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tv   Bloomberg Technology  Bloomberg  September 25, 2020 5:00pm-6:00pm EDT

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♪ emily: welcome to "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. stocks, rallying today. sign a waiting out any venue stimulus package. , nancyhe close, speaker pelosi, and steven mnuchin agreed to keep talking. the s&p, with a fourth straight weekly drop. tech for once was not to blame
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for the drop. the nasdaq 100 extended its 2020 rally. more now with abigail doolittle, our bloomberg markets reporter. l ofe been following al the action. what do you make of stocks rallying at the close? abigail: what an exhausting week. a mixed close on the week between different indexes, making it just as exhausting. all of the volatility tells you what we were talking about yesterday. the uncertainty out there. there's the nasdaq 100 on the week. you can see the huge ups and downs. this tells you investors do not know what is going on. between this month and last month, not a lot has changed fundamentally for these companies. just technical movement, that in august.e had at this point, you do have the on thep investors up 2% nasdaq 100. the best week going back to
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august. largely driven by apple having its best up week since august 21. from a also up sharply percentage standpoint. apple, from a waiting standpoint, as you know, between those two companies in early 20% nasdaqsset 100 -- of the 100. to my knowledge, none of this movement is on real fundamental news or change. it is really momentum back into the stocks. for the most are comedies are companies that have benefited quite a bit from the pandemic. so, what stocks did move on real fundamental news? we know tesla had battery day, we saw a move there. what did you see? abigail: i would say tesla is one of those stocks.
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that is the biggest momentum stock of the year, still up more than 350%. oracle stands out on the week. really not doing much of anything at all. trying to gain big swings up and down in between the. -- that. still unclear what is going to happen between now and whether the deal will go through with president trump and china for tiktok. the negotiations happening there still. sunday or monday. investors are hanging in there. since oracle has been interested, the stock is up sharply, telling you investors like the diversification. tesla is down 8% today. from a story standpoint, the stock that stands out the most is the electric truck company, getting absolutely pummeled on the week, down 43%. this of course is the ceo and founder that resigned amid
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fraud allegations. there are not a lot of words that investors say. one word that investors never want to hear is fraud. you can see it right there, the worst whatever for nikola. down 43%. emily: what a dramatic slide. bloomberg's abigail doolittle, thank you so much for that update. happy friday. i want to keep talking about nikola. shares down over 50% from the start of september, following that bombshell report, accusing the company of fraud. that landed just after general motors took an 11% stake in the company. did they do their research? joining me now is tim o'brien. the story has captured the fascination of many. how could gm have mixed --
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missed this? did they do any research at all? there was a report that set the solid motion over the last 10 days or so. -- set this all in motion over the last 10 days or so. our bloomberg reporters - -- it should not have been news to gm when the report landed. the question here is, what were they looking at and considering when they decided to do this deal? remember upfront the financials on this deal were very good for gm. she got an 11% stake in the company without putting up any cash. nikola harvest of the environmental credits that
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nikola has around this line of production. there were a lot of good, smart financial details. ideailds around the that trevor moment is a show man and snake oil salesman who sold gm a bill of goods. the deal came to gm through steve gursky. is, did thequestion ceo relied too much on judgment in this? she has said publicly the lawyershad an armada of and analysts look at this before they did the transaction. which they may have. ,t still raises the question of why did they not think about the reputation of what the exposed themselves to? emily: let's talk about that reputational risk.
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gm emerge from this unscathed even if they did not know? it certainly does not look good. >> mary is a very good, talented ceo. this is not going to bring the company down. scenario, they clean of the mistakes they made around this, they learned their lesson, and they move on. doje is an fcc and investigation looking into the circumstances surrounding a bunch of claims from nikola. gm transaction will follow under the purview. it is likely gm's board will have to take a close look at this if they not have -- if they have not already started to make sure they dotted all their
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theird crossed all t's. i'm not an insider there. emily: you have also been looking closely at the upcoming election. you wrote the book on trump. it is looking more and more judge barrett will be president trump's pick to replace justice ginsburg. it's been a dramatic and emotional turn of events for a lot of people. how do you think this changes what we see going into the election? >> i don't know that it will change that much going into the election other than it will incentive both sides of the aisle, because there are a lot of bread and butter issues involved in this nomination. i think the highlight around it is the state of roe v wade. but i don't know that that is
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going to move the needle that much between now and november 3. i think the thing to watch for is what happens after november 3. if the democrats get control of the senate in the presidency -- and the presidency, there's been a lot of interest around what they might do to seek retribution for mitch mcconnell and republicans in the senate now ramming this appointment through with such a short time between now and election day, essentially contravening their own statements in the past that they would never do anything like this. i think there's going to be a big political turf or after november 3. -- turf war after november 3. that is where this will end up residing. emily: do you think it makes sense for this to happen essentially before the election, so that it doesn't potentially confusion among
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voters, and they can vote president trump in or out? believe from an institutional standpoint that it does not make sense to ram this through before election day. all the polling indicates that american voters would prefer the decision is made after november , so whatever is elected president is the person home asked the final call on this. there is no question that inliberation will be rushed this time and there will be a lot of strong-arming going around on this. i think it is something that should be much more deliberate than with the process right now entails. i don't think it's a good idea. i think it erodes institutional respect for both the courts and congress. both of those institutions already went through this during the kavanaugh
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hearing. this again is going to raise doubts in the public's mind about both the quality and integrity of the process. that is about thing -- a bad thing. emily: you have been looking at some of the president's statements about the election, mail-in voting, the process itself being rigged. is it rigged? will president trump declare victory if he does not win? will he be prosecuted? >> first and foremost, no. the electoral system in this country is not rigged. we have one of the most honest and well-built electoral systems in the world. it has flaws, there are abuses, but it is not rigged, and it is as thedled with fraud,
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president keeps saying. it is factually untrue. a large number of states, including red states have done mail-in balloting and run on a selections for quite a long time -- honest elections for quite a long time. whereis an election year i suspect donald trump is very worried about losing. he is looking for anything to blame for his defeat other than his own actions. having said that, there's no question that what he is saying and doing has the potential to rode public respect for the process. to son has taken to twitter and sent people to take to the streets. and march on polling places to make sure there is a fraud. they are setting the stage for very unusual, vicious public violence that we all should be opposed to, regardless of what's
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-- what side of the auto we are on. however, donald trump is also, if you loses, i do not think he is going to try to call the military out into the streets of the country to preserve his office. if you were to do that come i don't think the military would listen to him. i don't think we are going to get there. it is a time for people to take a breath, be worried, keep an eye on the process, be vigilant, but do not be afraid, because our institutions have been beaten up, but they are still strong. emily: okay. o'brien, thank you for weighing in. always good to have your opinions on the show. with got some breaking news about tiktok -- a judge has set sunday morning for a hearing at 9:30 a.m. unless the u.s.
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agree stability and impending ban on tiktok. this, at a request of bytedance. we will talk about what this means after this quick break. this is bloomberg. ♪
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a federal judge in washington has set a date to halt the u.s. ban on tiktok sunday at 9:30 a.m. this sunday morning. the u.s. filed a sealed motion opposing tiktok's efforts. details. the beatles -- let's get the details. what does this mean? >> the decision to
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of the ban, because it seems like they have not gotten a deal across the finish line yet and tiktok still does not want to be banned from the apple and google app stores, that they continue to fight the executive order in court. now it is up to a federal judge to say, are you going to have a ban or not? the commerce department could come out and give another delay, which would not be tiktoking, considering is considering negotiations. emily: what is next? howbigger issue about chinese technology companies can do business in the u.s. is not over. >> this deal has so many
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different stakeholders between the u.s. government, the chinese government, also needs to sign off on any kind of deal, not to mention the different companies and investors that are involved. it is really a microcosm for the bigger issue, which is the u.s. and china and how they are going to get along in the future, and what the u.s. is going to consider for tech policy going down the line. how can companies continue to operate globally, cross-border, between the u.s. and china and other countries, as long as they have this fear that a u.s. president could come after them? emily: i know you will be tuning in at 9:30 a.m. sunday morning. thank you for continuing to follow the twists and turns of this. wonder whoever powers your shopping checkout experience on facebook and instagram's? we will speak to bench and
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instagram -- experience on facebook and instagram? ceo of aay to the company that does just that, next. this is bloomberg. ♪
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the pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce, pushing online sales above $210 billion in the second quarter of this year. that is up over 30% from the previous quarter, coating to the u.s. commerce department. one of the companies that empowers merchants to build businesses online is big commerce, who partners with amazon, ebay, instagram, and more. joining me is the cfo and coo of big commerce. thank you so much for joining us. give us a big picture look at demand. how has the pandemic impacted demand among your customers and platforms? e-commerce was accelerating
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even before covid. i think in the march timeframe, -- ust don't that search is only continued. i think the shift online with accelerating. people thought we would be if the lettering this year. nobody thought we would be accelerating to this degree we are seeing right now. dust toou are one of platforms that allows shoppers -- just to platforms that allows shoppers to buy on instagram and facebook. even though thought we -- even though we thought shopping on facebook and a cigar could be a big opportunity, it has not grown as much as some expected. how much traffic as the driving? -- is that driving? >> commerce is going to be an important way people consume and byproducts. we want to be in the forefront
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of that. i think the better the user experience, the better the adoption. i think with our latest integration with facebook and instagram, the ability to buy and check out on instagram without having to be redirected another wayite is to improve that experience. that experience can be improved pretty rapidly, we believe, overtime. the consumer behavior is driving online transaction. that experience that we can provide or help our merchants provide to their merchants, enabling that user experience that makes it really easy and seamless. we help merchants do that. selling on market places like amazon and ebay and others is a way we do that. the more ways that consumers , big commercects
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is going to be in the forefront of the. emily: -- of that. emily: what is your outlook post pandemic? how much shopping that is done online goes back off-line? it has to be a certain subset. >> it's pretty interesting. pre-covid, it took over 20 years for e-commerce to be 10% of retail. that was 2017. forenzie published a report total retail. in them -- in the months since covid, it is in the 30's. it is in isolation in terms of how covid is driving the percentage of total retail. it is hard to predict with the new normal is going to be. i think everyone recognizes that thee's been a shift to
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consumer buying experiences, shifting online. experiences are more normal today than ever before. i think one things get back to normal or as normal as they were before, think there is going to be a permanent shift to some degree in terms of consumer behavior, consumer expectations, and technology platforms like big commerce and our ability to drive even further adoption. it is really difficult to tell, but we do know e-commerce is only going to continue to accelerate. at some point, it's going to be 30%, 40% of total retail. exactly when that will be? i don't know. . -- i don't know. but that is where the e-commerce market is headed. emily: big, as a big successful ipo last month. shares have surged up to 400%. having this
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conversation about pricing, valuation. critics saying valuations are too high. what are you thinking? >> the ipo for us was great. ensure process, we could the shares we were selling we could put in the hands of investors we thought were long-term minded. it's been great to see how well we have done. we've got a series of focus on our customers and focus on each other other partners. that is really what needs to be the focus right now, it's very distracting otherwise. emily: [laughter]
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i'm sure it's hard not to watch the stock. robert alvarez, thanks so much for joining us. toing up, airbnb is planning go public next week. we will get thoughts from todd mckinnon ongoing public in a pandemic, next. this is bloomberg. ♪
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switch and save up to $400 a year on your wireless bill. with the carrier rated #1 in customer satisfaction. call, click, or visit your local xfinity store today. >> temer has turned out to be a huge month for ipo's. debut --re was company is big tech about to hit and that is palan tir. andhe midst of a pandemic an election two months away, what should they expect? the ipous to talk about
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environment is our guest. we have been in a roaring debate about whether these companies left money on the table. we saw snowflake go up over a hundred percent. did bankers miss price this? snowflake and palantir have better technologies than their competitors. everything is data centric at palantir. everything is moving to cloud. these companies are in a great position over the long-term. if we can talk about specifics on the ipo, they need to get out. they need to get their companies moving forward. need to think about the variables involved and not the specific price on the opening day. the need to get about their
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business of building great companies in the long term. emily: palantir is going out of the gate next week. they have chosen a direct listing. airbnb will be happening later this year. if i called you for advice, what would you say? say there is a reason why hundreds of companies have gone public a certain way. you have to think hard about trying to innovate around your ipo. you need to just get through it. get a fair price, get a stable group of investors, get a stable stock price and get your employees comfortable than move on and get back to the business of building your company. that's something that gets lost in this. you are trying to build a long-term sustainable company and the fewer distractions you have and the better relationships you can build with investors, the built -- to the company. emily: as we have been speaking,
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we have gotten some news in. mark filing to go public. what does that mean for everything else? for m&a int mean this environment? are deals happening? >> you are seeing the secular shifts to cloud computing. to e-commerce. you are seeing things like snowflake and palantir about data being incredibly valuable and ways to mine the data. there's a lot of money out there and the money wants to follow where the long-term future trends of technology are. investors want those returns. they are ready to invest. people are betting on long-term trends. one thing that is interesting, there was applause because people had to figure out how to do these complex deals all online.
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how do you buy a company over resume? how do you build a relationship with that company? how do are you sure that the company is going to work with you to make your customer successful? it's harder to do that online. that stuff figuring out, you will see these deals start to happen. emily: companies have now been working at home for a while. i am curious another we have been in this for six months, how has it impacted culture? we have had so many ceos saying were doing this for the foreseeable future and employees should not feel pressured to come back to the office. is this working? are you able to build culture the same way as if you were in the office? >> the main thing i think about is, we have to make sure we are open to the fact that we might not know. we haven't been through this
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before. people are going through incredible stresses in their personal lives. their families. maybe health issues. we are trying our best. what i tell my team is we have to stay open the signals coming in. how is your team and business doing? reiterate and do the best thing we can. i am confident that if we do that over the long-term, we will not only survive, we will also thrive. we will come out on the other end with stronger company. emily: you just hired another female senior executive. what is it like hiring a senior leader during covid? i couldn't be more thrilled about susan. we are lucky to get her on the team and to help take us forward.
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her when i was working at salesforce. she has a unique combination of first in customer centric, but also when i first met her, she was selling platform at salesforce. she knows how to sell platform. she knows how to sell technology to i.t.. she knows about the cloud delivery model. she has a technical background. she has led and built great teams. we are lucky to get hurt. when you talk about hiring people when everything is remote, i am lucky not to have to build a relationship from scratch with someone so i can bring on someone i have known from a long time and is also a world-class executive. that's a pretty for to decision to be in. it's hard to build these relationships online. sometimes in a key role like this, it's better to happen to one of the world's best leaders that you already know. emily: ok.
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thank you so much. for joining us and sharing those insights. as we have been talking, the new york times has reported that president trump has officially picked judge amy coney barrett to sell justice ginsburg's seat on the supreme court. this will kick off a furious and contentious process. president trump hopes to fill the seat before election day. isjudge kony barrett confirmed, this will alter and reshape the supreme court for years to come. we will continue to follow that story. coming up, amazon is expanding its offerings in the hotly contested gaming market. will their new gaming service be able to keep up? we will look at the new platform. this is bloomberg. ♪
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emily: amazon hadn't made many moves in the gaming world until yesterday when they announced they want a bigger piece of the gaming industry amidst a slew of new devices, amazon announced a new cloud gaming service called luna. is a senior analyst who covers the company. what are amazon's chances in the gaming market? you have huge entrenched players. microsoft just made a big investment buying bethesda which means they will have more content.
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can amazon compete? >> i think they can. surprisingly, consistent with their strategy, they have probably been very mindful of having the hardware that is associated with luna come in at an attractive low price point relative to other gaming console offerings. i know they have been in the market for quite some time in terms of hiring product engineers, hiring folks to develop i.t.. they have an entrenched intrigue audience given what they have with twitch. will they come out with aaa ea or activision? i don't think so, but i don't think they need that to be successful. vply: i spoke with a senior at amazon yesterday. i asked him this very same
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question. how do they compete in an already crowded market? market. a big we are in the renaissance of gaming. different customers are going to want different kinds of gaming. luna rings that to them. emily: does amazon need original titles to keep this up? >> i think they can get away originalmbination of and licensed. from my perspective, the key is an attractive price point. a lot of what they are able to do is take advantage of the fact that you can get a lot of entertainment for a significantly lower investment. six dollars per month is not a lot. if they see a lot of success around this, my viewpoint has always been they taught -- talked yesterday about an expanded fire tv offering. you can see over time this
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getting bundled and tied together with prime. i think it has something to do with that strategically if i look out a couple years. as the executives from amazon have commented, covid has been a big part of. gaming usage has exploded. they are coming to market with a good-looking device, well priced, and not a lot of upfront investment to be able to get a healthy amount of bang for your buck. it will certainly be an interesting holiday season to watch. thank you. continuing with tech, i spoke earlier with a vice president of ibm. i asked him about how quantum computing can play a role in minimizing or preventing future pandemics. >> when viruses begin to spread, it is -- information quickly.
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the sooner we were able to track what was happening and seeing what was spreading and getting a test -- in reality, when you get a disease like this, you can't stop whole thing. we could have found ways to use technology to track and mitigate it to some extent. emily: you have been highlighting ai and quantum computing. how could that have helped? side,ticularly on the ai if we see patterns ahead of time on the disease spread or other patterns, maybe we couldn't see is people because we could look at that much data as wants. should be the flag that says hey you should look at this. we need someone to come in and look at it and say this is what is happening. this is one of the things we like about ai is seeing a broader picture than bringing in someone to take action.
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>> you think that ai want to computing and this technology could ultimately replace humans decision-making in a pandemic? >> one of the things great about using ai is augmentation or assisting role. things at scale that a person couldn't do, but it requires a person who understands what is the goal, what are the ethics, what are the issues on trying to solve. take thate context to information to make the actual decisions which will be critical. >> where his research leading and what are your predictions? >> all five that we did this year were around how we can accelerate scientific discovery to help with climate change and covid. august covid, we focused on could we find ways to repurpose current drugs to treat the disease? usually, it takes 10 years to get a new drug out.
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what we use today might be safe and the able to help covid. how can use this using ai help find dental candidates? >> when you talk about climate change, how can technology help? i know you are looking at sustainability in california. taking then wildfires and terrible air quality on the west coast. how can technology help? >> i am in san jose and i have been suffering from that as well. how do we do a better job of carbon capture? how do we capture co2 from the air? maybe use it for something else like plastic production. how can we make more sustainable batteries? can we find ways to make
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materials that go into computer chips or sustainable and environmentally friendly? these all add up to make a difference. >> it seems like we are at a turning point when it comes to battery development. we have been following tesla's battery date. is that the best way to put it, that we are on the cusp of a big change and help batteries and renewable energy could impact our lives? >> we obviously have a lot of good production going. a lot of our power can be generated by renewable. requiresod storage really large very energy dense batteries that are very safe. the technology we have been have concernsme from impact perspective also turned out to be safer. they could charge faster. sometimes, looking for something
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better for the environment, it turns out we get a better battery as well. >> how do we make sure that batteries are used to their full potential? where do you see the applications whether it is in electric cars or elsewhere? >> electric cars people are focused on. if you think about it in the energy space, you have solar panels, places with a lot of son. you want to store battery packs ash extra energy and use it necessary. we have had power outages during the fires. if you were able to store better energy from solar power ahead of time, that could be very useful and help run your home. >> when it comes to sustainability, do you think other companies are doing enough? parts we could all do more. everything we do, we would like takingthe product cycle accountability from the beginning.
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we are discovering that if you really use, particularly with ai and about ahead of time, you might find a better way to go forward from the beginning. the ibm research vp. we will be back with more bloomberg technology after this quick break. ♪
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emily: president trump plans to toe amy coney barrett replace justice ginsburg on the supreme court. it looks like she is still the favorite.
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>> sources are telling us that she is expected to be the pic tomorrow. the president has been telling associates that she is the pic. the president is someone who obviously could change his mind from time to time and that could happen between now and saturday at 5 p.m. when the announcement is expected. all indications are that amy coney barrett will be his supreme court nominee. emily: tell us more about judge barrett. this is going to kick off a huge partisan battle. one of the specific issues of road versus -- roe v. wade has people incredibly concerned especially on the left. what stands out about her record to you? it's a number of things. she is a favorite of social
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conservatives. she is a staunch supporter -- opponent of abortion. the president wants the cement of conservative majority on the court. he wants someone who is going to be a rocksolid conservative. justice roberts has made whatrulings contrary to the president might have wanted. significantly alter the court for a generation to come? judge bear it is a very young woman. one of the youngest justices ever to serve potentially on the supreme court.
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talk to us about the process and what happens now. we believe that president trump will try to force this, force the senate to confirm judge bear before election day. that's right. he said this week that he wants the new justice on the court in part so they could help sort any challenge to the election result on november 3. that is sort of a stunning statement for the president but he has made his indications clear. that is going to play a factor in this presidential race. the coronavirus and the u.s. economy are still of top concern to voters. we are seeing indications that this might backfire on the president because most voters are saying they want the person who is elected in november to pick that not necessarily president trump right now. democrats are energized by the justice-- prospect of
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ginsburg's seat falling into the hands of conservatives. this while the president and his allies believe this could be an asset for them. it could also be an asset for joe biden. emily: exactly. is it really the smartest debt -- course of action for him to push this through with six weeks to go? i think that's going to be the million dollar question. is this a gamble that's going to pay off or the president? what the president's campaign --m is looking at in 2016 voters who thought the supreme court was a big concern for them, they mostly sided with donald trump over hillary clinton. this time around, it's different. the president has put two justices on the court and we are seeing now that liberals are the
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ones who are energized. they want to shift the balance back toward the center or left. with already having two justices, conservatives are more -- than they were four years ago. again, bloomberg is reporting that president trump plans to name judge amy coney barrett to replace justice ginsburg. we could hear that announcement from the president tomorrow. the president could still change his mind as he often does. judge barrett has been the favorite it seems for the last several days. she still is a favorite and as bloomberg is reporting, president trump plans to name her as his pick tomorrow. thank you so much for that update. i will let you go. oft does it for this edition uber technology. next week, we will bring you
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special coverage of the presidential debate. that will start tuesday 8:30 p.m. eastern time. next, wall street week with david westin. have a great weekend. this is bloomberg. ♪ [ sigh ] not gonna happen.
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