Hi everyone, this is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher and we're gonna have to scrape Scott Galloway off the floor. Scott, are you there? Yes, and I still have absolutely no idea who the president of Mexico is.
And I don't even know if it is a president. I don't know if it's a general consulate. I don't know if it's an ambassador, but getting a bunch of white people together to call each other racist, stupid, misogynist. That's gonna get us back in the White House, Kara.
That's gonna get us back in the White House. Oh, you seemed upset last night on the Twitter. We're gonna talk about this whole thing. But before we get to, I suppose that you were great on the front line document, an area that is not quite so fraught.
You were very good on the end. You look good. You look smart. You look good.
I look good. Yes, you look good. Really? Yes, you did.
I'm a great documentary. I got self-tanner in La Mera and I literally splattered all over my five heads, so I go from this kind of ashen 80-year-old look to just marginally unattractive, but I'm glad you saw PBS. Talk about a great brand. How important was PBS to you growing up?
I was so excited to be on PBS. Oh, very, very much so. That's a wonderful brand. Yeah, it was great.
They do it nice. The front line does a very solid job. It was very slightly negative, but they were so fair. Did you like it?
I'm very close to it. They really nailed. I did. They really look like dear leader, and they all look alike, even the women.
They all look like the same person, which was really interesting, but you know, you did get a sense of how they care nothing about safety, whether it's customers or employees or people who are caught in facial recognition, and it's so benign, it's such a benign not-care. It's not even a evil kind of thing. It was sort of fascinating. I thought you were very, and that you were very point full about the makeup thing.
Thank you for saying that. I'm fascinated with aging, specifically how you're used. I don't know about you, but I used to be the youngest person in every room I walked into, and then one day I showed up. I was never yet.
I was the oldest. It just happened overnight. Last week, I had one of those moments. I actually become 100 when I got up in the morning, and I was so excited because I was going to the World War II Museum in New Orleans that day, and I thought, okay, this means I'm 100.
I had another one of those moments when I started live-tweeting Frontline on PBS. I'm like, I'm young, but I'm old. It's like, who live-tweets Frontline on PBS? It's God.
I have been 63 since I was born. Oh my gosh. I have been 63 since I was born. Listen, we've got to get to the debate.
Let's speak in the poll, and really, you have a stance that was a very funny clue. They were arguing about stance and calling each other racist and misogynists, and not a mention of Trump. It was really, or hardly a mention of Trump. Let's do this breakdown.
Really? Let me hear. Let me have you go off because people are desperate to hear what we think about this, and then I will wisely weigh in correctly on all this. So when my son can't sleep, he comes out into the living room, and he and I watch Deadpool together, and he and I watching an R-rated film together has been hugely bonding for us, and so he gets out every night at 11.30, and he comes in, and we sit on the couch and we watch 10 minutes of Deadpool until it gets to, and especially violence, and he covers his eyes and he goes to sleep, and it's really nice.
He came in last night in the middle of the debate, and five minutes into it, I'm like, you've got to go to bed. This is too disturbing. No, no one on the age of 18 should watch this. Okay, so we have people calling each other misogynists when we have a president who chefs his hands under the dress of a woman who is unfortunate enough to sit on the plane seat next to him and be trapped next to him.
We are missing so much leadership at the Democratic National Committee level who calls these people into room and says, listen, for the next nine months, we're giving each other a hall pass on racism, misogyny, don't call each other stupid. I thought that was so embarrassing that a group of people, a group of white people getting on stage in front of the world, calling each other racists, I thought it was so rattling and disturbing. How do you not deal with those issues, though? I mean, look, in the middle of the whole thing, you haven't run in Vero tweeting, like, anyone has any stories about misogyny, which obviously is aimed at Bloomberg.
How do you deal with these issues that do exist? There are like worrisome questions around stop-and-frisk. There are worrisome questions about being a prosecutor now, including a lot better job than Bloomberg, your guy, Bloomberg, about explaining it. So how do you justify the idea that we have to talk about these issues and they exist even if the comparison is so bad?
That is as you often do. I think that's the correct question, and I don't have a good answer for it, because I do think that when Bloomberg comes in late mid-race, he deserves to walk on coals and be subject to the same scrutiny that in the same fire that all these candidates have had to walk through for the last two years, which is how long they've been running for president. I think that's a very good point. I think some of my disappointment is probably referred anger that Bloomberg wasn't able to respond back that, look, as it relates to women, if you look at frames of my career, they're ugly, I apologize, I've tried to take ownership of them, but if you look at these frames as a movie, I have empowered women.
If you look at the movie that is my relationship with the Black community while I was in New York for 12 years, it was a positive one, and that is the reason why that a lot of Black leaders are endorsing me. So why didn't you do this? He seemed like deer caught you. He was terrible.
And I think Elizabeth Warren's standing next to him, taller, like there was a physical element to what it felt like. The same thing with Pete and Amy, the other side was a physical element of anger and rage between them. You could feel. This early.
Why didn't he push back? This is a guy you talk about. You're a big fan of his. Big fan.
What was the problem? Is he just thinking he didn't need to prepare? He had no good answers. He got good when he got on climate change or a business or things like that.
And then he was like, oh, all right, good, good job. He didn't get good answers. He didn't smile at all. And I hate to say that about a man.
He should have smiled. But he didn't. He was not likable, not answerable, didn't answer, and seemed just completely. And I don't think Elizabeth Warren was that unfair to him.
I don't think she was. I think she was relatively polite in the attacks. I mean, she was on fire last night, but she sort of surgically eviscerated him. She hands down, took the night.
She was strong. I mean, if you think of it as a boxing analogy, and it's who lands the most punches while not having there if you land on her, she beat the shit out of that stage last night. No one, no, everyone was scared of her last night. She was cutting.
She was incisive. She was unafraid. And the fact that Bloomberg wasn't better prepared for what they knew they were going to ask about. The fact that he wasn't able to say simply, look, there's no accident that the two mayors are the ones that have been accused of racism because every day we have to make dozens of decisions balancing safety and civil rights and privacy rights.
We have to make those decisions every day, and oftentimes we get it wrong as opposed to just voting predictably whether you're on the left or the right, and then pontificating about it all the time. He could have just said, you know, it's very difficult to be an operator. You're forced with having to make these decisions instead of speeches and just voting left or voting right. And if you're, I don't, you didn't live in New York during the Bloomberg years, the notion that that they're painting Bloomberg is this raging racist and misogynist.
I mean, that's just the people who he governed, the people who worked with him, the women who have been empowered and made wealthy by him, the women in his campaign, the black community, the Latino community, there were definitely moments where there was tension. But I think in general that they would say that this was a decent, high character empathetic person. I'm not so sure about that. I think his inability, his inability to in any way counter punch, his inability to surround himself with people who would prepare him just with some level, some level of depth responses is unforgivable.
What was, what that was just incompetence, what I thought was strategically incorrect and also just plain wrong was the way Mayor Pete went after Amy or Senator Klobuchar. Yeah. I was like, what? She was.
It was, it was murder suicide. She actually, she got a little bit thrown off her game. You could see how angry she was. I'm not sure if that helped or hurt her, but for, for, for Mayor Pete, for a 38 year old to accuse a Senator who has written a hundred, you know, pass incredible legislation, understands the nuance.
She's going to forget more about foreign policy than he knows. Yeah. And the fact that he felt emboldened to go after and play this kind of like jeopardy, you know, you lost on, you lost on Jeopardy, I thought, I thought the journalist was really inappropriate. And when she chimed in that, well, she didn't understand policy, I was like, no, you're there to ask questions.
Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting. Yeah.
I think he didn't come up with an understanding. I was like, no. Oh my God. Stop it.
Okay. So I'm going to ask you, since you're a marketing professor, not a political analyst, but people really, I think we're intelligent people who are responding, just like marketing wise, each of them. I want you to go through it. And we got to get to other topics, but this is such a good one today.
I want you to go through each of the marketing and we'll start with Biden in the middle. Like, what does he do? How do you market that? And he just kept yelling.
I'm everybody knows me. And, you know, I thought he was highly ineffective in sort of peering out, but what do you do if you were by and then we'll go through each of them? Biden? What would you do?
Biden's done. Biden is about to be the guy who ran for president three times and never won a state. He's knocking in South Carolina. There is no fire.
Nothing to do. If you were him. Declare Victor and Lee, peace out, honorable career. Quite frankly, he doesn't look like he wants to be on the stage.
What you want in marketing is you want to differentiate yourself from your closest competitor. That's your biggest challenge. And arguably, if his closest competitor is Bernie, because they're quote unquote the two front leaders, a 78-year-old who just had a heart attack, looks like a Muhammad Ali standing next to Joe Biden right now. Joe Biden.
Quite frankly, Joe Biden has a difficult time. He comes across as old and weak. There's just, and it's a terrible thing to say. It's an age to say.
But biology isn't politically correct. And the reality is the guy, the 78-year-old at the heart attack, looks like he can run a marathon. He's engaged. He looks strong.
He looks crisp. And so basically, Bernie just cements our worst fears about Joe. Joe has done that. It's ridiculous.
In my view, that he's still in the race. So next, Amy, what would you do marketing? What does she do? Because there's a clomentum.
They're calling it the clomentum. How can she keep up the clomentum? The best brands invest during recessions and maintain a certain level of marketing spend, because they realize their fitness over time wins. She is a case study in staying the course, staying on message, bringing sort of like a nice affable strength to the debate stage.
He took her off that by forcing her to get angry, because his comments were so inappropriate. But I think Senator Klobuchar has shown a ton of strength and grace. I think she has been this probably more than anyone who likely won't be president. This benefits her other than those Joy back-adonant Yahoo!
failed business- I think she comes back next election in Trump wins. That's what I kept thinking. Okay. She's all set up.
No doubt. 2024, the kind of most formidable forces are going to be Senator Klobuchar and Nikki Haley. I think 24 is going to be the year of women. I think we're going to hear a lot more from Senator Klobuchar.
So just hold the phone, she may not make it, that's her marketing move. What about Bernie? Well this is what's about to happen with Bernie. So Bernie really benefited from everyone going after Blooper.
Yes, he did. That was crazy. Bloombard. When he's the founder.
Because Bernie is the front runner, you are about to see over the next seven days, over the next 168 hours, you are about to see the mother of all vetting and scrutiny on Senator Sanders, including footage of him standing next to very uncomfortable socialists in Latin America and praising him, talking about how great the Russian system is. He really has one, one, a combination of fear of alienating, you know, brands are in love with young people because young people are stupid and spend money on high margin products like Nike's and phones, right? So everybody is obsessed with young people and the marketplace for politics is obsessed with young people and doesn't want to alienate that person with the tattoo in the nose ring because their feeling was eventually burning would fade and you didn't want to piss them off and alienate them. That is about to switch and people are about to go after Bernie because they realize right now it looks like Bernie has the math and is starting to run away with it.
And last night, he took very few incoming and this notion, he has enabled, endorsed much less ignored, the toxicity that is the internet to his advantage. The Bernie bros are, I mean, the one thing he has and some people might argue, well, you got to bring a gun to a gunfight. But the online toxicity venom that is being thrust around and spit at people on his behalf with his endorsement and his kind of what I'll call benign neglect around it was not really addressed last night. And his embrace of socialists and even, you know, some very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable figures.
We're about to see all of that come to light because all of a sudden they all woke up last night and go, wait, we let Bernie get away with everything last night and he's actually the front runner. The next seven days are going to be, the next seven days will be the fire that Senator Sanders has never really. I agree. You know, Bloomberg tried to go after him on that communist, which I thought was at one point, Bloomberg finally was sort of him where he goes, this is just ridiculous.
This is how we elect Trump. Yeah. This conversation. Someone I thought the best tweet was by a guy named Justin Barugona, he said Bloomberg brought a wallet to a gunfight tonight.
Right. Well, actually let's get the Bloomberg glass and then we got to move on. So Warren, what do you do if you're Warren? Oh my gosh.
Keep on keeping on sister. My word. My word. He is quite frankly, and this goes right to Bloomberg.
If I were Bloomberg right now, I would be a moment of self-awareness saying, all right, just have me memorize some talking points around the following five questions I know I'm going to get over and over because he just, they didn't do, they didn't do that. And also to a certain extent, the damage here, I don't know. And again, I'm biased because I like the man and my criteria are three things. Who will be Trump who will kill Trump who will bring shock and auto-Trump.
And I think he's quite frankly, because money has infected politics, 60 billion is pretty important. And I don't like myself for it. I wanted Senator Bennett. I wanted a school superintendent, a thoughtful guy who could reach across the aisle.
I'm fed up. I want to, I want to, I want shock and awe against against against against the Trump. Okay. What is Elizabeth Warren doing?
What's she doing? What Bloomberg should do? What Bloomberg should do? Well, it unfortunately kind of all comes down to money at this point in momentum because what you have with Sanders, Sanders has a money machine.
That's what he doesn't have attention. That's what Warren you're saying. The gangster move here, quite frankly, if Bloomberg could pull it off would be to pull a, the interesting move, but it was the wrong characters. It was like shavings of shit on their shit salad was when Ted Cruz announced Carly Fiorina has his beak.
If the Bloomberg campaign could convince Senator Warren to hook up with her and announce hers his VP and stop the debates and then say, and I'm only going to run for four years, I'm out, I'm old and try and set her up for a run. Because she right now is the strongest person on the stage. It'll be interesting to see if she gets the momentum in the next 48 hours to give her a shot at it. Because right now she doesn't.
They're all out of breath because they're all out of money except for Bernie who has a money machine and obviously the guy we're $60 billion. Yeah. All right. So that's too.
I'm going to keep you tight. Pete. What does he do? He's running out of money.
He's got some money. He's got more money than others, but some. It'll be interesting to see if Pete scored strong. It's just strange that he had.
I think probably Pete Pete was about 72 hours ago. And I think it was a murder suicide last night. I think he miscalculated going after Senator Klobuchar the way he went out. He came across as a sort of snitty and snotty.
And I wonder, I mean, there's still a chance there. He would be very interesting on the debate stage with Trump. But I think we saw Pete Pete. Yeah, he also looked like a kid.
That mustache thing. I hate to look at personal things. But boy, was that a mistake. I was like, shave or do something.
It looked like he was growing a mustache right there. It was. I already started using deodorant. He looked young.
He looked really young and nothing wrong. It really was a contrast. All right. Last thing.
And then one of the other things. Bloomberg, what do you do now? You've got this great social media thing now. I'm going to mention a couple of things.
He's innovating in the real political marketing, paying people $2,500 a month to promote him. He's using influencer paid influencer content. He's investing heavily in Instagram, doing memes and everything else. He's spent $50 million on digital ads since he started his campaign.
What do you do now? You've done this amazing job on social media and when you weren't being seen, which got you into big numbers. He's like, he's ahead in Florida. He was ahead in Florida.
He's ahead. What do you do now? What is the move? What is the gangster move now for Bloomberg?
Besides hiring Elizabeth Warren, which you will never do in this lifetime. Well, the first is when you go through childbirth, supposedly a hormone releases a great samnesia. Otherwise, women would never consciously decide to have a second child. Supposed to be the same effect with men too, and kids are young that we forget what it was like having babies.
Otherwise, we would never have more. It's supposedly- Oh, no. My baby. Everyone wants to have a baby after seeing my baby.
But go ahead. Now, you know what I mean. You know, child birth is very painful. My grandmother used to say- It's the worst pain you've ever had in the easiest to forget.
But go ahead. Well, that's it. Supposedly, there literally is a chemical response. The amnesia here is going to be money.
That is, I think, seven to nine million people watched the debates last night, and it granted it will get a lot of press. Media will go crazy. It's 24 hours. Bloomberg will spend $10 million, let's assume a CPM of $100, which is crazy way more.
That means $100 million in pressions. That means at least 20 to 30 million people are going to see three ads today from Bloomberg. And it's not fair. Citizens United is terrible.
We need to get money out of politics. But that money will be the amnesia hormone for most of his performance last night. That's the hopeful. That's the best thing you could say about Bloomberg.
But there's just no getting around it. He needs to spend the next, whatever it is, several days in a room with one person going over his responses to four questions. And we all know what those four questions are going to be, and to understand the responses every which way, but lose around those four questions. It's not hard.
It's not a tough playbook. It's money. It's the amnesia hormone. I think he's got big interviews.
I think he's got big interviews. That's actually a great point. I want to flip it back to you. Give us your breakdown on what happened last night and what you think needs to be done.
I also have no idea. I'm not entirely sure who you are. I can't believe I'm saying this. I don't think he says hurt as you think he is.
I think he was stupid. And I think it gave you a very clear view into this man. I mean, he's like this. He's like, what?
I forget it. He's a he reminds me so much. They just move along. Like Mark Zuckerberg.
We're just going to move. Okay. I do this. I'm going to move along.
He's like, I don't know why we're discussing this. I'm not as bad as him. That's how they do everything justifying. And so he reminds me utterly of everyone I cover.
And they don't want to be the details of what happened as long as they changed is stop bothering me about this. And so they never want to reflect. I call them vampires. If they look in a mirror, they can't see themselves.
He has no ability. He's annoyed by it. He was visibly annoyed. And he's got to do something about that.
He's got to do. And he did point out that look, his social media stuff is clever and funny and interesting. And he's not. He's not as witty as the stuff that other people are writing for him.
So he should just listen to what the people who are writing for him do and be like that person. And I think being unlikable is not something he can do just because he feels like it because he's grumpy, old billionaire essentially. And so I think what he has to do is from up from up, I think he should continue to put the metal down on social media and spend all that money and rack up the numbers because I think you're right. Not everybody watch this and not everyone's going to get a message.
I think he should contrast himself to Trump in that, you know, I said some stupid things and I shouldn't have said them. I've tried to become better, but I didn't, you know, assault anybody like the president. And he should do that. I did this thing with stopovers, which is terrible.
I the policy was wrong. It was my fault. I shouldn't have, you know what I mean? Like you should do that.
And instead of like, I'm not apologizing to this anymore. That's the attitude he has. And it's such a tech. Yeah, it's such a technocrat attitude.
It's like, oh, we've got, and then you saw him in bits and pieces go, you know, really the point is to be Trump and he's right, right? Like he's so annoyed that this is dragging him down. But there is some element of, you know, me, a cop in politics that you have to do definitely and I don't think this is a killer for my don't think he's done. I think that's a mistake.
I think he's got money. He's got really talented people around him, marketers. And I think that the voting public, as shown by like, remember the five alarm fire that was the Republican debates? Come on.
Like, do we remember any of that? And it worked for Trump. I think bloomers should play to his strengths, which is you want to be Trump? You need me.
100%. And that's what he needs to keep saying. And I think he should not, I think he should do a series of interviews, including with Karis Swisher, in which he has it out, you know, he has it out with the media, essentially. And I do think Ronan Farrell coming around is not going to be good.
Those stories are not going to be good. He has a history of saying stupid things. I've had him say stupid things to me, like, just stupid things. Like, you know what I mean?
That's a pretty internet executive. So was everyone else. So, I think it's recoverable. I think it's recoverable.
You know, who's very forgiving of those stupid things? Moderates. Yeah. In a weird way that some of that stuff, I don't want to say it helps them, but I don't think moderates are looking for the most swirl candidate.
Yeah. That's our criteria. Yeah. And the fact, a couple of times he was sort of, I don't call it unapologetic, but his strongest moment in my viewpoint was he said, wow, the fastest way to get Trump reelected is if people are listening to his conversation.
This is just ridiculous. Right. Yeah, that was a great moment. I think a lot of moderates stood up and said, and the reality is most moderates aren't probably watching the debates because they just have better shit to do.
And they're going to go with, OK, I like the fact that two out of three, I mean, two sets of Americans right now are pulling, saying that they're better off than they were four years ago. Yeah. And the number of times we've kicked a president out mid-cycle without a recession is zero. So right now he's got a lock on it.
And if we don't bring somebody to bear that has literally the resources, the executive experience, the reputation as a good manager. And despite his flaws, you know, a decent man. I just, I think you have a tough time saying that Michael Blumberg isn't, isn't a decent person. I just don't buy it.
That is, that is the playbook here. And he's, you're right. I like to think what you're thinking that he can, this is what I call an on the field injury, but he gets up, goes to sideline shakes, shakes it off. And I think you're right.
I think Elizabeth Warren did him a favor in a weird way, you know, like showed him what he's, I think this way, he probably has people around him that yes him all the time. He's just like a lot of people like cover. He's an arrogant prick. I mean, I'm sorry.
That's what, you know what I mean? Like I can just, I watched, I was like, Oh God, that's a man. I've dealt with all my life, essentially, I cover. And I think that she did him a favor that he can't now, his, his people can now say what they think rather than be, you know, lick him up and down and be obsequious to him.
And so maybe that will help. Maybe she did him a favor by showing him. And again, she's definitely benefited here. I don't think she's going to necessarily, I think she's amazing.
I think she handled it beautifully and didn't seem like, you know, she has the danger of looking like, you know, the school marm lecturing man about how they should behave and she didn't do that. She did a very deaf job, but and she's obviously the most intelligent person on that entire stage compared to everybody and the most qualified and the least corrupt, you know what I mean? Like in terms of all of them. And, and she, I think she did him a favor.
So we'll see what happens. I think he still has to really, he's going to have to answer better. That's, I mean, and we'll see if he gives up. He may just be like, this is what this bullshit.
I'm so rich. Oh, he's talking about, yeah, I don't think there's any, any downside to him saying and given like, what do you want to do with all that money? I thought the house thing, I think they have to have to burn it. Like I was amazing.
Yeah, I think so too. All right. Do you feel better now? Do you feel a little bit?
There's always darkness before the darker. It's always darkness before more darkness. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break. It's darkest before it's pitch black.
Exactly. We're going to talk about tech things. When we get back, we have listener mail and predictions. I'm a said Herndon and this is America, actually.
We're all talking to each other to see what did we do wrong? What do we not see? I'm in Washington, DC this week to interview Ruben Geigo. He's a Democratic senator from Arizona, and he's been thinking openly about running for higher office, but he's recently run into some hot water because of his connection to Congressman Eric Swalwell.
I have to learn from this and I will learn from this, but, you know, for me, it's not a 20, 28 question. It's about what it means it to be a better first boss in my office and also a better center to my constituents. This week on America, actually, we asked Geigo about predatory behavior in Washington, his plans for immigration reform, and more. This week on Network In Chill, I'm breaking down the institution everyone's talking about right now, but nobody actually understands the federal reserve.
With all the drama happening between Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, you're probably seeing headlines and wondering what any of this has to do with your money. Spoiler alert, it's everything. I'll explain what the Fed actually is, why it exists, and how this one institution controls the interest rates on your mortgage, credit cards, student loans, and more. We're diving into why raising or cutting rates isn't just boring policy talk.
It's the difference between affording a house or watching crisis viral out of control. Plus, I'm breaking down the current controversy over firing Fed board members and why both Republicans and Democrats are freaking out about it, because this fight isn't just political theater, it could mean real chaos for your wallet. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. All right, Scott, we're back.
You've had a moment of debate. People were demanding we discuss it. I thought it was intelligent. You're you're a coy little mean.
So I don't know where your heart is around this. I'd like to make a candidate of all of them. OK, we're going to listen to the listener mail. That's enough.
I don't know. I like them all. I like them all. And that's I like them all in some way.
And I don't I'm not as hopeless as much as many Democrats. OK, let's take a listen to the tape. You've got you've got to believe I'm going to be a mailman. You've got mail.
Hi, Scott and Cara. My name is Theron. I'm from London and I'm a big fan of the show. Why has Warren Buffett invested in Apple and Amazon in recent years when he's historically avoided tech and stuck to industries he understands?
Why has he invested in restoration hardware and most recently Kroger? Is physical retail making a comeback? Finally, what do you think about Buffett pledging to give away 99% of his fortune versus Jeff Bezos dropping $165 million on a house and Amazon donating less than a million dollars to fight the bushfires in Australia? Is Buffett a better type of billionaire?
Thanks a lot. All right, I'm going to answer this one Scott again. I recently spent some time with Warren Buffett in Omaha. Yes, he's a better billionaire.
He is a better billionaire. One of the things I've talked him over the years of various times, he has great regard for Jeff Bezos as an entrepreneur and a company. So he does he's smart to invest in Apple and Amazon, which he's done lately and has done rather well doing it. One of the arguments we had many years ago, not really an argument because I just made the comment that he should have been investing in tech much earlier.
And his answer at the time was I don't know a lot about and I don't understand it. So I'm not going to invest in it. And I thought that was a perfectly decent response for why he doesn't do it. I think he likes to put his bets all over the table.
Restoration hardware, it looks like something that could recover. Kroger, same thing. He thinks that that's some physical retail is here to stay. And yes, he's a better billionaire in terms of philanthropy.
He's an admirable person in the regard. It was a delight spending time with him. He is he is much less. He's much more humble, although he certainly has an ego and he lives just having had dinner with him.
He lives in literally and bent to his office in the most humble way for someone that wealthy and even a normal person. He lives rather with a lot of very, not very fancy backgrounds in his community in Omaha. He can put away a lot of meat. We went to a steakhouse, just a regular guy.
So I think Bezos could learn a thing or two from him in terms of being a little more humble. But I also that's the way Jeff wants to be these days. And that's the way he is. Scott, what do you think?
So he's a fair and from London, by the way, that's a good wrap. I'm a fair and from London. That's a good wrap, right? You had a British accent.
Oh, my God. A hundred percent. My dad's Scottish. For some reason, I didn't pick that up.
Can you imagine if I had my dad's accent and Shakira's ass, I would do so much damage in this world, so much damage in this world. Those are the two. Let me hear your Scottish accent. Let me hear your Scottish accent.
No, it's I do it and I end up sounding mildly racist, like I'm trying to impersonate. Right. You're dead in the life line. Let me just say what I'm certain.
Yeah. Oh, no, sandwiches. Anyway, so OK, so Amazon and Apple. Look, the only he doesn't you don't need to understand investing.
People ask me for investing advice all the time. I say only invest. I only have two criteria. A monopoly that's unregulated.
Those are the only companies you need to invest in. And Amazon and Apple check both those boxes. Check out this stat. I love playing with market caps in the last 13 months.
And I'm just fascinated by the notion that tech has now the technology panzer tanks have rolled into Malibu and Santa Monica and Burbank in Studio City. They are taking over Hollywood in the invasion. To give you a sense of the invasion in the last year, when you look at Amazon's flywheel around Amazon Prime video, when you look at Apple getting in Apple TV plus to create their own recurring revenue bundle or Rundle, this is what's happened in the last 13 months, even as they haven't increased their earnings tangibly, but they've been recast as companies that are becoming more unassailable in the last 13 months. Apple and Amazon have added added Cara, the value of Verizon, AT&T, Walt Disney, Fox, Lionsgate, Viacom, CBS, Oh, and Comcast, they've basically added the value of Hollywood plus telecommunications in the last 13 months.
And there's nothing that looks as if it's getting in the way. Look at all the supply chain coronavirus's fears around Apple and the stock keeps going up. So you think it's good that he's invested? What do you think about that?
What do you think of him? Besides the folks being delightful is open. I think he's an incredibly impressive guy and a good person and represents a lot of what's great about America. I think it's very hard to fault a guy like Warren Buffett.
I also don't like about his loan. Some of his companies around the poor people. But anyway, go ahead. Sorry.
No one gets out. No one gets off of the screw in your life. I mean, no, there is no, there is no, there is no mother Teresa that gets to be a billionaire. Yeah, all right.
Yeah, but the other thing I didn't like about again, don't mean to digress too much, but once you become a billionaire, you don't turn into a cartoonish bad person. That's just stupid. Yeah, that whole thing should billionaire survive. That was a ridiculous question.
Todd, should billionaires exist? Like, I think Amy Klobuchar handled it well. Like, look, it's great for people to make money, but we should be watching for abuses. I think that's really pretty much the, I think she handled it.
So Amazon and Apple, they may be overvalued, but they're just on a risk adjusted basis, unregulated monopolies of the best investments in the world. What's more interesting is investment in Resto and Kroger. Resto has created a recurring revenue bundle with the Restoration Hardware membership program, $100 a year, smooth out promotionality, 20% off everything. So people are now buying their sheets and their bedding, not only their couch, and they've also created, so they've got about half a million members, 50, 55 million in free cash flow, probably cost 5 million to administer to administrate.
So that's like another half a billion to billion just in value, much less the fly wheel effect that they're creating. Also, Gary Friedman is to our age, what Mickey Drexler was to the 90s and the odds. He's the best merchant in the world right now. Go into a palazzo or whatever they call it, a grand of restoration hardware.
It's just, it's inspiring. You want inspiring retail? Yeah, it is. I know much restoration hardware because it's looked on the floor.
It's merchandising, it's merchandising, it's what it is. And there's a certain level, a genius kind of, the line between crazy and genius. This is a guy, he kind of looks at the numbers, he kind of listens to the analysts, and he says, you know what, I'm going to start a catalog that's the size of a phone book when everyone else is pulling away from catalogs, and it's just going to be all about art. I'm not going to allow alcohol in our restaurants, hard alcohol in our restaurants, at the top levels of restoration hardware palazzo, because I want women to feel like they have a safe place, and I don't want a bunch of hedge fund guys hitting on women during lunch.
He just thinks differently in the execution there, that just enough crazy to be genius, the membership program, Resto is arguably the most impressive, especially retail at the most visionary, so I understand that, and by the way, the stock doesn't need to recover. The stock has been an outstanding performer in what is the Vietnam of retail. Kroger is more a value bet. That's like five to seven.
I would bet Kroger's a value play. Largest consumer category in the world is US grocery, about $800 billion a year. Kroger is the big player. Amazon's brick and mortar is actually underwhelmed, especially around grocery.
The big competitor there is Walmart, Click and Collect. Kroger is different. Kroger is kind of Lexus, and Walmart is Toyota, although a lot of people don't think it's Kroger's aspirational, relative to Walmart, some people might think it is. Actually, no, I'm going to take that bet.
I don't know what I'm talking about the position around grocery there. But Kroger is partnering with Microsoft. It's actually a well-run company. They're known for doing a good job of bringing their operational scale into regions and maintaining seasonal merchizing.
Given how close he is to Microsoft, I have some insight from me, I have to that. So Kroger's considered a well-run company, it's trading at five to seven times in an environment where everything's trading at 15 to 20 times, and groceries are going anywhere. Yeah, that's a smart move. So I'm going to move to something else.
I think it's much more admirable at being a billionaire than Bezos, but Bezos made an attempt by contributing $10 billion towards climate change. The optics of this, do you think it's a good thing or not? I think it's not clear what it is because he keeps not being highly specific. Elon Musk and Bill Gates have been doing a lot of investing in this area, and obviously Amazon is considered a major carbon footprint, not like methane gas or things like that, but still people have issues with their boxes and their impact on the environment with their delivery trucks.
Do you think this was a good move? Very briefly. It's hard to fault anybody for devoting $10 billion to the important issue around climate change. With this reflects, there was an underlying sickness in our society, where when Walmart pays $70 billion in corporate income taxes, the most successful company in the world, Amazon pays $2 billion.
We become reliant on individuals who address the biggest issues of our time, whether it's income inequality, or climate change, or decaying infrastructure. And Cara, I want Nassau to put me on fucking Mars, not Elon Musk. I want the Paris Accords to solve climate change, not to try and lean in hope for the generosity of Jeff Bezos. $10 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to what we are going to need to do on a nation-state level to address.
Brilliant. Brilliant. I'm worried it's going to give us cold comfort that it's going to do anything, and we're moving to this very scary era. Well, you know, Pablo Escobar isn't that bad because he builds parks.
Well, it found the way to getting there. I want to be clear, I'm not comparing Bezos to Pablo Escobar, but governments are the gangsters here. Governments need tax revenues so that they can address and fight the biggest problems facing our society. They are the most noble organizations in the world in the notion.
We don't need Bezos to give $10 billion. We need to pay us a goddamn taxes. We need senators Warren and Senator Sanders to stop ragging on billionaires and create a tax code that ensures they pay their fair share, such that we put men on Mars, such that we can fight climate change instead of having to hope that Jeff Bezos waits someplace morning has breakfast with Leo DiCaprio and says, I'm a climate warrior now. That's not going to get us there.
That's perfect. Perfect analysis, Scot Gali. I may just say, we were discussing this morning that you have a word in urban dictionary, yoga back to my favorite topic. Yes, it's coined by Scott Gali in his piece, yoga babble on his, urban dictionary officially in the urban dictionary, yoga babble's in there and they credit me.
I know that, but is there two B's or not? Because your piece had two B's or it looks like they have a misspelling on the page in urban dictionary, just so you know. Well, I'm the journalist major, what should it be? Two B's, two B's, yeah.
Two B's, yeah. But by the way, just I want to give credit for credit too. I stole the term. I remember watching the thing called the circus.
I just want to give credit where it's due. And John Holliman, is that his name? John Holliman. John Holliman was out of rally for who is the Ohio governor, the ramp for president and was likable, but never really made a whole lot of sense.
Sure, Brown. Not sure, Brown. Oh, how governor? Oh, come on.
He was a he's a likable Republican who came out against, yeah, Casey. John Holliman described Casey's speech as yoga babble. And I grabbed that word and I ran with it. I'm now I'm using it.
He's going to come out. I'm using it as a term to describe. John could come at you, you know that. I'm happy.
Whoever runs urban dictionary, you know, I assigned a new meaning to it. It's basically frauds planning by Uber and other companies on my post on it to wallpaper over a shitty business with new financial terms and flowery language called yoga babble. Anyways, it's in the urban dictionary. I'm immortal.
Your dog is immortal. I'm rented in in Lassie. I'm immortal. All right.
We want more terms to be so predictions. It's Friday in February. What do we have to look forward to? Give me one prediction and then we got to get out because we were political today and you cannot do a political prediction.
You're about to see. You're about to see video footage of Bernie Sanders talking about how much he loves Russia and very, very sketchy socialist leaders in Latin America. All the scrutiny that everyone has been scared of. Bernie is about to come full force of him in the next in the next seven days.
And I had a stock prediction, but I made it last week and I didn't get it on the air. I think the one company that gets the most out of this coronavirus care is we're in the midst of the largest work-from-home experiment in the history of modern business and 11% of Stern students are Chinese nationals and they're walking on Stern's campus care and people are wearing masks. And I think Zoom, which is already up 20% in the last nine days, is probably it's at 107. I think it goes to 140 or 150.
Okay, we're going to talk about coronavirus on Monday, so that'll be interesting. Okay, all right. That's really good. We have to end now.
But remember to our listeners, we love your questions. You got a question about a story you're hearing in the news. Email us at pivot at boxmedia.com to be featured on the show. Scott, please read us out with the credits.
I've stuck all the oxygen out of the room, Cara. You do this. People are stuck in my voice. No, no, not at all.
You know, when you talk a lot, I look more smart. You don't understand my ploy here is what's going on. I like control your dialogue. I think people accept that on the thing.
So I'm fine. You're a little control freak. What you are. Anyway, today's show is produced by Rebecca Sinan.
As Eric Anderson, his executive producer, thanks also to Rebecca Castro and Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast. If you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like our show, please recommend it to a friend.
Thanks for listening to Pivot from Fox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.