This guy said something so terrible and grotesque at the White House. This is where this woman used to live. Like, back off.
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
Oh, do we have a lot to talk about. Wow. President Trump celebrated his 80th birthday ringside with this UFC Freedom 250 where fighters compete in front of a crowd of 4,300 with the actual White House as a backdrop as a marketing thing. There's a lot of marketing going on, whether it was Bud Light or whatever. Meta did something very laudable. They were giving these glasses to blind service members. I think their brand took a hit for being associated with it. Anyway, the guest list reads like a who's who of power, tech, and money. Zuckerberg was there, who is a big fan, and this is the only thing I genuinely like about him. I'm glad he's committed to that. Whatever. Joe Rogan was there, as you said, cabinet secretaries. Lindsey Graham looked very happy surrounded by muscled men. Of course, Paramount CEO David Ellison was in the audience as the event streamed exclusively behind a Paramount Plus paywall. Nothing says the people like a paywall. We'll talk about that more in a minute because, you know, again, this one fighter grabbed and took this cheap shot at Michelle Obama, which is part of a conspiracy theory among the right, and they seem to be obsessed with her and the Obamas. Now, UFC CEO Dana White later told Time magazine, 'Everyone knows my position on free speech, but I hate that kind of nonsense.' I don't think you need to defend free speech, Dana. It's just... Can't you just say this is horrible? Like, they always have to find some dumb excuse. I think that was a good comment from him.
I guess it's the least he could do.
But we disagree on this because I actually think... well, we're going to... I think the event was a win for the White House. I know... to sink to that dumb moment which will get a lot of play. But look, I think that essentially just the way Tucker Carlson is trying to shore up the Nick Fuentes manosphere part of the party. There's still a large segment of America that wants to embrace some form of masculinity and feels like it's been shoved aside. And I feel the same way about masculinity that David feels about the border. And that is, if progressives don't enforce the border, fascists will. And if Democrats can't come up with some sort of symbolism or role models that demonstrate strength and service as masculinity, then the Republicans sort of fill that hole with violence and misogyny, which is exactly what they're doing. And unfortunately, it not only highlights this performative, weird, dominant, misogynistic form of masculinity that is, in my opinion, absolutely the terrible role model for young men. It highlights to me that Democrats haven't been able to identify anything around an aspirational viewpoint around masculinity.
I'm going to push back. Trump is down 10% among young men over the past few months. They're way down on... not because of this event. No, I'm just saying, I think this version of masculinity... you know what a better version was? The Knicks. The way they were, and I'm not taking away the owner, who I don't particularly like, but I thought they displayed a lot of support of women. If you notice, there was a lot of mothers, there was a lot of sisters, there was a lot of... they always talk about, you know, the main guy Brunson, he gave up a big pile of money to have other people on the team, including Karl-Anthony Towns.
He wants a ring. He wants a ring.
He wants a ring. Of course. But it just shows... the difference of the watch parties was really rather significant. And so if you want a version of masculinity, that's a version of masculinity that is very sporty, very masculine. It did a lot to heal the male loneliness epidemic. Have you seen people out in the street like that? Men out in the street like that?
I don't think there's any way to not highlight the Knicks, their players, New York, what have you. Again, look, I think that event and the pageantry and the flyover, I think there's a large segment of America that likes that stuff. I like a flyover, by the way. I'm not saying I don't like a flyover. I think there are ways into this that are very, very clear that you can support things. I think it's... here, this is Monica Hess in the Washington Post. I think she did a great job, and she also is a big supporter of MMA, by the way. She likes it. The problem isn't the fighting on the lawn. People who love the UFC have had to sit through decades of presidents inviting poets and chists and opera singers to the White House. And the turnabout is fair play. The problem with Sunday's broadcast wasn't the fighting. The problem was the tonally incoherent emulsion of patriotism and bloodlust. History and by this crap, an event happening for the people but tucked behind a Paramount Plus paywall. I think that's exactly what it felt like. It felt like... and by the way, all the cheap seats, they were stuck in that one area of... they weren't at the White House, which was... this is what she also wrote: 'What do we make of this other than this is America? Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses advertising Bud Light and trucks, in loud we trust. Bring me your ring girls dressed skimpily in sequin stars and stripes and your men with cauliflower ears and a bunch of sailors dancing to YMCA.' I just... there was such an... I don't know. I do contrast these things. I also contrast the World Cup, too, which looks wonderful and diverse and interesting, and the crowds are... I don't know. It's just there is a way to appeal, and I think Democrats should embrace it. But this was grotesque, and it got the center of attention will be this idiot. This idiot who's had his head hit too many times, making an incredibly misogynistic... it's racist, it's anti... it's just like gross. And nobody... no man doing anything. That's what it is. That's what it is. Agreed. Anyway, we can...
Yeah, look, her comments, her assessment is really, really impressive. And I do agree the World Cup and the Knicks are better. Look, at the end of the day, just politically, Kara, it was a total distraction and occupied the news cycle from the fact that we have a shitty memo of understanding on something actually a lot more important. We won't get to that. Yes. So just from a distraction standpoint, it was... I think it was a win. If they hadn't had that event, the media would have been much more focused on something that has much larger implications for the world, and that is Donald Trump walked into a car dealership demanding a Ferrari and is leaving with a Camry because he's figured out he has bad credit... that he's overpaying for. Yeah. That we're just giving them everything... at a minimum. And they probably wasn't strategic planning the timing, but I think anything that distracts from this memo, even if it's a terrible statement... I get it. I get it. Well, we've got a lot to talk about. We're going to talk about that. The Trump administration, by the way, is fighting with Anthropic again. And SpaceX, of course, went public. That seems like 100 years ago. But, you know, speaking of Paramount, with it got Justice Department approval, the merger has just cleared a key hurdle. The DOJ says its review found the roughly $110 billion deal is unlikely to harm competition for consumers, removing a major federal obstacle. The deal isn't done yet, though. The state attorneys general, including California's, are still reviewing the transaction and could challenge it. David Ellison said the merger remains on track to close by September. He's got to, because after that a so-called ticking fee would kick in, making the acquisition more expensive. European regulators are still weighing approval. What's interesting to me is the Justice Department apparently shut down its investigation into Paramount's bid to buy Warner Brothers before career staffers even had a chance to weigh in. And those lawyers weren't just skeptical of the deal. They were actually leaning towards recommending the DOJ sue to block it, arguing that combining two of Hollywood's biggest studios would be bad for competition. But with the Ellisons and Trump, the fix apparently was in. We'll get to the Roku deal, which actually Fox just bought Roku, but these mergers are just coming fast and furious, and I think no one was surprised by this. It's a question of if the states or European Union can slow this thing down. But you were concerned with Netflix with higher prices. How do you feel at this...
Netflix with higher prices?
Yeah. The reality is, the economists I talked to say that it's hard to say these guys have a monopoly. When you look at the fact that the combined viewership still won't rival YouTube's, when you look at the revenue, it's nowhere near what the revenue is for the tech media companies we talk about. So you can accuse them of overpaying. I had chills down my spine over the weekend when I read that Mark Thompson is being considered as kind of the manager they need to come in for CBS News.
The only one, actually. The others who they mentioned said no, but go ahead.
It just all of a sudden sent a chill down my spine. I'm like, what? The Ellisons own CNN? It's like it hadn't fully dawned on me. But from a straight... from a straight regulatory standpoint... Yeah. there was really no, in my opinion, valid reason to block it. And by the way, I've switched on that. I was worried about the consolidation of media, but when you include competitors around watch time, revenues, there really wasn't an economic argument. Now, in terms of mergers, you're going to see a flurry of them because anyone who's thinking maybe we'd like to buy companies, they're like, 'Let's do it while the doing is good... because if you get a Democratic administration in there, you're going to have much more scrutiny around these mergers.' Yeah. And I mean, you already see it. You already see attorney generals, AGs in blue states getting much more exercised about this merger than the federal guys, but it's going through, and it'll be really interesting to see what kind of the first moves are or ramifications of this consolidated company. Well...
They've got that debt to deal with. Because, you know, I've just recently interviewed a whole bunch of big media people, and they're all like, this debt is ridiculous. Most of them are very much focused on the debt and the math of the situation. I think they'll have to make enormous cuts, and, you know, a lot of the rest, speaking of distraction, a lot of the rest is a distraction with the CNN thing. Well, you know my feelings on that anyway. Let's go on. I mean, I'm leaving as soon as I can. Okay.
So you're out. You're out of CNN.
You've been trying to talk me into doing [__] at CNN for 24 months.
That was before. You're not listening to me. Do you ever invest in a relationship? I've been saying it publicly for...
Well, that's why lesbians have the highest rates of divorce, because both of them are listening.
It's important that in a relationship the man not listen a lot. That is key to the survival.
That is key to the survival of our relationship is a lot of [__] I just runs right over my head.
Let me try to outline it. I don't want to work for the Ellisons, and I don't want to work for their handpicked minions because I think they're incompetent. That is what I've said over and over again. And I love working with the people at CNN, and I very much like Mark Thompson.
Yeah, I like him too. Smart guy.
And I hope they put him in charge because I think he would do a great job. I just don't see any way that these people make good decisions, and I don't trust them. That's it. I just don't want to work for tech people. You know, they're more than they can... I don't know. There's just... I'm just not staying. There's lots of places to go. I don't like you. I think TV's great, but it's not that great to put up with this [__]. Like, I don't... That's one thing. I like making that series. I just... except if I owned it. If they want to buy it, they can buy [__] off me if they feel like it. But I don't want them to own something. I don't think... see, I would argue for Kara Swisher if they gave you an agreement to work at CNN and said, 'Yeah, look, we're just... this is the editor, this is who's in charge of your stories.' Why wouldn't you... you don't think you'd be able to fashion an agreement...
I don't think they would do that. I don't think they would do that. Like, they would pay me every time a person I don't like talks to me, I guess. But no, at this moment, no way. They're behaving right now, and this, by the way, this whole like...
pull a Lesley Stahl, demand a day because he'll protect CNN from these evil...
I am not... I don't think I have that power to do it. Anyway, there's lots of other options, and I'm under contract with them until the end of the year, and I'm hoping they'll let me out early because I don't want to affiliate with them. That's all. I left Murdoch, too. This is not a new, fresh thing for Kara Swisher to flounce out and do better. No one cares, but it says something.
I just want everyone to know I'm absolutely a [__]. An expensive [__]. So, Ellisons, you have my number.
Oh. Oh, I heard about that. Let's not get into that issue.
You've had... You have my number.
Yeah, they called you. I know that. I was defending you on that, by the way.
I had your number. We don't need TV at this point, honestly. Anyway, let's go on.
We are TV with much better economics.
It's just... it's like a headache, and then I have to see them.
Makeup's not as good, and I'm not as attractive as Stephanie Ruhle or Ari Melber, but we are TV.
Anyway, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Fox is buying Roku.
Support for this show comes from NetSuite. When the competition is moving faster and businesses in every sector are starting to adopt AI, how do you even begin to keep up? NetSuite Next. You probably know NetSuite, the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects all of your data. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth. Trusted by over 43,000 customers. NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how business gets done because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically surfaces custom insights throughout your day. AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work. And anytime you have a question about anything, just ask like you're talking to a colleague. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite Next, where your business meets AI. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai/pivot. Built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. netsuite.ai/pivot.
Support for today's show comes from Attio, the AI CRM. There's only one thing that knows your business better than you do: your CRM. Attio takes in every email, every call, every bit of product data, and turns it into one live picture of your business. It doesn't just store what happened. It tells you what to do next. Walk into a meeting, you're already briefed. A deal starts to wobble, you already know. And revenue agents search, update, and act across your business around the clock. Attio is the CRM that amplifies what you can achieve. No wonder 30,000-plus companies run on it. Try it free at attio.com/pivot. That's attio.com/pivot.
Fox Corporation is buying Roku in a $22 billion deal that could reshape how Americans watch TV. It's a big play for advertising-based television. Just so you know, Fox gets access to over 100 million households worldwide. Lots of people use this, combining its live news, sports, and Tubi streaming service with Roku's massive platform. The combined company would become the third largest player in US television by share of viewing, putting real pressure on the likes of YouTube and Netflix. I've always liked Roku. Roku will operate under the Fox umbrella with Roku founder Anthony Wood, who's a really interesting person, joining Fox's board in a subordinate role. That's interesting. Fox's shareholders own about 73% of the combined companies with Roku shareholders holding the remaining 27. And the deal still needs a sign-off from both shareholder groups and regulators. It's interesting because they deliver all the networks into living rooms, you know, they're like... it's almost like a cable company in a weird way. I think I'm using my Roku in Brooklyn because I didn't want to get the cable bundle or something like that. I haven't hooked it up yet, but I've always liked Roku. I don't use it that much, but I thought Anthony did a nice job. And I'm just curious, you know, he can't get any bigger presumably is why he's selling.
I think it's a great move. It's something I didn't see happening coming. And the moment I looked at it, I'm like, this makes all sorts of industrial logic.
Who else could have bought Roku just before you move on from that? Who else?
Well, there's the obvious... like, there's the obvious Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney. I mean, this is... they have assets that are incredibly important. They have... I mean, they have a ton of first-party data. They have first-party data across 100 million households, which is a really strategic asset. It gives Fox a direct viewer relationship that cable and broadcast never offered advertisers, right? So, because you had the cable company in the way. Fox projects $400 million in run-rate cost synergies.
They needed this. They needed this.
It's really savvy. I thought, oh my god, the sun is down.
Makes a lot of sense. What's interesting is they actually sold their shares in Roku at 58 bucks a share to fund their acquisition of Tubi, and now they're buying back in at 160. Fox owned roughly 73% of the combined company.
Yeah. No, no, no. But wait, yeah, I just said, but they had had shares before.
Yeah. So, my understanding is that Fox actually... they had Roku shares in March of 2020... and they sold them at 58 bucks a share... to fund their half a billion dollar Tubi acquisition.
Yeah. Which has been very helpful to them. So look, this is a company that's making a big bold bet recognizing their core business is in structural decline. I think it's really... I think the folks at Fox are really smart.
Yeah, this is a smart move. I thought that... that's exactly... I'm like, huh, but it is a big bet on advertising-based versions of this, right? Because Roku is advertising-based and it's not subscription-based. So...
But here's the thing. If you look at the trends, subscription streaming has been eating into linear advertising-supported TV for the last 20 years. In 2024, it stopped gaining share.
It's like 50/50 right now. So...
I mean, for example, I don't know if our listeners know this, they can watch Pivot or Prof G Markets on Roku. It's available. We have a channel on Roku. And it gets huge, huge viewership. I mean, the company Roku is probably the most... a significant revenue generator.
Oh no, it's... we launched two months ago, but my attitude is if you look at enterprise value, just... and I'll try to be transparent about where we're trying to build Prof G Markets and where we're trying to build Pivot. If you're... the way you increase enterprise value and increase the multiple on your EBITDA is one, by right now adding subscription revenue, which we're doing on Substack, and two, having alternative distribution and differentiating your media mix or your revenue mix. So what starts small, I think we'll do, you know, 100 or 300 grand in revenue from Roku or advertising on Roku by serving all of our pods on Roku. But what you want is when you... if you ultimately are thinking about enterprise value, it's a multiple of your profits and your growth. But what increases the multiple is how enduring that revenue is, i.e., as much subscription revenue as possible and also a diversified set of revenue streams.
Right. Yeah. I see. So my attitude is while it's been an effort to reformat our content and put it on Roku, it's absolutely worth it because what you want to say to a potential investor or acquirer is look at all these different points of distribution and types of revenue mix that create a more enduring company. But just to get back to Roku, 4.7 billion in total net revenue, up 15% year-over-year. Platform revenue of 4.1 billion, that's up 18%. Gross profit of 2 billion, up 15%. Last year was their first GAAP profitable year. The company reported net income of 80 million in Q4 alone. So it's kind of hit that...
Over 100 million households have Roku by the end of 2025. And device hardware still runs at negative gross margin, but they sell hardware at a loss to capture platform users. I would argue that Roku is arguably the most important media company that people have never heard of.
Now, let me just point to one other person, Anjali Sud, a young woman, chief executive officer of Tubi. This is a free ad-supported streaming service they have, and she was the previous CEO of Vimeo, but she's expanded the user base. I think it's 100 million users, and it's the most-watched free TV streaming service. It's very quirky, and you can find all manner of stuff on there. But I think the two of them are very savvy. They're both incredibly smart. Like, that's the thing. And I think one of the things, you know, Lachlan Murdoch I just think was born into his job. But one of the things... I just interviewed Peter Chernin for my podcast today, another smart former Fox executive. One thing that Rupert's been good at is executives. Like, they're very sharp. And you should listen to Chernin, one, because I think it was a great interview, but, you know, just really smart executives. And this is the case anyway, very smart. You can also, by the way, watch us on YouTube. By the way, we're very promiscuous. The entire Scott and Kara are very promiscuous. Anyway, let's move on to the other one. We like this deal. SpaceX, of course, this seems like a hundred years ago, officially public. And one, Scott Galloway predicted it did indeed close up on its first day of trading. And you had said it was going to be about 20% and not more, which is interesting. It was 19-something percent. Shares are at a high of 177 at the time of this taping after the company's public debut on Friday, making the current market cap 2.32 trillion. You thought it might be a scooch under two. His first day on the market, over 500 million shares traded hands. A lot of movement here. Elon himself, of course, crossed the milestone thanks to the pop, becoming the world's first trillionaire. There were some notable buyers. Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest person, bought over a billion-dollar stake in the company, and Cathie Wood's ARK Investment bought more than $500 million worth of stock. So go through if there's anything surprising there, because venture funding for US space technology firms excluding SpaceX jumped $7.5 billion in 2025 from $2.5 billion the previous year. Probably we'll see if that goes anywhere, because that's also a money furnace, as you, the word you use. But any thoughts on where it is right now?
I thought that the bankers and Musk... and look, I think the most significant thing here is that we've never seen such engineered, manufactured scarcity. There was tens of billions of dollars of demand for this IPO that has never existed for an IPO. And then you combine it with the fact that unlike other IPOs that went public on the NASDAQ, it didn't have to float more than 10%, it only floated 5%.
Yeah. Very scarcity, as you said.
So you've just created manufactured scarcity. Now, to be fair, it's up again today. So this has created a level of excitement in the market. I do think you have to highlight the positives here, and that is I never want to be someone that demonizes success. There are 14 new billionaires in Texas that you've never heard of. Those people will give money away. They will start new businesses. Something that's uniquely American is that we continue to produce companies like this and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. It's going to create a lot of economic growth. You're going to see a surge in philanthropy from Berkeley to the University of Texas. It inspires a lot of people. There's a lot of positives here, and we're seeing venture funding increasing in space-related projects. So there's a lot to like here. You know, I don't like the manufactured scarcity and what I'll call the overlying narrative of sort of like the hero's journey here... and the numbers at certain businesses are not great.
Yeah. Look, this from a valuation standpoint, and this is what Musk has always been able to do, is to create this narrative over numbers that's like no one else in history. So, but right now the stock is trading 30% above the IPO price. And then he has also, again, and I go back to governance, there's all these different lockups. Like if you trade on a certain platform and you bought shares through direct share purchase on a certain platform, they technically don't have a lockup, but if they sell their shares, they can't trade on the platform before, which is like a soft lockup. There's certain criteria around when you can sell if the stock is up a certain amount, etc. To be fair, Elon's locked himself up. I doubt he's planning to sell. He'll just borrow against his stock. But what they've effectively done, which you're not supposed to do, is they've created different classes of shares, which you're not supposed to do. So again, I find that this is really inspiring and important and going to be great for economic growth on certain levels. I also believe that this entire sector is going to have not a collapse but a pretty serious drawdown when people, after two or three earnings calls, are forced to justify anything resembling a future that involves the kind of earnings built into this thing... right. And then the rush to space technology firms, same thing, they're going to overinvest, which is normal, like I would assume presumably...
And quite frankly, that's one of the great things about America because we overinvested in the internet and the technology survived and a lot of those companies came back and that investment was good, but you didn't want to be one of the investors overinvesting initially. dot-com. Yeah.
Yeah. So, but I said somebody called me, and I said this on Pivot. Someone called me and said, 'I have allocation. Should I take it?' And I said, 'Take it and trade out on the first trade.' If you buy it and trade out, you don't do as well as most people don't do as well, except in certain cases, right? There were all these really interesting statistics of buying and selling that were not good in the long run over time. It's just you got to hit the exact right one or you lose money most of the time.
This was different because... so first off, trading out, you get short-term capital gains at a higher rate. So there's a lot of evidence that shows that just generally with investing, you're better off just buying and trying to never sell. It's just trading is a difficult game. I thought, and I said this, I said they are going to manufacture a 20% pop. The bankers... exactly... and everyone are figuring out a way to create a supply-demand imbalance that will exactly peg this at a 20% pop. What's impressive and punctures that theory is that it's up another 11% today. And the thing that also just... the thing that deserves a nod is the best VC in the world is not Andreessen Horowitz or whoever initially funded SpaceX. How do I respond? Well, it's in my opinion, it's Uncle Sam. And SpaceX investors and the banks taking SpaceX public should remember... that we would not be here today without grants from the federal government. In 2008, SpaceX was on the verge of bankruptcy... and would likely have run out of money if not for a grant from NASA.
And the golden law of stupidity here, Trump is trying to cut NASA's funding by more than 20% this year.
Same with mRNA technology. Same with... the government is one of the greatest investors of all time if you could think about it that way. Best VC in history, whether it's medical research for our universities or electric charging stations. What you know, and they would argue back, well, they're going to get their bite, they're going to get enormous return through tax revenues...
