And, This is Who Actually Raises Our Young Men With Scott Galloway

Serial entrepreneur, professor, bestselling author & podcaster Scott Galloway breaks down what's happened to masculinity in America, how young men are failing, and what we can do to address it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
In twenty twenty, Donald Trump one roughly forty one percent
of the vote with young men. In twenty twenty four,
he increased that shared a fifty six percent. What's happening
with young men in this country? What's happening with the
trend lines that define some of the stresses and the
anxieties that so many young men are facing in America today?

(00:22):
This is Gavin Newsom and this is Scott Galloway. Well, Scott,
thanks so much for taking the time and joining us
on the podcast. And there's so many things I want
to talk about, from higher education, a little bit, touch
on housing, issues of inequality, a lot of the work
that you've been doing, talk about some of the trend lines,

(00:43):
particularly as it relates to young men. But there's a
lot of attention now being placed once again on tech titans,
notably Mark Zuckerberg, who you once described lovingly is the
most dangerous man in the world, who is now testifying
in an antitrust suit. He'll be joined in a number

(01:06):
of months by a number of other companies. I think
there are five lawsuits the FTC, but Mark is up
there on one of the may perhaps the most consequential in decades.
Anti trust discussions related to what's happened Instagram just curious,
you're over under What do you make of this moment?
What do you make of Zuckerbird's outreach to the Trump
administration to try to get this thing off the docket,

(01:29):
the fact they didn't move on it. What does it
mean to you from a political perspective, not just from
a substantive perspective in terms of the future at tech.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
First, I think you have to get Mark zuckerbergers too.
I think it's one of the most brilliant business people
of the last fifty years. I also think there's a
few people that have done more damage while making more
money than Mark Zuckerbird. The coarseness of our discourse teen depression.
If any company could reverse engineer their product to an
uptick in self harm among teen girls, that company would

(01:59):
be put out of business. And it relates to if
it relates to antitrust, the concentration of power. You know,
power corrupts absolute power, absolutely corps. And we have one
company that controls fifty percent of e commerce Amazon, one
company controls ninety percent of search Google, and one company
owns two thirds of social media globally. With the exception

(02:22):
of China, two out of three people are on a
meta platform every day, and unfortunately, I'm in the field
of brand strategy.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I taught that.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
I studied that at Berkeley, teach at NYU from nineteen
forty five to nineteen ninety five. We thought we discovered
the ultimate sell or selling tool, and that was its
sex cells, like tell people to be hotter and play
volleyball and be more tractive potential mates if they buy
a Maserati or drink Core's Light. But these algorithms figured
out with Google that there's something that sells even more

(02:49):
than sex, and that's rage. And that is if you
bring on somebody who says an mRNA vaccine alters your DNA,
that person, in my view, deserves the right to say that.
The the center's voice is important. But what these algorithms have
figured out is that if we elevate that content beyond
its natural organic reach, it creates enragement because people will

(03:10):
weigh in and go, that's nonsense and that's not true,
and you're going to result. You're going to see a
surge in measles and rebella and then people way back
in and every comment enragement equals engagement equals more Nissan
ads equals more shareholder value. And so unfortunately, the deepest
pocketed companies in the world are trying to enrage us
or addict us, get us addicted to our phones such

(03:31):
that they can then hand us over dopamine addicts to
the pharmaceutical the medical industrial complex. Now, how do you
address that. We need more laws. We need to remove
two thirty for algorithmically elevated content.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
We need age gating.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
There's no reason anyone under the age of sixteen should
be on Instagram. But also the more and boring stuff.
We need to break up these companies. And in a breakup,
it almost always works economically, it works for shareholders. The
seven baby bills that AT and T was broken up
into are all worth more than eight and T you
within seven years. PayPal is worth monstrously more than the

(04:05):
original eBay. Breakups are very accretive to the economy. They're
good for employees because they get to charge more to
rent their labor. If you want to be in social
media and you're a hotshot engineer, how many companies are
really bidding on your talent? I would argue snap in
Pinterest that Facebook could put them out of business. But
they don't just to pretend they have competition, they can

(04:25):
put them out of business. I think in ninety days
if they targeted their sights on them, shareholders win, consumers win.
And what happens is this level of concentration is rents
go up. And unfortunately these companies have non economic rents,
and that is it's hard to determine the pricing on
a product that's free. But what I would argue is
one of the greatest increase in rents in history is
the rents, the increase in rents that parents are paying

(04:47):
at the hands of an organization that really doesn't have
your kids' welfare and best interests. I know you have kids,
I have kids. I would say between forty and sixty
percent of all real tension or ajita in my house,
not only between my kids but between my kids and
their mother, is around the phone and social media. So
look at the rents we're paying here. I'm cynical anything's

(05:08):
going to happen. They've been much more masterful than our
government figuring out a way to avoid all regulation.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Did you were you surprised? I mean with all the outreach,
particularly for Meta, but I mean all these guys, you know,
not just being there at the inaugural for Trump, but
obviously more outreach in the oval that you surprised Trump
didn't intervene a little more aggressively with the quote unquote
new FTC and then went to trial.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
I'm convinced, Governor, that four hundred and ninety eight of
the five hundred fortune five hundred CEOs wake up every
morning and say good morning, mister president. I think all
of these guys think there's a non zero probability then
be drafted to be president, and the key attribute to
be president's leadership. And I think of leadership. We teach
leadership at business school, and I can summarize the entire
course of the following do the right thing even when

(05:52):
it's really hard. But we want to charge them seven
thousand bucks and so we can hire formally important people.
And it's in my opinion that we shouldn't have leaders
super ethics classes. But that's an entirely different, entirely different
talk show. How many corporate CEOs are really stepping up
here and saying the greatest own goal in history are
these tariffs? And that make no sense. There's been such
a lack of leadership from these CEOs stepping up. The

(06:16):
FDC and the DOJ, I would argue have been neutered.
Jonathan Canter I just interviewed, said that I'm not giving
the current officials at the dj enough credit that they
will break them up, and that Trump has been kind
of a little bit all over the map on this.
He didn't like TikTok till he found out and then
I think the CCP dialed up the algorithm in his favor,

(06:37):
so he decided he liked it.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Then he found out that.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Jeffrey ass is a large shareholder who gave him two
hundred and twenty million dollars, and what do you know,
he no longer wants.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
To ban it.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
So I find unfortunately our government has become at this point,
especially this administration, and I think Democrats have been guilty
of this, but just in a small ball.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Kind of way or a more elegant way.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
I think it's just pure pay for play, whether it's Apple,
which gives a million bucks to the inaugural Committee and
it has a cult of iOS users that he does
not want to piss off. You just saw tearff relief
for Apple. Meanwhile, ninety eight percent of company is dependent
upon the export and import economy or small and medium
sized businesses, So what do they do?

Speaker 3 (07:18):
It's you know, it's great to.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Be Apple, but what do you do if you don't
have If you're not the largest market cap company in
the world, then you're just a company selling pots and pans,
importing from China. And you have I talked to a
homer or retailer over the weekend one hundred million dollars
in product on a ship on ships that are going
to about to be offload at the port of Long
Beach over the course the next three weeks. This person

(07:39):
has to show up with another one hundred and forty
five million dollars in tariffs to get this stuff off
the boat.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
In addition, he's going to have to.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Send down hundreds of people to retag and relabel because
now labels and pricing are attached to the factory in China.
And he doesn't have a plan his business. So he's
stopping hiring. He's not recruiting at universities. He doesn't his
earnings calls are going to be a mess.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
So what do we have?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
A reduction in hiring, a reduction and prosperity with increased
consumer prices and a brand that is America now of
toxic uncertainty, where we're seeing people selling our bonds, where
people diversting from our stocks. But I'm very disappointed that
a lot of what I think great leaders in the
corporate world aren't stepping up and calling this for what

(08:22):
it is, and that is a totally self inflicted entry,
probably the greatest own goal since our entry into Iraq
with Scott.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
I mean, they're not doing it for obvious reasons, right,
just pure self interest, right. And would you argue for
douciary interest on behalf of the shareholders? I mean, what
you know, I'm with you one thousand percent. But in
a world that we're living in, I mean, is it
surprising or is it just outraging?

Speaker 2 (08:49):
I think you bring up the correct point, and that
is the smart thing to do from a shareholder perspective.
I mean, the thing that disappoints me, governor present company excluded,
is not that our government officials. It's not going to
be provocative here because you've had a lot of right
wing people. It's not that our government or elected representatives
in DC are are whorees. It's that they're such cheap hors,

(09:09):
and that is it's the best ROI is to give
a million dollars thenopogal committee any crosshairs so chief. So
when you're earning a three trillion dollar market cap company,
why on earth would you just just grin and bear
it and text me and my co hosts that I
hate being here. But meanwhile they show up, they prostitute themselves,
they get prayed around. Because if you're solely focused on

(09:32):
shareholder value, I get it, they're just being fiduciaries with
the share stay out of his crosshairs.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Bend the knee.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
If you're a law firm refusing to take clients of
his adversaries, which is literally an attack on our constitution, fine.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
But for God's sakes, let's give up the charade about stakeholders.
I've been on a bunch of corporate boards and everyone's
always talking about stakeholders. I'm like, okay, let's stop it.
In some way you should expect or not expect, the
American corporation is better, are making money than any corporation
in the world, and therefore should not be trusted to
do anything else. We need laws, and we keep hoping

(10:06):
that if we shame Mark Zuckerberg and talk about all
these kids self harming and all the damage he's doing,
that his better angels are going to show up. That's
just not going to happen. The incentives in America are
the following. To be rich in America is to be loved.
It's a loving, generous place if you have money. It's
a rapacious, violent place if you don't. So so many
incentives are to do whatever incremental decisions you have to

(10:28):
make to make more money. That unless we have systemic
laws that say, if you algorithmically elevated content that shows
a fourteen year old girl images on suicide pills, nooses, raisors,
and this happened because the algorithms pick up she's having
suicidal ideation. Unless we put someone in jail, or we

(10:51):
find them five fifty billion, not five billion, they're going
to continue to do this right now.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
The incentives are the following.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
If you have a parking meter in front of your
house that costs one hundred dollars an hour, but the
ticket was twenty five cents, you'd break the law. And
that's essentially the incentive system we have around big tech
right now. But for God's sake, stop stop to see
us to stop with this bs around stakeholders. They're there
for shareholders, admit it, and we can just get on
with figuring out we need laws not to shame them

(11:20):
in front of the populace for a TikTok moment so
you can raise more money as an elected representative, and
then the wheel turns, if you.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Will appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
On TikTok, I mean you're just I mean you are
firmly in the camp that they need to be banned
in the United States. Is that right?

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Well, okay, so October seventh happens. Since then, there's been
fifty two pro Hamas videos for every pro Israel video.
And I recognize that young people have a healthy distrust
of people my age and are maybe more progressive and
have a lot of warranted empathy for the people in Gaza,
But fifty two to one. We spend hundreds of millions

(11:57):
of dollars on psyops to support our message oversea, with overseas,
with what you would call Radio Europe or Air America,
whatever it might be. That's propaganda. TikTok now has greater
dominance in terms of time. The average fourteen year old
male in America spent seventeen hours a week on TikTok,
meaning that if you include sleep, they're spending a full

(12:18):
day a week on TikTok. They have a greater command
of attention among people under the age of twenty five
than CBS, NBC, and ABC had in the sixties. Would
we have been down in the sixties with the Kremlin
owning those three networks? And the argument I would make,
Governor is, they would be stupid not to be doing this.
They can't beat us militarily, they can't beat us kinetically,

(12:40):
they can't beat us economically. I know, let's get them
to hate each other. And I think that's what we're doing.
So we're raising a generation of civic, nonprofit and nonprofit
and military leaders. They just don't like each other. They
don't like America. Half the people our age, Governor feel
good about America. It's one in ten young people. So

(13:01):
we weren't comfortable with having missiles pointed at US sixty
miles off our shore in Cuba. I don't understand why
we would have a neural jack and plan into all
of our use wet matter controlled by the CCP that
has a strategic andperative and diminishing our power. I think
it's insane that we would allow TikTok into the United States.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
And as a point you make often is name how
many American tech companies are operating in mainland China.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Well, we just to talking about tariffs. Tariffs can be used.
Tariffs do play a role, and that is you can
protect nason industries. South Korea has done a good job
thoughtfully protecting some industries there. If we feel we need
a certain level domestic steel production in case we have
a war, need to build tanks, maybe make some sense
have tariffs there when you have leverage. We had leverage

(13:49):
in the truck market. We impose a twenty five percent tariff.
On Japan they impose zero percent. So they can be
used strategically and thoughtfully. And one type of terraff to
restore traders is to say, if you're not going to
allow a single American media company in the mainland China,
it would make sense we're not going to allow any
of yours.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
But we do for some.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Reason because again the General Lantic partners to Qui Capital,
there are a lot of American investors that are investors
in TikTok but I just think this is I think
American's core competence are One of our kiaptriats is our optimism.
But the Achilles heel of that is I think we're
a little bit naive. And it bothered me that the
Biden administration no one was allowed to be on TikTok

(14:30):
for security reasons, because I don't think they realize what's
going on here and you don't.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
I'm pologizing a little bit all over the place. But
have you seen the program Adolescence Governor.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
I did not have the guts I started. I kid
you not as a parent. I couldn't do it. I
couldn't do it. My wife watched it. She said, I'm
glad you I'm glad you missed it. Even though she
says you're going to watch.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
It with me.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
It asked to be seen. Apparently, it was parenttly powerful
beyond words.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yeah, it's funny you say that I found it. I
did watch it because it's I think a lot about
these issues.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
I found I had to have a drink before I
watch it.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
It was so rattling, and the question at argurs is
who's raising our kids? And are you raising your kids
or is the Internet raising your kids? And if the
Internet's raising your kids, who is raising them? And I'm
just not down with a CCP controlled algorithm raising American children.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Let me ask you this, I mean in terms of
just and we'll get to America's children. And I think
it's interesting just so much of your work is not
just about headlines, but it's about these trend lines. And you,
of course did that wonderful book Adrift that did it
in charts, and you've been talking about these broader issues
and goes back to my opening a little bit, and
as it relates to inequality and generational theft, as you've

(15:52):
referred to it, the issues of housing costs. But you
have sort of a plan, a flag in history here
in California. You grew up in Los Angeles, and not
only are you a proud graduate of UCLA, we're a
proud beneficiary of your largesse. And as someone that's on
the UC regions, thank you. If you haven't been formally

(16:13):
thanked for your incredible personal contributions to UCLA and to
UC Berkeley, you've paid forward, You've paid back twenty times X.
But I talk to me a little bit about these
trend lines you've seen exacerbated perhaps by these algorithms that
have really led to the headlines and the anxiety that
we're all experiencing today.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Well thanks for that. That means a lot coming from you.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Look, I was an unremarkable kid, and I'm not son Ahmobruck.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
I was remarkably unremarkable. I was raised by a single immigrant.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Mother who lived and died of secretary of a household
income was ever never over thirty eight thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
I applied to UCLA.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
When the acceptance rate was seventy six percent, and I
was one of the twenty four percent that didn't get in.
And I was installing shelving in the highlight of my
day as I get ridiculously fucking high with my coworkers
and then take to the high ways of Ontario, California.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
And I came home and I just broke down.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
With my mom and I said, is this my life?
And there's nothing wrong with vocational work, but I'd really
hope to go to college. And we found out there
was an appeal process, and I appealed, and I remember
changed my life. The guy the admissions director called or
got missioned off called and said, you're not qualified, but
you're a native son of California, and we're going to
give you a shot. And I rewarded UCLA with a

(17:26):
two point twenty seven GPA. Undergraduate, I did nothing but
learned how to make bonds out of household items and
watch Planet of the Apes. And what did Berkeley do.
One of the top ten business schools in the world.
They led me into graduate school with the two point
twenty seven GPA, and I got my shit together. My
mom got sick. I just grew up, liked to think,
I started becoming a man, and it started an upward

(17:48):
spiral of prosperity.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
And I've been able to give back.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
And the lesson here is that no one can predict
greatness at the age of eighteen in anybody, no institution
and his higher education is my industry of about identifying
rich kids or the frequently remarkable and turning them into billionaires.
Or it is about giving the bottom ninety a shot
at being in the top. And we used to love Americans,
and I look back on the things that that gave

(18:15):
me just this unbelievable American experience, and some of them
don't exist today. UCLA's and missions rate has gone from
seventy six percent to nine percent. They just they couldn't
have let me, and they didn't have the bandwidth. It
was not I spent seven thousand dollars over seven years
undergrad and grad. It's obviously that's total tuition. It's obviously
a lot more. You know, I talk about this very openly.

(18:39):
There were also things today that I think I would
have succumbed to that would have gotten the way my prosperity.
My mom, when she was forty seven, when I was
a senior in high school, became pregnant and had access
to family planning. Had we lived in a southern state,
given our income and our lack of sophistication, I would
have dropped out of school to help my mom, and

(19:01):
I wouldn't have been able to go to college. Quite frankly,
young men are being targeted by the deepest pocketed, most
talented organizations in the world, specifically big Tech. Want to
give them the sense that they can have a reasonable
facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Why
go out and try and make friends when you have

(19:21):
read it in discord, Why go through the pain of
putting on a tie showing up on time, not partying
during the week, and get a real job when you
can trade stocks or crypto on coinbase or robinhood.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Which usually leads to disaster.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Why go through the humiliation, the effort, the rejection, showering
for God's say, its working out, having a plan, showing resilience,
approaching a stranger, and expressing romantic interest when you have porn.
The scariest stat I've seen is that fifty one percent
of American men age eighteen to twenty four, I've never
asked a woman out in person, So I think the

(19:57):
America today.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Scott, by the way, just because I can't help it,
I got two young women find the camera. Literally both
shook their head when you said that, Oh really, well
give me I mean they literally and now they're laughing,
but nervously. I mean that's that was very powerful stat
you just gave, and it was powerful.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Their response, Well, look, I think a lot about masculinity
in America, and the reality is back in the eighties,
you know, America loved unremarkable people. And it feels as
if America has fallen out of love with the unremarkable.

(20:40):
That the objective of higher ed and America is to
try and identify a superclass and turn them into billionaires
instead of giving the bottom ninety nine a chance to
be millionaires and to find someone, fall in love, have kids,
you know, all the.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Profound shit, right. And I worry the young men who.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Are especially susceptible, that these algorithms are kind of losing.
They've lost a lot of on ramps into the middle class.
And we aren't producing enough economically and emotionally viable men.
And who wants more economically and emotionally viable men women?
Sixty percent of thirty year olds who just have a
kid in the household now it's twenty seven percent. I

(21:21):
coach a lot of young men, and I think between
these algorithms the lack of jobs. Quite frankly, they're just
not Their prefrontal cortex isn't developing. They're less mature. Seventy
percent of high school valedictorians or girls, women own more
homes in single.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
Women than men.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Now in urban centers under the age of thirty, women
are making more money. And by the way, that is
a collective victory. They deserve it. They're working harder, they're
studying harder, they got their shit together they deserve more money.
The problem is is that without women to have an
honest conversation around household formation and mate and we have
to have an honest conversation, and that is women tend

(21:58):
to meet sociation economically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down.
And so when the pool, the viable pool of male
mates that's horizontaled up, keeps shrinking, there's a lack of
household formation. And what's interesting is that women without a
relationship oftentimes pour that additional energy into their friend network

(22:19):
and into work. When men under the age of thirty
don't have a relationship, they oftentimes pour that energy into
video games, porn and sequestering from society, conspiracy theory. They
start blaming women for their problems. They become much more
prone to misogynistic content. They start blaming immigrants for their
lack of economic viability. They become very nationalists, and some

(22:40):
they turn into really shitty citizens. And if a man
doesn't have a relationship by the time, if he's never
cohabitated or been married by the time he's thirty, there's
a one in three chance he's going to be a
substance abuser. And some women used to need relationships for
financial support, they no longer need it. Men have always
needed relationships for emotional support, and without that emotional support,

(23:03):
they kind of come off the tracks. And I'm not
suggesting in any way women lower their standards. What I'm
suggesting is men need to level up, and we also
need to recognize it. Unless we give more money to
young people who are twenty four percent less wealthier than
they were forty years ago, and old people are seventy
two percent wealthier. Unless we level up all young people

(23:23):
and create more opportunities for people to meet, to fall
in love, and to do what I think is the
most profoundly rewarding thing, and that has raised children with
someone you care about and have a reasonable chance of
having a home and not being one of the forty
percent of households that have medical or dental debt.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Then what is all of this for.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
There's been more shareholder value created in a ten mile
radius of SFO International Airport in the last three years
than it's created in Europe in the last thirty years.
But we can't afford to give people a middle class lifestyle.
And I think all of these things are conscious choices
we've made. But going back to this notion, and you know,
I had the opportunity to meet people. I had the

(24:05):
opportunity to get jobs. I had the opportunity to get
a cheap education. I had the opportunity when I bought
that house in San Francisco. When I graduated from Berkeley,
it was one hundred thousand dollars average comp average house
in San Francisco costs two hundred and eighty thousand. Now
the comp out of has is two hundred great money,
but the average house costs two point one million, So
it's gone from two point eight to ten times. Minimum

(24:26):
wage is stuck at seven twenty five. The Nasdaq has
gone up sevenfold, minimum wage has gone up zero percent.
Every year, we transfer one point trillion dollars from people
under the age of sixty five to the wealthiest generation
in the history of the planet, to Social Security recipients.
And I'm not suggesting we do away with Social Security,
but Governor, neither you nor me should.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Ever get Social Security.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
So I feel as if we've consciously transferred money from
the young to the old, made it more competitive. Women
are thriving, that's outstanding. The young men are struggling, and
I think we're finally having a productive dialogue because the
people who are finally not finally, the people are most
supportive of my work now it's changed totally, are mothers,
and what they realize is that the nation and women

(25:08):
aren't going to continue to flourish as long as men
are flailing and our young men are failing. Governor four
times is likely to kill themselves, three times is likely
to be addicted, twelve times is likely to be incarcerated.
Do we have an opiate crisis? Do we have a
homeless crisis? Yes, but we really have a male opiate
and homeless crisis. And if any other special interest group

(25:31):
was killing themselves at four times the rate is the
control group, we would weigh in with programs. But instead,
because of our generation, where so much was prosperity was
crammed into a small number of people, specifically white heterosexual males,
we want to punish the nineteen year old male for
our blessings, and understandably there's a gag reflex because we've

(25:54):
had a three thousand year head start. But the nineteen
year old man whose mom's addicted to opiate, it's his
father's incarcerated, who has no on ramps into a middle class.
I mean, do you really want them to pay the
price for the benefit and the privilege that the two
of us have received. There's a lack of empathy, and
this is not a zero sum game. Civil Rights didn't

(26:14):
hear why people game marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage. If
we level up our young people, it's not going to
take away from the incredible progress women have made.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Scot When did you start to really see this trend?
When did you start? I mean your work on this.
You're doing a new book on Notes on being a
Man and obviously talking a lot about it. I'm personally
been very attached to this issue. My wife has done
a number of documentaries, one on the miss and underrepresentation
of women and girls ten years ago, right, yeah, ten

(26:46):
years But then immediately did one called the masculinbing about masculinity,
and this was pre Trump, and she really to your point,
she came at it as a parent and the challenges
and the difference between we have two boys and two girls,
and so I've long appreciated this topic. It's a difficult

(27:06):
one politically, and I want to get to that in
a minute. And I think you started to unpack some
of that. But when did you personally really start to
see this and realize we need to talk about it more.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
You know, it wasn't any specific moment or epiphany.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
It was I love data, and the data here was
just overwhelming when you just saw what was happening to
college attendance. It used to be forty sixty, now it's
sixty forty. It's probably going to be two to one
female to male college grads the next five years because
men drop out, so there's literally going to be two
college literally college crowds.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
I literally had a CSU conversation along those lines, literally
two to one.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah. And then you look at just some of the dynamics.
Around one out of three men under the age of
thirty is in a relationship. Too out of three women
under the age of thirty is in a relationship, and
you think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women
are dating older because they want more economically viable men.

(28:02):
One in three men under the age of thirty under
the age of twenty five is living with their parents.
One in five at the age of thirty is living
with their parents. So you see, you just see the
data so overwhelming and just on a personal note, Governor.
I just relate to these young men. I could think,
I think to myself, had it not been for the
generosity of California taxpayers and the regents of the University

(28:25):
of California, and the irrational passion for my well being
and my mother, and the fact that the tax policy
and economic policy gave me just this upward spiral, you know,
there for the grace of God go I. I relate
to these young men. I don't think that you know
as you when you're younger, you you like to you

(28:46):
credit your you credit your grit and your character for
your success. My origin story up until the age of
forty was check out my shit. I was raised by
sam la'mi grandmother. Now I'm a baller and you know,
aren't just smell me? And then as you get older,
you realize a lot of your success is and your fault.
If had I not been born in California, a white,

(29:07):
heterosexual male, am I you know in the sixties, I
just don't think I'd be here. And by the way,
I'm not humble. I think I'm a fucking monster. I
think I'm in the top one percent, but the top
one percent of this on this planet puts in a
room of seventy five million people, my life is better
than the top seven and a half at least. And
that's because my smartest thing I ever did was to
be born in America, specifically in California, and I realized

(29:30):
that a lot of those features that really lifted me
up by the scrap of Mayac and flung me forward
at the speed of sound into prosperity, that hand is
getting weaker and weaker. So one, the data is overwhelming,
and two, I just really relate to these young men.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
I was there.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
I didn't have a lot of economic or romantic prospects,
and things worked out for me because our nation decided
that it loved the unremarkable, and I just I worry
that's no longer the case.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
Hi, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Director of Communications
and Wall Street financier. You might have caught me on
a recent episode of This is Gavin Newsom. If you
like that, I think you'll enjoy my own podcast, The
Rest Is Politics Us. Alongside journalist Caddy k we go
behind the scenes of politics, from the chaos of the
West Wing to the forces shaping the world's most powerful economy.

(30:30):
I was in the Trump White House for eleven wild
days and Caddy's been reporting on US politics for nearly
thirty years. We bring sharp insight, real stories, and maybe
a few secrets you haven't heard before. Search the rest
is politics US. Wherever you get your podcasts, hope to
see you over there.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
You've highlighted I think four x the housing costs, two
x the educational costs. Paychecks now declining and exacerbating these
conditions in this sort of generational shift that you highlighted
as it relates to seniors doing better and this generation,
younger generation doing worse for the first time in American
history than their parents' generation. What is that I want

(31:12):
to connect?

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Do you connect any of the dots in our conversation
around terras. Do you connect any dots as it relates
to de industrialization, Do connect any dots to any substantive
policy decisions that were made in the United States of America?
Or was it just a broader neglect and focus on
what made America great? Was it a lack of intentionality

(31:36):
in subsidizing higher education? Was a lack of focus on
yimbiism versus NIMBYism? As relates to housing and the imperative
there was what was there? Was there something that you
really connect as a moment? Was it in the simple
terms that often are painted in politics, Reaganomics and trickle
down economics in a broader sort of decoupling of commitment

(31:59):
to the social well.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
So a lot there, but a couple of things that
it isn't. A couple of reasons that didn't inspire this
decline in the prosperity of young people of the American male.
The first is that manufacturing has gone away, and that's
the problem. As manufacturing has gone away in the seventies,
we've had more overall prosperity. Americans aren't looking. You know,

(32:22):
Stave Chappelle said, we want to wear nikes, not make them.
You know, the notion that we're going to have the
biggest own goal in history so we can bring more
manufacturing and microwaves back.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
It's just stupid.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
The average assembly line worker for Fox Con working for
Apple makes five hundred dollars a month or six thousand
dollars a year in China. The average executive at Apple
headquarters makes over two hundred thousand dollars a year. We
have purposely traded off manufacturing for higher growth technology systems
services jobs.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
So do you make the case that's not it, then,
I mean, that's notton.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
We're still the second largest manufacturing in the world. We've
just outsourced the shitty manufacturing work. Have we left some
people behind?

Speaker 3 (33:02):
Unfairly? Sure?

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Eighty percent Americans want more manufacturing. Only one in five
one actually work in manufacturing. You can't take your dog
to the shop floor to the plant at Lansing, Michigan.
Everyone loves the idea of manufacturing. People want to design software.
They want to be in the services industry. They want
to be an associated JP Morgan and not not tooling
or making batteries somewhere. The ascent of women has been wonderful.

(33:28):
It has not come at the cross, It has not
come at the cost of men. I think there's a
variety of things that are going on here. One just
biological men mature are less fast. And when we even
the playing field in academia, women blue by men, I
would argue that the educational system is now biased against men.
A boy is twice as likely to be suspended on

(33:48):
a behavioral adjusted basis exact sand infraction, A black boy
five times as likely look at the behaviors that we
promote in school. Sid still be organized, be a pleased,
or raise your hand. You're basically describing a girl you have. Woodshop,
metal shop, and autoshop have gone away, so the online
kind of the on rams to a vocational job are

(34:08):
not as clear. We all knew that guy in high school.
There was no way he was going to college, but
he was fixing up his trans am in his driveway
and he could go to work making thirty or forty
bucks an hour as a mechanic. Now that path, that
vocational path, those jobs are there, but sociologically we sort
of shame those jobs, and we tell parents you've failed.
If your kid is one of the two thirds of

(34:30):
kids that doesn't get in doesn't get into college.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
We've seen, you know. I would call a lot of
mixed messaging to young men that pull up.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yourself, you know, pull yourself up by your boots if
you're only more in touch with your feelings. I think
that modern masculinity from the right is be coarse and cruel,
and from the left it's.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
Be more like a woman. I don't think either of
those is right.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
I still think there's opportunity for men to embrace masculinity,
you know, being strong, being physically strong, being risk aggressive,
initiating romantic contact, being aggressive around trying to get a
job you're not qualified for taking risks. I think these
are wonderful at being kind, being a protector, your default
system as a protector. So I think young men have

(35:18):
gotten a lot of a lot of mixed messages. More
than anything, we have made the conscious decision to transfer
money from young to old. Old people have figured out
a way to vote themselves more money, and they continue
to do it. The forty billion dollar child tax credit
gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill, the one hundred
and thirty billion dollar increase in cost of living adjustment
for seniors flies right through Congress because old people vote.

(35:41):
And it's just insane to me that we have the
largest economic transfer in history annually happen, every being done
in twelve months from young to old. There used to
be twelve people supporting every retired worker, now there's three.
We haven't raised the age. All this nonsense around Doge.
You know they save two and a half billion dollars.
You could six sax of Doge by cutting off all

(36:01):
subsidies to Tesla it's if you really want to be
an adult here about the fact that we're spending seven
trillion on five trillion revenues.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
There's only two things you can do.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
You're gonna have to go after entitlements and you're going
to or you're gonna have to raise taxes. And the
answer is yes. At some point, we're going to need
an adult that says, I'm sorry, folks, we have to
do both. I'm the person that's going to cut your
entitlements or at least means tested and age gate it,
and I'm going to have.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
To raise your taxes.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
And what we've decided is the people who vote and
the wealthiest people. Taxes for incorporations are at their lowest
level since nineteen twenty nine. The twenty five wealthiest Americans
are paying six percent of taxes. And we like to
think that, oh, we can't lower taxes, they're too high.
There's a strange dynamic in the US whereas the people
who get most screwed by our tax code are not

(36:50):
only young people, but well, let's just stop. There two
biggest tax deductions mortgage interest rate and capital gains. Who
owns stocks and homes, people age, who rents and makes
some money from salary. Young people social Security tax. My
analyst who works for me makes one hundred and sixty grand,
pays nine grand to earn social Security tax. I make
substantially more than that, and I pay nine grand because

(37:14):
we've decided to cap it such that it's a regressive tax,
so we keep transferring more and more money to the old.
And what you know, young people aren't economically it's economically viable,
which is more important for a man. Three quarters of
women's say economic viability is important in a mate. Only
one in four men say that it's important. So we
essentially have just the most depressed, obese, and anxious generation

(37:39):
in history, and we ask ourselves why.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Well, of course they're upset.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
They're not doing as well as their parents. They can't
find a mate. There aren't as many venues to meet.
They meet online where they type in six feet or
one hundred thousand dollars plus. If you take out married,
obese and men under the age over the age of fifty,
that's two percent of the male popular. Men need a
place to demonstrate excellence. If you talk to couples that

(38:06):
have been married longer than thirty years, seventy five percent
of them say one was much more interested in the
other at the beginning, and it's almost always the male
who was more interested than the woman, because the downside
of sex is much greater for a woman than a man.
We've been taught for thousands of years to spread our
seed to the four corners of the earth. Women have
been taught for thousands of years to put up a

(38:27):
much finer filter to pick the strongest, smartest, and fastest seed.
And some they're just more selective. And I'm not suggesting
they should ever lower their standards, but typically what happened
in those relationships is the man had a chance to
demonstrate excellence. I worked with him, and I found out
he was really good at what he did. We went
to the same temple, and I saw how kind he
was to his parents. We spent time together, and we

(38:50):
worked at a food kitchen together, and I saw that
he was kind. I liked his hands, I like the
way he danced, I like the way he smelled, And
slowly but surely he raised his game in my mind,
and we fell in love and decided to have a
life together. Where does a man, a young man, demonstrate
excellence to get through that much finer filter that women have.

(39:11):
They're not going to work, they're not going to school.
The number of bars. I'm living in London, the number
of bars in London has declined forty percent. Kids don't
have the money and they have this anti alcohol movement.
And just so I can really act like I'm crazy,
I think young people need to drink more. I think
this anti alcohol movement is the worst thing since remote

(39:32):
work for young people. I tell people jokingly, you need
to go out, drink more and make a series of
bad decisions that might payoff because the risk to your
twenty five year old liver of alcohol is dwarfed by
the risks of social isolation.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Well as a guy who owns a few bars and wineries.
I'm with you Scott on that, but you're in yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
No.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
But it's interesting. I love hearing. I mean, by the
way you've made this point about bars, it's interesting you're
sincere about it. You're not just being flipping about it.
I mean, I mean people to your point. I mean
they're more isolated, more lonely, and more disconnects. One of
I mean, we can get to solutions in a minute,
but it's actually one of your foundational principles to address
some of these issues. Not just bars. I mean social

(40:14):
settings that can bring people together.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Sports leagues, church, nonprofits, national service tax credits for places
that bring people together, young people together. I mean, and
I'll ask you this, Think of your closest friends, I
mean your buddies, where you get together and you just
pick up a letter m no matter how long it's
been since you've seen them. Think about your romantic relationships
in your life. Did what percentage of them? Did alcohol

(40:38):
play some role in your formative yours?

Speaker 3 (40:41):
Exactly?

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Enough said?

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Enough said, there you go.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
No, I mean right, I mean everybody listening. How many
people listen to your point? That's ninety plus percent of folks, right,
I imagine.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Well, and six percent of our youth are addicted to
drugs and alcohol. Twenty six percent or twenty three percent
are addicted to social media.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Where's the real problem here?

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah? Well said, you talked about minimum wage at seven
twenty five, and you've talked about the fact that if
you ingested for productivity and inflation, be closer to what
twenty three, twenty four or five dollars, And that you've
talked about the issues of vocation, community college. You know,

(41:22):
you brought up the woodshop frame and just how we
know those jobs exist, but we haven't persisted in providing
the sort of reputational support for those skills and the
actual education that we pulled away from our education system
K through twelve. What else should we be focused on
in terms of substantially trying to address this besides now

(41:45):
having an honest conversation about it.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Well, first off, I think you and the governor of
Washington have shown a lot of leadership around minimum wage,
and that is what we found is that the myth
that all these small businesses are going to go out
of business, it's just a myth that when you raise
minimum wage. Wonderful thing about lower middleclem households is that
when you give them a buck, they spend it all
and it creates a greater multiplier effect. And we haven't
seen a decline in businesses, economic growth, or an increase

(42:09):
in inflation when we raise minimum wage. So that's, in
my opinion, that's no brainer. I like to think I'm
helping the Democratic Party with messaging. I like to think
of a unifying theory of everything, and the unifying theory
of everything for me is anyone under the age of
forty that's a good person and works hard, should be
able to find someone, and should be able to raise
kids in a household without living in poverty. And the

(42:30):
first thing is twenty five dollars an hour minimum wage.
I don't, I just don't. It would hurt wal Mart stock,
it would hurt McDonald's stock, and it would be worth it.
I think more men in K through twelve education, if
you were to look reverse engineered to the single point
of failure for when boys become come off the tracks,
it's when they lose a male role model. We have

(42:51):
the most single parent homes of any nation in the world,
and when we say single parent, we really mean mom
is heading the household. That's ninety two percent of single
parent homes. And ends up is that girls in single
parent homes have the same outcome, same rates of high
school attendance and self harm. Boys become much more likely
to engage in self harm and not go to college.

(43:11):
It ends up that while boys are physically stronger, they're
mentally and emotionally much weaker. So we need more males
involved in K through twelve And even just saying that
boys need men in their lives used to trigger people,
and now mothers are recognizing that that's just not true.
We need boys involved in men's lives.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
And Scott, you mean by that teachers, not just mentors,
people that are advocates, counselors in what respect.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Yeah, so all of the above after school programs, coaches,
they usually don't get paid.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
More men.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
I think the Catholic Church and Michael Jackson have screwed
it up for all of us. I think there's a
lot of wonderful men out there that don't have families
of their own. There are three times as women applying
to be big sisters as men applying to be big
brothers in America. Why one men aren't stepping up and
two I think they feel self conscious.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
If you're a thirty five year old male.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Maybe doesn't have your own family or your own kids,
and you want to be involved or help out a
fifteen year old son of a single mother, don't people
look at you like there's something wrong with you. There
are a lot of wonderful men out there that I
have loved to get paternal and fraternal, and they're under
the illusion that if they're not a baller, that or
they haven't done have a degree in adolescent psychiatry. They

(44:26):
shouldn't get involved in a boy's life. I think of
the rings of masculinity. You got to take care of yourself,
you got to be strong, you gotta be economic viability,
You take care of your family, you take care of community.
But I think the ultimate expression of masculinity is to
get involved in the life of a child that isn't yours.
And we need more men involved. When my mom got divorced,
she made sure that a couple of her boyfriend she

(44:48):
kept in my life. There was a neighbor that used
to come over with his girlfriend to take me horseback riding.
I made really good friends with a stockbroker and I
used to swing by his the brokerage, Dean witter Reynolds
in Westwood after school. Lot of wonderful men in my life.
So one, men need to step up. More big brothers programs,
more coaching. I would like to see a mandatory national service.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
If you look at if you.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Look at Israel, lowest levels of young adult depression in
the West, despite all the existential threats. I was just
in Israel and I met with a battalion of one
hundred and ten from the idf all these beautiful young
men and women fit outdoors, learning how to handle assault rifles,
getting to the point where they're so skilled that the
man or the woman next to you would literally depend,

(45:33):
you know, trust you, with their lives and serving the
agency of something bigger than themselves. And that's where they
meet friends. That's where they meet mentors, co founders, and mates.
I'd like to see national mandatory, national service where people
can meet others from different sexual orientations, different income classes,
different ethnicity, so we start to see each other as
Americans before we see each other as trans or Republican.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Or rich or poor.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
I think any college it's not growing as freshman class
faster than population growth should and has an endowment over
a billion dollars should lose its tax re status. Dartmouth
has eight billion dollar endowment, five hundred students. It's not
a college, it's a hedge fund with classes.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
It's just insane. If you had a drug that made
people less obese.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Four times more likely to get married, likely to run
for office, much less likely to get divorced, much less
likely to have diabetes, whilch ahard that drug. That's what
me and my colleagues are doing. At elite higher institutions,
we purposely sequester artificially constrained supply. We could let in
five x the number of kids we do now, but
we're all drunk on exclusivity. When my dean announces we've

(46:41):
rejected eighty five percent of our applicants, you know what
me and my colleagues do.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
We stand up and we allawed. It's awful.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
And I really appreciate the University of California and what
the cal state system is doing trying to increase its
population by the amount of one class. But unfortunately a
lot of elite institutions have not have not received the memo.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
I just toured.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
I did a calle true with my son University Chicago.
Four percent admissions rate. Do four percent admissions right?

Speaker 1 (47:08):
And you were, by the way, literal when and just
for listeners, when you said nine percent of UCLA. It's
nine percent at UCLA, eleven percent at Berkeley. It is interesting,
Scott use over the entire system it's now seventy percent.
Just broke seventy percent, but at those specific campuses because

(47:29):
of UC mer said and other ucs, we're making progress,
but it's not good enough. In your point, it's even
worse if you look at degrees. If you're trying to
get a computer science degree or something, you're talking one
to three percent of people getting in. And you're right.
You hear it all the time faculty.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
In others.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
It's not a knock at faculty, but people start to
applaud I've been in those meetings just as you described,
and it's gross.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
And California gets it.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
I'm not a billionaire, but I've given a lot of
money to UCLA and Berkeley because California gets that. The
cal State system is probably the unsung hero.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Right, biggest pelgrant recipient in the world in the United States,
biggest conveyor metal talent the country.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Pel grants saved my ask Governor. I'm the recipient of
affirmative action because I came from a household that was
in the lower third economically, I got unfair advantage and
I got pelgrants. I couldn't have gone to college without them.
And it's worked out for everybody. And also so I
do think there's schools to get it. I think what
ASU is doing with Michael Crowe. I do think there

(48:29):
are schools that get you dubbed Madison. I just took
my kid at the University Wisconsin Madison, fifty thousand good
kids from Minneapolis and Wisconsin University of North Carolina doing
their job trying to expand it.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
So some people get the memo. The majority of elite.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Institutions now see themselves in their as their mes bags,
not as public servants. In terms of solutions, we just
need to put more money in the pockets of young people.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
I like what Portugal did with a tax holiday.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
If you gave every person under the age of forty
who makes less than one hundred thousand dollars a tax holiday,
it wouldn't cost that much because reality is they don't
make that much money. I think all capital gains should
be like the Reagan administration. There shouldn't be long term
or short term. Why is sweat less noble than the
money my money makes? Why is rent less noble than

(49:16):
the money you pay for a mortgage. That's nothing but
an elegant transfer of money from the young to the old.
And then you want to talk about the greatest intergenerational
theft in history.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
COVID.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
We took seven trillion dollars. A million people dying would
be bad, But if I got less wealthy, it'd be tragic.
So we took seven trillion dollars flushed into the economy.
Eighty five percent of it wasn't spent. It wasn't spent
on food, or medicine or housing. Eighty five percent of
it wasn't spent.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
So where did it go?

Speaker 2 (49:43):
It went into the markets, and housing went from two
hundred and ninety thousand average household to four to ten
in just four years. The stock market went crazy, so
I got richer and richer, and young people the entrance
everything got more expensive. When you bail out the baby
boomer owner of a restaurant, all you're doing is transferring

(50:04):
opportunity away from the recent graduate of a culinary academy
at twenty six who wants her shot. The reason I
get to live the life I lead economically is in
two thousand and eight, we bailed out the banks, but
we let the markets fall. The markets are cyclical, and
disruption transfers power and money back from incumbents to entrants.

(50:24):
And what did I get to do? I got to
buy Netflix, Apple, and Amazon at eight ten and twelve
dollars a share, and Netflix is at nine point forty.
Where does a young person find value now because we've
decided to use their credit card to bail us out.
When shit gets real, I'm in the club doing rails
of cocaine and champagne, and the closest a young person

(50:45):
gets is they get to throw me their credit card
so I can spend where the government can spend seven
trillion dollars a year on five trillion in receipts, such
as young people are going to have to pay this
shit back. It's criminal such that the stock market stay
is high. So that's that you and I stay wealthy.
So I think almost every major economic policy can be

(51:06):
reverse engineered to one thing. How do we maintain the
incumbents wealth at the cost of potential entrance?

Speaker 1 (51:14):
If I can just briefly enter the world of partisan politics,
you know, it's interesting these trend lines of obviously accrued
to the Trump candidacy. I mean, you saw with the numbers.
I think it, you know, and forgive me if I'm
off a little bit, But I think in the first
Trump election he won forty one percent of young voters,
fifty six percent of young voters in this last election. Obviously,

(51:39):
so much focus on his outreach and in terms of
focusing on the quote unquote manisphere focusing on sports more
of a hyper masculine frame of outreach and engagement. Don't
get me started or don't even get you started, though
I would love to actually get you started. But with
the DNC's lack of engagement to young men nonexistent. Doesn't

(52:03):
exist in the Democratic Party, hasn't in the past. But
give me a sense of you're over under. Was that
very intentional on his part? Was he just the beneficiary
of that because of the neglect of the Democratic Party
and he sort of stumbled into it. What do you
make of the difference between the two parties in terms
of trying to approach some of these issues in a

(52:24):
sincere and honest way.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
The three biggest own goals in American history where our
entry into Iraq or in recent history, these ridiculous tariffs
that is the most elegant way to reduce prosperity in history,
and the Democratic Committee losing to an insurrectionist and this
is how we managed to steal, to snatch the feet
from the jaws of victory. This was supposed to be

(52:46):
a referendum on women's rights. Understandably it was, and women's
rights did not show up which showed up was testosterone. Specifically,
young men are really struggling. And if you look at
the three groups of pivoted hardest from blue to red
twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, it was one Latinos,
who I believe don't want to be identified as a group.

(53:08):
The Mexican Americans in South California have much different priorities
in Cuban Americans in Southern Florida, and even identifying them
as a group I think pisses them off too. People
under the age of forty per your comments, they're just
not doing well. And when you're not doing as well
as your parents, you feel rage and all you want
is disruption. You don't even want change. You want the
candidate who is kind of chaotic because you're like, whatever's

(53:28):
going on here is not working for me. And then
the third and most interesting group the pivoted hardest from
blue to red, was forty five to sixty four year
old women. And my thesis is that's their mothers. And
there's still a lot of women in the US who
will vote for what they perceive is best for their
husbands or their sons. And when you're a mother and

(53:49):
your son is in the basement playing video games and vaping.
You don't give a shit about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine,
or women's rights or transgender rights. You just want change.
Trump campaign, to their credit, was brilliant. They flew right
into the manisphere rockets crypto Joe Rogan went He went on,

(54:10):
Joe Rogan, do you realize with forty million audio downloads,
assume me forty million YouTube videos and fifteen million audio downloads.
For vice president to get the same level of exposure
Vice President Harris, she would have had to gone on CNBC, MSNBC,
Fox and CNN every night for three hours.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
For two weeks.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
They totally outplayed as governor and then talk about young
men not going to the Republican Party but moving away from.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
The Democratic Party.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
I like you was at the convention and what I
saw was a three day parade of special interest groups
representing everybody but the one group that has fallen furthest.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Fastest, and that as young men.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
If you go to the DNC dot org website, it
has a site that says who we serve. Explicitly, it
says who we serve and it goes on to list
sixteen demographic groups ranging from Asian Pacific Islanders, the Black Americans,
the disabled veterans. I added it up, it's seventy four
percent of the US population. When you say you're explicitly

(55:09):
advocating for seventy four percent of the US population, you're
not advocating for them, You're discriminating against the twenty six percent.
And young men went viciously towards Trump. So did the
women in their lives supporting them, and that was enough
to swing groups who had traditionally been Democratic to Trump.

(55:30):
And this was a huge own goal. An honest question
is how did we let this happen? Quite frankly, we
ignored the group that has fallen furthest fastest. This wasn't
This wasn't This was the testosterone election. And Trump figured
that out and went.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
And flew right into it.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
Look, if Democratic Party is not listening, they sure as
hell better listen. Are there's going to repeat history. I
appreciate Scott, you're reinforcing this, and you know, we know
we're short on time, and I guess it begs the
final question, you know, what is the hesitancy to the party?
Is it just that you know, I think you've heard
the old phrase pay all male. You know, we've had

(56:11):
all the privileges you mentioned, three thousand years of sort
of male dominance, the Me Too movement, this notion that
you know, we still have gender disparity, we still have
all these issues. Is it just our unwillingness as a party,
the Democratic Party? What do you to just own up
to this fact? Or is it do we feel it's
just we're talking only about white males. What is it

(56:34):
that you think has restricted the capacity for the Democratic
Party to fully embrace and understand this gap in terms
of their electoral thinking, let alone the policy substance behind it.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
I think we became too obsessed with achieving social status
versus doing things that actually helped people grow the material
or the psychological well being. And I think identity politics
is for a long time, I think it was just
smart to cater to the specific needs and the easiest
way to identify people was through their identity. And I
think and by the way, I'm really hopeful for the

(57:10):
Democratic Party. I think this tariff nonsense is just unbelievable
opportunity for us to go. These people are insane and
they're producing your prosperity. I think this is a gift
to us. And the reason I have been and will
be for the rest of my life a Democrat is
that Democrats we get it wrong, but our heart's in
the right place. We're trying to do the right thing.
Sometimes do we carry it too far? We'd do and

(57:31):
what I would argue is using what needs to happen
at universities as a metaphor for what needs to happen
to the Democrat. You know, I'll use the University of California.
In nineteen ninety seven, the University of California dipped away
with race based affirmative action and they shifted to an
adversity score.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
Was what they realized is the daughter of a time
when he's private equity billionaire. It's not diversity.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
But if you're a trans kid, a white kid who's trans,
who's faced incredible uphill battle, you deserve a second look,
a second shot. And I think the Democratic Party to
move away from identity politics and focus really on one thing,
and that is the unifying theory of everything should be
that if you're young and you're a good kid, you

(58:10):
should have be able to have a job that pays.

Speaker 3 (58:13):
A certain wage.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
You should be able to find someone to fall in
love with, and you should be able to have a
home and kids. We need seven million homes in ten years,
manufactured homes that cost thirty to fifty percent less than
homes built on site. We need a minimum wage of
twenty five bucks an hour. We need a tax holiday
for people under the age of forty. We need national
service and more third places where people can fall in love.

(58:34):
And stop this identity politics. We are here to give
everyone a shot. Everyone and affirmative action in America should
should thrive, but it should be based on color, and
that color is green. We need in America. This is
a collective victory. You'd rather be born gay or nine
white than poor today.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
So let's go after Let's help the people.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Let's use the full faith and resources of the greatest
experience in history, the best performing organization in history, the
US government that's offered more rights and prosperity for a
lower cost taxes than any organization in history. Let's puild
a full weight. Let's put the full weight of that
incredible organization around the people who need it most in
the US, and that is the poor. Let's let's stop

(59:18):
this nonsense where the richer are protected by the law
but not bound by it, and the poor are bound
by the law but not protected by it. The constitutions
here to protect the lower fifty. This nonsense of rounding
people up and sending them to healthscapes. Guess what knowing
you or I know is risk. I could be in
deepest reddist Mississippi. I have access to messifest round because

(59:40):
I have money. That is not why the government is here.
The government isn't here to make you or me richer.
The government is to help the lower half. And I
think that's that's where the Democratic Party needs to go
and get away from identity politics because it's it's creating
more problems than it's solving.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Scott has been wonderful to spend time with you. Thank
you for your insight, thank you for your recommendations, and
thank you for always being so candid and forthright.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Thank you, Governor, and thank you to the toxpayers of California.
Literally changed my life.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
I love it.