← On with Kara Swisher
On with Kara Swisher
Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone
01:02:06
Loading summary
Transcript138 lines
- [00:01]
John Malone
I outlined the whole damn thing. Streaming, random access.
- [00:05]
Kara Swisher
Yep. No, you're quite prescient.
- [00:07]
John Malone
Yeah. I mean, so what the hell, you.
- [00:10]
Kara Swisher
Know, what the hell?
- [00:11]
John Malone
I'm also so stupid.
- [00:13]
Kara Swisher
That's okay.
- [00:14]
John Malone
It's on.
- [00:25]
Kara Swisher
Hi, everyone from New York magazine and the Vox Media Podcast network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today. Today is John Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, a cable industry pioneer and literally one of the smartest people in media. As the CEO of Telecommunications, Inc. Or tci, he turned a struggling Denver outfit into the largest cable company in the country and then carved Liberty Media out of TCI and grew it into one of the most influential and diverse media companies in the world. Liberty and its spin off companies have owned major stakes in companies like Discovery, Sirius xm, the Atlanta Braves, and Formula One. His memoir, Born to Be Wired, just came. And as he says in the book, he's often been cast as a ruthless villain by the media. He's been called Genghis Khan, Darth Vader, a monopolist and a robber baron. John describes himself as, quote, high functioning autistic, and he's mostly avoided the spotlight, but he's never shied from a fight. And the self described libertarian has been taking potshots at CNN for years. So of course I had to ask him about that. And full disclosure, I'm a CNN contributor. At 84, he's still hugely influential. I'm excited to talk to him because he's a complex man. A lot of people think he's one thing and a lot of people think he's another. I think he's just really good at business. And one of his focuses, of course, is making money. He also thinks a lot more than the regular media executive about the impact all over the place. And though I don't agree with him about a number of issues, it's always interesting to talk to someone who is clearly incredibly gifted at what he does. Our expert question comes from Jeff Bukes, another one of my favorites and the former CEO of Time Warner. Please note, we recorded this interview in two separate sessions. We ran out of time during the first one and John was kind enough to come back and do a second taping. He's a fountain of knowledge and an idiosyncratic one at that. So stick around.
- [02:30]
John Malone
Foreign.
- [02:35]
Kara Swisher
Support for this show comes from Sensor Tower. Smart marketing teams use Sensor Tower to outperform their competitors. Do you? While you're stuck waiting on results, your competitors know what ads are working and where they're seeing which apps are growing and which audiences are converting and which trends are exploding. Sensor Tower gives you digital advertising, mobile app and web insights so you can move faster on your way to take market share. You can join global leaders like Procter and Gamble, Duolingo and Activision to get insights that make an impact on your marketing strategy. Learn more@sensortower.com Vox AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 247 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit Sierra AI to learn more.
- [03:28]
John Malone
Support for this show comes from Shopify. With Shopify, it's easy to create your brand, open up for business and get your first sale. Use their customizable templates, powerful social media tools, and a single dashboard for managing it all. The best time to start your new business is right now because established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com Vox Business all lowercase. Go to shopify.com Voxbusiness to start selling with Shopify today. Shop it is on.
- [04:08]
Kara Swisher
John, thanks for coming on. On.
- [04:11]
John Malone
You're welcome.
- [04:11]
Kara Swisher
Do you like the podcast game? You know, that's the game these days. I don't know if you.
- [04:15]
John Malone
I know. I don't play it much.
- [04:17]
Kara Swisher
Why?
- [04:18]
John Malone
Well, I'm. I'm sort of antisocial, so.
- [04:21]
Kara Swisher
Okay. You don't. You don't play much on it. Do you listen to podcasts? Are you interested in the trend of.
- [04:27]
John Malone
Video and following it as the collapse of traditional video news? I guess.
- [04:35]
Kara Swisher
Any thoughts on why that is? Why people are shifting towards them in rather large numbers, actually.
- [04:40]
John Malone
I think people want to listen to their own choir. Meaning it's part of the broad fragmentation, I think, of our culture.
- [04:49]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, I think you kind of started it, I have to say. Cable was sort of.
- [04:52]
John Malone
I've been blamed, you know.
- [04:53]
Kara Swisher
Yes, I know. Well, we'll talk about that. Let me start. Born to Be Wild is a memoir, but you also tell a bit of the story of the cable cowboys, the guys who created cable TV by stringing wires from antennas and hilltops to remote towns that otherwise wouldn't have gotten broadcast tv. My family is a cable family. I don't know if you know that. It's from Scranton, Pennsylvania. We were a coal company and we had the trucks to lay the lines. So we got the cable franchise. My family and I actually worked for the cable company, basically catching cable thieves who used to string their own wires to the Cable wire and shutting them down. So I know a little bit about this, but explain what they were like and the ethos of how you approach the business in the early days.
- [05:40]
John Malone
Well, I started my career as a technology guy at Bell Labs at and T for a While and then McKinsey. And from McKinsey I ended up as a consultant for technology companies, one of which was a company called General Instruments, which had just bought a company called Gerald Electronics. And the company was a mess and, and I was asked to go straighten it out. And that got me into the cable business because they were manufacturing, designing, building and financing cable systems. And one of my customers was a company called Telecommunications Inc. In Denver.
- [06:27]
Kara Swisher
Tci.
- [06:27]
John Malone
Tci. Bob Magness. And I ended up falling in love with, with the concept and getting my family out of the New York metro. And we moved to Denver in 72. So I was here, I was a PhD from Yale and yeah.
- [06:50]
Kara Swisher
An IV educated prep school kid.
- [06:52]
John Malone
Yeah.
- [06:53]
Kara Swisher
So when you took the job as CEO of TCI and this was a pretty struggling Denver cable company, you were able to stabilize it and grow it actually through the M and A process to transform it into one of the biggest cable companies in the country. Even though you had sort of started with this sort of, sort of silver spoon kind of background, what was the thing that you wanted to do there and then what, what attracted you to this cable business, this cowboy business that you weren't a cowboy. You weren't.
- [07:24]
John Malone
Well, first of all, I have to combat the silver spoon. I worked my whole life. I was, I had a work scholarship all the way through and you know, even graduate school was $400 a month.
- [07:39]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, I meant IV educated.
- [07:41]
John Malone
Yeah. No, I got a great education, I have to admit.
- [07:44]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. But what was the attraction to taking something like this that had been very troubled and stabilize it and then grow? Because TCI was well known for the aggressive M and A activity.
- [07:56]
John Malone
Yeah. No, TCI was in horrible shape. It probably had set the Harvard Business School record for debt leverage.
- [08:03]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [08:03]
John Malone
So it had managed to get itself way over levered. What attracted me was the people you know, I joined the motley crew out there. Most of the guys had not gotten a college education. They were more military trained, self taught. And this group of entrepreneurs, you know, didn't know that they were broke. They didn't know that they were virtually bankrupt and it was struggling through in the trenches. That group of guys who, many of whom those are still living are still involved in my various companies. So I'm partners with a number of them. So it was the relationships that drove.
- [08:51]
Kara Swisher
Me, that drove you. And also the nature of even if you're in kind of a trench or in a difficult situation, you keep pushing through. Correct.
- [09:00]
John Malone
There's another huge motivator. It's called fear of failure. Of course, I had a young family and I really didn't have a choice. We had to make it work.
- [09:10]
Kara Swisher
Is that a good motivator, fear of failure? Because one of the call marks of, say, technologists in general is failure's great. Like it just moves you to the next thing.
- [09:21]
John Malone
Yeah, well, technology failure and getting promoted up in big organizations is not unusual. Personal financial failure is what, what the driver was. It wasn't reputational, it was, it was financial. And that's because my folks had graduated and married in the heat of the Depression and they were afraid of banks. My mother kept all of her cash, some paychecks going back 30, 40 years, you know, in a coal stove. And they were just very nervous about financial distress. Which came to you, which they imprinted on me big time.
- [10:12]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, yeah. But you, you still had a very risk taking position. You recognized earlier you needed to achieve economies of scale in order to compete. And you write that the wiring of the country, the largest private construction in America since World War, was going to take a tremendous amount of debts. And in order to get Wall street to go along, you had to have them focus on EBITDA cash flow instead of profit. You had a risk profile, though. How did that happen?
- [10:39]
John Malone
No question, it was a risky business. And I learned the hard way how to manage risk and how to isolate risk. The banks loved it. Once you were predictable and nothing drove economics like scale. So it was very simple economic equation. Build scale, isolate risk. If you were going to do an acquisition or a big build, finance it separately, you know, have watertight bulkheads, as many and as much as you could. I had a mentor by the name of Moses Shapiro. He used to teach me elements of the Talmud. And he said, one of the biggest lessons is ask yourself the question, if not, you know, if something doesn't work, where are you at? Are you dead?
- [11:33]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [11:33]
John Malone
You know, can you recover? How do you lay off some of the risk? How do you turn failure into success? Think it through before you act. And so I became very driven by that kind of a concept of building a business that no single or multiple torpedoes could take down. And it was a hell of a fight with a syndicate of banks who thought they were totally upside down for the first six years.
- [12:02]
Kara Swisher
How did you change the way they understood debt and Risk that you weren't taking, you were taking calculated risks is what you're talking about. Where you isolated the risk into certain parts so it wouldn't kill the hole. Like a boat, for example.
- [12:15]
John Malone
Yeah, this is a hard lesson to teach even chief financial officers to get that last fraction of a data point in terms of cheaper interest will tend to cross guarantee, will tend to cross collateralize. And you really do, as an entrepreneurial manager in a risky enterprise, you really do have to fight that and say, no, I'm willing to pay a little more for the protection I get. I also have a philosophy of always having dry powder. So pretty typical companies that I've been involved in building will have no debt at the parent and will be in fact will be quite liquid at the parent, but will have leverage at the operating subsidiaries, which is where the debt goes, which is where the debt is.
- [13:12]
Kara Swisher
And that's to isolate the parent if something occurs.
- [13:16]
John Malone
That way, the parent can come to the rescue if necessary. I used to joke about it that way. The bankers buy you lunch. You don't have to buy the banker's lunch when something gets in trouble. And that was a lesson learned through struggling. I probably spent half of my time traveling in those first years at TCI just negotiating loan extensions with the bankers because everything was tied together, the debt was all at the parent, everything was cross guaranteed. And so then you get the banks fighting with each other. It's miserable. So it was a lesson that I learned the hard way. By the early 80s, there were technology opportunities and there were content opportunities because we did have synergy with those opportunities. I had also to some degree mastered the financials of taxes, how to advantage yourself with the utilization of efficient taxation, let's call it. And in order to protect Bob Magnus from losing control of his company, I had come up with the Alphabet stock concept, which allowed Bob to take out his two co founders without losing control of the company and allowed the co founders to monetize.
- [14:48]
Kara Swisher
So you are well known for your tax expertise, essentially, but you're also a libertarian, have a generally dim view of government regulation. In 1991, you created Liberty Media, for example, by carving out of TCI in order to further avoid further scrutiny by the doj. As you are creating this scale, you seem to take advantage of regulation and at the same time decry it. So talk about the philosophy towards regulation, how you structured Liberty so you're able to scale it without attracting too much attention.
- [15:19]
John Malone
Well, it seems absurd these days that when I got TCI up to 20, 22% of the nation in terms of our footprint. The government decided to change the law and literally block us, specifically us, specifically me, from continuing to grow the core cable business in the US So obviously they perceived us as, as having developed a somewhat monopoly position. Not just me, but, but the cable industry generally. But we were the leader, so we were the biggest, we were the target. So they limited us in terms of the percent of the country we could service. They then limited us also in the number of programming channels that we could have a financial interest in. And they then essentially passed some legislation as well as regulations. Retransmission consent represented the broadcast industry fighting back against the cable industry. It really delivered the content business back into the hands of the large broadcast network owning enterprises.
- [16:39]
Kara Swisher
Right. Just for people who don't know, retransmission consent means cable companies had to pay the broadcast networks for their content.
- [16:45]
John Malone
Right.
- [16:46]
Kara Swisher
But what your view of government regulation then? Obviously negative, but explain the philosophy of how you structured liberty to scale it without.
- [16:56]
John Malone
I would say not negative. I would say they have their job to do to protect the consumer. I think ultimately. And if you're a manager of a company, you have your job of creating as much wealth as you can for your shareholders. Mm. And so clearly running into regulation was just part of the job. And then figuring out how far you could go around the regulations, what to do so you're not stonewalled completely became, you know, part of the management job, part of the strategy.
- [17:33]
Kara Swisher
Right. But in the book you make clear you feel the regulations are mostly bs.
- [17:37]
John Malone
Well, most of the regulations, unfortunately, the regulators are always looking backwards. Mm. Now, admittedly, they're not clairvoyant and it's very difficult to predict the rapidity of change in the technology industry. And if you combine technological change with regulation, it's quite a challenge. So I, you know, I respect the fact that regulation is there to protect the consumer, not competition and not any particular competitor. And my take on it is really that the regulators should focus more on innovation and making sure that people who have too much market power, not necessarily monopolists, just people with overwhelming market power, are not using it to stifle innovation.
- [18:31]
Kara Swisher
Yep, that's my philosophy. I mean, this is what happens though, inevitably, doesn't it? Isn't that sort of, you know, it's.
- [18:36]
John Malone
Happening in AI, it's always awkward. And now that you have global companies, the technology world is now very much global. The economics of it. And I don't think our regulators are going to be that good at cooperating with the other guys regulators. So I don't know how they're going to do it, how they're going to continue to protect innovation and the consumer from from excessive market power.
- [19:02]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [19:03]
John Malone
But it's a legitimate tug of war. And, you know, far from being, you know, critical of these guys with their big tech companies, I really admire them. I mean, I, I don't know how I missed some of the opportunities I've missed, but it is incredible what's been built and the entrepreneurship that's driven it.
- [19:25]
Kara Swisher
Hey listeners, we're taping a How to AI for Business episode soon and we want your questions like how does Vibe coding work? What are the best uses of it in my daily workflow? Should I trust AI to protect my private business information? What is the best LLM service for me? What about hallucinations? And of course, the perennial Will AI take my job? Email your questions to on voxmedia.com and you might hear one of our experts answer your burning AI query. We'll be back in a minute. Support for on with Keras Wisher comes from Quince as summer fades, it's a perfect time to update your wardrobe with pieces built for fall. So if you're after luxury items that feel easy, look refined and layer seamlessly, you should check out Quince. With timeless styles like this, you'll find yourself reaching for them day to day. This fall, Quince has all the elevated essentials for fall. Think 100% Mongolian cashmere for $50, washable silk tops and skirts and perfectly tailored denim, all at prices that feel too good to be true. I have used quints a lot myself. I buy from it and pay my own money. I like the look and feel of their clothes. I think they compare well to other brands because they're a lot cheaper and I've used all their leisure wear stuff, all their pants, their bras, their shirts for working out. I'm a. I'm a soft clothes person and I will buy them again and again and return to them. You can keep it classic and cozy this fall with long lasting staples from Clothes quince. Go to quince.comkara for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Cara to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Cara support for on with Kara Swisher comes from Groons if you've ever gone down the Internet rabbit hole of trying different nutrition solutions, you likely found a bunch of weird conspiracy theories that range from eating everything you can find to starvation. Thankfully, there is a product that can help improve your skin, gut health and immunity without the crazy ideas attached to them. It's called Grunds. Grunds are a convenient comprehensive formula packed into a daily snack pack of gummies. It's not a multivitamin, a greens gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of those things and then some for a fraction of the price. In a Groons daily snack pack you get more than 20 vitamins and minerals, 6 grams of prebiotic fiber and more than 60 ingredients. They include nutrient dense and whole foods, all of which help you out in different ways. For example, Gruins has six times the gut health ingredients compared to the leading greens powders. It contains biotin and niacinamide which help with thicker hair, nails and skin health. They also contain mushrooms which can help with brain function. And of course you're probably familiar with vitamin C and how it's great for your immune system. On top of all, Groons are vegan and free of nuts, dairy and gluten free. Get up to 52% off when you go to Gruns Co and use the code Kara that's G r u n s.c o using the code Kara K A R A for 52% off. Support for on with Kara Swisher comes from LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24 7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new feature allows you to write job description and quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. You can either post your job for free or pay to promote in order to receive three times more qualified applicants. Let's face it, at the end of the day, the most important thing for your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you're getting the best. That's why LinkedIn claims that 72% of small business owners who use LinkedIn find high quality candidates. So find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com Kara that's LinkedIn.com Cara to post your Job for free. Terms and conditions apply. I'm gonna Fast forward to 2009. Netflix reported that it streamed more movies than it mailed. That was the year that it shifted over. My former partner, Walt Mossberg interviewed you for our conference that we did with the Wall Street Journal at the time, and you said this regarding streaming. Quote, you have this terrible reality of commercial life, which is, how do you monetize this thing? Unquote. The thinking within the cable industry was streaming wouldn't produce enough ad revenue or is too expensive to produce original content for it, which Netflix just ran into. Speaking of taking risks, why didn't the cable companies become Netflix before they did it? I'm curious. Because that might have been a solution for you.
- [24:27]
John Malone
Keep in mind, by then, the guy you're interviewing here was the chairman of DirecTV. So I was no longer in the US cable business at that time. I was in it internationally, but not. Not us. And I tried to buy Netflix at that point in time when Reid was having a little bit of financial difficulty. But, I mean, there's no question that they saw the future and they drove hard toward it. Reed's comment to me at Sun Valley when I tried to buy it was, if I ever sell the company, it's gonna be to a big tech guy. It's not gonna be to an old media guy.
- [25:08]
Kara Swisher
Oh, wow. No offense taken. No offense. So. But you didn't believe in spending money on the content for streaming, Right? Is that correct? Cause it was. The numbers were enormous, and Netflix at one point was spending four times what Disney was or some cockamamie number.
- [25:25]
John Malone
I believe that. In fact, it was my own outfit. Stars. Remember Stars?
- [25:31]
Kara Swisher
Yes, I do.
- [25:33]
John Malone
That licensed all the Disney original content to Netflix. That gave Netflix their real. Their real boost.
- [25:42]
Kara Swisher
Absolutely. When it was happening, I. I talked to a number of those. I'm like, do you understand you're arming your enemy?
- [25:48]
John Malone
It was insanity the way it was contracted. It should have been limited. But the reality was, I saw it, I wanted to buy it, and they were unwilling to sell it.
- [26:01]
Kara Swisher
I mean, I think the original sin of media companies was to give Netflix that. That leg up, for example. But you. But why didn't the content people spend money, including yourself? Why. Why wasn't that the idea?
- [26:16]
John Malone
Well, it depends where you. They say where you stand depends on where you sit, I guess.
- [26:23]
Kara Swisher
Right? Yep.
- [26:24]
John Malone
Keep in mind, the cable industry was heavily embedded in the linear contractual relationships that was their meat and potatoes on. That's. That was really the only business until Internet came along and they had Tied up the big media companies and exclusive agreements that precluded the media companies for the most part from exploring these new, these new phenomenon. So I would say the industry was kind of tied in a knot. The industry came up with various versions. They had a thing called TV Everywhere. I remember when we sold the business to AT&T, the principal asset that AT&T got from us was control of a startup business called At Home, which was the first high speed Internet delivery over cable. And I had been able to unite basically all the major operators in North America other than Time Warner. They were blocked by a contractual deal they had with US West. And the goal was to offer this high speed Internet connectivity and to allocate 20% of the revenue to the creation of content to be played on this new exclusively.
- [27:45]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [27:46]
John Malone
That was the goal anyway. That was the asset AT T bought when they got tci. And it was very much my thought that it would include the full content package. If you could. If you interview guys like the guy running Time Warner, Bukus, he'll tell you the struggle they had in getting the cable industry to cooperate with each other through that period.
- [28:11]
Kara Swisher
So speaking of Jeff Bukus, every episode we get an expert question. Let's hear yours.
- [28:16]
John Malone
Hi, John, it's Jeff Bukus. My question's on tech. Big tech's network effects on revenue combined with near zero marginal cost for incremental users causes a natural monopoly, winner take all dynamic that makes competition much less effective than how things worked in the industrial era. If you take that and you look at the global scale at which these giants operate, which extends well beyond regulatory reaches of either US or EU governments acting separately or even together. Without China and the global south, what do you think would address the challenge of dominance rent seeking? The threat to preserving innovation and probably more important than all of it, the political plurality and the separation of government from the private sector.
- [29:09]
Kara Swisher
That's a great question.
- [29:11]
John Malone
That's a big broad regulatory question. I'd have to say that don't rule out competition. Look at how much money is being spent on data centers now by these big tech guys. They're competing with each other. There's a race on driven by this technology which may or may not live up to its promise. So technology is going to continue to drive this and it will create global competition. We're already seeing a pitched battle between the Chinese and America. And Trump defines it as who can produce the most electric power. Because you can't have a super giant set of data centers if you don't have enormous amounts of Electrical power to drive it. I'm not sure technology won't fix that, though. I think they can probably figure out over time to lower power consumption. But that said, you have the big tech companies now desperately looking to compete with each other, and you have companies or countries, China, the US looking at it the same way. It's the whole future is dependent on, on who can implement these new technologies the quickest and the most efficiently against each other. And I, I looked at it, I said, well, the Chinese have an easier challenge. In America, we're going to have 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 people trying to do this. In China, they'll just have one.
- [30:53]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [30:54]
John Malone
So for the same amount of money, they end up with about 10 times the firepower as we will, because we're going to divide it amongst competitors. On the other hand, our competitors will drive innovation much faster against the Chinese. So for Jeff's question, you have to say, these things are moving so fast into areas that we have no experience at that. I don't see how regulators can possibly keep up with the rate of change. You almost. In America, you almost have to count on competition to sort it out. To sort it out, yes. And if government has to intervene, it's probably going to be more on a national security basis than it will be on trying to pick winners and losers.
- [31:50]
Kara Swisher
Right. That said, you have. The cable industry, of course, has transformed itself. Cable companies are Internet service providers. They often bundle cable, streaming Internet, in some cases voice. But it's in a decline. In many ways. Silicon Valley is moving into this space. And you've called for strict regulations on big tech. You say tech companies should be forced to make their algorithms transparent and consumers should be paid by tech companies when their personal data is harvested. This is something I have said for 30 years, but it's kind of a departure from your libertarian ethos. Explain what you're saying. Competition's gonna sort this out, but it may be it'll sort it out not in anybody's favor but the tech companies.
- [32:30]
John Malone
Well, first of all, I'm on the side of the consumer. The consumer should be given choice as much as possible, and regulations should set up to allow the consumer to have choice. And in older, more established businesses, they do. And the regulators have probably done a pretty good job of making sure there's multiplicity of choices and connectivity in various other areas. Right now you have a concentration of fireproducts. Take for instance, Google's dominance of search. How long will that dominance and search last? The AI investments that the other guys are Making, because I notice even personally I'm using AI search rather than Google search because it's, it's handier, it seems to work better. So, you know, I think innovation is really ultimately the answer that the regulators have to look to now. When government intervenes like they did with network neutrality, they created a disaster for the cable industry because all of a sudden the cable industry had rapidly growing demand for its capacity by tech companies and no way to collect. So you disconnected the capital requirements on the cable companies from the revenue source that would normally drive the volume relationship that would normally drive it. And so cable companies are running around rebuilding their networks to handle this rapidly growing demand at great cost, at great, at great capital cost, without any connection to the revenue stream. And this is particular onerous to me from a network configuration point of view when it comes to big tech using sports, streaming sports, because it takes one channel to cover the country with high quality sports. With a football game, okay, you don't need, you know, 50 million simultaneous streams to do it. But network neutrality has made it possible for big tech to create an advertising vehicle, right, by turning what could be done with one channel into 50 million streams so that they can, they can maximize the ad revenue that they can generate out of the information they had on the consumer.
- [35:11]
Kara Swisher
Right? In such a sense they're getting all the juicy bits, right? And you said we need a new regime of government regulations designed to rein in and monitor gigantic tech companies of big tech. You've called for algorithmic transparency, privacy data. Is there any? And then you're saying, well, I guess we'll rely on innovation and competition.
- [35:31]
John Malone
I think there is a national security element to this. I think you got to cut the Chinese off from control of TikTok. You really have to do it. You can't just, you know, look the other way because you're playing games with it. You really have to do it. There has to be a national security element to all of this stuff if we're going to continue to have a world that doesn't get along with everybody. Because the ability to manipulate through these technologies is pretty severe. And I don't think, I don't think our system of government can survive too much dominance of that capability, that ability to understand brain chemistry. And I mean, look, these, these guys with their social networks are all brain chemists now. You know, how do we, how do we stimulate certain brain chemicals and make them last? And you know, how do we make these things addictive? And those skill levels are aided by AI now where they can sort of Individualize everybody's brain and see how every individual reacts to certain stimuli. I mean this thing can, can be a real sci fi nightmare, you know, pretty quickly.
- [37:00]
Kara Swisher
Gosh, John, you sound like me. Everyone got mad at me for saying this.
- [37:04]
John Malone
No, it really can. And so I think the government really, I don't know if the government has, has the ability to attract people who are smart enough. In fact, I don't know if the people exist who are smart enough to keep an eye on this stuff and call a halt if it starts to get out of control. And I think, you know, I agree with the, some of the spokesmen in the industry who say the industry needs to do this, the industry needs to self regulate.
- [37:34]
Kara Swisher
They won't.
- [37:35]
John Malone
Okay. But I don't think they will and I don't see how that crosses international.
- [37:40]
Kara Swisher
They've obviously moved into politics in order to continue to preserve their power in that way. Very significantly now you supported President Trump the first time around and you and Liberty Media donated a combined $1 million to his inauguration in 2016. But by the time.
- [37:54]
John Malone
Well, that was an inaugural contribution, not a political.
- [37:58]
Kara Swisher
I know that I was saying compared to his inauguration. But by the time the 2020 elections came around, you soured on him and the Trump White House was chaos and you were hoping to vote for Michael Bloomberg. And it seemed like you stopped donating to Trump after January 6th, but you still donate significant sums to Republican causes. For example, you gave $500,000 to Speaker Mike Johnson's Grow the Majority PAC in March. As a Libertarian, talk about how you feel about the MAGA version of the Republican Party right now and its impact on business, which has obviously been your focus.
- [38:32]
John Malone
Well, I broadly agree with the Trump Republican agenda. Okay. I have to say that controlling the borders, trying to improve the quality of life for people, for the working poor, let's call them, by limiting illegal labor competition. You know, I think we should shift the tax code a little bit away from rewarding capital relative to labor. I think we. It's had a skew to it for way too long. So there are some of those agenda items re industrializing America, at least in areas of national security and technology, I think is important. I don't know that you need to make shoes in America again, but I do think in areas that are critical, long term, rare earths, places where we've allowed our supply chain to become extremely vulnerable as a nation, because I don't think it's a peaceful world out there yet. And, and so I agree with those kind of things. I believe that what Trump's even doing on tariffs is a rational response to the VAT tax. Congress is not going to pass a consumption tax, but the VAT tax gives foreign manufacturers a real edge over US manufacturers. You know, in Ireland, there's a 21, 22% tax on imports, which is waived for Irish manufacturers on their exports. So they can they. American stuff going into Ireland has a tax. Stuff going from America into the US does not. That's not fair. And so to equalize from at least a competitive manufacturing perspective, I think a tariff roughly equivalent to the VAT tax is appropriate.
- [40:35]
Kara Swisher
Okay.
- [40:35]
John Malone
I think it's also appropriate for Trump to use it as a. As a lever to get foreign companies that have particularly strong positions in technology or manufacturing, like semiconductors, to come to the U.S. and supply the U.S. from U.S. production.
- [40:57]
Kara Swisher
Okay.
- [40:57]
John Malone
It's going to take a long while. It's not going to be easy.
- [41:00]
Kara Swisher
Well, it sounds like you like what, what he's doing now. Most of it.
- [41:03]
John Malone
I like a lot of what he's doing. I don't necessarily care for his style, but I. But I do like what he's trying to achieve, which is a reindustrialization of America, strengthening national defense and improving the economic life of the lower middle class. Let's call the working middle class.
- [41:23]
Kara Swisher
What about taking 10% interest in intel or charging Nvidia Vig to export chips?
- [41:29]
John Malone
Well, I would not support him going out and buying a 10% stake in Intel. But under the Biden administration, they had already given intel the capital via the CHIPS Act. I much prefer us either loaning it to the companies if we have to, to get them to do what we want them to do, or taking an equity stake if their balance sheets won't support them borrowing the money and being able to truly pay it back. So I'm not opposed to on national defense grounds. I, I just think as a general matter. But if he needs to get a big injection of capital into Lockheed Martin so they can build drones fast enough, if that's an important thing to national security, I don't mind him buying preferred and equity stake or loaning them the money to make that happen rather than just giving them the money.
- [42:35]
Kara Swisher
In the book, you say the country was drifting towards socialism because JFK called on US Steel to lower prices. But when Trump calls on American companies to keep prices low despite terrorists, is that drifting towards socialism?
- [42:46]
John Malone
It's silly in its politics.
- [42:48]
Kara Swisher
It's politics.
- [42:49]
John Malone
Okay. It's silly in its politics. They're gonna have to do what they have to do. In, you know, to produce results or they lose their jobs.
- [42:58]
Kara Swisher
Right, so.
- [42:59]
John Malone
So, you know, calling on people to be nice guys, you know, it's good, it's good public relations, but it's not necessarily effective. And I think if you do things, if you single people out or companies out for bad behavior, that's probably okay. If it's not politically motivated.
- [43:24]
Kara Swisher
Well, everything with Trump is politically motivated, it seems, but so you say repeatedly in the book that CEO's responsibility is toward their shareholders, which seems to be your religion, essentially. You're right. That's how capitalism works. So when Tim Cook, for example, has to do things with Trump, like give him a golden statue in order to keep the tariffs off his back, that's what he has to do. Presumably you think that, does the CEO have any responsibility towards fellow citizens? If Trump, do you consider him an authoritarian? Especially with these troops in the cities, is there any point where business leaders, they have to put the Constitution before shareholders?
- [44:05]
John Malone
Well, I think the jury's out on this National Guard in cities, you know, I'd rather see the federal government fund a surge of cops, you know, rather than the National Guard.
- [44:21]
Kara Swisher
But how are you assessing what Trump is doing here then? Because not just going into the cities, but the idea that you have to kowtow to, you know, the sort of the central executive idea.
- [44:34]
John Malone
Well, I don't like that solution. My solution would be much more subtle. It would be reforming Social Security, it would be reforming 401k. You know, I look at these government problems as requiring long term strategy. The problem in our culture, the problem in our political system is we have politicians that are elected for two or six years in Congress. Congress is the most important part of our governmental system. It's very difficult for them to take long term strategic views. But to fix these kind of problems, you must, whether it's national security. You know, when George W. Bush, who I admired personally, but when he brought China into the World Trade Organization as a developing country, he said goodbye to American industrial production. And it's been consistent ever, ever since. We've shifted more and more industrial production out of the country to the point where we have very little ability to build anything in America, anything fundamental in America.
- [45:47]
Kara Swisher
So you're not worried about Trump being an autocrat or trying to stay in office or et cetera, et cetera?
- [45:53]
John Malone
I worry, I worry in a couple of ways. One is he tries to fix everything quick and his tactics are, you know, are pretty brutal. You know, it would be nice if he could have more finesse in, in approaching these things and do a better job really of explaining. But when you try and use a tariff for 27 different political reasons, like to help Bolsonaro in Brazil or, you know, to, to battery India into not buying Russian oil, you know, you kind of lose, you lose your, your perspective. So I worry about Trump taking on too much too fast. Do I think he really is going to attempt to stay in power and put Don Jr. Into the white House after him? I don't think so. I don't think that's really where he's coming from. I do believe that his close call with the assassination attempt really did make him think through his life what his legacy can be and how much time he has to achieve it. And the little comment he made on the side a few days ago about I want to go to heaven and I'm not sure, I'm not sure I'm doing well. You know, it's a pretty, pretty strong kind of statement that snuck out there.
- [47:22]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. Interesting.
- [47:23]
John Malone
I think it's true.
- [47:24]
Kara Swisher
All right, we'll see. We'll be back in a minute.
- [47:40]
John Malone
In business, they say you can have better, cheaper or faster. But you only get to pick two. What if you could have all three at the same time? That's exactly what Cohere, Thomson Reuters and Specialized Bikes have since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database, application development and AI needs where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high performance environment and spend less than you would with other clouds. How is it faster? OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second cheaper. OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking.
- [48:26]
Kara Swisher
Better.
- [48:26]
John Malone
In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds. This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads right now with zero commitment. Try OCI for free. Head to oracle.com Vox that's oracle.com Vox Support for this show comes from Robinhood. Wouldn't it be great to manage your portfolio on one platform? With Robinhood, not only can you trade individual stocks and ETFs, you can also seamlessly buy and sell crypto at low cost. Trade all in one place. Get started now on Robinhood Trading. Crypto involves significant risk. Crypto trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Crypto llc. Robinhood Crypto is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Crypto held through Robinhood Crypto is not FDIC insured or civic protected. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Securities trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Financial llc. Member a registered broker dealer. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte, paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app Download today.
- [49:59]
Kara Swisher
John, thanks for coming back for a second taping. We had a great conversation the first time, but I didn't get to ask you about the news business, which I meant to. It's just the other things were more interesting to me at the time. But since then you've had some controversy around stuff you said about cnn. And I wanna just go over it a little bit. Let me go backwards for a second because In November of 2021, in the middle of the Warner Brothers Discovery merger, you criticized CNN and said it should, quote, actually have journalists. You compared it favorably to Fox News and now you're criticizing them again. First, in an interview with the New York Times, you said that when it comes to making CNN list biased to the left, Warner Brothers CEO David Zaslav has been, quote, unable to have any meaningful impact. And in an interview on cnbc, you said you aren't seeing any actual journalism in mainstream media or CNN in particular. And you compared it unfavorably to Fox News again, which I just let you go on and explain this to me. Talk about your theories of what's happening here.
- [50:59]
John Malone
Well, let's narrow it way down to television news.
- [51:06]
Kara Swisher
Okay?
- [51:08]
John Malone
I go back, my standard would be Walter Cronkite and Huntley Brinkley, where they had massive audiences. Pretty much their coverage of the news was very similar. And probably I haven't done the arithmetic, but probably less than 5 to 10% of the news of the night had anything to do with politics. When Ted Turner decided to start cnn, Ted's theory was that news should be journalism. It shouldn't come out of New York or Washington, D.C. it could come out of Atlanta. And over time, we saw CNN starting to become a little to the left. And when Rupert Murdoch called me up and said, is there room in America for another television news service? I thought, yes, because Rush Limbaugh had demonstrated on his radio side that there was a very Large and underserved audience on the right of center. And so Rupert launched Fox News. And the deal, Rupert explained to me, was he was going to have a true news organization inside Fox News that was going to be really neutral politically and focused on factual news. That would be represented today by Brett Baer, previously by Brit Hume. And the rest of the, the rest of the day was going to be entertainment, focused on, on whatever's going on, fairly heavily political. Whereas Ted's approach was zero celebrity, just journalism, just the news. What happened of course, was then MSNBC got, got launched as NBC felt like they needed a flanker brand for the broadcast news to, to fill the 24 7. And in order to compete and gain share against each other, they started to become increasingly political news because that was something that could really differentiate one from the other. CNN in my opinion, had terrific journalists, still does, very talented people and spread all around the world. Now I also believe that they've been drawn into way too much political focus in their broad coverage in order to compete with the other two guys who are almost entirely political.
- [54:05]
Kara Swisher
I mean, that's what one would do if you see success at what Fox was doing. And we'll get to Fox in a minute because they're not the stellar news organization you speak of all the time.
- [54:14]
John Malone
Yeah, but they don't, they don't hold themselves to be all journalism. They hold themselves to be sometimes journalism. But a Sean Hannity openly admits he's very biased, which he is. And, and the various call them quasi celebrities that have their hour here and the hour there. I mean, let's face it, when you have a, a comedian, Greg Gutfeld, right, is getting a big audience and he's, his personal political position is very, is very right wing. Okay. You know, is it entertainment or is it news? Well, I think it's, it's entertainment. They don't try to be overwhelmingly factual. They try to be controversial and funny and keep an audience.
- [55:08]
Kara Swisher
So let me ask you, what do you think the public wants here? I mean, which CNN anchors are biased? Is it the evening time? Which is very similar. It tracks onto what Fox does.
- [55:16]
John Malone
Look, the trouble with bias is it's almost invisible. And the person who, look, these are good people. These are people who believe they're not biased, okay? They really believe that. It's just like an awful lot of us white folks say we're not biased about blacks, okay? But it's, it's embedded. You grew up in a family that, that didn't see blacks as we would like to see blacks today. So, so you have to go through a little mental exercise to understand where they're coming from. So you get somebody, a journalist, an anchor, a promoter, a producer who's really behind, you know, what you cover and what you don't cover. And that kind of point of view is difficult to suppress. I mean, if you look at the political affiliations of the journalism industry, who they contribute to, who they register to vote with, okay. You'll find damn few professional journalists on the right. Damn few.
- [56:30]
Kara Swisher
There's a lot in Newsmax. They have more stations than ever before.
- [56:35]
John Malone
Yes, there is a rising group because there is a rising economic structure that's willing to support it. I want a news service that not only serves the public, but makes us money.
- [56:53]
Kara Swisher
In a way you're pining for a time that's gone by. Right. The idea of that we all got along and there were only three networks. Well, you were part of the change in that. Oh yeah, the cable business certainly was. But I'm curious, you don't really criticize Fox News. You just think they just are what they are. The way it's incredibly political, it's divisive. Let me finish. And even though you admit it's got a lot of entertainment, not fact based mostly on, and probably sees it as news and truthful and let me also, as you know, and I'm not giving you some information you don't know, they settled a lawsuit with Dominion for $787 million because its journalist repeated lies about the 2020 election. Brett Baier sent emails pressuring the network's decision desk to reverse their 2020 election. Arizona Call and flip it from Biden to Trump. So how, how do you square this circle, if you don't mind? I just, I just. Are they all the same?
- [57:50]
John Malone
I'm not here to defend Fox as a journalism organization. I think Brett Baer comes the closest he does on air. But you know he's going to be pushed to the right just by the fact that he's so surrounded by people who are, have been selected because they, they may not even believe it personally. I mean, I don't know what, what Greg Gutfeld really believes, but I know he's found an audience for his comedy by approaching it from the right. So right when I, when I criticize it, I'm just saying, look, if you want to have a successful global news service, it should really be, the effort should be to make it very factual and less partisan political and more, more in depth coverage so people actually have, who are interested, actually have the facts in some level of depth.
- [58:57]
Kara Swisher
But no conservative viewers are going to abandon Fox or OAN or Newsmax for CNN's version of Fox News July 8th. I would assume in the book you write that the news service like CNN is a public trust that, quote, the media have, if not an obligation and a moral imperative to help unite the country. Rather than endlessly exposing or exacerbating our differences, we started talking about how the media fragment and people want to listen to their own choir. We can argue about whether or not Fox is living up to its obligation to unite the country. I don't think that's its job, nor do I think it is intending to do it. But it's clear that on social media enragement equals engagement and there's very little incentive to unite, especially financially, just what you're talking about. So where does that leave us as.
- [59:43]
John Malone
A society if scared to death about our grandchildren? Scared to death going through dramatic changes already having all kinds of psychological psychiatric problems, suicide rates, people feeling isolated, young men, couch potatoes connected to the rest of the world only through a digital platform that's manipulating their brain chemistry. I think it's very scary and, and I'm not sure I can predict in any meaningful way where it's gonna, where it's gonna go. I, I think, you know, I'm a huge believer in education, in the educated citizen being able to end up keeping a political system functional and I just don't see it. And there are going to be plenty of people that are really well educated and really understand a lot more than I do. But the average, the mass population is currently subject to great manipulation by entrepreneurs who really should be brain chemistry scientists and are, and people get addicted to things without realizing it.
- [61:14]
Kara Swisher
Let me read you something to someone who knows you very well. And they were joking. They said John has been out west for too long, which is funny. He said he doesn't recognize the rotten government, the unprecedented and Putin esque subservient oligarchic corruption, and isn't frothing at the mouth about the Marxist tariffs the way he would if a Democrat had done it. The lack of EQ among Republican male business types augmented by other issues is an abandonment of what they all previously declared were their conservative principles because MAGA extremists have slapped an R on the whole tyrannical project. And the last thing they said, one of the things that's hard to do is you don't have a solution, I guess. And he jokingly said one loses brain cells living in the plains or mountains either because of the emptiness or altitudes. That was a joke.
- [62:04]
John Malone
Well, you know, look, I. All I say about myself is I'm really an engineer. You show me a problem and I'll try to figure out an approach to solving it. So I'm very much problem solution, problem solution kind of a person, no matter what comes my way. And I'm pragmatic about it. I'm not, I am not politically biased in one way, or I would call myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I think government needs to stay out of people's lives as much as possible. And I think the financing of government should be as painless to market economy as it can be and is as little disruptive to them a market economy as it can be. You know, but I believe we live in a rational world with a lot of bad actors and we need to be strong as a country and think about our survivability, our sustainability, which we don't do nearly enough. I mean, our political system is built around, you know, a three part federal government in which the Congress was supposed to be the most important and the most active. And unfortunately they in recent years have been the least active. As a result, the executive has. And the bureaucracy has been filling in for the vacuum created by Congress. Not being explicit. Look at. There hasn't been a budget coming out of Congress in years. They can't agree on anything, so they just kick the ball down the road. And what that really means is they're transferring power to the executive branch. It scares me to death that Trump is right at the very edge of presidential power, trying to define the, the extent of it. I hope he doesn't go against the courts, but I do hope that the courts constrain themselves and don't think they're now the ultimate power in the universe. Congress should be the ultimate power in the universe, but Congress is so divided, it's dysfunctional.
- [64:25]
Kara Swisher
This particular Congress has abrogated its power to him. You know, this is.
- [64:29]
John Malone
Yeah, this is a real, real problem in our form of government.
- [64:34]
Kara Swisher
All right, well, we're going to end there. John, I really appreciate this. I wanted to get the clarity in you. You did that and so I appreciate it. All right, very good. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor, Russell Kateri Yocum, Michelle Eloi, Megan Burney and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Maura Fox. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda and our theme music is by chance, if you're already following the show, you're a cable cowboy. If not, you're Darth Vader. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more this month on Explain It To Me. We're talking about all things wellness. We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes and fitness trackers. But what does it actually mean to be well? Why do we want that so badly? And is all this money really making us healthier and happier? That's this month on Explain It To Me, presented by Pure Leaf. Thank you to CVS Caremark for supporting this show. CVS Caremark allows you to get the prescriptions you need for where you need at the best price for you. CVS Caremark allows for greater access to medication through broad, flexible network strategies. They work with more than 64,000 pharmacies nationwide, 44% of which are independent pharmacies. This coverage means CVS Caremark can give their members the unmatched ability to choose where and how they want to receive their prescriptions. Go to CMK CO Stories to learn how we help you provide the affordability, support and access your members need. Support for this show comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style. It's fall and it's time to invest in new arrivals you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed Prada blazer and Gucci loafers that are great for work or a weekend rendezvous. Saks makes shopping feel totally customized to you, whether that's in person with their in store stylists or online@saks.com where they show you only what you like to shop. They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in, or when an item you've been eyeing is back in stock. For a personalized, easy shopping experience, head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the best fall arrivals and style inspiration.