Recode Co-Founder Kara Swisher joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer'

On this episode of Influencers, Recode Co-Founder Kara Swisher joins Yahoo Finance to discuss everything from the state of the tech industry to President Trump's behavior on Twitter.

Video transcript

ANDY SERWER: Years ago, technology revolutionized the way humans interact with one another. Today, it's changing the way we work.

Kara Swisher, co-founder and editor-at-large at Recode, has covered the ins and outs of the tech industry ever since the early days of the internet. From reporting at "The Washington Post" and "The Wall Street Journal" to building her own media group, Swisher played a real part in shaping the culture of Silicon Valley as it developed the interconnected world we know today.

On this episode of "Influencers," she joins me to examine the role of America's largest tech companies and how they've contributed to the development of our new work-from-home society.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- "Influencers with Andy Serwer" is brought to you by Verizon.

ANDY SERWER: Hello, everyone. I'm Andy Serwer, and welcome to "Influencers." And welcome to our guest, Kara Swisher, co-founder of Recode, now owned by Vox, contributor to NBC, and also an editorial writer at "The New York Times"-- contributing--

KARA SWISHER: OK, yes.

ANDY SERWER: Columnist-- I shouldn't say editorial writer.

KARA SWISHER: Whatever, yes.

ANDY SERWER: They got all kinds of different writer roles.

KARA SWISHER: Whatever, no one cares.

ANDY SERWER: OK. We care. You care.

KARA SWISHER: All right.

ANDY SERWER: How's it going, Kara?

KARA SWISHER: Good. I'm sorry. I was texting. But I was texting to Katie Couric about something you said that was funny.

ANDY SERWER: Oh, OK. Well, that's salient, right?

KARA SWISHER: Salient, yes.

ANDY SERWER: So, wow, the times in which we find ourselves, right?

KARA SWISHER: Yes, indeed. I can't believe you dragged me here today to have me killed with coronavirus.

ANDY SERWER: You're not gonna die. None of us are gonna die. Although, you said people will die.

KARA SWISHER: They will.

ANDY SERWER: Look, in all seriousness, that's the whole-- we have no idea how bad this is gonna get. It's gonna get worse.

KARA SWISHER: Yes. Yeah, life is analog. I'm sorry.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah.

KARA SWISHER: You know, for all the digital things I cover and you talk about, life is analog. And this is a virus that is analog. And it's spreading in an analog fashion and, you know, affects us all.

ANDY SERWER: Your brother's a doctor. You talk to him about it.

KARA SWISHER: Indeed, mm-hmm.

ANDY SERWER: So I guess, does this relate to technology, Silicon Valley? Yeah, a lot, right?

KARA SWISHER: Well, sure, there's a lot of solutions. There's a lot of things that we're utilizing. The last time we had something even approximating this was SARS. And it wasn't as serious a problem as this has become-- a global phenomenon, global crisis. And we didn't have-- the last time this happened, we didn't have apps, we didn't have phones the way we do, the smartphones. We didn't have Facebook. We didn't have Twitter. We didn't have on and on and on.

And so it's a really different-- people are coping, at least from a work point of view and a school point of view, a little better, given that everybody has to socially distance themselves. And they can come together socially on social media, for example. And, in fact, it's working pretty well in a good way, finally, I think.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, I mean, there a lot of facets there, because you talk about social media--

KARA SWISHER: Commuting.

ANDY SERWER: And then there's commuting.

KARA SWISHER: Telecommuting.

ANDY SERWER: Right, and then there's--

KARA SWISHER: Telemedicine.

ANDY SERWER: --conferences.

KARA SWISHER: Conferences.

ANDY SERWER: There's bad behavior by people in Silicon Valley, as usual, which is, like, hey, it's a virus, just like a viral thing, and then people get shut down on Twitter.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah.

ANDY SERWER: There's Twitter, of course, is always to talk about.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah, but it can be used as a good thing, that these technologies didn't exist the last time we had a crisis like this, a pandemic crisis. And they've helped. They've helped a bad situation. And, obviously, AI is gonna be used to figure out where patterns are in this, if we do enough testing across the world. They're doing testing and analysis. And so there's a lot of good things about technology in this.

And I think technology companies, by and large, have reacted pretty well to how to deal with their workers at home. They're at least stepping up to the gig workers, in some cases, how to take care of them. And we're all starting to realize how vulnerable our society has become from an employment point of view.

And then, informationally, they're trying really hard to keep out the bad information and try to stop the bad actors, such as Amazon cutting off price gougers of things like Purell and other things, and Facebook and Twitter trying to take off bad information about how to get the cure for coronavirus.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, that gig economy point that you made, I think, is a really important one. Because at these big companies, I think people might be surprised to learn how many people are--

KARA SWISHER: Most are contractors.

ANDY SERWER: They're contractors, right?

KARA SWISHER: Yes, yes, quite a lot. I think at Google, I think, it's 150,000. It's some number that's really larger than you thought. It's not 150,000, but it's a large amount of the people that work at these companies are contractors. And then you have companies like Uber and Grubhub, all these things, and Amazon, you know, delivery. It's all contract workers.

And so these people are without protections, without health protections, without job protections, and really have to go to work. And at the same time, there's gonna be a big push for delivery at home, with most people staying home, hopefully. And so it's kind of an interesting situation of how to protect those workers.

ANDY SERWER: But you raise another point there, which is to say, in this society, you're gonna need these Uber drivers and Grubhub people. And those people, they have to work because it's their livelihood, and they can't afford to take a week off, right?

KARA SWISHER: They don't have a choice. Well, yeah, unless they're sick, and then there should be paid sick leave for them.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: And so it really does begin once this is over, which at some point it will be, we have to start thinking hard about what kind of society we have created and what protections we need to put in place to protect all people who work and have a better life for them. So it's made us think about it in a really dramatic fashion.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, it's sort of-- I mean, this has always been the problem with these gig economy workers. They're kind of having it both ways. So in other words, right now, I'm hearing that-- I think it was Uber or Lyft-- one of them was going to be offering protections to some of their drivers who were getting sick. But then that sounds like an employee.

KARA SWISHER: Right.

ANDY SERWER: So then the government may come after them.

KARA SWISHER: Well, they already have. You know, there's things like in California with AB5, you know, and this is a game these companies are playing.

ANDY SERWER: Right, yes.

KARA SWISHER: They are employees. And they need to pay up. And that's just the way it is. And I think the question is, do we-- you know, many years ago, Gavin Newsom and I, who's now the governor of California, talked about this new designation of worker. We have to change what a worker is and how we protect them. And, you know, it brings into very sharp relief how important health care is and the delivery of health care.

You know, you could see, in the future, a lot of these tech companies getting into health care. I mean, why couldn't Amazon do testing for this virus? You know, probably would do a better job than the Trump administration. Although, that's a very low bar. And, you know, you could see-- you know, you'll see Apple get into health care, Amazon get into health care, maybe Google get into health care.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, I mean, as far as Amazon goes-- excuse me-- a lot of people were saying they'd be the perfect company to deliver masks and everything else.

KARA SWISHER: 100%, and they'd do it right.

ANDY SERWER: Would the government, would POTUS, call Jeff Bezos up, you think?

KARA SWISHER: Well, that's the issue, I mean, of course. But you know what? As soon as we get rid of this clown, the better, because he's just bringing his personal gripes into what really requires people to do just a really good job at governing. And so that's another thing that you've seen in this crisis is that who is good at executing. And that's really gonna be critical in this crisis, and also in general in life.

And you see the governors of all these states stepping up and doing an excellent job, both Republican and Democrat, Like, Mike DeWine and Larry Hogan, who are Republicans, Maryland and Ohio. And Jared Polis in Colorado, Gavin Newsom in California, Governor Pritzker in Illinois, and many, many others.

ANDY SERWER: Let's talk about Google and this website that they supposedly have or don't have.

KARA SWISHER: They don't have. They do now.

ANDY SERWER: What do you know about that?

KARA SWISHER: I'll tell you what I know. What Trump announced was false-- was a falsehood. What it was was an idea. And I think someone just said it to him, and he just repeated it. That seems to be what he's done several times in this thing. He says something, doesn't retain it properly, and then repeats something that he just makes up.

And so I'm gonna give him-- the best benefit of the doubt here is an exaggeration. I think it was a lie, but he exaggerated a discussion that was going on between the White House and tech companies, which took place last week. And one of the ideas is this website. It makes sense. You would have a website, a matching website, where you could find out where you could get tested-- if we can get tested, by the way, that part hasn't been fixed yet either-- but where you can get tested, your symptoms, and this and that.

And so Google had been-- a division, not of Google, of Alphabet-- Alphabet owns Google-- is another division at Alphabet is called Verily, and it's life sciences, essentially. And it was working on a website for California, probably with the Newsom administration there. And it was going to do a very small test case in the Bay Area, and it was not ready. And so he conflated that with the fact that 1,700 Google engineers had agreed to volunteer for whatever efforts Google was making in this area.

And so Google does that periodically, during all the hurricanes, all kinds of things. I remember they moved very quickly, same thing at Twitter, when Haiti was having-- was under a hurricane watch. And so he conflated 1,700 workers working on a website that will be up very soon, not like websites of past. And I'm like, what is a website of a past?

ANDY SERWER: Well, you know what that was.

KARA SWISHER: There's no-- what? Myspace?

ANDY SERWER: Oh, he was referring to Obamacare.

KARA SWISHER: Oh, that. Oh, I see, OK, whatever.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, it was a little--

KARA SWISHER: He's just an-- it's just idiotic. Of course, and listen, that was a debacle. Let's be clear. But this is a crisis.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, right, right.

KARA SWISHER: And so, you know, I think Google did a very nice thing by saying-- or maybe they're trying to curry favor by saying, oh it's-- oh it's-- we're gonna do it. And they weren't gonna do it. But their first reaction was, essentially, W-T-F. Like, essentially, that's what they-- that was their first, like, we're not making that. And then their second was like, we're making one with the federal government.

ANDY SERWER: Well, it reminds me a little bit of when Microsoft found out they won the JEDI contract.

KARA SWISHER: Oh, ha.

ANDY SERWER: And they didn't even have a press release made. They're like, oh, we won? They were shocked.

KARA SWISHER: Well, that one's now in court, obviously.

ANDY SERWER: Right, yeah, yeah.

KARA SWISHER: Because, again, it looks like the president put his thumb on the scale for that one.

ANDY SERWER: What is the--

KARA SWISHER: We'll see. That's going forward.

ANDY SERWER: Right. What is the mood like in Silicon Valley? I mean, a lot of people accuse that part of the world of being in la-la land and, you know, in their own bubble.

KARA SWISHER: Right.

ANDY SERWER: Do they take this seriously now, you think?

KARA SWISHER: You know, I think it's interesting, because for such a digital culture, it's very analog, you know?

ANDY SERWER: Mm, that's a good point.

KARA SWISHER: The buses, their campuses, they've got food and dry cleaning and haircuts. They live on those campuses in a lot of ways. And more than any other offices, the offices of Google or Facebook or Twitter, they're very populated, because it's very comfortable to work there and because they provide everything, you know? I call it "assisted living for millennials." You know, any kind of thing they could have, they have. And so they're very used to going in and interacting together.

And engineering is, even though it seems like a solo craft, it isn't. It's a group act-- it's a team activity. And so they are used to gathering. And so now they're not. Now, they're very good at not gathering, too, because they can do remote work, they can use all these tools like Slack or Zoom or--

ANDY SERWER: Hangouts.

KARA SWISHER: Hangouts, whatever-- Teams for Microsoft. There's all kinds of tools, now, to work remotely. And they certainly can work remotely. And I think the tech companies have moved really quickly to doing that. Quicker than other companies, I think, probably. And probably easier, because they have a population used to it.

ANDY SERWER: It's interesting, though. I didn't consider the cultural thing, like, who's gonna wash my dog?

KARA SWISHER: Right. [LAUGHS]

ANDY SERWER: Because I'm just so used to--

KARA SWISHER: Who's gonna wash my dog?

ANDY SERWER: I'm just so used to bringing it in, right?

KARA SWISHER: Yeah, right. Oh, some of those campuses are kind of ridiculous.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, yeah. And so, as a tech--

KARA SWISHER: Where am I going to get my Tibetan food this week, you know?

ANDY SERWER: Right, right.

KARA SWISHER: They do. They have Tibetan food or whatever the--

ANDY SERWER: As a tech columnist, how do you figure out what to write generally, but right now especially?

KARA SWISHER: [SIGHS] Well, you can't write anything without typing "coronavirus" right now.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah.

KARA SWISHER: I think it's really hard to-- I mean, we can talk about antitrust issues right now, but no one's-- there's not gonna be any legislation. There's not gonna be anything having to do with investigating at the Justice Department, which was taking place. Just last week, there were hearings where Yelp was involved and all kinds of others about antitrust issues. There's been ongoing investigations at the FTC around the size of tech companies.

So it was ongoing. It's just stopped right now, like everything else in the country. So you really can't-- I've written about that quite a bit. But it's really hard to write about anything but this right now, because there isn't anything else.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, you think you'll have to find, well, here's a new company maybe working on a vaccine?

KARA SWISHER: I did. I actually started writing about-- initially, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about, like, we're gonna need to focus on Zoom and some others, like, some other companies that are telecommuting. Because telecommuting didn't really take off as much as people thought it would. Now, of course, it is.

And so, you know, this week I'm gonna write about Twitter being good, finally. It's actually useful. It's not the cesspool that it typically is. That it can be useful in a crisis. That you feel a sense of belonging on a site like that and have a community. And so you feel a connection.

ANDY SERWER: I was gonna-- I'm sorry to say-- I'm sorry to say I was gonna ask you some questions about that, because I know you don't want to tip your column too much.

KARA SWISHER: Sure, that's OK.

ANDY SERWER: But, I mean, in other words, gosh, there's so much going on there with, you know, the activist management--

KARA SWISHER: Oh, yeah, sure.

ANDY SERWER: You know, Silver Lake.

KARA SWISHER: We've talked about this a lot on "Pivot," yeah.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah. And then, of course, there is POTUS. And, you know, it's just-- it's kind of a weird-- and then Jack's trippy mind.

KARA SWISHER: Well, he lives to fight another day. I mean, I think Silver Lake came in and saved him from what was-- we'll see. You know, I don't know. Elliott Management, which tried to do what was correct as a shareholder, which was, this is a highly undervalued asset, and boy, this week has shown that. Like, I bet the numbers are up enormously this week.

This is an undervalued asset that they've been under revenue, under the stock price. It hasn't risen. Facebook has gone up, whatever umpteenth times, and Twitter has stayed, I don't know, 10% since he got there? And so I think they had a very good point about that.

And also a good point about Jack Dorsey, who is the founder, the creator of Twitter, not being there full time. He has another job at Square, which is another public company-- worried about that. And then he had said he was going to Africa to live for part of the year, which was another, like, what? Like, no CEO could have done that-- said all that stuff. And so there was concern about that.

And so they were putting pressure on him. And then Silver Lake came in with a billion dollars to invest in the company and got a board seat. And so we'll see if there's some significant changes. At least it's good to have different voices on a board, unlike Facebook, where you saw Ken Chenault leave this week-- last week. And they're putting on people who look like rubber stamps for Zucker-- although, he doesn't need a rubber stamp, because he is the ultimate stamp. He has no-- that board is just without any power whatsoever.

ANDY SERWER: But isn't that a problem across the board, Kara-- Facebook, Google, Twitter-- that the founders--

KARA SWISHER: Well, not Twitter.

ANDY SERWER: Not Twitter, because he doesn't have a control in shares.

KARA SWISHER: Not Twitter, because it's common shares. But at Facebook, 100%.

ANDY SERWER: And Google as well.

KARA SWISHER: The board is-- it's like a banana republic over there. Mark Zuckerberg runs everything, right?

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: So but when Ken Chenault was on there-- and I think the reason he left is he felt he could have some influence, even if he didn't have voting influence really-- but he didn't. He couldn't-- he was obviously frustrated. And, you know, he let it be known, the sources close to Ken Chenault said. Obviously, was dissatisfied with the way the political stuff was going, the decisions were being made. Probably the influence of Peter Thiel on Mark, I would guess, because Facebook went with letting politicians lie.

Now, that's not gonna look so good coming out of this, I'll tell you that. So they may have to adjust that particular attitude that they have towards that. Now, Twitter went full, we're not gonna have lying political ads, but that's because they can't handle them. I mean, mostly it's like, ugh, no, like, let's put it in a drawer and close the drawer and it go away. And that's a good decision for them, because they were not handling it.

And Google took the middle ground, which I thought was the best one, which is, we're gonna watch micro-targeting, we're gonna not let people lie, we're gonna watch them very closely. That, to me, was the most responsible of the big platforms. And still they've got issues on YouTube and other places, but they're at least trying to be responsible.

ANDY SERWER: Well, let's talk about Facebook a little bit, Kara, because people like yourself-- and I've written negative things, and God knows Roger McNamee's out there--

KARA SWISHER: Yeah.

ANDY SERWER: And yet--

KARA SWISHER: The stock remains.

ANDY SERWER: Right, and the advertisers remain as well, right?

KARA SWISHER: Of course, there's nowhere else to go.

ANDY SERWER: Right. So what's gonna--

KARA SWISHER: And after this, a lot of companies are going out of business after this. They're gonna be left standing, the big powerful companies who can wait it out with the money, and Facebook being one of them.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, I mean, so is it impregnable, therefore?

KARA SWISHER: No, nothing's impregnable. Look at, you know, what are we, in the AOL building?

ANDY SERWER: I think it-- yeah.

KARA SWISHER: It was. Remember them? They were great. And I know they're still here, but they're not--

ANDY SERWER: Right, of course.

KARA SWISHER: They were the dominant force. And I think, you know, technology companies, the young eats their old, and eventually Facebook will not have the kind of power it has. But it is holding onto power, because it's the only social media company of any size, really. I mean, there is Twitter and there is Snapchat. But if you think about, in three areas, in commerce, search, and social media, when's the last time there was a new social media site started? It was 2011-- 2011, that's nearly a decade ago-- Snapchat. Search business--

ANDY SERWER: Which they tried to buy desperately, correct?

KARA SWISHER: They did, and then now try to steal from and ruin. So that's nice.

ANDY SERWER: Right, yeah.

KARA SWISHER: And then there's-- to me, that's the case against Face-- that's the one the government should pursue, what happened to Snapchat. They're the Netscape of this relationship with vis-á-vis Microsoft. And then there's search. There's been no search companies, period, none.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: Commerce? There's been no big commerce companies. And Walmart is sucking wind, compared to Amazon online at least. And so there's no competition. There's no competition. And that's really a problem. And eventually, the government is gonna have to-- especially if these companies come back stronger than ever from this coronavirus crisis, which they will, because other companies will just be culled completely. The herd will be culled, and then what?

ANDY SERWER: And you know they're gonna need a new definition of antitrust, though, because--

KARA SWISHER: Yeah, they're working on that.

ANDY SERWER: --that whole thing that it was only consumer harm, and you can't show that with lower and lower prices from Amazon. You have to show harm to the competitors.

KARA SWISHER: There's different kinds of consumer harm.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: There's different kinds of consumer harm. The lack of innovation is consumer harm. And I think that's really the issue.

ANDY SERWER: Right, lack of choice.

KARA SWISHER: And some of the stuff the FTC is doing, including looking at the purchase of small companies, I think is critical in terms of how they-- there's ways to take out talent. There's ways to take out competitors. It's called killer acquisition, that you kill whatever might be a risk to you. And so I think looking at the smaller ones, instead of the larger ones, will yield a great deal of insight into what's happening, which is what they're doing. They're buying up the competition.

ANDY SERWER: You've spent a lot of time, Kara, in both Washington DC and Silicon Valley.

KARA SWISHER: I have recently.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, you're one of a few people who, I think, goes both ways there.

KARA SWISHER: I do. Well, I saw this coming. I saw this coming, because I had covered the Microsoft--

ANDY SERWER: What do you mean by that?

KARA SWISHER: Well, I covered the Microsoft trial back at "The Washington Post." So you could see these companies creating-- like, you know, you have Amazon. It owns the marketplace and it sells goods and it has the distribute-- what? Like, huh? Right?

ANDY SERWER: What does that remind you of?

KARA SWISHER: And the distribution? Yeah, that reminds me of the railroads owning the tracks, the tickets, the everything, the routes, everything. You know, you have Google, which I happen to like the Alphabet CEO, Sundar Picha-- Pichai, but-- it's not Picha-- Pichai.

ANDY SERWER: Sundar Pichai, yeah.

KARA SWISHER: It's Pichai. You know, they own all of search. And then they make products that compete with the Yelps and everything else. Like, what's that? And then you have, you know, over at Facebook, the only social media company of any size. There's no VC that's investing in social media. They will say it to you outright.

ANDY SERWER: Right, I mean, you couldn't. But so these two--

KARA SWISHER: Three.

ANDY SERWER: --places on the map. Well, I'm just saying-- the Silicon Valley versus Washington's where I'm at. They don't get each other. I mean, what--

KARA SWISHER: They need to get each other this week. Certainly, there needs to be cooperation between the federal and state and local governments and these big companies, which are operating as quasi-countries of their own, right, or as powers of their own?

ANDY SERWER: Right, yes. Denmark has an ambassador.

KARA SWISHER: Really? Oh, that's right.

ANDY SERWER: --to Silicon Valley, yeah.

KARA SWISHER: To Silicon Valley, they do. So, you know, they have to get along on some levels. And at the same-- and in other-- you know, especially around defense, around security, around cybersecurity. But at the same time, there have to be laws in place on these internet companies, of which there aren't any. Just keep that in mind. The banks have law-- you've covered banking. Didn't you cover banking for a long time?

ANDY SERWER: Sure, yeah.

KARA SWISHER: Banking-- you've got laws for chemical companies.

ANDY SERWER: Well, Walmart has more laws that govern it versus Amazon.

KARA SWISHER: All of them do. The only industry that does not have any regulation is the internet industry.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: None. In fact, the regulation that does exist advantages them, which is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It is an advantage-- it's an advantage to them to have that law in place.

ANDY SERWER: Right, because they're not media companies. They're platforms--

KARA SWISHER: Whatever.

ANDY SERWER: --and they're not liable to, say, um, lawsuits.

KARA SWISHER: Whatever, they're not-- they're not, whatever, whatever.

ANDY SERWER: All kinds of litigation.

KARA SWISHER: It was meant as a good reason when it was started, and now it doesn't work for us. But it depends-- but taking it away is also not an answer. And so it's really complicated. And I think, again, once our legislators have time to think about things, they could perhaps focus on this.

ANDY SERWER: But some of the problems with that are the fact that, say, Ted Cruz thinks they're stifling conservative voices, whereas David Cicilline thinks they're meddling-- they're allowing Russians to meddle in elections.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah.

ANDY SERWER: Maybe they both have a point, but they definitely don't agree.

KARA SWISHER: David Cicilline is correct. The Russians did meddle in elections.

ANDY SERWER: [LAUGHS] That is true.

KARA SWISHER: Every intelligence agency has said that. This is ridiculous that we're even arguing about this. Of course the Russians meddled.

ANDY SERWER: Yes, right.

KARA SWISHER: And the Russians were customers of these platforms. They didn't hack. They do hack, and they did hack. But they were also customers. And so that's one thing.

The second thing is this conservative voices thing. And I just recently talked to another group that was insisting that this was the case. And, you know, some days I think, well, maybe they violate these rules more, and that's why they're getting flagged more. And at the same time, they should be able to say what they want. And they've gotten broad advantage on these platforms, actually, conservative voices. And so when Ted Cruz says things like that, it's just-- it's nonsense. It's really just nonsense. He-- if that's the case--

ANDY SERWER: Well, he's trying to keep pushing the envelope--

KARA SWISHER: Well, he is, but--

ANDY SERWER: --so you wouldn't dare stifle a conservative voice, right?

KARA SWISHER: Right, exactly. But the issue is, when do these people ever shut up? Never, online, right?

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: They let Alex Jones stay on those platforms long after he violated-- and he's still on there selling coronavirus toothpaste or something like that. What a-- this guy should be jailed, like, at this point, because of the damage he's causing the populace. But, you know, they let them stay there. So they're tolerant, way too tolerant, of a lot of stuff that goes on.

ANDY SERWER: Is there someone in Washington, like a Senator Warner--

KARA SWISHER: Yes, Senator--

ANDY SERWER: --who could kind of get a middle ground and--

KARA SWISHER: There's a million senators-- you know, there's this sort of idea that people in Washington don't understand that. That's not true. The FTC chair people-- on both sides, there's Republicans and Democrats at the FTC commissioners-- I find them all incredibly intelligent about this. And they really-- and the staff certainly does understand it. A lot of people at the Justice Department really do understand what needs to be done. It's just a long, arduous process.

And then in Congress, there's plenty of people. There's, you know, Suzan DelBene from Washington. There's Mark Warner. Amy Klobuchar has got some amazing bills in place. Senator Wyden, Senator Cantwell, Senator-- there's a whole-- I can-- Senator Bennet is particularly good on this stuff. There's plenty of people who know what to do and are very well-versed and aren't in the thraw of the tech companies, as some are.

ANDY SERWER: Right. Just a question about Twitter. So you're on there a lot. So is POTUS. Do you ever respond to that? I mean--

KARA SWISHER: On there a lot-- what do you mean?

ANDY SERWER: You're on Twitter a lot.

KARA SWISHER: Yes, I am.

ANDY SERWER: And so is President Trump.

KARA SWISHER: Yes.

ANDY SERWER: Do you respond to President Trump on Twitter? I mean--

KARA SWISHER: No, he doesn't talk to me. I don't--

ANDY SERWER: Well, I mean, but, you know, do you, like, retweet and say, this is nonsense? Or--

KARA SWISHER: Oh, constantly, yeah. I'm allowed to do that, because I'm-- I have a personal-- I'm a personality, so.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah, I left that, like, fair and balanced world long ago.

ANDY SERWER: It's funny though, because people say that he's just so clueless about technology. And yet, he has mastered that particular platform.

KARA SWISHER: He's fantastic. I wrote a great column about how good-- I've written several columns about how good he is at it.

ANDY SERWER: Is it really him, do you think? Is it actually him--

KARA SWISHER: Yes, oh, no, no, no. He is a-- as FDR is to radio and JFK is to TV, he is to Twitter. He's really good at it.

ANDY SERWER: That's perfect. I like that. Mm-hmm.

KARA SWISHER: And so he's, you know, he's an epic troll, and he's, you know, just appalling behavior on Twitter and breaks the rules almost continually, that I can tell. But he's allowed to, because he's a newsworthy figure. I do think it's dangerous. It's a dangerous tool in his hands. I think he's used it badly. I think this whole crisis has sort of been a backlash to that.

I think he's done-- it's fascinating how badly he's handled Twitter during this crisis, because he's put a lot of-- when it comes down to people's lives, I think people don't like falsehoods, you know? The political attacks are one things, but this is people's lives. And when he's lying about actual science, it's a problem. But he's very good at it.

You know, another person who is very good is AOC. You know, pick someone who's quite good at Twitter, she's fantastic. She's different than him. He's sort of a broadcaster. He just screams-- it's like someone screaming with a bullhorn at you, and then you have to hear him, because they're screaming. She is-- she's a more call-and-response kind of person. And she speaks internet, you know? She speaks Twitter, like, she's a native speaker of it.

ANDY SERWER: Right, yeah, yeah.

KARA SWISHER: And so I think more and more politicians, you know, they're all on it, and the press is all on it. And so there's a lot of discussion going on. And then there's all these people who just popped up and are really good, like George Conway, who I would have agreed nothing on, but I really enjoy him on Twitter, you know?

I can't wait-- I was saying to him-- I saw him recently. I said, I can't wait till we can go back to not liking each other again on regular topics, on good-- on policy issues. But it's an interesting place, where certain people have done incredibly well.

ANDY SERWER: Let's talk a little bit about your career.

KARA SWISHER: Sure.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, you started at these legacy media companies.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah.

ANDY SERWER: And then you became an entrepreneur.

KARA SWISHER: Entrepreneur-- "report-trepreneur."

ANDY SERWER: "Report-trepeneur."

KARA SWISHER: Don't use that word.

ANDY SERWER: And you still have your foot in that. Then, you're also working at this legacy media organization, that according to a colleague of yours, is now almost monopolistic again.

KARA SWISHER: OK, sure.

ANDY SERWER: OK, sure. So what is your career arc? I mean, did you plan it?

KARA SWISHER: Yes, I planned the whole thing.

ANDY SERWER: I know. When we were in school together--

KARA SWISHER: Well, we went to school together.

ANDY SERWER: Right, exactly.

KARA SWISHER: No, I think I've been entrepreneurial my whole career. And I think I-- once I started covering the internet, as a young reporter, first at "The Washington Post" when I covered AOL--

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: --I think I started to see that this was a shift, very much like radio was and television was. You know, I think I saw that shift much earlier than other people, and then was responding to it. And so I'm very hyperaware of the shifts in it. And I know before they're coming than most people. And so I pay a lot of attention to the impact on media, which I've always been aware of.

And so that's how I moved into podcasting. I thought, well, now-- you know, I did that five, six years ago. That was-- now it's the thing, right? And I've got two very big podcasts, make a lot of money. And the reason I did it is because I saw the mobile devices getting so prevalent, the software, being the app software, being terrific. And then the fact that people had them-- these great AirPods and things like that, in their ears, and were really utilizing books. And I thought podcasts make sense. And so I started doing that.

ANDY SERWER: Is that what you like the most of your media?

KARA SWISHER: I do. Now I do.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, you have different things. You've got your column, you've got going on TV, you're writing still.

KARA SWISHER: Yep.

ANDY SERWER: What-- is podcast the thing?

KARA SWISHER: Yeah, right now. But I have other things that I'm interested in. Yeah, I think podcasts are amazing. I think they're really fun. And you have a real fan base. It's a really interesting business, because we make a lot of money at it. We happen to. Not everybody does, but we do. We have very high CPMs, which are costs per thousand. And it's very low-cost to make them. I have a very lean staff making them.

And people love-- fans-- the fans are crazy. Like, the fans I have from the podcasts, both "Recode Decode" and "Pivot," are crazy fans. They love you. And they talk to you. And they want-- this week, I'm not gonna do selfies. But it's a really interesting dynamic, the relationship you have. And you can also do really-- we really bet heavily on substantive conversations.

And so, you know, there is a lot of-- I felt there was a lot of twitchiness going on in regular media. And so I thought, I can talk an hour, like I do at the Code Conference, except I can do hundreds of people versus 16 top executives. You can meet people like Shoshana Zuboff. We had her on earlier. She does surveillance capitalism. I think we were among the first people that had her on.

Or Stacey Abrams. I remember hearing about her early, early on when she was working in Georgia as one of the top legislators there. And I had her on early, early before anyone heard about it. So you could really find-- or Kirsten Green, who runs Forerunner, which does all this VC investment.

Or you can go to big names, like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. We did a very famous podcast where he messed up quite substantively. But it's a conversation. And so it gives people a chance either to show their true colors or really show colors that aren't so attractive.

ANDY SERWER: Right, right. You know, I refer to that Ben Smith column.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah.

ANDY SERWER: And I think it is an interesting point he made that everyone thought that the internet was gonna diffuse media. And it did in a way. And now it is becoming re-aggregated perhaps. Do you-- what are your thoughts on that, Kara?

KARA SWISHER: I don't know. We'll see. I just, you know, I think all media companies are, you know, one payment away from going bankrupt. So, you know, I mean, look at this. What's gonna happen now to all media companies? It's not just "The New York Times." I think they're in a strong position. But nonetheless, this is gonna to be a real hit to all kinds of media companies and will cull media companies.

And certainly the strongest will survive. And by the way, "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post" have been doing amazing work on coronavirus, I have to say. It's go-to stuff. It's gonna be difficult no matter where you are in the food chain and in the media business, largely because Facebook and Google control all digital advertising-- control and dominate. And they're monopolies on that or duopolies.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, does that mean that the golden age of digital media is over?

KARA SWISHER: No, no.

ANDY SERWER: I mean, you know, you had that crop, like the--

KARA SWISHER: Sure, the BuzzFeeds, the Vice, Vox.

ANDY SERWER: Right, Politicos and, you know?

KARA SWISHER: No, no, because they're-- I think it's just hard to do media now. The golden age of media is over. And so, you know, it used to be "The Washington Post" used to print money, right, doing classifieds and display ads, remember? But the problem there was not digital, it was Walmart coming in, and then Hechinger and Woodies closing. That wasn't-- that's what killed-- that's what hurt "The Washington Post."

ANDY SERWER: And Craigslist.

KARA SWISHER: Craigslist, yes, next.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: First was Walmart.

ANDY SERWER: First was Woodies going.

KARA SWISHER: Woodies--

ANDY SERWER: Woodward and Lothrop?

KARA SWISHER: Woodward and Lothrop.

ANDY SERWER: Oh, yes, we remember.

KARA SWISHER: Going-- Garfinkel's, Woodies, Hechinger-- all kinds of local retailers who used to do display advertising didn't when Walmart-- and Walmart didn't advertise. And then classifieds got hit by Craigslist.

ANDY SERWER: Right, right, right, yep.

KARA SWISHER: And then subscribers got hit by the internet. Now, that-- people do now like to subscribe, and "The Washington Post" is doing a thriving business in subscription. But it's got a limit to its ability-- it's never gonna go back to what it was.

ANDY SERWER: Right. What is the model or models that you think will work going forward?

KARA SWISHER: Trying different things. We've shifted a number of times. Like, so, early on, I realized that digital business was over a long time ago, because I understood that Facebook and Google were gonna dominate.

ANDY SERWER: In just ads, for instance.

KARA SWISHER: Absolutely, there's no winning. There's a race to the bottom. It's a race to the bottom. And there's no way I could get great enough people. No matter how good you are, you cannot beat them.

ANDY SERWER: You discovered that with Recode, like, after a while, when you--

KARA SWISHER: Yeah, before that. Yeah, when I was at "The Wall Street Journal" with All Things D.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, All With D? Yeah.

KARA SWISHER: It was just impossible. So we made an enormous amount of money on events, right? And then everybody tried that, you know? We're still in business, which is great. Although, it's been hit by coronavirus.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: But we moved into events, which was very lucrative, like, enormously lucrative. And then podcasts.

ANDY SERWER: Right.

KARA SWISHER: You know, just keep trying different things. And so I think, here in the media space, you have to try, like, 10 different things, and then try to get costs in line with that. And it doesn't-- it means there's gonna be a lot of small companies is really what it is. But large, behemoth media companies are very hard.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah.

KARA SWISHER: Again, as you've seen here, that's what they tried to do at Yahoo. If you-- they tried-- very hard.

ANDY SERWER: They're trying.

KARA SWISHER: They're trying. Keep going. Keep at it, Andrew. [LAUGHS]

ANDY SERWER: Hey. So last question, Kara.

KARA SWISHER: Where's Tim Armstrong? What happened to him?

ANDY SERWER: TA? Yeah, he left the building.

KARA SWISHER: Where did he go?

ANDY SERWER: He left the building.

KARA SWISHER: I'm just getting some air.

ANDY SERWER: He's got a new thing. He's doing--

KARA SWISHER: All these geniuses with their ideas. I remember having to listen to all of them. I was like--

ANDY SERWER: It's hard.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah, whatever. They did OK.

ANDY SERWER: Yes, there's that whole point as well.

KARA SWISHER: Yes, yeah.

ANDY SERWER: What do you want people to think about you or-- I don't even want to say remember, because we're too young, even though one of us is gonna--

KARA SWISHER: Are you, like, something I don't know?

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, 6-0.

KARA SWISHER: What? 6-0? Oh, yes, we're gonna get old. Yes.

ANDY SERWER: Right, yeah.

KARA SWISHER: I'm thinking nothing. I'm gonna keep going, Andrew. I don't know what you're doing.

ANDY SERWER: You said, "Fun! Fun! Fun! Death."

KARA SWISHER: Fun! Fun! Fun! Death. How do you remember that?

ANDY SERWER: I know that, you know?

KARA SWISHER: That was what I was gonna put on my tombstone. But the punctuation is critically important. It's fun, exclamation point, fun, exclamation point, fun, exclamation points, death, period.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah, that's right.

KARA SWISHER: Got it?

ANDY SERWER: Got it.

KARA SWISHER: Punctuation is always critically important in my life. No, I want-- I want to keep doing things. I'm gonna change-- I'll do things that will surprise people and shift. And I think that's critical, if you're gonna be a journalist. You have to remain forever curious, including about your own business models and stuff like that. Most journalists aren't. They are now, but they weren't for a long time.

ANDY SERWER: Right, yeah. No, that's true. All right, Kara Swisher--

KARA SWISHER: Thank you.

ANDY SERWER: --co-founder of Recode, "New York Times," NBC.

KARA SWISHER: All things, everything. I'm multi.

ANDY SERWER: All things TV.

KARA SWISHER: I'm a poly-- a polymath. What do they call it? A polymath?

ANDY SERWER: You are. You're a polymath.

KARA SWISHER: Yeah.

ANDY SERWER: Anyway, thanks for joining us.

KARA SWISHER: All right. Thanks a lot.

ANDY SERWER: You've been watching "Influencers." I'm Andy Serwer. We'll see you next time.