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Download the Uyter app at eterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network on Cara Swisher. And I'm Sky Galway.
So you headed West Scott? Are you headed West to meet me? I'm heading West. I had, so I'll start off, I'm going to talk about my weekend.
Okay. I'm interested in what you did, but not really, but go ahead. I had oysters, but go ahead. I'm actually feeling very fond of you lately, even very supportive.
So anyways, I have my boys. And if my 16-year-old and I were just left at home, they would find us freezing and starving. Like we do nothing. We're happy to do nothing.
My 13-year-old goes on YouTube and says, 10 best things to do in London, and he'll plan out the entire weekend. And it's wonderful. And I just say, you're in charge. And he said, Friday said, we're going to go to the world's fourth highest ranked food court in the world.
I'm like, okay. So we got a Heron's Food Court. Heron's has a... And it was amazing.
Amazing. You've never been there? I've never been there. So it was me, my 13-year-old son, and what felt like every first date in London.
Oh, wow. And we had just an amazing meal. And then of course, we went up to the technology section because we liked to browse around. And then Saturday, we, me and both boys, went to go see Chelsea play Arsenal at Stanford Bridge.
And Chelsea, you don't care about me. I mean, it's voices on you anyways. Chelsea has literally spent a billion dollars on new players under this new owner, Todd Bully, who strikes me as a really nice man. Anyway, he also owns the Dodgers.
And it's been a terrible season. And I'll tell you, the thing that makes for other fans, Premier League football is the other fans. The thing that makes owning a team really difficult is the fans. They are very harsh on the ownership.
Chelsea goes up to nothing against what is arguably the best team in the prem right now, Arsenal. And then in the last 20 minutes, Arsenal scores two goals and ties it up. And I was physically worried that if Arsenal scored a third, there would be a riot. Oh, all right.
But it was a big game to that. And then yesterday, I got on a plane, came here, hanging out with my sister and her kids. And then about an hour and a half, I got on a plane, I'm going to come see you. Oh my God, what a family time.
What a family. Great weekend. What did you do this weekend? Gosh, I have a doctor's appointment, which I'm not going to bore you with.
I have all my doctors still in San Francisco, because I love them for decades. Should I be looking for a new co-host? I have a list. No, I'm good.
That's why you're not going to be looking for new co-hosts. I go to the doctors. I'm one of those people who be very assiduous in going to my doctors every year about everything. Not too much.
Not too little. Just right. Just right. I saw this terrible cold out there like it will pass.
That's really pretty much what they say. I'm in very good shape. Don't worry about it. Well, speaking of doctors, my urologist, no joke, is starting a short form video platform.
It's called Dictalk. Oh, no, you're kidding me. Okay. He doubles his eloxameth.
It's called Coxmouth. Oh my God, stop. Stop. Do you want more?
Do you want more? Do you know if we're out of five urologists? No, stop. No, stop.
Oh my God. I love how you get the complaints. It starts off. How can you affiliate with him?
That's really what it starts. And I'm beginning to come around to their way of thinking. Daddy rings the register. No.
Two words. First word, cost, second. No. Touching.
And by the way, it's all the people pretending to be woke that like the dirty stuff. Next show, you know, dictos. Anyway, we're going to talk about important things. Like the Supreme Court's latest ruling on the White House in Big Tech.
Companies continue to struggle on how to address the Israel Hamas war. And we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Matt Mullenweg, another person who is wonderful, early person. I've known for a long time. He's the CEO of automatic who has some news to share with this company.
And he's actually an interesting person to talk about the power of Big Tech and others. He's a really interesting entrepreneur. But first, the Washington Post published its in-depth story on Congressman Jim Jordan over the weekend. The article looks back on his time as the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State.
And what he did and didn't know about the team doctors, sexual abuse scandal in the interview for the piece. Jordan apparently tensed up during the questioning about the doctor, but continued to deny having a knowledge of abuse at the time. The post interviewed 11 former Ohio State wrestlers from the Jordan era, who said it was inconceivable that he didn't know about the doctor's behavior. I don't know what to say.
He's going to stick with the story. He's obviously out of running for the speakership. I'm not sure we'll have any impact. He's just going to keep doubling down on that he didn't know, even though he should have known or he's in willful denial.
I'm not sure what to say. I'm conflicted there because this type of crime is so heinous that you'd like to think any whiff of this, any complaint, any evidence, any, not even a red flag, but a yellow flag that you'd like to think that good people immediately run this thing down and make sure it's not true. Having said that, you know, if you go back, I go back to the 80s and I imagine being a coach, I'm not played sports in college and I'm imagining a coach, I was so naive to the fact that these crimes even existed and they claim so alien that if you'd heard discussions of this and you were a junior coach, I can quite frankly empathize with either not knowing what to do or ignoring it or not believing it. And the reality is the vast majority of people that heard these rumors did nothing.
Yeah, that's true. But the lesson here, I mean, it's just easy to judge to go back to, you got to put yourself in the shoes of someone who's in the early 20s and a coach. And but it's like my friend, my friend, Doug Simon says, it's not what you do. It's how you do it.
And I think if I think of representative Jordan had said there were rumors, I heard about them and I am ashamed that I didn't do anything. I want to apologize to all the victims. I feel horrified. I wish I'd been more of a leader here.
But quite frankly, it just didn't seem believable at the time or I didn't. I didn't know what to do. None of us knew if it was true. What was I think of it said that I think people would forgive and say, okay, put yourself in those shoes.
Would you have been a real leader in figure this shit out? Or would you have made it the easier decision to kind of think that it was locker room talk or whatever? I remember calling one of the high school teachers in our high school, the gym teachers, his name was Chester. So we naturally called him Chester the molester.
Does that mean other teachers should have run it down because he had a nickname? So I think this is stuff is really hard. But I'm going to take the opposite. Let me just finish.
All right. Let me just finish. His guilt here is by lying about it. He's lied about it.
He has said where he screwed up here is he has consistently said heard nothing of the kind of about it. And that is not true. There are a ton of people who come forward and said he was in the room when people are talking about this. So I'm a bit conflicted here and I do think there are a lot of people because quite frankly representative Jordan sounds like a great asshole who want to see this guy be taken down.
What are your thoughts? Yeah. All right. Here's the deal.
He's an intense one of the things that was interesting in this article was how intense he was as a wrestler. How intense he was as a person how directed he was a real competitor. One of those real competitors and you've met those types in sports and I'm sure you have. I think nothing got in the way of his ambition.
And so that's what made him deaf was his own ambition. He wasn't going to hear it and he wasn't going to say anything about it. And to this day, I think he believes it. He believes he didn't hear it, but he heard it.
That was the evidence here is that he heard it. You know it. And I know there's rumors there was rumors in high school about various and sundry people and nothing was done. You know what I mean?
Every school has that story of something like the rumor of the teacher that sleeps with the student, et cetera, et cetera. I as a 22 year old quit a job over something like this. And I'm sorry. I wasn't that hard.
It really wasn't that hard. It was hard. At the time I was young. I wasn't sexually harassed.
I witnessed it. I heard about it. I tried to do something about it. A friend of mine was sexually harassed and the guy settled with someone else we were testifying for.
And to say we didn't know was impossible. It just everybody knew. The other people in the office who were all Republicans, this was John McLachlan, who were in the McLachlan group. They knew and they did nothing.
And this day, and I quit. I testified against him. The thing was settled. And I quit the job.
I changed my life. And I'm not putting myself out as a hero at all. And I think I was unusual to act. So I get people who didn't act.
But someone who came up to me later, met recently, relatively recently, who knew about it and told me I must be lying. They said that to me. When I said we have to do something about this, came up to me, tried to apologize and said, I'm really sorry. I did that.
I'm really sorry. I didn't know. I didn't do anything. I was concerned.
I was young. Same thing. Wasn't that young? I was older, actually, than me by a lot.
I was young. I didn't want to lose a job. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And they said, can you forgive me?
This was years later after denying it, being part of me having to quit. And I looked at this person and I said, no, I don't forgive you. I don't forgive you at all. And I never want to see you again.
I'm sorry. This was just heinous to have done this. And this guy would happen here was much worse, I would say. Yeah, but I think you just you demonstrated a certain moral code, courage, and leadership at 22, that most of us don't have a 22.
Most of us are in our first job and don't. We don't even understand. I mean, you'd like to think you have a moral sense of self in a code and that type of leadership that you express and demonstrated. But the reality is the majority of us don't.
The majority of us don't have that kind of confidence and code in perspective at the age of 20, 20, whatever. I guess. But let me just say the person who knew they all knew. They all knew.
They said it to me years later. And all of them are still failing by not saying something. You know what I mean? Like, so you know, when this person came up to me, I was like, say it publicly, call it right everybody.
They didn't want to do that, right? It's water under the bridge. That was one of the phrases. And that's when I knew I was like, you will not be forgiven.
There's no water under the bridge for this, for this woman to change this woman's life. We've got sexually harassed. I know that. It comes back to the same thing.
And that is, I don't care if it's the people who work at Altria or Philip Morris or the people who work at Facebook. When it's raining money, your vision gets blurred. And you decide to, when you're paid not to see something, it's amazing how your vision can get blurred. And the reality is the reason why John McLaughlin got away with this was everyone around was making money from him.
And I mean, this happened at Newscore. There were abuses there that just shouldn't have gone on so long. And when there's clear signs, let me take it a bit tight. When there's clear signs that you're radicalizing young men, when there's clear signs that young girls are having greater degrees of suicidal ideation because of your algorithms, but you're making so much money, it's just easy to come up with reasons for why to ignore it.
I guess. And it takes, it takes, so I guess what I'm saying is, I don't find it. I know why he did it. I was around people who did things like that.
I saw it with other people. That's not what I'm saying. Now today he should say something and he can't. Oh, there's no reason not to.
There's no reason not to acknowledge it now. And this is, this is what's good about, I think there's a lot of, you could argue there's a lot of negatives around cancel culture, whatever you want to say, but there were too many people in vulnerable groups getting abuse for too long. Yeah. And something you said is always resonated with me.
And that is when you're a white heterosexual male, you have to take a minute and take a breath and realize that you will never have the same level of empathy or understanding of this because, and you said this once and it's always stuck with me. People who have never been victims have a difficult time understanding what it's like to be a victim. Yeah. Because I don't quite think I'm not worried about crime because I've never been a victim of crime.
That's not me either. Because no one fucks with me. I don't, and then if I'm out with my sister walking around the street, I can see she's very cognizant of what's going on around her because she is much smaller than me. Yeah.
And I do think that men in the workplace and outside of the workplace, who are just quite frankly physically bigger, need to take a breath and go, your world is different. You have a different threat of self-med. Yeah, it's true. I think in this case, this guy's ambition was just so high, he didn't see anything else.
And that was, Are we talking about that in Jordan? Yeah, I think you could see his intensity. But what do you think his ambition was? He was a junior wrestling coach.
No, no, no, no. But he was a very competitive athlete. He was always on the focus on the next thing. And I think he was always planning and plotting.
Anyway, speaking of someone who did take a stay on John Stewart and Apple are parting ways with the cancellation of Apple TV plus show, the problem with John Stewart just days before the third season was due to start taping. It's really not clear what happened. But no one said anything publicly I've asked John for an interview. Today, an Apple executive reportedly had disagreements over upcoming guests and potential show topics tied to China and AI.
Not surprised. And he talks I had with Hollywood that have to do with anything I'm making. And Apple, mine, selling to Apple is always there like wary about me and topics. What topics would you discuss?
Again, it's Apple's network. They can do whatever they want. But I talked to Stewart on Sway in 2022 and asked him about his decision to do the show with Apple specifically. Let's listen to what he said.
We wanted to try and create kind of a universe of information where we were boosting some of these voices and figuring things out. It's entrepreneurial to some extent. But also within that, what Apple gets out of it was like, I'm not sure what they want out of a content company. I really don't.
I don't know. And in some ways we might be antithetical to their business model. Honestly, I think Apple wants to sell iPhones. I think Amazon wants to sell toilet paper.
Right. But that's what I mean. It may not be in their interest to have a provocateur. But I do know they've been incredibly supportive and have given us the resources to do it.
Well, until they didn't. Right. So I don't know what exactly what's happened here. So I'd like to talk to the principals.
But that was the word in Hollywood for sure. I was waiting for him to get to China or things that they're uncomfortable with. This is the same reason that Facebook's getting out of news. It's just on a risk-adjusted basis when you have other businesses.
I mean, Apple is a $3 trillion market capitalization company. 95% of their products are produced in China. And China makes no bones about saying your content and your views. We're not.
We don't get a shit about the first amendment. We have one party here. And if this party can't be, it can't swing back to the second party. If we're voted out of office, that's called revolution.
And we end up hanging from telephone polls. So we take this stuff very seriously. We will oppress input, economic intimidation on people who say things that are not in our interest. And Apple is in the business of producing devices, 95% of which are 90% of which are produced and manufactured in China.
So they look at this and they go, we get it. We understand. Imagine they hated making this decision, but said, we got to be honest, boss, it sucks to be a grownup. Have you noticed everyone always says, everyone tries to excuse you on Musk's behavior to say, he's got terrible impulse control.
Have I noticed? Yeah, I know that. But when it comes to China, he's very measured and thoughtful. He's like, this is a difficult situation.
And he's stopped talking because his second biggest market is not capable of control. So he's measured and has discretion when it involves his pocketbook. But when he knows he'll be protected by the First Amendment and Red-Shack trolls on his platform, he's very strident and has problems with impulse control. The interesting thing about John Stewart, first up, John Stewart is a gift to America and the West.
He's just so insightful and courageous and he softens the beach to change your mind with humor, which is the ultimate shelling of the beach to soften it such that you're open to changing your view. He can say things that are offensive to some people or you might not agree with, but he gets away with it because he's so, because of his art. And the reality is he could continue to do this show and have as much impact by just putting it on YouTube. I think he got a lot of money here and not a lot of, you know, I think effort is what it will take.
And I think he's kind of got a sweet life. I don't know. Apple, I bet Apple said you're a flagship. We have more money than God.
Here's 10 million bucks. I've got a round table once a week. Yeah, I think more than that. I think he got a lot of money.
Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. And there's something wrong with that. He deserves to have a good life and have a lot of money.
But if he's looking to continue to be a strong voice, he should. His interviews have gotten really good if you know it's on the show. I thought it was, I called him possibly irrelevant at the time because it was sort of not hitting all cylinders. And then it suddenly did.
Some of those interviews he did were really powerful with the, on big controversial topics, I was surprised Apple hadn't sort of been nervous before, but he couldn't get near China. You know, he was doing stuff around book band, whatever whole bunch of stuff. Well, just numbers. His first shows were viewed by 40,000 households.
John Oliver's viewed by 850,000 households. The difference though is that John got traction. I bet quite a few of his clips got millions of views. That view he did of that representative of that elected official in gun control.
That clip everybody saw that. I mean, almost everybody. Yeah, he did that several times on several topics. YouTube really is his distribution channel.
Highway, right. So, frankly, other than probably the 10 million bucks that Apple was paying him a year or more, in terms of his impact and his ability to reach people and influence them. If he wants, I mean, that's not an expensive show to produce. No, I know.
It'd be interesting. I do want him to come back and talk. I think he's, you know, he's super active around 9 11. He's about veterans and burn pits.
He's done so much good work. I just, I want to find out what happened here. And I suspect it's a little more complex. Apple is much happier with shows like Ted Lassa.
Morning show. Yeah. Well, how can you not be happy with Ted Lassa? I know the morning show does hit some controversial topics.
They're right about to go into a portion right now in the current season. And I'm, it's a little more edgy than you think, actually, I was surprised. There's an Elon Musk character on the show. It's played by John A.M.
of all people. Really? I couldn't figure out if that was Bezos or... No, it's the same Musk.
It's the same. I can't even focus on what he's saying, John. He's so handsome. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, he's good. I think he's really good. We'll see where it goes. Anyway, John, come and talk.
I'd love to talk to you some more. Also, it's tough times for Tesla and the third quarter earnings down 37 percent from last year, some troubling news to be giving Elon for the upcoming cyber truck on earnings call with investors last week. Elon Musk seemed to be tempering expectations for the new vehicle. We dug our own grave with cyber truck.
Elon reportedly said on the earnings call it was a very erratic earnings call, highlighting production challenges and getting to cashflow positivity. Although we know the demand was off the charts, Tesla's announced a cyber truck delivery event for November 30th. Maybe he's downplaying expectations. Who knows what this guy that stock is down pretty significantly.
And he spent the weekend speaking of dick jokes. He's like you, dick-a-pedia, and wondering why Wikipedia costs so much, just being an idiot. Could be cyber truck. I think it's inappropriate when he says it.
When I say it, it's funny. I know. I have such a double standard. I don't know.
Where is this? There's... You know, the Rivian is out. I see lots of them.
The Ford 150 Lightning is getting its problems in order. There's lots of choices here. And that thing is a choice. It's a choice to pick that car, for sure.
Look, I just... And people remind me of this on Twitter. I'm not on, but I'm sure they still remind me 10,000 times a day. I think valuation and bottoms of valuation on companies ultimately rear-sits-head in terms of stock price.
And Ford trades at seven times in terms of enterprise value to EBITDA. And that is the stock price minus the debt. That valuation relative as a multiple of your profits, EBITDA is sort of a form of profits. It's four to seven times.
The GM is five times. The BMW get this at four times. Tesla's multiple of enterprise value to EBITDA is 43 times. And whenever I've had discussions with people, they want to immediately pivot to, oh, no, it's not a car company.
It's a software company. I know it's an energy company because stockholders don't want to get into a discussion around the fact that this is metal being wrapped around four tires and a more innovative engine, the electric engine. This company deserves to be profitable. They've done as inspiring.
And I just think you're going to see the valuation come way down. And they are hitting the same issues of scale that any manufacturing or automobile company faces and that their margins are contracting. There's more competition. And it's hard to scale.
You still have... It's not like a digital product where the marginal cost of production is near zero. You have to make these things. These are difficult, complex products.
Anyways, but it's just in a cyber truck. I think it'll be interesting. I have a bias. Yeah.
Did you put your name on the list or not? What do you think of as a car? It looks really creepy looking, but whatever. I think it looks like Battlestar Galacta meets Homer Simpson.
I think it looks strange. I got on the list for Rivian because I thought it looked pretty cool. But the cyber truck to me just looks something out of 1980's sci-fi movie. I don't know.
I think there's probably a limited audience. But who knows? I just don't see a million people driving these things. It's a choice.
Like, you know what I mean? It's like, okay, I'm going to take that looking car. And I'll tell you something weird. I think we've seen it too much.
I think it's overexposed. I just have seen it. It's been around forever. Where's the freaking truck?
Like, I've seen it him throw things at it. I've seen him show it off. I've seen him drive it around town. But I'm like, everyone else has got the truck out.
Let's go dude. There's still though this unique and it's fairly new peanut butter and chocolate to drive valuation of someone who's an iconic figure. Here's a great storyteller slash visionary and then using social media to massively increase your stock price than getting access to cheaper capital. Investing at cheaper capital and pulling away from the competition.
One in three companies 20 years ago in public where we're not profitable. Now two and three are not profitable. So the narrative is not important in the numbers. And to his credit, his narrative and his leveraging of social media, it's just unparalleled.
As evidenced by the fact that just 30 or 60 days ago, they put out this big press release. We announcing the dojo supercomputer leveraging AI, which helps gives us an advantage around modeling and creating scenarios around autonomous driving. The market goes, oh wow, Elon Musk, AI, plus his ability to promote this on his social media channels. The core competence of CEOs now in the growth economy, it's storytelling.
It's the ability to leverage these new mediums. It's so not there there. We'll see if people buy this truck. I just think I'm not saying it's warranted.
I'm not saying it's a loud fish. I'm saying there's got to be actual sales here. No one gives a shit with Mary Barra says. Right.
But they got to announce a supercomputer. I get it. No one cares. He's got to sell the cars and he's got to make them profitable.
You know what I mean? That's it. I don't think his narrative is as flexible as it was. But we'll see.
I'll tell you what he should do. He should buy John Ham and have John Ham play him. That's what he should do. And then he'll be fine.
I'm watching Madman with my 16 year old. And I'll keep doing his pausing it and going, just you know, at work, that was not appropriate behavior. You're not supposed to do that. This is a show about what you're not supposed to do as a boss.
Anyway, let's get to our first big story. The Supreme Court is temporarily allowing the Biden administration to continue efforts to get social media companies to remove misleading posts. Late last week, the Supreme Court announced it was pausing and appeals court ruling that limited the government's ability to communicate with these companies. The court has agreed to hear the case this term in addition to several other social media first amendment cases.
Already on the docket, it's a win for the Biden administration. But I don't know, in combating misinformation, at least for now. The original lawsuit claims that government officials censored productive speech by urging tech companies to modify posts involving COVID and the election. The case has already seen lots of back and forth with various appeals and injunction.
Missouri's Attorney General, one of the parties who brought the suit called the government's actions, the worst First Amendment violation in our nation's history. I don't know. It's interesting. What's the best argument for the government to make?
Well, the best argument is that we have First Amendment rights. And if we pass a law that says that social media firms, I mean, this is so ironic because Congress passed a law that said that they're not subject to the same scrutiny of the content that put out as every other media company called T30. But I would imagine the defense for the White House, or the legal claim of the White House, is if we pass a law, saying you can't say this stuff, then yeah, that's a violation of the First Amendment, which is government shall pass on a lot of him. It's free speech.
But I think that they have some rights to free speech and can say to these companies, when you are saying these things and they get algorithmically elevated in both of us, including the executives of your firm, acknowledge that there's no evidence that mRNA vaccines alter your DNA, can we work together to stop the spread of this obviously false information that is creating greater levels of death, disease, and disability? When there is a deep fake of Nancy, she, Speaker Pelosi, that makes her appear unebriated, can we all agree that this is fake, this is bad for voters, this is bad for America, and we'd appreciate we'd like to know what you're doing to stop this. Isn't that there, First Amendment right? It is not, Scott, you were a terrible lawyer.
No, it's the government, it's the government, they're speaking as the government, not as themselves. The government's not supposed to do, it looks like it's quashing free speech, I think that's their argument. Right. I think where the argument is.
So you know if it's not a law, you're violating First Amendment, and we get the White House. I think the Supreme Court is exactly who has to weigh in here. But the conservatives are also attacking, besides trying to silence academics, as we've talked about before, the agency, cyber security and infrastructure security agency, they're after, I entered a gen easterly who's running it. This is the group that's trying to protect elections, the guy that Trump fired for saying the election wasn't stolen.
Do you remember that? They're trying to attack it and it's funding. The hard right Republicans, they think they're gone too far and are looking for ways to reign it in. This is very typical, Rand Paul, but this is what he says.
Sys has blatantly violated the First Amendment and colluded with big tech to censor the speech of ordinary Americans. You know, they're going to do some damage here. Can I just ask you a question, and I'm generally asking for elimination not to make a statement. Everybody talks about the power of the presidency.
The most powerful thing about the presidency is the bully pulpit. And that is his and it's always him. It has been always his to date, their ability to say something that endorses, controls, shames, sets of vision, tries to influence people and organizations' behavior. So is the basic argument here, the bully pulpit is fine, but if you're not doing it in public, you're doing it directly to a company.
It's no longer the bully pulpit. It's a violation of First Amendment. Yeah, yes, it could be. If it's the government speaking, I don't know.
That's why it's going to go to Supreme Court. Other cases on the court, documents involve social media and First Amendment. They may call for sweeping changes. Other cases involve whether public officials can block people on social media, and whether state laws can regulate how social media companies moderate content.
We do have an inkling of how some of the justices might approach the White House case based on this latest ruling. But justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch publicly dissented on the court's decision with Alito calling out government censorship of private speech. They're on this case. They're not giving up.
It has the same vibe as when they went after abortion and everything else. But I think it's- Not just the same group of people constantly bitching and moaning that their speech is being censored. Yes, but I think it's a coordinated effort by a lot of these groups, academics, to hit government, to hit anybody who questions anything. And because they do not want a government agency declaring an election free and clear, even though that's the job of the government and things like that.
We have electoral boards. Isn't that what they're supposed to do? I know, but it has done invaluable work and Trump fired them anyway. And they still do invaluable work.
But all these Republicans are vowing out of their help around election security to their discredit. And now they're sort of crawling back a little bit. But they have to make these things about free speech. We'll see.
It's an important case at the moment. It is. All of these are. And our Supreme Court should be the one to weigh in.
And I'm scared that they're going to weigh in the wrong way. But we'll see. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, CEOs and companies feel the pressure to weigh in on the Israel-Hamas War.
We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, automatic CEO Matt Mullenway, who has some news to share about his company. I'm Maria Sharapova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come in the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.
Follow Pretty Tough, wherever you get your podcasts. So we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'm saying it's going, OK, I give us like a C-plus. There is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past, because humans are going to human. That's what we do.
I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those principles to include more people. What's going to determine the next 250 years of America? And how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve? OK, so I'm just going to be a jerk here, because I'm a historian.
So we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people. OK. No, I do still remember it from Schoolhouse Rock. We the people, I don't even want to perform for a UDA, and establish justice.
What is it? Ensuring domestic tranquility? So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy.
That's this week on America, actually. Scott, we're back with the continuing debate over whether companies should speak out about the Israel Hamas war. We're seeing the consequences of doing so with a number of companies, CEOs and entertainers this week. Let's start with an update to Web Summit Story.
We discussed last week CEO Patty Cosgrave announced that the weekend he's stepping down. This is after the backlash of his comments. He's accusing Israel of committing war crimes. Scott, did the news of his resignation change your decision to pull out of Web Summit?
Are you going now or what? I was called by a couple media outlets and I said, I have no comment. My actions speak for themselves. And they said, well, off the record, are you going?
I'm like, absolutely not. And I said, why? I'm like, because this is meaningless. And I think it's an interesting lesson in corporate governments that the media has gone for this head fake of, oh, he's stepping down.
Let me be clear. When you own 82% of a small company, stepping down to CEO is absolutely meaningless. All that means is he can go next week, he can get 82% of the profits, he's still in charge, he's still in control of the company. He does his card with a founder or chairman and not CEO.
An analog would be, remember all the shit that Chamath, Palatataa and the owner of CrossFit, a CEO got a lot of grief for making what people perceived as insensitive comments. Yeah. They didn't ask Chamath to change his title from owner to shareholder. They said, you need to sell your stake.
I think the NBA said, you got to sell your stake. They didn't tell the CEO of CrossFit, change your title to chairman and they made him sell his stake. And I just find it, when you're, so I've managed small companies about the same size. I would immediately, as soon as someone was great, and I was worried about them leaving, who was a senior person, I'd say, you be CEO, because titles matter to people.
But I was in charge. You know why? I was a large shareholder and I controlled the board. I controlled all decisions and be clear.
Patty Cosgrave and you may decide that's enough, the public embarrassment, you might decide to forgive him fine. But be clear, nothing has changed here. Yes, he's still in charge. He's still in charge.
He will still get 82% of the profits. He will still make all the decisions. My bet is that whoever was actually doing all the work, they just give him or her the CEO title now. But I just find it hilarious that the media is acting as if this is some sort of change in anything.
It's not. It's laughable. I agree. It's laughable.
It's just, it's just, when you own 82% of the company, if Bob Iger stepped down to CEO, he loses his compensation. He loses his authority. He's out. That's a big deal.
When you're the 82% owner of a private company, the only title that matters is largest shareholder. You don't call yourself gentle consulate of Australia. It doesn't mean a damn thing. No one doubts who's in charge of news score.
The guy who controls all the voting shares. Yeah, it's the Rupert Murdoch test. Is he gone? No, he's not gone after all the shit, the dominion, the sexual harassment lawsuits.
Oh my God, you're right. You're 100% right. This is visible. It's visible.
Look up that word. It's good word. Laughing what I mean. McDonald's is finding itself also in a difficult situation with franchises taking sides in the war.
Early this month, McDonald's franchise in Israel said it would provide free meals to Israeli soldiers. Some McDonald's franchise is the Middle East to make statements distancing themselves from the Israeli franchise. Others made donations to Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians. McDonald's corporations set a company's top priority in sharing the safety of its people and teams on the ground.
Employees at Google, Meta, and Amazon are pushing management to speak out against the war according to report in the Washington Post. There was just today, there was a story about a woman at CIA who had a post criticizing Israel. She has big clients that are named Maha Dakhil. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right.
Whose clients include Tom Cruise, Natalie Portman, Reese Withers, Boon Anne Hathaway. She came under scrutiny of the Scrutiny that's according to the Hollywood Reporter for an Instagram post that have been highly critical of Israel and referenced genocide. The post was later deleted in the agent. I apologize for the remarks, but she's resigning from her leadership role in that division.
Around 20% of the largest companies in the S&P have issued formal statements on the Israel-Hamasu War as of last week according to Bloomberg. Nearly all of those hundred companies released public statements on Russia and Ukraine. So they're very wary here. We'll get to Dave Chappell in a second, but first talk about companies very briefly.
Like it's situational and the reason why you have a kitchen cabinet and you have the board of directors and you have thoughtful people hopefully you surround yourself with is one situation is not like the other. I don't think a small company hosting a web event in Lisbon has any obligation or quite frankly any rationale to weigh in here, especially when your comments are going to be seen in terms of the timing as being apologists for terrorism. And on a shareholder basis, my advice to companies on political issues from when I'm on the board is unless we have operations directly impacted by this unless we have people on the ground being impacted by this, you know, unless it's a no-brainer. I think when Russia invades Ukraine and starts bombing maternity wards, I think that's a no-brainer.
But the problem is when you take a political stand as the CEO, you're implicitly or explicitly putting pressure on your employees to agree with you and if they don't agree with you to be silenced. So my advice as someone who on the board who's thinking on a risk-adjusted basis about shareholders, if you're McDonald's, I'm not sure you can avoid not making a statement about this because you have a big business in Israel. Yeah. I feel for them.
I don't want to pretend that I understand exactly what they should do. My advice on that would be to the extent you can stay out of this shit. You know who did a great job? I have to say.
Zidi Marley said free Gaza from Hamas. I was like, that's a very clear statement and he condemned anti-Semitism and the attacks. You know, Biden's coming under increasing pressure from Arab Americans too as Israel prepares to invade. So this has lots of chapters for these companies.
And then you have another person who's, of course, when I saw it, it's like, of course he had to say something. Comedian Dave Chappelle had shown Boston where he condemned Hamas, but also reportedly criticized what he called the war crimes in Gaza. This led to both tears and walkouts. You know, I just don't think there's a particularly good answer in this situation, unfortunately.
Especially as things unfold. If all of a sudden Israel starts to get really aggressive in this, what is a information war and they have an aggressive start to get aggressive. I see I'm correcting myself because I'm like, I'm not thinking about it. Yeah, but I want to channel my Jeffrey Son and Felith here or my Sam Harris.
And that is when a comedian or anyone else says this, but also this, I just don't think the moral equivalence exists here. They accuse Israel of war crimes. And here's the thing, that is a damaging accusation because in Israel, there are war crimes. If you take hostages, that is a war crime.
If you kill non-combatants, that is a war crime. If you take video of you killing a son and then you send the video to all of the son's contacts on his phone, including his parents, that is a war crime. If you murder and kill these children in front of their parents, in front of their parents and then kill the parents, they pour some to witnesses before you murder them. That is a war crime.
Hamas, there is no such thing as a war crime. That is their approach to combat. And so when people say Israel is guilty of war crimes, they are acknowledging that Israel, and assuming that damages them, and that's an insult, they're acknowledging that Israel lives in a superior society, then jihadist fundamentalists who don't understand their approach to combat is war crime. And so to pretend that these two have any sort of moral equivalence is quite frankly, is outrageous and ignorant.
Well, we'll see where it goes. We've been talking a lot about misinformation on social media with a war assembled a panel this week to talk about it. And I want to play a clip from this BBC verified journalist because you have to remember there are people out there trying very hard to get it right, to get people good information, even if good information makes it really hard to decide what to say. Let's listen.
What we want to know first of all, you know, when was this piece of video filmed? Where does it come from? Who's the original source? Can we actually source the video to the person who filmed it?
The platform that way was first shared because obviously you put something on Telegram on WhatsApp, then it travels across platforms. Just because you see it on TikTok or Instagram doesn't mean that's where it came from. You have to source it. You have to find out who filmed this video, if this piece of footage, who first posted it online, and then you have to contact them and talk to them because they probably have more context.
Then the second thing is, is this actually the entire footage? Is that a longer version? Are there people being at the scene where this video was filmed? Is that something you're trying to manipulate it to look?
Well, exactly. It has been edited. I appreciate journalists trying to do that. I still think even correcting the misinformation is still you then get what do you think?
Even if you know exactly what's right, as you were noting, there's lots of reports about what happened on the attack on the Israeli citizens. A majority of viral misinforations about the Hamas were on X as being pushed by verified users by the way, according to a recent study. You say verified. You mean people with a troll check?
A blue check? A blue check? A troll check. Researchers have analyzed 250 most engaged posts in the first week of the war and found that verified accounts are responsible for 75% of that.
Let's just be clear. Verified account means you've paid $9 in some cases to spread misinformation or elevate your content to have some veracity which you have not earned on your own. Yeah. I agree.
So it's a big information message, which I think that's the whole point. Let me just ask you lastly to bring our guests in a minute. You pause, don't you, before you say things or maybe you don't, because you have to be... It's not for fear.
It's you don't want to upset. I pause because I don't want to upset people. I'm like, I've got to be thoughtful here rather than knee jerk, right? Like, let's say something off that you say so much off the top of your head in life.
I think that's the problem I have more than anything. I don't know. You don't want to... Look, I'm conflicted here.
I think if you have economic security, and people who love you unconditionally, you have a moral obligation to speak your mind and speak the truth. Because I do find that over the last 10 or 20 years in academia and in media, there's a certain narrative that is emerged. It's like, this is the narrative you're supposed to adopt. Yeah.
If you veer outside of that narrative, you risk your economic livelihood or being shamed. And as a result, when we all start barking up the same tree, we get stupid. So I do think you have an obligation to speak your mind. I think on issues like this, to take a breath and try and understand both sides, frees a car.
It's similar what you said about Ziggy Marley. Yeah. When I interviewed, frees a car, he kind of sounded it perfectly in one very simple statement. He said, I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for the people of Gaza.
I have no empathy or less empathy and sympathy for Hamas. That's a meat to summarize it. It's like, I get it. That makes sense.
And to just be able to articulate, to be able to see, if you will, the nuance of the situation here. But I don't buy this. The fact that NYU students, the fact that young people have conflated the struggles of people in Gaza with civil rights, I think they are incorrect. Yeah.
I don't even call them strident. But I think this is a situation here where there is a wrong and a right. And let me be clear, there are different forms of evil. There are different forms of wrong.
I have said that far-right policies in Israel have done them no favor. You could argue that they're inhuman. I think that Netanyahu is a criminal. But you have to call out.
You have to. There are shades of moral ambiguity. But there is a right and a wrong here. And I try to be.
You don't want to diminish people. You want to make people feel bad. But what I see here is just a disturbing virus that is airborne that you can't see, that is rooted in anti-Semitism. Yeah.