Kara and Scott share their reactions to Elon Musk calling them "cruel, mean, & deceitful human beings." Then, they dig into Elon (and a group of investors) making a $97 billion bid for control of OpenAI, and what exactly will come of it. Plus, Trump's latest tariff threats, and his master plan to discredit judges and weaken the judiciary branch. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What did Elon Musk say about Kara and Scott?
On this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, I'm chatting with internet sensation and everyone's favorite Philly influencer, Bran Flakes. He's a social media maverick and content creator turning viral moments into cold, hard cash. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on the Your Rich BFF YouTube channel.
Oh my God, I can't go to a sex movie with you. I just, that just flashed through my brain.
That wasn't on my bingo card either. So yeah, that's, that's not going to happen. Yeah.
Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I am the very cruel Kara Swisher.
And I'm the deceitful Scott Galloway.
Yeah, and we're both mean, right? We're both mean.
Yeah, I know. We're awful.
That one's accurate. Don't you think?
The revolution begins with two podcasts.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of Musk's $97 billion bid for OpenAI?
And he goes after you. Of course. It's like, okay.
I'm always taking a bullet for you, Galloway.
I said these things, Elon, not Kara. And he's acting like these individuals. First off, can the guy not afford autocorrect? It's like his team or grammar, pick a struggle. And the notion that there's somehow these, he portrayed this team as being in Guantanamo Bay when the reality is they're on a Discord server figuring out if their logo or their meme should have sunglasses.
I mean, to portray these kids as victims is just kind of hilarious. But I did feel bad that he went after you and not just me.
I know, of course. Well, I am pretty obnoxious about him all over the place. So it probably like glommed up into one thing.
He didn't say anything.
I know, but in general, on CNN, where I call him a toddler, an adult toddler on any day of the week and twice on Sunday or anything, just us threatening him. But here's the deal. First of all, all you said, and I tend to agree with, is, you know, from the reporting, the exceptional reporting by Wired, for example, these guys, a couple of them sound like a prick, right? And we said it.
These people sound like pricks. They're doing something that's probably fun for them. They get to work for Elon Musk. They get to like raid the government or everything else. We just, we're like, this is not the way we should make sausage in our country. It's really gross how they're doing it this way. And they need to do it in a legal way. That's all we said.
And he tries to insinuate that we're threatening them. Because as I say, everything, every accusation is a confession by these fellas. And let me just read the thing again. for people who don't understand, he reposted a video of us talking about Doge employees in our last episode.
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Chapter 3: How does Trump's judicial strategy affect the judiciary?
Yeah, I get it. I understand. I do attack him.
I realize you don't need protecting. I don't. I just found it. He puts your name first like you did that. I was me.
Well, he likes to do that. You know, but let me just say about the death threats. You know when I got death threats? When he said my heart was seething with hate. Remember with Yoel Roth where he said Yoel was evil and my heart was filled with seething hate. I got, should he have not done that? I didn't like bitch and moan about that. And I got a lot of really frightening comments.
Stuff aimed at me when he does it every time. So, you know what? And instead he bitches and moans about it. Well, I'm bitching and moaning now. Guess what? I got death threats. Guess what? I can handle it. It just is, again, a larger strategy of intimidating journalists and other people who speak out and disagree with him.
President Trump called for the Washington Post to fire columnist Eugene Robinson. Elon Musk called, speaking of which, investigative reporter Catherine Long, who was writing about this stuff, disgusting and cruel. You know, just this is what these people do all the time. They do all kinds of intimidating and rude remarks.
And that's to say nothing of his endless anti-trans stuff, anti-immigrant stuff, his tasteless stuff about gay people, his tasteless stuff about women, about anyone who opposes him. So this guy, you know, pot, kettle. Nice to meet you. Anyway, there you have it.
Well, you know, look, we get it wrong sometimes. But just keep in mind, both Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, we live with our children. And so we got that going for us. And we're not giving Nazi salutes.
That was your best one. You're such a great dad.
You're an amazing father. To the best of my knowledge, I have not hired video game players to pretend they're me such that I can go on podcasts and say I'm a world-class video game player. I'm not creating fake accounts to call myself an amazing dad. I do a lot of virtue signaling around my fatherhood, but I haven't gone that far. And so far, I am not addicted to ketamine.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of AI for future content creation?
Oh, how'd it go?
I'm willing to try. No, I didn't. I didn't get there. I just went out and drank instead. I had something called – I had two mezcal margaritas and half an edible, and that worked for me. That all worked.
Jeff Swisher said he'd help you if you need help because he gives ketamine every day as a doctor. Not that he's going to prescribe it for you.
Oh, I got to tell you, I had – I'm sorry, I keep bringing this back to me. I had lunch with Chris Anderson from TED.
Oh, yeah.
And he sat down and it was so lovely. You know what he said to me? He looked at me and he's like, me and Jacqueline, his wife, who's lovely. He's like, are you all right? I'm like, yeah, well, I mean, I'm no less fucked. I'm more fucked up than I usually am. People after hearing that podcast are worried about me and taking me out to lunch and sitting me down.
He goes, no, no, really, no, really, Scott, are you? Are you all right? And also, would you be willing to come back and do another talk?
Did he step down from Ted?
He's like he's basically it's kind of a gangster move. I don't know if you've heard about this. He said, I'm giving Ted away. And of course, he's going to give it away to some billionaire who put a bunch of money behind it. But he has basically decided to give Ted. He needs every Democrat. Over the age of 100, like 40, 50% of them needs to take a note out of the Chris Anderson page book.
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Chapter 5: How did the Super Bowl reflect cultural tensions?
Yeah, but this notion that like, I'm not, this shit used to bother me.
Yeah, it did. It doesn't bother you anymore. It doesn't.
I feel like I'm turning into one of those villains that gets energy from attacks. I love that this guy hates me.
Like he punches you and then you get his energy? Like that kind of person? Seriously.
We're doing some right, Kara.
We're doing some right. It's true. It's true. He does call most people disgusting, cruel, pedo. When he calls you a pedo, that's when you know he loves you.
Yeah, we're headed that way? I don't know, but you pointed it out.
You, not me.
Look, let's just get to the source here. It's just so clear the guy wants to fuck me.
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Chapter 6: What are the latest developments in Amazon's business strategy?
I had this, I played this game with someone. I'm not going to tell you. I didn't, I couldn't answer it, but you know, fuck Mary Kelly.
Fuck Mary Kelly.
Okay. I'm going to do this. You're going to answer it right now.
Okay.
Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg. Go.
Yes.
Which one? Go ahead. Okay. We might have played this before, but I'd like to play it again.
Oh, I would definitely marry Bezos because I'd like to roam around in a thong on one of his yachts. I think that would be a good look for me. I'd be willing to embarrass myself. They go to the best parties.
I love the fashion.
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Chapter 7: How do mergers and breakups impact the tech industry?
Oh, God. I want Zuck to put on one of those jujitsu outfits and start manhandling me a little bit. Ooh. And then a few things go the wrong place. Oh, yeah. Let's get ready to rumble. Oh, my God. And I'm not going to say kill because I don't even think it's funny to joke about violence. It's just a game. It's just a party game. I am Lauren Sanchez, and I'm making sweet, sweet love to the Zuck.
As always, everything goes back to Elon, who has continued to plague us, but he's now plaguing Sam Altman. The feud with the CEO of OpenAI took a new turn today when a consortium of investors led by Elon is offering $97 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. The bid was submitted on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal. And in a quote, Elon Musk said,
It's time for OpenAI to return to open source safety focus force for good it once was. Obviously, for people that don't know, Elon and Sam and others created OpenAI Together as a nonprofit to battle. And I did an interview with them at the time about this, both of them. to battle the bigger companies and the privatization of AI.
And so it was going to be a nonprofit that was going to focus on safety. At the time, Elon thought AI was going to kill all of us. He's changed his tune on that, obviously, over the years. And this is a really shocking news. What do you think, Scott? What's he up to? Because he's not busy with other things, for goodness sake.
I think this is a rich man's version of I'm invading Greenland. I think this is a distraction. So first off, I got to be clear, I got to do more research here, but essentially what they've done accidentally or unintentionally is by starting out as a nonprofit and then pretending that they would maintain some fidelity to the nonprofit once they smelled
hundreds of billions in potential shareholder value, they accidentally created a two-class shareholder company. And that is they have essentially some shareholders, the nonprofit, that have a lot of governance rights. And the for-profit group is raising money at a $300 or $350 billion valuation.
And Musk has found a way to try and create a cudgel or, according to him, essentially get control of, if you will, the voting shares by taking over the nonprofit side of OpenAI. Now, what this really does is is probably force them to pay more in their negotiations, I think, since the last round on what they're going to pay or what share of the equity the nonprofit gets in the for-profit.
But be clear, this is based on the false pyramid, the statement that you just read that he's concerned.
Yeah, he's not concerned with anything.
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Chapter 8: What does the future hold for AI regulation?
It was $157 billion is the valuation they're looking at now, which is enormously high. You know, when they started as a charity, maybe for a moment there, but the minute it got profitable, all of them were running for the for-profit subsidiary. And OpenAI has emails from Musk talking about wanting to turn it into a for-profit subsidiary.
What if his entities aren't for profit?
That's correct. They have emails saying it. Like he's a liar. He's a liar about wanting this particular sentence or a fabulist or whatever. He's just doing it for the performative nature of this. But I think the question is what it will be valued at. And so he's just setting it higher. And who would end up with this controlling stake in the new open AI?
Now, he could have waited until it did this and then tried to make a play for it publicly. But you're right. It's Joe Lonsdale from Palantir, Ari Emanuel, like literally the least – Charitable people I know, right?
Let's just say they're the most capitalist.
Capitalist.
They're probably charitable people, but no one's going to put $100 billion up for fun.
100%.
And so, you know, I think he's filed all these legal complaints saying that they had betrayed their nonprofit mission at the same time. colluding with Microsoft, and this Tobarov was the one that tried to get the Attorney General's California to do this and do a fair market value. It's a fuck you, Sam kind of thing.
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