Apple Bows to Trump, Bond Market Sounds the Alarm, and Kalshi Bans George Santos

Pivot

In the final episode of 'Scott Free August,' Kara Swisher is joined by Jacob Soboroff of MSNOW to discuss a range of current events, including Apple's

Key takeaways

• Apple's decision to comply with Trump administration directives over 'Lake America' signals a significant shift in tech policy alignment with political pressure.
• The global bond market sell-off indicates growing investor anxiety about economic stability and fiscal policy uncertainty.

Main topics

• Apple's compliance with Trump administration policies
• Mail-in voting crackdowns under the current administration

Notable quotes

"Apple bows to Trump over 'Lake America'" – a metaphor for corporate surrender to political pressure.

"The bond market is sounding the alarm" – indicating widespread economic concern.

Conclusion

As Scott Galloway prepares to return, this final 'Scott Free August' episode closes

Transcript preview

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Because with the right partner, the question isn't crypto or traditional finance. The question is simply, why choose? A new standard of modern finance. It's happening with Ripple. Speaker 1 (1:06) For informational purposes only, availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities. Support for the show comes from CoreWeave. Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible. And at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology breakthroughs. CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built tech, building what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI. Ready for anything, ready for AI. Speaker 1 (1:33) To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com slash ready for anything. We picked you precisely for your hair on the final day to remind people what hair looks like. Scott will have a hair desert when Scott comes back. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher, and this is the final day of... Scott Free August. Speaker 1 (2:09) Yes, it's September, but Scott is still gone. We don't know where he is now. He'll make his triumphant return next week after Labor Day. In the meantime, I have my final guest co-host. He's a senior national and political reporter for MSNOW and the anchor of Connect with Jacob Soboroff. It is he, Jacob. Hello, Jacob. What a delight, Cara. And I was confused if it was going to go to Scott Free September, but... I happen to know it's still scot-free August. No, we can't do that. There might be scot-free all the time at some point. By the way, judging from just when you were getting ready, you were taking off your sweatshirt and we thought you were going to do a scot thing, which is show us his chest, which he likes to do. Never, I would not. And you very politely moved off the... Speaker 1 (2:55) We appreciated that. We appreciated your entire thing. Nobody wants to see this dad bod. Well, in any case, we don't want to see Scott's either. We are subject to it on a twice-weekly basis sometimes. Anyway, we appreciate it. We appreciate it very much. Thank you so much. Seriously, I'm tickled to do this. This is very, very cool and fun for me. Thank you. Well, it was kicked off with Hillary Clinton, and you were the last one. We've had some great co-hosts, Caitlin Collins. The downward slide. I was just watching Caitlin's. Yeah, it was good. She was great. Speaker 1 (3:24) Right. So where are you broadcasting now? From Los Angeles? This is our, yeah, this is our LA bureau at MSNOW. And this is the newsroom. Well, I appreciate you being up at such an hour. Oh, no, it's glorious. So it's a newsroom. And you live in LA now, right? That's where you're broadcasting your shows from. Born and raised. And I spent the summer in New York. You wrote a book. Exactly. About the fires. But born and raised here. Spent the summer in New York. And our studio here in LA is just about ready. So we're bringing Connect, my show, back to LA. Speaker 1 (3:53) Oh, great. Is there a special L.A. thing for it? Yeah. Explain your show. Sure. It just sort of started, right? Correct? Yeah, it started on June 13th. And, you know, I started at MSNOW in the summer of 2015. And over these 11 years that I've been here, I have traveled the country and I've traveled the world. And I've been, you know, a guy in the field. I think I got the best job in TV. I love people. I love hanging around people. And from... Pulling placelines to the border, to Ukraine, to Haiti, to Greenland, to Guatemala. Getting to be around people has been, I think, like the greatest blessing, not just of my professional life, but I honestly really, really, it makes, it fills me up. It makes me who I am. And so we wanted to bring that essence, Rebecca Cutler, my boss, back into the studio. And so she asked me if I would do a show. Speaker 1 (4:48) And that's what Connect is all about. It's a show about people. Politics is, per me, it's everything we do. But I want it to center people we don't normally hear. You're not going to see political panels. I got three hours a day. I took over for Ali Velshi, who moved to primetime. And on Saturday and Sunday, we just spend an enormous amount of time on basically the stuff that the people that watch us care about and worry about. And we don't really do the sort of news of the week thing. Speaker 1 (5:15) How is Los Angeles doing? I just got back from San Francisco this morning. I love it here. And I'm ducking, anticipating the incoming, but I think it's the greatest city in the world. Why? I love Los Angeles. Yeah. I don't know why I'm self-conscious about being from L.A. Honestly, I grew up here, and I grew up, as you mentioned, in the Palisades that burned down in the costliest wildfire event in American history. But I've spent... most of my adult life on the other side of town in Northeast LA. And I think that you can get in LA a slice of anything and meet people from all over the world. Yeah, I always call it New York if you flattened everything out, if you took all the buildings and went like that. So you enjoy spending time here? Speaker 1 (6:00) I do. I love, I don't insult Los Angeles. Like I don't insult California the way other people do, you know, and they just, it's a magnificent state. It's got a lot of issues. That's exactly right. We had a, we had a, we had a really tough year in 2025 with the fires and then the ice raids that kicked off here. And I think it was really bruising to so many people, but the resilience of the city, we sort of modeled it here during the ice raids. for everyone else. And to see people spontaneously pour out into the streets, I was out there on June, whatever it was, 7th or 8th of 25. To me, that, it instantly gave hope to me and I think to so many people in the city and so many people watching around the country that like, there's a way to band together in the face of all of this bullshit that's going on. I just interviewed Chris Larson yesterday. He's a billionaire up in... Speaker 1 (6:53) And San Francisco is given a lot of money and is very civically oriented, which is unusual. And we had a really interesting discussion about what's going on there. Obviously, it's continued homeless problems, very significant, you know, climate problems, tax problems. You know, the government has grown quite a bit. But it seems like, and even on its worst day, I would rather live there than many states across the country. And it contributes to so much for that. And I think people have sort of a warped vision of it. that doesn't Speaker 1 (7:25) It doesn't comply with reality. And of course, that's why it's done like that. And anyway, I really like, well, thank you for getting up so early. I really appreciate it. And I was in for Chris Hayes last night. I don't have any makeup on other than a little powder under my eyeballs. Oh, come on. You look, oh, stop it. Stop your Clark's headness of it all. You know, people do call you that, right? Correct? With the hair. Better than Al Franken's son or Stephen Colbert's brother, although I'm honored. Oh, you get those too? Oh, no, no, no, no. We picked you precisely for your hair on the final day to remind people. hair looks like scott will be we'll have a hair desert when when scott comes back may i just say uh Speaker 1 (8:00) Propecia works, and I've been taking it for a very long time. Oh, okay. Well, it's working for you. Thank you. So we have, speaking of men, let's not talk about them for a second. I want to mention Gloria Steinem has died at age 92. She was a feminist and activist, a journalist, and so much more. We talk a lot about business on the podcast, and Gloria once described herself as an entrepreneur of social change. She earned that title many times over. I met her on several occasions. Really interesting. Speaker 1 (8:29) interesting, sometimes controversial, even within the feminist movement. Very good journalist, if you go back and read her stuff. I remember loving her Playboy Bunny piece. If you go back and read it, it's actually quite good, where she was a Playboy Bunny, or just, I guess, sort of an investigative piece. It was just interesting. And just a very impactful person, and it's kind of interesting that two people I consider Some of the leading feminists, Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem, die within the same couple of weeks or a week or so. How do you look at this change? How would you cover it on Saturday, for example? I just said to my team, I have about 25 people that work for me, and I think three of them are men. I almost want to hand the floor over to the team. I never got to meet Gloria. I did get to meet Dolly. Speaker 1 (9:22) which was one of the most extraordinary experiences I've ever had. But when I think about Gloria, two things. One, I was just reading the Ms. Magazine 50th anniversary, which she founded, introduction that she wrote. And I guess I didn't realize how much of what that magazine did was informed by the readers and the letters that were written into Gloria and how much. almost in an open source way 50 years ago, she let the second wave feminism movement and particularly through the magazine be guided by the people who were her readers, her clientele, her customers. And I'm so inspired by some of the stuff that I was reading. The other thought that flashed through my head is I'm the father of a 10-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. And when my son, I guess I'll never forget that she was the honorary co-chair of the Women's March, which was the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump. Speaker 1 (10:16) And I was in New York for excuse me, I was in Washington, D.C. for the first inauguration and I was out on the lawn where Donald Trump said it was the and Sean Spicer said it was the greatest crowd of all time. And I wrote in my first book about how I stood there on that big white, empty plastic tarp and no one was there. Nope. But then I came home that night and the following morning I wasn't supposed to work. But my wife, Nicole, and our son, Noah, and a bunch of her. girlfriends and our and other kids went to the march and i called uh the bureau chief at nbc news at the time polly powell after dropping them off and said you know i would like to report and i have never ever i'm getting the chills talking about this um seen a crowd of people like i saw um that day and i remember watching her make a speech from washington dc i remember standing on on the roof man Speaker 1 (11:10) What was that like? Cool. It was amazing. You know, a lot of pussy hats. I mean, a lot of people felt like it. You know, I'm here and there on marches because I feel like sometimes, what's the point? Like, I think a lot of people felt very hopeful that there was a point. And then you had, you know, especially this administration, which is, I would say, misogynist in many ways. It was great. It was great. I took my sons. I took my two sons. Exactly. I didn't force them into pussy hats, but they would have if I asked, especially my older son, who I consider very much a feminist. But it was more so than me in a lot of ways. And he had a great time. We had a great time. It was a joyous occasion. That's how I felt, too. And so while I never got to meet Gloria, to me, in a way, in spirit, that was the closest I've come to. Speaker 1 (12:05) being around her. I remember standing on the roof of the satellite truck because I wanted to get a vantage point of how many, you know, I've been to a lot of marches and I actually, I really do believe in the power of all of that. I've seen it kick Greg Bovino out of every one of those cities just in the last year. Yes, you're right. There's an extraordinary power in it. And I, looking back at the pictures today, I still have the sign actually that my wife carried there. Speaker 1 (12:31) in the back of our Volvo. And I found it the other day. And to me, I can't wait actually to talk to our kids about the fact that Noah was there that day and that Gloria Steinem was one of the people behind it. What did the sign say? Love wins forever. Love wins forever. Oh, that's a nice one. Yeah, that's a good one. So you have a nice family. I like all the mean ones. No, wait, I got to find it. Where's my phone? There were some other good ones. Hang on. Love rules forever. Stop the war on women. Another friend of ours, Zoe, held up. Women. Speaker 1 (13:00) freedom. It was a very special day. Yeah. Yeah. I'm partial to the vagina ones. I like the really funny ones, which are great. I think today it's kind of interesting. When I was speaking yesterday, I was talking about the series Furious on Hulu, which is about, you know, lady serial killer and anger towards men. And it's about Epstein kind of like figures and getting what they deserve and everything else. And it's really interesting because a lot of men have had a very bad reaction to it. And I'm like, do you understand how angry lots of people, especially women, are? And it's really powerful. It's a very powerful. There's incredible women actors in it. And just... Speaker 1 (13:44) the anger is there visceral. And what's interesting about Laurie Steinem, and then we'll move on, is, of course, Ted Cruz yesterday, before she died, said, you know, Lord help us from white liberal women, which... What an idiot. Sorry. I said, you know, yeah, a regular Lincoln that guy is, right? Like, you think about, like, what in the world... How can you want to be president if that's how you feel about him? a large swath of people. Like, it's really, and if he's going to continue on in the Trump way, and he's such an unappealing character, Trump had appeal to people. This guy is, you know, has zero charm and almost despised by his people he went to school with and things like that. It just seemed like, I thought about it today after he did that yesterday before she died. Or look at, look at what we talked about last night on Hayes' show, what Pete Hegseth posted about those. Speaker 1 (14:35) uh two canadian one cadet and one soul one train uh you know instructor at the summer camp um military summer camp for i think kids and teenagers yes it is basically body shaming them what is what i said on the show was what a sad loser that this is the dude that's in charge of the most powerful military in human history and he is posting um well two this is what he does exactly but that's That is the world in which we live, which is why I'm so I'm so I think I felt so emotional today when I saw the news about Gloria Steinem and I saw the reaction of people not just on my show, but another, you know, signal chats that I'm in with other journalists. And, you know, I was thinking actually about the Daisy Chain Fields Festival that Olivia Rodrigo put on here in L.A. last weekend as well. All women. Speaker 1 (15:26) so many of the same goals. Amazing. All right, Peter, Gloria Steinem, she lived quite a life. We've got a lot more to get to today, so let's dig in. Apple just followed Google's lead in being a quizzling, changing Lake Ontario to Lake America for U.S. users of Apple Maps. Trump celebrated the update, writing on True Social that the renaming is now complete, ratified, and binding. None of... which is true. The name change came on John Ternes' first day as Apple CEO, taking the reins from Tim Cook. Just not a surprise. Google had done it before, as I said. And one company, a little company called MapQuest, which I covered 100 years ago, is back, baby. The downloads at 1.5 million, the top