April 25, 2025 • 34 mins
In the fourth (top secret) episode of Bloomberg Businessweek’s new podcast Everybody’s Business, hosts Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith grapple with the rise of the Man-o-sphere. Elon Musk is backing away from Doge, but his legacy will linger, and Max reveals the man behind Doge (hint: it’s not Elon)
Then Sarah Frier joins the show to talk about the former talent agent who introduced President Trump to the Manosphere and how he politicized the space. And how one clip of President Trump talking to a podcast host about cocaine won the hearts and minds of the manosphere and put them squarely on team Trump.
Finally, as the underrated story of the week, Stacey and Max discuss an AI tool invention that got a Columbia student suspended and then won him millions in venture capital
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. I'm Stacey Mannox Smith.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
Hey Stacy, Hello Max, Welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I was on vacation in Las Vegas and I was reporting.
I really enjoyed the episode that you and Brad Stone did,
although I did have a note for you.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Oh you had a note what we missed you. Brad
was such a great sport. We loved having him on.
But I'm excited to hear your notes.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
We'll get to that at the very end. Okay, But
this week, as I understand it, we are talking about men.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yes, there's been a lot of male energy in the
news this week, and in fact, Bloomberg's issue this week
is all about the man of.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sphere, the manusphere. We had men all over the places.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
So many men make me this week.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yes, you add President Donald Trump saying that Federal Reserve
Chair Jerome Powell should be fired. This sent the markets
into a lot of dramatics. Trump since backed off and
the markets have recovered.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseith doing another signal thing believe group chat,
adding his wife to the group chat which is always fun.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Meanwhile, your man Elon Musk making waves this week, Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Elon Musk telling Tesla investors on an earnings call that
he is stepping away from Doge. We'll look at what
doge has done and what its future is, and then
we're going to talk about the podcast Ecosystem the Manisphere
that maybe changed the course of the twenty twenty four
election and perhaps history itself, with Sarah Fryar, BusinessWeek contributor
(01:50):
and Bloomberg senior editor.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And we will also talk about our underrated segment of
the week. It turns out, Max, the cheaters do win,
and they win five point three million dollars in seed money.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Things are strange here in the dawn of the Man economy.
So Max, we may be in the middle of the
man economy, but here at Everybody's Business, we are an
inclusive group.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
We want to hear from everybody. This is part of
the show.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
We like to have the questions and thoughts of you know,
people from all over the place.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
And this got me thinking about where I should go
to talk with people.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And I was like, where in New York is the
epitome of economic Like manliness.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Where is it?
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They started thinking.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Like Wall Street, Power Brokers, Bravado, and then it hit me,
the bull, the what.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Is the bull?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
The Wall Street Bull? You know that's the big statue
of the bull.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
So I went to the bull and you know, there's
like one hundred people waiting in line to post for.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
A photo with the ball.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, but they are not posing for a photo with
the front of the ball.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Do you know this is like this the balls is
what you're telling?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Are all posing? It's apparently very good luck?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Do they touch this?
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Okay? Wow? Okay? So are they kind of you know,
in a bronze statue it gets kind of poyes wow okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
So I was like talking to people in line and
I asked them, like, you know, in this moment, this
manospheric moment, who do you think embodies masculinity? Like who
would be the ideal masculine figure for this moment. Here's
what the people waiting in line at the ball said.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I actually admire John and Robert Downey.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
What are the qualities about them that you like? Confidence
has humor for both of them.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I love sports, So, you know, Kobe Bryant was a
very very intense athlete, but when he retired, he really
wanted to make the world a better place. And that's
really Number one.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Do you have a like an ideal man?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
You think, Oh, who would you think would be the
ideal masculine person right now?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Donald Trump? Donald Trump? Yeah, it's popular for me, it's
very good.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
It's been who's the man that you admire? I don't
think there is one. I don't think there is. I'm next, No,
I don't think there is. I don't think any of
the top good businessmen of good role models. I don't
like Jeff bezel SE's a mask, none of them. They
love Mary Curriy, somebody who's doing good. They're looking for
qs for stuff like that. So, wait, is your ideal
(04:39):
man Marie Curry.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And she's a woman?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
John does pretty much.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
No, it doesn't really, Mutch.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I know that was a journey. First of all, it
sounded like several of those people have been credibly accused
of I know.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I know people had so much trouble coming up with someone.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Does this leave you thinking that we are in a
crisis of masculinity?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know, it kind of did a little because like
if someone asked me, like, who are the women you
look up to? I would not really have trouble naming
people who I admire in different fields.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
I try to think quickly, like who is the man
I most admire? And I'm not saying this is the
man I most admire, But I was thinking of the
Giant guy and Reacher the Amazon show.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Okay, I have not seen Reacher.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
The whole premise of the show is basically, he is large.
He is like very smart and sensitive, but he solves
crimes and he can kick ass. So that's what I
came up with. Okay, I should have said my dad,
though that is the correct answer.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
The correct answer is always your dad.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yes. Indeed, if I haven't gotten to the episodes where
Reacher turns bad, like, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Everybody, that's a mid season error. So Max, we've got
to talk about Elon Musk. You have spent a lot
of time looking at Elon muss You know a lot
about this man, and it was a big week for him.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Talk to us a little bit about like this Muskian
moment we're in.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
It's been crazy just because Elon Musk, who you kind
of hinted at this, But I've basically been reporting on
him for you know, close to twenty years, and who
he is, like his model of a man, if you will,
has completely shifted. I mean, he went from being kind
of universally admired business guy, oh the person probably if
you had gone to the bull polishers downtown, some of
(06:35):
them would have mentioned him as my guest and obviously.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Rooted electric vehicles like space travel innovator timely.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I'm almost a little surprised no one did, but maybe
it's telling and what has happened amid this his sort
of political turn is in addition to kind of polarizing
his persona and tying himself to Donald Trump in the
way he did, he has been acting in this way
at the White House that has made him more and
more unpopular. Like he traded in his brand as like
(07:05):
the guy who has a lot of kids and who
like cares about the environment and likes to drive fast cars.
And now he's like play acting as a management consultant,
going around terrorizing federal workers and acting like it's so
awesome that he's like cutting the budget. That is a
weird vision of masculinity, the man as consultant and what
we've seen in the public polling is that he's gotten
(07:27):
a lot less popular. And we've also seen this in
the results of his car company, Tesla Motors.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yes, Tesla has not had a good couple of months.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
No, they just reported earnings. This was on Tuesday, possibly
the worst quarter they've ever had.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
It was very bad.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
This was a growing company. It is now a shrinking company.
The profits are down. They missed expectations by a huge amount.
And Elon Musk, in an attempt to try to make
investors happy, say something that would you know, maybe cause
a stock to go up. Said, I'm going to spend
a little less time with my boy Donald Trump, and.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
I think starting probably an next month, may my time
allocation to DOGE will drop significantly.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Well, I mean, of course, like the Department of Government Efficiency,
DOGE was kind of Trump's brainchild, but Elon Musk kind
of took the helm. And I have to say, from
my perspective, when I was watching this all happen, it
just looked like chaos. Like you know, Elon Musk came in,
he didn't know what he was doing. He hired all
these kids who didn't know what they were doing, and
it was just like this hack job.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
But in your article this week.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
It was so interesting because it kind of looks at
it through this lens of like it was not actually chaos.
There's something underlying it and a person So talk to
us a little bit about kind of what was under
the chaos.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So the article that I wrote is about this guy,
Russell Vote. Now, most people haven't heard of Russell Vote.
He is like a behind the scenes player, but he
plays a role within the Trump administration that's not that
different from somebody like Stephen Miller. He is like a
behind the scenes ideologue. But what makes Russell Vote interesting
is that he created this plan essentially partly in Project
(09:07):
twenty twenty five, the nine hundred page policy book that
he co authored, and partly over the last three four years.
He runs this right wing organization, the Center for Renewing America,
but he helped create this kind of vision of trumpsm
that is now basically the trump Ism that we are
seeing today. Vote is interested in kind of two core
(09:30):
things which are relevant to the Doge conversation. One is budgets.
He really wants to cut the budget. And the other,
and probably the more important thing, is basically drastically reducing
the power of the federal workforce, not just eliminating federal workers,
but like totally reshaping the relationship between the civil service
(09:51):
and the president.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So is the chaos that seemed to be manifesting through
Doge did that chaos enable this plan to go forward?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Or is it actually not chaos?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It is chaos. You know, we've seen Musk do things
that seem very aggressive and are very unpopular. You know,
when they shut down USAID. USAID did a lot of
wonderful things. Oh, you're in this program, pep far it
was seen as like the one of the greatest, maybe
the greatest public health program in history, significantly arrested the
AIDS pandemic by giving out free or low cost medication.
(10:27):
And Musco's on Twitter and says, we put it in
the woodshipper, you know, hahaha. Isn't it that we're destroying
these people? And if you look at Vote Vote In
addition to saying we need to kill all these programs,
the president should be able to just fire people willy nilly.
Also with saying things like we need to traumatize the
federal work first, we need to make them feel boud right,
(10:47):
and then so I think Elon Musk is his own person.
Donald Trump is his own person. It's not like any
behind the scenes player is controlling them necessarily. But if
you're like why were people around Trump tolerating this? Like
why did this happen? I think one reason is there
was a plan to some extent to do this.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Why because that was such a notable thing about dose two,
Like you said that the tone of the layoffs is
like pretty brutal and not respectful of the work that
these civil servants have put in.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Why is that part of the plan, Like what end
does that achieve?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Well, if you look at what vote and I guess
other people around Trump have said and are saying, is
you know they came away from the last Trump presidency
feeling like Trump had been ineffective and the reason he
had been ineffective was because you had this federal bureaucracy
that was stymying him at every turn. Now I think
(11:44):
there are good reasons to question that take on purpose. Yeah, yeah,
Like basically he would have gotten re elected, He would
have been far more effective if you didn't have people
in the fbich state people the quote unquote deep state
and vote is interesting because he was like really very
much a part of some of these stories. So Vote
(12:05):
ran the Office of Management and Budget the last time,
and he's running the Office of Management and Budget this time.
He's one of the only people in Trump world who
essentially has the same job that he had before. Office
of Management and Budget is the part of the government
that essentially funds the rest of the executive branch. So
Congress says, Okay, we're going to give you eight hundred
(12:26):
million dollars to start a federal agency. OMB like basically
parcels that money out and Vote's big idea, one of
his big ideas, is you could just use OMB to
kind of stop that or slow it down or something.
But during the last Trump presidency, Trump asked OMB to
cut this aid to Ukraine. Vote did it, and in
(12:48):
his telling, there were all these bureaucrats who were like
really mad at him, and it was this kind of
like radicalizing thing. Of course, cutting that money is what
led to Trump's impeachment, and so in their view, what
went wrong was not the insistence on this kind of
using this aid to send a message to Zelenski or something.
It was the fact that people tried to stop it,
(13:09):
and so so much about what's happening now is this
effort to ensure that that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
What is the vision that vote has for like what
the federal government looks like.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
The vision is he calls it and the people who
have this who share this view, it's it's the unitary
executive You may have heard that phrase, but the idea
is essentially that the executive branch is just.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
The president all the other fund I mean, the president
can't be sending out Social Security checks.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And the point is, like, as we've set up the
federal government, you have the president and then you have
these executive body branches like the Social Security Administration, and
we have these like non partisan bureaucrats essentially administering it.
And I think a lot of people like that idea.
We like the idea maybe that the person who's inspecting
our water is not a political appointee because they know
(13:57):
they're war experience politics. Now, this is where there's like
a fundamental disagreement, Like the people of the russ Vote
school say, essentially, the executive branch should just reflect the
policies of the president. And if you have unelected bureaucrats
to use their phrase, making decisions that virg into policy,
then you got a problem that shouldn't be happening, And
(14:18):
so they want to be able to basically enforce the
president's will across the executive branch and make the executive
branch way way, way, way way smaller. And if you
want the kinds of quote unquote non partisan things, Congress
should just do that. That's their view. So, like you
don't like it, pass the law. That's that's what they say.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Has Doge been successful then, as you see it, I
don't think Doge has been very successful at cutting the
budget deficit.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So Musk initially promised two trillion dollars I remember that, Yeah,
two trillion dollars in cuts, and over the last few
months he's moved the goalpost several times, Like first he
said two trillion, then he said one trillion, and the
latest is maybe one hundred and fifty billion, Yeah, twenty
six it's so much smaller. And even that one hundred
(15:06):
and fifty billion, Like, I don't know if they've really
gotten there. Part of the problem is that, like the
payroll is not a huge part of what the government does.
It's actually very small.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
It's like a less than five percent.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You could fire a general workers and you still have
a pretty big budget. So I think in that sense
it has not been a huge success. And I think
politically you look at the popularity of Elon Musk and
so on, it hasn't been a big success. They have
managed to assert executive authority in a huge way, and
(15:36):
we don't yet know how lasting these changes will be.
So usaidea I mentioned CFPB is the Consumer Financial Production Bureau.
They're both like effectively no more in a case of CFPB,
And I focus on this in the story because Vote,
in addition to being the head of OBA, one of
the workers there. Yeah, in addition to being the head
of OMB, Vote runs the CFPB on an interim basis.
(15:58):
And although courts have baickly stopped this effort to fire
everybody or fire almost everybody, what's happening now is anybody
who works at the CFPB is in this limbo state.
I mean, they technically still work there, but they're not
really able to do They're not like going into the offices,
closed all of these actions that they were doing, all
the ways that they were, you know, trying to regulate
(16:18):
financial fraud. Many of the cases were dropped, and I
don't think there's a lot of optimism among people who
supported the CFPB that they'll be you know, resumed at
some point. They're basically dead. They've done a lot of
damage to these agencies that they really don't like. And
I think one of the reasons, just like the tariffs,
these drastic changes are going to be very hard because
(16:39):
you get a new president or a new Congress, and
they could try to move very quickly to undo some
of this stuff, but this stuff, to build it back
is going to take a very long time, and maybe
that's the goal.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
What do you think is going to be DOGE going forward?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Now that Musk is taking at least a backseat, maybe
kind of slowly departing.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Like so my take on this is actually that he's
not really departing. I mean, oh, okay, so he's not
going to be running DOGE. But like during this earnings call,
he said, I will still be working for Trump like
one or two days a week. This is a guy
with six companies. One or two days a week is
a lot of freaking time. I think they are clearly
(17:20):
deemphasizing the work of Doge. What I mean by that
is the kind of performative layoffs the like slash and
burn cut contracts, ask questions. Later, Trump and Musk have
been telegraphing that that is coming to an end. They
realize this point that we heard that there's gonna be
damage here, like they understand that, they understand their political risks.
But Musk is not going anywhere in the Trump White House.
(17:42):
And for the next few elections, I guess.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
And votes plan realized partly, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I mean partly. I think. I think we don't yet
know how completely votes Plan will be realized until we
see how the courts behave because there's been a real
sustained effort to stop some of this stuff, and we
just don't yet know how that's going to shake out. Okay, Stacey,
(18:12):
there have been these iconic media moments throughout political history.
So I'm thinking about the nineteen sixty television debate between
Richard Nixon and John F.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Kennedy.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Just the first television debate and kind of established politics
in a new way.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
It's sort of a more visual you know.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
It's when voters learned that Richard Nixon was a little
bit older than jfk. And when we all learned, which
we now know well, that that can be a problem politically. Now,
I want to suggest a modern analog, and I'm going
to play you a clip.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
We're at We're at mar Lago. I can't even believe
this is happening. We got Donald Trump President of the
United States. Thank you podcast, Thank you. We're really really excited.
Speaker 6 (18:59):
To be It's my honor, My honor.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
You come highly recommended by Dana White, and that's good
enough for me. All Right, you're laughing, Yes, but that
was important, and I think by the end of this
segment you are gonna agree with me that it was.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
I'm Dana White's like the mixed martial arts guy.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
That was Donald Trump. He was on a podcast called
the Full Send Podcast. The people interviewing him, I don't
even know their names. They're just the NLK boys. And
to talk about this clip and why it may be
influenced not just the twenty twenty four election, but maybe
like a lot of the stuff that's happening right now,
We've got the perfect person, Sarah Fryar, BusinessWeek contributor, the
(19:38):
person at Bloomberg who runs all of our big tech coverage.
Hey Sarah, Hello Max.
Speaker 6 (19:44):
Yes, it was critical because this was Donald Trump's first
podcast in the manisphere, which you know, the person who
set it up tells me that's a term only the
media uses. But it's this really hyper masculine part of
the Internet where people we're sort of a political but
very pro manly aggression and where bros are gonna brow.
(20:07):
It's like frat boys, and they love UFC and they
love Dana White, they love YouTube pranks. The knelt Boys
really got their name as being these kind of jackass
style pranksters the first time they rode an Air Force one.
They also like burned fake Joe Biden ballots to see
if anyone would call them on it.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
It's like jackass meeks punked. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
The question of how did Donald Trump get connected to
these guys has come up a lot, and what you
generally hear is it's Baron Trump, you know, his teenage son. Yes,
he hangs out with the podcast bros. It would be him,
But as Sarah wrote in her story, it's actually this
talent manager's former talent manager named John shahiti So used to.
Speaker 6 (20:52):
Be a manager of pop stars and DJs in the
music industry and that was his entree to like digital media,
and he worked with a lot of the top vying creators.
If you remember Vine, it was like the predecessor to
TikTok that Twitter acquired that died. So he's been early
in a lot of these twists and turns of new celebrity.
(21:13):
And around the first Trump administration, he was getting a
lot of shade for being a fan of Donald Trump,
and he realized that there might be a business opportunity
in leaving the music industry and going into podcasts where
the algorithms were extremely friendly to this kind of pro
(21:34):
conservative content, and he started working with Nelk. Dana White
introduced him to Trump, and he basically told Trump like,
young people are going to come out and support you, like,
I know this market, I know these people. This audience
loves the idea of somebody just being themselves and not
apologizing for it. That's kind of what trump stick is
(21:59):
in general. John Shahiti realizes this and he hooks Trump
up with the Nelck Boys, and from there it turns
into a strategy because that Nelk Boy's podcast that you
just heard the beginning of went super viral in part
because YouTube band it Max and I talk about this
all the time, but being canceled, being censored on the
internet if you're a conservative, is actually really great for
(22:21):
business because people talk about it, it becomes a news story.
They start paying to hear your voice, and so it
became a big story on Fox. Trump loved all the buzz,
and then he started making podcasts a huge part of
his strategy. He was doing like one every week towards
the end of his campaign. It was Joe Rogan, it
was it was Aiden Ross, it was Theovon.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
It was this whole.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
Ecosystem of bros on the Internet. Who wants to just
sit down and talk with Trump unfiltered for like two
or three hours.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
You just mentioned theovon, Sarah. Let's hear Theovon and Donald
Trump talking shortly before the twenty twenty four How did
you get addicted?
Speaker 7 (23:01):
How did no?
Speaker 5 (23:02):
I would just do cocaine? That was really well, yeah,
so not just yeah, that's down and dirty. Yeah, and
this is yeah this, I mean it was yeah, but
you don't anymore. Now I don't do it anymore, man,
And I'm not doing is it too much? Too much
to Some of the stuff started to get a real
rattle in it too. I don't know where we were
even getting it from in this country, but Yeah, it
(23:23):
started to make me feel like I was a mechanic
or so.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Do your way up with cocaine more than anything else
you can think of.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
Okay, I'll turn you into a damn owl, homie.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You know what I'm saying it had you heard this already, Stacy, No,
this is the.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Rallying cry for men across America.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
This is the humanization of Donald Trump for this audience. Right,
Like the fact that he is willing to go on
with this, you know, former MTV comedian turn YouTube podcaster
and just just shoot the about cocaine makes him appealing
to this young male voter. Not just that, but there's
(23:59):
a large level of skepticism among the extremely online about
anyone who is too focus grouped, too tailored to what
they want to hear, to fake right, And this is Trump.
You know, he's talking about his brother and alcohol addiction,
and he really gets into his personal life. And yeah,
it's insane to have the former president of the United
(24:21):
States banter about cocaine as he's trying to get elected.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Like that didn't used to work.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
So Shahiti is a Trump supporter. Dana White is a
Trump supporter. I've talked a few people in this world.
And the thing that keeps coming up is basically like, actually,
like these aren't super right wing, these podcasts. They're just
kind of fratty, right, It's just it.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And so yeah, the second podcast is often like into
Bromide toothpased and working out.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
But Shahiti helped turn this world into a pro Trump world.
It could have gone either way. I mean, these guys
have Bernie Sanders on all the time too. I know
the Kamala Harrison campaign really wanted to go on theovon.
They really wanted to go on Joe Rogan. They were
trying to make it happen. But there's a higher bar
when you're currently in the White House the vice president,
(25:10):
and there are certain things you can and can't talk about.
There's certain places you can and can't be And so
her team was a little bit too skittish about going
on with these guys and having a completely unscripted, controlled
conversation and people really weren't sure too if it was
going to be worth it. This is just a cordonship
of my sources within that campaign to take her off
the trail and go sit down with Rogan for three hours, Like,
(25:33):
is that a good use of her time? Does she
even have a chance with those voters? So it didn't
work because they had more rules and they were more skeptical.
But Trump went all in because he trusted Dana White
and he trusted John Shahiti to tell him what was
going to work, and so far it had been working.
So we just doubled down.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
One thing that's interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
We were just talking about Elon Musk, and it seems
like the brosphere, like the Dana White figures and things
like that, is one part of it. The tech bros
seemed like a totally separate culture, but it seems like
they kind of.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
There's an intersection here. I mean, fun te My favorite
fun fact about Dana White is that he's a technologist.
He just joined the board of Meta Platforms, Mark Zuckerberg's company.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I don't know if that makes him at.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
I don't think.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
I don't know if that makes them technologist. I think
that just means that Zuckerberg also wants in on this world.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Stacy brog Up Zuckerberg sarahs talking about Zuckerberg. Sarah also
wrote a book all about Facebook and influencer culture called
No Filter. So Sarah, we got to talk for a
minute about Zuckerberg getting man pilled. I'm going to play
one more clip. It's Zuckerberg and Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
For me, it's, uh, just I think a lot of
a corporate world is like pretty culturally neutered, and the
the kind of masculine energy I think is is good. Yeah, obviously,
you know society has plenty of that, but but I
think corporate culture was really like trying to get away
from it. And I think having a culture that like
(27:06):
celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits
that are really positive.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
I should say, like corporate CEOs eighty percent male, ninety
percent white.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Mark Zuckerberg was to make it it's eighty one.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I mean, obviously this was a very famous quote and
just this idea that the workplace was becoming more feminine.
I think because of all the flexible work from home
DEI policies and things like that.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
Zuckerberg doesn't do much without an angle. And this was
a couple months before he was set to testify in
front of an FTC lawyer who wants to convince a
judge to break up his company and spin off Instagram
and WhatsApp. He's got tons of pressure in Europe. He
has a TikTok band hovering that Trump could decide whether
(27:53):
to enact that law or not. There's so much at
stake for him right now with appealing to the Trumpman,
And yeah, part of it is he likes this world,
he feels comfortable there. He wants to embrace it.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
But it's also strategic, the.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Most awkward embrace imaginable, though.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I can I ask you both something which has been
kind of in the back of my mind this whole show,
which is what's the appeal of the manisphere right now? Like,
what is it about this culture this moment that's like
drawing in so many people. Obviously they're you know, people
are jumping on the badwagon for their own reasons, but
it's really appealing to people. It's speaking to something right now,
(28:35):
and I'm wondering what that might be.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
I think it's the identity issue.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
You know.
Speaker 6 (28:39):
If you hear them talk, they're like, we shouldn't raise
young men in America to think that they're mean, that
they're evil, right, we should celebrate them, and we should
not be ashamed of our of our natural aggression. We
should not be ashamed of liking hot women. It's this
whole like backlash to equality which has really gained steam
in the last few years, and when it comes to
(29:01):
somebody like Zuckerberger others in the tech world, that tech
world leadership felt like they really played nice with the
Biden administration as they amassed like more power than we've
ever seen in the history of the world. They felt
like they made some small concessions to try to make
(29:22):
sure their services were like safer, which maybe hurt their
profits a little bit, and they felt like they should
have been rewarded for that. They felt like they were
doing what they had to do to recruit and retrain
employees and make them feel like they were part of
a mission based company. But because the Biden administration continued
the tech clash on from the Trump administration, they felt like,
what's the point if you don't like me, even when
(29:44):
I tried to be liked by you, I'm just gonna
like flip the table.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Everyone. Stacy here just a quick note. In this segment,
we talk about a company called Klue. In fact, we
got it wrong. The company's name is Clue. Our deepest
apologies to the good people at Klue. We will try
to be less clueless in the future.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
We have a segment at the end of our show
called the Underrated Story of the Week, where we look
around and try to find a story that we think
maybe didn't get as much attention as it should have.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Wait, but Stacy, yes, I need to chime in here
because you and Brad did this last week, and Brad
gave a take.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Oh, this was the women going to spaces Humanity his
pro Katie Perry Space trip Cake, and.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I just feel the need.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
I think it was trying to be positive about it.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I feel like I owe it to our listeners to
say I disagree with that.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
You strongly disagree.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
It was a lame stunt. I'm sorry, there's no there's
no control.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Merits to Katy Perry and Space.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
You think no, All right, let's move on. All right.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
So Underrated Story was a very delightful item that I
saw amidst all of the big stories of this week,
of which there were a lot. But there was a
Columbia student who was suspended because he developed this cheating software.
It was apparently an AI tool it's called Kluey that
helps you cheat on everything by apparently you can have
(31:21):
a hidden window in your browser. So if you're taking
a test online or doing an interview online or something,
you can see information that the computer or the other
person you're chatting with cannot detect. So he he got
suspended from Columbia and wait, let.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Me get and it had ruined his life. Now he
had to go home to his parents. They're very mad
at him.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Oh is this terrible?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
I mean, can you imagine trying to apply to job
terrible situation getting suspended? Actually no, because nothing is what
it seems in the manisphere. And he just announced that,
in fact, he's launching a company to launch this cheating product.
And he just got five point three million dollars in
seed funding from benure capitalists who really think there's a
(32:05):
lot of promise in Klue.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
There's nothing a venture capitalist likes better than you getting
kicked out of your Ivy League college. I can tell you,
Like Peter Thiel, I don't think he's an investor in Klue,
but like that is like the number one hitting a nerve.
Mark Zuckerberg tossed out a Harvard look at him. Now
he's worth one hundred billion dollars or whatever.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
So the student Roy Lee, he released this video of him.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Promoting klue And in the video, he's on a date
with this woman, lying about his age. He's apparently like
nineteen or twenty or something, and he's lying to this
woman and he has these like hidden windows in front
of his face, and he's like lying to her about
all this stuff. That is how he's advertising the product.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I know I look a little young for my age,
but I promise you I'm thirty years old.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Okay, well maybe you artist way older than you look.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
This is like the worst ad I have ever seen
for any product of all time. I have to say,
because it doesn't work. He gets rejected, he gives rejected.
His cheating tool completely fails. It's like, here's why AI
is useless.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Well, like five point three million dollars would say otherwise.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
I mean, people are going to see through it if
you use AI to get through a date.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I have to say, like the tagline for this company,
cheat on Everything? Is that the tag that's their tagline,
Kluey cheat on everything of people?
Speaker 6 (33:33):
You want to give your money?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Right, that's got promise. I'm just saying.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
The show is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer. Amy Keane is our editor, and Brendon
Francis Nenham is our executive producer. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts,
and if you have a story that should be our business,
email us at Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is,
everybody with an ass at Bloomberg dot net. Thanks for listening,
(34:03):
and we'll see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. I'm Stacey Mannox Smith.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin.
Speaker 4 (00:14):
Hey Stacy, Hello Max, Welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
I was on vacation in Las Vegas and I was reporting.
I really enjoyed the episode that you and Brad Stone did,
although I did have a note for you.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Oh you had a note what we missed you. Brad
was such a great sport. We loved having him on.
But I'm excited to hear your notes.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
We'll get to that at the very end. Okay, But
this week, as I understand it, we are talking about men.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yes, there's been a lot of male energy in the
news this week, and in fact, Bloomberg's issue this week
is all about the man of.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sphere, the manusphere. We had men all over the places.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
So many men make me this week.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yes, you add President Donald Trump saying that Federal Reserve
Chair Jerome Powell should be fired. This sent the markets
into a lot of dramatics. Trump since backed off and
the markets have recovered.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseith doing another signal thing believe group chat,
adding his wife to the group chat which is always fun.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Meanwhile, your man Elon Musk making waves this week, Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Elon Musk telling Tesla investors on an earnings call that
he is stepping away from Doge. We'll look at what
doge has done and what its future is, and then
we're going to talk about the podcast Ecosystem the Manisphere
that maybe changed the course of the twenty twenty four
election and perhaps history itself, with Sarah Fryar, BusinessWeek contributor
(01:50):
and Bloomberg senior editor.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And we will also talk about our underrated segment of
the week. It turns out, Max, the cheaters do win,
and they win five point three million dollars in seed money.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
I don't know what to say.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Things are strange here in the dawn of the Man economy.
So Max, we may be in the middle of the
man economy, but here at Everybody's Business, we are an
inclusive group.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
We want to hear from everybody. This is part of
the show.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
We like to have the questions and thoughts of you know,
people from all over the place.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
And this got me thinking about where I should go
to talk with people.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
And I was like, where in New York is the
epitome of economic Like manliness.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Where is it?
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They started thinking.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Like Wall Street, Power Brokers, Bravado, and then it hit me,
the bull, the what.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Is the bull?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
The Wall Street Bull? You know that's the big statue
of the bull.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
So I went to the bull and you know, there's
like one hundred people waiting in line to post for.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
A photo with the ball.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, but they are not posing for a photo with
the front of the ball.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Do you know this is like this the balls is
what you're telling?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Are all posing? It's apparently very good luck?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Do they touch this?
Speaker 5 (03:10):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Okay? Wow? Okay? So are they kind of you know,
in a bronze statue it gets kind of poyes wow okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
So I was like talking to people in line and
I asked them, like, you know, in this moment, this
manospheric moment, who do you think embodies masculinity? Like who
would be the ideal masculine figure for this moment. Here's
what the people waiting in line at the ball said.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
I actually admire John and Robert Downey.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
What are the qualities about them that you like? Confidence
has humor for both of them.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I love sports, So, you know, Kobe Bryant was a
very very intense athlete, but when he retired, he really
wanted to make the world a better place. And that's
really Number one.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Do you have a like an ideal man?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
You think, Oh, who would you think would be the
ideal masculine person right now?
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Donald Trump? Donald Trump? Yeah, it's popular for me, it's
very good.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
It's been who's the man that you admire? I don't
think there is one. I don't think there is. I'm next, No,
I don't think there is. I don't think any of
the top good businessmen of good role models. I don't
like Jeff bezel SE's a mask, none of them. They
love Mary Curriy, somebody who's doing good. They're looking for
qs for stuff like that. So, wait, is your ideal
(04:39):
man Marie Curry.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And she's a woman?
Speaker 4 (04:44):
John does pretty much.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
No, it doesn't really, Mutch.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I know that was a journey. First of all, it
sounded like several of those people have been credibly accused
of I know.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
I know people had so much trouble coming up with someone.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Does this leave you thinking that we are in a
crisis of masculinity?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know, it kind of did a little because like
if someone asked me, like, who are the women you
look up to? I would not really have trouble naming
people who I admire in different fields.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
I try to think quickly, like who is the man
I most admire? And I'm not saying this is the
man I most admire, But I was thinking of the
Giant guy and Reacher the Amazon show.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Okay, I have not seen Reacher.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
The whole premise of the show is basically, he is large.
He is like very smart and sensitive, but he solves
crimes and he can kick ass. So that's what I
came up with. Okay, I should have said my dad,
though that is the correct answer.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
The correct answer is always your dad.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yes. Indeed, if I haven't gotten to the episodes where
Reacher turns bad, like, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Everybody, that's a mid season error. So Max, we've got
to talk about Elon Musk. You have spent a lot
of time looking at Elon muss You know a lot
about this man, and it was a big week for him.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Talk to us a little bit about like this Muskian
moment we're in.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
It's been crazy just because Elon Musk, who you kind
of hinted at this, But I've basically been reporting on
him for you know, close to twenty years, and who
he is, like his model of a man, if you will,
has completely shifted. I mean, he went from being kind
of universally admired business guy, oh the person probably if
you had gone to the bull polishers downtown, some of
(06:35):
them would have mentioned him as my guest and obviously.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Rooted electric vehicles like space travel innovator timely.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I'm almost a little surprised no one did, but maybe
it's telling and what has happened amid this his sort
of political turn is in addition to kind of polarizing
his persona and tying himself to Donald Trump in the
way he did, he has been acting in this way
at the White House that has made him more and
more unpopular. Like he traded in his brand as like
(07:05):
the guy who has a lot of kids and who
like cares about the environment and likes to drive fast cars.
And now he's like play acting as a management consultant,
going around terrorizing federal workers and acting like it's so
awesome that he's like cutting the budget. That is a
weird vision of masculinity, the man as consultant and what
we've seen in the public polling is that he's gotten
(07:27):
a lot less popular. And we've also seen this in
the results of his car company, Tesla Motors.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yes, Tesla has not had a good couple of months.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
No, they just reported earnings. This was on Tuesday, possibly
the worst quarter they've ever had.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
It was very bad.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
This was a growing company. It is now a shrinking company.
The profits are down. They missed expectations by a huge amount.
And Elon Musk, in an attempt to try to make
investors happy, say something that would you know, maybe cause
a stock to go up. Said, I'm going to spend
a little less time with my boy Donald Trump, and.
Speaker 7 (07:59):
I think starting probably an next month, may my time
allocation to DOGE will drop significantly.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Well, I mean, of course, like the Department of Government Efficiency,
DOGE was kind of Trump's brainchild, but Elon Musk kind
of took the helm. And I have to say, from
my perspective, when I was watching this all happen, it
just looked like chaos. Like you know, Elon Musk came in,
he didn't know what he was doing. He hired all
these kids who didn't know what they were doing, and
it was just like this hack job.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
But in your article this week.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
It was so interesting because it kind of looks at
it through this lens of like it was not actually chaos.
There's something underlying it and a person So talk to
us a little bit about kind of what was under
the chaos.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
So the article that I wrote is about this guy,
Russell Vote. Now, most people haven't heard of Russell Vote.
He is like a behind the scenes player, but he
plays a role within the Trump administration that's not that
different from somebody like Stephen Miller. He is like a
behind the scenes ideologue. But what makes Russell Vote interesting
is that he created this plan essentially partly in Project
(09:07):
twenty twenty five, the nine hundred page policy book that
he co authored, and partly over the last three four years.
He runs this right wing organization, the Center for Renewing America,
but he helped create this kind of vision of trumpsm
that is now basically the trump Ism that we are
seeing today. Vote is interested in kind of two core
(09:30):
things which are relevant to the Doge conversation. One is budgets.
He really wants to cut the budget. And the other,
and probably the more important thing, is basically drastically reducing
the power of the federal workforce, not just eliminating federal workers,
but like totally reshaping the relationship between the civil service
(09:51):
and the president.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So is the chaos that seemed to be manifesting through
Doge did that chaos enable this plan to go forward?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Or is it actually not chaos?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It is chaos. You know, we've seen Musk do things
that seem very aggressive and are very unpopular. You know,
when they shut down USAID. USAID did a lot of
wonderful things. Oh, you're in this program, pep far it
was seen as like the one of the greatest, maybe
the greatest public health program in history, significantly arrested the
AIDS pandemic by giving out free or low cost medication.
(10:27):
And Musco's on Twitter and says, we put it in
the woodshipper, you know, hahaha. Isn't it that we're destroying
these people? And if you look at Vote Vote In
addition to saying we need to kill all these programs,
the president should be able to just fire people willy nilly.
Also with saying things like we need to traumatize the
federal work first, we need to make them feel boud right,
(10:47):
and then so I think Elon Musk is his own person.
Donald Trump is his own person. It's not like any
behind the scenes player is controlling them necessarily. But if
you're like why were people around Trump tolerating this? Like
why did this happen? I think one reason is there
was a plan to some extent to do this.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Why because that was such a notable thing about dose two,
Like you said that the tone of the layoffs is
like pretty brutal and not respectful of the work that
these civil servants have put in.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Why is that part of the plan, Like what end
does that achieve?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Well, if you look at what vote and I guess
other people around Trump have said and are saying, is
you know they came away from the last Trump presidency
feeling like Trump had been ineffective and the reason he
had been ineffective was because you had this federal bureaucracy
that was stymying him at every turn. Now I think
(11:44):
there are good reasons to question that take on purpose. Yeah, yeah,
Like basically he would have gotten re elected, He would
have been far more effective if you didn't have people
in the fbich state people the quote unquote deep state
and vote is interesting because he was like really very
much a part of some of these stories. So Vote
(12:05):
ran the Office of Management and Budget the last time,
and he's running the Office of Management and Budget this time.
He's one of the only people in Trump world who
essentially has the same job that he had before. Office
of Management and Budget is the part of the government
that essentially funds the rest of the executive branch. So
Congress says, Okay, we're going to give you eight hundred
(12:26):
million dollars to start a federal agency. OMB like basically
parcels that money out and Vote's big idea, one of
his big ideas, is you could just use OMB to
kind of stop that or slow it down or something.
But during the last Trump presidency, Trump asked OMB to
cut this aid to Ukraine. Vote did it, and in
(12:48):
his telling, there were all these bureaucrats who were like
really mad at him, and it was this kind of
like radicalizing thing. Of course, cutting that money is what
led to Trump's impeachment, and so in their view, what
went wrong was not the insistence on this kind of
using this aid to send a message to Zelenski or something.
It was the fact that people tried to stop it,
(13:09):
and so so much about what's happening now is this
effort to ensure that that doesn't happen again.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
What is the vision that vote has for like what
the federal government looks like.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
The vision is he calls it and the people who
have this who share this view, it's it's the unitary
executive You may have heard that phrase, but the idea
is essentially that the executive branch is just.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
The president all the other fund I mean, the president
can't be sending out Social Security checks.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And the point is, like, as we've set up the
federal government, you have the president and then you have
these executive body branches like the Social Security Administration, and
we have these like non partisan bureaucrats essentially administering it.
And I think a lot of people like that idea.
We like the idea maybe that the person who's inspecting
our water is not a political appointee because they know
(13:57):
they're war experience politics. Now, this is where there's like
a fundamental disagreement, Like the people of the russ Vote
school say, essentially, the executive branch should just reflect the
policies of the president. And if you have unelected bureaucrats
to use their phrase, making decisions that virg into policy,
then you got a problem that shouldn't be happening, And
(14:18):
so they want to be able to basically enforce the
president's will across the executive branch and make the executive
branch way way, way, way way smaller. And if you
want the kinds of quote unquote non partisan things, Congress
should just do that. That's their view. So, like you
don't like it, pass the law. That's that's what they say.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Has Doge been successful then, as you see it, I
don't think Doge has been very successful at cutting the
budget deficit.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
So Musk initially promised two trillion dollars I remember that, Yeah,
two trillion dollars in cuts, and over the last few
months he's moved the goalpost several times, Like first he
said two trillion, then he said one trillion, and the
latest is maybe one hundred and fifty billion, Yeah, twenty
six it's so much smaller. And even that one hundred
(15:06):
and fifty billion, Like, I don't know if they've really
gotten there. Part of the problem is that, like the
payroll is not a huge part of what the government does.
It's actually very small.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
It's like a less than five percent.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You could fire a general workers and you still have
a pretty big budget. So I think in that sense
it has not been a huge success. And I think
politically you look at the popularity of Elon Musk and
so on, it hasn't been a big success. They have
managed to assert executive authority in a huge way, and
(15:36):
we don't yet know how lasting these changes will be.
So usaidea I mentioned CFPB is the Consumer Financial Production Bureau.
They're both like effectively no more in a case of CFPB,
And I focus on this in the story because Vote,
in addition to being the head of OBA, one of
the workers there. Yeah, in addition to being the head
of OMB, Vote runs the CFPB on an interim basis.
(15:58):
And although courts have baickly stopped this effort to fire
everybody or fire almost everybody, what's happening now is anybody
who works at the CFPB is in this limbo state.
I mean, they technically still work there, but they're not
really able to do They're not like going into the offices,
closed all of these actions that they were doing, all
the ways that they were, you know, trying to regulate
(16:18):
financial fraud. Many of the cases were dropped, and I
don't think there's a lot of optimism among people who
supported the CFPB that they'll be you know, resumed at
some point. They're basically dead. They've done a lot of
damage to these agencies that they really don't like. And
I think one of the reasons, just like the tariffs,
these drastic changes are going to be very hard because
(16:39):
you get a new president or a new Congress, and
they could try to move very quickly to undo some
of this stuff, but this stuff, to build it back
is going to take a very long time, and maybe
that's the goal.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
What do you think is going to be DOGE going forward?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Now that Musk is taking at least a backseat, maybe
kind of slowly departing.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Like so my take on this is actually that he's
not really departing. I mean, oh, okay, so he's not
going to be running DOGE. But like during this earnings call,
he said, I will still be working for Trump like
one or two days a week. This is a guy
with six companies. One or two days a week is
a lot of freaking time. I think they are clearly
(17:20):
deemphasizing the work of Doge. What I mean by that
is the kind of performative layoffs the like slash and
burn cut contracts, ask questions. Later, Trump and Musk have
been telegraphing that that is coming to an end. They
realize this point that we heard that there's gonna be
damage here, like they understand that, they understand their political risks.
But Musk is not going anywhere in the Trump White House.
(17:42):
And for the next few elections, I guess.
Speaker 4 (17:46):
And votes plan realized partly, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I mean partly. I think. I think we don't yet
know how completely votes Plan will be realized until we
see how the courts behave because there's been a real
sustained effort to stop some of this stuff, and we
just don't yet know how that's going to shake out. Okay, Stacey,
(18:12):
there have been these iconic media moments throughout political history.
So I'm thinking about the nineteen sixty television debate between
Richard Nixon and John F.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Kennedy.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Just the first television debate and kind of established politics
in a new way.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
It's sort of a more visual you know.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
It's when voters learned that Richard Nixon was a little
bit older than jfk. And when we all learned, which
we now know well, that that can be a problem politically. Now,
I want to suggest a modern analog, and I'm going
to play you a clip.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
We're at We're at mar Lago. I can't even believe
this is happening. We got Donald Trump President of the
United States. Thank you podcast, Thank you. We're really really excited.
Speaker 6 (18:59):
To be It's my honor, My honor.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
You come highly recommended by Dana White, and that's good
enough for me. All Right, you're laughing, Yes, but that
was important, and I think by the end of this
segment you are gonna agree with me that it was.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
I'm Dana White's like the mixed martial arts guy.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
That was Donald Trump. He was on a podcast called
the Full Send Podcast. The people interviewing him, I don't
even know their names. They're just the NLK boys. And
to talk about this clip and why it may be
influenced not just the twenty twenty four election, but maybe
like a lot of the stuff that's happening right now,
We've got the perfect person, Sarah Fryar, BusinessWeek contributor, the
(19:38):
person at Bloomberg who runs all of our big tech coverage.
Hey Sarah, Hello Max.
Speaker 6 (19:44):
Yes, it was critical because this was Donald Trump's first
podcast in the manisphere, which you know, the person who
set it up tells me that's a term only the
media uses. But it's this really hyper masculine part of
the Internet where people we're sort of a political but
very pro manly aggression and where bros are gonna brow.
(20:07):
It's like frat boys, and they love UFC and they
love Dana White, they love YouTube pranks. The knelt Boys
really got their name as being these kind of jackass
style pranksters the first time they rode an Air Force one.
They also like burned fake Joe Biden ballots to see
if anyone would call them on it.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
It's like jackass meeks punked. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
The question of how did Donald Trump get connected to
these guys has come up a lot, and what you
generally hear is it's Baron Trump, you know, his teenage son. Yes,
he hangs out with the podcast bros. It would be him,
But as Sarah wrote in her story, it's actually this
talent manager's former talent manager named John shahiti So used to.
Speaker 6 (20:52):
Be a manager of pop stars and DJs in the
music industry and that was his entree to like digital media,
and he worked with a lot of the top vying creators.
If you remember Vine, it was like the predecessor to
TikTok that Twitter acquired that died. So he's been early
in a lot of these twists and turns of new celebrity.
(21:13):
And around the first Trump administration, he was getting a
lot of shade for being a fan of Donald Trump,
and he realized that there might be a business opportunity
in leaving the music industry and going into podcasts where
the algorithms were extremely friendly to this kind of pro
(21:34):
conservative content, and he started working with Nelk. Dana White
introduced him to Trump, and he basically told Trump like,
young people are going to come out and support you, like,
I know this market, I know these people. This audience
loves the idea of somebody just being themselves and not
apologizing for it. That's kind of what trump stick is
(21:59):
in general. John Shahiti realizes this and he hooks Trump
up with the Nelck Boys, and from there it turns
into a strategy because that Nelk Boy's podcast that you
just heard the beginning of went super viral in part
because YouTube band it Max and I talk about this
all the time, but being canceled, being censored on the
internet if you're a conservative, is actually really great for
(22:21):
business because people talk about it, it becomes a news story.
They start paying to hear your voice, and so it
became a big story on Fox. Trump loved all the buzz,
and then he started making podcasts a huge part of
his strategy. He was doing like one every week towards
the end of his campaign. It was Joe Rogan, it
was it was Aiden Ross, it was Theovon.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
It was this whole.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
Ecosystem of bros on the Internet. Who wants to just
sit down and talk with Trump unfiltered for like two
or three hours.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
You just mentioned theovon, Sarah. Let's hear Theovon and Donald
Trump talking shortly before the twenty twenty four How did
you get addicted?
Speaker 7 (23:01):
How did no?
Speaker 5 (23:02):
I would just do cocaine? That was really well, yeah,
so not just yeah, that's down and dirty. Yeah, and
this is yeah this, I mean it was yeah, but
you don't anymore. Now I don't do it anymore, man,
And I'm not doing is it too much? Too much
to Some of the stuff started to get a real
rattle in it too. I don't know where we were
even getting it from in this country, but Yeah, it
(23:23):
started to make me feel like I was a mechanic
or so.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Do your way up with cocaine more than anything else
you can think of.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
Okay, I'll turn you into a damn owl, homie.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You know what I'm saying it had you heard this already, Stacy, No,
this is the.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Rallying cry for men across America.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
This is the humanization of Donald Trump for this audience. Right,
Like the fact that he is willing to go on
with this, you know, former MTV comedian turn YouTube podcaster
and just just shoot the about cocaine makes him appealing
to this young male voter. Not just that, but there's
(23:59):
a large level of skepticism among the extremely online about
anyone who is too focus grouped, too tailored to what
they want to hear, to fake right, And this is Trump.
You know, he's talking about his brother and alcohol addiction,
and he really gets into his personal life. And yeah,
it's insane to have the former president of the United
(24:21):
States banter about cocaine as he's trying to get elected.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Like that didn't used to work.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
So Shahiti is a Trump supporter. Dana White is a
Trump supporter. I've talked a few people in this world.
And the thing that keeps coming up is basically like, actually,
like these aren't super right wing, these podcasts. They're just
kind of fratty, right, It's just it.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And so yeah, the second podcast is often like into
Bromide toothpased and working out.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
But Shahiti helped turn this world into a pro Trump world.
It could have gone either way. I mean, these guys
have Bernie Sanders on all the time too. I know
the Kamala Harrison campaign really wanted to go on theovon.
They really wanted to go on Joe Rogan. They were
trying to make it happen. But there's a higher bar
when you're currently in the White House the vice president,
(25:10):
and there are certain things you can and can't talk about.
There's certain places you can and can't be And so
her team was a little bit too skittish about going
on with these guys and having a completely unscripted, controlled
conversation and people really weren't sure too if it was
going to be worth it. This is just a cordonship
of my sources within that campaign to take her off
the trail and go sit down with Rogan for three hours, Like,
(25:33):
is that a good use of her time? Does she
even have a chance with those voters? So it didn't
work because they had more rules and they were more skeptical.
But Trump went all in because he trusted Dana White
and he trusted John Shahiti to tell him what was
going to work, and so far it had been working.
So we just doubled down.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
One thing that's interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
We were just talking about Elon Musk, and it seems
like the brosphere, like the Dana White figures and things
like that, is one part of it. The tech bros
seemed like a totally separate culture, but it seems like
they kind of.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
There's an intersection here. I mean, fun te My favorite
fun fact about Dana White is that he's a technologist.
He just joined the board of Meta Platforms, Mark Zuckerberg's company.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I don't know if that makes him at.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
I don't think.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
I don't know if that makes them technologist. I think
that just means that Zuckerberg also wants in on this world.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Stacy brog Up Zuckerberg sarahs talking about Zuckerberg. Sarah also
wrote a book all about Facebook and influencer culture called
No Filter. So Sarah, we got to talk for a
minute about Zuckerberg getting man pilled. I'm going to play
one more clip. It's Zuckerberg and Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
For me, it's, uh, just I think a lot of
a corporate world is like pretty culturally neutered, and the
the kind of masculine energy I think is is good. Yeah, obviously,
you know society has plenty of that, but but I
think corporate culture was really like trying to get away
from it. And I think having a culture that like
(27:06):
celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits
that are really positive.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
I should say, like corporate CEOs eighty percent male, ninety
percent white.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Mark Zuckerberg was to make it it's eighty one.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I mean, obviously this was a very famous quote and
just this idea that the workplace was becoming more feminine.
I think because of all the flexible work from home
DEI policies and things like that.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
Zuckerberg doesn't do much without an angle. And this was
a couple months before he was set to testify in
front of an FTC lawyer who wants to convince a
judge to break up his company and spin off Instagram
and WhatsApp. He's got tons of pressure in Europe. He
has a TikTok band hovering that Trump could decide whether
(27:53):
to enact that law or not. There's so much at
stake for him right now with appealing to the Trumpman,
And yeah, part of it is he likes this world,
he feels comfortable there. He wants to embrace it.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
But it's also strategic, the.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Most awkward embrace imaginable, though.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
I can I ask you both something which has been
kind of in the back of my mind this whole show,
which is what's the appeal of the manisphere right now? Like,
what is it about this culture this moment that's like
drawing in so many people. Obviously they're you know, people
are jumping on the badwagon for their own reasons, but
it's really appealing to people. It's speaking to something right now,
(28:35):
and I'm wondering what that might be.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
I think it's the identity issue.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
You know.
Speaker 6 (28:39):
If you hear them talk, they're like, we shouldn't raise
young men in America to think that they're mean, that
they're evil, right, we should celebrate them, and we should
not be ashamed of our of our natural aggression. We
should not be ashamed of liking hot women. It's this
whole like backlash to equality which has really gained steam
in the last few years, and when it comes to
(29:01):
somebody like Zuckerberger others in the tech world, that tech
world leadership felt like they really played nice with the
Biden administration as they amassed like more power than we've
ever seen in the history of the world. They felt
like they made some small concessions to try to make
(29:22):
sure their services were like safer, which maybe hurt their
profits a little bit, and they felt like they should
have been rewarded for that. They felt like they were
doing what they had to do to recruit and retrain
employees and make them feel like they were part of
a mission based company. But because the Biden administration continued
the tech clash on from the Trump administration, they felt like,
what's the point if you don't like me, even when
(29:44):
I tried to be liked by you, I'm just gonna
like flip the table.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Everyone. Stacy here just a quick note. In this segment,
we talk about a company called Klue. In fact, we
got it wrong. The company's name is Clue. Our deepest
apologies to the good people at Klue. We will try
to be less clueless in the future.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
We have a segment at the end of our show
called the Underrated Story of the Week, where we look
around and try to find a story that we think
maybe didn't get as much attention as it should have.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Wait, but Stacy, yes, I need to chime in here
because you and Brad did this last week, and Brad
gave a take.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Oh, this was the women going to spaces Humanity his
pro Katie Perry Space trip Cake, and.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I just feel the need.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
I think it was trying to be positive about it.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I feel like I owe it to our listeners to
say I disagree with that.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
You strongly disagree.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
It was a lame stunt. I'm sorry, there's no there's
no control.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Merits to Katy Perry and Space.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
You think no, All right, let's move on. All right.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
So Underrated Story was a very delightful item that I
saw amidst all of the big stories of this week,
of which there were a lot. But there was a
Columbia student who was suspended because he developed this cheating software.
It was apparently an AI tool it's called Kluey that
helps you cheat on everything by apparently you can have
(31:21):
a hidden window in your browser. So if you're taking
a test online or doing an interview online or something,
you can see information that the computer or the other
person you're chatting with cannot detect. So he he got
suspended from Columbia and wait, let.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Me get and it had ruined his life. Now he
had to go home to his parents. They're very mad
at him.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Oh is this terrible?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
I mean, can you imagine trying to apply to job
terrible situation getting suspended? Actually no, because nothing is what
it seems in the manisphere. And he just announced that,
in fact, he's launching a company to launch this cheating product.
And he just got five point three million dollars in
seed funding from benure capitalists who really think there's a
(32:05):
lot of promise in Klue.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
There's nothing a venture capitalist likes better than you getting
kicked out of your Ivy League college. I can tell you,
Like Peter Thiel, I don't think he's an investor in Klue,
but like that is like the number one hitting a nerve.
Mark Zuckerberg tossed out a Harvard look at him. Now
he's worth one hundred billion dollars or whatever.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
So the student Roy Lee, he released this video of him.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Promoting klue And in the video, he's on a date
with this woman, lying about his age. He's apparently like
nineteen or twenty or something, and he's lying to this
woman and he has these like hidden windows in front
of his face, and he's like lying to her about
all this stuff. That is how he's advertising the product.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
I know I look a little young for my age,
but I promise you I'm thirty years old.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
Okay, well maybe you artist way older than you look.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
This is like the worst ad I have ever seen
for any product of all time. I have to say,
because it doesn't work. He gets rejected, he gives rejected.
His cheating tool completely fails. It's like, here's why AI
is useless.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Well, like five point three million dollars would say otherwise.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
I mean, people are going to see through it if
you use AI to get through a date.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
I have to say, like the tagline for this company,
cheat on Everything? Is that the tag that's their tagline,
Kluey cheat on everything of people?
Speaker 6 (33:33):
You want to give your money?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Right, that's got promise. I'm just saying.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
The show is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer. Amy Keane is our editor, and Brendon
Francis Nenham is our executive producer. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts,
and if you have a story that should be our business,
email us at Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is,
everybody with an ass at Bloomberg dot net. Thanks for listening,
(34:03):
and we'll see you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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