AI tonight, as we sit here, is hanging on by a leather jacket.
I like that he dresses like a lesbian, but that's okay.
Hi everyone, live from the Buell Theater in Denver. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
Whoa.
Wow. Whoa.
God. Wow. Holy Rocky Mountain oysters. Wow. That was great. My son was telling me to eat them this morning. I was like, as if. Anyway, but you clearly have. Um, that was the loudest of all the cities. I have to say, you guys win.
How you doubt it was. It was. Before we start, I want to send a big thank you to our title sponsor Beehiiv, the platform for building an audience and a business around your point of view. From newsletters and websites to podcasts and communities, Beehiiv brings your content all together in one place. It's where our Pivot post is. We love them because they believe in free speech. Anyway, thanks also to official sponsors Tanium and ODU.
We're going to start with our guests. We've been having guests in lots of cities. We had Hillary Clinton in New York. We had Gavin Newsom yesterday in San Francisco. We had Amy Klobuchar in Minneapolis. She's their new governor. She's their senator. And we're bringing to you a couple of different people tonight, but the first one, the main one, is going to be — he's been a teacher, a high school principal, and spent eight years in the Colorado State Senate before becoming the 46th mayor of Denver. He's also running for a second term next year. Please welcome Denver Mayor Mike Johnston.
Thank you for being here.
We pretty much just dropped the mic on you with the welcome, huh? That's why everyone comes to Denver. Well done, Denver.
Go ahead, Denver.
So, I'm going to start with an easy one.
As we tape, Lauren Boebert's house race still isn't called. She's down a few thousand votes, far outside the automatic recount range. Her lawyers are alleging unusual voting patterns, which, okay, whatever happens. Um, does talk a little bit about this. Does she hurt trust in Colorado's elections? I'm looking up a tweet. I mean, not a tweet. I'm not on that Twitter. Um, but I'm looking up something that I sent. But does she hurt Colorado's elections and trust in it, and whose job is it to defend the system? Because this is a, you know, this is a state that has a range of different political persuasions.
I think she's hurt people's trust in Colorado is what she's done as a brand. Actually, she's no stranger to this performing arts complex, in fact.
Wait a minute. What seat? Wait, what seat? What seat? Which seat? Who's in it?
She's not here currently.
Who's sitting in her seat?
The last time she was here, this was a theater. She's not here currently. The last time she was here, she had to be escorted out by security for some inappropriate behavior. That was at this performing arts complex. Yes.
So funny that you started that as your first question.
Well, it's not funny. Knew the Denver inside joke.
This is one of them. Lauren Boebert is refusing to concede the election. You got to give her credit. She tries to keep a grip on things until she gets a happy ending. Personally, I think it's going to end messy. So anyway, but seriously, I mean, it is an embarrassment. I mean, what is going to happen here?
Oh, we have great faith in our elections. The votes will be counted. It will be clear that she's the loser and she'll have to exit stage left as she did once before.
And tell me why you think — I mean, she moved from another area that she was losing in to another candidate, to a safer area, and obviously what happened here from your perspective.
She's run out of congressional districts to find where she can win in Colorado, I think is what happened. But I think, you know, we were surprised that people didn't see it as more of a grift when she moved across the state and adopted it as a home, as a place where she could win. And I think those voters felt like she broke those same promises and said, we were ready for change. And so it was part of the wave you saw across the country. But, you know, we almost took all eight congressional districts here in Colorado. We took back seven of the eight congressional districts, which is remarkable.
Places like Colorado Springs that have, I don't think, had a Democratic congressperson in our lifetime will now be represented by a Democrat.
So, is it a permanent thing, or is it just she's such an unpleasant political figure?
Is it a permanent state of being for her? No, it's — no, I don't. No, but I mean the idea of flipping these seats permanently.
Oh, I mean, I think that this election around the country and in Colorado was about a vote of anger, not yet a vote of trust. I think trust we have to earn, and trust we have to earn by delivering on the promises that we've made.
So let's talk about how to do that. Immigration made you a national name under Biden. Migrants poured into Denver and you said the city was near its breaking point. Under Trump, you said Denver moms might turn out to protect immigrants. His border czar threatened to jail you, and you ended up testifying before Congress and suing the administration. You begged Washington for help and fought Washington off. I'd love to know a couple things. And tonight on 60 Minutes, in a rather soft interview of Donald Trump, though he did say he thought he maybe was too tough on immigration, which was exactly right. Maybe, I don't know. Yeah. What should Democrats learn from that before they take over and maybe reflect on the maybe too tough?
Yeah. I think that one of the reasons why Americans were so angry is they don't like to be taken for fools. And I think that, you know, they expect you to give a straight answer and keep your word. And Trump didn't do that. He said he was going to use ICE officers to round up violent criminals around the country. Instead, what he did is use ICE officers to kill innocent civilians in American cities like Minneapolis. He used it to arrest elementary school teachers and wives of US Marines and dads going to the NICU to drop off milk. That was not what America ever signed up for. And I think when he did that, they were furious. And so when we said we think Denverites will stand up and protest, we were right. But what was even more impressive was Denverites also stood up in service, which is when the governor of Texas sent 40,000 immigrants to this city in the middle of —
He's not the governor of Texas anymore.
It turns out he tried to send a bunch of Latinos packing from Texas, and a bunch of Latinos sent him packing from Texas, as it turns out.
But when those folks arrived, I think this city showed up in tremendous ways, and people brought people into their homes, they cooked people breakfast, they found people jobs, and we were able to get those folks successfully to work. They're now, you know, paying rent, paying taxes, working, and supporting the city. And so I think our belief was the American spirit was always if you arrive here and you're willing to work hard, you can find a way. That was true for these folks, too. And I think Trump made a dramatically wrong bet on how Americans would see people that showed up in their communities.
This happened during Japanese internment with your governor.
Yeah. Colorado has a real history of this, right? I mean, our citizen of the century for the 20th century is Ralph Carr, who is the governor who opposed Japanese internment and said it's un-American. And I think he lost the election over that, but he knew he was right. And I think that there were a lot of us who believed this was the right thing to do, whether it was the popular thing to do or not. And America. And, you know, Trump said that all these immigrants, Abbott and Trump thought would tear Denver apart. It would increase crime. It would increase homelessness. As the city that received the most migrants of any city in the country per capita, in those same two years, we delivered the largest drop in homicide of any city in the country and the largest drop in homelessness of any city in the country.
What do Democrats need to do now to continue that? I mean, obviously the citizens were upset about the borders. Yeah. And Trump took advantage of that and then overstepped, as is his way. But what do Democrats need to do to stress that they're interested in this issue but not the way this was done?
I mean, we were clear from the beginning. We will absolutely collaborate with anyone to round up violent criminals in this city, no matter where they come from. We don't care if they come from Cleveland or Caracas. If you're committing a crime in here, we will charge you. We will prosecute you. We will hold you accountable. That's always true. We still partner with other — we have a task force that still disrupts international drug trafficking or other gang-affiliated crimes. So we believe that's entirely true. But we think what is also true is that people want to have a path to citizenship if you're here and working hard and playing by the rules. That is the American dream. You know, the study shows that about 93% of the folks the Trump administration has rounded up had no violent criminal charges at all, right? Two-thirds had actually no criminal charges of any sort. They literally hadn't jaywalked. All they had was the status offense. And so what we know is those folks support our communities. They add to our economy. We want them to be successful. There should be a secure border. People should be held accountable for violent crimes. If you're working hard and playing by the rules, we should say thank you and put you back to work.
So Lauren Boebert's district is the reddest district in Colorado. And quite frankly, it's unlikely it'll stay blue. And if we want this blue wave to turn into — the way I would describe it is we're renting these voters. We don't own them. And I worry that the mistake that Democrats are going to make is we're going to get so hopped up on watching C-SPAN and revenge and accountability that we're not going to capture the swing voters that are primarily focused on getting a home, getting a job, forming a family.
I'll go to the hot topic. 41 of 42 ballot measures to restrict data centers passed. Very anti-data center. I look at Colorado and I see cold weather. I see a lot of power generation. I see big expanses of land not near schools or public parks. Why wouldn't Colorado be the Saudi Arabia of the digital age and say, come one, come all, for data centers?
I think there are — we put a more —
Overwhelming support from your audience. I think what we believe is that there are real concerns. As you may know, in Colorado also we say, you know, whiskey's for drinking and water is for fighting in Colorado because this is a state with a major drought. We are worried about any entity that uses a quarter of a million gallons of water a day is a major problem for this state. And so, you know, it's not to say that they shouldn't exist someplace. We put a moratorium on them in the city and county of Denver until we're able to get our hands around. You know, right now they were used by — right, so anyone could just buy a piece of land and put up a data center there. We think that's not the right way to go about doing business. We think if a data center exists, it should make everyone's utility bills cheaper and not more expensive. They should be required to bring their own energy, and that energy should be renewable. And they should make sure they have a self-contained system that doesn't use water. And I think there are places that do that, but the places that do that well need 500 acres to do that. I don't think you're going to put that in the middle of a residential neighborhood. And so I think we're working on a task force that will make recommendations for what to do in the city. I think there are places in the state where it could be a real economic boom to smaller towns, but those places should expect there's something in it for them as a benefit for their residents.
A lot of it was done via NDAs. I'm a little more conservative on this issue than he is. I think the way they did it, whether it was Kevin O'Leary in Utah just forcing it and calling the people who are against him Chinese agents, whether it was Elon spewing toxic fumes in Tennessee, or Facebook down in Louisiana — all NDAs, all secretive, all forcing it through without community input — is just the absolute wrong way to do it, and very typical of these people that they just come in and tell you they're here to help and then do whatever they feel like ultimately. And I think that's more the problem. And it should be done with local community input and, in fact, control.
People expect to have a say, and they have a right to have a say on what gets put in their neighborhood. And so I think that's the most important priority for us. And I think our folks are not opposed if it's done the right way. Three blocks from here, there's a data center. You would never know it. It's an adaptive reuse inside of an empty commercial building. That's the Power and Light Building. But it's been there for 20 years. It's not a hyperscaling data center that uses a ton of water. It doesn't create noise for the neighbors. It doesn't, I think, raise people's utility rates. So there are ways to find the right balance. But I think Americans are right to say we expect to get a fair trade out of this deal. And that wasn't happening before.
Right. So one of the other issues you've been able to make a big impact is on street homelessness. The number of people living on Denver streets is down 64% and big encampments are down 91%. Your approach: police clear the camps, then you make sure there's actually somewhere to send people, like tiny homes or converted hotels. Los Angeles and San Francisco have struggled with this issue. I would say San Francisco is doing a lot better. I'm from San Francisco and it's changed perceptually under Daniel Lurie, who's the mayor there. Los Angeles yesterday was pretty tough. I was surprised — still a real problem there. Talk about what you're doing. Your shelters were built with federal ARPA funds and won't re-up, and Trump is trying to cut housing aid on top of that. So how do you keep this going?
Yeah, I think our first belief was — we took this on because it was the biggest humanitarian crisis in the city. No first-world city should have people freezing to death on their streets in the middle of the night. And that should be an accepted truth. And I think the biggest fear was that people had come to believe that this problem was unsolvable, that people have just given up to the belief that every American city is going to have giant tent encampments in front of post offices and grocery stores. And we believe that's not the case. And so this whole city pulled together to prove we could do something different. And we're proud of that. And we also know the work is not done. But for us, there were a couple of core commitments that mattered. One is the first thing is you have to get folks off the streets into transitional housing. You got to bring on a lot of units to do that. We brought out about 1,200 units in six months. So we had to do a lot of cutting of regulations and red tape to make that move faster. Then was to move people off the streets and not sweep encampments from block to block, but actually close them. And close them by moving all the folks that are in that encampment into transitional housing. And then in each of those transitional housing sites, we offer wraparound services. So you have mental health support, addiction support, workforce training, long-term housing. And then our equal commitment to the residents of the city is there has to be something in this for the rest of the residents as well as the folks that are suffering. So whenever we would close an encampment, the commitment is we would not ever let another encampment return to that block or that neighborhood. And so block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, we were able to close those encampments around the city. And I'd be the first to say the work is not done. I mean, we have the benefit of making it farther than any other city has at 64% reduction. But I often say we know that the last 36% of folks we're serving will be tougher than the first 64. These are folks with —
When this money is cut, what happens? And this doesn't look like the administration is going to be particularly cooperative with the next —
Yeah, we've taken significant federal and state cuts, and the biggest challenge for that is it cuts our path for people to get into permanent housing. So we can get them off the streets into one of our tiny home villages or our hotels, but they need permanent housing the same way a first-year teacher needs housing or a server in the city needs housing. And so the biggest impact of the federal government is to have cut that housing opportunity. I think the big idea for the new Congress, what they should do is pursue, you know, what I would call the American housing promise. And it has to be a very concrete promise to say, listen, we're about 10 to 15 million homes short in this country. We should say, we're going to build 10 to 15 million homes over the next 10 years so that every American can say they can live in a house where they don't pay more than 30% of what they make to rent. And you could do that. You could do that by partnering with the federal government and with cities. Say there's a bargain. If cities have to do their part, we have to cut red tape. We have to make sure permitting goes faster. We have to make sure we invest with local resources ourselves. We have to have pro-housing policies like more density around transit and other things that make sense. But when we do that, the federal government will match it by saying, you know, we'll do $35,000 to $50,000 a door for every unit that you need to meet your goals of affordability. And you think, oh, that sounds like a crazy idea. You know, the federal government could do that in this Congress for less than the cost of the Iran war. I tend to believe if we can find the dollars to bomb homes in Iran, we ought to be able to find the dollars to build homes in Denver. That seems like a reasonable proposition. You could do it for less than the cost of the ICE surge. You could do it for far less than the cost of the Trump tax credits. These are accomplishable, reasonable, ambitious goals, but these are the kind of things Democrats will have to actually deliver on. That's not a program you never heard of or couldn't name or can't remember, but one that you can see a direct impact on units opening in your city that house your friends and your family and your neighbors who will otherwise not be able to stay in the city. That's where we have to deliver.
One of the things you also push is universal child care, which is a big thing of mine. If I was running for president, I'd executive order the out of that. Yes. And I think most, not just women know, most all parents understand that's the big issue. Even if you have money, it's, you know, and most people don't. Talk a little bit about this. What are the specifics? And it's interesting that you're putting up the idea of universal child care, homelessness, immigration. It feels like you might be running for higher office.
I'm not. I'm not. I love this office. I said I love this office. No, I'm not.
Maybe not that either. Well, we'll see how long my wife can handle this. But I do think that when we talk about pro-growth for cities, I mean, I had two very heartbreaking conversations on this child care. One was talking to a 33-year-old Black guy engineer. I think his race is relevant in the story. He and his wife went through college, both have good jobs, good degrees. And he said, 'We've been talking about for the last few months whether or not we want to have kids. And we both really want to have kids. And we have decided we're not going to have kids because we don't think we can afford to have kids in this city and raise them here.' In the same way, I talked to a woman a week ago who was asking me some very pointed questions about the budget. I was at a play date and I was like, 'This isn't — you're not an amateur budget analyst.' She's like, 'No, no. I teach high school chemistry.' And she stops. 'Well, actually, I used to teach high school chemistry until we had our second kid, and I couldn't afford to pay two slots of child care, so I'm not teaching anymore.' Like, we can't afford to lose talented people from the city, and you can't lose talented people from the workforce if you don't do this. We believe there's a path to do this in a very practical way for everybody, zero to five. So we would do it from birth up to kindergarten. We already have it in Denver for four-year-olds. It's called the Denver Preschool Program. And yes, the dental preschool program. And what makes it wonderful is our proposal is different than those you see in New York or others, which is ours is a sliding-scale system, which is we don't propose that what you'd say is whether you — if you make 10 million a year, we're also going to subsidize all of your child care. What we say is no one should have to pay more than about 7% of what they make to child care. Most people now pay maybe 30, 40% for their rent, another 20, 30% of their income for child care. That's impossible. So what we would do is propose a sliding-scale system where there is some public subsidy, but also people pay what they can based on their income. That makes it far easier for tax dollars to go a lot farther and us to get to a lot more kids a lot faster. And so we're going to work this year designing the system. We'll pilot it next year with the hope we can scale it in '28, and we might be one of the first cities to get to a truly universal program from birth all the way up to age 18.
Very last question for me. There's all these pretty cool mayors around. We got Dan and all different — Daniel Lurie is very different from, of course, the top mayor in New York, Eric Adams, who's the most popular right now, whether you like him or not, he's very prominent and stuff. There's all kinds of mayors all over the place of different kinds. Do you all hang out?
We not only do we hang out, we have a text chain. Yeah, we have a group chat. I think because it's actually — it can be a lonely job, but it also is a really rewarding job. And it is a job where you're ultimately accountable for delivering results every day, and that's a different kind of stress than being a senator or a congressperson where you can host a press conference and blame somebody else. And this job you fundamentally have to just fix it or it's your fault. And so people get real practical real fast on, you know, so every one of the folks you've named I talk to regularly to either ask for ideas from or to share ideas with. And so yeah, mayors feel like the last bastion of kind of nonpartisan get-stuff-done people, and it's fun to work with them.
So you have Republican ones, too.
You have Republican. Who is the most annoying texter?
Uh, they're not that many. You have to just sort of — sometimes you'll get 20 or 30 texts and you got to just skip them and go to the bottom. But some people have more time than others. But the ones that don't have a lot of time always — I'm going to —
I can't remember. I scroll through those texts too often.
In any case, let's have a round of applause for Mayor Mike Johnston.
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Oh, good. That's good. Thank you.
Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has admitted to an affair with a woman who US intelligence believes was a Chinese spy. You literally can't make this up. Nvidia's board is investigating, but already says it has full confidence in him. Wow. They've already not investigated it, but they've decided that. That's really interesting. Silicon Valley boards are such anxious toadies. Anyway, the problem is Huang has been Washington's loudest voice for selling AI chips to China, and that's what the alleged spy was reportedly recruited to push. It's so problematic on so many levels. If any other CEO had an affair with a suspected Chinese spy, they'd be gone yesterday. And of course, the company tried to downplay it and pretend it wasn't happening. Then, oh wait, it was. And then he released a statement saying, you know, please give me privacy for my family. And I'm like, no, you — No, this is a big deal. He's been very tight with the Trump administration. Now we understand why when they took a trip to China, he was left off the flight and then brought back on in Alaska because Trump is now saying it's okay. He probably — it's fine for him to do it. Trump apparently knew about this, and it's not clear whether they told Jensen Huang she was a spy or not right now. So there's a lot of questions here. But is Jensen too big to fire, and should Washington still trust him on issues around China besides the personal sloppiness? So —
It's a lot here. So first off, I think they blew an opportunity. He should have just said, same last name. It's my wife.
Right, missed opportunity.
Her name is, I think, Allison.
Okay. So just some insight, and this will be illuminating. Sometimes men make bad decisions with their dick.
I think a decent form of evolution would be every time a man has an erection, it looks like a tombstone and it says, 'Good judgment, born 10 million years ago, died the same day.' Look, as you get more powerful, you start believing — you start mistaking kindness for sexual interest. And this is, as Kara said, the CEOs of McDonald's, Nestle, and Intel were fired for relationships that didn't involve security concerns. This is literally shipping potentially uranium or nuclear secrets to the CCP. And this reflects a couple of things. One, not only I think Jensen's mistake is meaningful, but the profound mistake is supposedly there's rumors that the administration had intel on this and didn't warn them because they wanted to keep the revenue and the stock price flowing. So I see this as a defense department — look, if we're thinking that men aren't going to continue to make — and they should face the ramifications — this is going to continue to happen. It always happens. I serve on a lot of public boards. I point that out because I'm desperate for your affirmation. But we deal with this all the time. And the general rule on a board is below a certain level, you put young people in a close base working hard, they're going to pair up. One in three relationships begins at work. And that's actually a wonderful thing. Once you get above a certain level, your fly is up and locked, boss. And anything resembling an affair — now this wasn't in the company. This was a supplier, but a supplier who was potentially —
Not a supplier. It was someone they were selling chips to, and they may have taken the chips and sent them —
Excuse me, a customer who was potentially putting these very sophisticated chips in, and potentially that were being used in processing for Chinese companies which we wouldn't ordinarily sell to.
This is what we have, and this is the gap. And I see it not only — I see it as a failure of governance, and it's the following. When you're talking about a company like Nvidia or OpenAI, you're talking about nuclear weapons, you're talking about uranium, you're talking about CIA, Langley, Defense Department, Pentagon-level risk. And we have — we work like security — and just the extraordinarily extraordinary level of poor judgment for this individual. And I want to be clear, like, you know, 'I've always made good decisions around this type of thing,' said no man ever. This is — and you can empathize, but this, in my opinion, this involves national security. Now here's the issue from a governance standpoint. It was very interesting today. They said he's going to continue to operate as CEO and they've hired a special counsel to investigate it. Typically on a board, what you would do in anything of this gravity, you would ask him to take a leave of absence until you got the report back from the independent counsel. And here's what's going on. And I think I have some insight into this. The board is human. And I did some research on the board today. And it's a group of what I'll call talented, accomplished executives, but not what you would typically see on the board of the most valuable company in the world.
I don't know one. They're mid-level.
So, example, and I don't — we give scrutiny. I don't think board members get enough scrutiny. Dawn Hudson, talented woman. She was a senior executive at Pepsi. Her last job was eight years ago. She was the CMO of NFL. That's a real job. Not dissing her. She's probably not — she's probably made a good living, but she's probably not a wealthy woman. I looked at the filings. She's made $80 million in Nvidia options the last eight years. So let me ask you this. If you're on the board and you're flying private and you have just an extraordinary life because of your role on this board and because of Jensen, aren't you going to find a lot of reasons why you're going to forgive Jensen? And this is what happens on boards, and this is why you need mandatory churn on boards, is typically the CEO is the most charming. He's the rush chairman. He's a really likable guy, and let's be honest, it's almost always a he. 80% of the time it's a he. And he purposely cherry-picks people who are smart, but that's who they play golf with. That's who they know. And if you've made someone $80 million that left a job probably at $600,000 a year as the CMO of the NFL and you haven't had a full-time job in eight years, you really think that person is going to be focused on national security? So I worry — I think this is a failure of governance. We need mandatory — the NSA, the CIA should be screening every employee at these companies —
Of these kind of companies.
And just — I've been on the board of only two companies where there was quote-unquote sensitive information. Just as we need to have very open and raw conversations with our sons, you need to have raw conversations with the CEO and just say, boss, assume if a woman's interested in you, she's a spy.
Yeah. So let me interject because it's bigger than that. And it's not just this board, which I think is — I would say B's. It's a lot of B's.
Some C's. And weak, designed to be weak so he can run it and wears other jackets.
That's how a lot of boards work. A lot —
I get it. But some boards have some pretty prominent — and this doesn't have any. I was sort of — because you go to Google, there's some big names and strong figures. So this is from Bill Ackman, my least favorite person. I know you like him. Alert, Jensen —
W. You said you know I like him.
No, you like him, don't you?
I like Bill. I think he's a good investor.
We're in a purple state. We're not in Wokestan.
Woke us. But this guy — no, no, no. We'll have a Bill Ackman discussion later.
I think he's a great investor. I don't like his politics.
Fine. He's a good investor. I don't really care what he thinks about DEI, and he should hush up about it. But nonetheless —
As we do, we're so measured.
Can I just say I don't go on and on about hedge fund investing. He should like back off about the meeting.
We talk about business and investing all the time.
Anyway, so I'm going to read what he said on this topic. 'Jensen Huang is a human and he is an incredible human. Even incredible humans make mistakes. He takes full responsibility as he should,' which he didn't. 'We should all support him and his family. Onward.'
Onward. Okay. The US government thinks she's a Chinese spy, and these people have lost the narrative and lost the message of the recent election, which was about accountability. This is a self-interested take by a Wall Street person who's done well. What's coming? Shareholder lawsuits, congressional investigations, endless scrutiny. And at the same time, a lot of — he is at the center hub of a lot of investments. He just made a $3 billion investment in Meta of this sort of round-tripping circle jerk that's happening among all the AI companies. This is a bigger topic. This could have much bigger —
It has implications. Do you think — and I think they're going to circle the wagons on him, even though they shouldn't. It puts them at risk, like Meta or any of these people, OpenAI, wherever he has these different deals that are happening. Should he be — and getting to the White House thing, what did they know, when did they know it, etc., needs to happen. But what does it do to the bigger industry? Because this guy is at the dead hot center, and they're going to use every single excuse to say, well, he shouldn't have cheated on his wife and shouldn't have been with a spy, and oh, the congressional hearings, and maybe they stole chips in China. And these are the people who screamed bloody murder about China all the time and how we have to compete with China, and now they're going to give him a pass on this.
He's — I like Jensen. I don't know him personally. I've only met him a couple times. I think he's a reasonable guy. I think he's an outstanding professional. I think he's only human and he makes mistakes, and I think only humans who make this type of mistake should be fired summarily. I mean, how many people have been fired? How many people have been fired for less than selling exceptionally sensitive hardware to our adversaries? I mean, for God's sakes, it's not the worst thing in the world. By the way, I would like to hire Lauren Boebert as a nanny, too. Two, I heard — I did some research into Jensen today. He met his wife. I love this story. He went up to her and said, 'If you study with me every Sunday, I guarantee you straight A.' So as someone who's going through some tumult in terms of my own kids, I want to offer him a job as a tutor, a private tutor. For God's sakes, we're going to talk about like this is some big tragedy. He's worth $180 billion. Get the out — you're going to be just fine. And then our government —
And then our government — and there's probably — you can't build a $5 trillion company without having an amazing bench. Let's churn. Let's bring some new people in. The greatest thing about this election was that we brought some new people in. He's going to be just fine. And then we need standards for these companies that say every time you have a relationship with anybody, anybody who —
Gets hired, any vendor runs a security check to make sure they're not spies.
All right. So, what about the impact? Because a lot of people feel this could be one of these tipping minutes with AI tonight as we sit here is hanging on by a leather jacket. Right? [laughter] I like that he dresses like a lesbian, but that's okay. You know, I'm just looking at one more thing. Uh, Ian Bremer had noted that this is incredible that Trump is giving him a pass here. Why do you think Trump is doing that?
The only bright spot in the Trump universe is the S&P. That's it. And the only thing 40% of the S&P is seven companies. Five of those seven are directly focused on AI. So, as goes AI, as goes the S&P, as goes the only bright spot of the Trump presidency. So, what do you know when someone comes out at OpenAI or, excuse me, at Anthropic, and a scientist comes out and says, 'I quit because I think there's about a 10% chance of a mass extinction event.' And then the scariest part was when the CEO came out a few days later and goes, 'He may have a point.' And then what is the whole idea of a government? You're supposed to defend our borders and prevent a tragedy of the commons. And what does our president do? He says, 'Shut the [ __ ] up. Keep shipping your AI. I need those stocks higher.' And supposedly, I think this is the scandal. I think a dude in a midlife crisis believing... men will always mistake kindness for sexual interest. Women will always mistake sexual interest for kindness. Call me a sexist. It's true.
