Trump's Latest Crypto Earnings Show "Astonishing" Grift | Pivot

This is grift on a very explicit scale, and also like, yeah, that's right. I'm taking it. I'm cheating.

And I'm Scott Galloway. We should get to the news. Actually, there's a big piece in this. Why not?

Well, there's the grift and there's the... I mean, there's the micro, and that is 2.2 billion in personal income, you know, while sitting as you're occupying the Oval Office, and 1.4 billion of it from crypto, a financial system that he now supposedly regulates. It's... it's not a conflict of interest. It's a business model. Yeah. And essentially what you have in America is slowly but surely we're monetizing everything. We monetize healthcare. We monetize education. We monetize enragement online. And now the president is monetizing the full faith and credit and power of the White House. He went from 622 million the year in net worth before taking office at 2.2 billion after. He's essentially set up a toll booth for the American government. And the memecoin would have been a five alarm scandal for anyone else but him.

It's a financial instrument with no underlying value that goes up when the president tweets about it. And that's securities manipulation with a big red hat. And the fact that he did it the Friday night before his inauguration under the cover of dark, you know, that he called people and said, 'Thanks for giving me 10, 20, $100 million for my campaign. FYI, the coin gets announced tonight. It'll go up and then you can, if you dump it, you dump it.' But on a larger level I was thinking about our 250 year anniversary and I mean this is the reality that since 1991 childhood poverty has gone way down, way down, crime has been cut in half. We have a... the number of people who have gotten educations has gone up. We have a healthier, better educated populace than ever before. The crime is at its lowest rate ever in New York. Right? But happiness, as Jimmy Carr says, or satisfaction isn't a function of what you have. It's the delta between what you have and your expectations. And what's happened in America, because there's now a normalization, an algorithmically normalized 1% in terms of your expectations. I'll give you an example. From 22 to 42, I did nothing but work. And I think my first vacation, the only vacations I took with my mom, we went to Niagara Falls once. We used to go to Magic Mountain because we couldn't afford to go to Disneyland. And I remember going to Club Med in Mazatlan when I was like in my late 20s.

And I thought it was... I mean it couldn't have been any tackier. Bad daiquiris, not a very nice beach.

And I thought it was amazing. I just thought it was the most... I brought back Club Med shirts. I had a Club Med hat.

I just thought Club Med was the most amazing thing. And I was talking about...

Yeah, you get beads for bars, for drinks.

Oh god. Yeah. Because here's the thing.

I had never been to nor was I being reminded 105 times a day as people vomited their experience at St. Barts and Mykonos. My expectations were dramatically lower. And then you combine that with the following. The people who are supposedly in charge are exhibiting a level of corruption and depravity that just makes us feel bad about institutions.

So you have a coarsening of our discourse where quite frankly there's an economic incentive to post everything. It's happened a lot during the Biden presidency. It's also to a certain extent happening now. You have social media vomiting everybody's wealth in your face and giving you the impression that if you haven't made $3 million on Ethereum and your boyfriend doesn't have a six-pack, you're failing. And also the people in charge seem to be genuinely like low character people and grabbing everything, all the good news. Yeah. And people don't trust the CDC. They don't trust the Supreme Court. It's like what William Gibson said, the future's here. It's just not evenly distributed. Prosperity is here. They see it everywhere. But people don't feel like it's evenly distributed. So people now, a quarter of people under the age of 25 feel good about America. It's 3/4 of people our age. So, it's definitely like... Kylo Scan coined the term vibe session, but the 250th anniversary... if you... if the... well, you're down there. What's the vibe like?

Yeah. It's... look, there's a lot of issues. I mean the number of people in the middle has gone away and young people have a rational reason to be upset. The traditional means of building a life, finding a mate, developing economic security, advancing up the ladder, which is typically some sort of certification, either vocational programming or a college degree, and then buying a house. The incumbents have weaponized scarcity to make it more expensive for them to get those things such that the people who already own them, a college degree and housing, can see the value of those things go up. And also our tax policy which continues to transfer wealth from them to the incumbents. Right. Loosely speaking, our tax policy over the last 50 years has taken $50 trillion and transferred it from the bottom 90% to the top 10%.

Yeah. So they justifiably can be very, you know, very upset. Having said that, if you actually look at the data, things aren't as bad as you would believe in terms of the vibe. But again, and this is the great Jimmy Carr, your happiness and your purpose isn't a function of what you have. It's the delta between what you have and your expectations. And the downside of a meritocracy and especially when social media speedballs it is everyone believes if they're not in the top 1% they're failing.

That's really it. Like there's just no... even pre... like look, grift has been around, the game has been around forever from the beginning, right, from every country, every historical thing. But this is grift on a very explicit scale and also like, yeah, that's right, I'm taking it, that's right, I'm cheating. And let me tell you, let me put out another story that came out. Politico is calling this week's Democratic primaries in Colorado an anti-establishment avalanche. Obviously what was happening in New York, which was no surprise with Mamdani getting, you know, backing a bunch of people, one of whom is really problematic. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, though, upset longtime Senator Michael Bennet, who you and I both have a lot of regard for, who looked like a lock for the nomination a year ago. We thought he'd be governor of Colorado. And then 29-year-old Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani unseated a 15-term congresswoman, and Manny Rutell, a progressive state representative, defeated a moderate Democrat. The results add up to a growing string of progressive anti-incumbent... and I think that's actually... Steve Bannon was very canny on this stuff... victories, notably with what happened in New York, and there are a number of primaries still to come over the next few months. All this is... a New York Times Siena poll showed Democrats within striking distance of putting the Senate majority back in play. I want you to not go negative yet because I want you to understand, talk about these victories and what they are. And let me read something that Robert Reich wrote on Substack about these elections. Pundits eager to declare a new movement or sound the alarm about socialism are having a field day. But they're wrong. Voters who have supported these candidates haven't done so because they've been particularly attracted to the idea of democratic socialism. Most even don't know what democratic socialism is. In reality, voters have been attracted to vigorous young people who are committed to getting stuff done. Steve Bannon said nearly the same thing, which was really interesting. And I would agree, talking to like Louie, like he's just sick of people not getting stuff done, like, and looking for something else, which is interesting. What are your thoughts on this? I think Reich and, I hate to say it, Bannon are correct.

I think that's exactly right. The establishment didn't lose on policy here, Kara, they lost on energy. And look, I've been calling for disruption in the Democratic party. I think Leader Jeff and Minority Leader Schumer are absolutely the wrong people to provide the kind of robust, energetic pushback that the Trump administration warrants. But here's the thing about disruption is you don't get to pick the exact calibration of your disruption. So for example, I consider myself a moderate and I'm convinced that the true litmus test of someone who's truly a moderate is everybody hates you. So think about the senators who are moderates like Fetterman and Manchin. Everybody hates them. So people claim they want a moderate, but when someone actually shows up and occasionally agrees with the other side, they become an apostate. At the same time, guys like me claim we want disruption. We need to disrupt the Democratic party. And then when it happens, we freak out about it. But here's the bottom line. There's a lot to like here. And I say this full disclosure. I have given money to Senator Michael Bennet for everything he has run for for the last 10 years. I hosted a fundraiser for him for president. You know, by the way, if you get money from me, it's not a good sign. But I think the world of Senator Bennet, former school superintendent, one of the most credentialed people in the Senate, lost to a state agent nobody had ever heard of a year ago. But here's the bottom line. If you want disruption, you don't get to pick your form of disruption. And these candidates, they are... there's a lot to like about these candidates. They're young. They're energetic. They're unafraid. They don't have a bunch of blather about how you would go about universal healthcare. They're just like Medicare for all. So, there's a lot to like about them, but the reality is for those of us in the center, we don't get to pick our flavor of disruption. What I would say that bothers me is that democratic socialists effectively want socialism through democratic means. The reality is if you really look at history, socialism just doesn't work, folks. And they will always point to, what about Northern Europe? Northern Europe is actually more capitalist than we are right now. They just have a social safety net and they spend...

Here's the system that's worked. Democracy, individual rights, and capitalism. Call it what you want. When you start believing that you should have government sponsored grocery stores or that you shouldn't have border... I mean that, quite frankly, it just not only doesn't make sense, it threatens our ability to win the midterms. Rahm Emanuel had a fantastic statement in the thread we were on and he said it publicly. We have to stop arguing and atomizing ourselves between blue and cobalt blue. So, I'm more focused on my energy on, you know, the grift and corruption and just stupid decision-making of the Trump administration. So there's a lot I like about this disruption. You don't get to pick your flavor of disruption. And you know what? Young people just want change.

I don't... I don't disagree with any of that. And the thing that Mamdani and some of these people are doing, the most admirable thing about Donald Trump, President Trump is action orientation. It's ready, fire, aim. It's like, no, I'm going to do this. We're doing it. And the courts might challenge it. We might have to roll it back. But Americans really respect that. And Mamdani, to his credit, immediately imposed certain taxes, certain policies. And I think young people think, 'Well, at least he's doing something.' Now, the glass half empty for me is the following. Whenever the far left and the far right agree on anything, it's a really... that's a tell, it's a really bad idea. They are both anti-vax. I believe they both... the far left and the far right come together on what I believe are anti-Semitic themes. They both come together on an isolationist foreign policy. And what I see here is they both come together on socialism as an economic policy. Donald Trump is investing in Intel. Donald Trump is entertaining the idea of investing in OpenAI. Donald Trump believes that the government should have a golden share in US Steel. All that happens when you do that is you end up with warehouses in Ireland full of DeLoreans and Air France. And you see a lot of that rhetoric from the far left. We absolutely need a more progressive tax structure. But here's how you get to a progressive tax structure. The thing we spend the most money on is not the military. It's not our debt. It's not even Social Security. The thing the American government spends the most money on, we spend $2.2 trillion on givebacks from the tax code in the form of loopholes to corporations and the wealthy. We need to reduce spending on tax loopholes and givebacks to the wealthy and corporations. And if you look at Northern Europe, they're very capitalist. They let companies go out of business. They don't take stakes in Spotify. Their tax rates are either the same or a touch higher than ours. But what they do is they enforce them and they say, 'Spotify, you don't get to write off your jets, your plant property, and equipment.' And the richest people don't get to have donor advised funds where they get to write off donations they haven't made yet. So quite frankly there's some things that really bothered me about the wins in New York because I felt like being anti-Israel was a litmus test. Obviously as a Jew that concerns me.

Shiovalier.

By the way she's going to be the poster child. She's about to become the poster child for Republicans.

Anyways, let me circle out to where I started. I don't get to pick the calibration and the color and the flavor of disruption. Disruption, they're youthful, they're energetic, they're unafraid, and that for me is 70 or 80% good. Do I worry that they're embracing a form of socialism that has never worked throughout history? Yeah, I trust there'll be modulating forces from the center on both sides on that. But the reality is we need... the Democratic Party needs to shed its skin. And I gotta be honest, Leader Jeff and Schumer are getting clear signals. No one gives a [__] what you think. You have become... institutional endorsements have become a liability. Just as we thought US bases in Gulf States would provide a veil of protection, they become bullseye. You're going to start to see Democratic candidates say, 'Senator Schumer, please do not come to my rally.'

We need a disruption. Good for them. Youth energy. Have at it. I think it's a good thing, too.

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Yes, I think she sort of articulated it. The ones that really upset me and I... the birthright citizenship was far too close. Far too close and that was disturbing. And by the way a lot of the Trump people have to go back home wherever they come from. The two that really upset me to me are... is this... the Voting Rights Act, obviously Voting Rights Act absolutely, but the finance... to me it's all the money. The finance regulations designed to prevent political corruption that was... more... more Citizens United was the last thing we need. And then secondly the ability of the... no independent agencies on things that deserve independence like the FTC. And you've seen what Brendan Carr has done, although one of the justices did say Brendan Carr was a [__] in part of his... essentially said that in his ruling. I think it was Kavanaugh, could have been Gorsuch, whatever, they look the same to me. So those two were like giving more power to the president in general which I think will be just as bad with a Democrat and is terrible with Trump. Was two problems, but the money to me was the focus I had. What about you?

Yeah, Citizens United is arguably one of the worst things that's happened in recent history to the US because of the 900 billionaires, they make up a third of political giving. It's probably more than half of influence because they can be much more targeted. You know, unions just give money to whoever's the union candidate. But a private equity firm can give $700,000 to Senator Sinema and say just be the holdout for the infrastructure bill and ask that they strip out the carried interest loophole. And that cost 20 or $30 billion which is the most ridiculous loophole in history. See above, $2.2 trillion spent on loopholes where private equity owners get their commission on investment gains in the form of long-term capital gains. It's totally indefensible. So that's bad. The silver lining, the dotted silver lining on this out of control spend is that what we're finding is it's gone past its utility. And that is it used to be 20 years ago like 97% of the time who raised the most money won. It's no longer happening. Like Tom Steyer spent a quarter of a billion dollars and didn't win. It's almost like the full local news station employment act. The amount of money they're spending on the whole... it's really bad. But what you are seeing is it's no longer the key fulcrum for who or the key lever for who wins. The thing that upset me the most, that which is so frightening that it was even this close, was birthright citizenship.

I mean this is the Constitution, right? Just straightforward. The Constitution says if you're born here you're a citizen. It's right there. And I'm going to give you a couple anchor babies. Balogun who got a red card unfairly. The attacker, the premier striker for the World Cup team. His parents were here. I forget. She couldn't go home. He was born...

She was too pregnant. I think the airlines said you're too...

It is. And I would argue the whole word anchor baby is so [__] ridiculous.

Immigration is not only the secret sauce. Illegal immigration is probably the most profitable form of immigration because they're risk-takers and they generally fold back across the border when the crops are picked or there's not enough demand for them. And they pay taxes and they usually don't stick around to collect Social Security and they usually don't call the fire. They commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens. The reality is we didn't just wake up and find, oops, there's 15 million undocumented workers here. Republicans and Democrats have looked at each other and gone, wink wink. It's nice having cheap housing being built in Phoenix, Arizona, or grapes picked for cheap or whatever. How are we going to get all these people to wipe grandma's ass for 11 bucks an hour? I mean, Haitian immigrants are the biggest nurses' aides. I mean, so it's not... This has been an economic decision. Has it gone too far? Absolutely. But be clear, folks, we didn't just wake up and let this happen. So Balagan is one anchor baby. You know who else is an anchor baby? Carolia. No, the Trump. Barron Trump.

That's true. Sorry. Who?

Oh, right. You're an anchor baby.

Why didn't I know this about you?

It seems like it's worked out for everybody. And I just want to notify the IRS and the Trump administration.

Yes, I know, right? Are they not allowed in if they're — 1939, Germany's calling and wants you back.

Well, my parents — my dad is or was a Scottish or British citizen. My mom became a citizen of the US, but I guess back to the UK. I don't know.