--:-- Kara Swisher: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
--:-- Scott Galloway: AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 24-7 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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 those, the vaxxed and the unvaxxed, 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. And I mean, a couple of 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 how deft it is around communication and increasingly how its leaders behave. This is 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 and specifically not China and Russia.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's exactly right.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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...
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's a nice way of putting it. Okay.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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 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 sack 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So what do companies do though? Like I just was talking to Vox and they're gonna 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 gonna 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 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 what. I think most people will not require proof, I guess. Correct, don't you think?
--:-- Scott Galloway: I hope not. And I hope that companies show more backbone than our firm is right now.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And say, we care about our employees. We care about America. And it's time to take a leadership stand and not give in to this crazy bullshit conspiracy, conflating freedom with selfishness. And some companies have.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I think they're 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 Ruhle come on. She's making faces at me. We're going to bring her. Stephanie, just come on. Come on. What are we doing? Stephanie Ruhle. A business is technically...
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: This is Stephanie Ruhle. Here we go.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Our loud-mouthed neighbor, Stephanie Ruhle from MSNBC. Let me introduce you. Our loud-mouthed neighbor, like, you know, on Bewitched, that's who she is. Our wacky neighbor. It's Don Rickles. So here's Stephanie Ruhl. Go ahead, Stephanie. You're just like dying. You're making noise. Go ahead.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: I would rather 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. Come on. Whatever. 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 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 Target. You have to wear clothes to work.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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 and 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree with that. But 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 think airlines can do it a lot easier, we're used to that. I think like cruise lines can do it. Airbnb, I doubt can do it, like that kind of stuff. But I don't know. Scott, go ahead.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Gotta 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 Nespresso in the morning with a little bit of meth called ladies and gentlemen, Stephanie Rule. First off, motherfucker, don't you stack? Jesus, it's like the morning here. I should press back. Let's ease into it. Let's boil the frog slowly.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: It's just like the phrase last I checked.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Let me just say, Stephanie, word, my sister, you're right. Six trillion dollars. He's still going to say sack up. The government's saying, no, you're right. They need to grow backbone, estrogen supported bone strength backbone. None of that made any sense.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. Nonetheless, it's going to be difficult. We're not asking anyone to storm the beaches. I get it. It's still going to be difficult. They wouldn't put on masks. 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.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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. And they just got, just got in the last week, $28 billion from the government specifically for restaurants. They can work this out. They can find a way.
--:-- Kara Swisher: They're not going to. I'm sorry. I live in the real world where people cough on people.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Oh, yeah.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You're from the mean streets of Calorama. It's Kara Swisher. I don't live in Calorama. I just like that word.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Okay, good. That's my ex-wife lives there.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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 put something in place during an extreme time. To where people will use these tools to do things like this. Thoughts? I want Stephanie to weigh in.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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 Entenmann's crumb cake and hang out all day. Okay, this is WhatsApp. Yes, Facebook. And I was up 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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?
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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. Some of their vendor supply chain relationships. And when you're a handset company, it's impossible not to be a platform or an apparatus and all these terrible things. So this is their Achilles heel.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Stephanie.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They have more employees in China than they have in the US. The number one job for a CEO is to risk manage. You cannot risk manage China.
--:-- Kara Swisher: What would you do if you were Tim Cook, Stephanie?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: I don't know.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I don't know. That's a good answer. Good answer. Good answer. All right. Last thing, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist and MacArthur fellow Nicole Hannah-Jones was denied tenured position at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill this week after a backlash in surges for her teaching the 1619 Project. She was offered a night chair position, a tenure position, teaching race and investigative journalism, a generally tenure seat. The faculty agreed to it. It went all the way up the chain. This was 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?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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 when 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right. OK, that's a good that's a very good way of saying. But Scott doesn't know enough about it, but he'll say something, Scott.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Like you're speaking to someone who's been denied tenure over and over.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's because you're not that good at your job. Yeah, you're not. You're not. That's really.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I have backbone.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But you don't have sack. And that's why you didn't get tenure. What do you think about this, Scott? This is designed for you.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Usually the professors decide this.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And then it's just rubber stamped. So the reason things are so political and vicious at universities is there's so little to fight over.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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 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 a tenure, 100 percent, I'm down 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 got their doctorate together at Carnegie Mellon and are looking out for each other.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. But in this case, this has never happened. I mean it is the system that 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 doing this ridiculous word that I'd like to cancel culture. I would like to retire that because 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 hyperbole person and it feels rather obviously political, but we'll see what occurs here. There's going to definitely be, they'll be yelling at each other at UNC for a good long time, I suspect. Great school. UNC, great school. My son has some shoes related to it, but otherwise.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Okay.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Now we're going to do something a little different. We're going to do a story grab bag, a big story grab bag with our favorite friend of Pivot, Stephanie Rule. 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. The 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 how what a shitty state it is on every other.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Well, that's the thing. So I, and listen, I've done a number of interviews with him. I have 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 things going on. The devastating part about it was how ill-equipped he was to discuss it. And this is a bill he had signed the day before.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, it's not my bill.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Stephanie, it's not my bill. I don't know. I just signed it. He 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 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It was a great movie. I like that movie, but go ahead.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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...
--:-- Kara Swisher: What was the reaction to it?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: So he and I called a few days later.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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 you don't have to have any horse in the race of transgender. This is just about logic. And if a governor signs a bill, he should absolutely be able to back it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: It should be a great, you know, there are a hundred bills in 38. I just did an interview with Chase Strangio, who's the ACLU lawyer 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 a continuing thing. And they've moved on to a topic focused on kids that will, that even reasonable people are like, "Well, boys shouldn't play on girls' softball teams." That's how they think in their head. It's a base issue.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Okay, but 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." Great, let's have that argument if there's ever a scenario where that's happening in any threatening way, but there isn't.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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 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?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Let's start with crypto.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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-loving minds.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Well, everyone is jumping out the window saying, "Why is it losing? 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 watched 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? Like, you could say to me walking down the street, "Why do your shoes cost $800?" That's a mile 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. There were no arrests. And on the other side, what actually happened in Herbalife? Well, Carl Icahn got five friends to go bury Bill Ackman. We've seen this happen on the professional investor stage for years. And now we're paralyzed just because we can't believe that because of the use of technology, the speed of technology and all these other platforms, you've got individuals who can now do it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, individuals who, speaking of Elon Musk, has been at the center of that, but also the Chinese other things. What do you think about that?
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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. It's outside the control of the reach of any central bank regulators. You can put your crypto on 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So what does it mean, Stephanie, for the future of digital coins and companies like Coinbase? Is it just a shakeup? Is this going to go back up? What do you foresee? I mean, there is no way to predict this, but how does it change? Because eventually it will move to something more stable, presumably.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: To me, the most interesting player here is going to be Gary Gensler, the new SEC chair.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: He is 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. 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. Like you're choosing to gamble in the riskiest place. And so if you lose money, tough nuts.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So what do you see? Thank you for the Eva Peron reference. Evita reference. That was a film, wasn't it? I'm sorry. Go ahead.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Patti LuPone. Don't even speak of the Madonna version. Don't even speak to me as a gay man.
--:-- Scott Galloway: What? Here we go.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay. What happens, though? How does it stay? Does it stabilize or just stays the deep end of the pool?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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 a 30 Rock. I don't know.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's an image. That's an image. I want to get to 30 Rock. So what happens to Coinbase, either of you?
--:-- Scott Galloway: It's the AOL of crypto. So its margins get compressed and it slowly but surely becomes less and less relevant.
--:-- Kara Swisher: To what? It went out. The reference price was $370. It popped to $420. It's already down to $230.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think this company has got no sustainable advantage.
--:-- Kara Swisher: To be replaced by banks or?
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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. About to see the mother of all margin compression. So the bottom line is, I think it's a great company. It's not worth $45 billion.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, and then just like AOL, its founders and executives will cash out and make a zillion dollars.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They're selling like crazy.
--:-- Kara Swisher: They're selling like crazy. Yeah, they're selling like crazy.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And people who got to the party late are going to get screwed.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Right. Well, speaking of that, Jeff Bewkes and Tim Armstrong look like a genius this week with both the Verizon deal and AT&T. I actually talked to Tim this week. This new one that's Discovery merging. 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?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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. 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 things that they did, that they were great at, I don't know, I can't think of it, right?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Maybe AT&T has realized we don't necessarily need it 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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 Stankey the firepower he needed and the license to lose money. Shareholders at AT&T do invest for the dividend and they want a predictable, great business called 5G that goes up, increases its revenue three or four percent a year, increases its EBITDA to five to six percent 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 Stankey and say, "John, you ready to put your big boy pants on?" I don't think Discovery and Warner is kind of a meh deal. I think it's interesting. It's a great thing for Zaslav. All of a sudden he's the dog that caught the car. But I think if you look at 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 AT&T U-verse, even I think it's Guy or Canal.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I see Comcast has got to come in here, right?
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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—
--:-- Kara Swisher: They have some good shows. They have one or two.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Peacock is all of a sudden looking like the small, it's looking like a 90-pound weakling going to 80 pounds. They have to do something. Quarter of a trillion market cap. Brian Roberts is aggressive. Stephanie, you watch. This story has not been written.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: No. And also, it's not just Comcast. Because Comcast needs to do this. Because if not, they're going to be left on the floor without 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 sit and wait. This is a quote: "They 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, with even larger multi-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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: So what, Stephanie, what do you think? Are you going to be part of a mega company that Jeff Zucker will run all of? 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.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: I mean, honestly. I'm characteristically scared. I just said my boss had to grow a vagina. You can say something here. I look forward to watching this play out.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Here we go. That success. This is at least in the short term, a giant win for David Zaslav. But remember, though, when Discovery bought Scripps, and I realized this is teeny tiny compared to where we are in the beginning, people were like, "I don't know, is that going to work?" And then it did, because that was complimentary content. Right now, this is going to be what content can work together and who can control it the most.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I'm sorry, I'm going to push back. David Zaslav is an excellent media executive from the 1990s, maybe the 2000s. 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 throws a great dinner party. He's well liked. But, you know, I mean, whatever you think of Jason Kilar, he does understand digital.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I think David's also sort of does.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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. Ben Johnson of the Montreal Olympics on the stage.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I don't know what that means.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Getting the gold medal. Enjoy it while you have it, boss. Enjoy it while you have it.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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 MGM? Or do the tech companies just sit and wait, just quietly wait?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: The tech companies don't have to do something this second. The tech companies can buy up other assets. The pressure is on much more 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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 they were fighting each other, but the real enemy was the ice people.
--:-- Scott Galloway: For people who watch Game of Thrones, they really just like violence and nudity.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay. Yeah, and, yeah.
--:-- Scott Galloway: What's wrong with that?
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: They're smart in their discipline. 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, 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 in 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Bringing in a Nazi metaphor.
--:-- Scott Galloway: OK, go ahead.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Well, speaking of History Channel, I affectionately call it the Hitler channel.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah. But essentially they have to recognize their strength in numbers. They got to bulk up and put their differences aside because the enemy is not only taking Poland, it's now 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 Discovery is literally a pimple on the content elephant. It's a cute little company. That's not going to push back against Amazon. I mean, literally, Jeff Bezos goes, "Isn't that cute?" It needs to be Comcast. It needs to be AT&T. And it needs to be Discovery all coming together.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Agreed. 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 investments. Comcast has got to get in here. Got to. Got to. Got to. They don't have a check. They're going to get killed later. Later. They're going to get killed later. Anyway, Stephanie has in common. They have some really talented employees with some really great shows. And 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.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Yes, that's true.
--:-- Kara Swisher: All right. Speaking of which, Stephanie, can you explain top line, explain the tax plan? This is your favorite area besides beating up on governors. Talk about the infrastructure bill.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: Okay, so here we are, right? 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 their 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 from a year ago? You talked about that. You talked about that. We still don't even 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. There are two of them sort of converging at the same time. And you're seeing signs that everywhere I go, people are like, "I can't find workers." OK, yes. But let's be clear. This whole thing that nobody wants to work because they're sitting home smoking cigarettes, 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 who had those jobs went to work at Amazon warehouses and Walmart warehouses. And those jobs, while we could say those jobs stink, not compared to a restaurant job. I spent a day working at an Amazon center. And yes, it was just a day. But you start at $16 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 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. The free Salesforce program, Google has a program, and they're getting other jobs. Or Uber driving. They're getting other jobs. So 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 have childcare sorted yet. People are 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 going 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 I try to raise these issues, I get punched in the face and called 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think your point about the tech jobs being, 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 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 a hundred bucks if you're vaccinated. How's a restaurant or a hotel going to hire somebody when that's your other option? Yeah. Like if you look at the most recent jobs report, 250,000 jobs, which was way off the estimated 950,000. But the nuances 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 "mom's got to stay home and be the teacher now." Yep. 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 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 percent. 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. It's $7.25. We are the wealthiest nation in the world. Let's start acting like it. We absolutely need an increase in the number. Bank of America announced this week raising their lowest workers to $25 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 $0 on. Entertaining, $0 on. These businesses spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on corporate travel and on entertainment. They didn't have to spend anything and they still made a ton of dough. What Bank of 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.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: And the problem there is then small businesses really won't be able to hire.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: That's right. Oh, there's the two out of business people. Anyway, any predictions about whether Congress approves the plan, Stephanie?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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." If 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, Kara, 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 2022. I think 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Although, you know, they like to stick with their guns, the Republicans. And I mean guns. Just look what happened with the January 6th.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes, but then Joe Biden can hold their feet to the fire and say, "Show me your bill. Show me your bill. I'd love to sign it."
--:-- Kara Swisher: And the commission was approved. 35 Republicans in the House.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes, they did. But not. You know what's going to be interesting, Kara? 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, you'll see. We see what happens or else Joe Manchin will just say 50 votes in this particular case. Or else they just do like a Benghazi election.
--:-- Scott Galloway: It coming. It coming. Kevin McCarthy, you will be deposed.
--:-- Kara Swisher: If they go Benghazi style, that's worse for Republicans. Then Nancy Pelosi has complete control.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yes.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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 72 when we get back.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott and Stephanie, let's move on to listener mail. Roll the tape. You've got, you've got.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I can't believe I'm going to be your mailman. You've got mail.
--:-- [Listener mail audio plays]
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. Belgium's lecturing us now. Okay. We talk a lot on the show about platforms like Facebook destroying mental health, 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?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, so fatter and dumber than ever is really what you're saying.
--:-- Scott Galloway: 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 them. 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, 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 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. That is a real fear, and we need to be thoughtful about that. But at the same time, I remember, do you guys remember the Presidential Fitness Awards?
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, of course.
--:-- Scott Galloway: And I remember literally training for a year when I was 12 years old, trying to figure out a way to do eight pull ups because that was the only thing that stood 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, 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 fucking 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 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: You did.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I have a new one. It's almost done. But it's really interesting. I'm getting a lot of information about what affects me and stuff like that.
--:-- Kara Swisher: But let's talk about how tech can help. Now, 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 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, inexpensive psychologist or psychiatrist. Stephanie, can tech help here? Or does it just make it bad?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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 has been always the case with the internet. Scott, last word.
--:-- Scott Galloway: There's some huge silver linings here in that as we might be able to push primary healthcare. There were 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. 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 a stronger character, and we need to be strong physically.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah. Well, you know, the lesbians are already doing that. Lesbians all have really fit and strong. CrossFit. It's huge intention of CrossFit. 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 reminders helped, all kinds of stuff. It was a really interesting thing. And it did just fine. I've seen more doctors because of telehealth. I mean, I'm the queen of canceling every doctor's appointment because I'm like, "Eh," telehealth changes everything.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Yeah, 100%.
--:-- Kara Swisher: And then I just went in for 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 COVID-related. And people have gotten used to it. All right, Scott, Stephanie, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Stephanie, you have to have a prediction.
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--:-- Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, you're gonna 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 Stankey or Stephanie's boss.
--:-- Scott Galloway: This is not... I think Zaslav 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 if you look at the kind of... I call it the bonfire of 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 John Stankey in this. And I just don't think this deal commands the space it occupies.
--:-- Scott Galloway: I think 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 them 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: So anyways, you're about to hear the term Comcast. My column says that it was about to appear. There has to be a Comcast in here. They have to come in here. The tech companies can't. 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 Discovery. It's just like too small. It's ridiculous. And it's not enough, by the way. It's not enough. So it needs a much bigger thing. And this eventually will be an existential crisis for Comcast. 100%. And Stephanie has no comment.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Stephanie, what's your prediction?
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: 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. It is en fuego. I walked into an H&M yesterday to buy my daughter a pair of socks. I'm not exaggerating. There were 35 people online, right? People are packing in restaurants. People are coming back to the city.
--:-- Stephanie Ruhle: This idea that 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 employees back 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'd agree. New York is...
--:-- Scott Galloway: But I'm saying that's where we're at emotionally. And the real estate market too.
--:-- Kara Swisher: I've had a lot of friends who said it's insane suddenly. Suddenly, 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 I kind of feel like 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Coming in hot. Coming in hot.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Oh, Jeff. Call me Jeff. Call me Stankey, who is the worst media strategist in modern history.
--:-- Scott Galloway: You know what though, Kara? 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 dollars when he didn't look like a genius. So there you have it. And then 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: They do care, Stephanie. They care. Trust me. They do. They do.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Anyway, this has been a fantastic show. Thank you, except for Stephanie no-commenting. Otherwise, she was brilliant. 100%. On thousand thread pound. 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.
--:-- Scott Galloway: Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sananes. Ernie and Andrew Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast, 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.
--:-- Kara Swisher: Shark Week, hosted by Stephanie Ruhle.
--:-- Kara Swisher: The pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. Crafted with our signature espresso and real pumpkin sauce. Then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The PSL. Get it while it's hot or iced. Only at Starbucks.