Derek Thompson

Yeah, crypto crime, right.

It's a paradox, right?

And so there, I do think, yeah, their prediction-

that the Trump administration would not only roll over on crypto regulations, but also they were interested enough in making hundreds of millions of dollars on crypto would mean that they would have a counterparty in the White House, right?

I do think that that was a part of the calculation.

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm quoting from the scripture of Matt Bellany, my fellow podcaster at The Ringer and also author of a great puck newsletter on Hollywood, that it's a little morally sickening for someone to make, as I think Zaslav will make, $800 to $900 million by executing a sale –

that is almost certainly to result in the loss of thousands of jobs.

The idea that you can make $900 million by simply cutting jobs really sucks.

I do think that there's like two layers to the story.

Like I do think one layer is the story of the merger, Netflix's bid, the rejected bid, the fact that yet again, you have the Trump administration using antitrust as an extension of personnel policy, basically picking winners and losers based on who are friends of the administration.

And it's important to say here, and I think you started this ball rolling, David Ellison, the head of Paramount, which is buying Warner Brothers Discovery, is the son of Larry Ellison, who's one of Trump's best billionaire friends.

And I think his soon to be neighbor,

He's the CEO of Oracle.

I think Ellison is buying some property near Mar-a-Lago very soon.

So there's that story, which is really sickening.

It's sickening at a moral level, at a legal level.

But it's in this broader... And this is sometimes where people hate me, where I talk about macroeconomics.

It's so cold.

But it is existing in this broader context where Hollywood is just really struggling.

The reason that...