USS Lincoln Fallout, Spotlight on Natalie Harp, and Press Secretary Succession

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Core Wave is the essential cloud for AI, ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how Core Wave powers the world's best AI, go to corewave.com/readyforanything. Tracking Macros has a bad reputation. People think restriction, obsession, and overwhelming food map. My experience has been the exact opposite. I'm Reverend Arson, VP of Fitness Programming at Peloton, and learning my Macros is what finally taught me what enough actually looks like. This week on Project Swagger, how tracking gave me more food freedom, not less, the mistakes it revealed, how I feel now, and how to know what's right for you. Follow Project Swagger now for the full episode, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm not going to speculate on what Trump and Natalie Harper doing, but Natalie Harper has been obsessed with him for years. There's a bunch of photos of Natalie Harper smiling at him, like that new movie obsession. You know the new horror movie that's coming out? Yeah, it doesn't end well. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher, and I'm kicking off another week of. Got reogas. Oh, he never gets sick of that. Yeah, Scott is still away. I don't know where he is. He has not been in touch, which is a good sign or a bad sign. So I think he's on some island. He might be who knows where he is in some expensive place. So I brought on a co-host, Scott, would approve of a young man that sounds weird. It is sound weird until you said it sounds weird. It was fine. Anyway, it's Adam Mockler, Gen Z commentator, and host of the Adam Mockler show. Talk a little bit about your background for people, though, now. First of all, I want to say thanks for having me on. I'm excited to co-host. I really appreciate how you guys do put attention on young male issues, which is obviously what you're getting towards. You guys talk about it in a very unique way, and that means a lot. I'm 23 years old, and I'm building a media company in Chicago. I've got a team of five to six crappy people. I do a lot of debates and a lot of political content online, and I've just built this over the past two to three years, but also over the past decade or so. I made my YouTube channel when I was nine years old, and I used to make Call of Duty videos. Okay. That was like decade. You're 23, okay? I used to make these Call of Duty and Minecraft videos. Many young people have experiences where they would make like these gaming videos. And that kind of sprouted into me doing political videos when I graduated high school. I would go to Trump rallies and debate the supporters there, and now it's turned to this. Now I speak to some young male issues, political issues. So, where did you go to college? You went to college, correct? Yes, in Indiana for one year, and then I dropped out after going to college for a year. It was too much of a balance between doing work. Mark Zuckerberg, little Mark Zuckerberg asked me. Something like that. Yeah, people always say Charlie Kirk, as he dropped out too into politics, but I don't know, I think Zuckerberg, I like that a little bit more. Okay. What is your hopes and dreams of what you want to make? I just want to make politics accessible for younger generation by using the vehicles to my advantage, such as short form content. Short form content is a really powerful vehicle for posting debate content and clips. And I just want to keep building my own show, my own apparatus. I worked with Midas Touch for a while, and now I'm building my own sort of machine on my side. So, my goal is to just keep scaling and expanding and making politics accessible. Right, because it's been a lot less expensive. I mean, I hate to tell you, but I happen to be the OG of this decade, two decades ago, really, when we left the Wall Street Journal. And it's very exciting. It is, you know, one of the things a lot of people who are doing this, like you are always like, oh, should I leave? I'm like, yes, like it's such an interesting time to do this. I find independent media to be unique, and you probably found this as well, because you can build a quite nimble, fast paced team, and you can scale almost infinitely with content. Like there's always another podcast to do, or hit, or appearance, or interview, and then you can post it on Facebook, on threads, on YouTube. It's like, there's so much you can scale, and you can have a really tight nimble team, as opposed to mainstream media, which there's like a few different conglomerates that own it. There's five layers of approval, if you want to ever post anything. It's a lot more nimble in this space. Yeah, I was, I was joke that I was a bad employee, and so I just left. So you're self-funded, correct? Yep, I self-fund. I reinvest the revenue from YouTube back into the business. Uh-huh. So YouTube is your principal place to do this for correct? Yep. Is there anywhere, how do you look at that? How do you think about that? My business model, I kind of look at it as a pyramid, where YouTube is my main priority, and then I trickle it down to Facebook, Spotify, and the organizations that are like audio. And then it trickles down to short form content on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and all of those. And so you make most of your money on YouTube. It is television now. I tell this to people all the time. YouTube is television free. Not just for young people, by the way, it was like, it's for young people. I'm like, yeah, but it's not. It's interesting. If you look at the change, there's more people watching my show on their TVs now. You can see on the YouTube back end analytics. There's more people watching on their TV, watch our wise, and on their phone. So it is the new television. And then I'm able to actually go on TV and do these debates and combine it with my YouTube. Right. So it's an interesting model that we're building. One of the reason I'm 10 years, I see you're very clever. You do use television as a marketing tool. Like, but how do you, where do you look at your audience? Obviously, you have probably a very low skewing demo. Oddly enough, pivot has a very low age on compared to cable. We're like almost babies. It's interesting. I actually have a pretty diverse audience age wise. I've got a lot of people in the 40 to 60 age range. And of course, a lot of people in the 18 to 34 age range on different platforms. I think there's a migration happening from places like MS now or like some of the bigger networks to digital media. And you see that in my comment section. You see that from people that said their disillusion from mainstream media. Now a lot of the big media organizations are using people online, online personalities in their shows. And it's becoming really symbiotic in a way. So I think the relationship will become more symbiotic. Like we said, independent media allows you to be so much more nimble with lower overhead. I mean, I can have a scrappy team of five people who are fresh out of college and we all are growing together while we invest a lot of our time into this ecosystem. So I think that I think that there's a lot of mileage for this independent media ecosystem. One of the big questions is during the next administration after Trump is gone out of the spotlight. What kind of what's the attention economy going to look like? Like I think everybody is asking the question about the attention economy. And I think that honestly it's probably a good thing for politics to be boring. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. But the way the environment works is going to be much different when there's not a clown cabinet in a constant train wreck to watch. Yeah. Trump has said that many years ago. I think Jeff Zucker even said it like thank goodness for Trump is really he is. People do like the show essentially they liked his original show is it is getting a little tired and weird at this point. But one last question. What do you worry about? Like what do you think you have missing or what do you worry about? What I'm worrying about a lot like what I think about most of the time is longevity in the space is building something that isn't just a quick blip that rises in falls. I feel like there are so many examples and I can't even pull them off the top of my head because they fall in a people that have this infrastructure that they're reliant on. They're reliant on one single contractor, one single gig rather than building a long term infrastructure around them that they can own and rely on. So I'm thinking about longevity. I mean Bill Mar has had his show since like the late 90s like hasn't yet a show since the early he's had it for 20 30 years at this point. Yeah, different shows of course same thing with like John. So these people have longevity in the space and that's what I'm trying to build towards a show or an infrastructure that I can own rather than being reliant on the next book or hitting me up. Right. Right. Absolutely. That's a really smart thing to think about. Are you worried about things like libel and things that stuff like that? Yeah, I have a lawyer and I we talk about it a lot and sometimes with this political space I have to either title things or use like outrageous sometimes titles and ways. That I frame things. But at the end of the day, my reporting is pretty spot on. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't float conspiracy theories. I've reject a lot of conspiracy theories that are out there. Anything about Trump's fake assassination attempts. I don't I think they were real. I think the assassination attempts were real. I think the elections have not been stolen. I'm not into conspiracy theories. I'm not into gossip or rumors. I'm generally pretty on point like like I made a video about Natalie Harp and I relied on Maggie Haberman's reporting from the New York Times. It doesn't worry me. It's rather well sourced. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And of course you still have to rely on reporters. But eventually you'll get into reporting like ultimately that's where it goes. But we've got a lot to get to today. So let's dig in. First, there's a growing concern about the 5,000 sellers aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carry which has now been deployed for more than 250. days and hasn't made a port call at least 200 days. Military families and lawmakers are sounding the alarm about food shortages contaminated water and mental health struggles. There's reports of multiple attempts by crew members to jump overboard. Defense Secretary Pete Hegg says that concern about conditions on board have been completely misrepresented and acting Navy Secretary notes the Lincoln's deployment was extended because the mission demanded it. The ship will soon be replaced by the USS George Washington. Obviously, it's complex and and and people push back against eggs that and President Donald Trump. Let's hear what he said about the Lincoln. Well, no, that ship is moving right now. Well, very shortly and it's being replaced with another very similar ship. No, no, no, not nearly long enough. So, that was something to say. I think the families are very upset. Now, also Georgia Democratic John Assof this week had some thoughts on all of this and Trump in general. Let's listen to what he said at a rally on Sunday night. And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trade stocks. So, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Amir of Qatar. I just want to explain to listeners, Natalie is Natalie Harb, Trump's personal aid, also known as the human printer. She's sort of his binky or comfort blanket, as Maggie Haberman, you speak much recently, put it. Natalie was even with him in the catering cart during his plane decoy operation last month. Talk a little bit about these stories. These are all like merging into one story. And also by the way, Maggie talked about the secret service being nervous about Natalie Harb and her love notes, she leaves for Trump all around his private spaces. Talk a little about these stories. This is bizarre, but on all levels at him. Yeah, first of all, John Assof did a really good job of weaving everything together there. I think he's a really talented communicator. Natalie Harb has been leaving a lot of these weird notes for Donald Trump saying, "You are all that matters to me." And she's inseparable from him. At a time when Mulani has kind of been missing from all these public events, honestly, putting that aside for one second, I just want to return to the USS Abraham Lincoln, because this is wild to me. The war has been going on for 170 days. These sailors, many of whom were in their 20s, like early 20s, have been trapped there for hundreds and hundreds of days with the tier rating conditions. It reminds me a lot of the prior wars. When I was really, really young in the mid-2000s, the same leaders, many of the same people would go on TV and say that this will make America more safe and protected in the long term. And we had to watch as these wars turn into grinding counterinsurgencies, whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan. We were told that we were winning. They went out there and they said, "We're winning. We killed the bad guy. It's Adam Hussein's dead." Then it turned into a grinding counterinsurgency that cost us trillions of dollars. We are seeing the same thing repeat. We have these leaders going out on television, claiming that this war is being won, that their military is destroyed. That's obviously not true. If the military were destroyed from Iran, then why is Trump still in danger? Why are Trump and Natalie Harb in this catering cart? Why is the straight-of-form moves closed? It's very clear that Iran still has a chokehold over the region. They still have enough of a military to close the straight-of-form moves, and it's not making us safer. I think there's a really strong parallel to be drawn, that a lot of millennials or a lot of people in my generation, especially people of your generation have seen, play out over the years. Being in the Middle East doesn't just make us more safe because we're in the Middle East. We have to be getting political concessions from the country. So, sorry, all of this is to say that we're not getting any political concessions out of this war. Trump is more focused on hanging out with Natalie Harb, and Americans are struggling right now. It's bad. The USS Abraham Lincoln has 20 years. Do young people think about this ship and what's added to these stories breakthrough? The war is absolutely breaking through. It's a pretty big promise that you can't ignore or avoid. It's a complete 180 from what he said on the campaign, which was no new wars. And that really bothers a lot of young people. You can see it in the way that it manifests on like Joe Rogan's podcast or Theo Vaughan. Theo Vaughan's a comedian who's not even Maga. People always try to ascribe these beliefs. He's just a dude who kind of pays attention to the news when it's there. And when it comes to Iran, he keeps saying that this is a illegal war. It's a war of aggression that it's not right. Joe Rogan has echoes similar thoughts about us being stuck. I think the broad populace of young people and these figures don't like this same war because of what I just said, the echoes of the prior wars in the mid 2000s. Absolutely. One of the things it's really interesting is I've noticed both my sons very much focused on it. And they're between your age, one is 21, one is 24. And this is at the top of mind for them. But this seems to have resonated in a way that a lot of news stories haven't. I don't, I'm not, they're aware of the Natalie Harp of it all. But I think they were super offended by the way they talked about these families. My dad was in the military and was in the Navy. And I was offended for these families. What has to occur here? And why do you imagine this is the way Trump is handling it? I think that he's kind of cornered right now. He's trapped himself and he's trying to negotiate with the carrot. He's trying to entice them via negotiations and use the carrot. It's not working. And then he's trying to use the stick and bomb them over and over. And that's not working. So he's cornered himself to a point where he's entirely trying to reject this idea that he's cornered. And it does break 30 young people. It's just such a brazen, broken promise. I also want to point out, we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this. We already spend $1 trillion per year on the interest of our national debt. Just to service our debt, we spend $1 trillion per year. It's one of the most expensive line items that we that we have on our country. Like my generation, your son's generation, we're going to have to bear the brunt of all this debt that is accumulating right now. And again, I think the most offensive part is the way that Trump and the people around him are lying about it so brazenly. Acting like it's not existing, trying to blind themselves. They have people like Caroline Levit, even the Scott Jennings of it all going out there in trying to say that there's nothing wrong that we're winning this war. It's a really sickening lie. Is it out of touch thing? Is it an age thing? What do you have when you listen to them? Or is it just they just good at lying? They're just trying to tell the party lying. You know how when we ask any Republican who won the 2020 election, they have that line that they run. They're like, they're like, most of them are trying to be a cabinet member. Say this, they're like Joe Biden was certified. They have this weird way they go around it. I think they have to tow the party line and they have to hold faith in the Iran War. But one more time, it's served 170 days ago. What do they say four to six weeks at the beginning of this? Yes, they did. And I was with actually a pretty prominent Republican center. He goes, if this is more than two weeks, Cara, everything's fucked. And I was like, I just I texted him like it's more than two weeks. It's pretty bad. Now, did you see the Chris Christie clip where he said that Trump is going to be Jimmy Carter that Iran learned one lesson from the Jimmy Carter debacle that you can hold something hostage. And if you do it for long enough, it begins to look bad for the president every single day. Oh, it's his biggest favor. I was with a pretty prominent foreign affairs. They were talking about the attempts by Iran to kill him. And they're like, why would they? He's doing he's good for them, like in terms of giving them a lot of cover and an ability to just make exactly what you're talking about Jimmy Carter. He's being Jimmy Carter. Just a deadly heart story. You get a lot of residents. It seems a little perient, but at the same time, it's weird. And she's right there. Make all the time. So does that matter to your listeners? Yeah. People find it very interesting, combined with the fact that Melania is also gone. I mean, Melania is clearly not enjoying this. And I'm not going to speculate on like what Trump and Natalie Harper doing, but Natalie Harp has been obsessed with him for years. I found this thread from decoding Fox News, a Twitter account. And they point out that Natalie Harp on OAM used to sign off her show by quoting the Bible. And sometimes she would quote Trump in lieu of the Bible. So she would either quote Trump or quote the Bible back in 2020, 2021. She's been obsessed with him for a while. And the more I cover it, the more people are rather interested in this weird note passing that's happening back and forth. Apparently the secret service, as you mentioned out, said this was sort of a security concern. There's a bunch of photos of Natalie Harp smiling at him, like that new movie obsession, you know, the new horror movie that's coming out. She's standing in the corner, like smiling at him. I swear, God, if you look at these photos, explain obsession, explain obsession. It's like, it's like a curse. It's like a horror movie where a guy wishes that his girlfriend is obsessed with him. And then turns into a curse where she's really creepily obsessed with it. And that's Natalie Harp all the time. That movie doesn't help. Anyway, Adam, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Press, I could drink Karen Levitt steps down. Support for the show comes from Mint Mobile. Kids not how to live in the moment. That's why they love summer. No school or teachers to structure their days. Well, then Freedom doesn't need to go away as you get older, especially when you actually have spending power. So, save your money the summer for the things that are fun and free and do it by saving money on your phone bill. Get the coverage you know and love at a fraction of the price. And you can do that with Mint Mobile. Right now, all of Mint's premium wireless plans are only $15 per month. All plans come with high-speed 5D data and unlimited talk and text. 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But great lawyers don't just complete tasks, they strategize. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run sub-agents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you can delegate the work and own the judgment. Harvey agents support work across fund formation, litigation, regulatory compliance, M&A and more, adapting to the complexity of each matter and the way your team actually works. Trusted by more than 60% of the AM/LAW 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work, helping teams move faster with greater precision and confidence. Harvey AI tailored for law. Learn more at Harvey.AI. Adam, we're back. Who will replace press secretary Carolyn Levitt, as is recording we don't know, Trump announced last week that Levitt is stepping down at the end of the month to spend more time with her family. She just had her second kid. Some of the rumored candidates replace Levitt, include Trump's former personal lawyer, Alina Habo, who's with him had his dancing to YMCA club in New Jersey recently. His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump and political commentator Scott Jennings, your best friend. I'll mention that after. But Scott was asked about this on CNN. Let's listen to what he said. Scott, who should replace Caroline Levitt? Obviously she is stepping down. She's got two things. And do you think who do you think, yeah, well, first of all, are you throwing her hat in the ring? Will you serve Scott? Answer the question. No, look, answer the question. I don't know, but I'll tell you this. Caroline Levitt has been maybe the greatest White House press secretary in the last 30 years, at least. She's been nothing short of brilliant. She's done it while raising a young family. I think it's great that she's going to go spend time with her family, but I don't know a single Republican in the country who isn't in all of it and an appreciation of of Caroline tonight. So Godspeed on your journey back to your family. You've done great. Do you want the job or not? Let me help Scott. Democrats are afraid of Scott Jennings becoming press secretary. There you go. Ah, I want to remind people before we get into this. You have a little history of Scott Jennings. This was so sweet. Let's listen to a clip. Scott Jennings is more than happy to defend a war with a country that starts with letters IRA that we are currently failing. That is going to put us trillions and trillions of dollars more in debt. I was only a few years old while you were in the administration defending prior endless wars. Now, this war is failing. Eight weeks is endless to you. OK, you said it was going to be four to six weeks. You have the attention span of a net. I debated you on TV four to six weeks ago, and you said we were weeks away from it. Now you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend the fact that this war is not going your way. Wait, one more time. One political concession. Yeah, get your fucking hand at myself. That got a lot of attention. So talk a little bit about that first, and then the press secretary's job. Does it matter? One way the other of Scott Jennings goes there or any of these other names we've mentioned. I mean, I think that Scott Jennings would make a perfect press secretary from all of my past interactions with him. Unfortunately, it's probably too much of a pay cut because he likes doing the media stuff where he's always towing the line. But he's really built up a unique talent that I respect in constantly groveling at Donald Trump's feet, constantly making sure he's towing the party line and kind of pivoting around questions. Even in that clip that you just played right there, you see how he very quickly brushes off the actual question and goes in to trying to sanewash in whitewash all of Caroline Levitt's history. If she was doing such a good job over the past 16 months, Donald Trump's approval rating wouldn't be underwater across every single sector, both immigration domestically, immigration at the border, immigration overall with ice, the economy, everything. When it comes to Scott Jennings, I mean, I can explain how that clip came to be. It was the Iran war putting so much pressure on him. Let me reword that him putting pressure on himself, busy kept lying about the Iran war week after week after week, and we blew through the timeline. I was sitting next to him on these panels, and he was saying this was going to be a four to six week timeline, right, four to six week war. We blew through that, and then it was seven to eight weeks, the nine to ten weeks, and we were 12 weeks in. And I would probably feel a lot of pressure too, if I were the one who had to keep lying about this war. So as I point out, he'll lie about any war that starts with the letters I-R-A, and I really do think he had cornered himself and felt the pressure in that moment. There's something weirdly fragile and not masculine about constantly trying to dish it out and be condescending on these panels, but then the moment someone tries to reciprocate, and at least press you on something, you freak the hell out. There's something really fragile and hypocritical about that, in my opinion. In that moment, what was- you handled it really rather well, and you didn't have your hand in his face. Let's be cool. That was so strange. It's like, what are you talking about? He actually got physical. I've noticed a lot of- interesting, a lot of physicality, when RFK interviewed Dana Bash, was interviewed by Dana Bash. He was moving forward. It's very strange and weird, and you're right, I wouldn't say non-mask on this, it's something weird. It's something else that's very strange. It's a very strange reaction to what I thought was a legitimate point you were making. You're very good at debate, so that probably irked him, you probably irked him in some way. The reality of it is, I had been on multiple panels with him in the weeks prior, talking about the Iran War, in every single time, I don't play the game that he plays. He plays this game where he's able to lie and dodge and weave on the panel, and then everyone collectively moves on, and it's fine, I get it. There's only so much time in the show, it's just part of the show. But sometimes, I'm like, wait a minute. I genuinely don't want to move on from this guy weaving around this right now. So I pressed him on it, and I pressed him on it, and he didn't have an answer. I think that you could just admit the Iran War is failing, and it would be much easier than blowing up and doing that to yourself. So him leaving to be pressed secretary, thoughts? I don't know, I don't think it's going to happen, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he's probably floating his own name just to create the headlines and the poster around here. No, I think he's being considered. I believe that to be true. I do think you're right, he likes media attention in mind. I guess the question would be what's the upside versus downside? The downside is that you have to constantly be a part of these clips where the media are trying to pin you down and press you, and we saw right there, he doesn't have the temper at this very moment. I don't know what's going on with me, he just doesn't have the temper. On the other side of that, he probably takes a pay cut as well, so there's a lot of downside. What's the upside? You become like a figure, and then usually you become a media figure after he's already a media figure. I don't see the calculation of becoming a press secretary. Yeah, he doesn't want to go right to dancing with the stars, like Sean Spicer, but one of the things that it isn't, I'm like, there's no plus to being on Nero's bars at the last part of it. That to me, and Scott is smart enough to do that. He's making more money for doing the same thing, basically. Right, and Alina Haba doesn't really have a lot of options, you know, and Lara Trump just likes to be, you look at me kind of stuff. So who would make a good one of these people? Is there another person you're not thinking of? I'd have to think about it. I mean, anyone in the Trump orbit who is well versed, I wouldn't be surprised if he puts like one of his ex-lawiers, like Alina Haba, could work. I saw a clip of Natalie Harp when she was an OAN anchor, that would not work. She was not very good. She was doing like a discount Tucker Carlson. Scott Jennings would be really good, but like I said, there's too much downside and good in like a infuriating way. Who do you think? Who do you think is on the top of the list? I think probably it's Alina Haba. She was sitting there kissing his ass. And you know, I just, I think she doesn't have a lot of choices and I don't think she's a lot of financial choices. See? Right. Do you think? It doesn't, doesn't matter. I mean, doesn't matter. Does, I mean, Karen Levitt is good at it, except you, I think you make the salient point. His polls are going down. So it's. It's not she's not that good, like ultimately if she's the probably she got a lot of pressure apparently she was yelled at quite a bit by him constantly. She was a little bit too obviously good at lying. It's like a bad episode of the boys. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where she goes. The reason they made her a senior advisor outside of visors is because of she gets protected in the executive, the way he said it, you know, they're all going to need. The other thing is Scott doesn't want to need a pardon, right? That's the problem. They all are going to need a pardon and I don't think you can get blank at pardons to that many people. Maybe you can. He probably could. I think there's a doubt. I think it hardly matters now after the midterms, like that's going to be a shitty fucking job for whoever it is, but it seems to me. Yeah. Caroline got it off the right time. Yeah, she really is. She's very candy that way. So let's move to the Democrats. They've officially signed off on a new presidential primary calendar for 2028 South Carolina and Nevada are now first replacing Iowa and New Hampshire as the top two. The change moves more racially diverse states to the front of the calendar, Dan C. Chair. Ken Martin says the new calendar will battle test our nominee, putting them in the strongest possible position to win back the White House. Talk about the calendar. I've heard a lot about this in which candidates it helps and it hurts. It probably helps Kamala Harris in some ways and others, but talk a little bit about because she's a known quantity down there. Talk a little bit about this shift. Yeah. So obviously folks in Iowa will be disappointed. That was a huge state in the process for a while, even in the Obama race that Iowa was like a huge turn. People there are going to be upset. I went to a lot of the Iowa primary rallies and the Iowa state fair a few years back. I'll miss it myself, but for my understanding, it's pretty simple. It's meant to empower and give more weight to black and Latino voters. There's a very big labor presence in the state of Nevada, which will be one of the earliest states, and I think the Democratic party is really trying to move in that direction. And overall, there's just a lot of distrust in the current establishment. You have to remember, and of course you remember, I'm just saying, you have to remember, in 2020, the Iowa caucuses didn't really go too smoothly. And people did just campaign, had a lot of problems. The app had a lot of problems. This comes at a time when you see the DNC not bringing in a lot of money, which is interestingly because individual candidates are bringing in a lot of money. If you look at the DNC, it's really struggling as an apparatus. But people like James Talleriko and John Alsoff are outraising their opponent. I think James Talleriko is raised $72 million or something, so there is energy, but not for the establishment, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so who does this put in a position for the nominees? You rightfully pointed out that Kamala Harris will do well. Again, there's a strong labor presence in Nevada. So it might not be the candidates that people think. When I think of a strong labor presence and who people like that vote for, it's not always inherently the more progressive candidate, which kind of breaks the archetype of a lot of people think. So I could see Kamala doing well. I could see if somebody like John Alsoff ran doing very, very well, I'm a big fan of him lately. You played that club of him. He's just so good at commuting. Yeah. Hot plant. Hot plant. He's vehemently rejecting the idea that he's going to run, is that like a game? Do they just say that they're not going to run? I don't know. I think he can't say anything because he's running for his office. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So if he's like, of course I am, then the citizens of Georgia are like, fuck you. Yeah. Well, you know, he can't. He's got to be vehement. And then he was like, oh, as I began to hear people, I understood that my future has to be with help. Is that what he sounds like? Why is he? Something like that. This isn't the head. These people wake up every morning. And as Scott says, saying, hello, Mr. President, they just do. Come on. Like, stop it. I don't know who would do well in Nevada. I mean, it'd be interesting if AOC runs, there's all men or people who have appealing in different states. I think it also goes to show where the Democratic Party is trying to move back to. We lost a lot of ground with the Latino vote in 2024, like a surprising amount of ground. And now it's immediately shifted back very much to like a rubber band where Trump's ice of raids, he sends ice surgically and intentionally into these majority Latino communities in order to intimidate and terrorize them. And then wonders why Latino communities are moving far away from him again. So I think Democrats could really make a move, realign a lot of the demographics again. We just need a strong candidate. It's going to be a really interesting ideological primary. Yeah. All right. Speaking of ideological, before we get to 2028, we've got to get through the midterms in Michigan. But Abdul El Sayed is trailing Republican microaggers by four points in the first poll since the Primero, though it's up and down, like polling market is a different thing because I don't always rely on them. By the way, you've reshared some polling numbers the other day on the Senate race and Kansas showing Democrat Adam Hamilton just one point behind Republican incumbent Roger Marshall, which is a big deal. And you said the blue wave is here, careful with the waves, as they say. So what's your latest prediction on the midterms Senate and House and how the Democratic anti-establishment and aggressive movements factor in a lot of my tweets are just formulated to be as simple as possible. So that's usually why I'm very reductive on Twitter, but listen, that's way to be. Yeah. Yeah. Listen. So I think that at the end of the day, people want change in the Democratic party. It's that simple. Democratic voters aren't reading marks and turning far left. People want change. They don't want the establishment and that's leading to more and more progressive candidates winning that can use social media in a more savvy and nimble way and have these newer platforms. I think that we're in a good spot to take over the house, come to midterms, call she and Polly market. Like you said, it's not the best indicator, but there's a lot of, there's millions of dollars. Yeah, they kind of fought up on Francesca the hog. That is bad. It's bad sometimes. There's millions of dollars flowing into some of these markets and right now it seems like Democrats have a good shot at winning the House in the midterms and the Senate is up for grabs. We want to point out with the House, we're already at a five point inherent disadvantage due to the redistricting that Republicans did. This radical, mid cycle redistricting put us at a five point disadvantage. So we have to fight back there. But I think Democrats are in a really good position. We have a lot of strong candidates. I'm not really trustworthy of the poll. I'm not trusting the polling right now nor the betting markets because they effed up with Hong really badly. They effed up with Abdul Al Sayad very, very badly. At the end of the day, Democrats are in a good position for the midterms. Democrats want change. And Abdul Al Sayad is a really strong candidate in my opinion. People keep saying that he's an example of these lefty progressive DSA members, but he's not even DSA. He's a self-described free market guy who likes entrepreneurialism. He likes small businesses. I think there's a really strong accessible version of liberalism there. Well, it's interesting because there's two, I've a friend who's from Michigan and he's said all his relatives and he's not progressive. He's a Democrat. He's a solid Democrat. He can't vote for him. These are suburban people and they're going to vote with their noses held for Rogers, which I cannot believe they would do that. I know. This is a long time Michigan there. And I was like, "Huh, interesting." Then again, my son who lives in Michigan and all his frappro friends are voting for Al Sayad and they did in the election over Hailey Stevens. Or was the issue, issues of the A-PAC was certainly an issue for them. There was a bunch of others and I'm like, "Which one is going to win here?" But they're very committed to him and I wouldn't call my son even slightly liberal. He's not. He's just not. It's a really interesting thing. I think people don't know. It's a question of how well this guy can, because if he chokes and doesn't win, he'll and it costs the Senate by one C, that'll make him sort of widely reviled. If he does, then it's what? What does it say? Yeah. Well, first of all, I think that there's still a few months left of the campaign and we just got out of a primary where there were $60 million spent against a duel, like negative spending against his character and his past and his policy. So right now, Mike Rogers on the other side didn't really have a very competitive primary where there were negative ads against him. I hope at this point, a lot of money begins to flow into the negative advertising against Mike Rogers and a duel else I add is able to consolidate some of the base. But I've heard similar concerns out of people that are voting in Michigan, people are concerned about him. I hope that as the general goes on, he's able to make a stronger case and able to continue to captivate Michigan voters. Right. They're sort of attacking him. The Trump and the terrorist communists. Yeah. I mean, they're overstepping, listen, like a really hard divisive democratic primary is always going to splinter part of the base. I'm sure people got some crazy ads about a duel coming from Haley Stevens campaign. But now we're going to consolidate. Mike Rogers is going to have so many ads going against him and this guy's got a wild pass that they're going to keep highlighting. If a duel wins, first of all, if a duel loses, it's going to broad the B.A. rebuke of not him personally, but this more progressive strand of politics. He's not even D.S.A. but he does represent a new wave of insurgent candidates. If he wins, I think it'll only further embolden that sort of movement. I personally hope it's not the D.S.A. taking over with their candidates. I hope it's a more progressive, pragmatic, liberal view of people who want to redistribute wealth. That's fine. A higher minimum wage and more health care is fine. I'm not for some of the more farther left D.S.A. ideas. Well, he is not, as you point out, he's not the D.S.A. He's not either. There's been a call for him to not stick with the Hassan Piker, another political pundit, who, by the way, may be suing Scott Jennings for defamation and correctly, so because those clips were really amazing. manipulative I would say he said a lot of he says he look he's clearly narcissistic and says a lot of like Inflammatory things but that he he should go right more forward with anything that he feels Manipulated but should should I'll say separate from him listen Hassan says things I disagree with two But that Scott Jennings clip was over the pale. It was like the most maliciously clipped-up series of events ever Yeah, I went back and watched all the real thing and I was like this. I mean he's like reading comments out of chat or whatever And then they're taking that out of context. I think he didn't know I think payaker said this I think Scott was not aware of what Hassan was doing which is that's even that's even worse in tight men You got to be more media savvy agreed stupidity is not it is not a defense, but go ahead You gotta be he's got to be more media savvy than that it might maybe if it's not malicious and I'm not sure by the way I'd say it I mispronounce you a second ago, but I think that when it comes to us on Piker a little duel There doesn't need to be a disavowal I think that's fruitless and I think it's just conceding these right-wing frameworks I genuinely think that Donald Trump surrounds himself with people that are just as like radical as us on Piker on a daily basis The way that Stephen Miller is always screaming and frothing at the mouth on Fox News every single week I mean Donald Trump surrounds himself and campaigns with many extremist radical people the Republican party is like uniting around Max Miller after he allegedly broke his two-year-old collarbone I'm not trying to compare any of that to Hassan because I'm just saying that the Republican party holds themselves to one standard And then holds a duel else I add to this impossibly high guilt-buy association standard No, he shouldn't disavow it keep campaigning keep moving forward keep laser focus on Mike Rogers I'd say that's my framework in any case We'll see what happens you you feel like he could win if he if he got through to voters and more Even with the attacks they're coming for the Republican. I'd like to think so Yeah, I mean listen Michigan is a purple state. It's a swing state and right now He's a more progressive candidate than we've run in that state in a while again There was just 60 million dollars of pretty negative spending directed at him So now he has the chance to put Mike Rogers on his back foot and spend against Rogers It's definitely possible the polling has been a bit misleading lately But I guess the rebuttal to that is it's been it's been overestimating the progressive candidates So we just have to see what happens Mike Rogers has some skeletons in his closet. So yeah, we'll see all right Adam Let's go on a quick break when we come back. We'll present and Trump help the tape brothers People are big mad about data centers in the United States this summer, but don't sleep on how mad people are about flock Floch cameras if you haven't noticed them don't worry. They've noticed you you may have heard about them in your reels or on flock talk I have never in my life been as pissed at the government as I am now that Floch cameras exist Americans are going to war against flock AI surveillance cameras and people are going around and literally Sign them down Absolutely destroying them an AI surveillance apparatus goes against the very essence of freedom and the core values of our country It's not right. It's not conservative and it's sure as hell ain't American The flocks surveillance cameras have popped up all over the nation every state but Alaska, but this year Dozens of cities and counties across the country have cut ties with flock and on today explain from box. We're going to tell you why Adam we're back with more news supporters of Andrew and Tristan Tate and want them freed many gathered outside the Miami federal detention center chanting for the release and even doing group push-ups The brothers have been in federal custody since July 18th as they fight extradition in the UK Where they face charges including rape and sex trafficking Tate's attorney has said that if the judge doesn't agree that brothers are innocent. They will go straight to president Trump's office What is the groups doing push-ups? I don't even begin to understand, but I actually don't want to understand Will Trump end up intervening here? I don't think he'll intervene in this case because he already did in February of 2025 January February and it didn't really go too well for them I've been doing a lot of coverage on this but back in 2025 early 2025 The Tate brothers are being invested by the UK and by Romania There was a travel ban. They weren't allowed to leave Romania during this investigation in members of the Trump administration Specifically asked Romania to lift this travel ban so the Tate brothers could leave during this investigation Baron Trump is reportedly very good friends with Andrew Tate and talks to him on the phone in Paul and Grasia was one of Tate's lawyers and he now works in the Trump admin And has been lobbying for the Tate brothers to be freed for the investigation to be dropped You might remember Paul and Grasia from his leaked texts about a year ago He's the one that said he has a Nazi streak in him So just some some real great gems in the Trump administration advocating for some real great people the Tate brothers They very insidiously would manipulate and abuse and basically traffic women who were in very bad positions in their lives But coerce them in the doing webcam modeling by acting like he was in love with them Then intensely intentionally isolating them from their family members and from their hometown and making sure they had nowhere to go And then this is an extensive law in order specialist unit. It's wild It's wild and like they allegedly would skim 95% of the profits off the top and just pay the women nothing and then Spread rumors about them and their family and their hometown so the women had nowhere to go It was awful then he would go brag about this and poison the minds of young men in my generation Sorry, that's a lot right there, but I'm passionate about this case right here. No, I know I listen to my sons both We both had long discussions about entertainment and Initially it was attractive. It absolutely was to a lot of people the you know the be your own man that kind of stuff But soon turn them off pretty quickly, but I remember early I was like I think these guys are really toxic pieces of shit kids But you watch them and you you make your own decisions here But this is my take as your mom. It's like attractive in the way that some of Nick Fuentes clips are attractive And I know that sounds controversial, but like it's not like it's like a guilty pleasure for a lot of people It's like I'm not supposed to be playing this video game. I'm not supposed to be playing this at midnight I'm it's even more fun. It's like agreeing with Marjorie Taylor green. You're like, oh, I'm still terrible And then there's some sort of a lord to it, but the reality is Andrew Tate is somebody who's uniquely awful because he's like living the worst stuff that he's speaking out loud some of these people are just Fakers they they're playing the role playing they're acting like they're these big tough guys who like do this They don't actually do anything Andrew and Tristan Tate built an empire based off of manipulating and allegedly Trafficking women in multiple different countries and now I have friends like reposting their reals because they're slightly funny or whatever It's so what happens Trump is not good. There's no plus to do anything though He might especially after the Epstein stuff. Yeah, it's like related to Epstein Yeah, I mean it's it's all related to each other, but my I have he might that's my feeling he might he could so the Tate Brothers lawyer Joe McBride has been trying to get a hold of Trump or Marco Rubio because Marco Rubio is the one that's in charge of Extraditions Marco Rubio said he wants nothing to do with it. Nothing, but at the end of the day I don't know I think that Donald Trump did it in the first time in an attempt to court these younger male voters Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate's lawyer has been saying that if Trump doesn't allow them to be released He's going to tell all their young fans never to vote for Republicans again So they're kind of like dangling it as leverage over Trump in the Republican party I think he would have to be pretty dumb to do it like after all the Epstein saga This would be very bad PR, but he he does stuff like that all the time then Scott Jennings has to defend it Imagine that yeah, I know right even even he did not defend I don't ever call no, he didn't know I'm saying imagine He's got a project. All right Adam one more quick break will be back for wins and fails Okay, Adam. Let's hear some wins and fails. Why don't you go first? Okay, so I'll start with the fail I got I did a seven-day trip to a few different cities multiple different hotels and I lost my car keys at some point in that seven-day trip And I flew back to a hair airport and my car was stuck in the parking garage. No keys nothing really bad situation Really bad situation to be you know, I'm only human and yes, I am like a young I'm in early 20s I'm just like your son I can be a loof. I can be a loof the win is that we've just been hiring and straining our new assistant over the past month And I asked him if he could do a favor for me. So he drove to a hair airport found a locksmith got the key and my car is now back Oh, the win in the failure a bit connected Yes, you know some of these cars you can open with an app. But may I may help you? Oh really yes, that when I lose my keys or leave them in the car you can open them with an app I believe all new cars you can do that with just that's actually a really good. That's a really good tip Did your son teach you that? No, I stopped you kidding. Hello, I don't need help with tech my friend I just I teach my son's that no my son dropped his credit card out of his pocket when he was ice climbing I could have killed him and like it went down to the canyon and I I've had to replace so many credit cards from my son Who drops credit cards? I'm not giving him anymore. I'm like get it on your phone. No, I drop him to they make him too easy to replace it Almost the center I see you can do you can get into houses. You don't need keys anymore. Let's hear your wind fail My fail today is Jason Arday and actually I'm going to link it with Hayden Panatier. I think she's, let me start with her backwards, she's just died, she's 36 years old, wonderful actor, just a lovely presence, she wrote a memoir recently, she very clear showing her struggles with postpartum depression, drinking, et cetera, there was sort of this heinous neutrogena dumpter for talking about that. I just, it's such a sad situation, we don't know what happened to her but it could be problematic, let's just say. And it's just sad. And one of the things she talked about was the relentless attacks of the media on her as a young woman. And she couldn't believe how much she'd been attacked and as an attractive young woman. And talked about it and if told it took on her. And I get celebrities not easy, but it was really, she did in a way that was really ugly and was not unable to sustain it in a lot of ways and it affected her. I'll connect this with Jason Arday who was the youngest black professor at Cambridge in the UK and he was found dead late last week. And he was under a lot of pressure because of pleasures and allegations. But the pylon, and we can debate all the nuance, there's a very good Atlantic story that debates the nuance of maybe he was doing things, taking shortcuts. At this point, I don't really care because there's a lot of white academics who get out very easily compared to this guy. The attention that this guy got was so out of size in Britain, the attacks on this guy were so oversized of his alleged crime of plagiarism and some other falsehoods that he might have told it doesn't mean you don't care about those things and accountability and academia, et cetera, et cetera. But the overwhelming ability of social media and the press, in this case, I blame the media for both of these, of just not knowing when to stop with this kind of stuff is really disturbing in every, I think we all participate in it. But the ugliness that you see here, especially with both of them and Jason more recently is really quite something has to shift in the way we cover things. I doubt it will. It's been going on forever when their tabloids have been here for a long time. But it's gotten amplified and magnified in a way that's gross and everyone who was a part of this should feel some regret and responsibility. I'm not sure they will. I feel they're families, it's just so unnecessary what's happened in these cases that contribute this kind of thing. I'm going to do an opposite win that's different. I've been watching the D23 stuff. I don't know if you are a child of Disney, but my kids, I have two younger kids too, watch Disney, my older kids watch Disney, and they're doing this amazing gathering of all these different Disney products. I have to say it's the most entertaining thing and it's not just a showcase for their talent, but it's very beautiful. Whether it's Anne Hathaway giving a wonderful speech about her career, and I know I'm being manipulated or there was this incredible song by Lynn Manuel Miranda. We sung to a song from The Little Mermaid about his career because he was inspired by Little Mermaid and Howard Ashman and others. I have to say it was just wonderful and this is when I love celebrity and I love that kind of thing. You see someone like Anne Hathaway who's grown up also in the public eye who's done, who's thrived, and Hayden who did know it. It's a really interesting week for that, both incredibly talented, by the way. So those are my wins and fails. Were you a Disney child, Adam? Yeah, yeah. I liked Disney a lot. There was a movie named Bolt about this dog. I love that movie. Do you remember Bolt? I remember watching that movie. I have four children. I know all of these. Okay, so you watched it a lot. And then a lot of the D23 stuff even excites me. They're doing all these like new casting announcements on stage where they're talking about this is the new X-Men. Yeah, they're great. I like a lot of that stuff. Is there an X-Men you object to? I think people kind of like the X-Men choices. No, no. I think it's good so far. I really liked it. I really liked the cast. I like Sadie Sink. Sadie Sink. She's really good. Yeah. And she was in the new Spider-Man movie. Have you seen that? No, I'm going to. I'm about to. Check it out. I am going to see it this week. My girlfriend refuses to watch the original Toby McGuire movie, because she says they're too corny and old and I'm like, dude, I grew up on those. How do I convince her to watch those? Oh my, she's I'm sorry. She has to watch and no wonder. Are you seeing the new one with your kids? I my one son is living in San Francisco and he's not a Spider-Man fan and the other is in China hiking right now. So he's not going to be able to do it. There are the others. The younger ones are too young to watch Spider-Man. They're not ready for it yet. They're four and six. And so they are still on in the they went to see Paw Patrol dining Island, which I am so glad I didn't have to see Paw Patrol, which I call Copaganda, is they just make a mess. The Paw Patrol people make a mess and then cleaned it up and declared themselves heroes. I hate them. I hate them. Oh my god. Paw Patrol's Copaganda. Copaganda. The cute little puppies. But they're Copaganda. I like cops, but me and they don't need more shows celebrating them and not the animals that destroy things, man. I like me. I'm for mayor, what's his name? Paw Patrol mayor. Paw Patrol mayor is mayor. Humdinger. Humdinger. Yes. Yes. Thank you for telling me that. He is so bad and I'm with Humdinger on all things. We'll move on from that anyhow. I will go see Spider-Man this week. Anyway, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com/pivot to submit a question for the show or call 85551 Pivot. Elsewhere in the Karen Scott universe this week on On I Talk to author Ryan Holliday, who's been popularizing the philosophy of stoicism through his books and his podcast and really a fan of his. And he used to have a lot of high profile fans in Silicon Valley and tech, but many of them have turned on him as they've turned toward President Trump also because he's pointing out the things they're using from stoicism. They pervert completely, which is why I love Ryan. It's it's been weird. I don't feel like I've changed that much and and it's been interesting to watch people radicalize. I talked about this in the book. I did on wisdom like watching Elon Musk go from reading Soviet rocket manuals to like getting all his news from from social media. You realize just how easily smart people can fry their brains. And I think that's kind of the main problem of our time is like how to avoid getting brainfuck. Yeah, you think that Adam. That's how you feel. It's actually very, very well said. I've actually wondered a lot throughout the past few years how Elon Musk and simultaneously be somebody who seems rather clever at times and can build and hire and push humanity in a visionary direction. But then also at such a minute level get caught up in these weird lies about like black crime statistics and trans statistics. How can you simultaneously get caught up in both of those? Well, this is your brain on drugs. I don't know just I don't allegedly, allegedly. You know, this it's more than that. It's he really was really an interesting character and not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But what's happened to him has been really disappointed for those of us who know him pretty well. The shift has been dramatic and disturbing and multifaceted. And it's it's a waste. It's an enormous waste. He's a little bit like Howard Hughes or Henry Ford. You know, this happens. This happens. Anyway, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'll be back on Friday with another special guest host. Adam, I'm a real fan. You're doing an amazing job. I think you're going to have longevity. Let me say the way you're talking about your business is really smart. And just keep changing, I would say, just keep changing and shifting. And I'm sure you'll be around for a long time. Thank you, you and Scott are huge inspiration. Thank you for having me on and I'm sure we'll cross paths again soon. Absolutely. Thanks, Adam. Today's show was produced by Lera Naiman, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Todd Wiseman, Ernie Andredut, engineered this episode in a shot curve. What is Vox Media's executive producer podcast? Make sure to follow Pivot on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.