Kara and Scott are coming to you on a Wednesday to discuss President Trump’s inauguration, and his barrage of Day 1 executive orders. Then, TikTok is back in the U.S. after briefly shutting down: what happens next? Also, President Biden’s last-minute pardons, Vivek Ramaswamy’s DOGE departure, and the First Couple’s meme coin frenzy. 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
What were the key highlights of Trump's inauguration?
In addition, as I said, they all had prime seats. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai. Better seats than cabinet nominees who were behind them, I believe. What's incredible is the other notable attendees, too. Joe Rogan, Rupert Murdoch was there. I didn't see him there. I don't know where they put him. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnall, TikTok CEO Sho Chu.
really full of business people more than anybody else. And even Miriam Adelson, a big donor of his, was shoved, even though a business person shoved in the back, which was interesting. I don't know. It was quite something, and it was definitely made for TV. Trump quickly got to work on Monday evening, issuing sweeping pardons to over 1,500 of the January 6th rioters.
He was thought to have not—J.D. Vance said he wasn't going to let off people who had violent— But that's exactly what he did. He let out people who had beaten up cops very clearly, people who had gotten 20 years to life, people who were obviously there to cause mayhem. But he let them off, too. One woman who was just inside and was a nonviolent protester wouldn't take the thing.
She said, I committed a crime. I thought that was pretty honorable of her. Yeah, that was weird. But he let off some very dangerous people. I know a lot of people that worked on those cases and they are terrified now that these people are out and emboldened. They essentially said Trump now has his own private militia at his behest. I think that was pretty upsetting.
I don't know what you thought about that one to me was the most seriously disturbing of all the many executive orders.
Yeah, I don't know. There's a few. Trying to revoke birthright citizenship, trying to override the 14th Amendment, that feels... You know, some of it, I can understand declaring a national emergency at the border. Declaring a national energy emergency is just dumb. Gas on an inflation-adjusted basis is cheaper than it was 50 years ago. We are the largest oil producer in the world.
Biden issued a ton of drilling permits. So that's nothing but just... A false narrative. And it goes back to the notion we were talking about. America will be the strongest, most respected. We're there. Unfortunately, Biden was unable to communicate that effectively. Correct.
Some of the stuff that, you know, this expansionary visionary stuff seemed very strange to me, felt like we're colonialists again.
What do you think of this strategy of flooding the zone with shit? Now, I know all presidents do this. They put out executive orders. These are just one outlandish idea after the next. Most of them have no force of law. Most of them are just press releases, as they said, on better letterhead. But it is this flooding the zone with shit to get Democrats, you know, completely flummoxed. How dare he?
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