Endorsement of Trump and Ideological Shift

So media Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that this week is talking about Bill Ackman, the patron sae. ivest investors with the great Kim Kelly. Kim. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing? How you feeling I'm good. I'm excited to talk more about this terrible man Robert, you know what I realized in between part one and part two? You know that very famous movie Pretty Woman? Richard Geere's character Yes That's his job Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. likeike yeah, that's exactly like gear is And that was still what it was like the corporate Rider thing. Yeah, right? Like that's very much the point of the movie is that like he's kind of a scumbag businessman. Yeah The terminology is so much cooler. like they should have just kept doing that. honestly. Corporation pirate. Yeah. Yeah,ass, etcetera. At least just own it. If you're going be a bastard, just be a bastard Well that was one of the more effective things about hook is that like you know, Robin Williams's character who's like a grown up Peter Pan comes back and like One of his old like friends is like, oh, you're just like a pirate now. Like that that's all you're doing. There was a really good one of the Monnie Python movies. I think it was Meing of lifeife opens with like a good skit about basically that, about like like a high seas accounting firm like like basically being like corporate pirates Uh It's very funny. U But then then things at a certain point, they're not happy being like evil. monsters anymore and they have to pretend to be the making of the world better. And that's kind of like the Bill Ackman Kie boundary here is like corporate raiders to activists. 's funottyy You know, like they want to own everything, but they want us to love them for it. and they get so mad when we don't. They don't want to they don't want us to act like they're doing what they're doing. They want us to act like they're doing us a favor, right? And we ended last episode, we talked about how Bill's company makes a shit load of money off this Canadian Pacific deal that this guy Paul Halal puts together and kind of during the same period where Halala is executing this masterful turnaround of Canadian Pacific, which is like often like a lot of people point out like this is about like the the chief perfect example of how well this kind of can work like an activist investing situation can work. This is the best case scenario. While that's all happening, Bill is miserably failing to do the same thing with JC Penney. L at the same time as Paul is having this huge success story for Pershing Bill is beginning to lead the company into a boondggle with JC Penney. and this is a very fun story This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human Is Jenny Garth from I Choose Me with Jenny Garth History is full of mysteries. Like how people ever survive before modern laundry detergent? Luckily, Tidee's here with boosted stain fighting for cleaner, whiter, brighter, and fresher laundry versus Tide simply. No wonder it was America's number one detergent in sales last year. If it's got to be clean, it's got to be tide. TDe is a proud sponsor of the Elttenjohn Impact Awards, honoring those who have helped shape a more inclusive and compassionate world artistry, advocacy, and unwavering commitment to equality. You won't want to miss the Elton John Impact Awards podcast available on june first on the IiHart Radio app and everywhere podcasts are heard When it comes to looking your best, beachbum Tanning does it better. 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Go to justfoodfordogs d. com and get fifty percent off your first order Bill starts acquiring shares of the legendary American retailer in twenty ten And he makes a big play with about nine hundred million dollars of Pershing's money. and this earns him a seat on the board. So he puts a little under a billion dollars into JC Pennies and he gets on the board Right? And so now he's in a position where he could start dictating and demanding the company make some changes. So Let's talk about JC Pennneys, rightight? You grew up around the same time I did. You went to like JC Pennyys to family photos, right? pictures and shit Christmas shopping with my grandma every year, schoolool shopping before I was like old enough to have opinions about the clothes I wore Go to pennies. I was getting winter coats at pennyies with my grandma Upntil it closed. got my mom and a book of fucking coupons, right? to get like whatever L the worst looking bld clothing that you you could we could all we could be dressed in. like I did't look good back then. I'm not gonna lie. tired. The Tay Hill mall was the center of the universe. I was from Gy. was aorite JC Penneys. Go the mall, go to Berttucci', go to the diner. J fucking Americana Out That was the American dream and they took it from us. Sit in Santa's lap, all that stuff. They being Bill, right? Specifically So JC Pennies at the time that Bill gets involved because twenty ten is when he starts buying his way in One of the biggest names in retail in the US for generations, but by the odds it's Quite a while, ten or fifteen years at least into a period of significant contraction In nineteen eighty nine, JC Penney's sales were about fifteen point three billion dollars. By the mid nineteen nineties, it was closing in on nineteen billion dollars a year. And in two thousand six, the highest revenue year, it almost crossed into twenty billion dollars. And that sounds good like that seems like it's making more money every year, But if you adj just for inflation, that means in nineteen eighty nine, the company made the equivalent of twenty nine billion dollars as opposed to nineteen point nine billionars in two thousand six. Right? So the twenty years It's gone it's contracted significantly in real terms, right As Joseph g. We got the internet Right.'s it's not people we've got the internet, we got better stores JC Penney just like didn't didn't handle that transition into the twenty first century very well As Joseph Ginto and also you know, the fact that we have like fucking phone cameras increasingly now and just easily portable digital cameras in two thousand six That starts to eat into because part of what brought people in is you get your family photo, we might as well do some shopping while we're here, right? Like all that stuff eats away at their role in society m As Joseph Guinto explained in an article for D Magazine, by the time Akman made his investment in twenty ten JC Pennney had been effectively stagnant for more than two decades. In inflation adjusted terms, the company had actually lost billions of dollars worth of ground ground that its competitors now claimed. So They're going bad by the time Bill gets himself involved and Bill has a plan to make JC Pennys great again And that plan is to rip off Steve Jobs Right? That's Bill's genius plan is I'm going to do what Steve Jobs just did at Apple, but I'm going to do it to JC Pennys and I'm going to hope that shit works, right? I'll explain. to be specific, the first big activist change that Akman pushed through once he was in position is to make the company shit canan its current CEO, Mike Olman. and Oman had he had presided over JC Penny's highest revenue year ever in two thousand six, but he had also been in charge for a lot of JC Penny's decline. He was not a great CEO Right So getting Mike out Let's say let's call it a neutral probablyro a neutral good decision for a Bill to have made Unfortunately, his next move is to replace Mike with a ringer CEO. and the CEO that Bill wants to put in there is Ron Johnson And in twenty eleven, Ron Johnson invented the Apple store. He is the guy that Steve put in position they when they needed to create the Apple store. Ron is the guy who like makes it, right So in twenty eleven, he's a pretty hot commody Apple stores have been a huge success. L No one can argue the guy was not good at his job. Like the Apple store worked very well. It did the thing that it was supposed to do for Apple. He was an enormous success. Business writer Bfnes Patel describes Ron as having, quote, built Apple's retail empire from scratch. Patel noted he thinks differently about retail than anyone else, and that's why Steve Jobs liked him Bill likes Ron because Steve had liked Ron Right? And I really don't think it went any deeper than that. I think he's like, well this guy created the Apple store and the Apple store is very worth money. JC Pennney is doing bad Apple store guy JC Penneys, JC Penneys will be doing good, right? Like that's I think that's the limit that to which Bill is really thinking this through. Yeah Just do the Apple store for slacks, essentially. What of the Apple store for pants? Yeah. That's Bill's business acumen. That's the Harvard MBA at work What if apple store but for perfume that they spray in the air as you walk by So As soon as yeah, genius, brilliant stuff. So Ron is now the CEO of JZ Penneys, and he sets to work doing what you'd expect the Apple store guy to do. If given control her brand like JZ Pennyys. He remodels everything all of their stores to look a lot nicer and to appeal to a high end clientele. You know how Apple stores look, right Big glass storefronts. They have Yeah L lot of tables, like very open floor plan, very sol coold soless minimal, but also high end Clean like modern, you know It's good for if you're going to be spending a lot of money on a product. like an Apple store feels like a reliable storefront. L I'm about to spend three thousand dollars and that's a huge amount of money for me on a laptop But it also has the energy of a place where I want to buy said three thousand dollars item and leave as fast as possible Yes, yes. You don't want to stay in the Apple store, but you don trust that the things that they sell you at an Apple store will work, right? Sure He remodels JC Pennys to like have a more high end look. and here's how Patel summarizes, Ron's first six months as CEO He has eliminated coupons and promotions, replacing them with an everyday low price model. He's begun redesigning stores into a town square format with branded mini boutiques. It is a radical, expensive, simultaneous change on multiple fronts The early data is alarming. Same store sales are dropping are falling sharply, not just a blip, but a structural collapse. Customers who had shopped at JCPenny for decades are not returning. The store traffic numbers are deteriorating every week. sixix months, not a lot of time. They start turning these JC Pennys into town squares with boutiques and they stop having c coupons It's really what they stop having coupons. People stop going to JC Pennyys immediately. That's not what Pennys is about. No. fucked it up, you moron. noody wants Apple store for pants No, no, and that's the gist of the problem, right? Ron was very good at selling premium consumer tech products. and an Apple store is a good place to sell a premium consumer tech product, right iPhones are ubiquitous devices, but like most people own iPhones are not rich. It's not like only people with money have iPhones. It's a very normal thing to own. But for most people who are not rich, a smartphone is gonna be the most expensive thing that you have on you on a day to day basis, right? And like your smartphone and your laptop, they're up there with like your car and your house is like the most expensive single thing that you own. So if you're going to be making a purchase like that and you're not someone with a lot of money, if you're someone who's making like a thousand or a two thousand dollars purchase and that's a huge, huge deal, you probably feel better doing that purchase at a place that feels like premium and clean and functional, right But That's not what you go to JC Penneys for, right? And JC Penney knowses from the jump. their loyal customer base, the people who keep JC Penneys in business at this point in time are women aged thirty five to fifty five whose households made between thirty five thousand and one hundred thousand dollars, right? These are not people looking for a premium experience These are people looking for a deal because they they have to They have a family. They don't have they have to stretch every dollar. They're not looking for a premium experience, you know? Solid, reliable, affordable, mom friendly. That's pennies. Exactly.' like That's what we want. That's what the people want And what brought ch up pennies. You can't, and that's like Ron's whole thing. His proudest move is that we've brought more than one hundred different brand name boutiques to sell their wares in these new town squares that we're designing. Th these include brands like Jonathan Adler. he's bragging We've got these three thousand dollars couches in JC Pennies now. and it's like But people don't want to buy a three thousand dollars couch at JC Pennies for no discount. That's not why you go to pennies. People are pointing this out at the time, according to Dee Magazine, quote, If you said, and this is them interviewing an employee. If you said our customers, she can't afford this or that, you'd probably get fired, says one headquarters employee. so you didn't say anything. Right? becausecause this is what we're doing You know, it's the same thing like this AI shit. If you bring in like, I don't know if this works here. I don't know if this is a good place to be using this. I think this has actually made our workflow worse You can't say that. You're not allowed to have that opinion, even though it's accurate because the boss has said we're doing this thing and it has to be a good idea. right?. Meanwhile, the customers whose money you want, they go in, they see a nice couch and they look, Ohh, I can't afford that. Now I can't afford to this. They don't want to get socks. Right. I'm trying bu likeike back to school shit. I need a three thousand dollars couch. I want my cou we're going to pennies. G coupon. se me I'm going to Anie Anne's on the way out. You should know JC like JC Pennyies, unless it's marked down eighty percent, people aren't buying furniture at JC Pennies. The people who shop at Pennyies get their furniture from Craigs. Let's in twenty eleven, right I didn't know that they had furniture at pennyiess. Nither stuff. We didn't go to that level. The Fren square pricing is also a disaster. That's the biggest catastrophe. The fact that they and again, they don't Bill and R don't understand this at all. They're like, well, but the prices aren't changing. We're just not pretending, you know, by having these like, oh, now we have a coupon. We're always giving you no, that's not how people' brains work, right? And within days of the change, as soon as they stopp taking coupons customers fucking riot. There's an immediate drop off in traffic. And says it says a lot about Bill how much this surprised him. And here's a quote from Bill Interestingly, people seem to be happier buying something at fifty percent off that costs fifty dollars as opposed to it being marked forty dollars and there being no discount And that's how Bill interprets this. And you can you can see he's like, wow people are dumb Right? That's that's the lesson he takes is, Oh, we failed because people are idiots and they can't do math And I thought people were smarter That's not really what's happened. And here's Joseph Ginto does a good job of like explaining the error in Bill's thinking Buyers don't just want something at fifty dollars that's marked half off because they're stupid. They want to buy something at half off because they don't trust that a company's everyday low price is in fact fair and square. This is the American way of haggling. We doubt the price tag, but we don't confront the seller. We simply remain silent about our misgivings until a sale comes around. And at JC Pennyys, a sale always came around twenty eleven o point two percent of all products sold at a JC Penny store were sold at full price. That means Johnson's fair and square was a radical change in strategy. and yet it was never tested with customers before being rolled out nationwide and was not veed advance by the board. So they have internal details that show percent of our sales are full price ninety nine point eight percent of our sales are discounted to some extent. And we're getting rid of discounts and they don't even test it. They don't even have like a trial JC pennies to see if this works and makes people happier. They just do it. That's malpractice, right? surprise Oh my go the best way to destabilize am midle working class mother is to change literally anything she's expecting It's like it's like if your kid turns sixteen and you're like, all right, well, it's time for you to learn how to drive. So I am putting you in command of a shipping vessel in the like heading through the strait of Hormuz. just just driver straight through son. You got this. I'm going to be I'm not going to be on the boat, but you you can handle this pilot are through you're smart, you know, like it's just it's malpractice. It's deeply irresponsible Oh my God. And it's very funny to me that Ean's interpreation is people are dumb and they can't do math and the reality is like, you didn't. Test this You didn't check to see how people would respond. Before you did this everywhere People, your customers aren't the stupid ones, Bill. You're a dummy That's Dum. I have focus groups at the mall. It in. I've done themm like twenty bu God. Like we did AB testing on titles of articles for Cack, let alone fucking your entire sales strategy U So anyway, yeah, I think Ackman and the fucking Apple store guy rushed to make reckless changes and didn't follow any of the best practices for doing that sort of thing because hey, it worked at Apple. How could we lose? We've got the guy from Apple? Have you seen how much money Apple makes, right? BeCacause when I think JC Penny, I think Apple. Yeah. Apple Absolutely the same thing. It''s so they don't even I don't think Bill thinks beyond it in any way. And when this completely fails, he is caught so hard by surprise Now Ron Johnson, for his part, claims initially after the first six months when the company' hemorhaging money, this is just like the pain inherent to transitioning into a more sustainable business model. customers are going to come back in time and it'll be fine. We just got to stay steady as she goes And Akman is like, we've got all full faith behind you Ron re backing up to the hilt. Keep going, you know, we'll continue plowing forward. So, months more go by, and by the summer of twenty twelve, sales are still down across the board. There's no sign that customers are coming back, and Johnson starts to backtrack on some of his most controversial moves. He reintroduces clearance racks and sales to JC Pennys, but he keeps these expensive remodelings going without ever testing the plan on customers. never checks to see Do they like the remodeled stores? He just keeps spending insane amounts of money on it and now no one's showing up at JC Pennyyss anymore because he screwed that pooch already. At no point were there any hints that his strategy might have a chance of succeeding, But Ackman protected Johnson from calls to replace him and the work went on. In April of twenty twelve Johnson cut fifteen percent of the HQ staff in Plano and fired thousands of employees, nineteen thousand total layoffs. He blamed the company's issues on these people, stating in February of twenty thirteen to the Wall Street Journal that the JC Penney's headquarters staff in Plano had been overstaffed and unproductive D magazine as proof they claim that employees in Plano had watched five million YouTube videos in a single month and that a third of the time headquarters employees spent on the internet was for purposes unrelated to work. and That's really gross victive ass covering The only reason you put something like that out as opposed to doing what like normally you do, which is like we have to make these layoffs and we're sorry to have to let these talented people go, but that's just the way business works. When you're like, no, they were just watching YouTube videos. You're trying to explain why your strategies aren't still working and you're trying to blame it on these lazy people at headquarters. It's not their fault, you ruin the company Hight Yeah like going after the people that are probably being paid a salary that makes it so that they often shop at JC Penniess Like ye you probably should have just asked them what they thought in the first place. You wouldn't have to let anybody go. No, if they said what they thought thought they would have got fired. So they stopped speaking up and just watched YouTube videos while the companany circled the drain because you clearly weren't going to listen to them You know, it's It's a disaster gets let go not long after this point. He's CEO for like a little less than a year and a half. The board brings Olman back temporarily and Akman calls for him to be fired again, even as he's trying to like pull Pershing out from its investments because all of its investments and AC Penneies are bleeding money now Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, and member of the Pennies Bard He's actually weirdly, this is how bad Bill Ackman is at what he's doing. Howard is like a voice of reason here. So Schultz is on the pennies board and he makes the unprecedented almost decision to publicly shit talk another board member. It's really bad for your company's stock price. If board members are talking shit about each other while the company is going through crisis And the fact that Schultz does that says a lot about how desperate the situation is. So this is what Schultz says on CNBC This is the truth. This is not fiction. Bill Ackman was the primary engineer and architect of recruiting Ron Johnson to the company. He and Ron Johnson co authored a strategy that has fractured the company and ruined the lives of thousands of JC Penney employees. Bill Ackman has the blood on his hands for being the architect and the recruiter of Ron Johnson and then the co author of the strategy Okay, Howard? Wild for Schultz to be the good guy here But he's not wrong. Abby, where was that Howard Schultz when the fucking workers at Starbucks unioniz? Wow, wow. He gu. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, He's not gonna eat where he shits. So Johnson's tenure at JC Pennys lasted just seventeen months, but in that time, same store sales fell by thirty percent and the company lost around a billion dollars in cash, roughly equal to Pershing's investment in the company. Akman resigned from the board in august of twenty thirteen after selling off his entire position, netting a five hundred million dollars loss for his company at the same time as Halal's making billions this point It shouldn't be surprising When I say Bill Ackman by twenty twelve is at least as hated as he is respected by his peers in the finance industry, right? Like not shocked when fucking Howard Schultz is talking shit about you in public Piously And you're on the same board. Yeah, man One hedge fund manager told Vanity Fair, There's a saying in this business, often wrong, never in doubt. Ackman personifies it. He is very smart, but he lets you know it. And he combines that with this sort of no less obllige that lots of people find offensive. Me, generally not. On top of that, he's pointlessly, needlessly competitive every time he opens his mouth And then this person immediately asked Cohen, the interviewer, the journalist behind that article, Do you know about the Akman cycling trip with Dan Loebe I can't wait to tell you this story. about Bill Ackman, But first we should talk tell the story of the people who sponsoreor this podcast. I'm so excited. I am too. I love when they fight. Like rich dudes fighting is the best thing This is Dr. Joy from Therapy for Black Girls If you could enjoy a spotless space without so much scrubbing, wouldn't you Of course you would. Well, I've got you Dwnpower wasash dish spray cuts through the mess and gets everything clean in half the time We're talking about both the toughest messes in everyday dishes Plus, itss work goes beyond the sink, like to clean counters, stoves, grills, and to remove stains on laundry. 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Beachbum delivers advanced sun and spray tanning, luxury skincare, and an elevated salon experience designed around you. It's why so many guests trust Beachbum for flawless color and real confidence. And now Beachbum is expanding wellness services to many locations. with red light therapy and infrared sauna, with more on the way. Rcharge your body, refresh your skin, reset your day. Beachbum isn't just tanning, it's full spectrum wellness. Visit beachbum dot com to find a location near you And we're back So As you were saying, Kim, these people, it's very funny because we're about to talk about like a legendary story and a legendary like rich guy beef becausecause all of the people in this story are like rich ghouls to some extent But there's also there's the there's the gulzu you can clearly, you can identify with some extent.'s like, well, this is this is an intelligent person who's capable of like looking at the world as it is and like seeing things realistically. And there's this person whose narcissism has completely blinded them to reality. And it's yeah, I love this tale. So in the summer of twenty twelve, Bill Ackman decided to go on a long cycling journey with a group of very rich guy friends Or at least he's friends of like one of them. I think these are mostly friends of his buddy Dan Lobe, right? And Dan Lobe is a triathlete who takes cycling very seriously. He's another multimillionaire investor type, you know finance dude. are all the guys in this cycling group, but they're also like guysu who take cycling seriously, right? These guys are super rich, but they're also like serious athletes like Dan Lbe is a competition triathlete. He does marathons. He's in really good shape. and he knows how you handle a long bike ride, right? All of these guys do, but like it's exactly the wilderness going to. Right, right. C can stop soda But you have to you have to be reasonable about it. If you ride at a reasonable pace, if you don't go more than your body can handle, If you're like, you know, properly hydrating and fueling yourself, you can get through something like this okay, you know, even if this isn't something you do regularly. But immediately, as soon as they start cycling, he rides out far in front of everybody, going as fast as he can immediately as his hyper comppetitive instincts That's how Lbe describes it drove him forward, right So like he's he just he can't handle the idea of like, well, these other guys who cycle all the time are better at cycling than me. He has to beat them all. He has to be the best. And so I'm going to quote from Cohen's article here, what comes next As he and Leb approached Montauk, Loebe texted his friends who rode out to meet them from the opposite direction. The etiqute would have been for Ackman and Loeb to slow down and greet the other riders, but Ackman just blew by at top speed. The others fell in behind at first struggling to keep up with the alpha leader, but soon enough Akman faltered at mile thirty two, Akman recalls, and fell way behind the others. He was clearly bonking, as they say in the cycling world, which is what happens when a rider is dehydrated and his energy stores are depleted While everyone else rode back to Loe's East Hampton mansion, one of Loe's friends, David Tiger Williams, a respected cyclist and trader, painstakingly guided Ackman, whom by then could barely pedal and was letting out primal screams of pain from the cramps in his legs. Back to Bridge Hampton. I was in unbelievable pain, Ackman recalls. As one writer notes, I've never had an experience where someone has gone from being so aggressive on a bike to being so hopelessly unable to even turn the pedals. His mind wrote a check that his body couldn't cash I love it. I love it Nice finance joke snaps for for the finance joke. Well done Beautiful. Oh my good. incredible, Jesus Christ. what Iimal screams Like It's such a profound failure of humility, of like basic humility. of like, well, I can't do that. Weird bdy guy. He for everybody. He's got to be the best. Yeah, I could do that. No, you can't, Bill. No can't That's fine. You don't do this normally I wish you could see a guy like that on like survivor or alone. Yes. It's always be. You do sometimes and those are the best episodes Iear really always a cop on alone. It's always like someone who was like a cop and came and like, oh, I'll be ready I'm ready to survive. and then they get scared because it's scary. I'm watching the Arctic Circle one right now and there is a cop and I am just waiting wait for him his mind to break T have more episodes So by the time twenty twelve rolls around, Bill is embroiled in this disaster with JC Penney. and one of his subordinates has a shocking million dollar hit, multibillion dollar hit with Canadian Pacific, right? And my interpretation is this kind of eats at Bill right that his last big success at his company with someone else and he has this really public failure, embarrassing embarrassing failure at JC Penneys. Bill's got an ego. And I think he fundamentally just needs the limelight that comes with getting the credit for Giant bold business moves, and he starts casting him out for a project to call his own. In twenty twelve, he settles on a whale of one. herbal life HerbalLife is a multi level marketing company that sells like drink powders and nutrition shakes. A lot of nutrition products, like what is a nutrition shake? Like what do you mean? you're giving me nutrition? does that. Are you saying you're selling food? you know? All my girlfriend's from high school, I'll tell you that Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, all the hs out there. like before all the MLM, like documentedics herrbaife man. Urbaife. It was new massive Yeah, it's still, I mean, I think it still is, but yeah, it's still out there Herbalife's critics will argue, I think accurately, that the real business for hererbalife is convincing people to become hererbalife distributors, which they are told is a great business that will change their lives and make them financially independent. Roughly ninety percent of distributors either lose money or just barely break even Many people argue that herbal life isn't really a business and shouldn't be treated like one. And Bill Ackman is one of these people. He is in the right here in my opinion, and it's to his credit this is actually him deciding to do like real activism as an activist investor. So he has his company herbal lifeife by a billion dollars, right? Which means that if things get worse for hererbal lifeife's bottom line to a certain extent, his company makes a bunch of money, but the company has to like really flatline for that to happen And at the same time, he does the Bill Aackman thing where he starts a media blitz. He has this big press release stating out laying out what he thinks are the fraudulent elements of hererbalife's business and saying like pushing to have you know my contacts and the federal government investigate herbal life. These are the crimes that I think they're involved in. The company is clearly going to collapse in the near future. And his the thing the Bill is saying is he's trying to short the company. He's not just saying, I'm going to short the company and I think their stock value will fall by this much. He's saying, I think it's going to fall to zero betting to short the company, but I want to destroy it and I think it is going to be destroyed because they're breaking the law and the government is going to come after them like in the near future. right? That's the thing that Bill is putting out in the press and that's what he very much seems to believe And he comes into this wielding all the tools of his trade, right? He's learned at this point you can boost or reduce a stock price with strategically applied publicity. and he uses these same skills to put downward pressure on hererbalife' stock value. He publicly brags that his goal is to destroy is to like, you know reduce hererbalife stock price to zero, in effect killing the company. And this is admirable. like Herbalife's bad. I wish this had worked And it doesn't and ultimately Bill risks everything here on a belief that an ongoing US government investigation into herurbal life will find the company irredeemably corrupted criminal, right? Bill is a system loyal guy. The system has always worked out well for him And he does It's so sad because of all for all that I don't like this guy, he clearly sees and recognizes how evil herbal life is that it's just hurting people. It's destroying people's lives. It's robbing people. and he he thinks he's like, well, the right thing to do is to use my financial power to kill this company and maybe I can But he also has this belief that, well, if what they're doing is criminal, then as soon as the government finds out about it They'll stop it Right? So that makes this a good investment for me. Right And that's key. He's not just an activist trying to do the right thing. He's trying to make money doing the right thing. and he's betting a billion dollars on the U.S government doing the right thing. Oh my gosh. M. How do we think that's gonna work? Bless his heart, as they say in themseloundves. Yeah, bless his heart. So What Bill doesn't understand is that hererbalife and herbalife's friends own the system, or at least large parts of it In twenty thirteen alone, Erb Alive spent about two million dollars on federal lobbying, but that only tells a small part of the story. Robert Fitzpatrick, an activist with Pyramid Scheme alert, calls the association of all of these different MLMs and companies that are on the edge or outright pyramid schemes that put money into US politics, the pyramid lobby. This is like this vast assortment of dark money groups and industry organizations that exist, quote, not just to curry favoritism lawmakers, but to prevent its extinction. In other words, because Everything that these companies are doing ought to be illegal Right if they're actually being dealt with based on what they're doing to people, they'll be shut down So in order to keep this industry from being wiped out, you have to lobby to basically keep crime legal, right? Like that's kind of how the pyramid lobby works, right? Now that's a good evil name. The Pyramid lobby. It just makes It's like the freemasons. Yeah, R? work fits Bad. It just doesn't spooky. And as Fitzpatrick works, the only way that the pyramid lobby can prevent its extinction is to thwart law enforcement and consumer protection, right? Wh should be protecting people from pyramid schemes I'm going to quote next from an article in the Nation about MLM lobbying by Rick Perlstein The targets for that campaign are almost exclusively Republicans, for MLM fraudsters are a huge part of the conservative infrastructure. Of course, in the case of the Mighty DeVos family in Michigan, the conservative infrastructure in the MLM industry almost entirely overlaped Richard Devoss Sror, numbers sixty on Forbes' twenty twelve list of wealthiest Americans, with an estimated net worth of five billion dollars made ripping Americans off, founded AMway short for American Way in nineteen fifty nine. In nineteen seventy nine, the company was forced by the Federal Trade Commission to tell distributors that over half its distributors do not make money and that the average distributor made less than hundred dollars hundred a month A stricture they promptly violated. None of that kept the Devos family from rising in Republican and conservative politics. After all, between nineteen ninety one and nineteen ninety seven common cause documented, Amway affiliated companies gave four point four million do in soft money to the Republican National Committee, Devos and his wife giving one billion in April of nineteen ninety seven alone. In two thousand, AmMway gave one point three eight five million doars in soft money to the RNC J just five hundred dollars less than Enron, and DeVos hosted a party starring Colin Powell on hisrivacht on his private yacht at the Republican National Convention. In two thousand four, Devos and his co founder, J. Van Andel gave two million each to fight to the right with prorogress for America five to seven. And in two thousand six, his son tried and failed to win the Michigan governorship There's a lot of money in the pyramid scheme lobby and they put a lot of it into politics Ackman is not ready for this. Either he just doesn't know this or he doesn't think about this or he doesn't think it should matter because what they're doing is so obviously a pyramid scheme, but legally it's not. Lgally Hrbalife is not a pyramid scheme. Legally an MLM is distinct from that and Hbalife and their fellow businesses have put a lot of lobbying dollars into making sure that's the case And so If you want to make the if you're an actual activist, you would just be like, well, but it's still wrong and I'm going to fight it because it's wrong King that they have already bought the government and that this is an uphill struggle and that It's not a fair fight. Bill is not ready for that. and so he's totally caught off guard when a lot of heavy artillery comes to hererbalife's aid. There's this swarm of counter activist investors, I guess you'd call them, right? So he and his activist investors short the company by a billion dollars basically, and then these two billionaires, Daniel Lobe, you know, the guy who had been part of that bike Bike buddy. Right his bike buddy and Carl Icon who is an incredibly sketchy hedge fund billionaire. right. So these two guys get together on the other side of this deal R to fuck Ackman basically. And they're like, okay, If he's shorting it by a billion dollars, all we have to do is pump a bunch of money buying herbal lifeiveestock to put up the stock value until Ackman all of his short basically fails and he loses all of that money, right? So they were friends. Absolutely not. Nobody likes this guy and Yeah, who know. And that's not I'm not a finance guy, but that's all you need to know. If Icon and his friends can keep herbal life stock up, Bill loses a shitlad of money for Pershing, right? And it becomes immediately once all of these other guys start putting money into herbal life, it becomes very obvious to everyone watching that Bill is in trouble, that he might lose this because there's a lot of money arrayed against him Bill somehow can't see it. Now there's a documentary about Ackman's crrusade against hererbal lifeife called Betting on Zero. It's a good watch because if you really when you watch it, you really get to see how arrogant Bill is at the start. He's very insistent that this is going to work, herbal lifeife will die and the US government will punish them in his short will work, right? You get a good example of his rhetoric H self confidence in the clip that Soie's about to play. This is from an interview that Bloomberg conducted right and this is by the point at which he's being interviewed for this, his company has already lost half a billion dollars on this failed short. So this is this is him being interviewed by Bloomberg other investors and they are able to put together an LBO, what is that going to mean for you? More opportunity for us to be short at the company. mean a couple of things.umber one, in order the company be taken private They need to get all of the financial statement and they need to be able to borrow money And if you think about the proposition from a lender, for an underwriter of a bond issue. I mean, this would be a big deal R right? So the stock today has let's say a sevenillion dollars market cap and eight billion dollars close to an eight billion doll enterprisealue Let's assume they pa nine and a half or ten billion to offer premium to shareholders, right? They'd have to borrow B billion six billion dollars be a mjorBO they have to raise five billionllars equity capital. I'm not sure Carl is really a big believer O in this business on a very long term basis. But let's assume they could find the equity capital. It'd be very difficult to borrow the money. assuming they could issue bonds to do it And we were forced out of the trade because the company was taken private place the position with credit theault swaps. and we keep going. And this is not So he's again, it can't go wrong Like they can't raise the money. There's no way they could do it. It's impossible for this to right? L there's no, not a hint in his mind that all even half a billion dollars down after failing at JC Pennys in a major way, not a doubt in his mind that this is going to work out. It's remarkable that kind of confidence. And again our guys I hate my enjoyment of this of him being like really arrogant and wrong is ruined by the fact that he isn in the right. I wish he'd killed herbalife. That would have been awesome Right Yeah. Using your evil money for good. like. But that's the thing though, it's never quite even that becauseill Bill had hoped to knock Urbalife out of commission via the strength of his own financial power But he also wanted to get even richer doing it. And when that It is I'll say this when he when there's initial difficulties, when it becomes clear, this is not going to be easy, he does start getting close with a lot of activists like long time and these are mostly activists in the Hispanic community who have been fighting herbal life for a long time because herbal life does a lot of damage to Hispanic families, right? A lot of people get conned into herbal life and they lose everything, right So these long standing activists who have been pushing for change, Bill you know starts working with them, he does some joint events. and you can really see in the documentary that after this first series of blows and he's down half a billion, he's fucking exhausted and like kind of shell shocked by it And these longtime activists are not at all surprised or concerned because they're they're activists. They know that you're losing ninety nine percent of the time That's the business, right? That's what activism is is losing most every time until you win and Bill isn't really he doesn't have what it takes to do that Like he doesn't, he can't he can't handle it. He can't take those hits he He's just not armor ready for it. He has got no armor for it. He's got no he can't, he can't handle The fact that like, yes, it's unfair and yes, you're going to lose and unftunately because this is all tied into like a financial bet, he also can't afford to lose past a certain point, right? Beause it's other people's investment money that he's doing this with, that he's losing. A And yeah, Bill does and Bill did say, because back when he was planning to make a billion dollars doing this, he did repeatedly talk about donating any of his profits because he didn't want to make he called it blood money. He was like, I don't want to make money off of this personally. And I believe him. I actually don't doubt that he would have donated any of his personal profits. However, as the New York Times noted, the clients who invested his hedge fund, however, would still benefit enormously. So there's no point at which he doesn't have a financial aink Right And that's part of why he's not going to have much long term appetite to really keep fighting this I found a good New York Times article from around that period that discusses how Bill used his influence, particularly with Democratic Representative Linda Sanchez of California, and he lobbies her to send a letter to the FTC demanding an investigation of herbal life. per the times Corporate money is forever finding new ways to influence government, but mr Ackman's campaign to take this fight to the end of the earth using every weapon in the arsenal that Washington offers in an attempt to bring ruin to one company is a novel one, fusing the financial markets with the political system T pressure state and federal regulators to investigate herbal life an act that alone could cause its stalk to dive, his team has helped organize protests, news conferences, and letter writing campaigns in California, Nevada, Cnecticut, New York, and Illinois. although several of the people who sign the letters to state and federal officials say they do not remember sending them. An investigation by the New York Times is found out look maybe a little sketch there too. Wellow that real grassroots organizing right there. real real grassroots stuff. Now And ultimately, the weight of hedge fund guys wanting to see Bill fail was greater than the weight of money and government scrutiny that Bill could bring to bear on herurbal life. And this is unfortunate that he loses. I do wish that he had won here. But it's worth exploring because the reason he loses is that a lot of other rich assholes are willing to go to war with him and risk their own money because they feel like they can beat him and take his money, right and To look into that a little bit more, I want to quote from that article for Vanity Fair that Cohen wrote It's Ackman's perceived arrogance that gets to his critics. The story I hear from everybody is that one can't help but be intrigued by the guy just because he's somewhat larger than life. But then one realizes he's just pompous and arrogant and seems to have been born without the gene that perceives and measures risk. He seems to look at other members of society, even legends such as Carl Icon as some sort of subspecies. The disgusted, annoyed look on his face when confronted by the masses beneath him is like one you'd expect to see from someone confronted by a homeless person who hasn't showered at weeks. You can almost see him puckering his nostrils so he doesn't have to smell these inferior creatures. And that's interesting that other like psychopathic and Carl Iicon this guy defends Carl as an icon. Carl's a bad person We'll do an episode on him at some point. The fact that He's The issue these guys have is that, well he doesn't like us either. He treats us like we're beneath him too. Not just poor people, but other rich people who he doesn't think are like as good a people as him. He's a real dict too M, I mean, there's no solidarity amongst thieves, but they really don't like that one specific guy. No. someome of the thieves have solidarity against this specific thie. or no honor monks. Either way, like you got to be a real jag off to like fail out of the rich Jagff club. Yeah, it's fascinating So this all culminates in a giant fight between Carl Icahon and Bill Ackman on CNBC in twenty thirteen. And so if he's gonna play a very short segment of this very remarkable clip. You don't often get to see two billionaires embarrassing each other like this on live TV. It's very funny. We're just gonna play you a brief little segment of it. thing called me up and he literally said, you know, Bill, we can be friends now I never said that I want to be friends with you, Bill. Okay, lets I be honest with you. Let put stand on ear. listen, I could have admit it, I that I don' He called me and said he wanted to be friends actually after this. We're gonna beill That's Bill being like, Carl called me and said I want to be. I didn't say that to you. What? A gonna be your friendin on earth redible. It's so funny. It's funny. my God.. It would take years for Bill to give up on his crusade against Urbalife, but the short summary is that he did lose badly in the end. Yeah. In November of twenty seventeen, herrbalife stock ended up fifty one percent year over year, which is really bad if you're shorting them. This inspired Ackman to cut his short position and convert it to a put position But that doesn't really work either. In june of twenty nineteen, he dumps all of his remaining positions, effectively acknowledging that his one billion dollar bet had been a failure. hererbal Life stock went up six point three percent at the news. Um yeah, and we'll talk about what happens next for O Bill. But first What happens next for you is these ads This is Dr. Joy from Therapy for Black Girls. 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No code, just try it Because once you see the difference, you're not going back And we're bad I do feel bad that Bill lost against hererbal life. Like I wanted him to kill him, but yeah. It's like who who do you root for? You like I would have been happy in this case if he'd made a billion dollars fucking up herbalife, but he doesn't. He kind of does the opposite He made it stronger He makes it stronger, kinda, yeah Bad news. againgain, you can't in this case, you can't use the master's tools to dismantle the master. right? That's a fl not a fully not a statement I always agree with, but certainly in this case, it's proven true. So I'm not going to spend all of the rest of these episodes listing all of Bill's hits and failures, right? Because he does have a lot of other hits. He's not just fuck up He makes a lot of money activist investing in Chipotle. He also loses a bunch of money. He makes like a two hundred million dollars investment to borders, which f fails spectacularly U like they file for bankruptcy not long after. And Bill acknowledges this investment is a big mistake, but right after making the investment in twenty ten, he got on CNBC's fast money and said, I think the company is stabilized. The stock tradees as if it's going bankrupt, but we don't see that as a likely behavior. I think Borders is much more attractive risk reward than Barn andobl. Ultimately, I think the industry may consolidate. The two companies may become one Again, very telling a bill that he's like, well, the stock's acting like the company is going bankrupt Probably not gonna happen though. Good place to put park two hundred million dollars This man has killed every company my grandmother loves. It's funny. Yeah And the fact that none of that because that article is from twenty ten when Bill's record was much better, but the fact that none of his predictions here are right makes something I found at the end of that CNBC article very funny For a donation of a thousand dollars, you could be among a small group of two hundred people who have the opportunity to gain investment insights directly from Bill Ackman during the Harbor Investment Conference Oh boy. wish I'd gotten some of those in those insights What a scam. So By the time we start approaching the Trump years, the bloom is firmly off the rose in terms of Bill's reputation as an investor. He's still a multibillionaire, he's worth eight or nine billion dollars. His fund is still worth a lot of money. He has a lot of successes. It's not like he always fails. There's always successes alongside the failures. but his big hits are about as numerous as his big failures. Central to each of these is Bill's fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the possibility that he might ever be wrong Hrbal life was definitely gonna to hit zero. Ron Johnson was for sure the right guy to fix JC Penney. Borders can't go bankrupt, You know. In early twenty fifteen, Ackman's hedge fund started putting money on valiant pharmaceuticals Business was acquiring small drug companies, firing people, and then jacking up the price of medication, and Ackman thought this was a great idea Awesome business to be in an article published on LinkedIn He believed Valiant represented the future of pharmaceutical efficiency, cutting out traditional research and development expenses in favor of acquisitions and pricing power Why actually figure out how to make drugs? Well we can just cut up companies that are actually doing research and selling them for scraps. The only thing I do Now Long story short, everything goes wrong with this investment. But as soon as Bill puts money down, the SECC starts scrutinizing valuant for price gouging. And Bill, when people are like, Hey should we pull our money out? This could be an issue. Bill refuses to see it as a problem. He doubles down, increasing his stake in valiant even as the stock dumbles. It's a classic case of overconfidence and It's just like there's it's this dude this this psychological trap that these guys find themselves and where they're like, no, the market' got to correct. It's got to correct, It's got to correct. They just never get shit their' shit together Wow. In the course of a year, Valiant stock goes from two hundred and fifty bucks a share to ten dollars a share Pershing Square loses like four billion dollars and Bill's reputation takes a hit from which it has not quite recovered. But by twenty nineteen, he was in the black again, posting a fifty eight point one percent return that year. So again, another massive fuck up and failure to see things, but overall, in part because he's working at a big fund. He has employees like Hal who are making good decisions, the company overall is doing really well. That's not unrelated from all of Bill's decisions, but you've seen now he's made a lot of fuck ups too Bill, redemption for all of his failures would come during what was for everyone else, a very bad year twenty twenty. In the spring of that year, not long after the first US cases of COVID nineteen were confirmed, Bill began positioning himself to basically short the US economy Over the course of ten days, he bought a bunch of credit default swaps on corporate bonds. These are agreements where the seller pays the buyer if a specific debt defaults. They're a bet on things getting worse very quickly As Ackman later said, there was this massive storm coming. We could see the storm, but everyone else was playing on a beach. It only cost us twenty seven million dollars Ten days later, it became worth two point six billion dollars. We took that money in March of twenty twenty, with the market down thirty percent and we bought stocks So Bill and Berchhing make a fortune betting correctly, on economic disruption caused by the pandemic But Bill doesn't just put his money there. He uses his PR savvy to stoke as much fear and un certainty and doubt as possible on the market. At least that's what some people will argue On march eighteenth, which is about a week into him starting to make these investments, he posts this long Twitter thread addressed to President Trump mister President, the only answer is to shut down the economy for the country for the next thirty days and close the borders. Tell all Americans that you are putting us on an extended spring break at home with family. Keep only essential services open. The government pays wages until we reopen And shortly thereafter, he gave an interview with CNBC in which he warned Hell is coming Brian Baker wrote an article for MSN. Markman had essentially bet on the US economy undergoing a massive short term shock due to the lockdown, and some believe his messaging induced further panic And this is kind of morally, nothing Bill said is wrong. Like that is accurate, right? bothoth in terms of what Trump should have done, simimp kind of what he did, and also true in terms of like, yeah, hell was in fact coming for large segments of the U.S economy in that period. And it's not wrong to say that or urge a lockdown But what is doing to do that wt. You've shorted the economy as part of an investment strategy? Maybe that's kind of, you know, evil, right Somebody' Yeah can' you can't be saying something that's a little bit right or a little bit helpful doesn't mean all of the evil doesn't doesn't cancel it out. Or the fact that you're doing it to make money, not because like you want the compry to do the right thing, right? As Brian Baker wrote in then MSN article, one of Akman's many critics was Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novigratz, who reacted to Akman's CNBC interview with a request for the network Please get Akman off CNBC before people start jumping off bridges. Stephanie Rooley, a former banker and MSNBC correspondent called Akman's rhetoric wildly irresponsible In putting on that grand show, while he was getting choked up and talking about his father, he caused the markets to puke and he caused the circuit breakers to trigger, she told the Guardian, adding that it was perplexing to see Ackman cause such a scene since he was very well respected. I'm not emotional about investments, Ackman once shared with The New York Times. Investing is something where you just have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making, just the facts And That all makes me think, yeah, Bill kind of was trying to stoke. He was not wrong, but he was also specifically wanted to stir things up because it would be good for these investments he'd made. right There's this whole patter that you've laid out of him doing that He does not That a bunch. Yeah. It's not it's not a conspiracy theory really when that's how he got rich. Yeah. L a preferred tactic one. That's how he makes his money So Bill had previously been someone that you couldn't accuse at least. One thing we can say about him up to this point, not a right wing hardliner Going after herbal life is not a conservative thing to do, right? That's actually arguably a progressive thing to do Not necessarily way he did it, but We'll give some credit there But during the Biden years, he goes on a right word lurch That seems somewhat out of place given his enmity to a major Republican partarty donor. and a lot of his explicable, a lot of his rightward tilt in the latter Biden years is explicable by the fact that on october seventh, twenty twenty three, Hamas carries out a massive raid on Israel, right? We all know What happened there? And what happens what's that what's continued to happen And Ackman is a huge supporter of Israel Right? He is he has taken the most Israel hawk approach and interpretation of everything that's happened ever since, right? That is the kind of guy that he is here And when students on college campuses started protesting Israeli atrocities in response to the october seventh attacks, Bill got activated, right? What particularly tips him off. I mean, he's just very, he's obviously horrified at the raid itself. and then he supports Israel's response. And when it becomes clear that a lot of Americans don't and that the kind of media shield that Israel has enjoyed and a lot of its responses and a lot of like the violence that has carried out over the years is failing Right Especially as things escalate to outright genocide. Yeah He does Ackman cannot take that, right? Like that is not a thing that he likes to see. And it's particularly all of these college student protesters that drive him crazy. He is livid at the fact that there are protests on the Harvard campus. and he demands publicly that Harvard name any students who quote blame Israel for the attack so that he and other CEO's wouldn't inadvertently hire any of them. Rember Yeah That is big news, right? Okay And Harvard like does it for one thing they't have data on that like like right like yeah. How would they know? Okay, this is why you never sign up for protest kids. Right, right. So when Harvard refuses, he grows angrier. Per an article in New York magazine by Kevin Duggan, his attacks against the university started picking up steam following the december fifth congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology During questioning from Representative Eise Stefanic of New York, Harvard presresident Claudine Gay didn't explicitly agree that calling for genocide against Jewish people would violate Harvard's speech standards. She said it was personally opponnt to her and later apologized. Ackman then amplified Stefank and conservative activist Christopher Rufffo in attacking Gay, as well as Liz McGill of U Penn and Sally Cornball of MIT forquivocating about antiemitism on campus In this, Aman was not quite a leader in the crusade, but a strong supporting member of the team in demanding the resignations of all three presidents And I'm not going to relitigate the Claudy gay plagiarism controversy thing here because honestly, I just don't find it that interesting. It should never have really been that big a deal, right U Harvard initially promised to support her, but Ackman stayed on the attack, arguing that she had plagiarized or failed to properly cite sources more than fifty times. and Gay had made some mistakes. She submitted corrections to at least three of her papers. I don I don't care to go to bat for her or to condemn her for A bunch of Mild malfeasance to moderate malfeance in her college years. I just don't care all that much Do that matter? No he also but Bill does. Bill is really obsessive about this. And he also tweets at length about Mark Gorenberg, MIT's chairman for reasons that are a little less clear becausecause Mark's not really involved in a college, you know protest controversy thing Bill has issues with Mark's wife. Per Kevin Dugan, writing for Vanity Fair? The connection here is that Gornberg's wife, Katherine Stickney, is the founder of parody. org, a nonprofit that advocates for women in business. To Ackman, though, parody dot org is part of the larger problem on college campuses, which have taken on diversity, equity, and inclusion management philosophies Under DEI, one's degree of oppression is determined based on where one resides in a so called intersectional pyramid of oppression, where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people and or women are deemed to be oppressed, Ackman wrote In Ackman'sginal tweet about Gornberg, he insinuated that Gorenberg had improperly used MIT to fund Stickney's organization. He noted that parody dot org reported no revenues and received all of its funding through MIT associated funds. In short, this does not look like a legitimate nonprofit. Rather, it looks like a cinenecure for the wife of the chairman of NIT. he wrote in a follow up tweet So he's going hardcore an anti DEI after and, you know, hardcore into protests on campus, anti Semitism on campus. He really hates the fact that this guy's wife is working for like an organization that's trying to improve equity. He's getting into all of these weird right wing like women and g not really He doesn't like that. Yeah. That's like a hard line. It is. This is very you can draw a line to that. You could draw a line to his earlier issues at Harvard while he's writing his, you know, his thesis there Now Ackman ultimately backtracks on some of his allegations against Gorenberg's wife, but he continues accusing Gornberg of tax fraud. And this doesn't really work out in the long run Uh but You know, it does in some of these cases. they do succeed Bill and his fellow Oligarchs succeeded getting several college presidents shit can, including Gay. Although Bill is really unhappy that she doesn't get fired by the university, she's still employed as a professor Righting for the Atlantic, Kurt Anderson describes what happened next When former President Gay was hired, I knew little about her, but I was instinctually happy for Harvard and the Black community, Ackman posted while on holiday in the Caribbean, the day after he'd helped force her out over her plagiarism. But now, given her handling of the Harvard anti Israel protests, he'd realized that she was not qualified, having been chosen by a board looking for a DEI approved candidate. And by the way, in light of the amount, naturered and degree of plagiarism that had surfaced in her work Why wasn't she also booted from her tenured Harvard professorship The very next day, B insider. and this so this is the day after she's fired. he can't let up on this. He's got to keep stomping on this woman trying to get her career entirely destroyed because she had the temerity to be like a woman who wasn't mean enough to people he didn't like and day after this happens Biness insider publishes an article of their own. And this one was this is another plagiarism investigation. This one was into plagiarism by an artist slash technologist who was also a former MIT professor named Nerary Oxman Nary Oxman just happened to be Bill Ackman's wife This is his most recent wife J say, what happened to Karen picture anymore. We've got an area here now. She got it I try to avoidally talking about people's families here, but this is unavoidable because this is a big part of the Bill Ackman story The reality is that Nary Oxman's plagiarism was in my opinion, about as serious as Claudian Gay's, and that no one reasonable should care about this all that much on its own These were all pretty minor examples of people screwing up and being lazy, right? But where Ackman had seen gay's mistakes as damning, he sees his wifees as defensible. And this is what's funny, right? And I think Business Inider was right to publish this If none of this had happened, if Ackman hadn't gone after gay, I would say this article would have been in bad taste. But because Ackman makes himself in this anti plagiarism activist, it's pretty relevant that his wife does the same thing that gay did Right? That's almost cinematic. Like that's ye. that feels made up. Like it's too perfect Yeah I'm sure they came with the receipts. Yeah. And I gotta continue with a quote from that Vanity Fair article here. His invented euphemisms include this is a talk about how he defends his wife.