He unveiled it in 2017, delayed it in 2020, 2021, 2023, and 2024. Production is now targeted for 2028. Reservations are $50,000 for the Performance trim and $250,000 for the Thrust trim. Tesla's fine print even says it. It says it cannot guarantee when your vehicle will actually be delivered or if it will be delivered. In 2017, the first 1,000 Founder Series cars were $250,000 each. They sold out. Tesla has been sitting on $250 million of customer money for almost 9 years. Years. So you've lost in that 9 years, I gotta think inflation is about, you've lost a third or half of your money just in inflation. Mm-hmm.

Just sitting there.

Also, let's just talk about the car. I mean, it was, I'll give 'em this, dramatic fun gimmick, but this was an empty shell with air compressors in it. And let's talk, the air compression technology that expectorates to balance a rocket as it plunges towards Earth is not only amazing technology, it's amazing technology with a use. The amazing technology of these air-compressed thrusters on a car is amazing technology. It has abso-fucking-lutely no use. Let's talk about the practicality. You have to fill a tank to get 5 seconds of thrust, and it takes 5 hours to fill the tank. And you can't have anything else. This would never work with an electric car.

And if you have a cigarette, you're fucked. But go ahead.

Yeah. And you can't have an electric car there because it's just too heavy. So, you know, essentially what you have with Musk is that it's an— it's— this was an engineering flex with no commercial value. It's— it should be called a marketing expense. And you have a guy who is basically— you have something— you don't need a seatbelt. You would need a G-suit and a chaplain here. This thing is dangerous. And makes no sense. And when a CEO has to add, for real, that's the tell. The Roadster was first promised in 2017. It's a recurring keynote. And I feel like this whole Roadster is SpaceX that happens to have a steering wheel. And to your point, Tesla is becoming a holding company for his narratives. And the car business funds the story, and the story kind of funds the stock. And you got this early. The merger's coming. He's not building a car. He's building a bridge to SpaceX, one kind of one thruster at a time. But the merger, he's gonna announce it soon.

You know, the thing I'm sorry about, first of all, bread and circus is, like I said, the stock thing and this bread and circus, it's all meaningless. Are you gonna make a car for people? No, you're probably not. Are you gonna, you know, you're trying to—

Oh, BYD's doing that.

BYD's doing it. Why don't you do that? Like, and this is what you're doing? A car nobody can drive that's possibly dangerous and you can't ride on the road? To me, it says everything of this is the choice he makes at this moment in time. And he thinks we're gonna like go, oh, ooh, it flipped. You know, I gotta tell you, Alex is here this weekend, and he was unimpressed as an engineer. He's like, I mean, fine, but anyone can do that. Like, he was not— he said it was cool. He said it was cool, but it's not particular. He was trying to explain it, the whole thing that he did to me. And he basically, it's just a trick. It's just a trick. He can't do it very many times. And then the flipping over cars. Go to a monster truck rally. They do it all the time, just so you know. Or James Bond movies. They've done all manner of cool things with cars, you know, or Fast and Furious any day of the fucking week. And it's all, it's not all fake, the kind of stunts they do. And so I just was like, are you kidding me?

And then of course all his stans were like, ooh, he's so amazing. What a giant penis he has. I was like, no, he doesn't. It's teeny tiny.

The comments are pretty funny though. He got mauled. A bunch of Trump acolytes, or I'm sorry, Musk acolytes put out And it is that dramatic photo of it flipping upside down. It's really cool.

Yeah.

And they're like— and a bunch of them said, okay, China, your move. And it's like, yeah, China's working on—

China's laughing.

Range.

Right. Yeah. Selling cars.

They're putting out— they're basically putting out a Tesla for, for 40% of the price. And at some point, those cars are going to invade this shore. And not only is Tesla in trouble, Detroit is in real trouble. This is nothing This is him stuffing a rabbit in the hat and saying, look over here. It's no accident, the timing here. Tesla reports Q3 results on the 21st, and a flying car you can't buy until 2028.

It's not flying. It's a suction car.

Okay.

Okay.

The Tesla Roadster and this demo was nothing but a distraction from the numbers coming in 48 hours.

This is what he's doing though. Think about this is what he— do you know how much time they probably spent on this? This is what he's spending his time on. That's all you need to know is this. And 'cause he's a 12-year-old boy. And I thought when you said stuffing a rabbit, I thought you meant stuffing his pants to look like he has a big penis, which apparently he doesn't. I don't— I have no idea. Maybe he does. I have no idea. But this is a metaphorical version of that. Um, okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Trump cozies up to Putin.

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Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Pivot. It's the best way to support the show. Scott, we're back. Speaking of stunts, there was something very strange. Donald Trump is defending his latest pro-Russia moves, saying he's just trying to keep Putin at the bargaining table. Please. Putin has to be at the bargaining table. Trump signed an executive order late last week putting sanctions against Russia that were part of a new bipartisan bill on hold, saying it was in the national interest. The decision is drawing huge backlash from both Republicans and Democrats, with GOP Senator Thom Tillis calling it beyond irresponsible. And everybody did— Cornyn, everybody. Ukrainian President Zelensky called the move a reward for Putin, warning that it will only encourage him to continue attacks. And all of this comes just a week after Trump struck a deal with Putin to get Russian diesel. As the headline in The Atlantic put it, America is now an ally of Russia. Putin is also reportedly floating a summit with Trump and President Xi Jinping to discuss the Ukraine deal. Zelensky is not included.

Seems insane. Who do they think they are, honestly? So your thoughts on what is happening here?

It's a high bar between tariffs, ICE, the corruption, the monetization of the White House, Incredibly poor decision-making and execution around the war in Iran. But I do think that long-term, the worst decision or the most damaging decision of this administration is a concerted decision to undermine and abandon Ukraine. Even just the fact they're planning a summit with Xi, Putin, and Trump. If Zelensky isn't at the table, it means that Ukraine's on the menu. And not only is it morally wrong to essentially go back to basically what was 1942 or 1943 and have Roosevelt say, we've decided to partner with that guy in Germany. We're going to start buying equipment from— and Germany's not that bad. It also is minority ruled. Majority of Americans are on the side of Ukraine. And regardless of the moral and ethical and geopolitical considerations of abandoning a murderous autocrat who is invading Europe and turning off and on and throttling Starlink and Starshield. And I love when Secretary Rubio said, it just sort of happened. We're not sure what happened. They're all pointing fingers at each other. Musk is claiming it's the administration. The administration is kind of soft-pedaling that it had something, that Musk did it.

Everyone is running from this because this is nothing short of backing away from the most successful military resistance of the last century. The Ukrainian rate, I mean, distinct to the morals and the ethics You'd be backing— we'd be backing a winner, or we have stopped backing a winner. Europe has stepped up. Good for technology, good for the economy, good for Europe. It says to Xi, think twice before you think about invading Taiwan. To have an ally, which will likely be the Silicon Valley of all of Europe when it comes back online. This is— and also just backing a winner. The ratio of people being taken off the field, which is a polite way of saying injured or killed, was 1 to 2, 1 Ukrainian for every 2 Russians. It is now 1 to 8. The Ukrainians are kicking ass, and few things make me happier than seeing— being on a Saturday afternoon, coming back from Arizona, and seeing my favorite streaming video show of Russian refineries and server farms on fire, as they were in St. Petersburg. To think that they would be able to develop the technology to go on the offense and start taking these things down, and the fact that Zelenskyy is now on a very aggressive media tour.

The silver lining of Trump abandoning Ukraine and allying with Russia is Zelenskyy is kind of like Honey Badger Don't Give a Shit and is going on TV everywhere and saying, Americans are abandoning us. Because I don't think enough— I think Americans are so distracted with tariffs and Iran that they don't realize we have abandoned essentially what is NATO, essentially what is the entity defending the West right now.

No, we're on Hitler's side, not Churchill's. You're sort of like, are you kidding me? The only time we should have been with Russia was in World War II to get rid of the Nazis. That's a good reason to ally with Russia. But this is like, this just plays into every trope about Donald Trump being a puppet, as Hillary Clinton said, of Putin.

He is.

It just completely solidifies that idea of what in the world did they have on him? Why is he doing this? Is it just because he likes autocrats or is something else happening? It just raises those things. And of course, right at the election, so you have to wonder what he's doing. Because I don't think being pro-Russia is really a plus politically.

It's not a good look.

Ever.

A silver lining is Republicans are actually breaking ranks here. Ted Cruz said, I wish the president hadn't done it. I think it was a mistake. Tom, tell us, what part of enforcing a law passed 86 to 11 by the Senate does the president and his advisors not understand? Nikki Haley, a terrible misjudgment of Putin. John Cornyn, Lindsey would be appalled. The law is named for the late Lindsey Graham. His sister sister Darlene now holds a Senate seat and she's against the waiver too. She put, I don't trust Putin and I don't trust Russia, which is a surprisingly cogent 80 IQ statement from Lindsey's sister. But Republicans, I think they back away from this and you're already starting to see it. I think he sees going into the midterms, him holding hands with Putin is not a good look.

No, I don't know what he's doing. I swear that White House has got to be in massive chaos. And of course there's rumors that Susie Wiles is leaving and Stephen Miller will take over, which should bring us to new levels of darkness. I know, right? I know, right? You're like, oh my, oh dear, oh dear, dear, dear. It's a real misstep. I don't think this guy cares anymore. I honestly don't. He's sort of setting— what I think he's hoping is that if they get ahold of Ukraine, the Trumps can get in there with their people and make all the money from rebuilding it. That's my guess. I just— there's got— there's the only thing would be monetary in terms of helping the Trump family. And by that time, if things go the way people think it's going to be, several of them are going to be in jail. So We'll see. We'll see. Probably they won't. They'll get away with it, as villains often do. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, can a leadership shakeup get Netflix back on track?

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Scott, we're back with more news. Netflix has replaced its chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, with former Disney executive Peter Rice and fired its head of film, Dan Lin, in a major leadership shakeup. Bajaria oversaw Netflix's $20 billion content budget and Lin had greenlit or acquired 88 movies since joining in 2024. Replacement Peter Rice previously led Disney's television entertainment business before being fired in 2022. Previously to that, he'd been at— he was at Fox. I know him very well. I like him very much. The move comes as Netflix struggles with slowing growth, with its stock down nearly 40% over the past year and roughly 1,000 employees laid off just before the announcement. I want to say a word Belen Bajaria is a deeply talented executive, has been there I think 10 years or more than that, or more than that. And she has overseen the huge growth in Netflix influence in Hollywood. There were 2 executives, 3 executives above her, co-CEOs and a CFO. They have been fucking up of late and someone had to go. And of course they got the lady. Let's get the lady who had less to do than they did. They're not taking responsibility.

Neither Ted, I know you know Ted.

Do you really think this sucks I don't think it's sexism.

I just think, no, she's the next one down. I don't necess— a little bit. A little bit. It's funny how all the guys survived. And same thing over in Paramount. Cindy Holland was ousted and not the guys. Like, a little bit. A little bit. It gives you a kind of— when you're looking around, I don't think this is going to— Dan Lin was controversial. I know that. And he just got there. But you're not going to fix things by getting rid of lower— not low. She was pretty high up. You know what I mean? Like, the problem is above. Is that the problem? the top, and they have to really do that. Of course, I think the way they did it, they made her do a lot of the layoffs and deal with it. And then she got— it got put out, and Matt Bellamy's thing got out, and she found out there. Just like, what a classless way to treat an executive who's done a really good job for you. I'm sure she'll get a job in seconds. And by the way, this is no shot at Peter Rice. I think he did a— I liked him.

He did a very— He's a very good guy. Competent media executive. I think Paramount had talked to him too. And then the last thing I'd say is someone said the minute Ted Sarandos went to lunch at a very— there's a place in Los Angeles called Superba that a lot of Netflix executives go to, and he was seen having lunch with Casey Bloys, who Paramount managed to hold onto. The minute— someone said the minute he started dating, something bad was going to happen to Bella. That's pretty much. And I think she was aware of it. But it was only rumors. And to me, the way it was done, the fact that they're not assessing their own faults is really— I don't know. I mean, Hollywood's a tough place, but seemed a little classless to me.

Well, okay. So these classless things happen thousands of times every day in corporate America. And to your point, Bella Bajaria is arguably one of the greatest, most iconic content executives alive. Bella's gonna be just fine.

I agree.

Bella's already probably got 5 offers or someone who wants to back her production company. She's just gonna be fine. And a board after the stock is down 40%, and, you know, there's gonna be fall guys and gals. You're saying it's the fall gal is oftentimes what happens here. I think there's probably some merit to that. But a company deciding they need a shift and they need to signal to the markets they're making a change, that's not that unusual. And quite frankly, it's not sinister. This happens every day in companies. I think it's interesting. Bella's gonna be fine. Netflix probably felt like they needed to do something. What I would argue is that, okay, Bella's the chef and she had a buffet, and they're saying, oh, we don't like the food. You haven't come up with K-pop demon hunters. You need the big hits, and we haven't had any this summer.

What she came up with in the first place. But go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, she's, like I said, see above, one of the most iconic content executives in history.

Stranger Things or whatever.

And yeah, I mean, I've been watching East of Eden, which I think is amazing, by the way. But here's the bottom line. I think they're missing— I can see why the board, and not even the board, I can see why Ted and I think the co-CEO Greg did this. I get it. I don't think they're bad people for doing this. She's gonna be just fine. But what I think they're probably missing is the following. It's not that the food at the buffet or the content is the wrong content or the wrong food. It's that people aren't hungry. What do I mean by that? The format is changing. Everybody— and I wish I had more data here, but Netflix, or excuse me, basically YouTube is now at 14% of all streaming. Netflix is at 7%. Netflix is desperately trying to say— for a long time they said, we're the cheapest tech company and we're growing like a tech company. Now they're growing 13% a year, which is still good growth, but it's not tech growth. And their fear is their stock begins to trade like a media company, like Disney. They're trading at 5 times revenues.

Disney was— Disney's trading at 2. So they gotta find growth. And the problem is they can create a lot more iconic shows, but until they move to kind of shorter-form content or sports or podcasting, they, they're not serving what, what the people— The people at the buffet are vegans all of a sudden. They want a different type of food.

That's a very good way to put it. But again, whose fault is it? I mean, ultimately, to me, it rolls to the top. I just feel like it does. And by the way, they have 2 co-CEOs. I never get that crap. I never understand that. I just feel like perhaps the, you know, and maybe the fuck-up of the— was it a fuck-up? The Warner deal. There's still residual feelings about that, I suspect, internally. Again, not hers. She didn't do it. Right? And that's, to me, I get it. Life is not fair. It reminds me of the plot of The Studio where the woman executive gets bounced for Seth Rogen's character, which was played by Catherine O'Hara. I get it. I get it. But still, it was so done so fucking badly. Like, could you possibly not give this person a little better exit than that? If you're going to have to pick someone and you look around the table and you know that none of the dudes wanted to go. This is who you aim at. And I just feel like it just was like, ugh, I know she'll be fine, but—

Look, there's no, there isn't an elegant way to fire someone. What you often do, it's not easy in a public company, but what you wanna do is, or what I've done, and I grant I've never run a public company, but I've been on the boards of public companies, is you say to someone, it's not working out for you here. You have a ton of offers. a ton of opportunities. You should consider them. And then you give them peace with honor. And that is, you say to them—

Let them go.

Do you want this to be your idea? With someone like this, I think they wanted to maybe send a message to the market. There was probably no clean and easy way to do it. People get fired every fucking day. Quite frankly, I think some of the drama here is like, okay, it sucks to be a grownup. These people get paid tens of millions of dollars. They're on the firing line. They get switched out like crazy. CEOs get fired all the time.

I get it. But it always seems to be the— like Cindy Holland at Paramount. It wasn't some of the other people who suck at Paramount. It's just— anyway, I just— it's never the— and speaking of which, I'm gonna switch to a thing. Anyway, Bella, we love you. We think you're great. And Ted, keep it classier. Let her know, don't make her preside over layoffs. Take 'em yourself, big man. Let her look for another job, or she's and something like, I'm sorry, after that many years and that many successes, you get a little, you get a little sugar. That's my feeling. But speaking of the man thing, and I don't think everything is sexist, Scott, I really don't. But the White House new AI task force is like mighty white. It held its first, first official meeting on Thursday.

That would be racism, not sexism.

I don't know what it is, but it was like ridiculous. All people with self-interests, pretty much all white.

Yeah, but none of them have any— no, it's not. It's not even racism or sexism. It's incompetence. None of these people, none of these people know anything about AI.

A few do, but kicking off a 120-day push to develop a government response to the risks of advanced AI. The group will study 3 major areas: cybersecurity and critical infrastructure, biosecurity, and keeping AI models under control and accountable. It's still unclear how the government will enforce the rules because they don't want to make regulations because it's self-policing, with officials floating export restrictions as one possible way to pressure companies into compliance. Members of the task force include, uh, Vice President J.D. Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, moron. Just, this is just, they cannot come up with any meaningful AI safeguards. The next Congress will, and they're going to run it right over Donald Trump either now or 2 years from now. So, and it's going to be a big topic in the election. But as usual, it's the same group of self-interested, either self-interested and competent or moronic and self-interested. I don't know what else to say. Your thoughts?

A task force is where urgency goes to die. This is delay and obfuscation. And not one— okay, the members are Vance, Bessent, and Hexeth. Not one of these people has built, trained, or studied an AI model.

Jay Clayton's the head of it, and they have Emil Michael.

I know Jay. I think he's a very impressive, nice guy. He has no fucking business heading an AI task force.

Agreed. Agreed.

They, they— and by the way, I thought he was a competent head of the SEC. And I don't think he's a terrible pick to hit our security apparatus other than getting in front of Congress and refusing to acknowledge that Biden won the election, which means he's not going to stand up to the president, which if anyone needs to stand up to the president, it's the person running our security apparatus. But they should have, in my view, gone to the University of California, the University of Texas, Lawrence Livermore Labs, the best scientists in the world, the best people at the CDC and said, we're putting together a task force, or not a task force, we're putting together an equivalent regulatory agency of the EPA or the FDA. And immediately we're announcing nothing can be released for 90 days until this panel approves it. And Anthropic and OpenAI, if you don't agree to it right away, we're going to get a law in no time and it'll be a much blunter instrument. But if they were, if they had, they could immediately pull together some of the brightest social scientists, lawyers, IP attorneys, psychologists, technologists, bioweapons experts, and say, guys, figure out a way such that if we give you every model and every product for 90 days, you can start asking it questions like, how do I use kitchen supplies to make a bioweapon?

Start asking it all sorts of questions. You have access to every room, every, every document right away, and you need to start looking at the stuff and issuing recommendations back to the companies and back to the government as just a starting point, but we're going to have dissent to this? And then they're talking about export controls. That's sort of the tell here. They don't want safety, they want leverage. And AI policy is now becoming trade policy instead of regulatory policy that prevents a tragedy of the commons. And for God's sakes, putting Hexath on an AI safety commission or task force is like putting a pyromaniac Act to write the fire code or— anyways, likelihood of success here is very low.

Can I just say, Hegseth's going to be out after the elections if he can't stop the elections. That's what he's— he's staying there if Trump needs to try to stop the elections. And otherwise, he's gone. I mean, he's such a moron. That's my prediction right there.

But just coming back to this task force, the only hope of AI regulation, you need 3 things. You would need 3 legs of the stool. You would, first and foremost, you would need technical expertise. Then you would need enforcement teeth. And then finally, you need independence from the companies. And this group has none of the 3. This is totally ineffectual. It's symbolic. It is meaningless.

It really is. It's such a penis jerker. I mean, to me, let me just make the last thing. Everything we're talking about today has the same theme, hand-waving stunt, whether it's the share of SpaceX, kind of a ridiculous kind of that one, the car, whatever, an entertaining stunt, fine, meaningless at the same time. Same thing with the Putin thing. Dangerous stunt. Whatever he's pulling here is incredibly dangerous stunt. And then you move to the Bajaria thing, like stupid stunt because you don't want to take responsibility for yourself. Like, again, meaningless. And this is absolutely meaningless. Thank you very much. Stunt, stunt, stunt. That's what I feel. Hand-waving nothingness that doesn't matter, won't help people in any way in each of those situations. All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins Support for the show comes from Framer. The future of website building is seamlessly blending in all the tools we have available, and you can use a platform that has it all and stays useful even after you launch. That's what Framer is. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. You're able to prompt, inspect, edit, and preview your designs in real time. And it's not just websites. And publish in one place at a whole new pace. On Framer, agents and humans work in tandem. Agents bring speed and scale while people bring taste, judgment, and control. And all that takes place in the same workspace where the real site is designed, managed, reviewed, and published. Everyone's ideas land on the canvas, stay editable, and can be published when the team is ready. Framer is an enterprise-level solution. Thousands of businesses from early-stage startups to Fortune 500s are choosing to build their websites in Framer, where changes take minutes instead of Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist, or get started building for free today at framer.com/pivot for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan.

That's framer.com/pivot. Rules and restrictions may apply. Today Explained producer Denise Guerra wanted to make a show about Susan Collins.

But Today Explained host Sean Ramaswamy was like—

Boring! But then Denise said— She's like a ninja! Susan Collins is not Denise's beat, though, so we asked Alex Seitz-Wald from Maine's Midcoast Villager. He's writing about her race, which could decide the balance of the United States Senate. Ninja would not be the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Susan Collins, but actually pretty good comparison. She's quiet, she is flexible, she's quick, she can do things She's done things that seem impossible. She's lasted a lot longer than any Republican in New England or a blue state like her. Susan Collins is a ninja. On the 2,000th episode of Today Explained from Vox. Monday to Friday afternoons, wherever you listen.

Except YouTube?

But that's, like, where you watch, right? Kinda? Thanks.

If you like hearing me tell stories about people, well, I've decided to tell stories about my life and the people I love.

A letter was left carelessly around, so I was sort of caught red-handed.

It's a show about secrets and forgiveness. I hope you'll come see it. Find all our tour dates and get tickets at thisiscriminal.com/live. Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. Would you like to go first, or I can?

You go first.

Speaking of Netflix, by the way, Bella, thank you so much for The Diplomat. You'll love it, everyone. It's such a wish fulfillment at the end if you see the whole drop of the season. Thank you for doing that. I appreciate it. But I'm gonna— the win— it's a win-fail. The win-fail. Christiane Amanpour is leaving CNN in June after 43 years. I love Christiane. She is, you know, she's had her troubles back and forth with CNN of late, but she's just a legend. legend. Just one of these people who has contributed so much more to our society than I think anybody realizes. Great journalist, great job. She's doing a bunch of different things. But, and I know, I think she was frustrated with Paramount. I think. I haven't talked to her about it. But I just think she's just one of these people that is just absolutely a classic that we should all look towards as a real, someone to really— I find her inspiring myself as a journalist. And so I give her all credit for everything. She deserves every fet. They should throw her a big party. I think she's the best. Also a lovely person on top of all that.

My fail. Meta, even though it's revised its controversial website scraping policy after backlash from business and publishers over how the people could use their content, yet another grab by the information thieves that they are. I just, I can't— they will try to pull anything to get control of our content, anyone's content. And the fact that they're like, same thing with, oh, we took down the No Kings rally thing by accident. Oh, I didn't mean to do that. They just constantly operate in bad faith in the same way. And I find it, I just am like, when are you going to stop being quite so pretend cloddish when you're doing things all in your self-interest? I find them as the most exhausting company around in that regard.

Gosh, get that. 43 years at CNN. What a run. I think there's a dignity to— Christiana is not young, but she's not old. I think there's a dignity to leaving before you have to. And also, I think the person, I'm curious of your thoughts, I think the journalist most likely to occupy that quote unquote seat, because Christiana Amanpour has sort of, she's kind of carved out what I think is the most important seat, global journalism through a US lens. She works for a US company, but wherever there's a hotspot, she goes there. She's global.

She's seen as very trusted.

I think Clarissa Ward is really fantastic. Clarissa Ward.

Fareed Zakaria, probably.

Yeah, but Fareed's more commentary.

I don't think he's a good news reporter. I know, but Christiane has combined those now in a much more way. Clarissa Ward is amazing. She's amazing.

My point is I like it when people who aren't 90 leave before they need to, and there's someone really outstanding kind of ready, I think, to step up. So anyways, and I've only met Christiane I've just gone out for a couple times, but I've been on her show a bunch and I've always found her very— anyway, you're right. She's a legend. She's a first ballot Hall of Famer.

She's a legend. She's also become a friend, which I was so thrilled, pretty recently. And I really, really, really just love her. She's the best.

That's nice. Okay. My fail is the Tesla Roadster. The original promise, 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds, 620-mile range, about $200,000 production in 2020. Now it's 2028. Open quote, actually for real. That's something my 16-year-old says a lot. He's like, wait, actually for real? He says that all the time. I just got access to the new Ali G film. And he's like, actually for real? He always says that. Actually for real? That means he's impressed.

Has a lot of meanings.

That's 11 years from unveil to production.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just the car's been delayed I mean, this car's been delayed more times than my colonoscopy, which I always find a reason not to get done.

Can you please get it done?

No, I had it done.

Good.

Okay, fine. I do like the jokes. A, I actually like the prep. Boy, do I feel clean after that prep.

Good.

My God. And then I love the jokes. I'm like, will you run your fingers through my hair when you put it in?

Why am I laughing at that? That's so much fun.

The jokes are great. Also, that's the best drug in the world.

It is. At some point, I'm just going to Oh my God, we're like old people, like, oh, the poop joke.

Oh, it's so good.

Kids are gonna love it. Kids, it's gonna be great.

The last time I was there, they're like, you have 10 seconds before you go out. And I literally was like, I bleached my asshole blonde just for you. And then I was out. And I woke up and I said, did I get my joke out? And they said, no, we just heard you bleached. True story. Anyways, no price announced. Okay, good luck getting cold gas rockets past the NHTSA. The car can fly, but it's not going to be able to pass inspection.

Whatever.

Let's talk about the actual cars that Tesla sells. Deliveries fell in 2024. It's the first annual decline and fell again in 2025. BYD has passed Tesla in EV sales. This is look over here, don't look at my core business. Their auto business is shrinking. So Elon shows you a car that flies. When the fund— anyways, when the fundamentals fade, the stunts are going to get more and more outrageous. So look, he made a car fly upside down on a track. Meanwhile, the Model Y can't hold onto its market share right side up. So it doesn't— this is a circus act. And I don't know if the fail is that the markets keep falling for it, or he thinks that, you know, this to me feels—

One born every minute, Scott.

There you go. Anyways, so my fail is the circus stunt as opposed to, as you said, focusing on the core business. My win, I just want to remind people that there have been very few. We celebrate SEAL Team 6 for the hunting and bringing bin Laden to justice. We celebrate the incredible military operation in Venezuela. Venezuela. There has been no military operation and no standard of excellence like the Ukrainian Army. They went from a handful of drones to roughly 2 million in 2024 with a target of about 4.5 million in 2025. They're now the reason that the ratio's gone from 1 to 2 to 1 to 8 in terms of battlefield casualties. They realized they couldn't win the arms race, so they literally changed the race. There's going to be all sorts of strategy case studies done in graduate schools years. The keyword is asymmetry. Roughly, they can do these drones for about $500, which can destroy a $3 to $5 million tank. That's a 10,000x return. No VC in history has ever seen these multiples. They have a navy without a navy. Ukraine sank most of the, I think it's called the Black Sea Fleet, with sea drones.

In 2025, a Ukrainian sea drone reportedly shot down a Russian fighter jet, a first in history. A boat with no crew shot down a That's amazing. Operation Spiderweb in June of 2025, 117 drones smuggled in trucks, planned for about 18 months. Ukraine claimed 41 strategic aircraft hit thousands of miles inside Russia. That's like Pearl Harbor in reverse, delivered by, I don't know, DHL or FedEx. And then Kursk in August 2024, the first foreign occupation of Russian soil since World War II. Putin invaded to take land and ended up losing some of his own. So let's look at the scoreboard here, and I hate to reduce deaths of young men to this and civilians, over 1 million Russians killed and wounded by mid-2025. Kyiv was supposed to fall in 3 days and it's been more than 4 and a half years. This is, you are backing, we are backing. Do we want to be part of the greatest defense against autocracy and the greatest assault on Europe and democracy of the last 50 years? Do we want to be a part of that or do didn't want to be the ones that bailed at the last minute.

Yeah.

So this is—

Taking the L train.

Perfect. I'm going to leave it there. Elon, so I want to summarize both. Elon put thrusters on a car so it could fly other Teslas for a YouTube clip, and Ukraine put explosives on a $500 drone so democracy could survive. Same technology, different moral universe.

That's correct. Alex is here this weekend, as I said, and one of the things I said, we were talking about where he's going next. He's gotten some offers from— he's a mechanical engineer and everything else at Michigan. But one of the things I said is, you know, if I were you, I would go to Ukraine after everything settles. I think that would be such a fascinating opportunity.

I would wait a bit. I'd wait a bit.

No, not now. I'm not going to send my son into a war zone. But I was like, when it ends, it would be such an interesting— you remember when everyone— my years, it was going to Czechoslovakia and stuff like that after the wall fell and stuff like that. I was like, that would be kind of a fascinating place to be an engineer, like, and all kinds of opportunity. Of course, I'm not going to send him tomorrow. Although he'd be a very good soldier, but I wouldn't want him to be, of course. Anyway, I think you're right. I think you're 100%. The moral case of it is so different.

You know where most, a lot of my colleagues when I graduated from business school went? They went to Russia.

Oh yeah, that was another opportunity.

A lot of people were going to Russia and—

The Czech Republic was during my time.

They all came back tail between their legs.

Ah, interesting.

It was all broken dreams. It was all didn't live up.

Corruption.

The CEO of my company got executed in the streets. I'm out.

Yeah, corruption and violence was speak. Mine was the Czech Republic. All the journalists went there and they had a great time. I think they learned a lot.

Good beer.

Yeah, good beer and beautiful place. 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 submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott Universe this week in On with Kara Swisher, I went upscale. I spoke with 3 award-winning authors who've all released new novels in the last few months, all Barbara Kingsolver, Min Jin Lee, and Ann Patchett. We talked about the ways real-life inspiration blurs with fiction. Let's listen to a clip from Barbara. When you write a novel, people will insist on believing every single part of it is true. And when you write a nonfiction book, they will dedicate themselves to doubting your facts. So— Yeah!

So—

and I've, you know, I've done both nearly every time. Half my books are nonfiction. So, as Ann says, you reach a point where you say, this is— that's not my job to manage what people think. They all have hit books, by the way, and they're all great books too.

What are their books?

Ann Patchett has written a book called Whistler, Big Head. Min Jin Lee is part of a series of books she's written. She writes one every 10 years, but this one's called American Hagwon, which is a teaching thing in South Korea. And Barbara's book is called Partita, and it's fantastic. And they're both— they're all selling really well.

All right.

Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot. Be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday.

Today's show was produced by Lara Namensway, Marcus Taylor-Griffin, and Todd Wiseman. Arnie Nertad engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Severio, and Dan Shallon. Nishat Khurraz, Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Kara, I'll see you See then. you later in the week.