Scott Galloway on The Podcast Presidency
49:23 Share

This episode is brought to you by GlobalX. Since 2008, GlobalX ETFs has been committed to empowering investors with unexplored intelligence solutions. GlobalX specializes in exchange-traded funds that offer exposure to the artificial intelligence ecosystem, including themes like data centers, robotics, semiconductors, and cloud computing. To learn more about GlobalX's entire suite of ETFs, from covered calls, fixed income, emerging markets, and more, visit globalxetfs.com.

20 years ago, the risk aversion level of going on Call Her Daddy or Howard Stern in a campaign would have been through the roof. It was a firing offense to suggest it 20 years ago. But I think she's been so capable about it. Again, Call Her Daddy was a masterstroke. That is going to reach 15 to 25 million listeners, which a CNN interview is going to reach a quarter of a million people, tops, on a good night.

Isn't that crazy? Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America, any conservative America, face of America. Good night, and good luck. Hey, folks, welcome back to Lincoln Project Podcast. I am Rick Wilson. I am delighted to be joined today by entrepreneur, Stern School professor,

Pivot with Kara Swisher, Prof G Podcast, Prof G Markets, No Mercy, No Malice. The man is ubiquitous in the podcasting space. He is one of the smartest observers of our culture and a business that I can think about. I'm so happy that you joined us today, Scott. Thank you for coming on the pod.

Rick, it's always good to be with you. Thanks for having me. So I wanted to start out by, because you don't have enough podcasts, a problem I'm beginning to be familiar with. You just started a new one with our friend Jessica Tarloff from Fox. Talk to us about Raging Moderates for a second, because I'm fascinated with the perspective you're getting from that new experiment. So thanks. That's a generous question. It was mostly, honestly, it was inspired by

I went on Bill Maher and I know you've been on Maher and I'm a narcissist so I merely go on to see the comments on YouTube. Oh yeah. And typically I've done well on that show. It's a good format for me. And I went on with Jess. She was the other panelist. I had never met her and I went on, got all excited and every comment was, love Jess. Jess is amazing. Gosh, that Jess is impressive. Yeah.

And so I started from a position of hate and envy. And then I get a lot of comments. This is your lane. Politics is your lane. It's not my lane. People invite me into their living room to talk about business and sometimes tag. And then when I show up in the kitchen and talk about politics, sometimes, a lot of times, it pisses half of people off because I'm center left, which means nobody likes you.

The far right calls you a libtard and says you're biased and can't see straight. And the far left treats me as even worse. It's like, we thought we could trust you. They treat you like an apostate. So there's really no room, it feels like, at least in online and social, to represent the views of what is probably the views of the majority of America.

And that is, I think of myself as a moderate. And Jess, I think, is a little bit more left than me, but she's incredibly impressive. And also, this is her domain. So just as Kara will kind of on pivot interview me about business, I basically, Jess is really the kind of the heart and soul of the show. She kind of brings a lot of data. She's a former pollster.

And we just wanted to, you guys do a pretty good job of this. I mean, I would describe you, loosely speaking, as center-right, but you try and bring a certain perspective and balance to it. And I love politics. I'm a junkie. And also, just generally speaking, there's a huge commercial opportunity in podcasts. Once you have a mothership where you can launch stuff into your RSS feed, we can launch pods and get kind of 200,000 downloads right out of the gates.

So it's a commercial opportunity. I wanted an opportunity to work with Jess and I wanted the opportunity to sort of sequester

the politics stuff such that you can't accuse me or ask me to stay in my lane with a politics show when I'm talking about politics. So anyway, right, right. No, I think you're right though, Scott, there is an awful lot of, I mean, there's nothing, there's nothing progressives hate more than a center left person. And there's nothing, uh, conservatives hate more than a center right person. The, the, the intensity fires on your own side more intensely than, than, than any other scenario. Yeah.

So, you know, but I've listened to it. I like it. I think it's going to be a great show. I think it's going to be great. I think I think the world of her, I think she's really super smart and great on messaging, great on on this sort of pragmatic messaging, not the lofty, you know, our 400 page policy paper says this. And it's much more nuts and bolts, like real talk, real people, which I think is is amazingly important.

So I wanted to ask you, since we are talking politics and you are an expert on branding and positioning in various markets, what do you think of Kamala Harris so far from a branding and marketing perspective? Not the political thing necessarily at first, but where do you think she's, how do you think she's doing on branding herself in this marketplace? I think so, and I've gotten a ton of shit for this. I don't think, I think Vice President Harris was an outstanding senator, right?

an outstanding or a solid center, solid AG. I don't think she was, and I think it's a very difficult job. I don't think she was a great VP. I don't think she presented herself that well. I don't think she was able to attach herself to any one topic and really sort of own it. And that probably, that accusation or criticism could be levied across 80 or 90% of VPs. It's a nearly impossible job. I think, and so I don't think she set herself

I don't think she set herself up well for a run. Now, having said that, I think the people running her campaign and I think her ability to follow, stay on message, I think their strategy, I mean, this is your business, Rick. I think their strategy and their positioning has been pretty flawless in the sense that

Branding is synonymous with – it basically is a catchphrase for differentiation. And they've said, okay, let's have her – I think they've totally embraced her laugh. Have you ever heard Donald Trump laugh? He's like the least humorous person in the world. And you hear her laugh and there's some joy there. I think they've tried to play that up.

I think she tries to come across as measured. I think the biggest issue of the campaign is still the biggest issue of the campaign, and that is age. And the moment she gets on stage with a guy who is going to be older than Biden and is obese and has a family history of cognitive issues, and you see this youthful, non-white, attractive woman, it just creates a kind of differentiation there.

Biden was too old to be president. Now that bug for the Democratic Party has become a feature because he's too old to be president. I think they're really smart to play offense. I think they did a pivot and they said, let's just stay. Let's just let him speak and manicure her message because sometimes she's not as good on her feet as we'd like her to be.

But I think they decided a couple of weeks ago and you're in this business. So I'd love to get your response. They said, when it's this close, you have to take risks and you have to play offense. And I think they're doing a great job getting her out there. The one piece of media that just struck me, and again, I really would like to hear your thought on this.

People aren't talking about the 60 Minutes interview. They're not talking about the Colbert interview. They're talking about Call Her Daddy. Call Her Daddy. It feels like podcasts have come out. You know, every election has a new technology. Kennedy, television, you know, FDR, radio. Reagan, cable. Obama was the Google presidency. Trump was the Twitter presidency. I think this might go down as the podcast presidency if she pulls it off. And he's embraced it, too, going on these Manosphere pods. What are your thoughts, Rick?

No, I think that's really one of the areas where she has – where 20 years ago, the risk aversion level of going on Call Her Daddy or Howard Stern in a campaign would have been through the roof. It was a firing offense to suggest it 20 years ago.

But I think she's been so capable about it. You know, again, Call Her Daddy was a masterstroke. That is going to reach 15 to 25 million listeners, which, you know, a CNN interview is going to reach a quarter of a million people tops on a good night. This is not the same. You know.

You know, it's one of those things I contemplate all the time now is, you know, the time we spend going on cable and advertising there, it's asymptotically approaching zero in terms of its ROI. You don't get the same lift anymore that you do by being able to directly have a conversation. You know, we started this podcast back in 2020 because in our survey work, in our focus group work, 65% of likely voters said they got news from podcasts. That's gone up since then.

And so I think her approach on that has been absolutely perfect. You're right. Trump is out there doing the Manosphere alt-righty kind of, you know, crypto bro podcast.

But that's because his strategy is only to reach the base, the tightest part of his base. This is a broader thing that – and it's showing her I think to very good effect because she comes across as approachable and likable and real. She drinks a beer with Stephen Colbert on stage, all these things that –

That Trump, the other part of that is that contrast. She knows Trump cannot exist outside of the weird bubble he lives in. He has to do the dances. He has to be on a stage by himself. He wants to be the star of this weird sort of vaudeville show that he does.

She's flexible. I'm and you know, I wrote this about her like four years ago and I said, you know Sometimes in debates and performances. She's a grand slam home run hitter another time She's like a 125 batter and you could never tell when it was gonna be I think she's improved dramatically on the on the Presentational front the the in the last three years. I don't know what she's been doing behind the scenes

And maybe the VP job, it's so stifling. But I think she's done very well on that. And I think you're right. This is probably the podcast presidency in a lot of ways because the rest of streaming and news is in just a ditch right now. And it's having trouble getting out of its own way of both sides in everything. And so she's done, I think, I think she's done exceedingly well because of her fluency with those things and because the other formats are just so

They don't feel relatable to a lot of Americans. But if you, the way I would describe it is, and the lesson for young people is, if you're the non-white female daughter of immigrants who came from a middle-class family and you rise to the levels of success she's risen to, you know one thing's for sure. She does the work. And when I saw that debate, when I saw that debate, what I saw was a professional who said, I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to prepare like there's no fucking tomorrow. Correct. This is important. I have the world on my shoulder. Can you imagine...

I watched her walking into the debate hall with her husband. And I thought, you know, can you imagine what was running through this woman's head? All women are depending on me. Some 14-year-old who's been raped and has no options is counting on me to protect her. The Democrats are counting on me. Biden has put his faith in me. I mean, democracy, Western nations, Europe. Can you just imagine the level of pressure?

On her shoulders. And I think what she decided was the only way I can get past these nerves is absorption and preparation, you know, absorb anxiety. And you could tell they practiced the split screen. They even practiced her facial expressions. And if there's a pivotal moment in this presidency, it will be that debate where she literally says,

destroyed him and the campaign just going back to the media strategy the campaign or a surrogate of the campaign reached out to me to ask for advice and Anytime realistically, I think 95% of the time where candidates asked me for advice They're really just asking me for money and pretending sure what I think But my one piece of I had a one-word piece of advice at this point in the campaign and was the following Rogan go on Rogan. Yeah, go on. Go on Rogan. He likes her and

He likes her. And I think some of the few voters still up for grabs are young men. Because if you look at young men, they're actually more, they're supportive. They're just as supportive of gender equality as women at that age. They're not against bodily autonomy, but they feel like the Democratic Party has abandoned them. If you go to the DNC's website, it has a section that literally says who we serve. Right.

And it lists 16 demographic groups from Pacific Islanders to veterans, to seniors, to blacks, to Asians, to veterans. And I added it up. I think they, quote unquote, serve and advocate for 76% of the population. And when you state explicitly you're serving 76% of the population, you're not advocating for 76%. You're discriminating against the 24% you don't mention. And that 24%, Rick?

is young men. And so I think there's a lot of young men who aren't moving towards the manosphere. They're progressive. They're smart. They're interested in economics. They want growth. But they don't feel seen by the Democratic Party. I don't think they're moving towards the Republican Party. I think the Democratic Party, quite frankly, with some of their messaging. We had every demographic group in the world on stage at the DNC. No one mentioned the group that has fallen furthest, fastest in the last 20 years, and that is young men. No one talked about it.

And so I think a lot of young men don't feel seen. I think the one place they're making a little bit of a mistake right now is their secret weapon or not so secret weapon against this is Governor Walz, who presents what I would call, you were talking about branding and differentiation. He presents a really wonderful point of differentiation relative to the Trump campaign advance around masculinity. And that is the Trump campaign is trying to portray masculinity as a form of strength,

And toughness, it's Hulk Hogan, it's UFC, it's not being afraid to be coarse and call it like it is, even if it upsets or offends people. And I think that Walls is talking about protection and service, serving his country, the high school football coach, the LGBTQ community at his high school. And I love this story and I can't believe I've gotten out there more.

Ask him to help them because they feel they're being bullied at school. And he puts into action his football players. And he says to his football players, you don't need to understand this. You don't even need to agree to it. But being a man is moving to protection. And that type of service and protection and a guy who could probably put, you know, you have the sense if you were.

If your car broke down on the side of the road, this guy would not only pull over, but he would know what the fuck to do. And these contrasting views of masculinity, I really do think they should be getting walls out there more. I think they've learned about podcasts. We're now getting calls from the campaign. I'm hoping walls comes on our pod next week. But this is, as far as I can tell, it's really easy to heckle from the cheap seats because

I don't know if it's David Plouffe in the background. My sense is the messaging, the strategy have been really on point. I was very disappointed in the beginning. I wanted a competition, not a coronation. But I'm increasingly impressed with how they have acquitted themselves, quote unquote, strategically or from a marketing standpoint. What are your thoughts, Rick?

I think that's right. I think they're on a constant arc of improvement in this organization. She's gaining about 1.25 to 1.5 points a week of favorability.

in the last, since Joe Biden left the race. And that is not because of an accident. That's because of a plan. And I think that they, I think you're right about Walsh. He is this appealing, avuncular figure. It's easy to think about this guy. And I think for a lot of young men, if they put him out there more, there are a lot of young men out there who are not

who find a substitute for fathers online in weird communities, you know, on Discord or Telegram or gaming that are a substitute for company companionship guidance. And I think Walsh, you know, he almost can offer that as a surrogate for the whole country because you're right. He is a person. He doesn't scan as an elitist or an East Coast liberal or any of that garbage. He's

He scans as a regular guy. He's got jumper cables in the car. He's got snow chains for the tires. He doesn't own stocks. Right. He doesn't own stocks. I mean, the guy's, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what crypto is. Yeah, he doesn't care. He doesn't care.

Folks, I want to talk to you about the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club today. This is a surprising sponsor of this show. I'm delighted to be in touch with TJ Robinson, the founder of the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club, because I love to cook. I cook a lot. I cook for friends. I cook for family. I cook because I love showing my friends and family something that I've made with my hands to show them that I love them. And I love giving them quality, fresh ingredients every time. I cook a lot of Spanish food, like paella, picadillo, chicken and yellow rice, and I

Great olive oil matters. And that's what TJ Robinson's Fresh Press Olive Oil Club delivers with olive oils that come from around the world, from Chile, from France, from Spain, from Italy. They are remarkable in their diversity and their freshness and their flavor. They're like nothing else on the market. Get your free $39 bottle for just $1 shipping at GetFresh343.com. That's GetFresh343.com.

This is a product I am not just endorsing enthusiastically, I'm cooking with it every day. So as a special intro to the club, TJ is willing to send our audience members a retail size $39 bottle of one of the world's freshest, finest artisan olive oils right from the new harvest for $1 just to help them cover the shipping. Best of all with TJ's club, there's never a commitment to buy anything.

anything now or ever, and you can cancel your membership at any time. Try the Fresh Press Olive Oil Club, folks. It is an amazing addition to your cooking and taste the difference yourself. Get your free $39 bottle for just $1 shipping at GetFresh343.com. That's GetFresh343.com. I think you're going to love it.

But that question of young men, I think you're right. I think that is a gap in the campaign still. I get that from a lot of donors that, you know, I go out and talk to donors all the time. And they always ask me, like, why are young men going to Trump? Why do they like MAGA? Why do they...

I said, look, part of this is young men are naturally like in that peak testosterone era. They like transgression. They like the loudness stuff. But it's also because they're not given an alternative. They don't have somebody saying, hey, we give a shit about you. We care about you. Don't let anybody fool you. We believe in your future. And there is a culture in –

in academia of the girls are smart and the girls are well behaved and the girls are going to excel and the boys are the problem and here's more Adderall and I think that's a bigger than a political problem it's a cultural and a societal problem but

I think you're right. That is one area where I think, and to loop back, Rogan is a guy, he has expressed admiration for her. He's been talking about how well she's doing. If she went on Joe Rogan,

I think it would have an impact well beyond even what we saw in Call Her Daddy, because that is somebody who is not perceived as on the left or even in the center, but he's got a gigantic footprint. I mean, he's the Death Star of podcasting in a lot of ways. He's a formidable reach and...

And, you know, and again, the return on investment for going on that podcast, just as the return on investment for going on Call Her Daddy is astounding. It's, you know, you couldn't buy $5 million worth of ads to reach that many people at this point. So, yeah, to a certain extent, if you want to be part of the rebel force, you have to be you have to be willing to go behind enemy lines. Sure. And the 60 Minutes interview, there was some pointed questions, but I think her going on Rogan would absolutely be.

set the right example. And there's just some crazy stats. I mean, your stat is the right one. So this is a stat I just read that just blew my mind. I think, okay, if you want to go on a political show, what is it? Well, it'd be MSNBC. Do you know the average age of the viewer of MSNBC? It's about 65. 70. Yeah. So essentially for every 40-year-old that actually accidentally turns on MSNBC, there's somebody who is dead watching it. I mean, it's just...

And I don't know. I even watch my viewing patterns. I'm no longer – I love Stephanie Ruhle. I love MSNBC. I used to watch Neil Cavuto on Fox. I like him a lot.

And I now find that thing in my living room. We turn it on to watch Premier League football, but we don't even turn it on or unless we're doing appointment viewing, watching. I just watched this script called Native or this original script or drama called Native Wins. But they're going to where the puck is. They're going to podcasts. And the question I would have for you, and it's a sincere question, she's raised a billion dollars. Other than just buying ads, where does the money kick in over the next 30 days?

A big part of it, Scott, is going to come down to the field program, which the Trump people...

have outsourced to Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and to Elon, which we can go through that in a second. But a lot of what Harris is doing now is what they call the chase, where they find out if people have an absentee vote of an absentee ballot or an early vote request. They want to make sure those people have gotten them, turn them back in. They're banking votes right now from the early voting process. That saves them a lot of resources on the advertising side, because once those people have voted,

Once those people have that vote in the bank, they move on and target other folks. They're done talking to those people at that point. So that early voting push is happening right now. It's been going on for a while now, but now that the ballots are out and being returned, we're seeing some very good success from it. Right now, about six out of every 10 ballots that are coming back are Democrat or Harris ballots.

about three out of every 10 are Trump ballots and one out of every 10 is an independent, whether it's RFK or Jill Stein or some other cat and dog.

The other part that they're going to be able to do as they get into this is they're going to drill down a lot further on digital targeting, which is what we do here at Lincoln. They're going to drill down very specific messages into communities. And it won't just be, you know, it won't just be a broad thing. It'll say here in West Allis, Michigan, we're going to fight every day or, you know, here in here in.

Oakland County, Michigan, we're going to fight every day to reopen this auto plant, to convert this to an EV factory, to train 450 new people to work in a tech fab, in a chip fab. Those things are going to get very specific on. That takes a lot of content. It takes a lot of targeting. And that's an expensive process if it's not

If it's not automated on the front end, they're automating it now. They're going to reach a lot of people at a very granular scale. And finally, you know, they will be hammering Trump where it hurts. They'll eventually go on Fox and start pounding messages into the Republican brain because Rupert will always take your money. Trump gets mad when I advertise on Fox for Lincoln. He gets so angry. He threatens to sue Fox and sue us, all these things. But Rupert will take anybody's money.

So they're going to eventually be up on Fox probably in the last 10 days to two weeks with just just depressing the shit out of Republican voters. You know, he's crazy. You know it. You know, this is over. Start over. Find the new way. That is probably going to be something that's extremely expensive. But you got a billion dollars. You can do a lot of things. They're also chasing the overseas vote.

Yeah, I'm part of that. A couple million Americans. Yeah. Yeah. I've been part of the Oversea Voters Program as I live in London. But do you, so are you feeling, one of us is just heckling from the cheap seats. That means you're the other guy. You actually understand this shit. Are you feeling pretty optimistic? Do you think it's a toss up? Like, how do you feel about things right now? Look, I feel guardedly optimistic, as I like to say. I know that sounds like it's an equivocation, but

But I look at the numbers and all the vectors are moving in the right direction for her. Favorability in particular is moving in the right direction. Trump's is all his faves have always been stuck around 43 percent. Very difficult for them to bubble up or down further. They've drifted down to about 41 percent. That's a little statistically noisy still. But hers are on an upward tick.

A lot of what I'm also seeing in the sort of polling aggregation side, the Republicans are doing what they always do. They flood the zone with inexpensive skewed polling so the aggregators all pull it into their models and it looks like Trump is more ahead than he is. I think she's going to have a big night. I don't know if it's going to be big enough, though. I don't mean that to win. I think she's going to win.

I don't know if it's going to be big enough to deter Trump and the Republican apparatus and the MAGA media machine and Elon Musk and everyone else from going out and just declaring the election was stolen. It's all fraudulent. We have to burn it all down. That's my that's my big fear right now. And I think I think it's ironic. A lot of guys in the markets are, oh, I'm still with Trump because I want a tax cut, you know, carried interest deduction, all these things.

And I asked a pretty Republican-leaning donor the other day, I said, so you do understand that stability and the rule of law is what makes your life possible, right? You understand that a rules-based economy makes your world possible. And if Trump burns this thing down—

you're not going to, it's not that you're not going to get a tax break. It's that you're not going to have a stable economy and your business is going to suffer. And that's a cognitive split, Scott, that I'm just not sophisticated enough with a lot of these money guys to understand like,

How do you argue the case to them that the indulgence of Trump in their minds is a bad economic decision? That's what I'm just – I'm curious if you have any thoughts on. Well, I think you're zeroing in on one piece of soft tissue. I don't think they're pressing hard enough. And I realize that the cruel truth of capitalism is you have only a finite amount of capital and you have to pick your punches in terms of messaging. The two things I think they should have dialed up more were that if in fact Trump –

lives up to his word and he places the kind of tariffs they're talking about. The argument the Trump campaign is making is that if we've been taken advantage of by these foreign countries and that there's an asymmetric trade relationship

And we need to put massive tariffs on EVs and imports. And that'll make American products more competitive globally. And it'll bring back jobs to America. What it fails to acknowledge is at one point, I thought I was a pretty good boxer because I paid a guy to spar with me and he would never hit me back. And then I entered a boxing tournament. And I don't know if you can see this, but my nose goes to the right. And that's because the first time I entered a boxing tournament,

I heard a bell ring and then all I saw was bright lights because I got in the ring with someone who would hit me back. And what Trump fails to realize in his tariff proposal is that foreign nations will hit back and start putting tariffs on our products. So what tariffs do, unless it's totally asymmetric and you're trying to make sure you're not outsourcing pollution or there is an unfair tariff,

they're dumping steel, whatever it might be, is it just raises prices for everyone. And then if he puts in place a fraction of the anti-immigration policies he's talking about, you want to talk about the peanut butter and chocolate of trying to restore inflation to 5% or 7%, then just cut down on legal immigration and put in place tariffs and boom, overnight,

you're going to have runaway inflation. Now, the thing they're not talking about that shocks me, and it's always, when you talk about catastrophes that have really hurt economies, it's never the shit you see. Generally speaking, the things you're worried about don't come to fruition because by virtue of being worried about them, you prepare for them. When you're worried that those reeds kind of flowing in the wind because there's a lion behind it, you avoid it.

You avoid that part of the jungle or what have you. The thing we're not talking about that is, in my opinion, a real threat to the U.S. economy and ranks as number three on the list of concerns among young voters is the deficit.

We're taking in $5 trillion in tax receipts a year. We're spending $7 trillion. And we're using young people's credit cards. We're basically, your and my prosperity, to a certain extent, is a function of us living in the greatest nation in the world, being smart enough to be born in America in the 60s. We're both really talented. I'm not a humble person.

But right now, a lot of our prosperity or wealth maintenance is being propped up on a younger generation's credit card. Sure. And that is rather than face the music of maybe the economy slowing down or having certain industries go out of business, we would rather borrow $2 trillion a year on their credit card. You know, we're in the club ordering rails, you know, cocaine and champagne. And the closest a younger generation gets is they get to throw their credit card in and we run it up.

This deficit spending is not sustainable. And I just wonder if she should have come out and said, look, we're going to have to address the deficit. We're done shortchanging young people's future for our prosperity. We need to get serious about the deficit. Are we going to raise taxes and cut spending or cut spending? The answer is yes. I think that would have gone a long way. At some point, there has to be an adult in the room that says, we're not managing our household finances properly.

It is to my mind, you know, as a former conservative activist, political consultant and all that,

The deficit for a long time, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, we had zero interest lending basically from the Fed to a lot of people. A lot of money flooded the system. And they thought, OK, we can keep doing this forever and ever and ever. And what was a billions problem became a trillions problem. And now the curve is almost vertical every – if you look at it on a two or three decade basis –

The curve is going to keep rising, but at some point, you run out of other people's money. And I think you're- It's the Margaret Thatcher quote, right? About socialism? Yep. And at some point, we've socialized a lot of lending, especially to the, honestly, to private equity side and the market side.

That where they could access a lot of capital at very, very low costs. And, you know, I don't think that's a bad thing, by the way, in a functioning economy. But it ends up going back into a deficit that we are absolutely unable to address. And, you know, if we're lucky, you know, we sort of –

have a hard-ish landing by cutting spending, by raising taxes, and nobody wants to be the one to start. Democrats don't want to cut spending. Republicans don't want to raise taxes. And the deadlock in Washington of politicizing both those issues is too tempting and too appealing to give up the issue for a lot of them.

And that to me is it is not responsible. It is not mature. It is not how a functioning government works, but it is how the sort of crude political calculus on both sides of the equation see it. You know, Republicans are like, oh, that Republicans did a great job of convincing middle class voters that the carried interest deduction is like a heart and soul for their prosperity or that or that.

that the 2017 tax cut really, really helped just them. And Democrats are great at saying, no, we can't cut this. We can't. There's nothing in the government that's fat or we can split down. Even though Bill Clinton had a pretty aggressive cut program in the first part of his administration that actually built out a pretty decent trend line on the deficit. Remember that? Budget surpluses? Crazy. It's not impossible.

No, it isn't in an economy this robust that's growing this strong. I always fear that anything that the far left and the far right come together on is just a really bad idea. Economically, the far left and the far right come together. We have minority rule, far right, far left, because of gerrymandering and Citizens United, crazies on both sides of the party kind of dictating our national agenda. Yep.

And the two things I see them coming together on that are most dangerous in my mind are economically, we want to cut taxes. We want more social programs. I know let's do both and run up the deficit. That's how the far left and the far right come together is the only thing that passes for bipartisan cooperation is reckless spending. And then the other thing, a more serious issue is I see the far left and the far right coming together on anti-Semitism. And if you look at the darkest moments in history,

The extremists seem to find on both sides, seem to find an excuse to go after a special interest group and demonize them. And that's where shit gets, you know, that's where history starts to go really dark. So I'm sure I'm wary if I can get AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ted Cruz to agree on anything. I don't care what it is. It's a bad fucking idea. Because when the when the extremes come together, it's usually on something really, really awful.

With an hour before boarding, there's only one place to go. The Chase Sapphire Lounge by the club. There, you can recharge before the big adventure. Or enjoy a locally inspired dish. You can recline in a comfy chair to catch up on your favorite show. Or order a craft cocktail at the bar.

Whatever you're in the mood for, find the detail that moves you with curated touches at the Chase Sapphire Lounge by the club. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.

This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com.

There is a sort of weird horseshoe effect that's happened, I think, on the left and the right, on anti-Semitism in particular, because the most virulent anti-Semites I see are from the alt-right on the far, far, far right, and from the hyper-progressive Palestinian far-left types inside the democratic world. And those folks have a

That Venn diagram overlaps way too much for comfort when it's they run the media, they control the world, they run the banks, they must be driven from Israel. That to me is something that I think you're right. That should be a caution to anybody who looks at

who looks at that flavor of extremism and doesn't see a warning like – there's some of it on economics too. I mean, Donald Trump is more of a statist on economics in a weird way than Bernie Sanders is. But there are people on the far, far progressive left and the far, far right who now believe that we should be in a post-capitalist, post-free market economy world.

And maybe they approach the end state differently, but it's a bad plan no matter how you slice it. I'm shocked at how when I think about – so first off, there's some messaging around the most ridiculous things that they both – whenever they both agree it's a bad idea. Cut taxes, no taxes on tips. That is such populist bullshit. Yeah.

2% of America makes their living from tips. The vast majority of them don't make enough money to pay a lot of federal income taxes. And let me get this, the waiter's going to get a tax cut, but not the dishwasher? Right. I think neither has had a very cogent argument around taxation. And here's the problem with on the left when we're perceived as like, oh, okay, the rich need to pay their fair share. Here's the bottom line. The quote unquote rich pay more than their fair share.

If you're a workhorse, and this is the dirty truth about taxes that we don't like to talk about because it's not a populist argument. If you're rich, I call them workhorses. Mom's a baller. She's a partner at Skadden Arps running the M&A transaction group, makes $4.5 million a year. Dad is a chiropractor, has four chiropractors working for him, opened a second clinic. He makes $700. They're making $2 million plus a year.

incredibly hardworking, incredibly well-certified, probably live in a blue state in an urban center to get that kind of salary. They're probably paying between 47 and 52 cents on the dollar in taxes, all current income.

If they make the jump to Lightspeed and start rolling up chiropractic clinics or make all their money buying and selling assets and they're not tethered to any one locale and they piece out to Austin or to Palm Beach, their tax rate plummets. And I've been very open. My tax rate the last 10 years has been somewhere between 17% and 19% because I'm now –

I make my living buying and selling assets. The top 25 wealthiest Americans pay a tax rate of somewhere between 6% and 8%. Corporations are paying their lowest taxes in history. The tax code has gone from 400 pages to 4,000, and that incremental 3,600 pages was not there to help the middle class. And so what they need to make is a nuanced argument. And I think the right messaging would be, I can lower everyone's taxes as long as everyone pays their taxes.

And that is we get – it's not tax rates that are killing us. It's the tax code. And the tax code has been weaponized by the super wealthy. The workhorses are paying their fair share. But once you make the jump to light speed, you're not in the top 1%, but the top 0.1%, you can do things like 1202, the last business I sold.

the first $10 million was tax-free. That makes no damn sense. And they say, "Well, Scott, entrepreneurs wouldn't start companies if we didn't offer these incentives." I don't know a single entrepreneur that can tell you the tax rates when they start a company. But then when I sold my company, I found out, "Oh no, first 10 million tax-free." That makes no sense.

carried interest, you obviously bring us the most ridiculous one. Commercial real estate or real estate holdings, you can roll tax deferred into another asset. I mean, there's just so many goodies in there for corporations and the super wealthy that just the workhorses, the wealthy don't get to take advantage of. And so when they come out and start saying rich should pay their fair share,

You have a lot of people who are wealthy, making really good money, who go, what are you talking about? I'm living in Short Hills, New Jersey. I'm commuting into New York. I'm an investment banker. I'm working my ass off. I make a really good living. No one feels sorry for me. But I'm paying 50 cents on the dollar, boss.

And the reality is the poor pay more consumption and usage taxes. Correct. The bottom 50% effectively pay no federal income tax. So while it's a fun populist argument to pretend that the wealthy are climbing over the poor in terms of taxation, it's really two spots. It's corporations and it's the super wealthy. And without a nuanced argument, you lose a lot of wealthy people who say, you know what? I don't buy this whole tax argument. I'm paying 50 cents on the dollar.

There should be, now I get into policy. I think there should be an AMT. You make over $2 million a year.

there should be an alternative minimum tax of 30%. Just no matter what loopholes and how smart your tax people are, you got to pay at least 30 cents on the dollar. And I think most people would say, okay, that's reasonable. But instead, we don't have one nuanced argument. The left is seen as populist. It turns off a lot of people who have worked hard and are paying too much in taxes. And the far right continues to throw in goodies for the super rich. From a brand standpoint,

The best branders in the world are the tobacco companies. I would argue the alcohol guys. My industry is great at branding. The best brands in the world are academic institutions. And the other one really is the Republican Party because I think they primarily represent corporations and the super wealthy. And yet every year they get 47 or 48% of the voter, you know, of the voting population because I think Americans are so optimistic. They think, well, at some point that will be me. I want to lower incremental tax rates on millionaires because at some point I might be

a millionaire. But I think the place, we really haven't had a serious conversation around economics and neither party has been taken to task on economic policies.

You know, James Carvell said it's the economy, stupid. This is really more about the perception of the economy. But no taxes on tips? Jesus Christ. Don't waste my time. That's just a stupid populist argument that makes absolutely no sense. It's no coincidence that the single highest paid lobbyist I know

who has a very bespoke practice in Washington, is a guy who is a tax attorney and a lobbyist, and he writes tax exemptions into the code for extraordinarily powerful people and corporations.

And, you know, for them, it's pennies on the dollar or it's pennies on the million for the kind of benefit that achieves. And I think the tax code itself is so mysterious and so opaque that it does make people, you know, it does make people feel like there's something really shady about anybody who makes a living over X dollars. But it is something I think that

So hopefully, you know, we're going to have to face it. I mean, I hope we don't have to face it because of an economic crash due to the fact that we're going to run out the national credit card at some point. And by the way, for listeners, Donald Trump cannot just, as he said, write a little crypto to cover the national debt. That's not how this works. Right.

But it is a conversation we need to have as a country. Well, every fiat currency in history, every one of them has eventually failed because the political pressure that tends to be short term is to print more money. I mean, this is what happens. This is how it plays out. At some point,

We have a failed treasury auction where someone says, we're just not going to buy your debt for 6%, 7%. Yeah, the Chinese go, no thanks on those T-bills. Yeah, we're out. And then all of a sudden, we have to pay a lot more in interest and we blow an even bigger deficit and have to print more money. And we start this crazy upward or downward spiral, whatever you want to call it.

But no fiat currency has ever survived long term. And you can see how this happens. What's happened for us, though, is the dollar hasn't lost relative value. It's actually gained in strength because every other nation is engaging in the same short-term sugar high. But to me, this is the threat no one is talking about. You can't spend $7 trillion and take in $5 trillion. I mean, imagine the US was a household.

It makes $50,000 a year. It spends $70,000. And it has $320,000 in debt. What happens to that household? And every day they get new offers for credit cards that say, sign up and we'll let you roll your credit into another credit card. At some point, those mailers stop showing up and your credit card does not go through the next time you're a Trader Joe's. The question is when. But my guess is it happens...

It's impossible to predict when it'll happen, but when it happens, it'll not only be scary for our economy, it'll be scary for the world economy because the US economy really has been just an unprecedented juggernaut relative to all the other nations. The other thing I can't get over is people complain about the economy. Now, the way I would describe prosperity is that

It's similar to the future. It's here, it's just not evenly distributed. But if you look at our economy right now, Rick, we have grown since COVID about 9% GDP. The Eurozone's grown three to three and a half percent. Germany has had negative growth two years in a row. The UK hasn't grown in five years. China has shed $3 trillion in market cap. We've gained six... I mean, there are 190 sovereign nations, 189 would kill...

to have the economy of the United States right now. 100%. And the notion somehow, we've pulled off this Goldilocks economy. We have the strongest growth, yet we have the lowest inflation. An economist would tell you that is a nearly impossible needle to thread, and yet Americans feel really bad about the economy because it's not evenly distributed. And there's this weird phenomena when

The price of, when I get a raise, it's because of my character and my grit. But when gas or diaper prices go up, it's the government's fault. And what you've had in the last year

is wages are up 4%. Inflation is almost down to its target level of 2%, it's about I think 2.2 or 2.3, which means purchasing power and prosperity are growing, but nobody credits the government. And other than I would say the deficit, which I think is a real issue, Chairman Powell, you got to give the White House some credit, Congress, whoever you want to talk about. And I don't know if it's AI making us more productive.

But you have what is literally right now the Goldilocks economy. And I get attacked for this because people say, Jesus Christ, dude, I can't pay my student loans. My kids don't have that much opportunity. It's not evenly distributed. But on the whole, this economy is probably as strong as it's ever been relative to ever. Remember that China was supposed to overtake us by now? Remember when I went to business school in the 80s, Japan was winning? There is nobody close to...

to America right now in terms of how robust and resilient our economy is. It is literally, Chairman Powell has put on a, people ask me, what do you think you should do with interest rates? I'm like, whatever the fuck he thinks. This guy is literally the Yoda of a modern day economy right now. He really is. But,

And look, it's the underpinning of every campaign at the end of the day is the economy. But with that, Scott, we got to wrap up. But I want to thank you so much for coming on the Lincoln Project podcast today. Tell folks where they can find you on socials and where they can hear you on your constellation of podcasts. Yeah, I'm like AOL in the 90s. To resist is futile. You stick your hand into a cereal box, you're going to pull out one of my podcasts. I have...

The Prop G pod, the new pod with Jess that you were kind enough to talk about, Raging Moderates, Kara Swisher, who started it all for me in podcasting. We co-host Pivot. I have a newsletter that goes out to half a million people a year, excuse me, half a million people a week. It's free. It's called No Mercy No Malice.

books, you know, X, Y, and Z. I'm literally the whore of all media whores, Rick. So I'm impossible. It's not where do you find me? It's where do you avoid me, quite frankly. Yeah, that's right. Too bad. I'm everywhere. Get used to it. All right. Well, Scott Galloway, thank you once again for coming on today. And I will talk to you again very soon, my friend. Thanks, Rick. Thanks for your good work.

The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln Project production. Executive produced by Whitney Hayes, Finn Howe, and Joseph Warner-Chamberlain. Produced and edited by Whitney Hayes and Jeff Taylor. And good luck.