DC is old news. “The universe revolves around Silicon Valley”

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott's out this week in some country.

I don't know where he is.

But my friend and journalist, Maureen Dowd from the New York Times, is stepping into the mic today.

She's from Washington.

We're broadcasting from Washington.

Maureen, welcome to Pivot.

Thank you, Kara.

Thank you for doing this.

Now, you got a general sense of what you're supposed to be, Scott, but please be like a thousand times less obnoxious that we're well.

My only role in life is to do whatever Kara tells me.

Okay, that's a great rule.

That's a fact.

I think everyone should do that rule.

Anyway, we're going to talk about a bunch of new stuff and things like that.

Just for people, people do know who you are, but explain who Maureen Dowd is.

She is a famous columnist.

I have a column at the Times, and I also have a

feature in the Style section

where I interview people, sometimes from Silicon Valley.

So you like tech or do you're very interested in it, right?

Yeah, I'm fascinated with it in a sort of a Mary Shelley way.

That these are a group of people who think they are creating,

you know, or gods creating people and universes and things and possibly killer robots.

And, you know, in some ways, a lot of them are like little boys in that Palo Alto apartment where Sergey Brin and

or is it just Larry Page and Elon?

I don't know.

It's all of them.

Yeah, yeah, and they talk about rockets to Mars and fast cars and

all these amazing things.

But

in other ways, there are overlords.

Although, as Barry Diller says, really AI is the overlords.

They're the midwives.

How do they compare to Washington people?

Because you

are steeped in that.

That is exactly why I love talking to scientists and engineers, because you ask them a question and they give you an answer and tell you the truth.

You know, they don't.

In Washington, that's the opposite, obviously, more intensely so now in the Trump era, but it's often hard to get a straight answer out of a politician.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So you like meeting with them or meeting or

seeing them.

Yeah, they think so differently and they answer questions so differently.

And, you know, when you're in Silicon Valley, you realize people in Washington think the universe revolves around them.

You know, they're deluded.

Right.

And who does the universe revolve around?

Well, I think at the moment it revolves around Silicon Valley.

And still, and do you think that Washington's going to get them again this time with regulation?

Is that like a big

I don't know.

You know,

just in the past couple of years, the

the

tenor of how we think about Silicon Valley has grown so dark, you know, that Cheryl Sandberg and the others have admitted that they don't know how to keep control of their monsters.

But, you know, Congress is barely able to speak the language.

So I don't know that obviously will change with people like AOC,

you know, who is completely fluent in social media.

She is.

She is, absolutely.

What is the state of Washington right now?

And then we'll get to the big story breakdowns.

What is the state?

You've been pretty tough on the Trump administration.

It's sort of moving in on Mueller now.

And how do you feel right now?

Two years ago?

I would say the state is frenzied.

You know, the latest is that the Mueller report might be coming out next week.

So everyone is completely frenzied.

But, you know, it could be that the Mueller report is very disappointing to liberals who have so much invested in it.

I mean,

it might not be everything they're hoping and dreaming.

They might not be able to impeach Trump.

Right.

And so,

what is the feeling around this many years into the Trump administration, which seems to be one thing after the next, essentially?

Well, you know,

it seems ridiculous to use the words Trump and Dickens in the same sentence.

Well, we're with Mary Shelley, so go ahead.

But Trump has an unbelievable talent for cliffhangers.

And, you know,

in our section, the Times Review section, they try and chart whether there is Trump fatigue.

But

I just have absolute faith in Donald Trump that if Trump fatigue starts to set in, he will do something so self-destructive and crazy that he will grab back our attention.

I'm sure today in the White House, he is absolutely fuming because Michael Cohen postponed his testimony long enough that it's going to be on

the same day that he's in Vietnam trying to win a Nobel Peace Prize, Cohen is going to be talking about porn models,

Playboy models, and porn stars.

Right, got to keep those in mind.

So it's

a porn model, Marie.

I don't know.

It's a judge.

Good question.

No judge here.

Yeah.

But so there'll be a split screen,

which will, you know, that is the essence of what drives him crazy.

Yeah.

All right, let's get to some of the stories.

So this week, you know, speaking of like crazy things in Washington, you know, the cable cable networks have all sort of made us all feel awful all the time.

But CNN hired Sarah Isger.

She's a former Trump aide.

She worked for Jeff Sessions as the new political editor to help run its 2020 election coverage.

She was a spokesman to senior counsel at the Justice Department for Sessions, Jeff Sessions.

Previously, she served as deputy campaign manager for Carly Pierina during her terribly failed presidential bid.

She doesn't.

have any journalism appearance that we can understand of.

And so what do you think about this?

What do you imagine they're trying to do there?

Aaron Powell, well, I think she sold herself to CNN and MSNBC as someone who could

help, who had deep knowledge with the Mueller report.

And it's already paid off because CNN broke the story about how the Mueller report might be coming next week.

So I don't believe in

hiring people who have made a living trashing you.

Which she did.

She called the Clinton News.

Right.

And I also don't believe in hiring political operatives as journalists.

Yeah.

So why does that happen?

I mean, it's like all over the world.

Well, you know, this woman aside, we're in an era when, you know, the very people who sold Sarah Palin in the Iraq War are liberal heroes on MSNBC.

Right.

You know, so she's the least of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

They all are.

We're all cheering them now because they're not awful.

Yeah, the liberals were so shocked when Steve Schmidt, you know, took $2 million or whatever to go work for howard schultz as though you know he was some pure liberal just because he hates trump everyone's washing themselves in the blood of trump right right so what does that do what does that do to cable i mean how do you look at the like when you they do does it matter or is it just a circus just a ridiculous circus

oh that she yeah that she's going to run political coverage well i'm sure they'll spin it like um

we all missed uh in 2016 the Trump

resurgence.

Yeah, I didn't, and probably you didn't, because we have family members

before you and I know.

We know.

But maybe their attitude will be, well, you know, we have to have more diversity of outlook.

But in an era when all these journalists are getting laid off,

why are we hiring political operatives who trash journalists?

Yes, indeed.

That is a thing.

I think they might be trying to sort of thwart Trump's calling them fake news, but I think they'll continue to do so because it's part of the circus.

Well, here's one interesting tidbit.

You know, I was talking to Steve Bannon, and he said,

Yeah, I like at the coffee shop.

You probably know this.

You probably know this, but he was saying that Fox is not Trump's favorite network that CNN is.

He loves him some down the line.

Well, because, yeah.

Secretly, yeah.

Because he has to pay more attention.

He takes it more seriously in a way because it's not a slam dog.

He loves the New York Times, right?

Yes, he's obsessed with the New York Times, the same way Bush Sr.

was, because his father was.

You know, he grew up with a father reading it, and Trump did, too.

And, you know, we were, he called us after he got elected.

We were the first call.

Right.

And he came over and he said we were the crown jewel.

And we were the crown jewel of journalism.

And he was just loving on us.

And, you know, he's obsessed with Maggie Haberman and I think he's you too I think

well he you know he stopped speaking to me during when my book came out and I was promoting it it was funny I was on this Mercanis show promoting my book and I guess I said something negative about him and

He began tweeting that I was a wacky neurotic dope.

But the funny thing is I was thinking, who's up at 9 a.m.

on a Saturday morning watching CNN?

Then it was him.

Okay, a wacky neurotic dope.

Yeah.

Do you have a special nickname?

He hasn't given me a nickname.

I wish you had.

Well, according to Chris Christie, if he doesn't give you a nickname, like he hasn't given Nancy one, that means he respects you underneath it all.

I see.

He trashes you, but there's some links to it.

What would be your nickname?

W called me Cobra.

Cobra.

Yeah.

But

no, Trump hasn't given me one.

I used to know him pretty well, right?

You talked to him not infrequently.

Yeah, I talked to him for 30 years.

I talked to him in 1987 when Mikhail Gorbachev came to America for the first time.

He was meeting with New York businessmen, and I called Trump before he met with him.

And he said, we have to be really careful.

We have to be really skeptical about the Soviet Union.

We can't

get rolled by them.

And then I called him after the meeting, and it's like, I love them.

They're amazing.

They asked me to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

So the Russians were onto him so fast.

It was one compliment.

Right.

And they had him.

Yeah, that's it.

Do you think you'd get him back if you complimented him?

Yeah, Jared told me that.

Jared Kushner said,

if I put out two nice tweets and a nice column or one nice tweet and two nice columns or something,

he might talk to me again.

Oh, my goodness, my goodness.

The other thing that you wrote about recently, I'm going to move from Trump to another, one of Trump's,

I don't know, enemies, I guess, Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, but more importantly, he is the CEO and founder of Amazon.

Now, you wrote

about the demise of HQ2 and AOC and Bernie Sanders pushing them out.

You had a great take on that.

Talk about that.

Well, I think that

You know, again, we can't look at any news story without seeing the backdrop of what's happened, the darkening of our view of

Silicon Valley, and also

the fallout of no one getting punished in the financial crisis.

I mean, these major things that happen in the country infect everything, elections, stories.

So,

you know, Bezos could behave one way.

before,

but now,

you know, he sort of represents

all the arrogance and ruthlessness that people have now come to associate Bezos and Zuckerberg and people like that with.

And that's why that one moment where he stood up to the National Enquirer was his one.

Well, also how he's handled the post are sort of heroic moments.

But in general, you know, he's part of the problem in Silicon Valley.

Just his attitude.

That he pulled out of there.

No, because that

they are still of the mindset that New York was lucky to have them rather than

they were lucky to have New York.

Right.

And were you surprised New York pushed back so hard?

Well, it wasn't all of New York.

Right.

You have to Blasio and Cuomo on my losers list.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

We'll get to that in a second.

But were you,

where does it go?

You think it's going to have a backlash, not bringing them there?

I think, you know,

I think that

somebody had to push back.

Well, part of it also was his clue, you know, the cluelessness

of

Amazon about the

union situation in New York.

Yeah, and

other things, not fixing anything, just coming in.

Right.

I mean, I think it would have been really good for Jeff Bezos on the heels of his positive publicity about the National Enquirer if instead of just,

you know, pulling pulling out,

he had met with our queen, AOC,

and,

you know, tried to offer some emoluments to make it work or given back some of the money.

Yeah, he can't do it.

What do you think of

how she got this house?

She was one of the many people who pushed against it.

I know.

You know, all the guys in my Evas roll their eyes when her name comes up, but I have a real soft spot for her because I have watched.

She was a bartender when Amazon first talked about going, which was first announced this thing.

I know.

I love, yeah, I love her trajectory.

But also, I've just watched for decades while Democrats, Democrats were too scared to even call themselves liberals.

You know, they've always been, you know, in the language of SM, you know, they've always been the submissives.

You know, they have.

And so I love her whole fierce, you know, don't screw with me attitude.

I just love it.

I think if

she can, you know, learn her way around Washington and get things and not ban our planes and cows.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I just, I, I've interviewed her.

I just think she's great.

You know, she's.

not perfect, but she has the fight.

You know, even Hillary Clinton, if Hillary Clinton had had a little of that fight,

like in the debate with Trump when he was lurking around behind her, if she had turned around and said,

get the hell out of my

frame.

I asked her about that in an interview and she said she should have said something.

Yes.

It was, you know, it's that.

She felt like she'd get attacked if she's, if she said, you creepy person.

Well, that's why she was always hamstrung.

You know, she was always sort of overthinking and over-correcting.

You're not her favorite, as I recall.

Well,

you've been tough on her.

Well, this is another thing that bugs me about Democrats.

They just want you to censor and not talk about the flaws of Democrats and only talk about the flaws of Republicans.

But you can kind of see what they're doing wrong and everyone else can see.

So it would be better if they would just read the column and make a correction.

Make a correction.

Yeah.

So last question in this area.

So

there seems to be a presidential candidate every hour, a different one.

How do you think about the various rollouts of all of them?

Yeah, at some point, an advisor to Obama told me that Obama had already talked to 46 people, and that was, you know, five months ago.

Right.

Well, I'm running for president, Maury.

Well, I would vote for you.

Who do you think has done a good job in the rollouts?

I think, you know, Amy Klobuchar seems very appealing, but I think this throwing things at staffers is very problematical, more so because she does seem so appealing.

It's kind of like, where is that coming from?

Right.

You know,

and Nobody likes a lady who throws things.

Yeah.

And I love the whole Kamala Harris and Willie Brown.

Willie Brown keeps writing columns about how they had this affair, but, and he helped her get jobs, but so what?

He helped Nancy Pelosi.

I think, you know, that's a funny.

Women running have a whole level

different thing.

Different thing.

So

how did you like who else just was Elizabeth Warren?

Who was this weekend?

Or was it Bernie Sanders?

Oh, well Bernie Sanders that's right Bernie Sanders I think I I'm one of the ones who thinks Bernie Sanders you know

and Biden had their had their best shot last time I could be wrong but you know I just feel like at some point you've got to move on and have some fresh leadership that sounds like a Maureen Dowd column I think I need one you need one you need one by

when do you have to have it by tomorrow okay night at 730.

That's a good one right there.

All right.

we're going to take a quick break and we get back.

We're here with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.

We're going to talk about wins and fails, and Maureen's going to make some predictions.

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We're here with Maureen Dowd.

Welcome to Wins and Fail segments of Pivots, where we get to call out all the people who are messing things up and highlight a couple of people doing it right.

So we're going to do a bunch of wins and full, calling Rutger Bregman, who is the historian who was on the stage at Davos, who called out billionaires and suggested we should be talking about tax avoidance, a moron, even though it looked like Rodger Bregman was very smart.

He also called him a bunch of other things.

And the line that I think Rodger Bregman had that was really amazing was calling him, Tucker Carlson, Tucky, a millionaire who works for billionaires and sort of just does their bidding and doesn't talk about these issues about the wealthy.

being too wealthy.

This is a big move, this idea of the wealth.

It's going to hit Silicon Valley people, all kinds of people, the wealthy being too wealthy and taxing them.

AOC has one, Elizabeth Warren.

I just talked to her advisors on that.

How do you look at that?

Again, I look at it in the larger context of the Obama administration not punishing any of the bankers.

I think

everything is stemming from this anger that that was not resolved properly.

Right, right.

And that this, do you think it has legs?

Or because there's so many of these proposals?

Yeah, I do, because now, isn't it a majority of Democrats who think it's okay, the 70% of the people?

Lots of people,

actually.

Lots more people than you think.

This is what Rocker Regma was saying, more people than you think.

Well, they brought this on themselves by being pigs.

They always say they're so poor, all they have is money.

All right, your fail?

Oh, my fail.

Well, let's see.

I wrote down a lot of them.

I gave you the split-screen one.

Okay, good.

And also, I think Cuomo and de Blasio are a fail because

they couldn't either negotiate this thing or present this thing in a way that could, or save this thing in a way that could make it work.

Right.

You know, because in some ways it would have been nice to have all those innovators in New York if it had been properly done.

And, oh, and I told you, I think Trump has a fail when he talks about the press and goes up against A.G.

Sulzberger as enemy of the people, because every time he does that, our digital subscriptions jump.

Right.

Which is good.

And obviously, Jesse Smollett is a fail.

Yeah.

Talking about it.

Because, you you know, if you're going to

stage a homophobic and racist attack, I guess you shouldn't do it with extras from your own show.

But also, it might be a fail for the media.

The police were just having a press conference chastising the media because

we're all so eager to believe the anti-Trump plot lines.

Right.

You know, and we have to be careful also in Covington.

Yeah.

Do you remember a long time?

This is the teen who they're suing the Washington Post over this.

I'm not sure why they picked the Washington Post particularly over anybody else.

But this idea of jumping to conclusions.

Yes, I was a bitch.

But also, you know, I was thinking while I was watching this press conference, I guess the reason he did it is because he wanted a bigger salary.

So it would have been better if he just read Lean In and took Cheryl Sandberg's advice.

The way to get a bigger salary is to smile at your boss during salary negative.

Yeah, he's not going to get any salary now.

He's going to be out of salaries.

Yeah, he's definitely a failure.

It's depressing because issues around people of color and gay people are very severe in this country, for real.

And so to use that and then add it on to a Trump thing just was

just, it's just, I can't even think of someone who would think of doing something that you know

about it.

That show Empire is based on King Lear.

And there are a lot of comparisons these days with Trump and King Lear, you know, howling at the moon.

This is so literally Maureen.

I know.

You've got Shelley

Dickens.

We're We're bringing Shakespeare in.

I think a win was

these documentaries about R.

Kelly and Michael Jackson.

Right.

And the new Alex Gibney one about Theranos.

Yes, exactly.

That's coming out.

That's on eight weeks.

It's on HBO.

There's several of them.

What do you think of these?

I mean, they're all sort of finally telling the tales of what occurred.

The one on Jackson, I think it's called Leaving Neverland.

Well, how do you look at these?

It's interesting because my friend Maury North did some groundbreaking speeches on Michael Jackson and Vanity Fair, you know, 20 years ago, and she would tell me at the time about the vicious reaction of Michael Jackson fans.

And she'd say it would be worse, you know, the next day because when the ones from Europe weighed in, you were really in trouble.

And I just thought,

you know, when I wrote about it last weekend,

we're still telling what you said.

Well, that was great.

I just was writing about the documentary.

And, you know, these two kids, one was seven and one was eight or nine, you know, when he began abusing them.

They're now in their 40s.

And when they had sons of their own, and their sons are reaching that age, they have intense trauma.

symptoms and they just felt like they couldn't hide the secret anymore even though they had backed him up in testimony and helped get that off.

Yeah, but

because this was the interesting thing to me, they were in love with him.

He made them fall in love with him and also their mothers.

Yeah, the mothers.

And the mothers are so scary because they are still in awe of him.

They talk about how they got the limos and the credit cards and the cars and the houses and Neverland.

And one mother talks about the champagne and the wine and the wine cellar at Neverland and how great it was.

And you're just cringing because, you know, one mother is very proud of herself because Michael Jackson said, just leave your son here for a year because he would have one

child companion for a year and then he'd move on to another.

And the mother said, no, I'm not going to leave him.

I'll share him with you.

That was her idea of standing up to Michael Jackson.

Which is like amazing.

It's an astonishing thing that Pete says.

It's astonishing.

And, you know, it's sort of a saga about how celebrity warps judgment.

And, you know, from O.J.

to Bill Cosby to anything you know people who are famous can get away with things do you think that's true anymore i mean look this r kelly thing came out although he's still operating he's still not jailed

uh yeah i think that continues to be true michael jackson was a level of star that we rarely see anymore hollywood doesn't have that many stars anymore you know so it was much more intense but yes i think celebrity continues to warp to warp people do you imagine all this me too thing will have resonance i mean the times was one of the papers that really pushed it, Ron and Farrow was someone else who did that.

I think, yes, I think that it definitely put a lot of creeps on notice.

But I don't think anything will change in Hollywood until we have more than 1%

of women directors on the top 100 gross films and cinematographers.

I mean, as long as those statistics remain the same, it's very much like Saudi Arabia or the Catholic Church.

If you have a society that systematically excludes the hearts and brains of women, you're going to have a sick, warped society.

Right, the Catholic Church this week, all this stuff.

I mean, Silicon Valley, yeah.

Oh, well, hello, yeah, exactly.

You do have a warped thing.

Um, when, when, in that, that zone, when you think about those cultures,

where is the change point from your perspective?

Where do you imagine it shifting?

Because Washington was like that, now it's much more.

There's many more women in

Nancy Pelosi.

It took a long time, though.

Yeah, yeah, it took a crazy long time.

I don't know.

You know, I think Pelosi is an interesting

sort of emblematic figure because she, when we see her wielding power in that fierce, effective way, and that's what I was saying about AOC, I think that's what's really going to change the dynamic.

Although women do that every day in the home, right?

They often,

it needs a public thing, which is a lot of people.

Yeah, just to see

little girls growing up seeing that women successfully wielding power, I think, is will change.

On the flip side, you have Elizabeth

from Theranos Holmes.

Right.

It doesn't represent all women, but it certainly is disagreeing.

Well, there's this amazing news story in Vanity Fair by Nick Bilton talking about how, you know, even when she was going down, she didn't think she was going down.

So she got some Siberian husky named Balto

as a symbolic gesture about the Siberian Huskies who in 1925 brought the anti-toxin to Alaska for diphtheria.

And you're thinking, oh my God, this lady is so bananas.

Yeah, she shows up.

And she's an event.

She shows up at events.

I see her.

And she has another startup?

Yeah, I see her at events.

What kind of startup?

I don't know.

I just, I move quickly past her.

Yeah, well, you were on to her.

Well, no, I wasn't.

I just didn't cover it.

I knew something was.

Luckily, Rico doesn't cover health care.

Like, didn't have a reporter.

But I just found it, I just never put her on stage.

I didn't.

It was a weird, it was a weird feeling.

I had a big argument with Bob Iger about it because he was like, you should put more women on stage like that.

And I was like, I don't know.

That's the one part of the new documentary.

Two things I would like to see more of.

I would like to see the explanation of her strange, deep voice that she put on.

Is that real?

And I would like to see more about how she kind of ensorceled all these older guys.

Yeah.

What's with that?

Yeah.

Weird.

Even Jim Mattis.

That was a disappointment.

All of them.

All of them.

It was amazing.

And even Schultz.

Well, Schultz and the grandson.

Yeah.

That to me was.

He was so smitten with her that he couldn't see his grandson was telling the truth.

Yep.

Yep.

It was a really, it's a strange story.

And I don't know where it's going to go.

She's still under possible under indictment.

It could get worse for her, which is really interesting.

But you know, in Silicon Valley, a lot of the people like, look, Travis Kalanick has his thing.

Everybody gets to come back

despite all kinds of problems.

In some cases, it's just a regular fail, like what happened with Apple and Steve Jobs.

And sometimes it's like, wow, you're back.

Here you are again.

We thought you stayed down.

You know what I mean?

But they don't.

That's your motto, right?

Yes, stay down.

Right.

I've told Maureen that.

I'm using that.

Yes, stay down.

When are you going to stop when you stay down?

Got that?

I think it's a good, it's a good motto.

All right.

So now we're going to finish up and talking about predictions, Maureen.

Scott, a couple of weeks ago, he predicted famously that Amazon is going to buy Whole Foods, pushing into the health care space.

I predicted that Amazon would get out.

It's odd that we know so much would get out of New York.

Escape from New York.

Do you have any predictions?

I've got three.

Okay.

Do you have time?

You can get as many as you want.

Okay.

Speaking of Pelosi,

prediction is that she's marshaling her forces.

Congress will reverse Trump's declaration, but he'll veto

and they can't override it.

Right, okay.

I think that the

Democrats will probably pick Milwaukee as their convention site because Wisconsin will never be forgotten again.

No.

Miami's fun, but Wisconsin will never be forgotten.

And finally, Jared Kushner is about to

announce his Middle East peace plan.

Oh.

And Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will be at the center of it.

The Trump administration is still going to try and revive him, even though he's a psycho.

Yeah, Mr.

Bryant, I call him a boy.

And there's also a scandal brewing with Jared and Tom Barrett.

What?

What's Flynn about giving nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia?

Yeah, what do you think of Jared?

We mentioned him earlier.

Honestly, what did Kelly think?

Well, that's

the King Lear part,

the king, mad king, surrounded by all these, you know, duplicitous, scheming relatives.

Which means Jared.

Okay.

What do you really think?

That's disturbing that he's coming up with a Maidis plan.

It's like a child playing at government.

It really is.

Well, yeah.

I did hear him one night talking about bringing deliverables to Saudi Arabia and a chill went down my spine because that means weapons that can be used to kill children and young men.

Yeah, they don't understand.

I don't know what they're saying.

Yeah, I don't know if they're the ones.

Do you think Ivanka will ever run?

I keep hearing when I'm here.

I think she would have liked to at one point, and I think maybe she thinks about it, but I just think it's going to be hard for Ivanka and Jared after they get out of this administration.

If they go back to New York, I would think they'd be sort of pariahs in the elite.

Come on, those people.

They need their children.

You think so?

Yes, I do, Maureen.

I don't have as much faith in humanity as you do.

I live in St.

Louis.

You're right.

You know what I mean?

Tara's always.

No, it's true.

Come on.

Are you kidding?

Wouldn't it be great to have Ivanka versus Chelsea?

Wouldn't that be an interesting?

I don't know.

Barry Diller seemed kind of disillusioned

about Jared and Ivan.

Yes, they did.

So in fact, this is my prediction.

I think Netflix will be the first streaming service to win Oscar for Best Picture with Roma, which I loved.

Well, they got Harvey Weinstein's old Oscar Wrangler.

Yes, exactly.

The old Oscar Wrangler.

Anyway, I interviewed Barry Diller this week, speaking of which, and he said, and we'll listen to this very quickly, that Hollywood was over, irrelevant.

Then what happens in Hollywood now?

What is it?

How do you look at it when you look at it?

Hollywood is now irrelevant.

I mean, it has nothing.

That's a big statement.

Explain.

It is.

Look,

it will make and continue to make programming.

Right.

Clearly.

And that was one of its functions.

But what happened to the entertainment business since the early, you know, 100 years ago is that the basically, let's start with radio.

Radio.

essentially was dominated by NBC, CBS,

and as the decades went on, they were able to, because the hegemony was complete, they were then able to get into television.

Then they were able to get into the cable business.

Then they were able to get into all these businesses, all of which, not that they founded them, but when they got big enough, they would buy them.

So Little Warner Brothers Studio bought Time Inc., which had HBO,

and CBS,

which

actually, you know, was the leader in news.

it wasn't cbs that started 24-hour cable news but it was ted turner who eventually got bought by warners so it was that these six movie companies essentially were able to extend their hegemony into everything else right didn't matter that they started it when it got big enough they got to buy it right okay

for the first time they ain't buying

uh yeah he told me that too and he he admires reed hastings more than anyone and he did he talked about Nephi yeah and he just thinks that they've blasted Hollywood into another universe and what do you think what do you do you think that Roma wins I never disagree with Barry Diller or you yeah yeah yeah I think it will have you seen it Roma no I don't know you know I it's too long for you I used to

be I grew up being so in love with movies in Hollywood but they've been putting out such lame product for a long time I'm not as obsessed.

Oh, really?

This one you'll like?

I think you'll like.

What's the last great movie you saw, Maureen?

Shakespeare in Love.

Oh, what?

Maureen,

I was like a teenager then.

Come on.

Come on.

I don't know.

You didn't like Black Panther?

Oh, I did like Black Panther.

I'm just not

that much of a comic book person.

Right.

But there isn't been a movie.

Go see Roma.

You will like Roma.

I swear to God, it was a very good movie, and it was beautiful.

You know, I love Rachel Rice, so I'm rooting for her.

Oh, for the family.

And she's saying that, you know, all these lesbians are coming up to her and thanking her for doing these two great portrayals of lesbian relationships.

She did.

She's been a real lesbian this year.

I love her.

I love Regina King, too, but I'm rooting for Rachel because she's so cool.

And she gave me the scoop about her baby, the little 007.

Oh, man.

So I love her for that too.

I love Bond.

Do you know how much I love Bond?

I love Bond.

Did you ever notice it?

I put a tweet out this week that Stephen Miller looks like a Bond villain.

That's

really tweeted.

It's amazing.

It was astonishing.

Does he rock

to that level?

Well, then everybody sent pictures of all the

Robert Shaw.

Yeah, I don't know if Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller is like the guy who fetches cigarettes for the Bond villain.

Oh, really?

Oh, true.

Oh, true.

That's really.

Well, anyway, they sent pictures, and he looked like every Bond villain, which was really amazing.

All right, Maureen, thank you so much for doing this.

I know that you think you're not witty and funny, but you really aren't.

I would only do this for you.

I was like up all night study.

Did you?

Are you going to get it?

No, I haven't.

So Twitter Live is something I'm not going to get you to do, is it?

No.

I really want you to do that.

You'd be an enormous star on Twitter.

Do you have to do that?

You told me I couldn't wear makeup.

You can't wear makeup.

But I promised my sister I would never leave the house without mascara.

This is the one that drunk people.

This is no, yeah.

Well, no, there's a picture that's used from Stephanopoulos' book party where I don't have one mascara.

And every time it's in the paper, she calls me and she goes, do not ever.

So it's going to be you versus my sister.

Oh, man.

I would like that.

Yeah, you might have.

No mascara on my Twitter live.

Maureen, you know, how about just the back of your head and you can just talk.

Maybe.

Maybe.

All right, we're going to do it.

I just have this feeling you'd be an enormous Twitter star.

Anyway,

I really appreciate you doing this.

Thank you so much for taking.

You're much more interesting than Scott, and that's, but that's a volume.

I love it.

He's great.

He is great.

He's terrific.

All right.

It's time to get out of here.

Thank you so much for coming on, Maureen.

Again, I'll be back next week.

Rebecca Senanis produces this show.

Nishat Kurwa is executive producer.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson.

Thanks again to Maureen Dowd.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media.

We'll be back next week for more of a breakdown of all things tech and business.

If you like what you heard, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.

This month on Explain It to Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well: collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

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Why do we want that so badly?

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That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.

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