Crypto-crash, Streaming wars and tax plans with MSNBC Host Stephanie Ruhle

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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway.
Scott, more news this week. There's so much going on.

But one of the things that happened was the European Union is reopening its borders to tourists who have vaccinated against COVID-19. A lot of stores are doing the same thing.

It's kind of an interesting situation where

the vaxed and the unvaxed, although you don't need, going to Europe, you need proof, but going into, say, a Target or a Walmart, you do not. So it's just based on your character.
Yeah.

And I mean, there are a couple things that are interesting about this.

If you think about the American brand or America as a brand, a brand is a function of the quality of its services, its products, and it's how deft it is around communication and increasingly how its leaders behave.

This is probably,

probably one of the greatest brand accretive moves for the American brand in the last few years because you know what the key component of Europe letting people in is vaccines.

Not just vaccines, but what vaccines? The Pfizer and the U.S. vaccines.
vaccines. And

specifically, not China and Russia. That's exactly right.

So the bottom line is, similar to the way we put a man on the moon versus the Russians, you know, our Nazis were smarter than their Nazis. That's a little secret we don't like to.

That's a nice way of putting it. Okay.
The bottom line is, our science is better than the Chinese and the Russian science.

And I think if you really look at the medical community or if you look at the winners and losers coming out of COVID-19,

the skill,

our pharma and our medical complex comes out of this really the big winners.

But the fact that European is saying, Europe is saying, look,

you can come in if you only have the best vaccines. And who makes the best vaccines, the most important product in the world right now? America does.
And the second thing is... America does.

Europe is showing the kind of leadership and SAC that American companies and states and schools need to demonstrate. And that is, we require vaccines for school.

We require you go to a metal detector at the airport because you could be a threat to other people. Companies and municipalities need to step up.
So, what do companies do, though?

Like, I just was talking to Box, and they're not going to, they're going to have people back in the office.

People who go sooner do have to show proof of COVID vaccines, but those who are later, they're not going to do that. It was, I had a really interesting talk.

Same thing, like, for other businesses, airlines.

Airbnb has not required vaccines. I used an Airbnb in the middle of the pandemic, and

they did not require a vaccine.

So, it'll be an interesting interesting choice for businesses and how they receive it, whether you want it digitally or a piece of paper that's easily copied or whatever.

It'll be interesting to see who does. But I think most people will not require proof, would you guess? Correct, don't you think?

I hope not. And I hope that companies show more backbone than our firm is right now

and say, we care about our employees, we care about America, and it's time to take a leadership stand and not give into this crazy bullshit conspiracy

conflating freedom with selfishness.

Companies, and some companies worried about legal. I think there's some, I don't agree with you.

I think there's some real problems here in terms of letting people go back with it whether or not there's probably some issues around it. But we'll see.
Airlines for sure.

We're having Stephanie Ruhl come on and she's making faces at me. We're going to bring her on.
Stephanie, just come on. Come on.
What are we doing?

What are we doing? Stephanie Ruhl. A business is technically.
This is Stephanie Ruhl. There we go.

Our loudmacked neighbor,

Stephanie Ruhl from MSNBC. Let me introduce you.

Our loudmouth neighbor, like, you know, on Bewitched, that's who she is. Our wacky neighbor.
It's Don Rico.

So here's Stephanie Ruhl. Go ahead, Stephanie.
You're just like dying. You're making noise.
I would be Lana from Three's Company if I were to be a neighbor.

Come and knock on our door. Come and knock on our door.

So, first of all, I can't believe you didn't call Scott out for this. Scott, using the term, they should have a sack.

Screw you with your should have a sack. Like, great.

Okay, they should have a vagina. I'm sorry.
I'm just saying, let's try to use new words. Sack doesn't work.
But number two, a business is allowed to require its employees to be vaccinated.

Now, there are caveats because of the American Disabilities Act.

You don't necessarily have to get one if you have a medical reason, if you have a religious reason, and then the company can create, you know, different accommodations for you.

That absolutely can be done. Just like a business can say, no shirt, no shoes, no service.
They can also, if you run targets, you have to wear clothes to work. Right.

Because think about how hard this has been on frontline workers.

When we did have the CDC guidance that said you have to wear a mask, think about how hard it's been for those frontline workers and the fights they've gotten in.

They all just need to make this more clear. And one other thing, for every business, an individual who's saying, don't tread on me, I'm not going to get involved.

The U.S. government gave trillions of dollars away to support the American people and to support American business in the last year.

The one thing they're asking of us is get vaccinated so we can be safe and reopen. And it's just not too much to ask that we comply.

Yeah,

I agree with that. But I'm saying, I think, let me just say, I think businesses are going to have a hard time doing this nonetheless in practice.

The kind of headaches they're going to get from employees, I can think airlines can do it a lot easier. We're We're used to that.
I think like cruise lines can do it.

Airbnb, I doubt, can do it, like that, that kind of stuff. But I don't know.
Scott, go ahead. Got to be honest.
I'm a little bit scared right now. I'm a little bit scared.

When you bring up, I mean, it's literally like a double shot of espresso in the morning with

a little bit of meth called, ladies and gentlemen, Stephanie Rule.

First off, motherfucker, don't you sack.

Jesus. It's like, it's the morning here.
I should press back. Let's like, let's like ease into it.
Let's boil the frog slowly. It's just like the phrase.

Last I checked, Micky.

Let's go with another on me too.

Let me just say, let me just say, Stephanie, word, my sister. You're right.
$6 trillion.

I'm still going to say sack up. The government's saying.

No, you're right. They need to grow backbone.
Back up. Estrogen supported bone strength backbone.
Okay. They need...
None of that made any sense. All right.
Nonetheless, it's going to be difficult.

I'm

We're not asking anyone to storm the beach. I get it.
It's still going to be difficult. It's still not.
They wouldn't put on masks. They like, they coughed at people.

This is just not going to be an easy thing for businesses. And I'm sure they're exhausted and are going to try their best to be accommodating.
Whether you think that.

I'm not saying it's not difficult for businesses. And I think about restaurants specifically, they've had a hard year.
However, restaurants had access to the PPP loan program twice.

They just got, just got in the last week, $28 billion dollars from the government specifically for restaurants. They can work this out.
They can find a way.

They're not going to. I'm sorry.
I live in the real world where people cough on people. Oh, yeah.
You're from the mean streets of Calorama. It's a terrorist sweatshirt.
I don't live in Calorama.

I don't live in that. I like that word.
Okay, good. That's my ex-wife lives there.
Anyway, we're going to move on. Speaking of which,

speaking of things that are appalling, a mob of Israeli extremists

used WhatsApp to attack Palestinians.

This WhatsApp thing was a problem in Myanmar and other countries.

Again, tech affecting people to be able to organize. I don't know quite if I want to blame Facebook, but they've been through this a zillion times.

And they never fail to fail humanity to do something, put something in place during an extreme time where people will use these tools to do to do things like this. Thoughts?

I want Stephanie to weigh in. Stephanie.
I feel the way I always do.

I wish Instagram, which is a daily injection of joy in my life, would finally break up with Facebook. Instagram is like my girlfriend who has the worst husband ever.

And I desperately wish she would dump him. So I could go over her house with an intimate crumb cake and hang out all day.
Okay, this is WhatsApp.

Yes, Facebook and WhatsApp time and again, they do not do the critically responsible thing in their time of need. And why don't they? Because they don't have to, because they are largely unregulated.

Do I blame Facebook? Nope. I blame the government.
Yeah. All right.
Now, speaking of which, Apple had to compromise some of its privacy values in order to gain access to the Chinese market.

This is a long time and thorny issue for Apple, not just now, but before, despite their strong stance here in the United States on user privacy, it stores all of its Chinese user data on servers that belong to a state-owned firm.

There's all kinds of relationships there that are problematic and definitely compromised. Thoughts, Scott?

Just as privacy is

Facebook's Achilles heel, China and Tim Cook and Apple kind of going all in on China, which comes at a real price, is really Apple's Achilles heel.

They get two-thirds of their income outside of the U.S. They're the only big tech firm that has really managed to develop a large sustainable business in China, and it's come at a big cost.

And that cost is they have to really turn a blind eye or just bottom line is ignore. what is a level of control and civil rights violations and ignoring really terrible things.

And when you're a handset company, it's impossible not to be a platform or an apparatus in all these terrible things. So this is, this is their Achilles Hill.
Stephanie?

Listen, for almost all public companies,

how do you advance? How do you make shareholders happy? Growth. And so we look, how do you grow? The answer is most often China.
And Apple is living in the vortex of it.

When you decide it's China, you are compromising so, so much. And the question is, is it worth it? Apple has decided it is, and now they're living through that pain.

Yep, absolutely. I think it's, they have got several things.

Obviously, the lawsuit around the App Store, but this one is their absolute most problematic situation, especially because no matter where you go, including their supply chain, there's something bad happening, whether it's Uyghurs or something like that.

And so their reliance on their Chinese market is something I don't think they have any good answers to.

And it tarnishes what they're saying here, which I think we all agree is laudable on user privacy, also a brand attribute at the same time. They have more employees in China than they have in the U.S.

The number one job for a CEO is to risk manage. You cannot risk manage China.

What would you do if you were Tim Cook, Stephanie? I don't know.

I don't know. That's a good answer.
Good answer. Good answer.
All right, last thing.

Peel is a prize-winning New York Times journalist and MacArthur Fellow Nicole Hanna-Jones was denied tenured position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this week after a backlash in service for her teaching the 1619 project.

She was offered a night chair position, a tenured position teaching race and investigative journalism, generally tenured seat. The faculty agreed to it.
It went all the way up the chain.

Someone said it's as if the Queen of England decided not to let a law pass.

What do you think? Both of you, both of you. Of course, the anti-cancel culture people were silent, which is interesting in that regard.

So what do you think about this, Stephanie? I think I only know what I've read.

And so at the surface and the way you frame it, yeah, it sounds wrong in every possible way, but it's also one, these situations are super complicated.

And I think lots of us who are sitting in the cheap seats opine definitively on what should or shouldn't happen. And from my perspective, I don't know enough about it to say something.

Right. Okay.
That's a good, that's a very good way of saying it. But Scott, Scott doesn't know enough about it, but he'll say something, Scott.

Look, you're speaking to someone who's been denied tenure over and over. That's because you're not that good at your job.
Yeah, you're not. You're not.
That's really. Hey, I have backbone.

That's a fair. I have backbone.
But you don't have SAC, and that's why you didn't get tenure. I'm talking about it.

What do you think about this, Scott? This is designed for you. Usually the professors decide this, right? And then it's just rubber stamped at the top.

The reason things are so political and vicious at universities is there's so little to fight over.

And having been around the people who make these decisions, I can tell you here that there's more than meets the eye, and none of it makes any sense.

Tenure is strange. Faculty make decisions based on their relationships with people, who's written citations for other people.

There's so many people trying to make it fair. It's anything but fair.
And it's the, you keep in mind, the way you get tenure at a university now is not how good a teacher you are.

It has nothing to do with teaching. It's not even the quality of your research in terms of its impact on the world.

It's the number of citations you get in academic journals that we buy from each other for some ridiculous inflated price that nobody reads.

It's literally the biggest giant circle jerk, including men and women.

I want to be gender equal in my profanity here. And it's total, it makes absolutely no sense.
So if you have no tenure.

100%. I'm down.
I'm going to see you forever and ever. How about be awesome at your job and get a raise next year?

Tenure is nothing but dead on young people.

We have to make that connection.

Just as somebody enters their most unproductive years, we have to literally put $3 million in an escrow account to award tenure because we acknowledge how unproductive they are about to become.

And they leave feet first.

They can show up to faculty meetings when they're 80 and cause trouble and give their viewpoint, which gets increasingly obstructionist because they recognize they're losing relevance. So

tenure is nothing but, in my view, the most expensive corrupt guild. There are some departments that need lifetime employment around protection, the humanities law school.

We haven't said anything controversial at a business school in 30 years.

It is a ridiculous guild. It's a club between people who went to, got their doctorate together at Carnegie Mellon and are looking out for each other.
All right.

But in this case, this has never happened. I mean, it is the system that's in place.

It's an interesting problem because I think this is going to go on and on and on as each side sort of whacks at each other and then denies they're doing this ridiculous word that I'd like to cancel a culture.

I would like to retire that because it's like, it's become like fake news at this point. It's nauseating.

it's nauseating it's nauseating we'll see what happens she's certainly a high provole person and it feels rather obviously political but we'll see what occurs here uh there's going to definitely be they'll be yelling at each other at unc for a good long time i suspect on this great school unc great school

uh my son has some shoes related to it but otherwise okay now we're gonna do something a little different we're gonna have to a story grab bag a big story grab bag with our favorite uh friend of pivot stephanie rule

um a lot of stuff But before we start, Stephanie, I want to see what was the reaction to your interview with, which I thought was superb, with the governor of West Virginia.

And you know, my family is from West Virginia. Barbara Swishers are from West Virginia.
I thought you did a great job.

What was the reaction to it? This was on the trans issue, where you tried to actually ask him a real question of what one instance that this law will help.

And then you cited what a shitty state it is on every other message. Well, that's the thing.
So I, and listen, I've done a number of interviews with him. I have a a good relationship with Jim Justice.

He's done a lot for the state. But the infuriating thing about this transgender ban on youth sports is that none of it is rooted in fact, not one ounce of it.

So, we were doing a general interview, but the day before he had signed a bill banning transgender

girls from playing on sports teams. That's one side.
The other is medical stuff. There's two.
The devastating part about it was how ill-equipped he was to discuss it.

And this is a bill bill he had signed the day before. Well, it's not my bill, Stephanie, it's not my bill.
I don't know.

I just kind of just kept saying to me, well, as a coach, I'm a coach of girls basketball. Do you know how hard those girls work?

But this whole argument is rooted in fallacy that,

you know, we're supposed to think that

somewhere in America, some boys baseball team at the last minute switched uniforms, decided to become a girls' softball team, and won the state champs. That is a lie.

Like, that's that was a great movie. I like that movie, but go ahead.
That's a movie from the 80s that should have existed, but didn't.

The sad thing is that he would make that bill enough of a priority to sign it when that is a state that is literally dead last in terms of infrastructure, probably like 48th in terms of education.

So, instead of hypothetically saving that girls' basketball team from a potential boy, switching over, forgetting that.

What was the reaction to it?

So he and I called a few days later.

And we had a really productive call. And sort of the sad thing is.

He had no choice, right? Kind of, right? So

basically, and this we don't necessarily appreciate, in order for the governor to get something done, he's got to work with the legislature of that state.

And it is really hardcore, really far to the right. And so

what I deduced from my conversation with him was this bill was something he just had to play ball with, no pun intended, in order to get to other things that were a bigger priority.

But in doing so, he doesn't realize the impact of it, right? So when I called him, he was sort of like, well, I get it. This is a core issue for you.

He almost was thinking, like, she must have a transgender child. And I'm, yeah, you don't have to have any horse in the race of transgender.
This is just about logic.

And if a a governor signs a bill, he should absolutely be able to back it. It should be great.
You know, there are 100 bills in 38.

I just did an interview with Chase Strangio, who's the ACLU Lord fighting a lot of these. And

Chase was doing the bathroom bills, if you recall those that sort of came and went, which was the last attack. And before that, it was attacks on gays and lesbians around marriage.

It's just, it's a continuing thing. And they've moved on to a topic focused on kids that will, that, that, that people,

even reasonable people are like, well, boys shouldn't play on girls' softball teams.

That's how how they think in their head it's a it's one of these base issues that's it so it's like when i eat dinner with my mom and she's like well stephanie i mean you shouldn't have boys on the girls team let's have an argument if there's ever a scenario where that's happening in any threatening way but there isn't yeah it was interesting about what's happening on the abortion front in texas Yes, that is happening now, which we can get into in a second.

But first, we're going to talk about things we talk about here. I agree.
These states are moving in

a very right right way, in a way that people need to be paying attention to who care about issues like abortion and trans rights.

So here's the categories we're going to talk about.

The crypto crumble, Wednesday, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies crumbled after China-widened crackdowns on the digital coin, where a lot of it has been mined. Bitcoin plunged as low as $30,000.

It was up at $62,000 or something like that. Obviously, more on the AT ⁇ T Time Warner Discovery Plus merger.

We talked about this on Tuesday, but to recap, AT ⁇ T reversed a previous mega deal with Time Warner and spun off to merge with Discovery Plus to create a new streaming giant.

If it goes through, I have a feeling someone might throw a bid in. And a look at Biden's tax plan, which would seek to raise $1.5 trillion via higher taxes on the top 1%.

Stephanie, you get to pick this grab bag. Which one do you want to talk about? I want to start with crypto.
Crypto. All right.
Thoughts?

What is happening here? You had a lot of thoughts. I sent you all a lot of texts last night about when Elon says something, things go up and down.

But now China's entered the picture and the crypto people are losing their ever-love and mind. Well, everyone is jumping out the window saying, why is it losing? Why is it going down?

Why is it going down? I actually think the more important question has been for months, why is it going up so much? And

rather than just focus on crypto, to me, the amazing story in the last year is the power of momentum. Whether it's crypto or meme stocks, we have

individual names soar far, far, far away from fundamentals in a way that we haven't seen from individual investors. And this is why so many people are saying, we need more regulation.

This shouldn't happen. But why shouldn't it happen? Right? Like,

you could say to me walking down the street, 70, why do your shoes cost $800? That's a miles away from fundamentals. You could buy a pair for 20 bucks.

That's true, but the value of something is what someone would pay for it. And so can you argue that these stocks shouldn't soar to the heavens? I think you can't argue against it.

And I think something that's funny when we say this should be illegal, I don't know why should it be illegal? Haven't hedge funds always done this?

Five years ago, you had guys like Bill Ackman who were shorting Herbalife, saying things on television like arrests are coming.

Right? There were no arrests. And then on the other side, what actually happened in Herbalife? Well, Carl Icon got five friends to go bury Bill Ackman.

We've seen this happen on the professional investor stage for years. Now we're seeing it.

We're now just paralyzed because we can't believe that because of the use of technology, you know, the speed of technology and all these other platforms, that you've got individuals who can now do it.

Okay, Scott, individuals, he's speaking of Elon Musk has been at the center of that, but also the Chinese, other things. What do you think about that?

Barry Ritholtz texted me this morning and he had a really interesting point.

And that is, well, crypto, one of the main features of crypto or the narrative is how decentralized it is, that it's outside the control of the reach of any central bank, regulators.

You can put your crypto in a cold storage wallet. It may even be out of the reach of

federal agencies or the IRS. But that's one of the core attributes is its decentralized nature.
We don't even know who started Bitcoin. Actually, I do.
The CIA started it. And it was a brilliant move.

But anyways,

what this shows is... That narrative is bullshit.
This asset class is the most centralized asset class in history. It's centralized so much.

It all centralizes to one individual, Elon Musk, who can move it up or down $200 billion.

We've never had an asset class this big that is more centralized. Interesting point.
So, what does it mean, Stephanie, for the future of digital coins and companies like Coinbase?

Is it just a shake-up? Is this going to go back up? What do you foresee? I mean, there is no way to predict this, but what happened? How does it change?

Because eventually it will move to something more stable, presumably. For me, the most interesting player here is going to be Gary Gensler, the new SEC chair.

He is as smart, I mean, he's as smart and capable as they come. And I don't know what he's going to do.
However, I don't think there's any victims here, right?

Anybody who wants to play in the crypto space, buyer beware, you're in the deepest end of the pool.

So if this thing doesn't work out for you and you're crying and you're trying to sue, don't cry for me, Argentina. I got no time for you, right? Like you're choosing to gamble in the riskiest place.

And so if you lose money, tough nuts.

So what do you see? Thank you for the Eva Prone reference, Evido reference. That was a Madonna film, wasn't it? Wait, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Patty Lapon, don't even speak of the Madonna version.

Don't even speak to me as a gay man. Um, what

okay, what happens, though? How does it stay? Does it stabilize or just stays the deep end of the pool? I don't know.

Listen, if I knew, I'd be talking to you guys wearing a cape and a sword and a Darth Vader mask as a crypto king who's made a zillion dollars, but instead I'm sweating inside of 30 Rock. I don't know.

That's an image. That's an image.

All right, i want to get to 30 rock and it's like so um uh what happens to coinbase either of you scott uh it's the aol of crypto its margins get compressed and it slowly but surely becomes less and less relevant it's stock to what it went out the reference price was 370 it popped to 420 it's already down to 230.

i think this company has um got no sustainable advantage replaced by banks or oh no things like uniswap there's other more efficient the whole idea of the blockchain is it's supposed to be more efficient and the gas or the friction or the cost that just the commissions put another way are exorbitant here.

You're about to see the mother of all margin compression. Um, so I, the bottom line is, I think it's a great company, it's not worth $45 billion.

Yeah, and then just like AOL, its founders and executives will cash out and make a zillion dollars. They're selling like crazy.
They're selling like crazy.

And people who got to the party late are going to get screwed. Right.
Well, speaking of that, Jeff Bugas and Tim Armstrong look like a genius this week with both the Verizon deal and

ATT. I actually talked to Tim this week,

this new one, this Discovery Merger. So, Stephanie, as a host of a new streaming that

does the future of streaming look like with this mega company, what do you think? And also, is Comcast a possible spoiler here in this deal? Why can't another bid be thrown in?

Listen, all eyes are on other big, big companies because if this thing goes through, you're going to have two companies. You're going to have Warner Discovery.

and you're going to have Disney and that's it. And everyone else is going to be in the background.
So now the pressure is on for another company to do something.

The other issue here, when you look at AT ⁇ T and people are saying, I can't believe this. Look how much money they've lost.
That's one argument to be made.

Or you could say, listen, AT ⁇ T could have sat in the position that they were in and continued to play defense and go in the wrong direction or rip the band-aid off, take a different direction and now possibly do something.

We could possibly see something very good. Now we're hearing some shareholders don't like it.
You know, they're having their dividend cut. But here's the thing.

If you're a shareholder who's dependent on having a dividend, I don't think you're a very strong shareholder. That's basically saying I need to get paid by a company in order to own its stock.

This might actually wean out the most hardcore shareholders who believe in this. And the truth is, There's more synergies.

When you think about the most successful companies in the world, they're really good at one thing. What's Google really, really good at? Advertising, right?

Other Other things that they did, that they were great at, I don't know. I can't think of it, right? Maybe AT ⁇ T has realized we don't necessarily need to diversify.

As an investor, I don't need the companies I invest in to be involved in all different verticals. I'm really good at what they do.

Let me just say, the CEO was the one that pushed this and DirecTV though, that went down this thing. And I get you say good try.

I think you're saying good try, but let me read you a quote I have from Tim Armstrong. The big reason, he was talking about Verizon, but he could be talking about AT ⁇ T.

The big reason is that the investor sign outside Verizon says dividend here. An investor sign outside an internet company says growth here.
You need top buy-in to get to that level.

So the acquisition was only the first step in what should have been a much longer investment cycle. Scott, that's Tim.
Yeah, look, I think you're right.

We don't talk enough about the importance of your shareholder base. And that is the shareholder base of AT ⁇ T.

was never going to give John Stanky the firepower he needed and the license to lose money.

People, the shareholders at AT ⁇ T do invest for the dividend, and they want a predictable, great business called 5G that goes up, increases its revenue 3% or 4% a year, increases its EBITDA 5% to 6%, and they can count on that dividend.

And there is a marketplace for those stocks, but they mismatch investor bases. And

so this goes to my prediction. Stephanie, I think your boss, Brian Roberts, is either called or is going to call in the next 24 hours.

John Stanky and say, John, you ready to put your big boy pants on?

I think Discovery and Warner is kind of a meh deal. I think it's interesting.
It's a great thing for Zasloff. All of a sudden, he's the dog that caught the car.

But I think if you look at, I think NBC, CNN, and MSNBC overnight become the dominant player in news.

If you look at a cooperation deal with AT ⁇ T and Comcast, you're talking about direct distribution of ATTU verse, even, I think it's

a lot of fun. Comcast has got to come in here, right? So I think Comcast, and not only that,

look at Peacock right now. Peacock right now is when I tried to play sports at UCLA.
All of a sudden, I found out I was irrelevant and no one was impressed with me. Look at Peacock right now.

Peacock is literally. There are some good shows.
They have one or two. Peacock is all of a sudden looking like the small, is looking like a 90-pound weekly going to 80 pounds.

They have to do something. Quarter of a trillion market cap.
Brian Roberts is aggressive. Stephanie, you're

you watch. This story has not been written.
No, there's an. And also, it's not just Comcast.

It's because Comcast needs to do this because if not, they're going to to be left on the floor without like enough.

They need the bulk. And if not, these tech companies were just sitting.

The tech companies, which was really interesting, one executive pointed out to me that they just have to, the tech companies, because their growing power is unregulated and monopolistic, they now just have to sit and wait to, this is a quote, and have to sit and wait to bleed out largely unprotected media companies by applying more investment into content and talent that the new discovery entity will have to match.

Worse still, with even larger multi-billion dollar war chests to make media than Discovery has. Tech giants do not have to make a profit doing so.

They have other ways to make money and an investor base highly tolerant of investing in growth. So, what, Stephanie? What do you think?

Are you going to be part of a mega company that Jeff Zucker will run all over? I have no idea.

A lot could happen in the next week.

What do you think of it? What do you think of our scheme? We'll soon find out. I mean, honestly, I don't know.

Uncharacteristically scared.

He's got a lot of living.

Hey, I just said my boss had to grow a vagina. You can say something here.

I look forward to watching this play out. And

there we go.

Here we go. That's success.
This is, at least in the short term, a giant win for David Zasloff.

But it's not.

Remember, though, when Discovery brought scripts, and I realized this is teeny tiny compared to where we are in the beginning, people are like, I don't know. Is that going to work?

And then it did because that was complementary content uh right now this is going to be what content can work together and who can control it the most

i'm sorry i'm going to push back david zeslow is an excellent media executive for from the 1920s maybe 1990s he is not the one i would run to go against ted sarandos and everybody else that's coming down the pike for them he's very he throws a great dinner party he's well liked but you know i mean whatever you think of jason kyler he does understand digital i i think david zeslo sort of does So I think Scott's right.

He's the dog that caught the car here. And

I don't think he's going to be able to hold on to it. He's Ben Johnson at the Montreal Olympics on the stage.
I don't know what that means. Getting the gold medal.
Enjoy it while you have it, boss.

Enjoy it while you have it. But what do the tech companies do, Stephanie, since you refuse to comment on your own company, which is obviously going to make a bid here and has to, has to?

Any thoughts about Amazon possibly acquiring Metro Gold and where or do the tech companies just sit and wait, just quietly? Tech companies don't

have to do something this second.

no the tech companies can buy up other assets the pressure is is is on much more for for companies that are already in the content space as their core business because as i said if this went through you'd only have two businesses you'd have disney and you would have warner discovery and anybody else who's in the content business is going to have to get really creative really quickly

But that wasn't their real enemy. That wasn't their real enemy.
It is like they don't watch Game of Thrones.

The real enemy was the people on the other side of the wall not not they were fighting each other but the real enemy was the ice people people who watch game of thrones they really just like violence and nudity okay all right

and and what's wrong with that scott seriously what do the tech companies do like does amazon do they need to do anything just sit and wait and spend spend spend with their extra money that they have in their drawer they're smart and they're disciplined i do think they'll buy mgm and slowly but surely they're going to acquire more and more content i think they want to acquire it slowly and quietly because I don't think they want to raise too many antitrust flags.

But the enemy come in here.

Comcast, AT ⁇ T,

all of these guys, they're competitors. They're not adversaries.
Their enemies are Facebook and Amazon and Google. And they're smart.

Even if AT ⁇ T spins this thing with Comcast, I mean, quite frankly, it should be AT ⁇ T, it should be Discovery, and it should be Comcast. I'll join hands and saying, you're the British.

We're the Russians. They're the Americans.
We hate each other, but we hate the Third Reich more. We have to figure out a way.

Okay, go ahead. Well, speaking of history channel, as I affectionately call the Hitler channel, but essentially they have to recognize their strength and number.

They got to bulk up and put their differences aside because the enemy is not only taking Poland, it's now bombing, it's bombing the advertising industrial complex from the air.

They have got to bind together. And then once this is such an existential threat for them and

fucking discovery, Discovery is literally a pimple on the content elephant. It's a cute little company.

That's not going to push back against Amazon or, I mean, literally, Jeff Bezos go, isn't that cute?

It needs to be Comcast. It needs to be AT ⁇ T and it needs to be Discovery all coming together

and figuring out fantastic technology and also saying to their shareholders, get ready, buckle up. EBITDA's going down.
We're going to have to make staggering. Comcast got to get in here.
Got to.

Got to. Got to.
They don't have a choice. They're going to get killed later.
Later. They're going to get killed later.
Anyways, Stephanie.

They have some really talented employees with some really great shows. And there you go.

You'll be bigger than ever. And then you don't have to work for Facebook.
These are the pluses.

Unless if they don't do something, you'll be working for Facebook.

One of these brands is going to figure it out. And instead of having Stephanie ask questions, they're going to figure out a show where people ask Stephanie questions.
Yes, that's true. All right.

Speaking of which, Stephanie, can you explain top line, explain the tax plan? This is your favorite area besides beating up. Infrastructure.
Talk about the infrastructure.

Okay, so here we are, right? So Joe Biden is trying to get another $4 trillion through.

And every day we're hearing that Republicans are meeting with Democrats and Democrats are meeting with Republicans. But do I actually believe that they're going to get something done?

Well, seeing that you are now seeing Republicans block having a commission on the insurrection, I feel very little confidence that they're going to get much done on infrastructure.

However, I know Democrats' position right now is we have to go big. If we don't go big, we're going to go home.
And I want to be clear. I am in no way saying anything against the plan.

What I'm doing is trying to be overly pragmatic. Democrats have to realize if they go too big, they could end up going home.
If all of Joe Biden's plans go through, the U.S.

government, and that includes what happened in the last year, will have spent $10 trillion.

And I really do think... that the American people, no matter what they say at parties or to their neighbors, when they go and vote, they vote based on what affects them, not offends them.

And what affects them is the wallet.

And people are getting more and more concerned about the amount of spending and really the fact that, and there's no ill will, we have very little oversight for all that we've already spent.

Remember the CARES Act?

You talked about that. You talked about that.
You can have a chairperson for the oversight committee.

So yes, could you look at the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan and say, absolutely, there are so many really good things in there.

But are people going to say, yes, I want to pay for that? I don't know. And you have to look at important blue-ish swing states that are high-tax states, New York, New Jersey, California.

Are you going to get the suburbs in those places to say, yes, I agree, I want to spend $400 billion on elder care. I want to spend $250 billion

on

child care. When, you know, in American Rescue, we just spent $39 billion.
And so people get so fired up. And then

talk about the political elements here, because one of the things that the republicans are doing this socialism thing they're doing that nobody wants to work because they got all this money you know it's they're two of them sort of converging at the same time and and you're seeing signs that everywhere i go people are like i can't find more okay yes but let's be clear this whole thing that nobody wants to work because they're sit home smoking cigarettes it's not so much there's a labor shortage what we actually had in the last year guys was a labor shift when every restaurant when everything in the hospitality industry shut down

well over a million people went to go, who had those jobs, went to work at Amazon warehouses and Walmart warehouses.

And those jobs, well, we could say those jobs stink, not compared to a restaurant job. You go work, I spent a day working at an Amazon center.

And yes, it was just a day, but you start at 16 bucks an hour, you work four days a week, you know your exact schedule and you get health care from day one.

I met a bunch of employees, women, who said, I've never had a job with this regular a schedule. They want to keep that.

And, you know, then what's your other option go work in a restaurant and make two bucks an hour and roll the dice for tips right they keep saying we can't find line cooks anywhere maybe that's because being a line cook is a brutal job and we also saw a record number of people during covid who were laid off do lots of tech retraining skills programs you know the free sales force program like google has a program and they're getting other right or uber driving they're getting other jobs so it's so yes in some element there are people who are getting paid on this expanded unemployment and they're going to wait another few months there are also people who we don't we do not have child care sorted yet people like oh schools are reopened no they're not when a school reopens for three days a week a mother still cannot go back to work She's still got to deal with it the other days and she has to pick her kid up at three.

So Republicans are totally overplaying this argument that everyone's just staying home.

And then when all of us go out to our local restaurants, the owner of the restaurant is like, man, I can't hire anybody. And so this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And at the same time, prices are going up. So my concern for Democrats is that the majority of Americans

are not political, but they're going to look at prices going up across the board. They hear more and more about people not going back to work.

And then they start to feel like, man, why are we paying for this? And there's a good chance they could say, I'm not going to vote for Democrats in 2022.

And then they are going to elect people on the right that really are doing crazy, dangerous things.

So as productive as Democrats want to be about doing some really good long-term things, they have to be aware of the risks.

And I think when you try to rate, when I try to raise these issues, I get punched in the face and called, you know, you are an elitist jerk who doesn't want to help people.

I absolutely do, but I want to help people in a productive, long-term, practical way where you're going to actually keep power.

I think your point about the tech jobs being, you know, even if you can complain all you want at Amazon warehouses compared to when you put them up against a restaurant or some of these other jobs, they're better, like all bad, better kind of thing on this scale of shitty jobs.

And so, one of the things that's important to see is a lot of people have shifted over to tech-related jobs, whether it's delivering for Uber, whether, you know, whether it's Amazon, whether it's all kinds of stuff that tech needs around the delivery space or the commerce space.

And I don't think those are going back. I think everyone's gotten used to this.

They want to hire another 75,000 people. And by the way, they're going to give you 100 bucks if you're vaccinated.

How's a restaurant or a hotel going to hire somebody, you know, when that's your other option?

Yeah, look, if you look at the most recent jobs report, 250,000 jobs, which was way off the estimated 950,000, but the nuance is in the data, and that is there were about 275,000 jobs added for men.

It was actually net job loss for women. And what Stephanie pointed out is really the key.

piece of information here and that is when 50 of the schools are still closed remote learning is latin for for moms got to stay home and be the teacher now.

And we've seen female labor participation regress 30 years. And it's not that people don't want to work.
It's that work doesn't work for a lot of people any longer.

And it shocks me that small business owners and CEOs are so shocked that at some point, they're used to getting people at that level of jobs who are willing to work 50 hours a week so they can live in their car.

And it's just sort of overdue. And for all the all the posing for the cameras and all the posturing from Democrats on the left, the reality is since the Great Recession, the NASDAQ has quintupled.

Inflation's up 24%.

We've seen

an explosion in CEO pay from 50 times earnings to 300. And the minimum wage has exploded from $7.25 to wait for it, $7.25.
We are the wealthiest nation in the world. Let's start acting like it.

We absolutely need an increase in minimum wage. America announced this week raising their bank

workers to 25 bucks an hour in 2025 and their vendors to pay 15 an hour a we should applaud it but b you're damn right they should and so should everyone else think about the last year those businesses had corporate travel they spent zero dollars on entertaining zero on these businesses spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on on on corporate travel and on entertainment they didn't have to spend anything and they still made a ton of dough.

They have the, what Bank America probably realized was: holy shit, people are going to realize how much money we're making. And if we don't do something on the bottom, we're going to get filleted.

And the fact that we're not hearing other businesses follow suit is shocking to me. And the problem there is, then small businesses really won't be able to hire.

But then the argument is, if you cannot afford to pay your workers a living wage, then you do not have a viable business model. And it's okay for that business to go out of business.
That's right.

Oh, there's the two out of business people. Anyway, any predictions about whether Congress approves the plan? Stephanie? I mean, I do think,

listen, the pay fors are a really big issue, but I think that you even heard it last week when Joe Biden did a town hall with my colleague Lawrence O'Donnell. Joe Biden said,

yeah, you know, I want to see that Republican bill.

on the Senate side, we've seen on the House side what they've put forth on the infrastructure side. Even if we just passed that, it would still be the biggest transportation bill we've ever passed.
If

something reasonable comes out of the Senate and we should get it any day now, I bet Joe Biden takes it and runs.

Because if he does, Cara, he will have had, in his first two years, he will have beaten COVID and he will have gotten an infrastructure deal done.

Those are two, and yes, it's not the infrastructure deal he wanted to get done, but those are two massive wins and that'll carry him to 20 through 2022.

I think it'll annoy the, it'll upset the more progressive side of the Democratic Party. And everyone keeps saying, Joe's getting so progressive.

If Republicans offer him something even remotely reasonable, I think he'll take it. I agree with Stephanie.

There'll be a watered-down version of the tax hikes and a watered-down version of the infrastructure bill.

But bridges collapsing in Republican and Democratic districts, it's just a bad look for our government. I mean, infrastructure investment really is overdue.
Something's going to happen.

Although, you know, they like to stick with their guns, the Republicans. And I mean guns.

Just look what happened with the uh January 6th uh yes but then Joe Biden can hold their feet to the fire and say show me your bill yeah show me your bill I'd love to sign it and the commitment the commission was approved 35 Republicans in the house yes they did but not

you know what's going to be interesting Cara Mitch McConnell is going to be the interesting player because behind the scenes, Kevin McCarthy was twisting arms, trying to get people to vote against it.

And still 35 people voted for it. Mitch McConnell

is not an arm twister, specifically on this issue. Yeah, you'll see.
We'll see what happens. Or else Joe Manchin will just say 50, 50 votes, you know, in this particular case.
We'll see.

Or else they'll just do like a Benghazi election. It's coming.
It's coming.

Kevin McCarthy, you will be. If they go Benghazi style, that's worse for Republicans.
Then Nancy Pelosi has complete control.

Yes. Well, no matter what, Kevin McCarthy, you're being deposed on this issue and what you said and what happened.
And you have to tell the truth, allegedly. All right.

Scott, Stephanie, time for a quick break. We'll be right back to answer a listener mail.
This is a good one for Stephanie, too, when we get back.

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Okay, Scott and Stephanie, let's move on to listener mail. Roll the tape.
You got, you've got. I can't believe I'm going to be your mailman.
You do, you got mail.

Hey, Kara and Scott. Greetings from Belgium.
I love the show. I read some very worrying statistics about the health epidemic in the US.
90% of the U.S.

healthcare spending goes to treating chronic, mental health, and stress-related conditions.

If it keeps going this way, it is predicted that the healthcare system, or sick care system really, could bankrupt the US within 10 years.

The American diet leads to chronic illness as well as cognitive and brain dysfunction, which are in fact preventable with the right diet and lifestyle choices.

Chronic illness creates unhealthy and unhappy citizens, leads to the dumbing down of the population, and will further drive inequality and civil unrest. How can the U.S.

remain a powerhouse and globally relevant, influential, and competitive if its citizens are quite literally destroying themselves?

I'm not sure if Big Tech has an answer for this, but I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.
Oh, wow, Belgians lecturing us now. Okay.

We talk a lot on the show about platforms like Facebook destroying mental health, but and obviously the pandemic has caused a mental health crisis and everyone eats too much and bad food.

So

what do you think about this question? Listen, I think it's an important question. I think it's a real issue.

Do I think on the list of priorities in America that's anything that we're going to address in the near term? Absolutely not. Yeah.
So fatter and dumber than ever is really what you're saying.

No, sadly, the wealthier people are, the more focused they're going to be on optimizing their health and longevity.

And the lower people are on the socioeconomic scale, the more they're going to suffer. Look, 60% of people don't know what they're going to have for lunch until five minutes before they have it.

And we have a food industrial complex that taps into this instinct that hasn't caught up to industrial food production.

And just as we've politicized masks on the far right, we've politicized obesity on the far left.

And we don't want to have an open and honest conversation around how overweight America is and how it's been.

You know, 80% of the people admitted to the ICU had some sort of comorbidity related to body mass index.

And I think that we've got to look at economic, you know, how some communities can't afford to eat healthy. We've also got to inspire people from a young age.

There's a real fear here, and that is you don't want a 15-year-old who's already insecure to be shamed about their body. All right.
That is a real fear, and we need to be thoughtful about that.

But at the same time, I remember, I don't know if they still have it. Do you guys remember the Presidential Fitness Awards? Yeah, of course.
Yeah. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I remember like

working on that thing.

And I remember like literally training for a year when I was 12 years old to try to figure out a way to do eight pull-ups because that was the only thing that stood in between me and the Presidential Fitness Award.

I think we've got to figure out a way to get America very focused on its health and get strong. And I think, you know, what it comes right out coming out of college and high schools in America.

I think we've got to put more emphasis on our goal is not to make our youth woke.

Our goal is to make them warriors, both mentally, the ability to hold two contrary thoughts in their mind at the same time, but also to make them physically monsters to make them strong and fast and to think about their food intake and to think about exercise every day regardless if they're an athlete or not but i think i think stephanie's right the elites certainly do this i'm for example i'm wearing a glucose monitor right now i put that thing on you you did i have a new one it's almost done but it's really interesting i'm getting a lot of information about my but but what affects me and stuff like that but let's talk about how tech can help now you know if you had one of these on a lot of people you could do a lot especially if they were just patches understand what's going on.

But, you know, grocery delivery platforms could possibly bridge food desert neighborhoods, or maybe it would further the gap, but possibly it could be good.

These kinds of monitors where people can know and have advice and stuff and make them very inexpensive.

Mental health services that get delivered to more people because you don't have to pay a lot of money to go to a doctor, an expensive psychologist or psychiatrist. Stephanie, can tech help here?

Or does it just make it bad? No, it can, because even think about

the impact of telehealth in the last year.

We have seen mental health services broaden out who they're helping in an enormous way over the last year, especially for children in underserved communities, because they can.

If you are a mental health professional and you're working in one school, you can only help a certain amount of kids. But if you are doing telehealth, you can see a mass multiple of that.

And if we sort of adopt more of those ideas and help underserved communities, whether it's economically underserved or generationally.

We need to help senior citizens in terms of understanding this technology. It could make a huge difference.
But I can tell you in my own mega-privileged household,

right, in the last year with everybody home, people weren't moving. Kids didn't have sports.
They didn't have after-school activities. So for my seven-year-old, she wears a Fitbit.

But like, I can do that because I went, oh my gosh, my kids aren't moving. All we're doing is baking.

We need across the board to do this in a bigger way because when kids do make their way back to school, all they did, right?

When Will Smith a few weeks ago, you know, came out with those photographs of himself saying he's in the worst shape of his life and he just spent the last year in his pantry, everyone did eating processed packaged foods.

And this is an opportunity, especially to help our youth. Yeah, especially reaching out.

I think tech could actually make a big difference here, even as they mentally fuck with people in other areas, whether it's Instagram, it's usually Facebook doing that.

But there are ways that this stuff can really help, as it's been always the case with the internet. Scott, last word.

There's some huge silver linings here, and that is we might be able to push primary health care. Less than 1% of doctors' visits were virtual.
Now they're 30%.

And

can we push out a disperse great,

not only great, take healthcare and put it, take it off its heels and onto its toes. And instead of being disease-driven, be health and maybe even fitness-driven.

but also to disperse the sweat industrial complex and give people cheap ways to just use their body weight in their home and maybe a few weights and just get people into being strong.

I think from all levels, from an early age, we're a strong nation, we're strong a character, and we need to be strong physically. Yeah.
Well, you know, the lesbians are already doing that.

Lesbians all have really fixed strong children.

We're creating an army of children, just so you know. That's our secret thing.
Anyway, that's absolutely true. I think it's 100% true.

I spent a lot more time doing telehealth and it was, it was reminders helped, all kinds of stuff.

It was a really interesting thing and it did just fine. it did just fine and then i went

i i i have seen more doctors because of telehealth in the last yeah than i mean i'm the queen of canceling every doctor's appointment because i'm like telehealth changes everything

yeah 100 and then i just went in for regular the tests that they needed the blood tests and they were very convenient in my neighborhood because they were already doing there are all these testing facilities that are popped up and so then now they've shifted to blood tests and things like that rather than covet related um and people gotten used to it all right scott stephanie one more quick break we'll be back for prediction stephanie you have to have a prediction

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Okay, Scott, you're going to go first if Stephanie can think of it. What is your prediction or strategy you'll throw out there on the podcast that will inevitably become Twitter's next move?

I don't know what it could be. I think Stephanie's calling John Stanke or Stephanie's boss.

This is not,

I think Zaslov needs to be,

I just don't see Brian Roberts deciding to sit on the sidelines and say, oh, that's interesting.

And not only that, I think as we, I mean, if you look at the kind of the, I call it the bonfire of the the Benjamins, if you look at who's lost the most money the fastest, it was probably Gerald Levin.

Then it was maybe Marissa Mayer with Tumblr and Yahoo.

But now number two is Jon Stanke in this. And I just don't think this deal commands the space it occupies.
And I think that Comcast is

saying to their bankers, well, what could we do? And he'll call Stankey and say, look,

you have an obligation to consider this. He'll initially rebuff him and say, sorry, boss, your shareholders demand that you take a very hard look at this.
They are very sophisticated.

They're very aggressive. They have a quarter of a trillion dollar market cap and they have distribution versus discovery at, I think, what was it, 16 billion? This story is not over.

So anyways, you're about to agree.

My column says that. It was about to appear.
I just, there has to be a Comcast in here. There has to, they have to come in here.

The tech companies can't. The Comcast has to.
It's the only company that can. Disney can't step up.
They already did their thing. And this is ridiculous that it's going to discover.

It's just like too small. It's ridiculous.
And it's not enough, by the way. It's not enough.
And so it needs a much bigger thing. And this eventually will be an existential crisis for Comcast, 100%.

And Stephanie has no comment. Stephanie, what's your prediction?

My prediction is that America has decided COVID is over, and you're going to quickly see more and more states that haven't yet dropped their mask mandates. Just look at the American people.

Look at New York City. Even several months ago, this city was left for dead.
It was anemic. Walk around New York City right now.
Looking good.

Looking good.

fuego. I walked into an HM yesterday to buy my daughter a pair of socks.
I'm not exaggerating. There were 35 people online, right? People are packing in restaurants.

You're going to see people are coming back to the city. You know, this idea that, oh, people are going to come back to work by the end of the year.

More and more companies are going to have their employees back. ASAP.
The banks wanted to bring

months ago. And I really think the only thing that held them back from demanding more in-person work is that they were worried about media pushback.

People are done with COVID. They're going to move on.

Yeah, I'd agree. New York is something, but I'm saying that's where we're at emotionally.
And the real estate market, too. I've had a lot of friends who have said it's insane suddenly, suddenly.

You know, offers. I've had a lot of offers on houses I've had.
It's really kind of the cities are back. I would agree with you on that, Stephanie.

And someday you'll be for all of you that rushed out of the city that said, oh my God, the city's dead. I'm moving to some big house in the summer.
Yeah, great. Enjoy your commute.

And enjoy the suburbs, which is not enjoyable in any way. And my prediction is that Jeff Zucker is going to be Stephanie's boss.
And good luck, Jeff, on that one. That's all I have to say.

Coming in hot. Coming in hot.

So, Jeff, call me, Jeff. Call me Stanky, who is the worst media strategist in modern history.
You know what, though, Cara? It doesn't matter.

As long as you're a big, giant executive, whether you have a job or get carried out, you leave with a big bag of dough.

You know, Tim Armstrong, although he looks like a genius now, left with $60 million when he didn't look like a genius. So there you have it.
And in fact, he deserves it now.

Who cares what the likes of media critics have to say about you? You leave with all the money. They do.
They care. Stephanie, they care.
Trust me. They do.
They do.

Anyway, this has been a fantastic show.

Thank you. Except for Stephanie, no commenting.
Otherwise, she was very careful. They're crying on a thousand thread count.

Anyway, that's the show. Please send us your listener mail questions.
That was just a great one from Belgium. We love them.
Go to nymag.com pivot to have a chance to be on the podcast.

Scott, please read us out. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sonanis.
And the Intertod Engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows.
Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

Or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify or frankly, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you liked our show, please recommend it to a friend.
Shark Week, hosted by Stephanie Rule.

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