He has lost his mind. He is cognitively disabled, mad King George as it's getting, and it's getting worse.
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
Uh, I'm tired. I took the red eye back from Mexico.
But uh, fortunately the infrastructure is so superior at the airports in Mexico now. Took me about three minutes to get, and I'm not exaggerating.
I texted my assistant. I said, "Should I get to the airport early?" And she said, "Oh, no, not to worry. It's Mexico." And I'm like, "Jesus Christ, how far..."
We're going to get into that. It's really weird. I have to tell you, I'm so glad I'm not traveling this week. We traveled a lot last week for South by Southwest and it was quite fine. Even though it was sort of building the idea, it was building in these airports. Um, we'll talk about it, but I am so happy I'm not traveling. And it seems like airports, it's like lines, delays, crashes, and ice. Okay, let's get to the news. Two pilots are dead after an Air Canada plane and a firetruck collided at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday evening. There's stoppages at Newark everywhere. As we record this, LaGuardia is closed. The accident comes as airports chaos across the country, not just TSA lines, uh, due to a DHS shutdown because they're not paying the TSA, um, security people. The Trump administration is now sending ICE agents into airports there. They can't wear masks because there's no criminals apparently. Border control czar Tom Homan says ICE will be there to help move these lines along. I think he was told about it in a Truth Social and that he had to do something about this. Poor feckless guy is like, "Oh god." Trump just announced if ICE isn't enough to help at the airports, he'll bring in the National Guard. TSA workers have been calling in sick in record numbers and more than 400 officers have outright quit since the shutdown began in February. They're not being paid. Um, there was just a report that there was an agreement between John Thune and the Democrats which Trump rejected. This is fully in Trump's—this chaos is Trump's chaos. Um, he's uh, he's trying to send ICE to do this. Elon Musk, as usual, because he can't, you know, because he's a narcissistic prick, has inserted himself into this, offering to pay TSA salaries during the shutdown. This is not how we want to fund government. President Trump says, um, that it's the Democrats' fault. It's clearly chaos follows him wherever he goes and he won't do any deal because the Democrats want to put strictures on some ICE activities, which seems appropriate. Um, any thoughts on this? And airports suck for people. You're seeing video after video after video of the lines, the chaos, uh, the shutdowns, the lack of security, the possibility of accidents everywhere you go. Any thoughts?
You want another attack on the middle class? Is that probably the most obvious investment in the middle class is investments in infrastructure. Because when people can get to work, when people have more opportunities, when people can spend more time with their families, when people have an absence of stress, when they can take their kids to Disneyland, you know, that's accretive to the prosperity of their life. And a fairly decent metric for the progress of a civilization and how much it cares about its civil—how much it cares about its middle class is its investments in infrastructure. And when you see this type of political warfare breaking out, I mean, here's what's happened. It doesn't—the 1% that controls our government now has their own infrastructure. Um, I mean, I— their own transportation, their own planes, their own security, their own police force. If you just give a little bit of money away, you can get, you know, practically your own fief in government. So, I'm not exaggerating. I go to the Cancun airport, you know, I buy a, you know, whatever. I bought some—
Bad. Yeah. I bought a Modelo Especial and there was no security line and I thought, "Oh, I have to come to Mexico for an investment in the middle class."
Anyways, I find the whole thing incredibly discouraging. Typically before, um, our podcast, I do 30 seconds of research. In this one, I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.
Yeah. Well, it's not a very good look. Who do you look—I hate to say who looks better here, but I think this is one of these visceral things. The way the attacks on Minneapolis were, this is a visceral thing that goes all over.
Do they blame Trump or do they blame government in general?
I think they blame Trump. I think chaos follows this guy and it looks like there's very clear reports the Republicans tried to settle it and he's refusing. He refuses to give in.
Well, that's—but see, that's the problem. If you want to end the—if you want to get air traffic controllers and TSA paid, it's pretty easy.
Immediately pass legislation that grounds all tail numbers that are private planes. Private planes have their own special type of tail number.
And all of a sudden, the prunes are going to come through the constipation of the legislative process and they're going to figure out a way to fund TSA. But the people who control our government right now, unfortunately, aren't as affected by this.
And Trump doesn't care. He doesn't care about people.
He doesn't like—he gives a [__] that lines are long at Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
Yeah. What's interesting is the airports that are working had private security there, like San Francisco and some others. Um, and the ones that had TSA obviously. And if I was a TSA person, I would quit too. I mean, he was urging them to stay working without pay. No. No, just settle your differences and everyone knows that. And then to just send ICE in of all things. So ineffective, so inefficient.
What was the rationale for that, dude?
I don't know what they're going to do. I think—I literally, from what I—the reporting was is he tweeted it or threaded it or whatever that whatever he's on, truthed it. And Tom Homan was like, "Oh no, what do I do?" And they have to all act like, "Okay, you know, we have to do some—like, of course we're on it," but they're not on it. It's like crazy mad King George. I think what we have to have a conversation about, and we'll talk about Iran, is he has lost his mind. He is cognitively disabled, mad King George as it's getting, and it's getting worse as you saw from the tweets. Let's—as we record, he says he's postponing strikes on Iranian power plants for five days, claiming productive talks with Iran, uh, to end the war. Iran is denying the talks with the US, just as US presidents denied talking with Trump about how what a good idea it was. I think he's having com—he's like Nixon. He's talking to the portrait on the wall. Over the weekend, Trump was threatening to obliterate, uh, Iran's power plants if the Strait of Hormuz wasn't reopened. Then he said he wasn't. And then he said he was in Cox, and then he said this. He says a lot of things. It changes from absolutely minute by minute. Iran said it would irreversibly destroy essential infrastructure across the Middle East if the US attacked its energy sites. They are not backing down. They are a lot stronger than—well, Trump didn't do any homework at all. Oil prices fell and stocks rose after Trump postponed these, uh, strikes, but he threatened them and he may threaten them again in the next 15 minutes. He seems to be literally changing his everything by the second. Um, he probably got spooked by oil and gas prices. High gas prices in the last few weeks are sparking, uh, more interest in electric vehicles. We'll get to that in a second. But where are we this? Because this shifting is literally minute by minute. Like it's not—it's like there's four minutes that goes by and then he says something different than the previous thing he just said when he gets in front of a microphone.
Well, this is a continuation of just a total lack of objectives and no ability to communicate what the objectives are such that he could declare victory and win. It feels as if it's spinning out of control. A clear lack—I mean, at some point incompetence comes to roost. I was always thinking it's just amazing that [__] hasn't gotten worse or we haven't had a disaster when he keeps appointing podcasters and talk show hosts and conspiracy theory theorists to the most important positions in America and now we're starting to see that come to fruition. Of course they were going. One of the downsides of globalization, incredible prosperity, a lowering of prices. Um, you know, you outsource comparative advantage. Globalization, I would argue on the whole, has been just an unbelievable unlock incentive cooperation. The problem with globalization is it creates a series of choke points that can bring the global economy down. One of those choke points are the Straits of Hormuz. And a lot of people said it was a choke point, but whoever was saying that they weren't—they weren't listening to. And you have effectively the world is likely going to go into some sort of fairly either modest or maybe even a deep recession. Um, and everyone talks about our energy independence. Yeah, we're strategically from a defense standpoint not that vulnerable, but we're going to have to pay the same higher prices as everyone else. And even—even the numbers around—well, prices were down today because he claims to be having talks. There's now fear that, uh, he's sending combat troops and amphibious vehicles into the region and—
Then he said he wasn't, then he said he was, then he said he was, and that they're going to try and maybe take the island of Kar, which is responsible for 95% of the throughput, in exchange for them opening Hormuz. The president of Finland said that Europe should support the efforts to, uh, escort ships to the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for Trump committing to supporting Ukraine. And what's interesting about—
What's interesting, I think, or the dynamic I'm seeing emerging here is the key word that's coming out of both this war and the war in Ukraine is one word: asymmetry. And that is—well, two words: asymmetry and distraction. And that is, generally speaking, the world's powers shaped by economics and military strength. And if you go to the latter, military strength was a function of really expensive, sophisticated platforms of which only a few nations could produce just a small number of them and they were devastating. Now it's moving to the following dynamic: a Shahed drone costs 25 to $40,000, but the Patriot missile to shoot it down costs 4 million.
And so all of a sudden you have the ability to create cheap and cheerful massive armaments.
Yep. Using AI and GPS that can overwhelm the most sophisticated machines.
Speedboats. You know, I had that interview with— with Trent Telenko where he talks about this. He's like—
Aircraft carriers versus Zodiacs.
Weeks ago. He's like, "Look, we're going to lose because this drone that costs nothing is going to, you know, is going to hurt our ships or these Zodiacs or whatever it happens to be." But they have the ability to do this. And I think they miscalculated just how many of them Iran had and just how strong the government was. I think both Israel and the United States thought there'd be a popular uprising. There hasn't been. Um, it certainly could happen, but it doesn't seem to be happening because, as Telenko noted quite correctly, because he does his homework, this group of people has a grip on power there. Terrible group of people, but they are in control of this country in a way that Trump did not seem to understand. I guess he didn't anticipate them attacking their neighbors. I think long-term that's a strategic blunder on their part, but we used to worry that our aircraft carriers might be vulnerable to a Chinese hypersonic missile. It's not. They're vulnerable to hundreds of Zodiacs going 30 miles an hour. And also, I mean, it's the reason why Ukraine has, despite unbelievable odds, been able to push back against a far superior military power and economy, and Russia is the same reason that Iran is a greater threat and is able to create more disruption now than we had anticipated. And it all comes down to this one word: asymmetry. And then the second word is distraction. And that is— and Fareed Zakaria did a fantastic piece on this at the end of the 20th century. Britain was the world's dominant superpower, controlling about a quarter of the world's GDP, very similar to what we control. And they got bogged down in a series of conflicts overseas that took away their political, their economic and their military focus and weakened them at home such that Germany could industrialize.
And that we might be falling into the same trap.
A little group of Americans with just guns and some moxie, you know, that's the kind of thing. I mean, you have to sort of make these historical links because no one would have thought we would have beaten the British, right? But we had more at stake, right? Or we had more reasons and good reasons. Um, but I think the problem is again Trump equals chaos. It's like it doesn't have a point. This airline thing doesn't have a point. It's going to hurt airlines. It's going to hurt customers. It's going to hurt travel and tourism. Uh, it's going to get people not to travel. It's going to hurt the economy in all manner of ways. And the same thing with this. It's going to hurt everybody. Now, interestingly, with this oil and gas price spikes, high prices are sparking more interest again in electric vehicles, which had seen a fall-off. And searches for EV models are up quite a bit, 20% here in the US since the Iran conflict began. It's not just in the US. BYD dealerships across Asia are also seeing a spike in demand. Um, it's a really interesting moment because for people who don't understand, let me tell you, range anxiety is really going away. It's in a way that's really significant.
I'm sorry. You said range anxiety.
Range anxiety. People worry about not being able—their cars will run out of electric essentially, and that doesn't exist now.
What can take away anxiety? I'm in. Right.
I tried Xanax last night and even that [__] didn't work.
No, just a plug. That's all you need is a plug. And these—
I have several of those, but I do that for fun.
Oh, wait. No, I'm sorry. An electric plug. Excuse me. Never mind.
Called for. Anyway, electric vehicles are seeing a spike. This is not a surprise. But I have to say, uh, for the first time in my—I have a gas car and an electric car. I'm thinking of just going all electric because I don't feel range in. That's the issue is that I better have a car to get out of here in case of the apocalypse essentially.
Well, that might be. Okay. So that might be if there is a silver lining here over the medium and the long term.
It does put a—you know, $60 a barrel oil does not help alternative energy.
And this—I don't think this is going to be worth the price. I've been more optimistic about the potential outcomes of this—what should have been a conflict or a military operation out of war than most people. But hopefully this does give a renewed focus on—I mean, if China hadn't busted a very strong move to alternatives, they would be really [__] and they're still [__], but it kind of renews the importance of being independent and not being subject to these choke points around in a variety of ways, not just—
And actually, did I tell you this? Your ex-wife—
We spoke at—where was I? In South by Southwest.
And she ran after—of course, my favorite South by Southwest moment was after a talk, she came up and started answering questions for me as people were asking me questions. And by the way, her answers were pretty good. He's very—
Anyways, she—this time she ran after me as I was headed out and because I was talking about Iran and—
And she showed me the site and it shows at any given moment where Texans are getting their electricity for air conditioning and everything.
Oh yeah, she's on to the Texan thing.
And at that moment she pulled it up, 60% of the electricity—
—was coming from wind power in Texas and another 18% was coming from solar. So Texas, which is supposed to be the epicenter of oil and gas and land man, at that moment was getting 78% of its energy electricity—
This is getting—it is so—the incompetence chickens are coming to roost.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, the right-wing is going—the right-wing podcasters are really going after Hegseth and Trump on the war and stuff.
And we need to be really thoughtful about, um, this whole notion of asymmetric warfare. It just—you can't—and it's so interesting. They launch multiples of these drones and they change altitude so the GPS locators trying to fight back get confused. And then—but Ukraine is coming up with all sorts of defense drones. It's just going to open up an entirely different—I think you're going to see massive—and you actually pointed this out that Ukraine is going to—assuming we ever get to something resembling a sustainable peace that gives people the confidence to invest, you're going to see an unbelievable, I think, technology boom there around defense.
Actually, if I were like advising my son Alex and go to Ukraine when this is all over and you will be a billionaire. Like it'll be—it's going to be so exciting there. I think there's corruption issues there very significant, including with Zelensky's government and stuff, especially with Galen's government, but yes, it's absolutely an opportunity. What's really interesting here is, um, is again all of this has chaos attached to it and we do not need more chaos anyway. And by the way, on our 250th birthday coming up, guess who did this—that kind of military tactics? The US revolutionaries. Um, in order to beat the very much more organized and much more, um, at the time militarily superior British. Anyway, let's go.
But we just hid behind trees. We refused to march in a straight line.
No, we didn't do marches. We didn't—
—and have bright red coats that were great targets at dusk and night.
So funny. You're in my algorithm. I got served that great tomahawk scene of Mel Gibson with his and his kids killing like 90—
Yeah. I can't stand Mel Gibson as Mel Gibson, but I love all his movies.
Oh, he's a fantastic one. I know, but he's a terrible person. Anyway, um, I do—I love all those movies. I hate that I love them, but I love them. Every one of them.
Anyway, that's The Patriot you're talking about. That's The Patriot. Yeah.
Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Elon loses in court. Support for this show comes from DeleteMe. DeleteMe makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. When you sign up, the experts at DeleteMe do the heavy lifting of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. This isn't a one-time service. DeleteMe sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they have found, where they found it, and what they removed. I've tried DeleteMe. I use it all the time, and I've found an incredible amount of information about me out there. A lot of it inaccurate, but all of it compiled in a way that's really disturbing. You don't have to take my word for it, though. Last year, the New York Times Wirecutter named DeleteMe their top pick for data removal services. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe now at a special discount to our listeners. Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/pivot and use the promo code pivot at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com/pivot and enter the code pivot at checkout. That's joindeleteme.com/pivot. Code pivot.
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Scott, we're back with more news. A jury found Elon Musk liable for misleading Twitter investors in the run-up to his purchase of the platform in 2022. Damages could reach up to $2.6 billion. Musk's legal team obviously plans on appealing the ruling. He also didn't have the worst of the things—the jury didn't find around fraud and everything else. Um, by the way, he's been very busy this week besides offering to pay TSA. He's busy—he's got to shut up. I felt like that this week. He's busy keeping his hands in politics. He's been fixated on advocating for the passage of the Save America Act, a strict voter ID bill, attacking Senate Majority Leader John Thune in the process, even though there's very little, um, evidence. And by the way, the New York Times is just outright saying it that there is any voter fraud in these areas or examples of it. He's still holding influence in Ukraine, by the way, in a positive way, having cut off Russian forces' Starlink internet access last month. That's because they were getting them through the black market. The Russian forces using Starlink and he cut them off. Very good. Good job, Elon. Let's give you kudos for that. And over at his other business, Tesla's semi-trucks are finally here, actually winning over truck drivers. It looks like a pretty good product. And Tesla says as Tesla and SpaceX will launch Terrafab chip project in Austin because semiconductor manufacturers aren't making chips fast enough. Um, that's not a surprise. I think everyone's doing that. Everyone's going to be doing that. But sort of it's a mixed bag here. This jury trial, we'll see. He'll probably exhaust them with appeal after appeal. But the jury didn't like what they heard, how he behaved. And he still has never paid for his misbehavior when it comes to the SEC and others. He tends to win or get off. Um, any thoughts on that or any of these topics?
The definition of market manipulation is what he engaged in. If I were on a board and I went out and said falsely on Twitter that as a board member with insider information, we have funding secured to take this company private at a 40% premium to market and the stock ran up and then it ended up not to be true and all the people who bought those shares at an elevated price, I think I'd be in jail. I know I could never serve on a board of directors again, but here's the problem. He's going to be found—I think he's going to be found guilty. I think he's going to be fined $2 billion and it doesn't [__] matter. And the right answer is just—
But he was found guilty. Let's—the damages in this. It's not guilty. It's—
But he'll appeal it, right?
He's appealing. It's liable, not guilty. Just—
I think—excuse me, because it's a civil case, it's liable. Thank you. But here's the unfortunate thing. It doesn't [__] matter to him. And it's not a—the point of a justice system is not only punishment, but it's to create incentives so people don't do things again. And not only criminally, but in civil litigation. And what we need to move to is what they're proposing with a wealth tax. And that is the whole point of a wealth tax is we're going to take a percentage of your wealth. And now I'm against wealth taxes, not theoretically or philosophically, but practically they just don't work. But we need to move to some sort of proportionate civil liability fines. And that is the following. It's not a $2 billion fine. It should be 20% of your net worth. And that is if you commit this type of market manipulation where people lose faith in the markets, you don't owe $2 billion. You owe 20% of your net worth. Uh, otherwise, what is the incentive not to do this again?
Yeah. So, and the same thing should happen when Meta is found guilty of creating addictive products and so is Alphabet. It should—
It shouldn't be a billion-dollar fine. It should be 10% of the market capitalization, but it won't be. So, what's going on here—the juries now? It's interesting. It wasn't a judge trial. They decided to do a jury trial. So, jurors do not like this guy obviously. And he very clearly—
He's not a sympathetic character.
He's not a sympathetic character anymore. And he has gotten off on the pedo thing. He got off on the 420 thing. He got off on funding secure. He's gotten off over and over again. And what he—either he wears people down or continues to attack, right? When he lost in court to the Center for, um, Countering Digital Hate, he went back again or he pushed the government into bothering the person who founded it. I mean, this is the thing is he just keeps on coming and like this fixation on the Save Act, which is evidence-free, um, that there's issues that they're trying to solve here. And at the same time, here he is doing this kind of cool technology in Ukraine or the truck or the—I don't know if he's going to be successful in the chip project, but I wish he would just do that, right?
I mean, um, I was going to say it's called Pivot, but there could be a podcast. It's called Musk. He creates so much news. I mean, the guy is a big thinker and creates a lot of news. Look, I am super excited about the prospect. Uh, anything that helps the brave people of Ukraine and their army defend against Russia and push back on it, I applaud Elon for doing this. I'm thrilled about it. At the same time, it represents something much scarier and that is there shouldn't be one individual that has the ability who is unelected and not subject to any sort of—what he feels like. The biggest criticism I would argue—the big—
Say if he got Molly from the lady in the bathroom.
One of the most valid criticisms of Trump's unilateral war with just one other country is he didn't even get any sort of advice or approval from Congress, much less do what George Herbert Walker Bush did and that is get consent or get approval from the UN.
He acted—some people would argue unilaterally. Now a lot of people would say he didn't act unilaterally. He got 79 million votes. Okay.
Musk is changing the face of war. Fortunately for what I think is in the right direction—
But should—that's right, but should one man be able to accrete so much wealth and technical mastery that he or she—
Can change the course of civilization and war.
This is—we keep talking about the wisdom of crowds. The ignorance of the individual is really frightening.
Yeah, I like that. The wisdom of crowds, the ignorance—
I just made that up. I think the kicking in—you always do things like this so you're just being nice to me because we got in an argument this weekend.
We did. But now that's done.
The—it is power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts and we should not have any individual that accreted so much wealth and power and technical sophistication that they can change the course of civilization. Now some people would argue that Napoleon did that or Genghis Khan—
But these people were incredibly—
—but they were incredibly savvy and they worked their way through power structures and ultimately they fell. But I am uncomfortable with someone who is not elected by people, who's not accountable to anybody, who can pay his way out of or appeal his way out of any civil or possibly criminal—I mean, Christ, I hate to go—the only person imprisoned from the Epstein files is a woman, right?
I'm not arguing that. My belief is there should be other people in the cells next—
Looks like they shut down a lot of these investigations right at the beginning of the Trump.
But what happens when—But what happens if Musk all of a sudden decides, I'm pissed off with the left criticizing me. I'll show them. And he turns off Starlink in the middle of a ground offensive trying to push Russia—trying to push Ukraine out of—
I'm just telling you it's up to the lady in the bathroom with Molly. That's the problem, seriously.
But that kind of summarizes—
What does he feel like today? Did he have a nice night with his lady friend or did he have a bad fight?
So to a certain extent Donald Trump in some ways—well, I mean—is more dangerous. But what's more dangerous, someone who commands the US military—
Or someone who commands two of the world's low earth satellites.
But has—I say Musk, Musk—
But is not elected by the public. I mean, you can make the argument that okay, no, we chose Trump.
We did—we didn't, but Congress—we also believe in three parts of government and that's—
Agreed. But he has more legitimacy.
He has more legitimacy to make these type of decisions than Musk.
Yes. But not this decision.
When I first heard this I'm like, oh, that's great. Good for him. I even put out a thread saying, "Well done, Elon Musk."
And then I thought, "Fuck."
What I don't—I want him to have to go to Senators Kelly, Klobuchar, the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
What should I do? He may have—
And Senator Warner. You think he might have?
