The new COVID stimulus and Andy Slavitt on vaccine plans

[Podcast Intro]

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher.

Scott Galloway: And I'm Scott Galloway, and I so have my number three, Cara.

Kara Swisher: What? What are you talking about?

Scott Galloway: Future ex Mrs. Galloway.

Kara Swisher: Who? Hands down.

Scott Galloway: First off, it's probably going to be George Hahn. I think he's sexy and funny.

Kara Swisher: All right, I see that. One small problem there, but we'll overlook that.

Scott Galloway: Okay, all right. Jane Fonda. I am so marrying Jane Fonda.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there were so many hot ladies on the Golden Globes, wasn't it?

Scott Galloway: We both are super into working out. We both are under the impression because we're reasonably good at one thing that gives us license to talk about politics.

Kara Swisher: You know what? No, I'm going to push back on that. She has every reason to talk about politics, but move along. We're going to – they keep the wrong with celebrities. So do I, I guess, then.

Scott Galloway: I'm just saying we share that.

Kara Swisher: All right. We share that.

Scott Galloway: Duncan Cruger.

Kara Swisher: Yes, you do. You're a citizen of the United States. You can talk about politics.

Scott Galloway: Oh, right. God bless America. Just saying. And by the way, was that a fuster cluck or what?

Kara Swisher: What? Which one? The Golden Globes?

Scott Galloway: Was that what it was? No, I thought you meant the Trump speech.

Kara Swisher: The Trump speech? I liked the Golden Globes. It was kind of like messy. I loved it.

Scott Galloway: It was awful.

Kara Swisher: It wasn't awful. It was kind of a mess. I loved the messies.

Scott Galloway: Oh, my God. I'm so sick of it. All the Hollywood foreign press, they're not woke enough. I thought, no. It's all so politicized. They have zero person of color in their voting. Zero.

Kara Swisher: I don't doubt that they're guilty. I don't doubt they're raging bigots.

Scott Galloway: No. I just, it's like, I'm just sick of it. There were some really, it's great to be black. That guy Sterling Hayden was funny. It was funny. You nominated the wrong show. You didn't nominate enough of this show.

Kara Swisher: No, no. I just want to see Brad Pitt get fucked up. Were you down at CPAC? Was that what was happening?

Scott Galloway: I want to see Ricky Gervais say it's been a tough year for Mel Gibson. We've been really hard on him. Not as hard as it's been for the Jews. I like that. I like when he said that. Or when he introduced Tom Hanks and Tim Allen and said, one is a three-time Academy Award winner, a respected citizen and thought leader. The other is Tim Allen. I miss that shit. I don't want all these faux apologies. Just enough.

Kara Swisher: No, no, it was some nice. No, you're wrong. Catherine O'Hara was amazing. Jamie Lee Curtis looked like banging. Chad Bozeman's wife was very moving.

Scott Galloway: Chad Bozeman's wife was wonderful. Jodie Foster making out with her wife.

Kara Swisher: I didn't say that.

Scott Galloway: Really, I would tune for that. That woman has been so tamped down, and there she was with her dog and her hot girlfriend, and it was her wife, excuse me, not girlfriend. I liked it.

Kara Swisher: I'm sorry. I think you're expecting too much. They did a nice, what, it was a mess.

Scott Galloway: I like a hot mess.

Kara Swisher: Well, compared to the Trump situation, that speech was insane. It was like all his greatest hits. Someone I thought has said the best thing. It was like they keep putting Trump in the – he's like old fish. They keep reheating in the microwave.

Scott Galloway: You know what it is for me? That speech was terrible. He was like on windmills. It's like watching the adult video awards. You think it's going to be interesting and then it's just kind of weird and uncomfortable and you turn it off?

Kara Swisher: Which one? The adult video awards they have in Vegas every year.

Scott Galloway: Oh, which one? Trump or the Google?

Kara Swisher: The Trump, the CPAC thing.

Scott Galloway: Oh, the CPAC thing, yeah. That was just weird. Kimberly Gafolli. That's just weird. They're weird. The whole thing. I'd rather watch Catherine O'Hara. I mean, it's not even that interesting. And it seems so low budget. And where are they doing it? At the Mandarin Oriental dim sum?

Kara Swisher: No, they did it at Hyatt. It was very controversial. Oh, on my way to the airport yesterday, I went by the Hilton. Or we drove by the Hilton. And there were all these flags and people marching around. And they decided to do an impromptu Trump support rally in front of the Hilton. In Palm Beach. And I'm like, Jesus Christ. Talk about, that's what you do on a Sunday? I'm like, okay.

Scott Galloway: Was it a lot of them?

Kara Swisher: And you know what I did? I'm so cultured. I went to the Dolly Museum in St. Petersburg.

Scott Galloway: You did? St. Petersburg is wonderful. It's lovely.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, St. Petersburg's great. And I saw a Van Gogh exhibit. Very nice.

Scott Galloway: I dream of painting Cara, and then I paint my dreams. Van Gogh! Boom!

Kara Swisher: How is Francisco Suarez, speaking of which? How is Francisco Suarez?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, Suarez? Yeah. He is, I think he's very good. And he's, what can I say about him? He's smart. He's taking advantage of the tide turning and washing over Miami with a bunch of tech people. Some of the weirdest tech people. But anyways, that's another talk show. He's very good. I think he's a comer. I think he could be, I don't know if he's off CPAC. He's right on the edge. He's not Trumpy, but he's never Trumpy.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, but mayors have to get shit done. Mayors typically have to balance their budget. They don't have the luxury of being raging bigots or woke weirdos. They have to actually get shit done.

Scott Galloway: Oh my God, you're always obsessed with woke over like Nazis. You always are like so mad at the woke people.

Kara Swisher: I'm mad at extremists on both sides.

Scott Galloway: Well, I don't think Nazis, I think Nazis get to stack rank and top of this one.

Kara Swisher: What did I say Nazis? People that are just mad.

Scott Galloway: You said the word N-word.

Kara Swisher: I didn't say the word Nazi. No, but you like when people, extreme right people who are attacking the capital. You're sticking Nazi words in my mouth.

Scott Galloway: All right, here's, no, that's what Sacha Baron Cohen was talking about.

Kara Swisher: In any case, what's going to be interesting though is a lot of stuff from Amazon. Let's get to where we are. Amazon, Netflix, and others are really dominating. It's really interesting, you know, which has happened going into the Oscars. Same thing. So it'll be interesting to see how the sort of the empire, the old empire strikes back. But there's now no such thing, I think, correct?

Scott Galloway: I just turned it off as soon as that wonderful young woman from the Queen's Gambit won. Yes, with the eyes on the side of her head.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, she's quite beautiful. She's a beautiful woman. Yeah, and I also like the fashion choices of Jared Leto. I thought a bee was going to come flying out of that flower.

Scott Galloway: I'm like, that guy's a baller. Like, I wish I had the confidence to wear that shit.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Sean Penn's hair got a lot of attention on Twitter for some reason.

Kara Swisher: It's just messy. It's just messy. Yeah. Some of the people looked fantastic. I just like those. I like his ex, Robin. She's my number four.

Scott Galloway: Oh, yeah.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm going to get her on it. She's in a new movie. I'm trying to get her on the way. Here we go. Here we go. Anyways. It's called Land, I think. She did it herself. She's a woman who goes out in the wilderness and just is sick of everything and hunts a lot, I think. I don't know. I got to watch it.

Scott Galloway: I can see why that would appeal to you.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah, I know. That sounds right up to switcher alley. It would. I would like that some days. Amanda was like, I have this feeling you'd like to be all by yourself in Hawaii. And I was like, what? Well, really? Is that what you want? I'm going on a silent retreat. I'm going on a two-week silent retreat.

Scott Galloway: What? Where?

Kara Swisher: I don't care. I don't care. I just want to be alone.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I am. You're not going on a silent anything. There's no way.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Really? A monk place? If you knew me better, you'd recognize that I'm paid to be an extrovert, but I'm actually an introvert. And my favorite thing is just to be at home and listen to my kids and not say anything.

Scott Galloway: Oh, interesting. I don't like sounds, but I like to be sound. This is why I get this enormous amount of information all the time.

Kara Swisher: All right. Well, let me get you to speak right now. The Facebook Oversight Board is taking action on 11 of 17. Facebook said it's taking action on only 11 of 17 recommendations. So they don't have to listen to anyone. So it's the Kremlin.

Scott Galloway: In other words, you're right until we disagree.

Kara Swisher: Right, exactly. It's a Kremlin board. So we're all waiting for the—

Scott Galloway: I just think we've got to publish the names and the pictures of the people that are that fucking stupid to be a part of that thing, that are that desperate for some sort of faux affirmation. And I don't even know who they are.

Kara Swisher: There's a lot of people. There's the former Norway or Denmark. Okay, I'm going to do that. I'm going to be part of the—I mean, talk about—

Scott Galloway: There's a lot of constitutional law people, just so you know.

Kara Swisher: Con law? Yeah, con law. Conlon. There's a lot of people like that.

Scott Galloway: Well, we'll see what's going to happen.

Kara Swisher: I think the Trump one is the one everyone's going to be focusing on. By the way, speaking of interesting things that are going on, Jason Del Rey of Recode published a story detailing problems of racism at Amazon. His report shows that black employees at Amazon got promoted less frequently than their non-black counterparts. It's 6,000 words. I would recommend you reading it. And then Biden, just this week, speaking of Amazon and its workers, backed the union, backed the Amazon union.

Scott Galloway: Well, I'm sorry. Blacks not promoted as quickly as whites. Was he writing the article about Amazon or America?

Kara Swisher: America. Amazon itself.

Scott Galloway: Amazon itself.

Kara Swisher: It was a really good piece, though. It was really well documented. I think Amazon and its issues around employees are going to be front of center in 2021. They hired so many people.

Scott Galloway: That's actually, I mean, there's a couple of things. That's a big story. It's not the most underreported story. And I think one of the most reported stories are both involving Amazon. And the attempts by workers in Bessemer, Alabama to unionize is an important story because big tech constantly wraps itself in this blanket of First Amendment. And part of First Amendment, I believe, is the right of assembly and redress. And the notion that they're trying to suppress that is really ugly, especially when you consider the fact that – and I did a tiny bit of research here. There isn't a single billionaire in Alabama, meaning that Mr. Bezos is worth about 200 times more than the wealthiest person in Alabama. And I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure, according to my three-minute analysis on Google, that since March of 2020, Jeff Bezos has added to his personal net worth more money than the net worth of every citizen living in the state of Alabama. So, you know what, boss? Just back the fuck off and let them unionize.

Kara Swisher: Oh, no, because – no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because if they do that, then he's got a million people. He can't let the – he can't let one state do it. I'll tell you that.

Scott Galloway: I don't know. Do you really want to be? I just like what? I just think of Bezos and it's like, who talks to this guy? It's like, how do you want to be remembered, boss? How do you want to be remembered? And also, you know, the Walton family has gotten a lot of criticism for figuring out a platform, Walmart, to transfer wealth from 2 million people to the Walton family. How do you want to? I mean, minimum wage, and this kind of feeds into our other big story, but do you really want to be the guy that figured out a way to atomize unions and not let your company unionize? No. Is that really what you want to be remembered as? I mean, I just don't understand what makes these guys tick. They don't want to be remembered as that. They really are quite anti-union. It's really interesting. It's Googling things. By the way—

Kara Swisher: That's what killed HQ2 in New York.

Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah. Was they decided to go into the most— Queens, New York actually has the greatest percentage of union members of any population, any metro area in America. And they decided to go in and say, yeah, we won't let you unionize. And what do you know? They weren't welcome with open arms.

Kara Swisher: No, there's lots of issues there. But by the way, Alabama's richest resident is Jimmy Rain, the founder and CEO of Great Southern Wood Preserving, now worth $900 million. Still not a billionaire. I don't know what Great Southern Wood Preserving is, but there you have.

Scott Galloway: So just to give you a sense of scale here, because everyone knows the rhythms, but they don't know the words or they don't know the scale. I think there's probably 30 or 50 people who've worked at Amazon who are billionaires, and you can't find one person who's a billionaire in Alabama.

Kara Swisher: No, he's not. This is the richest person. He's 900 million. He's the left-best person there. He's close. whatever he does with great Southern. I've got to get to Alabama. I want to go to a football game or something there.

Scott Galloway: Really? I'm drawn to that state or something.

Kara Swisher: I think that's where Tim Cook likes that team. Is that where he's from? He went to the school there. I've got to Auburn. Where's Auburn? Tennessee? Or did he go to Clemson? Did he go to Clemson?

Scott Galloway: I think it's Auburn. You're right. I missed a mistake.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, yeah. He's got that football helmet in the back, which every CEO has to make me more likable.

Scott Galloway: I'm into college sports because it's one of the few things that doesn't offend anybody.

Kara Swisher: You can call Roy Moore or someone like that. Alabama. Alabama. Alabama. The only time—

Scott Galloway: Oh, that's right. We're a pedophile lost by like seven votes for senator. Alabama.

Kara Swisher: You know how I prefer to remember Alabama, and we're going to get all these letters from Alabama, was Sweet Home Alabama with Reese Witherspoon. That's the only Alabama I want to visit, you know?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, I like Reese Witherspoon. I'm going.

Kara Swisher: Okay, favorite Reese Witherspoon movie or is it Sweet Home Alabama?

Scott Galloway: Well, I like a lot of them. I like election.

Kara Swisher: Well, then name your favorite.

Scott Galloway: Probably Sweet Home Alabama. And I'll put the word Nazi on top of it. Because you know me. You know me.

Kara Swisher: No, that's not what... Okay, go ahead. What is your favorite?

Scott Galloway: Election with Matthew Broderick. Yes. Genius, genius film. She's amazing in that film.

Kara Swisher: She's really good in that. She's very good in all the films. She's very talented. She was good in Clueless. She's a producer. She's a lot of things. She does a lot of stuff. Very talented. Very talented woman. And also to create big little eyes or whatever, pretty little, whatever big little... Anyway, she's very talented. She does a lot of things. All right. On to, away from Alabama and Reese Witherspoon, big stories. President Biden's 1.9 trillion dollar COVID relief plan was passed by the house over the weekend and now heads to the senate. The bill includes 1400 dollars in direct payments, funds for vaccine distribution, money for state and local governments, and expanded child tax credit, rental assistance, food aid, and more help for small businesses. But it seems likely to be dropped out of the bill. It was a provision because of the parliamentarian that would raise the minimum wage to 15 an hour. So here we are. I did an interesting interview today on Sway actually with the head of GoFundMe. And that's what I wanted to talk about, that GoFundMe is being used as stimulus for a lot of people. That's how they're getting together. And I wanted to explore that besides the ban and stuff and things like that. But what do you think this means? I mean, it's really quite astonishing it's taken this long to pass this bill, this second bill. What do you think it means?

Scott Galloway: Yeah, well, I have real – I basically think the stimulus was – you have to – there's different types of stimulus. I think this stimulus bill is better. The majority of it is going to unemployment insurance and direct aid and stimulus and things like vaccinations and helping schools get open. Child tax credit.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, which is almost like the Marshall Plan for moms. They've lowered the income ceiling. So not like the previous stimulus where four out of five people say they're not going to spend it, meaning they didn't need it. This is not an attempt, I don't think, just to make the rich richer while throwing some loaves of bread and a few circuses at the poor.

Scott Galloway: And if you think about stimulus, I mean, think about, here's a number, all right? With this package, we have now spent $6 trillion on stimulus. And my question is, okay, well, how would you do it differently? Jane Fonda. What I would do, take the lower median of U.S. households, that's about 60 million, 55, 60 million households in terms of income. With $6 trillion, you could give them each $100,000. What would have happened to our economy? What would have happened to child poverty? What would have happened to a central frontline worker's ability to stay out of harm's way? What would have done to moms who need to stay at home with their kids? What would have been more effective? $100,000 in cash to the bottom median of U.S. households or sending a bunch of capital to small businesses so they could pretend to fetishize small business.

Kara Swisher: Here's the problem. You love your word fetishize. Go ahead.

Scott Galloway: We hate poor people in this country. A hundred percent.

Kara Swisher: We hate poor people. There's a problem. A hundred percent.

Scott Galloway: Because we think they're lazy and what are they going to do with the money? And even though you never get asked what you're going to do with the money, that's how the mental state goes.

Kara Swisher: We keep talking about a war. There's supposedly a war on poverty.

Scott Galloway: There's a war on poor. There's a war on the poor.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, there always has been. But anyway, minimum wage. Let's talk about minimum wage. And I'm actually going to, I empathize with the Republican argument here. I think there's a decent argument. I believe minimum wage should be $15 an hour federally. I think it should be $20 in states like California, Washington, and New York, where the cost of living is much higher. And if you look at high minimum wage countries, they have managed to figure it out. And although the Congressional Budget Office says we going to lose a million jobs, I purpose I think that okay, if Uber has to lay off a bunch of drivers because they're forced to pay the minimum wage, then that means they need to reconfigure their business and we need to rethink our economy.

Scott Galloway: Sure. However, however, I think minimum wage is probably an argument that should be had distinct of COVID relief. They were trying to slip it in here.

Kara Swisher: They were trying to slip it in.

Scott Galloway: Well, that's it. And not only that, there's just, federal minimum wage is $7.25 and the Democrats are all bent out of shape over it being not 15. Well, for God's sakes, isn't there some compromise there? Couldn't we say 11 or 12 federally?

Kara Swisher: I'm going to argue against it. Why not just go for it? You're in here doing this. Why not just do it finally?

Scott Galloway: Because it's not going to happen. That's my point. Instead of doing these tiny tips.

Kara Swisher: Well, they were close. They were close.

Scott Galloway: Okay, Democrats have a long history of being right and not effective. And so, yeah, they went for the 15. They're not getting it. Couldn't we have settled 11 or 12? Wouldn't that have been real progress? Like a 70% increase?

Kara Swisher: I'm guessing they wouldn't have let that through. I'm guessing that would have not. I don't know.

Scott Galloway: I think Republicans would have gone for 11 or 12.

Kara Swisher: Well, Manchin, who's kind of been the swing vote here, says he would do 11 or 12. I think he said he would like to do 12. And then you got your 50 votes or whatever.

Scott Galloway: Yeah. Anyway, it feels like this would have been a great opportunity for something. I'm going to use a strange alien word here for bipartisanship.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. Couldn't we have settled at 11 or 12 bucks? Anyway. I bet that's going to keep us coming back as a bill. I think this is something that is a big deal. I think it's a great political thing to do. It's very hard to be against it. You know, like it's the claim that businesses are going to get hurt is at this moment in time is actually a very good time to take advantage of people not earning enough or earning very little. But what do you expect is going to what's going to with the money that people are going to get? Besides all the different things, the child tax credit and food aid and rental assistance, which is great. What do you think people are going to do with their stimulus checks?

Scott Galloway: Savings? There's a lot of savings going on.

Kara Swisher: Okay, so savings typically averages 7%. In Q2 of last year, it popped to 34%. In Q4 of this year, it went to 24%, which says to me the stimulus is not getting where it needs to go.

Scott Galloway: So, we'll see. I don't think – I think this one is better. I think this one is better, but I don't – but my guess is the market – the market has already responded. The market is up 600 points today because it loves additional stimulus. Allison, there's kind of this new monetary theory that says that deficits don't matter and it's points on a scoreboard. All this really scares me. I find that at some point, there's no free lunch. You can't just keep issuing debt like this. For the first time in our nation's history, our debt is greater than our GDP. And typically, Italy and Japan, where that's the case, they enter into a decade of no growth. So, I don't know. This all kind of scares me. I think that we've attached – the way to get legislation through is to attach a certain feel of macho to it. And they've successfully attached macho to the size of these bailout packages. Like we're not flexing hard enough. We need it to be bigger. And it seems even Republicans who used to put, I think, a healthy regulator or a bit of a tap the brakes every once in a while on deficit spending. They seem to have taken their foot off the brakes since George Bush who fell in love with tax cuts and forever wars. So I don't know if I'm getting old and anxious or I just miss Jane Fonda, but I am starting to get nervous about all of this.

Kara Swisher: You need to find a very wealthy woman to marry, I think.

Scott Galloway: 100%. Yeah.

Kara Swisher: 100%.

Scott Galloway: It's really interesting. It's skyrocketed to – the numbers are huge, the savings rates, which means it says something about people. Like we don't believe the rainy day is over yet. You know what I mean?

Kara Swisher: Well, we also have – I mean, look, America – Consumer spending fell, rather. What is consumer spending right now? I'm going to look it up when we speak. It's, I mean, it depends on what you're comparing it to. But America is about, I think, is about opportunity. I'd like to think it's about generosity. But it's also about accountability and winners and losers. And there is, I don't think anyone should be hungry. No child should not have access to school. I don't think anyone should ever be homeless or not have housing. But I just think a lot of this money is just taking people and making them, you know, better off. And I don't buy that. I don't buy socialism. I buy capitalism. I think there are winners and losers. And this is – everyone talks as if this is an unparalleled shock. The bottom line is an 11-year bull economy was the most extraordinary thing that's ever happened. And we aren't charging people who – we aren't increasing taxes on people that increase their wealth by the GDP of Hungary.

Scott Galloway: Agreed. But here's the thing. Personal income grew 10% in January, the second largest rise on record, and spending rose 2.4%. So pandemic aid to households is pouring money through its economy, priming it for rapid growth this year. They are looking at, like, they think everything's going to go gangbusters.

Kara Swisher: Oh, it's going to? This year?

Scott Galloway: This is a journal story from this week.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my gosh. Wait till you see what happens to reservations and travel to Europe if the curve continues to crush.

Scott Galloway: Agreed, agreed. It's going to be crazy.

Kara Swisher: I literally just spent some money. I haven't spent money in forever on something. on a travel thing for later in the year.

Scott Galloway: Same or a big spender. It was weird. I'm looking for a rich wife. What'd you spend? What'd you spend? Snap a lot from me. I'm cheap. I'm so ready to go semi-pro. I'm ready to go semi-pro.

Kara Swisher: Well, in any case.

Scott Galloway: Not direct money for sex, but oblique large purchases for sex. Semi-pro.

Kara Swisher: No one's going to pay for that, just so you know.

Scott Galloway: That hurts my feelings.

Kara Swisher: No one. That hurts my feelings. In any case, one of the things that has to happen, obviously, is the vaccines. And this money for vaccines is really important, the funds for vaccine distribution. As you know, oh, did I not give you an update? I didn't get a vaccine again because I'm in the Hunger Games. Another day without a vaccine.

Scott Galloway: What did I do? What did I do? Tell me what I did.

Kara Swisher: You gave up?

Scott Galloway: I don't know. No. I called Microsoft. I scrambled the jets at Microsoft. It's lucky you're not leveraging your white privilege and position of power.

Kara Swisher: I am going to do it forever. I don't want to get a special vaccine. I want the system to work.

Scott Galloway: I just want to call Bill Gates. I didn't call Bill Gates, but I called pretty high up at Microsoft. Sacha, I need my vaccine. I want an explanation as to what happens. I'm helping everybody. I'm going to be doing a call this week on the fact that it was a Microsoft system that messed up. And then the mayor blamed Microsoft. But, you know, Microsoft is doing D.C. and New Jersey. New Jersey, there's some problems, too.

Kara Swisher: Really? Microsoft?

Scott Galloway: Yes, Microsoft is the vendor. Apparently, they're in emergency meetings every day with the government of district. I found out so much stuff.

Kara Swisher: Thank you. I did not know that. Kara Swisher did the reporting, found out who was the vendor, and I'm going to make this thing work for the people of District of Columbia.

Scott Galloway: I think we're looking at a Golden Globe Award for the Jungle Cat.

Kara Swisher: What would I wear? Best investigative journalism. Do you know what? I wanted to find out why it's not working.

Scott Galloway: What would I wear?

Kara Swisher: And by the way, Microsoft has Xbox and puts together, brings markets together almost continually. Why can't they get this system to work? Part of it is the D.C. government picked the system where it's Hunger Games every time you sign up. And so as more people pile in the system, people who have already been there trying to compete still have to compete with the new people. You know what I mean? Like instead of putting you on a list and get you registered and then that's where it goes and then they walk themselves down the list, you have to like keep re-registering the stupid thing. So I want to understand why they picked the system they did.

Scott Galloway: You deserve some answers.

Kara Swisher: I want some answers. Not just for me. It's for everybody. It's ridiculous. There was like, this is insane. You're doing a service for the community. This is insane what's happening with this situation. Anyway, I still do not have a vaccine.

Scott Galloway: Thank God we have you. Thank God we have you. Unlike you, I am not vaccinated and safe. And I want a vaccine like a lot of people.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I agree. So there we are. You deserve it. Anyway, speaking of which, we're going to go on a quick break. And when we get back, we'll be joined by White House Senior Advisor to the COVID-19 response team, Andy Slavitt. He is not like the previous. There's no Peter Navarro situation. This is an expert of this area, and we'll be talking to him.

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[Interview Begins]

Kara Swisher: Moving on, we have a friend of Pivot we have with us, Andy Slavitt. He is the White House Senior Advisor to the COVID-19 Response Team. He joined us for our prediction show in December. Andy, we're so glad to have you here.

Scott Galloway: And he has a podcast with his son. He does, indeed. It's a fantastic—I think I've been—well, we've both been on that show. We've both been on that content.

Kara Swisher: Listen, Andy, first of all, I'm going to speak to you about my vaccine distribution issues. I've been ranting about them in D.C.

Scott Galloway: Let's get to Kara, Andy.

Kara Swisher: No, when that's not, but I want to understand where we are. I want you to explain where we are with the COVID. What does it mean you're a senior advisor to the COVID-19 response team?

Andy Slavitt: It's sort of jack of all trades. Whatever the big problem is, I can jump on.

Kara Swisher: So what are they? What are the big problems right now?

Andy Slavitt: More, better, faster vaccines. We need more. We didn't have enough when we came in. Better means we need to get them to all the right people, not just out there. People who are struggling the most are getting line jumped. And then faster, we can't possibly do this fast enough. So we've accelerated. I think we've had some success in all three. I don't think it's ever be fast enough for the public, but we've purchased enough vaccines. We put thousands more vaccinators into the field. We built mass vaccination sites with FEMA. And we've doubled our output since we've been here about six weeks ago. And I suspect over the next few weeks, we'll try to double it again.

At some point we'll run into a very different problem, which we will have vaccinated all of the people who are clamoring for it and be on to the people who kind of think they might sort of potentially want it but aren't really sure. So we're also beginning work to figure that piece out. At the end of the day, we would love to get over the next few months, we'd like to get this program through this program so we can look back on this pandemic and say, wow, wasn't that a bitch? But at least we're moving to another stage.

Kara Swisher: So let's separate the two things. One is getting to the people who want it and not, and getting it in the right line configuration without people jumping the line. What I was joking about before was I'm in D.C. and was one of the people, part of the vaccine hunger games of the District of Columbia, which is being run by Microsoft, as it turns out, the sign-up system, and it's quite problematic. It breaks down almost all the time. I have a long call with them later today about that very topic.

Andy Slavitt: Well, excellent. Then tell them Kara Swisher's furious, along with all the District of Columbia residents.

Kara Swisher: I bet they know. Yeah, I think they do. In any case, what I got from talking to them, and I did talk to them yesterday also, was this idea of different states picking different things, the distribution systems being different. Some pick a pre-registration route. Some people are like, everybody piles in. What do you think the biggest problem with distribution is? Besides the fact there's not enough vaccines, but there are ways to create a list that is more organized.

Andy Slavitt: Well, so there's 58 states and jurisdictions. I can tell you one thing for sure. There are not 58 best ways to distribute this vaccine. When we got here, I think the prior administration viewed their job as vaccines, not vaccinations. So ship them out of the factory, get them to the states, and their job is pretty much done. That's an important part of the job, but the last mile, as we talked about, into communities, getting people signed up, getting people signed up fairly, all that is really, really important and also hard.

When we got here, they were already set up 57 seed distribution sites. I describe it as like if you had a product like an iPhone and you're like, okay, well, in Louisiana, they're going to sell it through iPhone stores. And in Texas, they're going to use the Internet only. And in another place, they're going to just use evaluated resellers. And by the way, they're not accountable to telling us how they've done it. We got here, about 46% of all the vaccines we'd sent out had actually made its way to people's arms. 54% were sitting in refrigerators. And with shortages, people do what? They hoard. And when people have less information about what's going on, they hoard even more.

So what we did, since this was already in process and we couldn't have time to tear down and rebuild the whole thing, is we said, look, we're going to promise every state, we're going to give them three weeks of visibility and how much production they're going to get. We're going to start these direct sites, these mega sites, as well as in community clinics. And today we're at about 77 percent. About 77 percent of the vaccines that have been sent out have been put into people's arms. The variability is, there's probably a low of about 70 percent to a high of close to 100 percent.

Kara Swisher: Within each state.

Andy Slavitt: Yeah, state by state. The prior administration said that their philosophy was going to be they're going to reward and punish. So if a state was not doing very well in their vaccines, they were going to give them fewer. And if a state was doing better, they were going to give them more. We don't think that makes sense. You can't help where you live and you can't be punished for your governor and your government any more than you're probably already being punished. So we basically said, we're going to come provide technical assistance, do multiple times a week calls, problem solve, operationalize this thing to the last mile. But there's a certain number of decisions that are going to be at the state level. And there's very little we can do about that other than come alongside that with our own distribution plans to the retail pharmacies and these FEMA sites.

Kara Swisher: So why don't you just do that? Why don't you just take over?

Andy Slavitt: Well, that would require us taking vaccines away from states that we've already given. We don't want to do that. They are doing a good job and they're doing a better job. Everyone's doing a better job than they were at the beginning. But we are supplementing it with the holes that we think are existing in the system. But everybody can handle more vaccines. The core problem is still we need to get them more vaccines. We need to increase that. We need to get the more vaccinators. We need more sites. And we need to do this more equitably. So it's a whole basic kind of logistical thing.

Scott Galloway: It's a logistical thing, which happens. Everybody gets their Amazon delivered. They get, you know, Microsoft has 100 million people on its platform, its Xbox platform. They know about market. They know about distributing markets. Let me just ask you one more question. What would have been the best way to do it from your perspective? If you had to go back from ground zero, would it have been a registration system or a federal system or states all sort of hewing? Because the testing looked like it did the same thing. It was all over the map.

Andy Slavitt: I think this is probably true of the entire COVID response. Treat the states as important regional partners, not as fiefdoms that set different rules. I know that runs into some of the laws and federalism and so forth. But I think you really could use the persuasion and bully pulpit in partnership to get most of the states on your page. But yes, I think I'd send out a single outbound text to people saying if you want to sign up for a vaccine, we'll send you a text when you get it. Number one.

Number two, I think, is look, this is about moving earth. You said it exactly right, Scott. This is like picking up a shovel and carrying dirt from one side of the yard to the other. I think you work really, really, really hard and pretty smart. And then after you get through vaccinating a lot of people, you start working smarter and smarter and smarter to find the needles in the haystack, to find the communities and the people that aren't getting them. So I would have, I think, you know, there's no point looking backwards. But I think setting up these mass vaccinations are very, very successful.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, they seem to be working. Everyone tells me those are great. We don't have one in the district. And 40% of the people who are going are people of color, which is over-representative as opposed to prior to that, we were at about half of the representative population. This is over-representative. We're doing some smart things. We're asking people, hey, why don't you reserve appointments for people who don't have their own transportation. We were in the last, agreed last week to donate millions and millions of free rides. We've got church groups that are bringing people there. The whole church, bring the whole church.

It was interesting. I would know this because during testing, I stood in lots of lines in the District of Columbia and it was, people will stand in lines. It was a mass testing center and it was great. You waited in line for a little bit, but it wasn't that bad, you got your test. And there's some you do it in your car. So I think some of this is just like, treat it like an emergency. I mean, that's what I wrote down. When I decided that I would come in for a few months and help, I was talking to the White House about what they wanted, what they felt like they needed. And I wrote down the words on a piece of paper, treat this like the emergency it is. War. Because war. And if you use that to color everything you do, you don't get confused by decisions like, should you ask one pharma company to help out another pharma company? You're like, of course you should. And of course they will if you ask for the right way.

This is coming out on Tuesday. Over the course of the day, I think there'll be some good announcements out about how we're trying to get everybody to work together differently and break a little bit of glass and everybody's more than willing to do it. One thing I discovered is that the last administration missed an opportunity just by not asking people, hey, what can you do to help? What skills do you have that you can bring to the table? Because they didn't want to acknowledge the problem as vocally as they probably should have.

Scott Galloway: So just along those lines, whether it was planting victory gardens or jumping in their leisure craft to go pick up soldiers off the beach of Dunkirk, in every previous war, and no war or conflict has claimed as many American lives as this one, American citizens were asked to contribute. What can a citizen do right now to go on a war footing and help?

Andy Slavitt: You know, it's really great, Scott. As Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, said this thing to me, which stuck in my head. He said it's easier to ask people to do something than to do nothing. In other words, it's really hard to sit home and feel like a victim. But if you're sewing a mask or doing something that feels productive, you feel a part of it. You feel purposeful. So we asked all of the businesses in the country on Friday if they would give their employees a day off the day or the day after they get vaccinated. And I can't tell you yet how many are going to say yes. But three of the biggest retailers in the country, Target, Best Buy, and Dollar General, all said yes. Absolutely.

I think asking, just asking people to do something. What is your skill set? What is your resource? What is your creativity? What's the community you touch? Who trusts you? And then asking them to do something and contribute. Most people say yes. So whether it's that or Uber and Lyft donating rides, CVS, we asked to reserve appointments for people from the zip code because there were too many people coming over from suburban zip codes. And they agreed and they're reserving appointments for people from the zip code, which is duh, right? But you wouldn't know it until it happened. And they said yes. People, if they want to do the right thing, they have to be told it is the right thing to do. And I think they also have to believe other people are doing the right thing, too.

Kara Swisher: I think 100%. One of the questions, when you talk about getting more people, it's so funny because right now I'm reading this book from Alvin Roth. Remember him, the Nobel Prize in Economics? It's called Who Gets What and Why? It's exactly what's happening because I'm going to be writing about this vaccine distribution this week. But talk about the people who don't want to get it because there's also been a spate of stories. There's one about the military, about half the people in the military, I guess.

Andy Slavitt: A third, yeah.

Kara Swisher: A third said no. Two-thirds said yes. You have that. You have a lot of people. Someone in my family doesn't want to get it now yet. I think they're an idiot, but that's the way it is. And how do you get people? Is it advertising? What are the plans right now? Because that seems to be something we could do now. I always thought the distribution system should have been in place six months ago, but they weren't. How do you get people now to get to the ones that aren't? Because that will get us over this hump of opening up.

Andy Slavitt: One thing that's happened is that every month since January, the percentage of people that say they definitely want the vaccine goes up by about 10%. So a lot of the fence sitters, I think, they don't want to be first and they're kind of waiting to see what happens. They're not dumb. They're not backwards. They have legitimate questions. And legit questions need to be answered. And probably equally importantly, disinformation and misinformation need to be shut down. And they need to be answered by people who people trust. So it's not as easy as Dr. Fauci getting on TV and saying, it's like, you know, I've got a question. I'm going to ask my doctor, my pharmacist, can they get a reliable answer that comes from the CDC?

But yes, to answer your other question, there's a massive opportunity to use the bully pulpit. We're going to be doing a large paid campaign and a large unpaid campaign that is really about getting people the messages that work and that we've done a lot of research on that show they work. And then a lot of stakeholder engagement, black community, rural white community, young people. Those are the three groups that have the most reluctance.

Scott Galloway: Okay, so then go ask your question about the military.

Andy Slavitt: Who's in the military? People of color, white rural people, and young people. So in some ways, it's like a clinical trial. I shouldn't say that because that will make people squeamish because they'll misinterpret what I mean. But in some ways, using what happens in the military is a really good microcosm on the kind of reluctant populations. And I really believe that most of them have legitimate questions that can get answered and will get answered. I do think there's an insidious amount of disinformation that does go on that we have to ask the platforms, the social media platforms, to really be vigilant about. And you guys influence those guys a lot. So it's an important message that they can't allow things that are just blatantly untrue to just sit up there on the platform. They have to flag those messages and say, hey, this is not true, or you should check this out because this claim is not backed by evidence. Because that does scare people and it does influence people.

Scott Galloway: So herd immunity, 70, my understanding is what I've heard from Dr. Fauci, somewhere between 70 and 85% of the population?

Andy Slavitt: I think that's the last thing I heard. He says he uses a range when he talks 70 to 85.

Scott Galloway: 24% of Americans are kids. What is your view on vaccinating children? When would it happen? What's the administration's view?

Andy Slavitt: I think the general sense without having the data back yet is that it's very safe for kids. Now, the crazy thing about a clinical trial with kids is you don't actually have enough incidents to have a reliable clinical trial. So they're running a trial now and they're dropping it down by age group. And Johnson & Johnson is starting a trial now going all the way down to infants. But you have to have enough of an AB group where you have hundreds of infections. And that's actually harder than it seems. So my guess is that older kids, like before the fall, they'll probably have it done is what I hear. I get this secondhand from Tony. And then younger kids probably soon after that.

I hope, I would hope that by the time we get to vaccinating kids, there's such a low incidence and prevalence. And I say this as a hope, not a prediction. And if that happens, we'll be in a position where that is a good thing to do, but it's not going to be the difference maker because we'll already be in good shape. That's my hope.

Kara Swisher: All right. What's the biggest step to getting us back open? Is it getting everybody vaccinated? Or is it this COVID relief package that will be part of the stimulus package?

Andy Slavitt: It's an orchestra. It's one of the things that I found frustrating over about the last year was everybody has a part to play. Congress, if Congress doesn't support bar and restaurant owners, then governors have to keep them open or lose the entire economy and lose all these small businesses. So the American Rescue Plan is critical. People can't afford to stay home from work and therefore not infect everybody unless the American Rescue Plan is there. So without that, it's harder.

The vaccines and the vaccine rollout that we have, we have enough vaccines. We've purchased enough vaccines now. They're getting made. They're getting made more quickly. We've got to get them out to a certain percentage of the population. There is money in the American Rescue Plan for states to improve their distribution and increase their distribution. So that's great. We have to monitor these variants. And we have to have really good surveillance into these variants. There's also money in the American Rescue Plan for that, but we have also seen a 20-fold step up in genetic sequencing around the variants.

Interestingly, I saw an analysis this morning, though, that showed that the impact of the variants, as negative as it could be, is actually smaller than would be if states basically removed all of their protections on social distancing and masking. There's actually a bigger impact if you can keep states to hold that on than there is from the variants. So if we can do both of those things and vaccinate people quickly, we've got a good road. I would tell you that this virus has been nothing but full of surprises over the last year. So I don't think the virus has done surprising us. We'll have some more curveballs before we're through. But I really believe we're making progress and we're going to get there.

Scott Galloway: So we always, I mean, a wonderful thing is, or a hopeful thing is, these things do end, right? Not that we shouldn't remain vigilant, but they do end. The terrible thing is they always happen. And assuming that we are going to have another pandemic at some point, how do you think, it feels like we just didn't make the forward-leaning investments to be prepared for this. And given having seen the devastation, believing that Americans want to be smarter about this and make some investments, where would you make those investments such that the next time this happens, we're in a position to meet the challenge?

Andy Slavitt: Yeah, you're right, Scott. This is kind of like our starter bug. And we're going to either get serious, like we did about Homeland Security, and I'm not arguing that every step we took after 9/11 was the right one, the smart one, but the country got serious because it felt threatened. Interestingly, I've talked to a lot of people who were around in the 80s and 90s during HIV, and the country did not take that seriously, as we all know. And because other people, some people felt safe and some people were dying. And the people who felt safe did not let this change the way we do business. And I feel sadder about that today than I did even back then. I was only 14 in 1980, but I now see the horror of us having ignored that lesson.

What I don't know about COVID-19 is, will we come out of it? And will a large portion of people feel the same way? Will they feel like, well, this hit a lot of people of color. It hit a lot of low-income people. It's largely an occupational disease. It hits people who have to work with the public. Will the people who make decisions that have money are not in those occupations? How will they react? Will they say, I'm just so glad this is over, but I never really felt the threat. Therefore, not a lot of lessons to learn. And I don't doubt that we'll learn the basic lessons. Like, we'll buy enough masks next time. We'll do some of the basic things. But will we really learn the lesson and make the investments in surveillance? Because we don't think that wealthy people suffered at all. I mean, they suffered, of course, people lost people. But in general, they've made more money. They've been able to stay home. They've been able to cope. It's been an inconvenience for a lot of people when it's been a certain death for others.

Did you see Los Angeles? The town by town look at Southern California.

Scott Galloway: No.

Andy Slavitt: During this massive wave, this massive spike in cases, Malibu, pretty much untouched. West Hollywood, pretty much untouched. Look at Salinas County, Carmel. They can't find an infection. Then you go inland to Salinas and it's raging. Get the lettuce pickers in Salinas. And so, it's this whole thing where it's like people would say, well, I really barely know anybody who had COVID-19. And I'm like, yeah, but the people who pick your food and drive it to the station and hand it to you, those are the people that are getting sick and dying. And you may not know their first names, but they're part of your life. And we just lost a little bit of that connection. I know this is social commentary. It's not what I'm paid for. I'm not paid anything, but if I were paid, I would not be paid for my social commentary back on my podcast.

Scott Galloway: But I just want to stop you there. I think that's the moment we move out of triage here and take the aperture back, it immediately is going to get to pretty big meta issues about industrial food production. When we cram all these animals together for scale and for profit, we are playing with fire. Income inequality. I mean, these are the issues, my sense is that are the pillars of a pandemic that raise. How do you begin to incorporate or have those conversations?

Andy Slavitt: Well for some of us, and I suspect the three of us are in this category, you can unsee it that way because it just looks that way. But I wonder for people who don't see the world through that lens naturally, whether or not the pandemic taught them to look at it that way or whether or not it taught them the opposite lesson. Boy, we need to close the borders. Boy, we need protectionism. Boy, we need to have gated communities and protect ourselves. I just, I don't know if people's worldview got altered because it's so hard for all, including me. I'm not saying that I value things totally differently today. Like I used to get pissed off if I had to go to the grocery store and they didn't have the brand of toothpaste that I use. And I'd be like, how could they have these 10 brands? How could they not have the 11th one that is the unusual one that I use for my gums? Now I'm like, then we went through a period where there's no toothpaste in the store. And this country had never, people this age had never been through anything like that. I value my friends differently. I value so many things differently. Coming out of this, I hope we capture some of that. What we do with it, how we take that conversation and meld it into policy changes, I think that's the easier part. But this inner consciousness is the harder part, I fear.

Kara Swisher: Well, that's a deep reflection. That doesn't even bring in the misinformation and disinformation too. The mask denial, the calling it the flu, everything that went into that, which I think slowed us all down rather significantly and led to many more deaths. One of the things, two more quick questions. When you look at other countries that did well, now not every country did well, including other democracies. What country do you look at and you go, they did it right, or they did it as close to right as possible? And then going into next year, we are going to have to have booster shots of these things. This will be an annual occurrence in terms of not just the flu shot, but these COVID shots and things like that. Is that correct?

Andy Slavitt: Yeah. So I did an amateurish analysis that basically showed me that countries that had two characteristics did better. The first is very simply experiences with pandemics. African countries actually did much better than you might think. The second is how egalitarian or how much of a collective, and this is a hard thing to measure, but if you look at just income inequality graphs between the top and bottom quartiles or deciles, it gives you a pretty good picture between those two things. Are you willing to do something for other people in this country, or do you feel like your own best interest is what you've got to watch out for?

You look at Brazil, Russia, the U.S., India make big differences in inequality, lots of people in the lower stratosphere, lots of deaths. And you look at countries that are egalitarian and that have some experience in the Asian countries. They were, I mean, Hong Kong borders China, right? Hong Kong is now technically part of China. They've had very, very few deaths. So there are a lot of things at play, and I'm constantly reminded that we all force fit our favorite explanations too often into the data we see. And so it's very easy to mislead yourself by just confirming the way you want it to look. But for me, I look at those types of countries and they did well. Now, competence and leadership doesn't hurt either. And I'd like to think that that's where we're going to gain on it in the vaccine rollout.

Scott Galloway: Scott, last question. What would you like to see if you were to say, well, let's stand on an optimistic note. And obviously, my sense is, and I'm a glass half empty kind of guy, Andy, and my sense is we're crushing the curve. And I don't want to use that as any excuse to not be relaxed, but as motivation to put a stake in the heart of this thing. But my sense is we are crushing the curve. What is your response to that? What's your sense right now?

Andy Slavitt: So can't predict the future at all, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine a bumpy spring, a kind of smooth, much better summer. And then a question mark about the fall and winter. I think this goes to Kara's question about boosters. What do you have in terms of what pops up again in the fall?

Scott Galloway: You mean in terms of a variant? What is your do? What are you scared of? What keeps you up at night?

Andy Slavitt: Well, these variants that evade our antibodies and vaccines are a curveball that I don't care what people say. People didn't expect. I know a couple people who kept warning about them, and I didn't spend a lot of time listening to it. But it tells you that, and now I'm way over the tips of my skis here, but one of the things about this particular pandemic that's different, and one of the reasons why things don't weaken, is we have these vectors, and these vectors are these asymptomatic people, kids and otherwise, that act kind of like mosquitoes do in other diseases. And that actually acts as a buffer to prevent the disease from weakening. So what this means is we could be playing an evolutionary game with this.

Now, I will end on an optimistic note as well, Scott. I spent a lot of time talking to the scientists, research scientists, CEOs of the pharmaceutical companies, the therapeutic companies, and all of them, science will win. I do believe that they will be on their game. And whatever this throws at us, whether it's an ongoing set of mutants or whether it's whatever else it is, science will arrest this. This is not going to get the best of us. So I think near term, I don't think we're done. I think we're going to have some more tough-

Scott Galloway: That'll be the meteor you're going to deal with next. That's the meteor hurtling towards Earth, something like that.

Andy Slavitt: The meteor hurtling towards Earth. Or like, I forget who said it, but I wish I could take credit for it, is like global warming. There's no mask. There's no vaccine. Like we have at least half a mask and a vaccine for this. There's other endemic problems, resistance to antibiotics, right? There's no natural mask you can just throw on to fix the problem. And we weren't even willing to wear the masks, a lot of us.

Kara Swisher: Would it be fair to characterize it crudely as a race between vaccinations and the variants? That vaccinations are, I mean, it's who's going to win here? If we've, isn't it really, isn't a nightmare scenario that we kind of had meddling vaccination acceptance and distribution and give the variants a chance to evolve into more superbugs, so to speak?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I think that's a fair characterization, in general. We have to take all of our measures, of which vaccines are our most powerful one, and overwhelm this thing quickly. And we can't just do it in the U.S. Shame on me, I spent this whole conversation talking about the U.S. And I'm hired by the U.S. taxpayers. But I will tell you that we have an administration that absolutely believes in two things. One is you've got to stamp this out everywhere. And second, rich countries have a moral obligation to the rest of the world. So we have to finish the job here, and then we have to help the globe to make sure that we help everybody else finish the job.

Scott Galloway: Well, we will end on that positive note. And by the way, Andy, say hi to Microsoft for me. Tell them Kara's coming and she's angry.

Andy Slavitt: No, they just texted me. It's funny. During this conversation, they were just texting me.

Kara Swisher: But I wish you great good luck. It would be really great for everyone who wants to get a vaccine to be able to. A lot of people are very enthusiastic about getting it. And it just makes them feel hopeful. It sounds silly, but if you feel hopeful and then you get continually frustrated, it makes you not trust government. It also makes you want to cheat. For a brief second, I was like, I'm changing my birth date because of a glitch in the system. Because I knew that's what was happening. They hadn't changed the dates. And I thought, no, I can't do that. That's a lie. But it causes discomfort from people who really do care and who've always done the right thing during this whole process. And we should celebrate those people. Anyway. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Good luck. Keep working really hard and become exhausted in making this thing go away. Thanks for your citizenship, Andy. We really appreciate it.

Scott Galloway: Well, that was good, Kara.

Kara Swisher: All right. One more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Kara Swisher: Okay, Scott, wins and fails. Tell me, what is your wins and fails?

Scott Galloway: My win is Andy Slavitt and people who decide to take their competence and not go to Silicon Valley or work for a hedge fund and decide that they're going to try and reduce death, disease, and disability among their brothers and sisters. I think we're blessed to have people who think that way. And I think those need to be our heroes. I don't care if you have a photo sharing app or even put a man on Mars. There are big problems here. So I'm grateful that guys like that decide to attack these societal problems. It does feel nice to have confidence. The fact that people like Peter Navarro and Scott Atlas had their hands on the levers is so frightening to me. The things they did, some of them should be tried and jailed for. It's amazing how much incompetence there was. So just having competent people is a really nice thing.

Kara Swisher: Agreed. What is your fail?

Scott Galloway: I don't have a fail. I just want to leave it on that note.

Kara Swisher: Oh, that's very nice. I thought that was inspiring and I like that. I like that a lot. That's a really nice thing. All right. Yours, Kara?

Scott Galloway: Wins.

Kara Swisher: You know we do this every week, right?

Scott Galloway: Right.

Kara Swisher: I don't think about it. At some point you're going to like, we have a pattern here. We do this every week. I thought the Golden Globe speech of Chadwick Boseman's widow, his wife, was so beautiful. It was so beautiful. It was so well done. So much dignity. So much love. I really enjoyed that. That was my win. I love Chadwick Boseman.

Scott Galloway: I thought of you during the Golden Globes. You want to know what I thought of you?

Kara Swisher: Why?

Scott Galloway: When Amy Poehler said, "I just knew I'd end my career walking around the Rainbow Room alone thinking I was talking to Amy." And I thought, that kind of summarizes us. We're never in the same room. We're just sort of always talking to each other, but we're never really there. That's how I'll end my career, just wandering around my house thinking I'm talking to you. I'm speaking to you, Kara.

Kara Swisher: Yes. And I think the fail was the CPAC thing. It was so embarrassing. It was so sad.

Scott Galloway: You didn't like that? That's a shocker.

Kara Swisher: No, but they just doubled down on election fraud. We so should have live broadcast from CPAC.

Scott Galloway: I know, we should have.

Kara Swisher: They doubled down on election fraud. This was an opportunity to move forward. And then the Nazi rune symbol thing. I don't know if they meant it or not, but boy, what a bunch of assholes.

Scott Galloway: It was a Nazi symbol? I missed that.

Kara Swisher: The shape of the stage was a really famous Nazi symbol.

Scott Galloway: I doubt that. They're not that stupid.

Kara Swisher: I know, but go look at it. Go look it up. It's just weird.

Scott Galloway: No, that's not really what my issue was.

Kara Swisher: The election fraud and the idea that the attack on the Capitol was Antifa was really irritating. But then what I was happy about, the win, was that Trump came out and mouthed off and then it was over. It didn't feel like it gelled in any way. It was lame.

Scott Galloway: It was lame.

Kara Swisher: It was lame. I don't know. We'll see how much it's followed. Lame on top of lame. The Golden Globes were lame. And then the CPAC thing was lame, I thought.

Scott Galloway: I don't think the Golden Globes were going to argue about that.

Kara Swisher: I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's fine. Whatever. The Golden Globes had nice clothes at least. In any case, we have a lot going on this week. The relief bill is coming. There's going to start to be full momentum. Oh, by the way, number two in the straw poll there, Governor of Florida, Governor DeSantis. You know who they think is going to hip check Trump out of the way? They all do. They're all sitting there like, how can we hip check this old dude? The same old act. He's like an old... I wouldn't say the Rolling Stones because they're actually talented, but he sings the same old songs over and over again. There was DeSantis and Chris Christie and Noem from wherever.

Scott Galloway: That's the one. That's what they were talking about. Hmm. DeSantis. Noem.

Kara Swisher: Yes. I liked her line, which she said, "I don't know about you, but I think sometimes Dr. Fauci is wrong." And she got a standing ovation. I'm like, oh, yeah, 79-year-old epidemiologist who rebuffed Ebola, Medal of Freedom. And you're the governor of South Dakota. Also, one in 500 people in South Dakota died of COVID, which makes it the second worst state.

Scott Galloway: Highest mortality rate. So, Kristi, hush up.

Kara Swisher: Well done. Okay, today's show. Okay, Scott, that's the show. Somehow it's March again. I can't believe it. It's been a year since we've been together. This is so sad.

Scott Galloway: That's right. That is sad.

Kara Swisher: But we'll be back on Friday for more. We will continue to broadcast from our little studios, and at some point we'll be together again, although we didn't do that many tapings together. But we will. We'll do something in person. Something in Miami, perhaps.

Scott Galloway: Hello. Hello, Miami.

Kara Swisher: I may come to Florida. Mayor McDreamy Suarez. I'm thinking of coming to Florida. Can I use your studio if I do?

Scott Galloway: Anytime.

Kara Swisher: I can't tell you why I'm interviewing.

Scott Galloway: Come to Florida with all the other fucking weirdos. Come on down. Will you turn it off? It's Mackenzie Scott. Are you in technology avoiding taxes and a total basket case weirdo? Come to Florida. The sunshine state.

Kara Swisher: But seriously, can I use that fancy studio of yours if I have to do some plays?

Scott Galloway: What's mine is yours, Kara. You know that.

Kara Swisher: But will you cut me off if I, like, say, have Mackenzie Scott, for example?

Scott Galloway: Again. Again.

Kara Swisher: Anyways, enough of that. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Ernie, Andrew Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burrows. Make sure you're subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify. If you like the show, please recommend it to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Scott Galloway: Kara, I dream of painting and then I paint my dreams.

Kara Swisher: Oh, my God. Okay. Okay, Van Gogh. Thank you.