Kara is joined by Jon Lovett, co-host of Pod Save America and host of Lovett or Leave It. They to discuss Elon Musk’s possible departure from the Trump administration, a Democratic win in Wisconsin, and Cory Booker’s record-breaking speech. Then, Liberation Day liberated us all (and threw the market into chaos), Joe Rogan thinks the Trump administration’s deportations are “horrific,” and President Trump reviews bids for TikTok. Stick around to hear what’s on Jon and Kara’s For You page. Listen to Pod Save America here, and Lovett or Leave It here. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social. Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of this episode?
That's correct. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I am the very nasty and openly lesbian Kara Swisher that's according to my number one fan, Megyn Kelly.
Chapter 2: What is the controversy between Kara Swisher and Megyn Kelly?
Scott is off today, but in his place, I brought in someone who Megyn Kelly might also take issue with, and obviously will, the host of Crooked Media's Pod Save America and Love It or Leave It, John Lovett. Welcome, John. Hi, good to see you. Good. Did you see Megyn trying to flirt with me online? Did you see that situation? I...
Yes. You know, dipping your pigtails in ink, for sure.
Seriously, what is the deal? Did you understand I like LGB, but not T?
Oh, of course. Of course. They're trying to divide the T off from the LGB. That's what they've done.
I don't think she knows what Q is or plus. What is plus? What is Q?
I don't think they know what the Q is. They certainly don't know what the IA is. They're not into any of these letters, but they're mostly focused on trying to, they want the T off of the flag. And we have to keep the T on the flag.
Yeah. I didn't make a response to the New York Post when they called me for one. I felt that was the right way to go, didn't you think?
It seems as though this is, is it just drumming up a misunderstanding from years ago to find a way to talk about you? Is that what this is?
I called her a rage machine last week on the show. Right. Because she is. She just yells at everybody. And, you know, and she wasn't, she... I hate to say this, talking about Elon Musk, they weren't exactly like this then. And so it's kind of a shock. What happened is she had canceled on the show and we had back and forth, back and forth.
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Chapter 3: Is Elon Musk leaving the Trump administration?
Well, the reason I know about it is because she called you a bitchy lesbian or whatever she said. I mean, that's the whole purpose. There's a cycle to this, right? She picks these fights. It generates a page six story. It gets attention. Who do you beef with? Who beefs at you from the right? Well, John got in a fight with J.D. Vance on Twitter.
Yeah, I saw that.
Which it's just incredible that the vice president- Explain that for the people, what it was about. It was about the fact that the Trump administration is, I don't even want to call it deporting. It is kidnapping people and dispatching them to a- Gulag in El Salvador and we have increasing evidence that they're making mistakes as they do this.
And now the administration is claiming once you've been sent to this mega prison in El Salvador, they don't they don't have the ability to bring you back. So no mistakes. So there's no due process to catch mistakes in advance and no way to rectify mistakes once they've happened, which is obviously wrong, even if you are getting it right. But now we see that they are getting it wrong.
And Vance was defensive and dissembling and lying about what the record said about one example of this.
Right, that he was in M13 or whatever, that he was a gang member. MS-13, excuse me. And then he wasn't, right? It was just like nonsense.
Well, we have no idea other than there is no evidence for it, right? And the evidence, there's no... Which you want. Well, of course, there's certainly, yes. They have provided no evidence that this person was in MS-13. Vance claimed he was convicted. As far as we could tell, this person has never... been convicted in the US of a crime, right? And the evidence he cited wasn't there.
Similarly, we have this for other examples of people that seem to have been rounded up because they had tattoos that rubbed an ICE officer the wrong way, including a tattoo for autism awareness.
Yeah. The guy, that was the gay barber? Was that the gay barber?
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Chapter 4: How did Elon Musk influence the Wisconsin election?
So talk a little bit about this. What do you imagine is happening here?
So I think, first of all, we should dispense with the idea that this is because the 130-day window is up. Because as we all know, Trump has nothing but respect for arcane rules governing when people can and cannot serve. So that's ridiculous.
Yeah.
I think it is probably too pat and too convenient for all of us that have found the way that Elon Musk has sort of rampaged through the government to be obviously disgraceful, but also politically unpalatable to say, look, we'll talk about Wisconsin, but he's deeply unpopular. Doge is bringing negative attention to Trump. Trump put Elon out there as a shield. He took all of these hits.
And now because he's unpopular, Trump's moving him aside. I don't think it's unreasonable for them to say this was always basically the plan, that he was going to come for a few months, get this thing rolling, and then step back. That said, Elon Musk has drawn so much negative attention to what could have been a far more boring
endeavor, that he has brought so much negative attention to the kinds of cuts that they might have wanted to make, but probably not with this much fanfare and probably without this much chaos. What is unclear is, A...
how much of this can go on without Elon as this singular aggressive figure, and B, how much of what he's already done is so damaging and so complete that really they've gotten what they wanted to get out of Doge and now they can move on. Right, which is to break everything. Which is break everything, fire everybody.
I have a friend at the VA and he was talking about how, yeah, the surgeries are continuing, But a bunch of people lost their access to the computer system because they were fired and then unfired, but they haven't gotten it back. So they're not really able to work. Right. Like a lot of the chaos, it leaves the headlines, but it's ongoing. Right.
These agencies have been hobbled in ways that we know about in a lot of ways that we don't know about. So, yeah. It doesn't surprise me that he'd be stepping back. And I also, you know, Trump can't possibly be enjoying how much blowback this is getting and how much is coming on to him.
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Chapter 5: What did Cory Booker achieve with his record-breaking speech?
Meet David Fahrenthold.
Are you kidding me? You are cutting billions across or claiming to cut billions across this government. We are pointing to specific container ships. holding specific amounts of food to get you to release it. So there's a total lack of respect for anyone who is not MAGA, right?
That's one of his tricks, by the way. He does that in interviews all the time. Show me a specific example, and then I have 10, and then he goes, show me a specific example. It's just, it's exhausting.
It's exhausting. And so, like, the...
So he is basically, he's not acting democratically in any way that a person would. You can imagine a version of this whole process unfolding where he says, you know what? I'm going to all these agencies. I'm going to listen to some of the people there. And I'm going to go to the heads of these various departments. And I'm going to say, oh, you have three months.
two months, three weeks to give me cuts. And these are the amount of cuts you have to give me. And if you don't give me this amount of cuts, I'm gonna do it for you." And you can imagine him engaging with people on the actual substance of these criticisms, but he can't do that. He has no aptitude or willingness to do that.
And we don't know with Elon, when he goes in front of a crowd and says, this is a grand scheme, to bring in immigrants to turn them into voters. We don't know if he believes that or if he just believes that's an advantageous argument to make in front of the people for whom he has no respect.
He burns PR people like you can't believe. And he had some good ones many years ago, right? But he, obviously, PR is critically important to him. He wants to be seen as the center of attention, you know, when he seems like a nuisance. And he pretends to be funny when the only person that's funny is his daughter, Vivian, right? Who's actually funny.
I will just, can I just, I will say though, I do think the most important, like just stepping back from his sort of repellent qualities.
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Chapter 6: How are new tariffs affecting global relations?
Right. What are we getting? Does that raise his profile as a presidential candidate going forward? I mean, he's always been bandied about as that.
I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does. Is he running for president? Is there any senator that isn't in their minds in some way running for president?
Yeah. It was interesting. When I was in Michigan, a lot of the students were asking me who was going to run. It was sort of surprised. I'm like, oh, I don't know. And then maybe go through the various and sundry people. It was interesting. They certainly are interested in looking over the Democratic Party in that regard. He definitely raised his profile.
I sort of, it's funny, like, even as you asked that, like, I'm such a political fiend. And for whatever reason, I have just no appetite for that right now. Because it, first of all, because it feels so far away. And also, like, I don't really think there's much you can do to kind of handicap this race right now. Anybody who wants to be president,
has got to be somebody, and Cory Booker did this, great, has to be someone out there in the fight showing that they understand the politics of this moment, that they have a passion and a rage in them to protect the country. And that's what I'm looking for. My one sort of...
feeling about it is I am so not interested in the kinds of planning and maneuvers that are about like building a profile and carefully managing the rollout. Like that is from another era and I'm just completely not interested in it. Yeah, it really is, right?
The book, the this, the that, the peer at Harvard.
No, thank you.
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what works. Okay, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, it's Trump against the world with these new tariffs.
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