Transcript for Tech Stock Slump, Staff Morale Down at the FTC, and Guest Tripp Mickle

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No, no, never.

Not once. Not once.

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Um, so today we'll talk about Amazon's rough quarters. See what's coming for the market. That's a big deal. Also, the FTC could use some TLC and we'll speak with journalists, trip, make a lot about his new book after Steve, which charts the difficulties had Apple after its founders passing. I had an interesting short meeting with Lorraine Powell jobs. We're going to do something really cool. Hopefully it code. So I was thinking about Apple a lot this week.

Yeah, I did. I had a great time. I, of course, didn't dress up at all. Everybody else did. I did not go to the White House correspondent center because I did think it was a COVID suit of a situation. I hate it in normal times. And so I did not want to go in these times because it's this sort of, is the Washington Health and Ballroom. And it's, I just don't like it.

No, I won't that was indoors. It was like totally utterly indoors, and it's like feels like you're inside of a petri dish. It just does in general times. This a lot of the stuff was outdoors, which is great by the waterfront in Georgetown. There's one at the French residents that was fun. There was one over the other one. I don't know. I went to a lot of parties and they were, they were nice. And I set myself out on the patios and just had people greet me and stuff. And I got to tell you Scott.

That is correct. That is correct. That is what I did. And received people. I received people. That's how you do, you know, I learned that from one of these, one of the big agents I can't remember, which one it was. He said he sits in a place and he waits for people to come to him. He doesn't mingle.

Yeah, okay. In any case, it works.

We have so many fans. I can't even tell you, it was crazy. It was really good.

Well, not you, us, a pivot. Diane Lane likes our show all these time. Yeah, I know, right? Like from a little romance and Simone Sanders used to work for come there as she was bowing. And everything, it was really quite this cron, oh, I met Jen Psaki. So that was interesting. She's very impressive.

She is going. Yes. And then I ran into Kevin Cistern was there, founder of Instagram. Susan Wajiski was there. There were a lot of internet type people there, which was nice. Senator Klobuchar was at the summit some of the things from the parties. Senator Klobuchar was at the summit some of the things from the parties. Senator Klobuchar was at the summit some of the things from the parties. Yeah, everyone was, everyone was loving on Pivot. I have to tell you.

Pivot. Pivot. They were, we are famous in a very weird way, especially among like, like TV personalities, hung out with Don Lemon a little bit who looks good. He Lemon. He looks great. We gated up him and his husband and I and Amanda, we gated up. So it was good. It was very good.

Well, yeah, that's okay. I think it's okay these days. It doesn't really matter. I met Tony Blinken, Secretary of State. That was nice. He isn't impressed. He isn't impressed. He's very handsome man. He's got very good hair. It just was. I can't remember now at this point. Oh, and then Tammy had it. Do you know how this white house is in her brunch? Tammy didn't invite me. That was Tammy pretends to like me and they could have come. You could have come. You could have come. This is the famous one that she's had every year and it was great. It was all outdoors too. It was a Mrs. Graham's old house, which was, you could be indoors. But I was, they're just beautiful outdoor air. They had a tent in open tent and everything. And it was, I had been there a million times when Mrs. Graham was living when I worked at the Washington Post in my 20s. They had different events there. And it was great. It's the sold house. Nobody lives in on the in the zone by this kind of mark. I knew in the Washington City paper. And it was cool. It was cool. It was very. It was nice for chat with everybody. It was nice. Don't know what I did. No.

You don't know what I did. Yes, what did you do?

Man's miserable fire. That's so nice. That's not what we did. We had we were fancy a man and I were fancy this weekend. We had baby sitters. We had babies.

It was a bad look for much of a fish. There wasn't a lot of Republicans there. I'll tell you that. There were very few. Right. And apparently went to the big one. I saw him on the diet as there.

they were there were a lot there was I've subred bear hold a bunch of I don't think Sean Hannity was there in any case speaking of the White House workers behind union drives at Amazon and Starbucks maybe visiting the lighthouse that of course was president Joe Biden he was very lively at the thing and and this is a this is a big move by him and it does in weird ways relate to Elon the reason he doesn't mention Elon is because it's not a unionized shop but I think that's wrong because Elon is clearly the the pioneer in electric cars and autonomous. I think it's really petty on their house, as I've said. But in any case, they're bringing in, it's unconfirmed, but it becomes the past as we reversal from previous statements to Biden administration would not pick sides in the union efforts, of course they are. So they may be at the White House. What do you think about that?

Yeah, we'll see. And that was an interesting story. And there is a lot of, listen, if you work at a media organization where there's a New York Times or box, you feel the strength of the union coming on. Within, I've talked to lots of managers, lots of media organizations, and they are definitely I think it's been a difficult road for, in general, to understand what's happening. So I don't know, we'll see where it goes, and it is led by what, it's two times the article talked about. And so we'll see where it goes. And I think you could really read life into, as you said, into the Union.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But some of it, not all of it, you know, I think I had to forget. Anyway, we are not in the Union, but I have been in unions before I have said view. In any case, it's an interesting time. We'll keep watching that with the White House, and especially if they focus in on Amazon and Starbucks workers, which I think are seeing the most activity, obviously Apple workers, Apple store workers too, and some others. But Amazon is where the action is really, and Starbucks.

That is bad for humor. Bad labor humor. Also Warren Buffett had some harsh words for investors looking to make a quick buck. The Oracle of Omaha, he just had his meetings at the stock market has become, quote, almost totally a casino, meanwhile Charlie Munger, uh, lashed out at Robin Hood, which he said encouraged gambling mentality. He also had some words for Bitcoin, which then at Elon Musk attacked him for being old. I don't know why he's doing that. What a surprise. But that's not to say, Buffett and Company hate gaming per se. He revealed that he had a 9.5%, 9.5% in Activision, which was interesting, which means he's done rather well. He said the buys are his bet that Microsoft deal will close. I guess he just did it. Interesting, Warren, I like when Warren Buffett. I like when people got mad at him. I like his whole grumpy man thing, older man thing. So what do you think about this?

You haven't had dinner with him. Yes, he does.

He has meal a giant plate of French fries potatoes and half of my meal, but go ahead. Fine. I can't believe he doesn't. It just hasn't exploded, but go ahead.

It's very strange to call there. I called her to begin with sort of early in the internet phase because he was very anti internet, which I thought was a wrong call by him because he he said he didn't understand it and I get that if you didn't understand he missed quite a lot of upside by not being as big an internet. That's obviously but he's an activation here. So I called him to ask at a quote when I was at the journal. At the time, I was like, this guy should be in the internet space. He thought it was also a casino much of it. And much of it was some of it was. And I called said, I thought I was going to PR person, right? So I called in. I got his secretary directly. And then he comes on the phone. Yeah. He was like, hi, Kara. And I'm like, hi, Warren Buffett. It was so strange. And that's happened several times. How old is it now?

I don't know. This was many, many years ago, but I had dinner with them in relatively recently before, just before.

This is record. This is record. This is like cryptocurrency.

Yeah, I thought I think they could consider it. Both of them should consider it at least. You know what I mean, and not It's not similar to what they did around the internet, but like you couldn't, I'd like to hear what they think actually looking at it. That's what instead of doing sort of a broad brush, I would have liked to hear their thoughts on it.

people saying I'm the new Warren Buffett and now now Warren Buffett is still Warren Buffett and yeah I would agree some marathon not a sprint yeah good friend yeah yeah yeah it was interesting I still think you should reconsider cryptocurrency anyway let's go to our first big story The 2022 Reaper has come for Amazon, and the Commerce Giant issued a disappointing earnings report last week. Some low lights, Amazon missed its earnings target. It reported a loss of nearly $4 billion for the quarter and had it slowest year over year growth. In two decades, it's probably not surprised coming out of the pandemic. The market took notice on Friday, Amazon shares fell by 14% wiping out over $200 billion of its market cap. It did a Facebook face plan, essentially. That's the stock's biggest one-day decline of 15 years, and Amazon's not alone in April was Nasdaq's worst month since 2008, and there could be more bad news for the stock market, which many people have been predicting a correction of a significant amount. If that's expected to raise rates, because of inflation on Wednesday, it's going to be doing a lot of raising of rates. What do you think? Scott, what do you think? Give us some little Scottness. I'm just going to give a couple more facts. Nasdaq composite, more than 45% of stocks are down 50%. more than 22% of stocks are down 75% and more than 5% of stocks are down 90% this is from Scott Galloway. So give us your pontificate, please, if you don't mind.

Because I'm just going to look at Tesla today, but keep going.

But Andy has resisted as you remember in an interview with me. Nothing like

They're really impactful on their actual business. No, doesn't make their actual business look a lot better. It really helps it.

You know, he ran AWS for those who don't know that. He was one who thought it up and ran it and created it. I think he's a Tim Cook such in a Dell a like operator. It's not worried about that.

They have, they have, and they have indeed. Although I'm just noticing Tesla's down just a little bit today. I thought it would go down more, but it has not.

that has not gone into recession. And to re-calibrate supply and demand, in other words, is what you're saying. There's so much demand and little supply, et cetera, et cetera.

I am returning the oligarchs. Yeah, I bought you. Did you? That's right. Finally, investing in our relationship. And now you made me worry. Yes, that's the Alice. I'm on a boat. Oddly, it came with a torture chamber below, but I thought you could use that. Enjoy.

All right. You know my safe word, right?

That's good. That's good. Um, okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Low morale at the FTC. We'll speak with a friend of pivot. Trip, nickel.

Scott, we're back. The FDC could use a morale boost. The survey found that employees, opinion of Cedarney leaders, dropped between 2020 and 2021. The yearly necond took over his chair and fewer than half of the FDC staffers who responded said they had a high level of respect for senior leaders and response content agency wide email committing to facilitating positive change. New leader. She's supposed to be an ambitious regulator, has not been able to do what she has said she wants to do. Lots of reasons. So what do you think? What do you think? Or is she just forcing them to do their jobs? So she's pursuing cases, but there you haven't had this sort of big, you know, high five win anywhere.

Yeah. It's put in charge.

And I think it has to do with them not having any wins or movement, but whose fault is that? Well, it could be hers. It could be these they were pushed back on the Facebook deal. By Judge and they had to redo their homework. She may be like it did bad work before, which they did. And maybe that they don't have any, they had a win. I think they'd be very happy. It's just that there's not these cases are going forward, but it's slow going. The court cases are problematic for them. The judges are problematic. But one of the things that FTC employees complained about is lack of information they get from above. It could be due to remote work. It could be pandemic related like coming out of the pandemic. I don't know. There's, it's, there's so much demand for anti-trustlers on the other side. Maybe that they are leaving. But the rates are the same of people.

What would you do if you were there? If you were there, lots of people come into agencies with very little. You know, repeated Buttigieg is running the department of transportation.

He was, he was at one of these parties, by the way. Yeah, he was giving an award to some veterans at Tammy's party. Um, you know, he is he's in charge of like the infrastructure money. I was I was sitting there and someone was making a joke about South Bend or I was like, oh my god, this guy is this guy qualified to give away all that money. I think about that all the time.

I think about all these people that Trump people put in who are holy. Okay, you're making my point. That's destiny. I think the federal government has that feels overwhelmed and especially the FTC. When I interview her, I felt, remember I said she seems exhausted already. She seemed overwhelmed. She seemed She seemed I would say over her head because she's intellectually rigorous. It was she seemed like she got in there and it's like we can't do anything like they're they're they're inert and I think if you work in a place like that where you dock it you're not getting they haven't gotten the funding because it got sucked up into one of the bills. You didn't pass. You're not getting any kind of wins. You're not getting any if they had a win they'd feel better in severe care.

Well, I don't know. I think people are feeling bad about working for the federal government. I think, and also, let me just say, again, let me compare her to Pete Buttigieg, which is a much bigger job. I'm sorry. If you're going to talk about qualified, and neither of them is qualified, really, in that regard. And by the way, I think they're both perfectly competent. So I'm not sure there's sort of been a good question. What is that?

I don't know. I don't know if they do those, but she should, she should need to step up. She can be inspiring. I still think part of it has to do with who is this young woman of color who just came in here and is telling us what to do. Do you think there's a bias towards her by the right file? I have seen it myself in my own in places I've worked. I've watched it. And it's really, it depends on who's saying it. You know, if you see her no diverse rack that and she looked like a search for. I don't know. I don't blame that for everything, but in this case, I believe me I don't. There's bad managers of all kinds. Anyway, she's got to get it around because they've got some real challenges. They need to get some wins on the board period.

They have cleaned up some previous stuff. That's done. Cleaning up is not enough and getting it moving forward. But a win, no. All right. So now, let's bring in our friend of Pivot trip, Michael is a technology reporter at the New York Times, an author of After Steve, a new book that charts the tensions between Tim Cook and Johnny Ive in the years before Ives departure from Apple in 2019. Welcome, trip, Michael.

No problem. So I've been thinking a lot about Apple this weekend. I've been thinking a lot about code conference, for example, and I haven't been thinking about how to think about Steve after Twitter. It's my 20th year of doing this. And he was a very first speaker at our first code. So I want you to just give us an idea of what your, this is after Steve that the time after, which has been a long, long time, by the way, he died a very long time ago in real terms. And in terms of Apple, a very long time ago. So can you talk a little bit about sort of your premise of the book?

So you felt that I would point to what you just said apples never been bigger never been more powerful never you could create a company out of you know the software and services has been nothing short of a miracle what they've done they're never good at that air pods all kinds of things so This romantic idea of apple, which I've covered since a very long time. I'm very old. I always found a little twey, honestly. So talk a little, I did. I was like, oh stop, but just makes, you just make stuff. So why is that? Why was Johnny so important in that regard? What is missing given the results are pretty damn good?

So you think they aren't as creative. You left out ping. I don't know why. There's social network that lasted 14 minutes. But you think that that has been missing here despite the financial success of everything. I was like, you could say the model T is the foundation of the car industry and they people have managed to figure out new and better ways to do it. But you think that it's missing this. deadly for it, or just the way it is.

And what's the negative in that, I think, also, what is the negative part of that?

Yeah, one of the, we talk about the glasses then, because I think they're closer to that, that the idea of the AR, because I've seen Tim in the interim, but one time, many, many years ago, all he could talk about was AR and Auburn football, which neither, I was interested in the first, not so much the second. Can you talk a little bit about the glasses, because that seems to still be illuminating a lot of people there I talk to, this idea of of eight AR glasses, not VR glasses, but AR glasses, where that is.

Do you? Who is the Johnny I of that company then? Is there one or do they need one? Obviously, there's no right way of leaving a company. He was such a legend there. No matter what, he's, you know, as a person, he's so interesting compared to most of the executives there. And Tim goes out of his way to be dullish, right? Trying to be sort of quiet and kind of brainy. Is there someone there that fulfills that role?

Anybody?

But nobody like a Johnny I've character, correct?

I can't think. I did have to buy someone like Snapchat or something like bring an Evan Spiegel who's quite creative or, you know, get a could of bought Instagram, Kevin Cistrom. You could, those are kind of more creative types of people. Scott.

No, no. It was everyone thought he was going to fail. I remember that time, they thought they couldn't do anything without sea jobs. One time when those stories were going around when he was sick, one thing he did say to me, he's like, I'm not Willy Wonka. He was trying to sort of disabuse people from that he was the only factor that mattered here, which was unusual because he was also somewhat of a narcissist. So it was an interesting thing that they have managed to go on. But is there a game-changing product for them coming up? Is any of these the car the glasses? Do you imagine that there's something coming that's really, if you had a pick between those two, which is where they're headed, would that be it for them?

He's still there? Sure is. Yeah. He's a fellow. They're all still there. It's so fascinating with this group of people.

Well, they're also remarkable that they have been together for so long. I never forget Walt was retiring and there was a little party with all of them and I was like, it was all like the old guys and I'm like, and they're still running everything and they're still there. Like it was they were remarkably resilient for for a management group despite all the tensions and various fighting that goes on at any company. I have a last question regulatory issues. Apple's trying very hard to pretend it's not a monopoly or say it's not it's been declared not a monopoly by a judge and They're argument being that Android is bigger and in the scheme of all phones they aren't, but they're have certainly facing a lot of headwinds around the app store and the marketplaces and the other things they compete in. How much of a risk is that for the company?

Absolutely, everybody should read it. It's called after Steve is by New York Times reporter, Nickle, how does Apple like a trip? You know, they don't. They don't. They don't.

They don't. They don't.

They don't just lie answer to you and it's a good thing.

That possibly. Yeah. Anyway, it was very funny. I said no comment when I was hearing some of the complaints. Anyway, I just said, oh, good. I can't wait to read it. I'm so excited. Anyway, it's a terrific book. Again, after Steve by trip. Nickel.

All right, Scott. One more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. All right, Scott, it's time for predictions. I'd like you to make one, please do.

One of the things that's interesting, this new anti-trust bill that got out of committee, Amy Klobichers, the YouTube's of the world and others are all nervous because TikTok won't be under the $600 billion thing and these companies might have to, there's going to be a lot of pushback and they're using TikTok as the cudgeals. If we have to reveal things, why doesn't TikTok? So it'll be interesting. They're going to be in the cross-airs of a lot of

People are coming for them though.

That's my question.

It's true. I can't watch TikTok because you get sucked into my God. And I was so entertained. Did you know?

It's so fascinating, especially, I'm telling you, I watched an hour of air fryer the other day and I was like, stop, Kara. And I was happy. I was very happy more so than being a Twitter. I was like, I'm getting off the Twitter. I'm going on to TikTok. I have a burner phone. It was weird. It was weird. I agree. But people are coming for them in any case. I could watch for hours.

And it's our entire relationship. I watch air fryer content and you watch the viral factors adjusting people. That one I could see. I would like to pop that.

I just had a chiropractor point. Crazy noise. I got cracked in the neck. And even the chiropractor is a deep crack. It was such a deep crack that the car marker did this. Oh, yeah. Like that, which was disturbing. But nonetheless, it was very pleasing. Anyway, there we have it. Send us your questions. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for us or call eight five five five one pivot. The link is also in our show notes. Scott, that is the show. We'll be back for more on Friday. That was a relatively Elon free night thing.

It was very nice. Thank God, we talked about really important things. We'll be back. I'm sure there's something crazy is going to happen by then, but we'll see what happens and we'll be back Friday for more Scott Reedus.