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Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vanta.com. Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are.
But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you might lose a few minutes from your day, but if you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. I know a guy isn't a good strategy for your home. That's why thumbtack works so well.
It matches you with top-rated local pros, with photos, reviews, and credentials, all in one convenient place. For your next home project, try thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Dallaway. I just went from Toronto and grew my arms tired. You're back from Canada?
Yeah, again. I did this fundraising thing for something called the LeCock Foundation there, which helps kids in certain schools in the area they've joined with schools. That's what the French exchange student said to the fraternity brother. Oh, it's LeCock.
You just knew it was coming. I knew when I saw it and I said the name of the foundation, which is a fine foundation. It was a debate. It was one of those funny debates where I was on the side of the Internet who's ruined everything and other famous Canadians were on the other side of the Internet, saved everything, essentially.
It didn't, hasn't ruined everything. I won. And who hosted the debate? It was the LeCock Foundation.
It was to raise money. It was to raise money for it. It's a very good cause. It's a very good cause.
I don't often do those, but I thought the Canadians convinced they wore me down last time I was there. I went from New York there. It was good. Give money to the LeCock Foundation.
I went to this thing, a bunch of friends. My reason I went was because it was much people from my high school and I like to run my success in their face. And I just went around going, tell all of you that signed my yearbook. Stay cool.
Job done. I thought that was the line. I thought that was the line. Anyways, Toronto was lovely.
By the way, I took their subway. Everything is so clean there. It's crazy clean. I know, but it was like so pleasant.
It was so pleasant. There's also interesting diversity there. It was on the street where this took place. I took the subway to it.
And I'm like, how do they maintain? They seem to get along. Well, they have issues. They do have issues.
I just find it a really interesting place. Canada is sort of like entrepreneurship for us. We kind of romanticize it. They face many of the same issues as us.
I know. You know what? Honestly, Canada is one of the best managed brands in the world. People don't even impression that Canada is just a much better version of America.
I would argue that Canada is just very similar to America, but it does face many of the same issues we face. Crime homeless. It does, but it's a different tone. They are more civil.
They're more civil. They are. That said, I have to say, most annoying airport Toronto going through customs there. They're very fussy about how many things to put in a plastic bag, etc.
It's really, it's such a performance theater there. And they're very like, is that bag too big to put in the top? There's a lot of that going on. Of course, I felt like 100% American.
It's fine. I paid for this seat. What do you need to do this if I want to speak to the manager? Leave me alone.
Leave me alone. Nice people. Stop helping me. There's a different personality type.
But anyway, the fundraiser was nice. It's weird whenever I drink Canadian whiskey. I get very angry, just like when some people drink in. They get very mean, except when I drink Canadian whiskey.
I'm very mean, but I'm sorry too. I'm sorry. Sorry. I didn't have a Tim Hortons donut.
It's not making me happy. Anyway, it was a good trip. I'm glad you're back. Let's be honest.
You give them an inch, Cara, and they'll take 2.5 to 4 centimeters. Oh, my God. Anyway, we're moving along. I'm going to see you next week.
I'm very excited to see you. I know. We're doing an all hands. I don't like hanging with our employees.
We're going to do that. You're going to be nice about it. It bothers me that they expect to be paid. Yeah.
Anyway, we're also going to do a thing with Joanna Coles at zero bond. We're going to do a little together. My stopping ground. Apparently, I can't wait to see it.
I've been there. I don't think so. I don't think you've ever brought me there. I'm sorry.
It's very exclusive, Cara. I can't. They have standard, Cara. It's a very exclusive.
I understand. Oh, that's awesome. Who's your? Desi.
Desi, who are those? Oh, yeah. She's a gangster rock star. I have to say, I like all of them.
I think they're all incredibly talented. I'm bringing Louis Swisher and his girlfriend Ivy. Louis was actually excited to go to something of mine, which was very fun, which I'm very excited. I finally was a cool mom.
Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. The DOJ may want to break up Google and misinformation running rampant during the historic hurricane season, which is really unfortunate. You're playing old kind of misinformation, basically, from the lips of Donald Trump. Plus, our friends, Pivot, our New York Times reporters, Suzanne Craig, and Russ Butner.
We're very excited. It's a new book called Lucky Loser, The Illusion of Success. It's a pretty good illusion. It's still going.
First week quickly, let's talk about Kamala Harris's press blitz this week. Some highlights, 60 minutes. Harris urged voters to watch Trump's rallies in place of the interviews he's canceled. On the view, she said she wouldn't have done anything differently than President Biden during the administration, so people thought this would fall to her do that.
I'm not so sure. On Howard Stern, the vice president said former President Trump has a desire to be a dictator. And of course, she cracked open Miller Highlife with Stephen Colbert and seek to say, what the fuck? Let's listen.
But elections, I think, are one on vibes because one of the old saws is, I, they just want somebody they can have a beer with. So would you like to have a beer with me? So I can tell people what that's like. Okay.
This was, now we asked ahead of time because I can't just be given a drink to the vice president. I'd say, but ask, you asked for Miller Highlife. Well, except for the unfortunate choice of the champagne of beers. Scott, how'd she do?
Yeah, but she wasn't going to order a dozakis, right? I mean, right? No. Had to be Miller.
You know, just, it's funny just listening to her just now. Her laugh is a real asset. I mean, branding is all about differentiation and you want to highlight where you're different than the competitor. I don't know if this is true, but I wouldn't be surprised if they said, look, I'm going to say this.
I don't think she's just compelling sometimes in person in terms of how she acquits herself in the arguments she makes around issues versus past presidential candidates. And I think they said, okay, let's just manage the campaign very tightly. Let's keep things kind of under control. And I think somewhere around a month or two months ago, they said in contrast to Donald Trump, she's fucking Winston Churchill.
So let's get her out there. And again, we've said this a couple of times. But for me, the kind of observation, everybody out here, I know I still everybody out here. No one's talking about Colbert.
No one's talking about 60 minutes. Everyone is talking about one media appearance. You know what that media appearance was? Call her daddy.
100%. This is the pivot to new mediums. I mean, there's a lot of TikToks. I mean, I just can't get over.
I don't know. Is it selection bias or proximity bias? I don't think so. Because the people I'm surrounded by are, I don't know if they're like hardcore podcast listeners, but I just have overheard people saying, did you hear the caller daddy thing?
Did you hear it? Or talk to Alex Cooper? It's really a pivot. I think we're going to find when they reverse engineer what had the most influence they're going to say, or one of the things they're going to say was, and he did this to be fair at the Trump campaign, did it first.
They started going on all these Manistere podcasts. Manistere. That's what creates all the buzz. Is there appearances on podcasts?
What are your thoughts here? Yeah, I think it's absolutely true. I kind of chastised. I was on Abby Field Show.
Some of them about laughing about calling your daddy. I was like, oh, you know, they did that all over cable and all over mainstream news. I was like, are you kidding me? Genius.
Like this is what matters. You know, and I was like, she should do more of those. You should do them all over the place. I think she'd do local news, as I said, and things like that.
But I think I thought it was a great idea. I don't care if there was a clap back on Twitter who cares. It doesn't matter. It's just the right place to reach a certain group of people and a lot of them in one place and motivate them in some fashion.
And so you got it. Like, I think one of the problems the mainstream has is that it's not as relevant as it used to be just like in all things. Like, this is not where kids get their news. This shouldn't be a new fresh take among anybody.
But I thought that was well. I think it still is. No matter how many she does, Trump floods the zone with lies and stunts and stupid things. And people look, right?
So even if she tries to get people talking about her, everybody talks about him because even bad things, any publicity is good publicity for him. And I don't, she does hundreds of these. It doesn't matter. I think they should be more aggressive, as you and I said last week, going on Joe Rogan, going local news and everything else.
But I'm not so sure it would matter because Donald Trump is a one man, you know, PT Barnum, talks to PT Barnum. So we'll see if it matters anymore. But that's a real problem for her, I think, no matter how you slice it. Anyway, we'll see.
I thought it was great. Do you want me to name Trump? Do you want me to name Trump? Do you want me to name Trump?
Do you want me to name him last night in LA? I don't want you to talk about this stuff. I just can't. I just can't.
I just can't. I don't even know who brought this up. My personal life is my personal life here. Let's get on to the next subject.
Let's talk about whatever conglomerate is being broken up. Okay. Will Arnett. Oh, how is he doing?
That's great. How did that happen? He likes our podcast. He's totally into.
He's got a gaggler kids, including young men and he's very interested in what we talk about. The issues around affecting young men. And I like to think about it. I saw him speaking.
You know, he's very handsome. He's shockingly handsome in person. He is handsome. They're all handsome.
It's so true in Hollywood. Can I just give you one piece of advice? Don't fuck it up like with Dax Shepard. Okay.
Don't fuck it up. No, he brought that up. He spends with Dax. He literally sat down and he goes, did you text Dax yet?
He's totally like, he said that. He's like, what's wrong with you? He's like, he's a great guy. Just reach out to him.
You've gone on smartless. You showed us a great show. I had a great time. Well, they have to ask you first because that's the thing about that show.
They have to ask you. As you said, I'm lower shelf. Speaking of texting, I will text Jason and Sean and make sure you get on. How about that?
No, I don't. I don't want to force my way. Because Will and I are now good friends. I don't like to call on my close, close friends.
I would totally use that. One thing that was interesting is when we did smartless. He hates Elon Musk. I wasn't going to bring that up.
Well, he did it on the show, so we did it publicly. Anyway, we'll get to Musk in a second, actually. Oh, shit, really? For that.
For one second, we have to. That's a shocker. Actually, let me just go there. He's set to unveil his vision of Tesla's future at the event.
We robot at the Warner Brothers in California. We're recording ahead of the event, which is tonight. Are you going? It's right there in Los Angeles.
I'm going. But Elon is expected. You should totally bungee in. But Elon is expected to reveal his long-weighted robo-taxi or cyber-cab.
I'm sure it's going to be slick looking. Supposedly, a fully autonomous car. Reportedly futuristic and designed two-seaters of butterfly wing doors. Of course.
The car, as penis-y as possible. He'll make it. The car will be used, and not in the good way penis. The car will be used for a new ride-hailing platform that describes the combination of Airbnb and Uber.
Elon is hinted at his team. We'll show off a few other things at the event. Remember to be additional mystery vehicles. I'm sure there's a scooter or something like that.
I actually talked to Elon about Tesla's plans for full self-driving cars, including robo-taxis in a 2018 interview. Let's listen to what he said that. I don't want to sound confident, but I would be very surprised if any of the car companies exceeded Tesla in self-driving, in getting to full self-driving. I think we'll get to full self-driving next year as a generalized solution that I think.
We're on track to do that next year. He was not on track to do it next year. It turned out to be a lie. That was 2018, and he's done that many times.
The interview was later referenced oddly enough during a lawsuit brought by a family of men who died in the Tesla, and Elon's lawyers claimed Musk, like many public figures, is the subject of many deep-fake videos. They tried to claim this interview as a deep-fake video. This is all such nonsense. He also said an investor called back in July, and he didn't believe that Tesla would solve vehicle autonomy should sell their Tesla stock.
By the way, Waymo, which we also introduced, the original ones at our co-commerce, has been driving millions of miles since San Francisco and all over the country. They didn't solve it first. They didn't get tested, was exceeded in self-driving so far. It's a really big deal for him.
A lot of people just left Tesla this week. Another group of top executives went either Waymo or other places. There's a lot of quitting going on. What do you think?
He's betting on this, isn't he? I think it's a lot of showmanship, but we'll see. I was at the bar last night, and there were some folks in. One guy was in from the Bay Area, and he was there with his date.
He was there for the event. He's an engineer at Tesla, and they're there for the big unveil. I think the guy's a great showman. I mean, he's really smart, and like you said, all the press or all presses get a press.
Very much like Trump, yeah. Yeah, so I won't watch it, but I'll eventually read the reviews on how it's better than what's out there right now. Speaking of which, I took my first, I met my friend at the Mayborn Hotel, and we were having a dinner at Medales, I think, and I ordered my first Waymo. I had never been in a self-driving car before.
Yeah, I think right. And it was a Jaguar, and I got in. First up, it struck me, the way it drives like a never-17 year old. It drives like how you would want your kid to drive after he or she got her driver's license.
And that is like, it'll stop at anything from the hunk of horror, and it's just very cautious. But it really is. There was construction with cones and an accident, and a cop using his red light, his baton to wave people, despite what the light was saying, and was a little confused, and would break cautiously, and I'm never even a cop looking at a shit-out self-driving car. But it's just amazing.
It figured it out. And I thought the millions of data points, it must be observing to actually not just shut off and go, I can't handle this shit. It's too dangerous. You figured it out.
Somebody needs to get in the seat and do this. And then the other thought I had was these billions of data points in AI, and it forgot to put the fucking driver's seat forward. I mean, I'm six foot two. It's like, why is there no driver there?
Why is the seat not more forward? But I thought it was super. I got to be honest. It's so much better.
I was in the original ones like this at Google, and I got to tell you, I ride them all over San Francisco. I've had very few problems. They have had problems, but humans have more, as I always point out. But they're driving on highways now.
They're starting to do drives in highways in, I think, Arizona. They're very far ahead in this game, in the Waymo division. Whether they make money or not, we'll see. But I mean, Tesla's idea is that you use Teslas to, like, when someone's Tesla's sitting empty, it comes to your house.
I would never in my frigging life get in a Tesla. Let me just say, in my neighborhood in San Francisco, someone was driving a Tesla, had it on autopilot. It drove into the Bodega in my neighborhood at the corner of the store and crashed into the window and the guy's like, I didn't do anything. It just, I would never, because they don't have as many points of safety as the Waymo goes.
I think it's ready misinformation. I'm not spreading. I'll send you the photos. It was crazy.
I think they're, I don't think they're driving. This thing is as good as other companies at this point. Look, it's obviously- It's a great car for an EV and some driving with a person there, but I do not trust it in the same way I trust the Google version of it at all. But the next, the next evolution of self-driving cars that we've been waiting for, and it's clearly, it really is on the horizon as it soon.
Country singers trucks are going to start leaving them in addition to their wives. Yeah. It takes a minute, but it's funny. Anyway, I'm sorry, there's all kinds of problems.
I just don't trust it anymore. I don't trust this company anymore in a way that I do trust others. Do you trust Waymo more than whatever? Absolutely.
They've just done it quietly. They've done it with more points of, I'm not a technical person, but they use laser and cameras and this and that. Is that the technical term? Laser and camera?
Whatever. No, but he doesn't believe in that. I don't know. I don't think he cares for safety as much as others, and I think that's worn out in a lot of his history.
You're really going full. I mean, you've really, you've really like that. I wouldn't get in the Tesla for this. I'm sorry.
I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't.
The thing is I'm all for self-driving cars. I think autonomous vehicles are cool, and I get in them earlier than other people. I just wouldn't get in this one yet until I understand the safety, and especially with all these executives leaving. It's head of vehicle programs.
It's the CIO. It goes on and on and on. He takes too many risks, and he's not going to take a risk with my life on this. I hope he gets there at the time he did this interview.
It was very helpful, but it was bullshit. It was just another lie. That's all I'm saying. Well, Apple's self-automatic cars coming up.
Supposedly they're having a tough time. It's not like Windows. Oh my God. I could do this all night.
Well, good luck with your thing tonight. I'm sure it'll go well. TikTok is being sued by a partisan group of 14 attorneys general across the country for violations against consumer protection laws. The lawsuit led by California AG, Rob Bonita, and New York AG, Latisha James, Allegiance TikTok uses addictive features on young people to make ad money.
The TikTok features highlighted in the lawsuit include beauty filters, push notifications, and endless scroll. Last year, over 30 other states filed similar lawsuits against meta. More people were finally against meta, which is interesting. They didn't quite get as many with this one.
It's part of a long on-site. I was fascinated by it. It was half as many as filed against meta. I guess meta is bigger.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. A little of this feels performative. I don't know.
How do you feel? If there are two substances the Galway household is addicted to, and the first is the affirmation of strangers. I care too much about what strangers think of me, which is really fucking pathetic. You too.
The second is TikTok. I don't think my kids are addicted to Instagram or Reels or video games. I actually like it when my son plays video games. He does it with his friends, and he screams out these warrior cries that wake up the whole neighborhood.
You know how, you know how as a parent, even if you don't see your kids, but just knowing they're in the other room is very comforting. I'll be working on something in the other room, like other part of the house, and I'll hear my son go, yah, I scream out, and I know he's just accomplished something on a video. It makes me very happy. I don't know how I got here.
The thing that has been the substance that has caused the greatest level of dysfunction in is we qualify as an addiction, and my household is TikTok, and I wonder if it's Instagram for girls. I don't think there's been a ton of studies around, you know, supposed to be 24%, we talked about 24% of Instagram users would be qualified as addicts. I think among young boys, I think it's TikTok. We're talking about addiction, and then one of the most valuable platforms in the world ascendant platforms out of China is an addictive substance, and then the most valuable company out of Europe is treating addiction.
The just the business of addiction is such an example of how regulatory forces have failed to move in and price things or recognize their externalities, because it kind of goes back to what you were talking about, or you know, the gentleman you referenced before and how impressed we are with him, and we make excuses for him. We talk about these platforms. We talk about semaglutide, because we're all just so, the bottom line is we've all acquiesced to money, and we absolutely, we defer, we acquiesce, we let money wash over anything as no matter how bad it is for us, and unless we can reverse engineer it to something that's getting in the way of the sale of legal drugs, or it's coming, we can weaponize it against foreigners or immigrants. I mean, 80% of people arrested for the trafficking of fentanyl are American citizens.
The way let's demonize immigrants, unless there's some sort of demonization of politicization in it, addiction is the ultimate business. Well, we have to kit everybody. You can't just be in this haphazard way, and this is just, I just sit here and I'm like, this is a waste of time and a lot of press releases. So can we just have national rules on this stuff and figure out what the best way is, by the way.
It may not be age-gating, it may not be, but like a considered national plan. It's got to be simple, and the simplest thing is the following. No smart phones under the age of 16. Look at that.
Should there be downs on downside? Should there be, maybe some, I'm not entirely sure how it violates anyone's privacy. What would be the upside of kids not having their brain being wired as we put every addictive substance in a Doka bag in their pocket, especially kids who are raised by single mothers, don't have a lot of people overseeing them or going to public schools where the teachers can't keep up with kids watching whatever in class. This is, again, being outsourced to the most to lower-income households.
I wonder what the addiction rate is to these products in my lower-income households, where there's not enough parental time to- Among the parents. Among everybody. You said something really coach, and you said that the bottom line is we let them do it because we're addicted to our screens and we want time on our own screens, but I think the legislation here that solves 80% of this or 80% at least my kids, no smart phones under the age of 16. And by the way, Apple and Alphabet could absolutely figure this out.
It wouldn't be hard. They could do it. They could figure it out in 30 days. Yeah, that's never going to pass.
That's the thing. Exactly. Regulation laws. It's a question, but they want to.
They have to be made to. Sorry. Well, speaking of that, let's get to our first big story. The DOJ is considering breaking up Google after declaring Google search business is an unlawful monopoly.
The DOJ has released a proposal for limiting the company's dominance, including breaking the company up. Included in the proposal of government is considering limiting the contracts Google can have to make the search a default. Apple is what they're talking about requiring Google to let sites opt in to search engine inclusion while opting out of inclusion in Google's AI tools forcing Google to make certain information like data and ranking signals available to rivals. I thought that was interesting.
And licensing or syndicating Google's ad fee separately from search results and requiring Google to provide certain performance information to advertisers. These all seem rather reasonable. I'm not sure about the second one, but talk about, does this list address monopoly problems adequately? And will any of it happen?
Obviously, Google right now holds 90% of the market share of search. Incredible. It used to be three. I think it's pretty strong things.
And what advice would you give Google what to do besides it's slow rolling it as they have done for many years? Yeah, you're exactly right. It's slow roll. And what's interesting is if you really think about the impact that antitrust has had, it's the scrutiny that you're under during antitrust that actually creates, has the most tangible impact.
Because as you know, Microsoft was found guilty of monopoly abuse, and the remedy was to deliver money. And so I think it's a really good thing. It's a really good thing. It's a really good thing.
It's a really good thing. It's a really good thing. It's a really good thing. It's a really good thing.
It's a really good thing. Because as you know, Microsoft was found guilty of monopoly abuse, and the remedy was to, they ordered to be broken up, and then it was overturned over several years. This is years long. This will play out or not play out over several years.
But even if it ends up being reversed, which I don't think it will be, even if they're managed to slow-ball it, it's good because Google will, or alphabet will think twice before they think, oh, here's an emerging AI player, let's force people not to install it on their Android phones or let's outspend them and put them out of business. So these things, it may take years. I was kind of hoping. I thought that there was a chance alphabet might prophylactically spin YouTube because everybody talks about, oh my God.
If you ask people who's a big streamer, they say Netflix, and that commands about 7.5% share YouTube, is it 10%, YouTube is the number one streamer in the world, and it's really well run. Anyways, I would think that that would be the logical spin that maybe they go to the DOJ and say, hey, what if we spun YouTube, but that's satisfying, and it doesn't look as if it would be. No, no, no. Because then there's an ad.
This is a search one. There's also an ad case in Virginia. They've got to separate them. They just do.
They have all the information, and they're ahead, whether even if they're lagging in AI, they have so much power. And so I think forcing them to make information and data ranking signals to rivals is a great idea. I think licensing is a great idea. I think limiting the default thing, they can buy their way into dominance.
They're not doing it because they're better. That's a more thoughtful answer, you're right. I don't know. These seem reasonable to me.
They're going to have to do at least three or four or two or four, and then they'll drag it out for as long as they can, but eventually they're going to have to do something you're right. They should do it prophylactically. But this is a pattern for companies. There's only a few of them.
Amazon, Apple. They all have to change their practices. Especially, it depends on who wins, but I think a lot of politicians are much more hostile than they were before. And sometimes too much, though, when someone's been calling for this.
Well, this is a question I'm looking for an answer, not just to make a point. But I can't think of another industry of this size, $300 billion that has one player with a 90-plus percent share. There isn't a market that has this sort of dominance. Their argument is that Amazon does search, you know, open AI, they have competitors.
Yeah, we have competitors everywhere. One click away. Yeah, they've managed to maintain 90 percent of it, $300 billion market. Yeah.
Because they're so good. They haven't innovated at all. And there's been no innovation in Search that's lasted. So, it kind of is classic in lots of ways.
I agree. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back. The dangerous hurricane misinformation is also surging online.
And we'll speak with friends of Pivot, Suzanne Craig, and Russ Butner. Their book is a chronicle of Donald Trump's lucky breaks and shady business practices. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough.
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That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's O-D-O-O.com.
Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.
Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more.
And the best part? Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?
Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's O-D-O-O.com. I know we are. Huge information.
It's really bad on X and Lynda Yacarena, one of the more heinous executives to run across recently, is saying stay safe, stay on X. Do not stay on X if you want to stay safe, just so you know, a peak bootage judge ended up calling Elon Musk to sort him out on some of this stuff. He was being polite about it, but spreading misinformation on this platform is really bad. Biden and other government officials are doing what they can to debunk the nonsense.
The White House started posting on Reddit, keep people informed about the hurricanes and combat misinformation. Meteorologists are also doing what they can to warn people about what's actually happening out there. Let's listen to a clip of NBC's six meteorologist John Morales getting emotional. He's delivered an update on Hurricane Milton, this guy was quite hugely viral.
It's just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours. I apologize. This is just horrific.
Wow. He's a Scott Galloway meteorologist there. I was going to say that guy. That guy.
Sounds like you. That guy cries at a lighter shoe being dropped than me. I don't usually see people get emotional or weather, but. Yeah.
Well, I think he understands a devastation that could have happened and did happen, but not in the number that they were very worried about. So talk about the misinformation to me is, again, another moment where Trump doesn't pay for what is really inhumane on the massive level. Even Republican governors are like, shut the fuck up, dude. They can make it work.
It's like, this is just line and line and line. You can win by line, really, pretty much. Well, this, I mean, what did he say that they ran out of FEMA, ran out of money because they were giving money to migrants? You know, this is obvious.
It's just a real, you always have a tendency, I think, to get older to think things are getting worse. But I do think there's some legitimate legitimacy to the notion that in instances where there used to be bipartisan cooperation, we now have people making it harder for FEMA to do their work. Because when they spread this type of misinformation, people believe them and don't call, don't go to the wrong place for resources. Think they shouldn't leave.
I mean, this costs time, energy, and maybe even cost lives, this type of misinformation. So it's, I just don't know what you do other than punish people hard and people say, well, it's censorship. I'm like, now, if you're purposely spreading misinformation to try and sow division and you knew you were purposely spreading misinformation and people get hurt, I think you should be under, you know, legal scrutiny for that. This is serious stuff.
You know, you don't spread misinformation that says, oh, the fire in the lobby is actually we're not sure it's a fire. It's a conspiracy. And you know, there's an actual fire in the lobby and you confuse people as to what resources to access or what the escape route is. I think you're liable.
And unfortunately, because of this Wild West mentality and this crazy bullshit notion that all even crime is speech, as long as it's, as long as it's not a digital platform, anything qualifies as speech and all speech should be protected, it's very, I know it's just incredibly disappointing. What I can't figure out is do, and I haven't seen any data on this. Do people go, okay, climate, let's be honest folks, climate change is real. Because government is important.
I do think the majority of people in these states, despite the devastation, appreciate that the federal government and their local officials are putting aside or trying to put aside all the bullshit and are trying to get help to the people who need it. I do think that my impression of the response so far, and it's impossible to get it right in this type of chaos 100% of the time, but my sense is they're doing their level best and that we pay a lot of money in taxes and that FEMA gets billions and billions of dollars and that government works. It does make sense. They are minimizing some of the devastation or the effects of the devastation.
I can't figure out if people are going to say, okay, we do need government, climate change is a real thing. President Biden and everybody, or Vice President Harris are doing a decent job and they get a benefit. Or if it's misinformation is getting traction, in addition to that, the chaos, whenever there's chaos, you just blame whoever's in power. You just hold them responsible.
I can't figure out, do you have any gut or have seen any data on if it hurts or helps one of the other candidates? Well, I think people are wondering about whether they'll have an impact on the election in terms of turnout and how people vote in North Carolina just passed emergency measures to ensure voters on impacted counties, often rural ones can still vote on election day. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't think people tend to, they may blame the government, but they don't blame the government. This is a storm. They understand that. I think the question is why make people in a terrible situation feel worse or feel more under fear or that the government can't help them or that someone's out to fuck them.
I guess heartened to see Republican governors saying this is bullshit, stop it. But they don't stop it, right? They don't stop them. Next year, when there's storms, they'll be with them on it because it worked if he wins.
That's the repulsiveness of this, is that it works on some level. It's sort of like that, at long last, have you no sense of decency, right? It's sort of, that's the moment to me. I don't know.
I think the person I was really irritated was Lindy, I could be saying, you know, be on X, stay safe. I'm like, you fucking asshole. How dare you? How dare you?
Like say, use this platform when it's being used for all kinds of nonsense. It's just, and not caring about that. I don't know how they sleep at night, these people. I honestly don't.
And in this case, people need good information brought to them. Let me give a compliment. The Starlink things are really important for people getting good information. But if they're getting, if you put the Starlink up, they get the information and then it's crap.
I don't even understand that the two things in the same place anyway. It's just, it's disheartening. But he has, just to be fair, he has weighed in and tried to offer Starlink or make it available to people, right? In affected areas?
Yes. Yes. I said that's great. But if you're beaming down crap, like, what is, why?
Why? If you're doing this good thing, why would you let this other thing happen? Like, I don't even understand that. And Trump is altogether just another story, just really incredibly irresponsible.
And it's, it's so disheartening if it works. Anyway, speaking of which, speaking of Trump, let's bring in our friends of Pivot. This is Ann Craig and Russ Buettner, our investigative reporters for the New York Times. That is underselling their amazing investigating reporters for the New York Times.
They've written a new book based on a lot of their reporting they have published this year called Lucky Loser, How Donald Trump Squanders His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. Suzanne and Russ, welcome. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us.
This was exciting. So I went to your book event here in DC. It was really interesting. But you've been reporting for people who don't know on Donald Trump's finances for years, but you go really in-depth in the book.
Talk to us about what, obviously, Donald Trump's all about talking about money, but what does his financial history tell us about him as a businessman? Let's, let's focus on that part. Yeah. Our big interest in doing this book was to get to the bottom of that.
We had done three longer stories in The Times that explored different windows, how much money he got from his father and how his business was performed in the 80s and 90s, and then again after the 2000s. But stringing all that together is where you really kind of see the pattern. And I think what you notice is that he's very good at drawing attention to himself, at selling things when there's things that need to be sold, often he's drawing attention to things he never does. That's one of the themes that runs through the book is he sort of builds up his reputation by saying he's going to do things that never happen.
But operationally, he has difficulties. He never seems to be very careful about the finances of projects. So he regularly spends far more than what the projects bring in. He often says that.
And then he needs money from other sources outside of his business operations to support those businesses. Right. So a bit of a Ponzi scheme is what it looks like. A little bit.
You see his inheritance filling in the holes. And then later the fortune from the apprentice really filling in a lot of holes as well in sort of sustaining this image that he's a powerful businessman when he's really having problems that he's hiding from public view. And is he going to talk a little bit about this reporting because you've been doing this for a long time? Right.
So, like I said, we had a number of stories at The Times. There's kind of three big ones. We've been covering him since 2000. It's hard to believe we're coming up on nine years of this, but it says every journalist I think we're covering this guy.
And then we decided after the 2020 story, it was a big story we had where we got decades of his corporate and personal tax returns. You know, we found out in that that he wasn't paying much income tax ever. We also got an incredible window into how much he'd made from the apprentice. So we laid that out.
And then Russ and I had a conversation and we realized we had a, I think, you know, we called a skeleton for a book, but we really saw this as an epic American tale and we wanted to tell it and we wanted to delve further into his father. We were really intrigued about his dad from the reporting we did while we were at the paper. And then we wanted to just learn more about Fred and see that impact that it had on his life. And then re-explored Donald's life because I think there's just a lot of misconceptions that were out there.
Some of them were laid down by him early on and just repeated over and over and over. And so, you know, when we decided Russ and I had a chat and Russ had very heavy lifting on the writing as a beautiful writer. And we worked together and I did a lot of the reporting. So we just spent a couple of years just full out of it every day trying to get this together.
Talk about the role of Donald Trump's father, this is Fred. Talk about his role and influence because he was a pretty good business person. In this case, he was, as it's not a small time developer, a pretty big time developer in New York. It's a tough market.
Yeah. I mean, it's an amazing arc to his career. He really was the self-created person, businessman that Donald Trump's always said that he was. And he started out just building like garages in the up and coming neighborhood in Queens where he grew up.
And then over the course of the next like 40 years, he really benefited from some of the big programs, the government programs to solve the biggest crises of the 20th century, first to the Great Depression, then finding building housing for soldiers during World War II, building more housing for veterans when they got out. And then a couple of programs to sort of build up housing for million-come people later than that. And he built up this colossal empire of 10,000 to 20,000 sometimes apartments that were rentals. He never had one except for a couple outside of New York City that didn't make money.
And so by the time Donald joins the company, Fred owns what would be during his lifetime a billion-dollar empire of rental apartments. It's kicking off tremendous amounts of cash. It has very little debt. And so Donald has this like windfall behind him to do what he wants.
And Fred, it's a really interesting relationship to us and it's seminal to Donald's life. Fred really puts his full faith in Donald from that point. There were other siblings, two brothers, for various reasons. Fred, the older one, falls off the scale, doesn't get his father's trust, becomes an alcoholic and dies very young, unfortunately.
And the younger one never really seems to be taken seriously because Donald's already claimed to help him by then. And Fred never challenges Donald at all in anything he wants to do. And they're entirely different. As I said, Donald starts saying he's going to build things that he doesn't do.
Donald's not paying attention to the bottom line. Donald's taking great risk, but it's not really with his money. But Fred throughout his life supports him, even as Donald starts to say, I'm way bigger than my father was. When he's only built one building with other big partners, but it really seems to be a seminal relationship in his life.
I have to say, Carol, though, you do see it in rest talked about Fred and that era where he went into these larger projects. They came out of government programs and Fred was seen at the time as taking advantage of them and exploiting loopholes. And there's even there's an article in one of the book on papers that ultimately called him a pariah feeding off government largesse and gouging his tenants. Do you see shades of what the practices that Donald is accused of?
Not a good guy. Yeah, in some respects, but a great builder. So there's contradictions in there. Right.
Right. No. Oh, he's in the leveling force. Scott, go ahead.
Nice to meet you. I had to ultimately pass away and he inherited approximately $413 million of the sticks of my mind. And if that were invested in just an S&P index fund, it would be somewhere depending on the returns worth today, somewhere between $10 and $20 billion. And it's very hard to nail down his actual net worth, but we know it's less than that.
We know if he just stuck it in an index fund, he'd be worth more money. Which businesses have been the most successful and which have been the least successful that he's been engaged in since inheriting that money? I got to imagine the casinos and the golf courses have not paid off, but the apprentice was a big deal. What else is made and lost in money?
It's a great question. I'm so happy that you remember that number because I was on a spreadsheet. You know, my screen for about a year and a half, we were all coming up with numbers to get to that 413. And you're right.
That's though we've kind of looked at his wealth and his general success is that if you just invested it and gone sailing, he'd probably be infinitely more wealthy than he is now. I mean, on the apprentice, look, all he did was show up there. Mark Burnett had the producer, had made this deal with NBC that he would get half or he would get all of the product integration money, and it wasn't really product integration. Each show was a commercial for whoever sponsored it.
And they didn't know NBC didn't know at the time what that was going to be worth. It took about a year to get going, but pretty soon, companies were paying $1,2,3, $4 million to be on each episode. And Burnett, in order to persuade Donald to join that effort, who he thought was really busy, promised to give him half of whatever that would would raise. And so that became just a huge windfall in his life, about $200 million.