Banning the press is like holding your breath to punish the air.
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
And I'm Scott Galloway. Let me just tell you, a federal judge ruled that Trump's ban on CNN, MSNBC, and Politico was likely unconstitutional, granting a temporary restraining order, telling the White House to immediately return, reinstate, and restore press credentials. It looks like they haven't gotten the memo. They're probably terrified of Trump in order to carry it out. As of this recording, some staff from all three outlets are still being denied access. It's not clear whether it's incompetence or Trump worry. They just filed a request for an emergency hearing. Of course, the story will probably change 15 more times by the time people listen to this episode. Maybe the people will be in whatever. The judge also rejected for now the administration's argument that the ban was necessary to protect national security, which is specious. He questioned the stories the White House used to justify the ban, saying they were routine and noting that some were months or even years old. By the way, the source for a Politico story cited by the White House was Vice President JD Vance.
According to status, I have been to those kind of briefings. What happens is they do these briefings where you say a source close to the president, and it's always like either the president or the secretary of state. And so that's — I've been to those. They're so ridiculous and stupid when you have to do them, and I've stopped doing them. But they're so incompetent. It's just — I can't tell whether it's incompetence or they just don't know what to do with Trump, or they're worried Natalie's going to be mad. I don't know. I just — he should back down because the microphones are terrible. Like, it's really kind of comical to watch the whole thing going on. And speaking of Trump's TV coverage, I love your comments on this. The White House launched Trump TV, a 24-hour YouTube channel with the administration's quote, 'Greatest hits, unfiltered, all in one place.' It's not exactly breaking the internet. It peaked at around 8,000 viewers at launch and dropped below 4,000 within 90 minutes as we record. The stream currently has 667 viewers. So all of this is obviously autocratic handbook and state-run TV. Really, there is something very meaningful here about the First Amendment and the ability of people to just report basic news from the White House. This seems insane on many levels. Your thoughts?
Well, we always make predictions on Friday. This is an easy one. He's going to back down. Trump doesn't need CNN's respect. He needs its attention.
And for him, attention and coverage is oxygen. And banning the press is like holding your breath to punish the air. Yeah.
It just — it really doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
And the most interesting thing here from a quote-unquote democracy standpoint is how many days of ignoring a judge's order do we begin to normalize, right?
Oh, very good point. Yeah. And I think at some point, unfortunately, one of the really many dangerous things about the Trump administration is they get these orders and then they hem and haw and kind of wait until the last — they're sort of playing chicken with our democracy constantly.
So, and then the kind of the fun one or the kicker is the Vance detail, and that is the White House cited a leak as a national security threat. And of course, the leaker was the vice president.
It's organized for people what people didn't get. It's not a security breach. It's a mirror.
It literally — they organize these things before the press who was working there. And so they can quote someone from the administration without it having his name on it. This is a common practice. And what they do is, for people who don't know, they bring groups of reporters in and Vance briefs them, and then you have to say a source close to the administration. That's the rule. That's the rule of the thing. So it's not even like secret leaking that Vance did. This was organized leaking by presumably Levit when she was working there. I think they don't have a PR person there anymore, you know, and it's Natalie and Trump sort of working it out. The Trump TV thing was pretty surprising. The numbers are so low. Like, wow. When I was probably — I don't know — when I was in junior high or high school in Westwood, we had something we had cable called, and it was called the Z Channel, and it was this box with little buttons on it for each channel, and it had a cord that ran all the way to the TV.
Oh wow. And one of my first major business lessons was the cable guy was outside messing around with the cable box, and I was watching him, and I was bored, and he was putting in all these things, and they were blockers such that my mom and I couldn't afford cable TV. So when I pulled up to Z Channel, it would go, and you couldn't see it — like, you could see it for a second, and we were a 13-year-old, and you have Cinemax.
You spent a half an hour just to occasionally see a boob or something.
Yeah.
And I walked up to this guy and I said, 'Are those blockers?' And he was like a nice man. He showed it to me, and I'm like, 'I'm at unit 7.' And I gave him $5. And he looked at me, and he took the blockers out.
It was kind of one of my first business lessons.
Well done. And you got a market for corruption. And oh my gosh, I did not sleep for the next three semesters.
Cable. When you're in a third tier, whatever you were, when you're just coming of age.
Yeah. You saw like a half a boob and then it went off, right?
Oh my god. Yeah. And then it was like they made sure you saw half a boob. That was good marketing. But cable TV for a 15-year-old boy with a lack of adult supervision, you're just — wow.
But why? I would assume he'd do well on YouTube, but this is a surprise. This is a —
It's boring. It's boring. It's not good. It's going to go away. The more disconcerting thing, across a million disconcerting things, is that these people are clearly following a handbook from autocrats. Step one is attacking independent press. Step two is favoring friendly press. And step three is building your own. He's running all three at once. Now, the third leg of the stool here isn't successful. The more dangerous thing is carving up press that already has massive viewership and doing it out to your friends and favorable parties.
That's why it's important.
Trump TV is meaningless. And what's scary is again the same people that happen to be Republican donors getting control of TikTok and CBS News and 60 Minutes and now CNN. Granted, the concentration there is scary.
It is. It is. Even if it's declining audiences, I think it's still powerful. It really is. And it's kind of like — and especially the Elon edition, Scott. Come on. Like, this is just — it's ridiculously being carved up for rich people. And it's weird. Like, go back to buying sports teams, people. But what's important is the coverage isn't as good because the pools have declined to cover them essentially. And as we tape, the Trump-Xi summit is kicking off at the White House. Ahead of the meeting, Treasury Secretary and Gray Pupan spokesman Scott Bessent discussed a possible US-China AI dialogue with his Chinese counterpart. That would reportedly include a communications channel for AI incidents that rise up to the national security level, which I cannot believe is not already in place. We asked the director of Green Mantle, Alice Han, about what she expects from the summit. Here's what she had to say.
What do I expect coming out of the summit? Well, four things. Number one, a commitment rhetorically on both sides for continued dialogue. I do believe there will be another chance for the two leaders to meet either in Shenzhen for APEC in November or for G20 in Miami in December. Number two, I do believe the Chinese will succeed in getting the Americans to delay the $14 billion in arms sales due to Taiwan. Number three, I do believe there will be continued signaling about the desire to extend the truce on tariffs and rare earths. Bessent's already announced a two-month truce up until January 10. And last but not least, I think the most important part of the bilateral discussion right now is AI controls, AI guardrails. It's coming at a time where we're getting a lot of news about rogue agents, the problems with AI alignment, and I do think both sides are invested and both leaders are invested in some kind of discussion about continued AI governance guardrails, certain levels of controls being put in place. I don't think we'll get any big substance on this issue, but certainly some kind of rhetorical statement from both sides about the need for bilateral cooperation on AI.
Well, that's great. That's really smart. You know, what would meaningful US-China cooperation on safety look like? I think that's really the question. And Trump has already said they were going to talk about it, but he said, 'But I wanted to let it go except for one or — forget it, it was something very minor.' He was talking about that the US Justice Department will be the guardrail essentially. Your thoughts?
Look, they've rolled out a technology as a solution that was invented in 1963, right? The Washington hotline after the Cuban missile crisis. It is the boring stuff that moves the needle, and there is some important stuff here. In 1972, we agreed with the Soviets to have something called the Incidents at Sea Agreement because if a nuclear submarine crashed on the shelf of whatever, we needed — everyone needed to know, okay, there's 60 nuclear warheads at the bottom of the ocean, and maybe we can help you rescue these people. And if we detect a nuclear submarine and it looks like it's not moving, is it lining up for offensive action? So it made sense to say, 'Okay, when things get real for one of our submarines or a military or an attack ship at sea, we're going to be graceful with each other, trying to help each other, and we are going to communicate with each other around what's going on.'
Right.
And one of the things we need for AI is the equivalent of the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board, that when there's an accident anywhere in China or the US, we know about it. We share it with each other. It's like I say to my kids: when you come home, if you've had a few drinks, if you tell me, I'm not going to be mad. I just need to know. I want to know what's going on with you. And I will afford you a lot of grace. I'm not saying I'll ignore things, but tell me when something goes wrong or you've had to — whatever they're called, those nicotine patches — and come home and start throwing up. I want to know why. And I don't want you to be scared to tell me. Are they called Niz or Riz or the little things you pouch? Anyway, my point is there's something important to that. And then the other really the most important thing of all of this, and it's again another terrible move in my view, and it's acquiescing to Russia — or excuse me, to China — is that we've agreed to delay $14 billion in Taiwan arms sales in exchange for AI rhetoric.
So basically we're trading hardware and defense of an ally for a press release, and it is so asymmetric. And you want to talk about a bad deal: China has not agreed to stop arming or helping arm Russia in their fight against Ukraine, or even Iran as we are in a war with them. But we're not going to ship $14 billion in what would be defensive arms to Taiwan. I am so certain they're going to surround Taiwan within the Trump — they've got only this two-year time frame to do it. They must do it, and especially when they get the nod from Trump. That's what this is, right? This idea of not defending this nation. And I think even the nation has given up on thinking the US — watching all the other allies get — you know, all the others. I mean, everything's a press release with this guy. I mean, one of the things he was — he's trying to rebrand AI called superintelligence. This is not a new name for it, and I don't know why he doesn't like artificial. Just everything's such a fake. And as you — oh, the real stuff like defending Taiwan or feeling like they're our ally or treating them like the ally they've been. And by the way, we totally depend on them with chips still to this moment. It would be devastating if China did what everyone thinks it wants to do and probably will do, which is surround it or somehow get control of Taiwan. So you're right. This is all [__]. So when he said that, I'm like, you are so stupid. I just don't know what to say. And you give away the farm every time with whatever malevolent ally heads our way, whether it's Xi or the guy from North Korea or anywhere else. He embraces dictators and rejects democratic leadership essentially.
But every victory on the battlefield for Ukraine against the invading Russian force makes it less likely China will invade Taiwan. People don't realize how important it is and what a great investment helping the Ukrainian army continue to accomplish miracles on the battlefield is, because you got to think that the CCP looks at what's happened with a smaller military force that's technically sophisticated. I can't even imagine how technically sophisticated the Taiwanese asymmetric force would be.
I understand that they are like starting to live with the idea they might be a part of China. That's what I've heard from people.
Well, that's — but that's up to the Taiwanese people. But my point is —
Oh, they don't want to be. They just think it's inevitable. That's —
But it would be — I'm going to weather — I don't think it's going to be — I don't think we're going to have a hot war there. First off, the CCP is very smart. They're very measured. And look at what's happened to the two hostile powers, Russia and the US, in Ukraine and in Iran. For all of their, you know, large army and everything, there's something very — I find interesting. There's not a single soldier in the Chinese armed services that has one day of combat experience.
And it could be a disaster for them in a hot war with Taiwan, and Taiwan has mapped the [__] out of the entry points. It would make Omaha look like — maybe that's a bad example. Anyways, what the fear is that it's a soft, creeping economic invasion.
Right. That makes it just very difficult if we continue to treat Taiwan the way we treat our other allies and friends.
You want to talk about if someone could go gangster on you — if Taiwan says we're going to reconsider the supply chain for chips to the US. I mean, they dominate. And anyways, I don't — as always, our geopolitical strategy here makes no sense.
Yeah, it makes no sense. I think it is astonishing how much he turns on allies, and Taiwan has been one of our staunchest allies and one of the helpers of creating this digital revolution too. It's just — it's one of these, you know, I know so many amazing technologists from Taiwan, you know, and a lot of people who are in Silicon Valley creating these companies are from there. It is an astonishing country and always under siege by the Chinese.
Have you been there? I've never been.
Yes, once, and it's amazing. It's amazing. I have a lot of friends who live there. Not also Americans, not just Taiwanese. It's such an important country to us, and we should be. You remember when Nancy Pelosi went over there and visited and freaked out?
Just going to say —
What would solve all of this is having Speaker Pelosi in a hot pink pantsuit on the runway in Taiwan in front of Air Force 2.
Well, who could it be? Her? Who could it be? I guess she's — yeah, I guess she could. Yeah. But she's not in power anymore. She was speaker once you did that. I think it has to be someone else, someone now.
Well, again, you're saying — if I were a Democratic candidate for Congress, I'd make a trip to Taiwan. I'm sorry, a Democratic candidate for president, I would make a trip to Taiwan.
Taiwan. Yeah, that's a really good thing. Anyway, we're going to move on. It's just Trump is so — like, he's as strategic as a rock essentially. Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Mark Zuckerberg shows off new glasses and gadgets. Support for this show comes from Quince. Do you have a favorite thing in your closet? The thing you look forward to breaking out every year. Maybe it's your favorite sweater, the jeans that go with everything, or the bag that goes wherever you do. Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe. And that's exactly what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and washable silk. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. It's also affordable, too. All of their items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Plus, they work directly with top factories, cutting out the middlemen. That way, you're only paying for exceptional quality and not brand markup. I just got a set of — not clothes, but Quince's sheets. I was very surprised how soft they were. They're made of organic cotton. They feel expensive and they aren't. And that's what I liked about them. No scratchiness. I slept like a baby in them, and I was really happy. And I'm going to buy more sets because they're some of the best sheets I have slept on. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com/pivot. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. That's quince.com/pivot.
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Scott, we're back. I have purposely not asked you what you think of this because I don't want to be surprised. Now, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are going all in on Muse, and now they want a new AI jet to be part of pretty much everything you do. At Wednesday's Meta Connect conference, Zuckerberg showed off several new pairs of smart glasses and a bunch of Muse integrations. He announced a partnership that will let Muse shop at Walmart, Best Buy, and other stores, not Amazon. And Zuck, which — who he's having a beef with. And Zuckerberg also unveiled a new lightweight VR glasses priced at $1,299 and expected next spring. Meta called them the sexiest pair of VR glasses you've ever seen. They are not. And from wearables to holdables, Meta is introducing a Muse Charm, a small device that fits on a keychain and lets you talk to Muse without using your phone. Another iteration of Humane. ChatGPT has one coming. These are — they think we all want to fine. And that's what it looks like. Meta hopes to ship it in time for the holidays. I must have your thoughts on how he kicked off the keynote with smart glasses and talking to a hologram of his CTO. Check this out.
Hey, Mark. How's it going?
How's it going? Just putting some finishing touches on over here. You ready to do this?
Yeah, man. We got a packed house out there. You better get on stage.
All right. I'll be out there in a minute. Let's go have some fun.
Okay. See you soon, brother.
He's no Steve Jobs. Let's just say that. He's still — he's not as awkward as he used to be. Let me pay him a compliment. He's not as hopelessly awkward.
He's only just — he's only just very awkward now.
So, what do you think of all this? I have no idea what you think. I will tell you what I think in a minute, but I want to hear what you think.
Well, I mean, my observations are a little broad. Power and age are the enemies of self-awareness. And typically really old people with a lot of power are the least self-aware people because you have so much leverage and influence over people's well-being that they find the shortest route to improving their own well-being is to kiss your ass. That's kind of the highest ROI strategy. It's not to antagonize — it's not to disagree with them. I mean, everybody says, 'Oh, I appreciate when people disagree with me.' In the short run, there's just too much. If you got two minutes with the president, you're just going to say what a great guy he is. And when you're hoping to get promoted to SVP and you get five minutes with Mark Zuckerberg such that you can have more options and finally afford a home in the Bay Area, you're going to say, 'Oh, by the way, the new glasses are amazing.' The other thing these companies are missing, in my view, is anthropologists. And that is people are physically uncomfortable in any way — and this is a certain format of the headset — with their peripheral vision blocked, because that's the [__] that can eat you or you can eat doesn't come straight at you. It comes from the sides or behind. And so that's why you feel nauseous when your peripheral vision is blocked. Your body is saying, no, no, no, don't block your peripheral vision. It's key to survival. The only thing people also — the only thing people will put on their face is for survival. That is glasses to help you read. If you can't see, you're more likely to be eaten. Is that my son or a bear coming towards you?
You probably are not going to get eaten, Scott, but go ahead. Yeah, I see your —
By the way, I'm in Aspen. There's bears everywhere.
It's like dogs running around. It's like, 'Oh, there's a bear.' I'm like, 'What do we do?' And I use that joke. I'm like — of course, I said, 'Well, you know, we should run.' And the person I was with said, 'We can't outrun a bear.' And I'm like, 'No, no. I just need to outrun you.' That's the old joke. That's the good one. Anyways, but what do you think of these? So, and thus —
Oh, I don't think these people have learned the following: you only put something on your face for survival or that increases the elevation of your cheekbones such that more people want to have sex with you. The reason the only glasses that work here are Ray-Ban Meta glasses because it's Ray-Ban first and computer second. People don't want a computer on their face. Maybe they'll put a cool pair of sunglasses on their face with a computer in them, but these guys just haven't learned the basics.
It's still not there. And it's still the creep. You know, she did a really interesting interview with Joanna Stern, and she zeroed in on the creeper glasses. He got visibly annoyed in the interview. But the fact that he's not addressing it — like, he's annoyed by it rather than being like, 'Yeah, I get it,' kind of thing. That's one. Two, these are better than the ones before it and better than the ones before that, but they're still very heavy and very invasive. I don't know what else to say. Like, I wouldn't subject other people to them. That's one. And so I'm not sure these will ever work properly. I think again they have to be in AirPods for some reason so that they're much more subtle. They're so not subtle, any of this stuff. I think they're useful. Some people play music or take a note, you know. I'm interested in the charm. Like, I will never carry a Tamagotchi. I'll tell you that. And it's really interesting that they're all working on these versions of a little clip that you put on your — you know, Humane was one. Again, ChatGPT is going to come out with one. I can't believe Apple won't have some version of this. What do you think of this charm? I mean, everyone's like, 'Wow, he did a charm.' I'm like, 'This is like the 10th charm like that I have seen.' And you know, he's trying to be adorable with it, with this little sort of squishy little squiddy little thing, but I find it — I would not use it. I'm an adult. Like, maybe kids will. I doubt my sons would use it.
