George Hahn connects the dots across the week’s biggest stories: how presidential favor can move markets, why OpenAI wants the government as an investor, and what SpaceX’s fast track into the Nasdaq-100 means for ordinary investors.
Plus, why Americans feel less patriotic as the country turns 250 — and how an 18-month-old podcast built a media business worth hundreds of millions.
00:58 The Kingmaker Economy: Trump's Stock-Pumping Playbook
03:33 The OpenAI Bailout Dressed Up as Investment
05:21 How Index Investing Rewards Wall Street Insiders
07:06 The SpaceX NASDAQ Conspiracy Behind the Midt...
What Scott Galloway said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Scott Galloway argued that the market is increasingly rigged for insiders, citing several examples. He said the government taking a 5% stake in OpenAI would be a bailout dressed as investment, leading to cronyism and favoritism. He claimed the fix is in for SpaceX's early inclusion in the NASDAQ 100, which would create artificial demand and enrich President Trump, who owns 40% of the company. Galloway linked this to a decline in patriotism, saying the system feels rigged when the president flouts rules, mentioning Trump's trades and crypto gains. He also discussed OpenAI's acquisition of podcast TBPN, noting its pro-advertising stance and growth from $5 million to over $30 million in ad revenue, contrasting it with Prof G Media's expected $20 million.
Key takeaways
Galloway called the proposed 5% government stake in OpenAI a bailout and cronyism, not investment or socialism.
He alleged the fix is in for SpaceX's early NASDAQ 100 inclusion, creating artificial demand and enriching Trump, who owns 40%.
Galloway linked declining patriotism to a rigged system, citing Trump's trades and $1.4 billion crypto gains.
He highlighted TBPN's ad revenue growth from $5 million to over $30 million, versus Prof G Media's expected $20 million.
Welcome to the week from Prof G Media, where we break down what mattered and what it all means. I'm George Hahn, and it's Friday, July 10th. Today, the government wants a piece of OpenAI. Then, America turns 250 and can't seem to enjoy the party. And finally, the hottest media deal of the year is a podcast that didn't exist 18 months ago. Let's get into it.
There's an old idea that companies win by building something people want. This week offered a slightly different theory: get the right person to want you to win. Take Dell. On Tuesday's Prof G Markets, Ed Elson laid out what happened when the president gave the company a little free advertising.
Dell stock surged as much as 8% yesterday, not because of any material information or any news related to the company, but instead because the president pumped it. Yes, yesterday on live television, Trump encouraged Americans to quote, "go Dell computer." And it was exactly at that moment that shares of Dell soared. Does President Trump own any Dell shares, you might ask? The answer is of course yes. According to his recently released financial statements, Trump purchased nearly a million dollars worth of Dell last year and now he is actively pumping it on TV. This is yet another example of a dynamic that we are calling the kingmaker economy. And that is the best way to increase your stock price in America today isn't to improve your product or to sell more goods and services. It is to have your stock anointed by the high priest of American markets, aka the president. If you can do that, great things will occur. You might get a shout out in a national address. You might even get a government contract. Who knows? The point is, it pays to kiss ass. Not metaphorically, but literally. And that's why so many leaders are now doing it. From Tim Cook and his golden apple trophy to now Sam Altman and his benevolent offer to sling OpenAI stock onto the balance sheet of the US government and hopefully get a bailout. Is this how free markets are supposed to work? Is this what capitalism is supposed to look like? Absolutely not. But that doesn't matter anymore.
Now, a presidential endorsement moving a stock is one thing. The government owning part of a company is something else entirely. This week, OpenAI floated giving the federal government a 5% stake in the company worth around $43 billion at its latest valuation. Their idea: if AI creates enormous wealth, the American public should share in some of it. But there's an obvious complication. Once the government becomes a shareholder, it also has an interest in the company succeeding, and the government happens to write the rules. That's the part Scott focused on in Monday's markets episode.
I predicted this six months ago that the biggest bailout in corporate history was about to happen and it was going to be the bailout of Nadella, Altman, Dario Amodei, and it would be dressed up as investment or growth. It's not. It's a bailout. If the government were to take a 5% stake in OpenAI, great. They're going to favor OpenAI. They're going to overregulate their competitors and underregulate OpenAI. They're going to provide them with protection money and direct access to the White House. It's not even socialism. It's cronyism. It's like, you know, when things are really good, we want to capture all the gains ourselves, but when things are bad, we want to socialize the losses. That's not capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down. It's cronyism. What happens when access itself becomes a competitive advantage? Meaning access to the president, access to regulators, access to markets.
This brings us to SpaceX. This week, the company was fast-tracked into the NASDAQ 100 under new rules. Now, if you're wondering why you should care about the membership rules of a stock index, fair enough. But the NASDAQ 100 sits underneath some of the most widely held investment products in the world. When a company enters the index, funds that track it may have to buy the stock. That can create enormous demand automatically, not because millions of investors independently decided they like the company, but because the rules of the index tell their funds to buy it. On Wednesday's Prof G Markets, Ed asked Simplify's Michael Green what he made of that.
I think it is candidly quite manipulative. We have allowed index investing to receive special treatment under the law in which it does not have the same requirements that active management has for fiduciary standards or suitability standards. If I run a strategy that says I'm going to do X and I suddenly unexpectedly change that, my investors are allowed to sue me. We are by and large protected from that in the index world as long as the index methodology has changed rather than simply the inclusion of a new stock. In this case, they published their intent to do this in advance of the listing. It was open for comment period. My understanding is the comments were almost universally negative. I certainly contributed several of those myself. The big winners there are those who are seeking liquidity, the insiders who are actually looking to sell shares. Whether those are investors who invested during its private period or whether those are employees who have waited for liquidity, the answer is it's the insiders. And that unfortunately I think contributes to the general perception that the stock markets are really not set up for the average investor at this point. Although we're thrilled to see them move higher given our participation through things like 401ks, it's a little bit of a slap in the face to see somebody become the world's first trillionaire on the basis of manipulating an index that we were all told we could trust.
Rigged index, engineered bailout, a president who moves stocks from a podium. Scott argues these aren't separate stories. And on Raging Moderates, he took the SpaceX story one step further to the midterms.
I have said that the X factor on the midterms is I believe the fix is in and that is Donald Trump agreed to figure out a way to lessen or put pressure on the SEC chairman or the NASDAQ 100 to include SpaceX early in the NASDAQ 100 thereby creating a ton of artificial demand for those shares. And if the stock went up 10 or 20% more than it would organically, that for him, he owns, I think, 40% of the company. So what is that? That's like an increase in wealth of 100 to 160 billion for him. And why wouldn't he say to him, you know how I was able to influence the election with 250 million? What if I put 10 billion into the midterms?
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Galloway, S. (2026, July 10). The Week | Is the Market Rigged for Insiders? [Interview transcript]. The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003138/
MLA
Scott Galloway. "The Week | Is the Market Rigged for Insiders?." The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway, 10 Jul. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003138/.
BibTeX
@misc{galloway2026_3003138,
author = {Scott Galloway},
title = {The Week | Is the Market Rigged for Insiders?},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jul},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003138/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
